There is no free time in Speedville; it is baseball season.
And if we did have free time, we’d just spend it in our pajamas, collecting rocks in the back yard.
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Theme Thursday: Hats or Scarves. Or Helmets.
February 7, 2013 By
Sneaking in under the wire for the latest Clan Donaldson photography link-up, the theme being “Hats or Scarves.”
I know that many a snowbound reader will shake frostbitten fists at the screen upon seeing this picture of 70-degree weather, but trust me – we will have several months of Texas fireweather starting soon. We have to seize these days before the sun begins to actively fry our hides when we step outside.
So, here’s Little League tryouts:
I am proud of this photo for two reasons.
1. My son has never played baseball before, and in fact hasn’t played a team sport since Pee Wee soccer as a three-year-old. He didn’t exactly ask to play this year, so much as grudgingly assent to his parents’ semi-forcing him to try it.
I don’t like to write about my children that much once they get older – it feels invasive to try to get inside their heads and then share that with the world. (I also want to hedge my bets for when they all someday get book deals to write about their harridan mother.) So I guess all I’ll say is that I completely recognized his nervousness about trying out, the fear not so much of failure as of not knowing what to do, and I was really proud of him for overcoming that.
In hindsight, I wish we’d had him try a sport a couple of years ago, because he’s almost at the age where the real standouts start to leave the rest of the kids in the dust. But we spent this week going to the batting cages and emailing the coach to make sure we had all of the gear, doing everything we could to be ready. And he did just fine. The coaches knew he hadn’t played before and it wasn’t a big deal. He was beaming and telling all sorts of corny jokes at dinner, which is how I know he was proud of himself.
They find out next week which teams they’re on.
2. I took this picture in manual mode and lived to tell the tale. I think I need something up from the kit lens to be doing sports photos at night, but that ain’t happening anytime soon. I downloaded a copy of my camera’s manual to my phone, so I could quickly search through to find the right settings for taking these photos. Not that this is some great picture, but it’s way better than the ones I took where I was just randomly trying different settings.
Stop by Cari’s to see more great photos, including an amazing shot of her husband, who appears to be the barrister scion of England’s oldest family, ready to do what it takes to hold the financial industry accountable for what it has done. I may be projecting.
Seven Quick Takes: NO THEME: Just That Dangerous
February 1, 2013 By
Because I want to fit every stereotype of the homeschooling mom blogger, I am not only learning photography, but we are going gluten-free. Next up: random tutorials. OH WAIT I ALREADY DO THOSE.
Okay, fine, it’s not (just) about my desire to fit in on Pinterest. My husband has been officially diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, an autoimmune disorder. We knew something was up about three years ago when he started having trouble walking, but we chalked it up to an injury. He did have knee surgery late last year, but continues to have chronic, random, and severe pain in his feet, knees, hands, shoulders, etc. I regret the day we decided to buy a two-story house because, basically, when he comes home from work, he can go up and down the stairs exactly one time. Hmm – well, I guess he can make two round trips each day, on a good day. So every evening is a routine of “how are you feeling?” – a question he absolutely loves to be asked every time he walks in the door, I can tell – and then assigning various children to fetch various items from upstairs.
It’s really crappy, basically.
A friend at church also has psoriatic arthritis, and is in fact almost exactly the same age as my husband. He’s experienced significant pain relief since giving up gluten, so now we are slumping towards doing the same thing.
Somehow I just don’t find the prospect of arsenic in my rice all that “Delight”-ful.
Here is the thing: I love making dramatic changes. Live for it. BREATHE it. Announce the change, be the change, live the change, forget the change because ain’t nobody got time for that. Back to the no-change.
But this change would be different, in that it wouldn’t be just a matter of “your life might possibly be immeasurably better if you succeed at making this entirely optional change!” Instead, we shall have “your husband will experience chronic and incapacitating pain unless you ALL GET WITH THE PROGRAM.”
So – that’s no fun! I liked it better when I was just letting a bunch of marbles gather dust and nobody was the wiser.
Uh – I said there was no theme, so here’s something random and amazing: a group of ten friends has spent the last 23 years locked in a game of “Tag.”
The game they play is fundamentally the same as the schoolyard version: One player is “It” until he tags someone else. But men in their 40s can’t easily chase each other around the playground, at least not without making people nervous, so this tag has a twist. There are no geographic restrictions and the game is live for the entire month of February. The last guy tagged stays “It” for the year.
That means players get tagged at work and in bed. They form alliances and fly around the country. Wives are enlisted as spies and assistants are ordered to bar players from the office.
“You’re like a deer or elk in hunting season,” says Joe Tombari, a high-school teacher in Spokane, who sometimes locks the door of his classroom during off-periods and checks under his car before he gets near it.
Also fun: Nic Cage as Everyone.
Is it too late to write about Christmas? Because I have had a “I Survived Christmas and You Can, Too” post brewing in my head for about, well, a month, and haven’t had time to post it. I did just find this photo on my phone, which I think perfectly sums up the compromise between High Expectations and Keeping It Real that was key to my staying relatively even-keeled.
It’s not even Ocean Spray. It’s generic.
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Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2012 By
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s about time we started wrapping presents.
