2. “I could totally watch three spring training games at once right now.”

3. “Oh my god, Kristen Bell is on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me this week?!?”

* As said to my bank’s fraud prevention rep, by way of explaining that one of the three questionable foreign transactions on my card in the last 24 hours was actually legit. Don’t worry, everything’s fine and I’m kind of super impressed with my bank right now.

I have replaced Sweet Tooth with The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg. So beautiful, these stories — whole worlds in thirty pages, like little snowglobes. I’m only about four stories in so more on this later, perhaps.

Internet-wise: “How To Give Birth to A Rabbit” by Carrie Frye (via The Awl), caught my attention with its title and before I knew it, I was deep into one of the best pieces of nonfiction I’ve read in months.  Also, the best thing about the NHL lockout being over is more Katie Baker columns!

SB and I are supposed to be seeing Django Unchained with his brother and sister in law.  As a general rule I don’t watch horror or gory/ super violent movies, which pretty much rules out the Tarantino ovuere, but I’m willing to suck it up because it’s the holidays and it’s his family.  But the four person outing expands to include several of the brother’s friends and I have always had a lousy poker face, so SB declares we are going to see Les Miserables instead.

After we are seated in the theater, SB looks around at the largely high school/college aged moviegoers around us and muses “it’s a younger crowd than I would have expected.”

“That’s because,” I said, “every teenage girl at some point believes she’s Eponine, whether it’s remotely applicable or not.”

II.

I am in eighth grade. Our English textbook contains a bastardized excerpt of the Bishop’s Candlesticks story, styled as a play (though, to my knowledge, it does not match any stage production of Les Miz ever done). This class is what is often considered “Gifted and Talented” —  our teacher senses we are interested in the source material far more than this bizarre excerpt and begins reading to us from the abridged version for ten minutes each day.  We make it to the point where Valjean collects Cosette and escapes into the convent in Paris, during which time we also watch a TV movie version of the story and our teacher plays for us several selections from the original Broadway soundtrack.  I immediately ask for, and receive, the soundtrack on cassette tape for my birthday.

Towards the end of the school year I overhear several members of the drill team singing “On My Own” at the top of their lungs and feel jealous, as if only I have the right to the material.

III.

In high school, I make the first of three attempts at reading the unabridged novel, getting bogged down in the interminable Waterloo section.  The irony of this does not fully strike me at the time. I also obtain a full double CD version of the Broadway recording and a piano book of selected songs, which go into heavy rotation for a good six months. I develop the ability to do a pitch perfect imitation of the young actors singing “Castle on a Cloud” and all of Gavroche’s parts, faux-Cockney accent and all, but I of course devote the bulk of my practice to nailing Eponine’s parts, even those she sings in the background.

IV.

In college, on my very first trip abroad, my traveling companion and I happen to stumble onto the London theater where Les Miserables is playing and, having a free afternoon the following day, purchase tickets to a matinee performance.  We are abroad as part of a literature course, but my companion is not particularly familiar with the story.  At the conclusion of “A Little Fall of Rain,” she sighs “Poor Eponine!”  I feel smug, and also strangely proud, of the emotional effect.

V.

Stranded at home post-bachelor’s degree, in a placeholder job until I can get through a second try at grad school applications, I find a paperback unabridged copy of the novel (with the musical’s logo on the cover, just to make sure everyone knows it’s THAT Les Miserables) for less than $10 at a bookstore and decide to make a third try at reading it.  This time, I restrict myself to reading only one or two of the incredibly short chapters a night, while reading other books concurrently at my normal pace.  The strategy works.  It takes six months, but, once past the detested Waterloo section, I find myself astounded at how much more there is to the story — particularly the entire Thenardier family, larger (Gavroche’s parentage is a revelation, as is the mere existence of second daughter Azemla), far nastier and further to the margins, yet somehow the linchpin of the entire nine hundred pages.. When I finally turn the last page, I can’t help shedding a few tears, for Valjean, for the 19th century French, for myself facing more endless nights in need of a distraction.

I never feel any compulsion to reread the book and, with it finished, find that my obsession with the story in all its forms fades.  Ten years later, though I generally enjoy the movie version of the musical, it is like looking at a beloved picture book; I can remember loving it dearly, and linger over every familiar phrase, but it has lost some of its power over my heart. In fact, my biggest surprise is how much the book has staked its claim to me, even after having not seen a word of the text in a decade. I recall the story with astonishing clarity, whether it’s identifying details from the book that were absent from the original stage production or even pulling out whole sections which are still elided or excluded entirely from the movie.  My biggest gasp of delight comes at the appearance of Gavroche’s elephant. Victor Hugo, after losing so many earlier battles, has won this particular war.

