The Not So Good Day

Two awful things happened to me today. Well, one awful thing and one kind of bad happenstance. But the combination led to me sitting on an exit ramp at 8:05 a.m. putting on my panties.
Adding to my panic, was the fact that the Honors English class I'm teaching had begun five minutes earlier. Maybe not begun, since I wasn't there, but had been scheduled to begin.
So I was running late for class and I had to get dressed on my way to class. I peeled off my gray wicking shirt and left the compressing running bra on. I pulled a sleeveless, navy linen dress, which nearly covered the bra, over my head during a break in traffic. When the exit ramp light turned red again, I slammed the car into park and pulled off my running shorts and shoes. That's when I put on the panties and threw the edge of my dress over them as the light changed and I passed the nice policeman who let me turn left in front of the oncoming traffic.
I was running late for this, the second day of class, because I had been at the emergency room since 6 a.m. You've gotta get up pretty early in the morning to make it to the emergency room by 6 a.m. And when I walked, well limped, into the ER, the triage nurse actually laughed.
I think it all started on Sunday though. That's when, in spite of a bad cold, I went to a ChiRunning class taught by an old friend. ChiRunning mixes the methods of Tai Chi with running. It leads to a smooth, injury free run. I'm pretty good at running. I ran the Columbus Marathon a few years ago. I did 16 miles one Saturday last month just on a whim. I'm left handed, so I have a tendency to be clumsy when I walk or cut things with sharp knives. For some reason, I've always felt coordinated when I run. I don't stumble or fall off the edge of the trail.
On Sunday, I was feeling pretty good about my ChiRunning abilities while a friend who had accompanied me was not so thrilled. She complained and pouted that she couldn't get it. I could tell I was going to be good at it. We were taught the proper stance, proper posture, tucked in pelvis and tilted forward torso. The idea, once in the right stance, is to lean slightly forward and let gravity do the running for you. I bought the book. And the metronome to keep me running on the right beat.
This morning, I did the stretches in my darkened kitchen with the cat trying to grab my hair when I hung upside down to loosen my joints. Then I ventured outside where an outdoor cat stood blocking my way as I practiced my running technique up and down the back sidewalk.
Finally, I was ready for the road. I aligned myself again and ran down the smooth concrete alley. I reached the road and turned right. I hadn't run since we moved here, nearly a week and a half ago. I was trying a new route. I stopped after a block to realign myself. Keeping the right posture is really important to chi running. The roads were empty (luckily) because I felt kind of silly stopping and using my hands to reposition myself. The next time I had to do it, I moved to the sidewalk under a tree so I wouldn't be so out in the open. Then I started again, leaning slightly forward. Step, step, splat. An edge of the sidewalk stuck up a few inches above the others and it caught my left toe, propelling me forward.
Falling down is such a surprise as an adult. I never expect it to happen. It seems there should always be some way to recover before the actual sidewalks meets my knee, hip, elbow and hands. The chi running lean gave me the extra momentum I needed to do a full sprawl on the sidewalk. I pushed myself up and looked down at my left knee for only a minute. Skinned, I convinced myself and turned around to walk home. Limp home. It hurt and I would go in the dark house and wash it off, but I wouldn't look at it until I got home. Walking, walking. Don't think about it. Then I saw the drip on my shoe. My running shoes weren't clean, but they were white, now dotted with red.
So the cat greeted me when I walked in the house and I found a washcloth and wet it before looking at the coagulated blood on my knee cap and the runnier stuff that had soaked my sock. I pushed open the bedroom door and said to my sleeping husband, "I fell down."
"What?" he asked.
"I fell running. I'm sorry. I'm just like a little kid." But I didn't sob. Do I get points for that?
He pulled on a pair of shorts and knelt on the white tile floor in front of me.
"Oh," he said.
"Butterfly bandage?" I asked.
"You're going to need stitched," he said.
And that's why I was in the emergency room at 6 a.m. and the triage nurse laughed when he saw my bloody knee and said "Running or biking?" The car valet guy didn't laugh but asked, "Are you okay?" I shouldn't have been snobby and said, "That's why I'm here."
So that was the bad happenstance that led to stitches in my knee and x-rays that turned out okay. But the really awful thing was during the questioning in triage. Keep in mind that I had gotten out of bed, put on running clothes, washed my face and brushed my teeth. Maybe I was not looking glamorous, but the triage nurse sent me into a depression when he asked the question that is the antithesis of being carded for alcohol. For the first time ever, I was asked: "Are you still having periods?"

