Playing Catch-Up

I'm a bad mom. 

Preoccupied Pipers (the band Ned and Marta play in from time to time) was playing in San Francisco last night.  I had intended to go to the show, but found I literally could not move last night.  Walt left the house around 9:30 and I was going to write this journal entry and then go to sleep, but I couldn't even get up to do that.  I ended up going to sleep within minutes after he left, woke up when he got home around 1:30 and thought that after five hours sleep I'd be up the rest of the night, but then had no energy to get up and write this entry then, went right back to sleep and slept through until after 6 a.m. this morning.

I'm not feeling as "jet-laggy" as I did after China, but things like this make me realize that I really am affected by all this flying around!   Yesterday I showed up at the book store to work, not realizing that my day had been shifted this week to Saturday, to let me recover from all the travel.

Getting back to normal involves finding out what has been going on in our absence.  It was the better part of a month news/current event black out and it's weird to start getting back into the groove again.  We got a daily news sheet on the ship, with one page of headline news, one page of sports and one page of business news (and one page of whatever else they needed to complete the stories).  We got CNN, but every time I turned it on, it was yet anther business program, so I gave up trying to find out what was going on in the world through the TV.

Jeri and Phil have a television, but rarely watch it, so it wasn't turned on the whole time we were there and I didn't read the paper while we were there (though Jeri read us the comics each day, which was fun).

So I came home and started watching TV again.

It's weird having so little knowledge of what has been going on in the Olympics.  I usually watch a lot of the events but it has been catch as catch can.  I saw some of the early sports while we were on the ship, but usually ended up finding kayaking.  I knew nothing of kayaking, except that you have to wear a little boat and make it through a complicated course while going through rapids, and keeping the little boat upright.  We saw folks kayaking on the Rhine. I assume they were learning how to right the boat after it tipped over.  Either that or they were very, very bad kayakers.

But I missed all the big emotional moments.  I saw one or two events in gymnastics, but couldn't tell you the name of anybody on our team (except that adorable Gabby Douglas).  I saw girls happy and girls unhappy, but didn't know why.

I saw about a minute of one of Michael Phelps' events.

What upset me when we returned home and I could turn on the shows talking about the events was what upsets me every time we have an Olympics.  The "tragedy" of "only" winning a bronze medal.  What a disaster -- being only the third best person in the entire world.  How can you possibly hold your head up after such an ignominious defeat, especially if you were just seconds behind the winner.  Sometimes you just want to tell commentators to shut up.  

I seemed to see more of the weird stuff -- the controversy over Gabby's hair, what was outlined in that rower's bathing suit during the medal ceremony, Serena Williams' victory dance (really, folks...get a life!).

I found out that we landed a rover on Mars and there was another horrific shooting at a Sikh temple and an attempted shooting at another showing of The Dark Knight.  I kinda sorta knew those things had happened, but really knew very little about them.

And then there was the political scene and back to watching the talking heads dissecting the events surrounding the presidential race.  Char's husband Mike watches FOX news, to find out what folks on the right are hearing and believing.  I do not have that strong a stomach, but going back to MSNBC and realizing that it is as slanted to the left as FOX is to the right is just as bad.  I loved hearing everyone assessing how the Romney campaign is imploding, but realized that those listening to FOX are hearing the same thing about the Obama campaign.  I'm becoming very superstitious.  I don't want to hear how badly Romney is doing because I'm afraid that he's not doing bad enough to convince voters.

I saw an absolutely horrific campaign ad yesterday, about a candidate who, according to this ad, wanted to allow thugs from Mexico into this country.  The pictures were horrific and scary, watching these hard-edged, sneering men in dirty t-shirts moving into your neighborhood.  It took awhile to realize I was watching a cop drama, not a real life Super PAC ad.

I want to get on another ship and not get off until the election is over.  It's too upsetting to watch the daily reporting on who had done what to whom.   A news blackout was actually very nice.