Sunday Bloody Sunday

OK, I know, two U2 references in a row. I'll stop that for a while.

Well, it has taken me a good 48 hours to be able to write about this past Sunday. The Mets completed their late-season collapse with a lifeless loss to the Marlins which, coupled with the Phillies' win over the Nationals, jettisoned the Mets out of the playoffs on the final day of the season. The game was almost unbearable to watch. Even when Tom Glavine vomited up seven runs in the first inning, I still thought they had a chance, and I spent the next few innings living and dieing with every pitch. My heart was pounding, I was eating compulsively. It sucked. Eliza awakened from her nap somewhere around the fifth inning and, for some reason, she was cranky, crying and inconsolable. I was standing there like, "little girl, I have no emotional resources left to make you feel better." But I did anyway. She's really cute. I watched all the way through the penultimate out, and then turned off the TV because I couldn't bear to watch the conclusion. I can stare at a gruesome car wreck for only so long.

Unlike some folks who were described in newspaper articles, I did not cry and I don't feel like this was the greatest disappointment of my life. But, for some reason, it stings. Why would I do this to myself? Why would I come back for more? Because although this sucks, I also know how good the good times feel, and like an addict seeking that amazing original high, I'll be there next spring hoping that 2008 is the magical season.

Of course, I thought that watching the Jets game would make me feel better. I had taped it and watched it that evening (that seems to be the way I watch football these days), and suffered through their loss to a formerly-winless Bills team that was starting a rookie QB. Uggh.

Thank goodness the news about the Thomas/MSG sexual harassment suit verdict didn't come out until two days later, or I might have packed the bags and moved to, uh, some other place. Man, if they don't fire Thomas it is going to be really hard to root for the Knicks this year. Not that they've made that a particularly easy thing to do within the past decade anyway.

The coup de grace for Sunday? At around dinner time I took the dogs out to the backyard to do their business (which, if you know anything about economics, isn't actually "business"), and I discovered a dead rat lying on the ground. The rat was around 10-12 inches long --- easily half the size of Oscar, if not bigger, and was somewhat reminiscent of a Warg from the Lord of the Rings series. I screamed. Well, it wasn't so much a scream as an, "Ahhhh!!! Ohhhh. Oh fuck. Ahhh, Eewwww. Ahhhh!!" That big-ass dead rat scared me more as dead than it might have if it were alive. I'm not 100% convinced of that, but I can't imagine being much more scared of it than I was. I took the dogs inside before they discovered the mammoth, fetid carcass, and went upstairs. I returned downstairs after the kids were in bed. I donned gloves and grabbed a shovel and two plastic bags. I doubled-up the bags and set them out in a bucket shape. I then approached the mighty beast and, summoning every ounce of courage I had, scooped it up and dumped it in the bags. It left behind a zillion little maggoty-creatures on the ground.

Are you puking yet? I was damn near close. I let out a few more loud and colorful protestations while pacing around in a circle, and then went back inside to get a bigger bag. I deposited the smaller bag of decaying monster rat into the larger bag and tied it up, hosed off the ground and the shovel, and brought the festering sack up and out to the garbage cans in front of our building. Not sure I breathed the entire time. Mercifully, the Department of Sanitation came and picked up our garbage this morning, because I was scared to go near my own trash cans.

Mets. Jets. Maggotty gigantic rat. It is so not easy being me.