Who Knew?

I used to watch baseball a lot, back in the day, and I think that going to a baseball game in person, especially for the first time, is a kind of transcendent experience. I have also thought for a long time that baseball should be the sport that women most enjoy watching, because the men are built like normal men and are wearing these adorable fitted outfits (unlike say, football and basketball, where the men are endomorphs, and football and hockey, where they have to wear so much padding just not to die that you can't even see the man underneath. And basketball, since they went to those goofy baggy uniforms, is useless.)

Anyway, I have not watched baseball much in recent years, except for the occasional sports segment on the morning news, but today, since they were talking about the last game at Yankee Stadium last night, they showed a bit more than the upper half of a player with his stats underneath; they showed whole people walking, running, hitting. They were wearing pants! Not leggings, but pants! When the hell did that happen? It looked sooooo weird. Not bad, necessarily, but very very strange.

Okay, onto other things. Birthday Sunday yesterday, yada yada yada, it's over, we're home. We are now suspecting possible gall bladder involvement in R's mysterious pain; she's supposed to call a gastroenterologist today. But here's what I've got to say today on the subject of R.

She is a relatively private person, in which regard she takes after her father. She is not sharing any more personal details than she cares to share just at this time. She's been this way since she was a kid. As a result, when she was a freshman in high school and got her first boyfriend, I had a very embarrassing experience: I had dropped off R and her friend L someplace, and was driving L's mother home in the car. And she said to me, "So, R has a boyfriend! He's a senior! How do you feel about that?" and I, at that time, knew nothing about it. Because R, although she didn't tell me, told her best friend L, who told her mother everything. After which I made R swear that if she had a boyfriend, she at least had to tell me about it, so I wasn't blindsided by someone else telling me first. Which she has done. I don't get much information, but she tells me.

So, okay, a few weeks ago, she told me she was going out with someone on a Saturday night. I was very cool, said something like, "Oh, well, have a good time," and let it go. Over the next few days or so, I gleaned these tidbits of information: he works where she works, he is 30, he lives in New Jersey, he has lots of single male friends (useful for sister purposes), and I heard his first name. And R said something like, "I expect you'll be hearing more about him."

Last Sunday, when we were in the hospital waiting to find out that she didn't have appendicitis, he was one of the people she was texting with back and forth, which I found out after it was going on for a few hours. She said he was being "very supportive." I also found out his last name.

Cut to the chase. We got home from Birthday Sunday around 8:45 last night, and about a half hour later, my sister called. (A call from my sister after 9:00 is a sure sign of death, at least traditionally.) I answered with "What's wrong?" and she said nothing, and then said "R IS IN A RELATIONSHIP?!!?" Well. I hadn't told her anything at all yet, because I barely know anything, and it seemed to be at the stage of so far being a date and some texting, so all I could do was sputter "What? How do you know?" Well, this is how she knows:

Because R, who hasn't told mommy that she's in a relationship, put it on her Facebook page. Who reads her Facebook page, other than everyone she ever knew? Wonderful Niece's husband, who noticed it Sunday morning, told his wife, who called her mother, who called me ... you got it.

So, she's in a relationship. Cool. And now, for the very first time, I actually am going to think about who would have to be invited to a wedding, because I just went to a wedding and it's on my mind and she's 27 and he's 30, so you know, it could happen. I'm not going out and booking a hall, but it could happen.

Update

So I wrote all that stuff first thing this morning at work and now it's about 11:15, and the kid and I have been emailing. First, she told me this is the first day in a week she didn''t wake up in intense pain, so that's real good, and also she has a doctor's appointment for Wednesday. Then we got into the whole last night's phone call, etc., and she finally admitted cautiously that yeah, she guesses she's in a relationship.

YAY!


WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1861
READING: Unwind by Neal Shusterman