ON SPORTS ~ Reinforcing The Soul...

Last night I got to enjoy three of my favorite things that have been largely absent from my life since I became pregnant last fall:

Beer

Hot Dogs

Baseball

Thanks to my Dad, I got to go to the Red Sox/Yankees game last night at Fenway Park. He purchased the tickets way back in the off-season and I have had the date circled on my calendar ever since. The game also coincided closely with Andy's birthday last week as well as my own in a few weeks.

I think we all know that pregnant women are discouraged from drinking alcohol. Throughout the winter holidays, summer barbecues and countless fun events along the way I begrudgingly settled for fake beer. I nursed baby Sammy for the first month and was generally exhausted - beer was not in the forefront of my desires. I had gotten so used to it not being an option that it hardly crossed my mind anyway.

You may not know that these days pregnant women are also discouraged from eating hot dogs, along with deli meat, sausage and bacon due to the higher risks of miscarriage that nitrates carry. This was most troublesome for me since it took away all of the lovely things I enjoyed eating on a frequent basis. Do you have any idea how challenging it is to eat something other than chicken when you can't have any of those items, in addition to many crumbly cheeses like Feta or Goat Cheese, many types of fish and lots of other tasty food items? Try being a food writer when you can't sample most of the items on the menu for 9 months! My biggest desire of the food I could not consume was bacon. The first food that I ate after childbirth was bacon. But I missed hot dogs almost as much. You may recall that they are a key ingredient in one of the few favorite comfort foods I have successfully made myself in the kitchen.

Watching baseball, or anything for that matter that is televised in the evening hours, became difficult for me to stay in touch with. The iron pills I took during pregnancy did keep anemia at bay and boosted my energy, but staying up all night to find out the conclusion of the Sox game just wasn't something I could handle like I had before. I went to a live game earlier in the season because the seats were free and fabulous. I was exhausted waddling back to the car after its conclusion and turned down several offers to attend other games later - something that pained me to have to do.

So....needless to say that I was in heaven last night. Our seats were way up in the tippy top of the bleachers and we couldn't see the details on the field very well. It was a really long walk up and down the stairs to get there. And the Sox lost. But it was a beautiful evening without a cloud in the sky. The park was buzzing with energy. I was in great company. And I wolfed down a Fenway Frank and washed it down with a few cold ones. We stayed through to the end and I didn't even fall asleep! I am exhausted today again and I'm sure I'll be long gone in dreamland on the couch before tonight's game has barely begun. But for one night I felt like a real person again - or at least the person I was before my darling baby boy captured my world. And I think it is important to revisit yourself every now and then - to reinforce the soul. For me, that means baseball, beer and a hot dog. Thanks Dad for the escape!