Following Rules

Before my kids started school, after nine years running things my way, my husband made me promise not to "piss anybody off" at the school -- at least until the kids started.
Well, today was their first day, so I guess that limitation is gone. I'm not a rule follower. I'm not certain when that happened. When I was a kid, I was a perfect student, got straight As. Now I look at rules with a jaundiced eye. What is the point of that rule, I wonder. My kids have already run into a few that are making me crazy.
Grace was in tears when she got in the car. "If I don't have my algebra book covered by tomorrow I'll get detention."
Okay. I can understand the rule to put covers on textbooks, but really, this is punishing the student if her parents don't get to the store that evening. This rule is made to teach what?
Here's one direct from the sheet: "Two (2) hall passes will be given to take care of any personal business each quarter. Any passes not used will equal extra credit! Any passes above 2 will result in a detention."
Okay, so if I'm interpreting this rule correctly,those with large bladders get extra credit. Girls, you need to schedule your periods to come only twice during each quarter. Imagine the girl who is unlucky enough for it to fall the first, fifth and ninth weeks of that quarter. I can see her squirming in the wooden chair, debating, "Is it worth a detention to staunch the flow of blood?"
Hmmmm. It's all coming back to me why I became a rule breaker.

First Day of School

Today, my son and daughter went off to their first day of school. Yes,there were tears, but it wasn't quite the way I'd always envisioned it -- my daughter in a smocked dress with patent leather shoes, my son with his caramel-colored hair slicked back and a button-down shirt. Instead, my daughter wore navy crocs with one strap missing and jean shorts tight to the knees. My son had on a gray Hollister shirt and baggy shorts that my husband kept trying to hike up even as Spencer sauntered out the door. And their first day will not require cutting or pasting. They are off to high school and middle school after years of homeschooling.
I shouldn't have had that celebratory espresso because my stomach was already in knots and now it is in jumpy knots. We left the house in plenty of time, with only a small tussle over the car keys now that Grace has her temporary driver's license. But the school buses were out in full force, stopping with their blinking red lights as the minutes ticked off the clock. I stopped in front of the middle school, in the middle of the road and said goodbye to Spencer -- no kisses, no photos. Just him with a bulky black backpack and the mandatory two boxes of tissues to give to his home room teacher.
I pulled up in front of the high school at 7:59. Homeroom started at 8 a.m. With a deep breath, Grace slid out of the front seat. She wasn't about to run. She pulled the strap of her messenger bag over her head and walked to the side door. She'd have no time to stop at her locker. I pulled away feeling like a failure as a school mom.
My youngest climbed into the front seat beside me and proclaimed it was time for Caribou Coffee. He was delaying school, choosing to stay home at least another year.
When we arrived home, my husband was getting ready to leave for work. "I put my name on my lunch bag," he said proudly, displaying the brown paper bag.
Like a brick in the gut, I realized, "Spencer forgot his lunch."
Of course, that was probably the first of hundreds of times my kids will forget something at home. But I hated that it happened on the first day.
My husband dropped it by the school on his way to work, and I could imagine Spencer realizing halfway through a class that he was without his lunch, or a teeny bopper office worker walking to the classroom and calling out: "This is for Spencer. He forgot to bring his lunch today." Or, the worst scenario of all, an announement over the PA system for Spencer to come to the office.
I watch the clock tick, imagining them going to American History or algebra or Honors English.
And I remind myself that the only thing that could make me a worse school mother would be forgetting to pick them up this afternoon.

INADEQUACIES

I consider myself a fairly confident woman. I have a master's degree. I've worked for 20 years, homeschooled three kids, written two novels.
Sometimes, the little things can throw me back to that insecure 13-year-old again. I've been teaching college for two years and last week I received notice that the lead teacher will be coming to observe my class. This is a totally normal, once-a-year occurrence. I've just dodged the observation for the past two years through luck.
I know the students leaving my class become better writers, so why am I so nervous about this? Why do I feel like the wizard about to have the curtain pulled back? I'm preparing powerpoint presentations, scripting my class, trying to plan for every contingency. I want to impress her with my teaching skills and I'm afraid she'll find me a fraud.
This is the second vulnerable incident in as many weeks. I finished a non-fiction book proposal and sent it off. I know it is a great book idea, but having never written a book proposal, I was filled with trepidation as the e-mail left my desktop. These people are professionals, for god's sake. They'll probably just laugh at my amateurish marketing plan.
Maybe this fear of being laughed at or found lacking is a throwback from my adolescent years. But aren't I the one constantly telling my own adolescents that if they don't take a chance, they'll never accomplish anything.
Photo:http://www.razewv.com/stuff/digitalgear.aspx

