It’s All In Your Perspective

As far as I can tell, the purpose competitive swimming plays in my life (bear with me here, it has one) is to make me realize that travel soccer could be a lot worse!

My best girlfriend has two daughters who swim like my kids play soccer.  Which is to say, constantly, everlastingly, and generally not close to home.  Both of us spend hours a day in the car driving somebody to and from practice.  However, as much as I bellyache about soccer, I’d pick it over swimming in a hot second.

For starters, each sport has a month of the year that is generally pretty slow.  Yes. A single month.  Ugh.  For swimming, that’s August.  Soccer is December.  Can you even imagine how much of a nutjob I would be if I had to spend December at soccer fields somewhere instead of getting my Christmas stuff done??  My girlfriend spent the entirety of a three day weekend (Dec 15-17!) across the state at a swim meet with her older daughter and finally found time to put her tree up on the 23rd.  That same daughter has training out of state starting tomorrow and running through New Year’s.

A downside of soccer is that it pretty much kills the end of summer (tryouts and training are intense in July/August.  That said, the school soccer season is over by Halloween—two months of the season are over the summer when you aren’t trying to deal with school as well.  School swimming is a winter sport and tryouts are November for a Nov-March season.  Loads of fun when you are juggling in end-of-semester testing with school and club swimming practices.

Oh, and last but not least: you can pretty much rely on a soccer game taking a specified period of time, after which you can go home.  Exact duration depends on the age of the kid and the league, but generally speaking, within 90 minutes you’re done.  None of this meet that lasts all weekend and your kid swims a grand total of fifteen minutes in three days but you still have to be there all three days stuff.  Yikes.

Somebody once said that if you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.  I’ve been warned and hell will freeze over before my kids become swimmers!

Oh, What A Lift To My Day

I always get cranky by this point in the season, sad to say.  Trying to get everything done and keep everything clean and fulfill everyone's holiday expectations just overwhelms me.  Wish I could just let things go, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.  Anyway, it came as a tremendous surprise when I received the following text out of the blue from a dear geocaching friend.

Santa left something for you and your mom at (latitude and longitude coordinates near my house.)

Intrigued, I hopped in the car as soon as I finished making the kids' lunch.  The coordinates took me to the base of a big tree at an intersection three quarters of a mile or so north of my house.

There, I found this.

When I opened it, I found two small packages wrapped in festive red and white paper.  One was addressed to me, and one to my mother.

This was in my package.

It may be difficult to tell from the picture, but that ornament is handmade from cherrywood.  The technique is called fretwork.  This particular friend is a retired shop teacher and a master woodworker.  He and his wife frequently eat lunch at a restaurant near my house; I am going to guess that they dropped off the gift on their way.  I do know what is is my mother's package, but I won't show it here since she reads my blog.  Mom, you will love it though!!

Merry Christmas to me (and Mom) from a very kind friend who lifted my soul today and reminded me of the true spirit of the season.

What Facebook Desperately Needs...

...in addition to the options to unfriend someone or hide their posts, is a third option to only hide the posts of theirs that contain a certain word or words.

An otherwise dearly beloved aunt of mine is constantly hovering on the verge of being either unfriended or hidden because her posts from pro-conservative sites are bad for my blood pressure.  The ability to filter out any post of hers containing the word “Trump” would go a long way.  :(

Now What???

I went to the drugstore today to pick up a few things, including a lighter.  The long kind you’d use to light a candle or fire, not the stubby kind used for cigarettes, for the record.  As the cashier rang up my purchases, she said she needed my birthdate to complete the transaction.  Startled, I asked why, since my purchases didn’t include cold medicine or any other stuff from which drugs can be made—the usual flag.  Apparently the lighter was the issue.  I’ve never been carded for that in my life, and given that I am 44, ain’t no way she thought I was anywhere near 18, which I gather is the age I need to be to buy a damn lighter.  Enough with the enforced bureaucracy already.

Here We Go Again

If there’s a more frustrating thing to shop for than pants for preteen/teenaged boys, I don’t know what it is, unless maybe it’s shorts for the same age group in girls that don’t leave their buttcheeks hanging out.  Ain’t gonna happen in this house.

Anyway, there’s been some serious growing among the boy children lately, necessitating the purchase of new pants (it’s cold out.)  Thing One is now solidly into men’s sizes at least, although he still wears a weird one that has to be ordered online because he is six feet tall with long legs and a toothpick waist.  Thing Two is in that awkward borderline phase where some of the largest boys’ pants still fit but some of the smaller (also weird-sized, generally online only) men’s pants do too.  This week has been an adventure in trying to find new pants for him before the holidays!  After several forays into all the stores in town and the Web, I have finally discovered which size of pants currently fits him.  Much like his brother, he is tall (I’m guessing probably 5’6”-5’7” right now) and slender with long legs.  What makes me laugh is that his new inseam measurement is the same as his father’s and he is 12!!  Thing One’s inseam is already four inches longer than my husband’s.  Given that my husband is an absolutely average-sized man, we are growing some giants here!  The boys wear size 11 and 13 shoes respectively, too.

He jokes that he married me to bring height into his genepool.  Looks like he succeeded!

These Two Are **SO** Lucky That They're Cute

A title that could apply perfectly well to any two of my three children most days, but in this particular case, the culprits are these innocent-looking little monkeys.  (Who...us??)

My husband was thrown into a mad panic this afternoon by the inexplicable disappearance of his wedding ring from the top of our kitchen island.

The mystery was eventually solved, but not without much frantic searching.  One of these little menaces (we strongly suspect Darcy, the curious one--on the right with the white stripe on his nose) must have knocked the ring off the counter, where it then skittered across the tile and hardwood floors until it lodged under the Christmas tree in the next room!   Batting toys across the floor is one of their absolute favorite pastimes, and they prefer nonconventional toys...hair barrettes, twisted pipe cleaners, and my sewing thimble are their victims of choice.

Thing One saved the day, finally spotting the glint of gold under the tree and then valiantly risking death by pine needle stabs to make the grab.  New house rule: no more small valuables on the kitchen counters!!  Little stinkers.

  

Sweet Jesus

A child killed herself today at Thing One’s high school.

The rumor mill is saying lots of things.  I won’t repeat any because I don’t know what’s true.  I have no idea if she was bullied, depressed, LGBTQ, marginalized, had received some bad news....anything.  It really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that my son came home from school today, and somebody else’s child didn’t.  I can hug Thing One (and you’d better believe I did, over and over and over) and those parents can’t.  I can have the conversation with him yet again: nothing is worth killing yourself over.  NOTHING.  Tell an adult if you hear anything.  I love you to the moon and back, as does your father.  The three of us can get through anything together.

They can’t.

I am sick to my stomach.  There but for the grace of God.