Varicose Veins

Varicose Veins
by R. Murdoch

A bocce game late in the month of May.
The lopsided score that was evening out with each throw of the green balls at the small brown pill.
A boy in a neighboring yard throwing around a baseball.
The bocce player walking to the other side of the small suburban yard in preparation for the next round.
A freak throw from the young baseball player.
The improbable collision of the boy’s baseball and the bocce player’s calf.
A yelp, a stumble, and finally, silence.
The endless, frantic apologies.
A painful red mark, and a trip to the emergency room.
The red mark, ruptured varicose veins.
A warm Friday evening in late May.

Therapy

Therapy
by R. Murdoch

“So, R. why are you here today?” she said as she rested her chin in her hand, picked up her pen and looked at me. And I knew perfectly well I was there but I shifted in my seat and lied,

“I don’t know. They made me come here,” and she asked me,

“Okay, why did they make you come here?” and I started to cry. Putting down the pen and the clipboard she asked me what was wrong. I remember thinking that she didn’t look like a therapist. She looked like a normal person, not like the ones on T.V. shows and in movies. I tried looking everywhere except for at her, and I took a few breaths chocking back my tears, and mumbled,

“I really don’t think I need to be here right now. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m sure she got that all of the time, but at the moment it was no concern of mine.

“R., no one said that anything is wrong with you. But I’m getting paid for this hour either way. How we chose to use our time is completely up to you. You can act like a child, or you can act like an adult. Even if you’re only here this one time, I would like you to get something out of it.”

“What is it? Are you worried that I’m going to pull something dark and scary out of you? Is it a secret you’ve never told anyone?” something in the way she said that made me more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. I looked down,

“No,” I replied. It was a lie though; I was terrified and thought she was going to do just that. Even worse, I was worried that she knew it, the secret about me that no one else knew. I felt like she knew everything about me.

“Good, then we shouldn’t have a problem here, should we?”

We spent the remainder of the hour talking about the basics, school, family, friends, interests, I cried a lot but talking wasn’t so bad, I actually kind of liked her. When the hour was up she looked at me and asked,

“Will we be seeing each other again?” I was nervous all over again, and I gulped down the lump in my throat,

“Yeah, I think I’ll come back.” And she took out a business card and wrote down a time for an appointment next week. She walked me out of her office and touched my arm as she told me goodbye and that we would see each other soon.

I left her office feeling happier than I had in a long time. However, I was worried about the dark scary secret that she mentioned earlier. But I was arrogant; I thought I was smarter than her. I was convinced that she would never hear those words from me. And that’s the day that my life really started. I saw her for over a year, and she didn’t even have to pull it out of me, I gave it up willingly. And in doing so she became the only person I ever became freely close and stayed close to. She was the only person I had ever been honest with.

The Ballad of Sheldon and Elizabeth

The Ballad of Sheldon and Elizabeth

by R. Murdoch

At my family’s annual family reunion some years ago when I was still a teenager, the emotions of a five-year-old got the better of her and stirred up quite the talking point of our long weekend.

The reunion took place at my grandparent’s summer home on Findlay Lake. It was a hot July weekend which included much reminiscing, bon fires, swimming, three on three soccer matches, screaming children, and drinking. I was at the reclusive moody phase of my teenaged years, and with no one there close to my own age, I stayed on my own away from the group most of the time.

On out reunion’s final day, we had a feast planned that was to be followed by fireworks after the dusk. I spent the day swimming on my own, and returned in the late afternoon when I could smell our dinner being cooked on the grill. There was to be sword fish, tuna, salmon, crab legs, steaks, corn on the cob, and homemade fruit pies. Everyone had been waiting all weekend for this meal. My uncle, who worked in food sales, got us a case of live lobsters for the occasion. When the meats were put on the grill to cook, the lobster case was opened, and everyone could see the lobsters squirming all over each other.

My five-year-old cousin, Elizabeth, didn’t know we were going to be eating the lobsters for dinner. For in the half hour between the time the case was opened and the time they were to be cooked, Elizabeth had formed a close relationship with one of the lobsters. She named it “Sheldon.” When my uncle told Elizabeth that it was time to cook Sheldon, she went mad. She started sobbing in protest, claiming that Sheldon was her friend and she loved him. The tantrum lasted for another half hour; I stood and watched the incident from a distance, not really wanting to involve myself.

Family members tried to rationalize with her saying that it wouldn’t be fair to keep Sheldon as a pet, but how does one rationalize that to a young child? Everyone grew tired of Elizabeth and my uncle finally yelled out,

“Jesus Christ, someone get that lobster from her.”

No one did anything, so I took it upon myself to take control of the situation. I walked through the crowd of my family members that were clustered around Elizabeth and I crouched down and said nicely,

“Elizabeth, could I see Sheldon for a minute?” she sniveled and reluctantly handed him

over to me. As soon as I had the almost foot-long brownish-red crustation in my hands I sprang from my crouched position and darted across the porch where my uncle had a large pot of boiling water set up on a hot plate near the grill. As soon as I started my run Elizabeth was chasing after me screaming,

“No, no. Sheldon. No!”

I reached my uncle and shoved Sheldon into his hands, and he in turn quickly threw the lobster into the boiling water. When Sheldon hit the water we heard a loud hiss as the life was quickly boiled out of him.

The look on Elizabeth’s face was incredible when she saw Sheldon fall into the pot. I thought she was going to jump in after him, so I picked her up and carried her across the porch and gave her away to my aunt. I can still hear her screaming,

“Take him out, take him out, Sheldon!”

Elizabeth cried for a long time. The Sheldon incident, as it’s now referred to, sort of ruined the dinner that everyone had been looking forward to.