Time Alone

Today I spent about five and a half blissful hours alone.
The only other thing moving in the house was the cat.
Now for most mothers, this is probably not a big deal, but for a homeschooling mom, this is fabulous. I managed to send my three children to the same day camp. For five days they will be catching the shuttle at a rec center and heading up to the Scioto River for sailing camp before I return to get them at the rec center.
My 11-year-old is making noises about not going back. He didn't like it. He had a stomachache. Too bad. He's going.
I have a lot of work to do while the kids are gone, but I have those restful moments too where I sit in front of the computer and listen to Stephanie Miller's radio program or sit down to a roast beef sandwich with a book spread out beside me.
I'm going to make the most of this week of sailing camp, whether the kids enjoy it or not.

Peaceful Passing

Sometime between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., our dog Rosie died.
She'd been a three-legged dog for about four months, getting used to negotiating stairs on three legs and licking her shaved hindquarters faithfully until the hair grew back. Amputating her leg was supposed to save her life, but the cancer had spread to her lungs, so she began coughing and started refusing all but the most delectable food tidbits. Yesterday, she turned up her nose at a hot dog and wouldn't take any medicine. Her last week was spent mostly lying under the porch swing as the flowers in the backyard waved gently in the breeze and the finches alighted on the bird feeder. She would lift her dry nose to feel the air wafting past and wag her tail at the approach of her family.
In spite of our coaxing, last night she wouldn't come in the house. While the kids and I went to the book store to retrieve the latest Harry Potter book, my husband sat on the ground beside her and she burrowed her nose into his lap, perking up her ears at his voice. He thought she had weeks to go. I thought otherwise. I watched how she wouldn't make eye contact with my daugher when we returned home. Grace sat with Rosie in the dark until friends arrived, taking Grace to an all night reading party.
I asked Rosie again if she didn't want to come in the house. She lapped at the water Grace had placed beside her and settled her nose on her tan paws. The clock read 1 a.m.
At 6 a.m. I wrenched myself from my bed. I was meeting friends for a run. Our black and white cat raced ahead of me down the stairs, anticipating his breakfast. I poured the dry food into his bowl and stepped to the sliding glass doors. Rosie lay on her side in the grass, her paws folded in front of her, no longer breathing.
I am sad she died, but I appreciate the way she lived and how she spent those last weeks of her life. I could learn a lot from her.

Community College Students Get No Respect

I'm fairly new to the college teaching arena. I jumped into the English classroom two years ago. I've been slogging away in the class, enjoying the interactions with the students, but I haven't seen too much of other teachers until this quarter.
This quarter, I'm tutoring in the Writing Center, so three of us are generally in there, sharing stories when students don't show up for appointments. I'm also taking an adjunct faculty workshop and that gives me even more time to listen to community college professors. Maybe I'm naive, but it shocks me how little the teachers respect their students.
One math teacher kept going on about how the college's real problem is getting students to even show up. I finally jumped in and said, in the students' defense, that was not a problem I'd seen. But I began to wonder if her students weren't showing because she expected so little of them. Her feelings of contempt must bleed through into her teaching. Why should they attend her classes?
Not many of these students come straight from a suburban high school to community college. Most of them have children. Some of them come from tough neighborhoods and their essays are filled with stories of alcoholic parents, cousins in prison and guns at parties.
They have clawed their way into college, even a community college, and they dream of coming out the other end with an associate's degree in landscaping or nursing. They work full-time jobs and juggle childcare and search out extra help for their essays, hoping to be a good example to the little eyes that watch them from home.
As an English professor, I spend a number of hours marking the rough drafts my students turn in, and that is the latest debate I've had with the other English professors. One claimed, "We don't get paid enough to grade rough drafts."
Well, really, who ever gets paid enough? That's not the reason we do this, though. I mean, we do it for the money, but every teacher who puts in extra hours in her job knows that the end isn't about the money. It's about the student.
I understand the point some teachers make, saying the students will only correct the mistakes that I mark. So I will start weaning them off their reliance on me, by correcting grammar through the first few paragraphs and pointing out the issues they need to work on. But I can't ever feel that "I don't make enough money to..." do whatever the students need to become better writers.
Sure, some of the students are slackers. They leave in the middle of class or only show up when an essay is due. Some of them will drift away from class, forgetting to drop, and end up failing. But for the ones who come everytime, who work hard, I'll pull out my pen and keep marking their essays.

