Tonsils and Tennis

Tigger with a tennis ball

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. My eldest son had to have his tonsils removed and his recovery has been painful and slow.

Who knew? Apparently it's a lot more stressful and difficult to remove tonsils in an adult than a young child, and as per the surgeon, my son's tonsils were huge. So he's been fairly miserable for the past week. (On the upside, it's a good bet that it will cure or greatly reduce his sleep apnea.)

His only bright spot is that since he's enduring a forced convalescence (2 weeks of rest as per the surgeon, as there is a small but serious risk of hemorrhaging at the scab site that cannot be stopped except by emergency surgery), he's had the opportunity to watch hours and hours of tennis during Wimbleton.

I am not a tennis fan. I never played as a child and don't really understand the game, but my son loves it. Through him, I am beginning to gain an appreciation for how exciting and difficult a game it is. The elite players are athletic machines with highly sculpted, finely tuned bodies. I can't imagine what their aerobic endurance is compared to even other performance athletes, to say little of ordinary mortals.

My sport of choice is baseball, which has an entirely different cadence and emotional tenor than tennis. In both sports, balls are propelled at speeds that should not be possible, given the limitations of human muscle and joint. The physical therapist in me cringes at the wear and tear in shoulders. But I can also appreciate the incredible beauty of the human body in motion. Since I haven't followed tennis and don't really know of any of the players, I can watch and enjoy the matches without having the emotional commitment of wanting one in particular to win.

When I watch the Red Sox play, I can appreciate the skill of the opposing team, but all the while, I want my team to win and their team to lose. I can't help it. It's the only professional sport I follow and I'm passionate about the game and my team. But it does make the game a highly stressful experience for me.

While my son has some favorite tennis players, rather than rooting for a specific player to win, he is most looking forward to the high level of the game that will be played in the finals.

I am glad he has something to distract him from the pain in his throat as he heals.

On the writing front, DERELICT continues to sell an average of more than 100 copies a day (!!!!) which is incredible! (Thank you for buying/reading/signal boosting!) It has sold nearly 4,000 copies in a month and I know what my writing work will consist of for this summer and upcoming fall.

I will also be releasing a collection of short stories, some of which have been seen in earlier forms by my newsletter subscribers, some are new and have never been read. If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you will get a copy of the eBook version for free, so if you have been thinking of signing up, this is another reason you might want to. The collection is called "Stranger Worlds than These," and will be released sometime in July.