Albert Pujols, a player the St. Louis fans long thought would be the person to take up and carry on Stan’s mantle, refused the nickname “El Hombre” because it infringed on Stan’s “The Man” nickname (and continued to reject it even after going to Anaheim). When he left last offseason, I wrote:

[this] is what makes sports fandom so hard, so frustratingly stupid at times: the rational part of your brain knows the player isn’t trying to hurt you — he doesn’t even know you.

Stan was different.  It wasn’t just that we felt like Stan knew us; there are reams of fan anecdotes to verify that Stan treated everyone who approached him like they were a good friend. If you were not lucky enough to have such a story (I am not), you always entertained the possibility that someday maybe you’d be in the right place at the right time and get to shake his hand. He was ours, and he remained so for so long, it seemed like we might never have to give him up.  Last spring, he came out for Opening Day looking noticeably frail.  His wife of over half a century passed away during the season.  We didn’t want to add up these signs. We weren’t ready to let him go.

Someday, I will tell my own children about Stan, just like I’ll tell them about Ozzie, and about what it was like when Albert came out of nowhere. But it won’t be quite the same as when my dad told us. Stan’s a true legend now, just out of reach in the history books, not on the TV waving and rooting on the Cardinals. The next great Cardinal won’t have a picture like this in his Google image search.

Goodbye, Stan.  The world will miss you, and baseball will miss you, but Cardinals fans will miss you most of all.

• Chopped chicken breast (okay, I use that Carving Board Chicken Oscar Meyer makes. Chicken breast remains my bete noire of actual cooking), blue cheese spread, and avocado slices on miniature pita bread.  This was inspired by my all-time favorite sandwich, The Cobb, at my all time favorite sandwich place, Tiny’s Giant Sandwich Shop. But that sandwich also includes bacon, which got me thinking about bacon on a sandwich, which led to…

• Crisp turkey bacon (with sea salt! I am being healthy!), with blue cheese spread, baby spinach, and tomato on pita.  I had to switch from the baby size pita (which I like because they fit in my adorable bento style lunchbox) to a half of a full size pita because the tomato and bacon slices fit better.  So. Amazing.  I ate this one with fresh blueberries and one of those green superfood juices and it made me feel so virtuous (the blue cheese spread is also low fat), while also really, really enjoying my lunch.

• Chopped chicken breast (yes, again) with apples and red onion on pita.  I made this one up kind of on my own  – we had a catering order at work that included a turkey sandwich with apples (that I didn’t get to eat), which gave me the idea, but I knew it was going to need a really good condiment to dress it up.  Then I found cranberry honey mustard at the grocery store, and it is exactly what this sandwich needed.  After Monday’s initial run, I decided to dice the apple and onion and mix them together in a psuedo-relish, which mixed the flavors together better.

I prefer pita bread because it doesn’t get soggy or smushed the way regular bread does (and also I can get through an entire package of it before it goes stale), but I bet these would all be good on some quality focaccia or maybe even as a panini. Look at me being a foodie or something.  Albeit a lazy one.

SB: No way, I’m leaving them here.  This is payback for you leaving the Double Stuff Oreos at my place last week. I ate the whole package!

I should object here that he ate the full package minus the 4 cookies that were in my Oreo sundae (our Valentine’s Day dessert, and why I brought the cookies over in the first place). In other news, our respective attempts to eat healthier are … not going so well.

That’s when I needed a moment.

Though I’m pretty much in agreement with Will Leitch’s gut reaction (I’ve never actually met Leitch but we were both commenting on a now defunct Cardinals blog back before Deadspin launched; as non-St Louis native Cardinals fans who now live in New York, it sometimes feels like we’re living oddly parallel lives), it was actually a piece I read this morning before the news broke that best captured my feelings. Posted on a White Sox blog after their home-grown star player, Mark Buerhle, signed with the Marlins, I read it thinking “this is how I will feel if Albert signs somewhere else.”  Thirty minutes later, the news broke that he had.

For those of us Cardinals fans who aren’t quite old enough to remember the team’s run of success in the early 1980s, who clung to McGwire’s home run chase only to see it soiled by the steroids accusations, who fell for Rick Ankiel’s early promise as a pitcher only to watch him implode in horribly public fashion, Albert Pujols was the first real sign that the Cardinals were finally returning to prominence, to playing October baseball that actually mattered instead of being sacrificial lambs to the Braves every year (if we made it at all).  Moreover, we were going to do it with a player found in our farm system, who seemed destined to become not only a Cardinals legend, but an all-time baseball legend.  When he signed that first big contract 10 years ago, I still remember that now defunct Cardinal blog enthusing, “Can you believe he’s ours?  That we have him?”

And now we don’t.  And yes, “we” never did, which is what makes sports fandom so hard, so frustratingly stupid at times: the rational part of your brain knows the player isn’t trying to hurt you — he doesn’t even know you.  The emotional part can’t help feeling like 10 years of adulation ought to be worth something.

