I need a Zim Zam

Back when I was a kid (Hah. Hah. No there weren't dinosaurs but I'm pretty confident that Australopithecus was still keeping it real...) I had a game called Zim Zam. It was kind of like tetherball only with a tennis ball on the cord, and the pole was about 5 feet tall with a metal coil at the top. You won by getting it to either the top or bottom of the coil, depending on whether you were hitting it forehand or backhand. Let me tell you what, I could smack hell out of that tennis ball with a backhand... before long, no one wanted to play with either me or my stepdad, as we were known to hit it hard enough that we usually split at least two tennis balls every summer.

WHACK!!

I can't play tennis thanks to Zim Zam because when I tried? Yeah. I hit it as hard as I did my zim zam game and sent the ball through the chain link fence. Um, whoops.

But it was GREAT stress relief. Fabulous stress relief without having to chase a ball all over the place and crash dramatically into walls in front of amused gym-goers like you would in racquetball. (I am nothing if not about as graceful as your average three-legged arthritic cow)

I'm kind of sort of maybe feeling a tad stressed out these days. Its a combination of sleep deprivation (two jobs and perimenopause do not A Cheerful Gerbil Make), some worries about family and a bunch of other stuff, and I usually lock everything down in order to fix whatever issue crops up, but the more you shove things into that emotional closet? Well, eventually you can't get the door shut and you gotta do some housecleaning. Or work off some of the stress and beating a two by four against a tree really sort of makes people look at you funny. And I really think beating a two by four against hateful people I encounter would not do much to make friends and influence people.

Well, it might influence them. Just not in a good way.

At any rate, this too shall pass. Hopefully before I get TMJ.



Is life telling me something??? For the last three weeks, my inbox has been flooded with advertisements for bras. Not the cute kind, either. The armored, "supportive" This-Bra-Strikesa-Fear-Into-the-Hearts-of-Men kind. The kind that not only lifts, separates and contains but could probably stop bullets, or at least angry squirrels. The kind that makes you think of Frau Blücher. Ok, Universe, I get it. I don't LIKE it... but I get it.


Also, back to Short Stuff recognizing his parents unseen? Tonight, he heard a toilet flush downstairs and perked right up. "DADDY!" he announced excitedly. "Daddy POOP."