Weekend Update

We had one hell of a weekend.

Friday night our van was broken into. My wife's purse was in it. It was rifled through, and all of her credit cards stolen.

Saturday morning I went to tennis practice, and once again played like a maniac. I am infamous for running around the court, tracking down every ball at full speed. I'm not a great tennis player, but I don't voluntarily surrender any points. Early on in practice, a harbinger, I ran into the back wall of our indoor court, chasing a ball that no sensible person would have thought anyone could get to. I emerged from that collision unscathed, though I did make my teammates nervous.

About half an hour after that I was playing up at the net for one of our drills, and I got lobbed. I take lobs as almost an insult to my speed. How dare you think that I couldn't run that shot down?!? The shot was a little too high, and so, even though it was deep and to my left, I ran the lob down and still had enough time left over to spin around and attempt a forehand instead of a backhand. Changing directions and spinning around at full speed is, well, stupid.

I tripped over my own feet, my momentum propelling me backward. Even though I spent months working on how to fall in my martial arts class, the lessons apparently didn't stick. I threw my arms out to catch my fall, a cardinal sin. Instead of bruising my butt and spraining my dignity, I broke my wrist.

I'm writing this, then, for three reasons:

1. To vent, while also sharing information.

2. To solicit prayers. I'm not always sure what I think about intercessory prayer, but I am sure that it never hurts.

3. To practice typing with a cast on. Early verdict: not easy. Not only do I not have all of my fingers - I can really only use about six at a time - but the cast keeps hitting random keys, or even worse, hitting the delete button.

I may have just picked up some writing work which will really help us out, especially since my bosses at work are skeptical about my ability to perform my duties with only one hand. But to do the writing work - assuming, of course, it actually works out - I'm going to have to learn how to type with the fiberglass weight on my hand, immobilizing my wrist and thumb and randomly smacking keys.

The good news: Best case scenario, I'm out of the cast in 6 weeks, and playing tennis again in about two months. And, all in all, despite my incessant whining, it could be a lot worse. While I was in the Hand Center's waiting room three different patients were wheeled in with missing fingers and mangled limbs.

And, I just hit spell check to make sure that I didn't clumsily strike the wrong keys while I was typing. While the typing was slow going, I only had one mistake. Even with two good hands I usually have more errors than that. Maybe having to concentrate from time to time, doing a formerly rote task in a new way, isn't such a bad thing.