What me? An athlete?

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, my father (and his four brothers) all played football for UC Berkeley, so I guess I do have some sporty genes. But it wasn’t until I took up soccer at age 40 that I played any sport at all. I remember in elementary school, we were tested for […]

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Injuries and other ouchies

Knock on wood! That’s what I do whenever I hear of or even think of some of the bad injuries that can befall a soccer player. I’ve seen women go out for months with torn ACLs, popped Achille’s tendons, and broken collarbones. Many have had knee surgeries. So my various injuries over a span of […]

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Coaches and none

Our team hasn’t had a coach for quite a while now. I miss having someone on the sidelines who can assess the game and sub us in and out. I even miss a coach who runs practices so we get better. In earlier times, we were neophyte soccer moms eager to play but with no […]

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Wind, Rain, Sun!

Ok, we soccer players of SoCal don’t have much weather to complain about most of the time. BUT some of my strongest memories are of games in which more intense forms of weather played a role. Let’s take wind. At more than one Vegas tournament, the winds were so strong they carried the ball all […]

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Positions!

And I don’t mean sexual! Ok, that got your attention! In soccer there are three “rows” of positions: forwards, half-backs a.k.a the mid field, and defenders. Other terms like striker, stopper, sweeper are also designations. Some players naturally want to go forward and score while others like to stay back and defend the goal (oh […]

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Soccer Stylin’

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It’s in the Bag!

The other day I saw my soccer bag under the stairs, huddling amidst other sports paraphernalia looking quite forlorn, and dragged it out. It’s a blue and black Addidas, backpack style, with side pockets and a netting on the front to hold my 2018 World Cup “Telstar” soccer ball. I decided to reacquaint myself with […]

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SO LONG, SOCCER!

Okay, the title is misleading.  I am not really saying “So long” as in “Good bye, Soccer.”  I mean, it’s been SO LONG since I’ve been able to play!  Just another shut down thanks to COVID, as soccer is a contact team sport.  Before March 13, 2020, I played soccer three times a week.  On […]

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Looking back on 2012

Went to Europe again.  How lucky I am to have been so many times in my life.  Paris is now almost familiar and more picturesque than ever.  I realized why they still have all those beautiful 19th century buildings.  They caved to the Nazis and didn’t get bombed!  I think California cuisine trumps French these […]

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The Bees’ Knees and Then Some!

I live in a Honey House.  Honey drips from the rafters and through the lightswitch plates.  Bees have been enjoying our attic for years now and today we have finally brought in the experts to salvage the massive amount of honeycomb hive that apparently has been the cause of the plethora of dead worker bees […]

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Relaxing into Reality

Okay. What the heck does that title mean? In some ways, offering an explanation is contrary to its very meaning. Any definition seems like an effort to control, and that’s precisely the opposite of relaxing. To relax or “re-loose” implies something (or someone) that is tight (uptight!) which needs loosening, and not just once but […]

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Bitch blog?

I was just thinking about blogging. About the purpose of blogging, for the blogger. Bitch about the state of the world? Kvetch about daily irritations? Pontificate on the moral and/or politcal climate of our times? Share vital information about unclogging a stopped-up drain? That is, is a blog a how-to? Or a where to, as […]

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N.O.M.B.

I came up with this acronym a few years ago when I was trying unsuccessfully to separate from my post-college, capable, adult daughters. They had already separated from me! But the maternal instinct dies hard, at least the part of it that feels the need to protect one’s offspring from harm of any kind. High […]

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Hypochondria, Goddess of F-f-fear!

