Three Things

Aarons Beach, December 2010

Welcome to Thursday, celebrated on this blog by sharing three (or more) things which are usually random, off-the-top-of-your-head thoughts.

For those of us with self-diagnosed, adult-onset ADD (brought on by old age  technology and the ever-increasing expectation that a person must do sixteen things at once, in three or four different locations),  it's slightly liberating to receive permission to spew off completely random thoughts, even if that permission comes from oneself.

(Isn't "oneself" an odd looking word? Shouldn't an apostrophe show up somewhere?)

Let's begin.

1.  A week from Sunday, Chesapeake Bay Father turns 70. Born with a defect which required open-heart surgery as a teenager (and submersion in ice), he has every reason to celebrate. And celebrate he will, assuming I can clean the house and get to gettin' on the birthday fiesta, which will be on Saturday, January 22, for anyone interested in attending.

Celebrating is so much more fun than cleaning, and yet I spend more time cleaning than celebrating.  (Note to self:  This really must change.)

2.  Chesapeake Bay Daughter, a seventh grader, had a basketball game last night.  They lost 21-20, but that close gap was made possible by her inability to accept defeat until the game was actually over, and the two three-pointers she scored in the last seconds of the game.

I blinked back tears of joy and pride.  She's absolutely amazing. Truth be told, she looks just like Chesapeake Bay Baby Sister on and off the basketball court.

Chesapeake Bay Baby Sister scored over 1,000 points in her high school career and was one scrappy, determined player, just like her niece.

After she and I debriefed tonight, I gained a whole new respect for her performance on the court.

She kept fighting and didn't resign to losing before they actually did. She believed until the last millisecond there was a reason to fight and a chance to win.  

There are many life lessons to be learned in her way of thinking.

3.  After months of scanning old photos for the book that's due this summer, I discovered a wrinkle in my methodology that may require me to cry to start over.  Terms such as "grayscale" and "output width" are involved.  "Grayscale"  now refers to the color of my hair, and "output width" involves the size of the tears that I've been blinking back will be streaming, if in fact I have to start over.  For now, though, I am not going to think about it panic; the publisher will let me know for sure if something is wrong next week. As far as I can tell, I'm still in the game and there's still a chance.

There's still a chance.

Now it's your turn.

Thanks, as always, for participating and commenting.  There are not enough hours in the day to respond to each of you as I'd like.  Just know that I thoroughly enjoy reading your responses and thoughts each and every day.  To use the quote we talked about on Monday, my readers are finest kind.

Baby Sis and Chesapeake Bay Daughter, Basketball Twins Separated at Birth, November 2010