Sheldon was the last lobster cooked that night. My uncle got the distinct pleasure of eating Sheldon. When he cut into Sheldon, he found lobster eggs inside. Sheldon was actually a female, but no one ever told Elizabeth this.

Kick the Football

I'm a huge fan of soccer and over time, I've got to see many stadiums and matches. I forgot about these picture files until yesterday when I was going through some old stuff. These aren't all the games I've been to either. I think I have thousands of 3 x 5 photos of soccer matches all over my room at home. I took all of these photographs, I think they're pretty good, but let me know.

_____________________________________

Wembley Stadium under construction. London, England. Summer 200?

Amsterdam, Holland. July 2004. I was walking through Amsterdam looking for a place to eat breakfast and I stumbled upon the Ajax fan shop. Inside on the back wall they had the signatures of former stars like Guilit, Witsche, Rijkard, and a lot more.

United States vs. Paraguay

International Friendly in Columbus, Ohio

Summer 2003:

Champions World Series

Manchester United vs. FC Barcelona

Philadelphia, PA

A few years ago we had season tickets in Columbus, but then Dad and I realized the Crew were pretty bad. I've been to many games there, lots of photos, but no more season tickets.

FIFA Women's World Cup, 1999

United States 3, North Korea 0

Boston, MA

Thank You

I wanted to say, I can not figure how to set up paragraphs with quotations properly on this thing. I'm hoping I'll figure this out soon. But in the mean time, I promise you that I do know how to do these things properly.

___________________________

Thank You
by R. Murdoch

It was the day before Christmas Eve. I didn’t want to be there, but I was at a baby shower. Not mine of course; it was for my uncle’s wife. They live out of town and I only see them at Christmas time.

I couldn’t recall ever being at a baby shower before. Initially, the idea of going didn’t thrill me but my sister and all of my aunts and my grandmother insisted I went. Everyone was going to be there, and after all, it was their first child.

I got there with my sister, Annie who met up with Nickie, our step cousin and I stood off on my own. People started showing up, and the awkward “hellos” with distant relatives and family friends started to pile up. I’ve never done well at social events. I’m not very social and most of the time I don’t have much to say and I’ve also been told that I come off as dry and pretentious from time to time. That is why I choose to be alone so often. When everyone was finally there and I said hello to everyone that I needed to say it too I stepped out to the bar and spent a few minutes trying to collect myself.

When I re-entered the party room, it was game time. I heard these things entailed games, but I didn’t know how horrible they could be. I saw Nickie had the name “Julia Roberts” taped on to her back. This seemed ridiculous to me so I said,

"Hey Nickie, why is Julia Roberts taped to your back?”

I was subsequently beaten with the pocketbooks of thirty pre-menopausal women who informed me that I had just ruined the game. I stumbled back to my seat, and the only thing that was going through my head was,

“The only reason I’m here is because I don’t have a penis. Christ.”

I sat through the rest of that afternoon. The baby crossword puzzles, the scavenger hunt, the opening of presents, the sobbing of the grandmother to be at the sight of her own gift (which to this day I don’t know what it was). The smoked halibut I had for lunch was wonderful, but even that couldn’t redeem the afternoon that I would never get back.

As the shower came to a close, one of my aunts brought around thank you cards, instructing us to fill out our address on the front of the envelops so my expecting aunt wouldn’t have to go through all of the trouble of looking up the addresses of her guests. I found this to be annoying and lazy. I started to write my address

R. Murdoch

4702 Sta.......

But then I got to thinking,

“Why make her go to any trouble at all? I’ll fill the card out for her, too! That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

It was one of my better ideas, and read as follows:

Dearest R,

Thank you so much for the wonderful baby clothes. I nearly burst into tears when I unwrapped the beautiful package and saw what was inside. My God, you are a wonderful shopper! You have always been my favorite niece, and I would be honored to have you in the delivery room with me when I give birth to your cousin. And remember, if you ever want to come out to the west coast to visit us, don’t hesitate to ask! We’re just a phone call away and will fly you out in second. Thank you again.

Lots of Love,
M.

P.S.
I forgot to mention how lovely you’ve been looking lately? What ever have you been up to?

The holidays passed as did the next few weeks. Each day I checked my mail, and finally that little white envelop was there for me. I don’t think my aunt appreciated the favor I did for her as on the little white space that was left, my uncle’s hand writing read:

R-

You pretty much summed it all up.

- J.

Photographs of Europe

I have done a lot of traveling. Most of it has been in western Europe. This post is kind of like a "best of" collection of photographs I took in Europe. I just picked these out of what I have saved on this computure. At my house I have stacks of photographs that I took in Europe and Australia.

I actually think that these are pretty well done. But let me know how you feel about them.

I took this in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. See the track running up the hill? Diary farmers use it to move things up and down the mountain.

This is probably my favorite photo of my favorite place in the world- Engleberg, Switzerland.

A Farmer. Engleberg, Switzerland.

I took this inside of a cable car traveling up Mt. Schilthorn.

Outside of Munster Cathedral, Frieburg, Germany.

A German town on the River Rhine.

This is Kinderjijk, Holland. This town has been powered by windmills for hundreds of years, something for all of us to think about.

Isn't this just the stereotypical Dutch girl?

Amsterdam

A canal in Brugge, Belgium.

The River Seine, Paris, France

Paris from maximum zoom on top of the Eiffel Tower. It shows how massive the Arc de Triump is, and I love how you can see how the trees line the streets.

Omaha Beach- beach of the D-Day invasions. Cannes, Normandy, France.

A little street cafe in Bath, England. I spent my 16th birthday here. It was a great day.