I’m glad that the Cardinals won two World Series with Albert on the team — it feels less like he’s abandoning us for greener pastures, then that he’s a 31 year old who has worked for the same company his entire adult life and wants to try something new.  I’m glad that he’s going to the Angels — a team I have such fondness for, I wrote a short story in grad school organized around their first World Series win — and not the Marlins, who not only have ugly uniforms and construct their teams in a way that feels like they are gaming the system, but are covered frequently in the New York media as a divisional rival of the Mets.  Still, Opening Day 2012 — a day that should have been about watching the Cardinals get their championship rings — is now going to be about enduring the spectacle of Albert in his new uniform in Yankee Stadium.  For the first time in a long time, I welcome the long months of the offseason.

Hey sorry about the cardinals! The only good thing is it won’t conflict with Stevie Wonder.

At 12:51 AM Friday I wrote her back:

I think you reverse jinxed us.

So, thanks to the weather postponement on Wednesday, and whatever the hell happened last night to save the Cardinals from their final strike not once, but twice, the first Game 7 in almost a decade is being played in St. Louis after the craziest World Series game I have ever seen and I HAVE PLANS.

Not, “oh I can reschedule because I can do this some other time” kind of plans, either.  Once in a lifetime, seeing-Stevie-Wonder-in-semi-private-concert-at-the-Waldorf-Astoria-for-free plans.

Stupid Mother Nature.

So here’s what’s going to happen:  I’m going to SB’s for the first hour of the game, then running to the Waldorf Astoria (it’s a short walk) for the concert, while SB DVRs the innings I’m missing, then coming back and trying to catch up.  You are probably better off not texting or emailing me until the wee hours of Saturday morning, but I’m going to turn my phone off just in case.

Also I may be wearing a Halloween costume.  I bought it for a party a few years ago, a party that was also scheduled on the day a Game 7 might have been played, had one been necessary.  In 2006.

Three facts you should know about the complicated mood in which I suddenly found myself:

This week marks my two-year anniversary with Sainted Boyfriend.

This week also marks the one-year anniversary of one of the roughest personal and professional periods of my entire adult life.

Three weeks ago, my grandmother died.

I thought about the day a year ago when, unable to sleep, I fled to the park at an even earlier hour of morning, trying to distract myself by watching the early dog walkers and their charges.  I thought about how SB has kept this entire summer afloat for me as the news from home got progressively worse and how much emptier my life would be without him in it.  I thought about my grandmother, who was never able to visit me in New York, but loved hearing about my city adventures.  The very last time I spoke to her, I told her about spending time at the city pool in my neighborhood; she would have enjoyed a story about a morning ramble in a verdant park.

I’ve been trying to write something longer, more specific, about my grandmother but I keep hitting walls.  It helps to write, to sort things out, but I’ve stopped fretting about its lack of writerly form; someday maybe I’ll have the distance to form something cohesive, or maybe it will always just be for my own memory.  I’m doing okay, for the most part.  And I have an anniversary to celebrate.

This morning I was in the park.  Dean Jones belted one last “Be-ing Aaa-Liive!” as I looked up through a break in the trees at the climbing sun.  I smiled, swallowed hard.  I walked to work.

Not having anyone to talk to, I could not help overhearing the conversation in front of me, carried on by a father and his young daughter (maybe 7 or 8), who was clearly attending her first baseball game as a conscious spectator.  Even though she seemed most excited at the revelation that Kesha was in attendance, the little girl did try to follow what her dad was trying to teach her about the basic rules of the game, with amusing results. Some highlights:

Dad attempts to explain how to read the scoring line on the jumbotron, in the top of the third inning

“See the top line is the inning, and then below it it shows how many runs each team scored in the inning, and it adds up at the end.”

“Oooooooh! So it was 1 to 0, then 1 to 1, and now the Angels have 1 and the Mets have [looks at blank space on scoreboard] whatever.”

Dad attempts to explain walks.

“Why is he going to first? He didn’t hit the ball.”

“Well, the pitcher only has a certain number of tries to get the batter out, if he doesn’t throw a strike it’s called a ball, and after four balls, it’s a walk, and the batter gets to go to first base.”

“Oh! So he walks instead of running. Why doesn’t he walk to second? No one’s trying to get him out.”

And my favorite, Dad attempts to explain batting average, during an early Daniel Murphy at bat.

“Every third time he’s up, he gets a hit.”

“How come?”

[Daniel Murphy promptly hit a triple,  delighting the girl and probably ensuring she grows up thinking batting average is a really accurate statistic.]

They left around the fifth or sixth inning, possibly because she was cold (it was a bit chilly after the sun went down), or possibly because the father didn’t want to explain the occasional boos from the crowd as the Mets’ pitching and defense continued to allow the Angels to go ahead every time the offense tied it up.  I hope she had enough fun to give it another try; I was about her age when baseball finally started to click for me.  Of course, my team made the World Series that year, which also helped.