Not So Dark Harry Potter

Last night, I dressed all in black, not because I live in New York (I don't) but because I was Belatrix LeStrange at a Harry Potter party. After helping my kids gather their costumes, I didn't have the energy to do much more than slip on black clothes with a black felt cape over it, knowing my naturally frizzy hair and pale skin could fill in the rest of the role.
I was in it for the long run. The party started at 7 and the movie began at midnight. Usually, my husband does the midnight movies. He has seen all of the Harry Potter movies as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. My job is to come home with my youngest son and we are snoozing by 10 p.m.
Yesterday, my 11-year-old decided he was ready for the midnight movie. There I was, yawning in the theater seat at 11:30. I was a little apprehensive on his behalf, having heard the rumors about the darkness of this movie, following the teen wizard angst Harry Potter showed in the book.
Yet, I stayed awake for the entire movie and thought it was great. Rather than being overly dark, scary and violent, I was inspired by the moments of love, friendship and light-heartedness.
Everyone who has read the book, knows that at the end, Voldemort tries to inhabit Harry's body, but he can't stay because Harry feels love and hope. So during this scene, which could have been fairly gruesome, Harry is flashing back to all of the love he felt throughout his life and throughout the movie. Flashes of Harry, Ron and Hermione sharing a grin after Harry's first kiss. The joy of the students as they created patronus spells and watched the animal shapes gallop around the room. Harry's parents grinning at him from a picture frame. Harry's godfather embracing him in a bear hug.
In the end, I found the movie much more hopeful than hopeless.
Today, my children slept until almost noon, recovering from the late night. But as my 11-year-old climbed in my lap today, proud of his late night, I could still see the faint lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Running is a lot like childbirth. After a too short time, we forget the pain involved and decide it might be fun to try again.
Since I started running with my group again on Saturday mornings, I've been adding up the miles each week. Now I'm going between 25 and 30 miles per week. Today's run was 10 miles and I'm in pain.
No, it's not my feet or my leg muscles. My butt is rubbed raw from my running shorts. I guess I forgot that feeling from a piece of material that rubs back and forth, back and forth for 100 minutes. Sometimes after a run, before I know that I've chafed, I'll hop in the shower. Once the water hits the tender spot, I shriek in pain. Often the chafing is from the running bra, just under my breasts.
Today wasn't a good run, although last Saturday, my nine miles was invigorating. I dragged today and stopped to walk for a minute. One of my friends, Pam, slowed down, waiting for me to catch up. I felt guilty that she was running alone, so I had to start jogging again.
So, now that I'm feeling raw and wounded, when I get up in the mornings and my ankles and knees are stiff as I come down two sets of stairs, I have to wonder again why I'm doing this. Sure, overall the running is healthy. It puts me in a better mood when I jog down to the park and do a few laps, coming home sweaty and salty. The main thing that keeps me going back to the running group at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, is my friends. We run and talk for miles and soon it will be hours. We have conversations about interesting books and rebellious children. We cheer each other on with new jobs and different endeavors. And no children interrupt us. We never have to run put in the laundry or load the dishwasher in the middle of a great idea. For the miles that we pound on the trail, we can talk and analyze and laugh to our heart's content.
So, I guess I'll keep slogging those miles, but on the next long run, I'll remember to cover my tender areas with body glide to prevent chafing.

WEBPAGE!

I know, I'm probably the last person in the United States to get a website, but I'm very excited about it.

I've been working with the guy who created it to perfect it. The home page was a little blah, so I decided to use paintings as the buttons. It made me realize how little I know about art. I was doing image searches with things like "artist who throws paint" which was Jackson Pollock, of course, I just couldn't remember his name. I never did find the name of the artist who uses dots.

