Right Knee

Ever since I started playing a lot of pick-up basketball in the summer after my 1st year at College, I've been pretty used to being crippled the day after a big game. When I lived in my parent's basement, the trip up the stairs the morning after a game would often involved clawing my way to the top, because my legs would be so destroyed. But, aside from a messed up ankle (resulting mostly from a fall from a lamp-post I probably shouldn't have climbed) in 2001, which took about 3 months to heal, it was always fairly obviously a pulled something or a sore what-have-you, and it would be fine before the next game -- and even if it wasn't, I could still play through the pain.

But last Friday I woke up, and my knee decided that if I bent it past 30 degrees, it would scream and scream and scream. And if I climbed down the stairs, it would scream. And pretty much anything involving picking up and carrying a little person, again, screaming. It happened 2 days after a ball game, so it wasn't just from that game (I actually felt great the day after the game), and instead of getting better, it got worse each day for the next 6 days. And, basically, I was wondering if just all the basketball and shooting practice I've been doing had worn out my knee -- which was a pretty terrifying idea; I'm 28, but that's not really the age where I'm willing to accept my joints giving up on me.

I had to consider that I might have to stop playing ball -- which is by far my favorite rec activity. I had always figured that all was missing from me being a great player was giving it more time, and here, having given it my time, it seemed to be ruining my body. Peja woke me up in the middle of the night (she's actually be pretty awesome lately, so it's no big deal), but what sucked is that I could barely get to my feet. I dragged my right leg to her room, and with an incredible amount of pain, I carried her to the bathroom and back to bed.

I fell back into bed, my knee grinding and popping, and I decided that it was alright. My goals have had more to do with coaching lately anyway, and if this was what it took to properly change my focus, than maybe it was alright.

Maybe it's what I need.

Jay.

The Old Days. . .

I'm always trying to go to sleep early when Sienna works nights. I know Peja will be up first thing tomorrow, just after Sienna gets home, and I'm going to drag my sorry old body out of bed and take her downstairs for breakfast and a morning of fairly uninspired play -- "How about we pretend that I'm the cashier at the grocery store -- you bring me stuff and I'll tell you what it costs. . ." Four hours later. . .

But I can't do it. The house is just too quiet. I feel like I'm 18 again, or living in the farm house in Guelph at 22. . . You can think it's lame or whatever, but Sienna and I have spent every night together since we met, except for her first 6 or whatever night shifts this month.

I just instantly revert back to my old nocturnal self, when I wouldn't really think about going to sleep until the panic of "Uh, I'm only going to get 2 hours sleep before my first class" would set in. And, really, it wasn't a big deal because I would just come home from class and nap the afternoon away. Ever crank music and take a nap? There's this great period of time before you're actually asleep when your conscious thoughts slow down and the music is all that you are noticing in the world. It's pretty awesome, I think. . .

Alright, there's a 3 1/2 year old human upstairs that really should remind me that I'm not my old self anymore. But, to be honest, Peja is more like a third arm to me -- like when you look at old pictures and think, "Oh, right, I used to wear glasses" -- when something is all-the-time, you start to imagine that it was always the case. Sometimes I dream that I'm back in college, or even high school, and generally Peja is right there with me (and I'm not wearing my glasses, for the record). Really, glasses?

So, what would be the options in the olden days. . . Well, I'd probably spent some time in the studio, convinced that falsetto singing was the key to a pop song. . . Which might be the case for someone else's falsetto, but certainly not for mine. I'm guessing that's not the best move (See above sleeping new human), so the other thing I'd do all night is write.

Sometimes things like this: (WARNING: FICTIONAL CONTENT TO FOLLOW)

At midnight, after three hours of heavy snow, the road was a salty slushy mess. The shoulder was knee-deep powder over a foot of crusted and untrustworthy hard pack. The street lights were a few hundred yards apart, leaving dark shadows between --confusing the snow, ice and slush, and often sending him sprawling into the muck. The young man would walk on the road, his already soaked runners getting wetter and colder with every step, until a passing car forced him off. He would clamber up onto the snowdrift, hoping not to break through the crusty hard packed, where he had gotten stuck several times already, losing and retrieving his shoes with bare hands numb and frostbitten. His nose was bleeding hot down into his mouth, where he was sure that he was missing at least one tooth. His left eye was cut and almost swollen shut. His ribs ached with every breath, tender where their fists and boots had assaulted, and he was half-convinced that he was dying from internal injuries. Fifty meters from his goal – a bus stop under the next light – a meat truck swung around the corner and sent him back up onto the bank. Cursing, he broke through the crust and again his shoe became lodged below the ice, his socked foot surfacing alone through the snow. He reached down with his hand, beyond cold, beyond caring. He pushed it through the snow and tried to grasp the lost sneaker; he failed. The nerves weren’t responding; a futile effort with his other hand left him with little choice. The bus would be warm. It would take him to help. He continued with one shoe, his foot too numb to care or notice.