My first hypochondriacal tendency can be traced back to my twenties when I started to imagine every headache was a brain tumor.  I didn’t know anyone with a brain tumor but I had heard that the English writer, Anthony Burgess, was once diagnosed with one which miraculously disappeared after he got Clockwork Orange out of […]

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Pollyanna was no Pollyanna

“Don’t be a Pollyanna!”  “She’s such a Pollyanna!”  Ever heard these exclamations before?  Usually they refer to someone who is way too 1)obnoxiously cheerful, 2)excessively optimistic, 3)forever positive, 3)stupidly idealistic, 5) did I say obnoxiously cheerful?  Or all of the aforementioned. But who is/was Pollyanna?  Besides the heroine of the 1913 novel of the same […]

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Mississippi Ippississim!

When I was a kid, I loved spelling Mississippi forwards and backwards, over and over again. All those s’s and i’s and p’s! They lilted up and down, like the waves of the great river of the same name. It wasn’t until 1977, the year I got married, that I finally saw both river and […]

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Atonement?

Yom Kippur tonight. My husband will start fasting. Despite being a self-proclaimed atheist, he still observes this ritual. He says he does it to feel connected to his father, who also fasts. Way back when we were first married, I, the shiksa wife, tried not eating for a day and it turned me into a […]

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IT IS WHAT IT IS!

I’ve been hearing this expression for weeks now — IT IS WHAT IT IS.Followed by a shrug and a sigh. It’s pretty apparent people aren’t saying this because everything is hunky dory and coming up roses. No. Whether “it” is the hot mess in Congress or L.A. traffic or losing all the data on your […]

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NANOWRIMO, BABY!

November is National Novel Writing Month! And I’m in the third week of attempting to write 50,000 words by November 30th! So why am I even writing here in this blog right now? I’m only up to 20,015 and I am way behind the daily quota to achieve such an awesome goal! What an experience […]

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PROJECT RUNWAY FINALE (Season 8)

Mondo! You were robbed! But you will survive! Because you are incredibly talented and honest and unique! I really don’t understand what was going in in the heads of Nina Garcia and Michael Kors. I mean, GRETCHEN?!? I would have preferred Andy. His stuff is better than Gretchen’s. Gretchen’s overblown sense of her own importance […]

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MAD TEA PARTY

Yes, those Tea Partyers are MAD. As in CRAZY NUTS INSANE! Don’t they realize that GOING BACK is not an option? Like Alice, I feel like I’m sitting at a table of spinning cups and steaming teapots where nothing makes sense anymore. As the daughter of an FDR devotee, I still believe our government can […]

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GOOD GRIEF

Fall has arrived, and with it, an elegiac undercurrent in my psyche. It’s been 45 years since my father succumbed to esophogeal cancer, but I can still feel the sense of loss in this season, and especially now that I am ten years older than my father was when he died. He had been diagnosed […]

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30 YEARS AGO…

…my body brought forth on this continent a new baby, conceived in love, and dedicated to being absolutely, positively, and amazingly HERSELF. Jon and I are fairly dazed today, wondering how fast the time has gone since that August 22nd in 1980 when she who was breech was pulled from my belly (he watched the […]

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CRUELTY, THY NAME IS BLOOD

I don’t know why this word has been chasing me around all week…like the Furies with Orestes. CRUELTY. Apparently CRUEL comes from CRUDE which is derived from some other root meaning BLOOD. And there are two definitions. The first is knowingly inflicting pain on others. The second is enjoying inflicting pain on others. Sadism, in […]

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4th of July a.k.a. Independence Day

We’re going to brunch, yes, brunch, at my in-laws. No barbecue. No fireworks. Not that I really care. My community goes ape-shit every 4th, starting with a 10K race at 8 p.m., a major parade down Sunset Blvd. in the afternoon, and fireworks at Pali High’s football field at night. One year my husband and […]

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TURTLE EGGS FULL OF HUMAN PROMISE

Human beings kill me. Yeah, some of them MIGHT kill me. But let’s not even go there. I mean, sometimes human beings are adorable, precious, touching! There’s a photo in the LA Times today of five volunteers in lime green tee shirts (from Alabama’s SharetheBeach organization) all huddled around a “nest” of sea turtle eggs. […]

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