Magritte was an easy choice. I love his clearer than life painting. Hopper was another artist I wanted to use. I was leaning toward a painting of his that shows a woman sitting in front of a table with a cup of coffee for "About Me." But she looked so depressed. I didn't want everyone to think I'm that sad. So instead I went with a Seurat. I think it's a Sunday picnic painting that looks a little formal for my life. I did use a Hopper painting for the "Home" button. It shows a woman looking anxiously, maybe anticipating something fabulous, out of a gorgeous bay window. We're buying a new house in the next month or so. Maybe I'll have a window like that as I peer out the window, waiting for the perfect offer to come from a publisher.

Stop by my webpage and look around. Hopefully, all the changes will be made today.

Good Dog

We have lived in this house for six years now and my dog still stands at the wrong side of the door waiting to get out. Like a misbehaving toddler from the 1950s, she stands with her nose in the corner. I have to scooch her back as I open the door at the other side and herd her around to that side, avoiding snowflakes and blasts of cold air that are gaining ground in this bizarre spring.
The dog was a bribe to the kids, brought by Santa the year we moved from Michigan, leaving behind a tight group of friends and godparents. In this friendless city, my husband drove to a farm and picked a chestnut brown puppy with floppy ears. She slept in an oversized dog kennel under the Christmas tree that night with a big red bow around her neck. The next morning she never left my 6-year-old daughter’s arms. My daughter named her Rosie, because she thought that brown fur had a reddish tint to it.
Rosie is eight years old now and mostly my thoughts of her have to do with vacuuming up dog hair and picking up dog doo in the backyard. She barks if anyone has the audacity to walk along the street in front of our house and she remains at the bottom of the pack, even under the paw of the kitten we got last summer.
My daughter Grace was certain she could turn this mutt into a show dog. She set up obstacle courses and ran her through them, along balance beams and through tunnels. Grace tried making her a sled dog, attaching the wagon to her ample sides and having her pull small children through the streets. Grace’s last efforts were teaching the dog to be a jumping dog. Grace would pull molded plastic chairs into the center of the backyard and place a long hockey stick across the seats. With pockets full of treats and a long leash, she would jump the stick, her newly elongated legs flying through the air. Rosie would follow sometimes, her belly barely grazing the stick. Other times she would simply stop, nearly pulling Grace’s arm out of socket as the leash jerked to a stop.
This fall, Rosie started limping. We probably waited a month before we took her to the vet, thinking it might go away. The vet diagnosed an old knee injury that was probably getting arthritis. He gave her a cortisone shot and sent us home. We went back two more times for pain medicine as her limp became worse. In March, the knee was so swollen and she was in obvious pain. This time, the doctor did an x-ray. He called me and my now 15-year-old daughter back to look at the x-ray.
A bone tumor.
Where her femur should have been straight and white, the bones seemed to wander off into their own curling paths.
Grace held it together until we returned to the examining room. She sat down, refusing to look at the dog. Tears streamed down Grace’s face as I petted the dog’s soft fur around her ears and neck.
“She doesn’t know why your sad, Grace,” I said.
My husband and I took her to the Veterinarian Oncologist and our very sensible friends refrained from laughing at us. But after two hours listening to the doctor explain chemotherapy treatments and the cost of amputation, we walked out having decided to make Rosie’s life as comfortable as possible. With all of the treatments, they could predict a 10- to 16-month life expectancy. She had already beaten the odds. A dog with this type of bone tumor normally only lives five months. Rosie had been diagnosed six months previously.
So, now I think about the dog much more. I give her medicine every morning and evening. I let her sleep on the living room rug rather than in her kennel. I feed her treats and trip over her chew bones. I’m careful when I open the door to let her out, trying not to brush her sore leg and leaning way into the spring snow to avoid hitting her with the screen door.
She has been the best bribe I ever gave my children.