He reached the bus stop, no more than a bench and a six inch wide sign on a metal post, used his sleeve to clear a space to sit, and collapsed. He had only walked a mile or so from where they had dumped him, but it had taken him the better part of an hour. It was getting colder, now that the clouds had moved off, and a full moon gave light that would have lessened his struggle moments before.

He had fueled his journey with anger and hatred, every step along the road was in defiance of the attackers who had left him for dead. But now he was spent. He pulled his arms up the sleeves of his thin pullover and hugged his body. He folded his sock foot up under himself – he couldn’t feel it at all.

He dared a smile when he heard the last bus of the night coming down the road, it’s diesel engine revving loud. The young man mustered his strength, stood, and took three effort filled steps to stand beside the bus stop sign. He waved a token gesture, then as the bus failed to slow, a larger wave, then both hands, then a shout, then a scream. The bus stormed past and down the road.

“Come on!

Hey!

Please!

Come on!,” He yelled after it, falling to the ground defeated. Tears mixed with the blood on his face.

He cursed god. He cursed his attackers. But most of all he cursed the bus. Flying down the road, laughing at him. It didn’t stop as a joke. It didn’t stop because the driver was lazy, near the end of his shift. It didn’t stop because his attackers had bribed the driver. It didn’t stop because the driver was old and fucking blind. It didn’t stop because they thought he was gay. It didn’t stop because he dropped out of high school. It didn’t stop for everything and everyone and the whole world was shit and this bus was paying him back for something he never even did. So he pushed the bus with his eyes, willing it to crash and burn – praying for it to miss the corner and slide over the bank. And then it did.

The now frozen slush had refused the bus tires any firm purchase on the road, and they continued straight across the other lane and broke on the high curb with great force. A horrible squeal of metal sounded the bus’s fight to continue on, and finally the suspension gave, and the wheels jammed up and over the side of the road. The fence was nothing. It crumbled like tin foil, and the bus got halfway over the bank before something solid under the bus hit the curb and brought it to a halt.

As the torn-up bus settled down into the snow, smashed and torn, window frames bent and empty, the glass falling shattered into the snow, a new sound reached the young man’s ears. A sustained piercing scream – a woman in excruciating pain, pleaded the night for help. The man lifted his face out of the snow, pushed himself up with his elbows. The scream got louder, broke through the blood in his ears, pushed past his indifference, and awoke a basic sympathy that the world had refused him.

Back down the middle of the road, recklessly hopping and sliding, falling and willing himself back up. If his eyes had pushed the bus off the road, then they sure as hell were going to get him to the wreck. He stared at his feet, one shoe and one sock, and ordered them forward across the ice.

“Can you reach my phone?”

Between screams, between breaths.

“Hello! Help me, goddamn it! I’m having a goddamned baby!”

Looking the part, she assumed he had been in the wreck too.

It was warm inside the bus. It wouldn’t be for long, with the windows smashed out, but for now it was warm. It was a relief for his face, and torture for his feet and hands. He had entered through the front doors, their frame bent and jammed, but yielding to his shoulder’s blow. The driver was dead. No question. A good portion of the shattered fence had flown up and crashed through the left side of the flat front window at chest level. The flesh and transit uniform bare little resemblance to the life that was gone. It wasn’t a view to linger on.

The baby had been born sometime between him leaving the bus stop and his arrival at the site of the wreck. Two screams rose in place of one.

Two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder for the mother, and a stranger’s coat for the baby picked up by frost-bitten hands. He willed his hands to pick up the baby, half blue but fighting, and he wrapped it as best he could. It was a boy, with a head full of hair and tightly closed eyes and clenched fists.

“My phone, it fell and slid to the back of the bus.”

Her voice lowered the moment she was handed the baby. He collapsed in front of the phone, prying it open with one hand, dialing the three numbers with his nose, pressing SEND with his thumb, and succumbing to the internal injuries from the beating earlier that night.

END OF FICTIONAL CONTENT

Good night.

Jay.

Winter Basketball. . .

The Winter season at KSSC is starting this Wednesday. Some issues with players and teams and other stuff has me playing against my old team -- which is sad, but also kind of awesome. What? Well, when you're playing ball, you only really interact with whomever your guarding, and a bit of chatter on the bench. When I'm playing ball against friends, I get to trash talk (a lot), because I know they know I'm joking and that I'm not actually looking to insult anyone. When you play against strangers, you can throw in a joke here or there (generally self-deprecating) but you can't say too much without being assumed an asshole.