7 Quick Takes: Nightmares and Visions
December 14, 2012 By
You know that nightmare where you totally forgot you’d enrolled in a class, and you find out just before finals, and you have to go talk to the professor and plead for your life because otherwise your GPA will be ruined and you’ll be kicked out of school and forced to busk for the rest of your days?
THIS IS BUSKING. THIS IS HAPPENING.
Photo credit: leudh from morguefile.com
It’s pretty much my most common nightmare, followed closely by the one from teenagerdom where I get pregnant from taking a defective Excedrin and nobody will believe me, which my history teacher told me was “the most Catholic nightmare he had ever heard.”
Anyway, the point is: that came true for me this week, except (so far) for the busking part. I have been so busy that I totally forgot about this amazing awesome tremendous class I went to this summer and was supposed to be working on over the course of the year. I got a very kindly worded email from the course assistant asking if there was anything she could do to help me, so I threw myself at her feet, virtually, and begged forgiveness.
Who’s the patron saint of not living up to the expectations of authority figures? I need some intercession, stat.
So, this happened:
By which I do not mean “I had a non-bad hair day right before I got my hair cut, and now I will never have another one because I went and got a haircut.” I mean that I got glasses.
Right before our big trip to France in October, I took the kids for checkups like a responsible adult and everything. I was patting myself on the back until the nurse told me, very concerned, that my older son basically can’t see anything at a distance.
Oops.
I mean, he was reading so well! He never complained about blurs on the horizon! How was I to know?
So, we rushed around town to find an optometrist who could fit him with glasses before the big trip, so that he could actually see the big things and not just contemplate whether French blurry horizons are inherently more sophisticated than those of Texas. I decided – hey, let’s get my eyes checked, too. Might as well.
“When was the last time you had your eyes checked?” they asked at the front desk.
“Well…” and then I lied, because I am pretty sure the last time I had my eyes checked was in seventh grade. I said something like “ten years ago” which seemed more reasonable to me because I know nothing.
Concern was again expressed. I’m telling you – disappointing authority figures. It’s becoming the story of my life.
The upshot was that there actually is not a government conspiracy to obscure the words on the signs at the end of grocery aisles; I, too, need glasses.
I don’t need them need them. Like, I can go about my life, squinting but successful. Except, now that I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing them most of the time – I notice when I don’t.
It was fun for the first few days, because hey! A new accessory! And now it’s kind of a pain, because I have a weird head and/or ears, and the glasses slip down my nose and off my face when I lean forward. I guess I need to have them fitted, or something?
I mostly cleaned out our office this week, and I have been feeling such a glow of accomplishment that it doesn’t even faze me that I had to reschedule the carpet cleaning twice because I haven’t had time to deal with the Cheerio situation in the carpet-to-be-cleaned rooms.
This whole “carpet cleaning” concept is new to me, because I grew up in a house with hardwood floors. Also because I am a terrible housekeeper. I am still unclear as to what people mean when they refer to cleaning baseboards. But my mom and stepdad are coming for Christmas and the dining room looks like an army of children make PBJs in there every day and then grind their feet into the blobs of strawberry jelly that inevitably result from poorly supervised lunch preparation. It looks like that because that’s how we live.
Just as I was heading to the computer to double-check the tracking information for my sons’ big presents, my older son came to me and said “I’m so upset right now.” He’d answered the door when the package was delivered and saw that they came from LEGO. “I spoiled my surprise.” I explained to him that he would have figured out what was in his big box as soon as he shook the wrapped present, and also that is the only thing he ever asks for, ever.
“I just hope if it IS legos, which it is, that it’s Lord of the Rings legos.”
“It’s not! Get ready to be surprised!”
My youngest has had some Stern Talkings-To and Consequences of late with regard to how we respond to disappointing news, like “you can’t erase something in your coloring book with a baby wipe” or “you have to eat one bite of broccoli and then you can ask to be excused.” His go-to phrase was “I WANT TO KILL MOMMY!” and we had to nip that in the bud. So the next time he got really really mad, he paused for just a second and yelled, “I WANT…YOU TO GO TO PARIS!”
As I observed to a friend on Facebook: I did the crime – I’ll do the time.
I still haven’t found the Advent box, but now I think I can blame it on someone else. My husband is pretty sure he put it up in the rafters of the garage last year along with some other seasonal stuff. He’s still recovering from knee surgery so he can’t get it down, and I – well, I am busy, is what I am. Let’s keep the focus where it belongs: not on me. I am going to claim the spousal-knee-surgery-exemption for at least the next 15 months.
Here is an impulse purchase I made recently:
Isn’t that totally amazing and necessary? It’s a Golden Section Finder! I need this because it is a thing! It makes me feel smart even though I do not understand how to use it! I bought two!
(They are $6 each. Well worth it. One for my purse, one for home.)
I mean, the opportunities for social interaction thanks to this item are limitless. I almost wish I were back out there, needing a pickup line, because I could size someone up and be all, “hey, baby, I noticed when peering at you through this yellow credit card that your proportions are perfectly proportional.” All you single ladies, feel free to use that anytime. Meanwhile, I’ll be viewfinding it up all OVER this town.
The thing is, for me to be able to use this – I have to be wearing my glasses.
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