Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Surgery and Soccer



9:30 am---
Well, here I sit in a waiting room while MFO is having her painful arthritic finger “repaired” allegedly to alleviate the
pain.  We've been through the pages of forms, affixing multiple signatures which I assume removes any trace of responsibility from the medical folks.  She has been “back there” for over an hour, and I have no idea what is going on.  So, I sit and wait (and use my new pad device).

Which gives me a chance to comment on the performance of the USA soccer team yesterday.  I am of two minds on this.  On one hand (note the mixed metaphor) I would have like to see the US team advance in the tournament.  One, it would help promote the interest in soccer, and secondly, to provide revenue for bars and gathering places for the “watch” parties.  As I reported earlier I watched the game with Germany in a local watering hole, and it was quite fun.  I watched yesterday’s match against Belgium (home of Hercule Poirot and waffles) at home by myself.  Not so fun.
 
And on the other foot (to keep the mixed theme going), and please give me some slack here, I was not unhappy to see them lose.  Everywhere else in the world soccer, also known as futbol, is the most popular sport (hockey in Canada maybe) and all the best athletes play that sport as opposed to here in America where our athletes aspire to (our) football, baseball, and basketball.  Then, every four years, we cobble together a World Cup “American” team (what the eligibility requirements are I have no idea) and we go play soccer/futbol with the rest of the world.  As I have often mentioned before, it seems to be a trait of Americans that they have to be “the best” or “number one”.  So there appears to be an expectation that we should win the World Cup just because we are Americans.  Of course we will win!  We deserve it!!

Look at the furor created by the United States coach when he said it was unrealistic (break, break, at 10:30 I am being forced to listen to Rachel Ray here in the waiting room, where the audience just wildly applauded the fact she uses tomato paste in a tube!) to expect us to win the Cup.  How dare he say that!!  He since has equivocated that statement a bit, but as of today, he looks justified.  Getting past group play with a one, one, and one record by some last minute miracles (not on ice this time) was a good accomplishment and we can be proud of that.  We did suffer from losing one of our best players to a hammy, and perhaps another left off the team for some reason, but it was clear (to me) that our players were not as talented as the other team.  A notable exception was our goal keeper Tim Howard.  If it wasn’t for his phenomenal performance yesterday, I think Belgium would have beaten us by five or six goals.  Goal keeper aside, it was apparent that although they played their butts off,  we are just not in Belgium’s class. But in general soccer is a team sport and I personally like to see good team play rewarded.  With or without us, this particular tournament provided some thrilling moments and high drama.  And, as I said before just seeing the people in the stands is so entertaining.  For two/three weeks, the world stops (kind of) and we all enjoy watching athletes control a ball with their feet and head making it do marvelous things.  Good for us all.

11;30..
Okay, so after three and a half hours, Doctor T comes out and says things went well with MFO’s hand and explained what he did with wires and fusings and such.  And in a little more time one of those eternally happy and perky nurses comes and gets me and we go to the inner sanctum where MFO is installed with more tubes, wires, and sensors hooked to wall mounted things that beep and chirp.  And why the nurses have to squeak I have no idea.  “how are we doing dearie?”  I know they mean well and indeed do a good job, but gosh a couple of octaves lower would be much appreciated.

1:30..
Anyway, we’re back home and the hard part begins, wherein the Feeder gets to do household chores for a while.  “Hi sweetie, I’m nurse Feeder and I’ll be taking care of you!”  Not sure how we’ll handle being

DFD

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