I met a couple of my teammates at the KSSC meeting, and they seem like cool guys, and I'm also playing with some Trailhead-related people who are very cool. I get to be the captain (read: got to pay the $75 deposit on the ball) which is kind of fun too.

The three top teams from last season don't appear to be around, unless they've changed names and turned into 1 amazing team. . . There are two individual teams (mine and one made up mostly of former "high fives" players), and another of my teammates Bonney has a team made of up people from the X-ray department at the hospital, and there's a fourth team I don't know at all.

I've been shooting a lot at Queens, working on my left handed dribbling (how did I let it be so bad for so long?), and my shot is start to get a little more consistant. I'm trying to get 10-12' bank shots to go in; I think it's a much easier shot, once you figure out the angle; Tim Duncan's made a career out of them. I still love the fade-away, because it can be shot while closely guarded, and because no one else in Rec Ball ever shoots one. There's a lot of picture-perfect jump-shots, and some Shawn Marion-style chest-shots, but I think I'm the only one holding the ball behind my head as I shoot.

Too much about basketball? Hey, the season hasn't even started yet. . .

Take care,

Jay.

Sugar and Butter = Wired Jay

Sienna's off doing a night-shift on the baby-ward at KGH, so I'm minding the fort (i.e. mashing up butter and brown sugar in a bowl and eating it while watching nba.com highlights -- wish that was a joke). So, yeah, I'm kind of ramped up from the sugar. . . It's a bit of an issue. When I was 6 or 7, I used to take off on my bike, go to the convenience store, buy $5 or $6 worth of candy (I was always a good saver, and besides, dad's dresser had enough loose change make up any shortages) and chocolate (which, for you young folk, back in '86-'87 was a hell of a lot of candy), bike to the bleachers behind the catholic public school and gorge myself until I could barely breathe. Good times. It could be much worse, I tell Sienna, I could like booze, or drugs, you know? Candy seems pretty harmless. That said, I could probably race a hummingbird's heart right now. Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . .

The comic hasn't been up for a while, and I'm starting to think it might not make it back. I started posting it again to get enough together to get rejected by some big faceless whatever. So maybe I'll get on that. . . I don't know. I think most of the humor in the comic depends on knowing us, and relating that to the fictionalized versions.

Alright, so you might be thinking -- "sugar and butter? what the hell is wrong with you?"; well, you know when you're a kid, and your mom or dad is making a cake or something -- the first two ingredients are almost always sugar and butter (or shortening -- works just as well), and once they get mixed up, you throw a finger in there and you've got a pretty good thing going.

I went to the gym on Saturday night, looking for an empty net or a pick-up basketball game -- I didn't really find either, but I did end up playing some pretty intense dodge ball for a little over and hour. Now I consider myself to be in reasonable shape, since I play a lot of ball, and I throw a three year old around for most of the day, but the Sunday morning I woke up in the body of a 50 year-old man. Good lord. I guess it's a different set of muscles, but dodge ball kicked my ass. I was happy with my fitness during the game (alright, so the part where you start lying down, have to get up, and out-run your opponent to the ball, that wasn't going to happen against 19 year-olds; my joints aren't that spry), but the next day Sienna said I looked like I was riding a horse as I walked around. Bow-legged McGee and the broken tendons.

I'm supposed to be booking a new gig for the band, so I'll try and get on that. I've been doing a bit of recording work, thanks to Robert Graham (of the Wolfe Island Grahams), in my studio, which has been fun; and I also took my show into the Dorian Music Studios to record a single with my boss Tim -- so that stuff kind of counts as doing work for the band, right?

The KSSC rec basketball league starts up next week, hopefully most of the high-fives end up on the same team again, and we can recreate our majestic march to 5th place. . . I'm growing my hair out so I can tie it back -- allegedly, if you can see your teammates, you'll be a better passer. Time will tell. All the shooting practice at Queen's seems like it's starting to pay off, so hopefully I won't continue my general 0 for 5 first half shooting streaks. Hell, what I should really do is just concentrate on being a good point-guard (you know, 'cause when you're a little guy that can't drive the hoop, you should probably be able to pass).

Hope this post finds you all healthy and happy. Lay off the sugar and butter, unless you want to write long rambling blog posts, in which case, go ahead.

Jay.

Excuses. . .

Hey, the comics a couple of days out of date -- I'll try and get one posted tomorrow or the next day. When I did the first batch of comics way back whenever I wrote 2 for every 1 that I drew, so I've been going through the old extras for the last little bit, just putting the drawings together. But I'm almost at the end of the ones I'm happy with, so I'm going to try and start writing new ones.

What about the band? Hopefully end of this month or early next there'll be a show. Keep in touch.

Happy 19th to Barn Flyz bass man Derek Pyne -- for the record, the moment you can drink legally is the moment it stops being rebellious and cool.