Perspective

Met up with three of my caching friends this morning and we hiked around a beautiful park for the better part of five hours straight.  One of my companions was a truly lovely woman who is rapidly approaching 70 and has two artificial knees, but she hung right in there with the rest of us for the full expedition.  Yeah, she moves a little slower than I do, but I'm still impressed...I want to be like her when I grow up.  Did a six-mile hike last week with a group that included a man of about 70 with an artificial hip, too...these ol' birds are tough.  :)  At 41, I'm the young'un in this crew by a lot, and bad knee or no bad knee, right now I'm grateful that all my parts are still original!



 

Success Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Last night I was up until 2AM working on a mystery cache.  This particular one was rated 4.5 for difficulty out of a possible 5, and to complete it, I had to solve nine, count 'em, NINE miserable beastly puzzles in a row.  Got the first six last night and wrapped up the final three this afternoon.  The sad thing is that I really didn't need to do any of that work, since a friend of mine already knows where the cache is and he's going to be with me tomorrow when I look for it (his wife hasn't found it yet, and I'm tagging along.)  Sometimes it really sucks to be constitutionally unable to take the easy way out, but at least I got to enjoy the moment of elation when I finally finished the damned thing.

A big of a deal as that was for me (yes, go ahead and laugh, I know I'm a dork) the bigger one by far is that all three of my children survived the weekend.  My husband left Thursday at the crack of dawn for one of his crazy relay race weekends five states away and was back in town this afternoon just long enough to switch bags at the airport (literally: he had two suitcases in the car; one for running stuff and one with business attire) and hop a plane to England.  He won't actually get *home* till Thursday, I think.  In his absence, the weekend was a staggering exercise in logistics, since Thing One had a faraway soccer tournament both days (four games total, with three hours of downtime between the two games each day) and we have two other children and a dog that must be fed, entertained and juggled in the meantime.  Not fun with only one adult, and I ran out of patience sometime yesterday: nevertheless, all four small dependent creatures are still alive and well and there wasn't even any wine or chocolate involved (although a smart man might bring some good chocolate home with him from his business trip, just sayin'.)

Tell me: what do you consider YOUR successes of the weekend??

Joint Effort for Great Reward

The boy approaching the soccer goal took a hard shot to the far upper corner from close range.  Our goalie launched himself horizontally into midair to block it and just managed to graze it with his fingertips.  The contact was enough to stop the forward progress of the ball, but left it perched dangerously right in front of the goal, just waiting for a tap-in from another opponent in a game that was already tight.  Thing One, who is a defender to his core, came out of nowhere with some kind of crazy spinning move that dropped him to the ground between the ball and the attacking forwards while launching the ball safely toward the sideline.  You'd better believe that I was the proud mom jumping up and down and hollering on the sideline, but honestly?  The best part was watching the joyful high fives between my son and the goalie afterward...between them, they got the job done when it absolutely needed to get done, and they knew it.  

The team they played in today's tournament game absolutely creamed them in a 'friendly' scrimmage last week.  It was ugly.  They weren't playing positions well, they weren't passing, and it was really easy to see that only about half the boys on the team are used to playing together (courtesy of all the roster shakeups over the summer.)  I don't have a clue what the coach said afterward, but today, it was like different boys showed up to that tournament game.  They played heads-up, team ball, they left their hearts--and in a few cases, a little blood--out on that field, and they WON.  

As did my beloved Irish, incidentally: 31-0 over Michigan.  Definitely a day for celebration in this house!

  

Weird Breakfast Table Conversations, Part Who Knows What

A good friend of mine attracts drama like honey attracts flies...there is always some sort of emotional uproar swirling around her.  As a sort of tongue-in-cheek nod to this reality, I've assigned her texts the Suspense ringtone on my cell phone.

She texted me this morning while the kids were eating breakfast.  As I picked up my phone to check the message, the boys (both of whom have perfect pitch) began to discuss exactly which notes are in that ringtone, which they ultimately confirmed with a quick trip to the piano, bagels still in hand.  Only at my house!!

Throwback Thursday, But Not The Good Kind

I heard the song today for the first time in close to fifteen years, the one that made him punch a coffee table in sheer frustration.  He called me hours later for help getting to the emergency room, where a friend of his who happened to be on call read the X-ray of his hand.  No break, just bruises, but ugly ones.  I'd forgotten all about that until the first few notes reminded me...not the best way to start a morning.  I should stick to old photos for trips down memory lane.

On a much brighter note, the school year seems to have started well for all three kids.  Thing One has managed to figure out his schedule and remember the combination to his locker, Thing Two LOVES his teacher, and Petunia has charmed her way into the hearts of her classmates with cupcakes (today is her 7th birthday.)  We shall see how they feel later in the school year when they actually have homework and tests and mandatory reading and such, but for now they (and I) are enjoying the honeymoon period at the beginning of the year!

There are definite benefits to having slightly older children, none of whom are new to the school.  A friend's daughter (a new first grader) got onto the wrong bus today at dismissal time, which nobody noticed until she did not get off the bus with her siblings at home.  As she explained to her mother, "Mama, I was never lost, and I liked the view from that bus better!"  This is why mothers drink and have gray hair.

It Begins Again

The kids start school tomorrow: 2nd, 3rd and 6th grades respectively.

Lunches are packed (oh, the joy...), backpacks are ready, first-day outfits have been chosen.  Petunia, my style maven, will of course be wearing one of her pretty dresses.  

All in all, I think it will be a good year.   Petunia is of the sort that will thrive wherever planted, and she loves school.  Thing Two is always the challenge, but as I told my parents on the phone this evening, had I waved a magic wand to make my preferred set of third grade circumstances for him materialize, I couldn't have done better.  He's been set up to succeed this year and that is a big deal.  Then there's Thing One, my trial balloon through the school system and fortunately another of the thrives-wherever-planted sort for the most part (always handy in an oldest child.)  He's starting middle school, which will be a whole new ball of wax--he now has a locker and a schedule where he changes classes each period and the organizational stresses on him will definitely be jacked up a couple of notches, so I'll be keeping an eye on his homework planner until he shows me that it isn't necessary.

A perennial struggle for me, that: the balance between age-appropriate supervision and helicoptering. I'm getting better at taking conscious steps back: I keep reminding myself that the goal is independence and that nothing good comes of me being indispensable!

Labor Day

Took a while to get going this morning courtesy of a late night out with friends last night, but once the caffeine finally hit I was unstoppable with my laboring.  Laundry, vacuuming, bathrooms, dishes, floors, all capped off with three-plus hours of weeding and wheelbarrowing in the garden in 90 degree heat.   Mind you, this is all because I am insane.

With my children older now, I somehow feel like I have to justify my stay-at-homeness even though my husband has not ONCE made me feel like he wants me back at work.  Quite the opposite, in fact. He's legitimately happy that I'm home to get the kids off to school and take them to their afternoon activities and available for their field trips and class parties and such.  And the summer, with them home much more than during the the school year, is absolutely my craziest time of the year bar the run-up to Christmas, so part of me views the arrival of September as sort of a mini-vacation, at least during the day!  With the kids going back to school on Wednesday, I have all sorts of fun plans with friends in the works and I think all the housework now is a sort of compensation in my own head for the 'time off' I will be taking later in the week, even though nobody is keeping score.  Sometimes my brain is a crazy, crazy place, but on the bright side, the house and yard look pretty good.  I'll take it.