With the Olympics and Fourteen Days of Love and Food and the fake Broadway show opening behind me, I feel in need of a little rest.  But before I take the next eleven hours to not think about the rumpus room that is my website, I would like to give you my final thoughts on the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

• I wish I were a hockey fan. I missed the game and it didn’t destroy me.  And that’s the problem.  It’s great to be an individual with your own drumbeat in the drum line and all, but it sure is fun to be instep with the rest of the world who loves hockey and give yourself the gift of elation or heartbreak when your team does what it ends up doing.  Vancouver was a sea of maple-leaf-red after the Canadian team won gold.  I want to care enough about something to wear red for it and bump into people on the street while screaming things.  How come I’m stuck loading the dishwasher in a state of envy and indifference?  I will not let this happen again.  I will watch.  I will embrace the chaos, the fight, and the inability to really see the puck on TV.

• The Canadians didn’t just own the podium, they paid off the mortgage, raised five kids, and buried all their dead pets there. Fourteen gold medals.  They deserve it.  If nothing else, for being in our shadow all the time.  (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.)  I’m not sure why the Americans are called the winningest team or the most decorated.  We (you know, Lindsey, Shani, Apolo and me) got the most coin necklaces, but bronze has only the fraction of the importance that gold does:  He’s worth his weight in bronze.  It’s a bronze opportunity.  Nothing bronze can stay.  Bronze Girls.  Bronze Gate Bridge.  Fool’s bronze (even the fools won’t have it).  Bronze digger (hey, that might be me).

• The US men’s four-man bobsledding team ended a sixty-two-year honor drought and won gold. Glad I didn’t hear this statistic before.  I didn’t know how bad I had it.  But no disrespect, seriously.  I’m always happy for people to shock themselves by how cool they are.  What I want to know is how you get in to that sport.  Is there a pee wee bobsledding league or is all training done in saucers?

In any case, thanks for joining me here at Saving Private Mommy for your primary source of irrelevant Olympic coverage.  I had a great time being rubber cemented to the TV and the laptop.  Now we, the good spectator citizens of the world, must rest up for more adventures in the summer of 2012 in London.  It’s going to take of lot of napping between now and then.

And coming up, is the gorgeous spring outside that nature will officially hand over in the next few weeks. In anticipation, the trees in my neighborhood are sprouting their pink blossoms and the hills are soggy and green.  Ahead are longer, warmer days, and a big boot to comfort foods, plus the Easter Bunny and my girls turning three and six and me turning thirty-nine and my husband, too.  And my oldest turning eight much later.

I hope you’ll join me as I put my feet up for a bit.  I’m going to need my dogs to be in good shape and perhaps you do, too.  I have telemarketers to take on and a governing board of the PTA to make fun of.  Please check back.

And now, a little March poem from our favorite spinster, Emily Dickinson.

To March

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat–
You must have walked–
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the birds’;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,–I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me–
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.