Giant Leap Of Faith

The car just pulled out of the driveway: Himself is taking Thing Two to a travel soccer tryout this evening.

The email came in a little over a week ago.  "We are looking for a few more boys in the U8 age group for the spring season.  If you have a child whom you would like to have try out, email so-and-so."  I reflexively deleted the copy of the email that came to me, but I knew that I'd be hearing about it from Himself.

Thing Two has two speeds when it comes to soccer: completely dominant and completely out to lunch.  When he's on, he's almost unstoppable, especially on offense.  When he's off, however, he's off.  He's good enough to play a higher level of soccer on the "on" days, but then there are those other days.  And the whole social thing, too.

His social skills are getting better, but are still an issue.  It terrifies me to be potentially sending him into a new social group, to be perfectly honest.  The kids he's known for years are used to his idiosyncrasies, but new kids sometimes aren't sure what to make of him.  When Thing One started playing travel soccer, there were a few real asshole kids on his team, and I cringe at the thought of putting Thing Two into that situation.  Parenthood really does mean deciding to forever have your heart go walking around outside your body, as Elizabeth Stone wrote.

So, Himself and I went back and forth for several days.  Do we try him out or not?  We finally decided that we didn't want to hold him back if he is good enough to play travel, and that we'd give him a shot.  But I still have no idea if it's the right decision.  I'm sitting here now wondering if I should be hoping that he makes the team or that he doesn't.  I guess time will tell.

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In other news, I finally brought the laptop we've been having all the bug issues with to Staples today to have their tech guys look at it.  They found 34 (!!) virus-like files on it in a preliminary screen.  And this was WITH the McAfee viral protection software on it (direct quote from the Staples guy: "McAfee sucks."). Hopefully I will get it back bug-free in a few days.  And in case you're wondering, he recommends Defender and Kaspersky if you are in the market for an anti-virus program.

Just for something different (ha) it's snowing here again tonight.  My blog-friend NOLA said this picture made her think of me: if I were a wolf, I'd eat that damned groundhog too.