Education Pushers

My fifteen-year-old daughter is starting college today.
It’s not that we try to be overachievers. I’ve noticed that we are not alone in pushing our kids to do more, faster.
This morning’s paper talks about how middle school kids can earn high school credit if they extend class time by 10 minutes. That’s it? That’s the difference between a high school class and a middle school class?
One friend’s son is hoping to get into a program where he takes classes at DeVry for the last two years of high school. He won’t go to high school. He’ll only go to DeVry and then he’ll graduate from high school with an associate’s degree.
What’s the rush?
Why do our kids need high school credit in middle school and college credit in high school?
A similar program stretches high school to five years, but again, once they graduate they will have an associate’s degree. What are they going to do with that extra year? Will they simply finish four-year colleges at 21? Does that mean they are rushing out to the job market?
Maybe that gives them an extra year to backpack around Europe and Asia or join the Peace Corps or City Year. Maybe they will take that extra year that we rushed them through and give something back to the community.
But I wonder if they’ll even know how to relax once we finish pushing them to their full potential.
Grace is terrified to step into that college classroom this morning. She is taking biology and French.
We have homeschooled since Grace was in first grade. Now she thinks she might want to go to high school next year as a sophomore. Looking at what she has studied, I figured she needed a language and a science credit, thus the biology and the French class.
And, I’m not worried about how well she’ll do in class. She’s smart. She can keep up academically.
It’s just getting her to take that first step across the threshold and preventing myself from shoving too hard.

Chickens

The rain was blowing almost sideways while I sat in the parking lot at the zoo waiting for Grace and her friend Eleanor. They came out the exit, their look alike heads bent against the rain,although Grace was several inches taller. Eleanor's hair a little redder, but the haircuts the same with a curtain of bangs pushed to the side ending along their cheekbones and the rest stretching in choppy layers to their shoulders. They were dressed alike too in their khaki pants and khaki zoo shirt with the green logo. And they were smiling. Tonight was the Girl Scout sleepover at the Holiday Inn across the street from the University. No parents, just two leaders -- three doors away.
They opened the rear door and blew into the car with some rain.
"Hmmm, bagels," Grace said, spotting the open Panera box. She started spreading cream cheese on a cinnamon crunch while I started driving. I still had to drop the girls off at the scout leader's house, along with the leader's son who was in the way back of my car, and get my sons to swim team. Five kids in the car, 13 bagels eaten or fading fast.
"How was the zoo?" I asked. The girls had complained that their volunteer time at the zoo often resulted in a lot of dish washing. They were constantly washing the bowls that hold the animals' food. One held pinkies, which are some sort of embryo mice or something.
Why doesn't the zoo have a dishwasher -- you know, a machine like GE or Kenmore? Grace wasn't certain, but she said the washing machine sits in the middle of the hallway, so they may be lagging on some essentials.
"Good," Grace said, her mouth full of bagel while she answered my question about her day. "We got to feed the chicken."
"Chicken? Why does the zoo have a chicken?" And why isn't the chicken fed to the tigers, was what I wondered silently.
We were zooming down the highway by this point, having evaded the stop and go traffic that led us back to the highway.
"I don't know, but it's name is Gracie," she said, chewing.
"Yeah, we fed it meal worms," Eleanor said.
"Grace touched the meal worms?" I asked in surprise. I knew that Grace's contribution when it came to worms, snakes or bugs in general would be minimal. When the girls were told to clean the Hissing Cockroach cage, Grace's participation was limited to trying to scare the cockroach away from the opening while Eleanor took care of the cleaning and feeding. I'm not certain what her tactic was for scaring it -- perhaps she hissed back.
"Well, I didn't exactly touch them," she hedges with a shake of her shoulders as if disgusted at the thought of touching the meal worms. "I kind of turned the can sideways and dropped some out."
"Yeah, and we were supposed to do them one at a time," Eleanor protested. "After that, the chicken wouldn't leave Grace. It just stayed with her hoping for another worm bonanza."
They both laughed, showing mouths full of bagel and cream cheese and braces.
"Yeah," she turned in the seat toward her 10-year-old brother, "the chicken kind of reminded me of Tucker."
"Hey," he protested.
"Why," I asked, "did the chicken remind you of Tucker?"
"Well," she said tilting her head to the side as if trying to find the best way to explain it, "I think it was the facial expressions."
I spent the rest of the drive pondering what sort of facial expressions the chicken could possibly have, but afraid to ask for more details. Sometimes, with teenagers, it's best not to know.

Coaches

I realize that sports coaches probably hope to achieve different goals than I do as a mother. I want my kids to learn how to play sports and to enjoy playing sports. Coaches just want to win. Still, I wonder if I am somehow a magnet for incompetent coaches or if every coach out there is incredibly BAD!!
Ironically, we decided to let my son play in the Catholic leagues, thinking ... what that the players wouldn't be as apt to use foul language and insult each other? Thinking that the coaches would be using Christ as a role model?
Some people might have wised up last year when the football coach was talking to a group clustered around him and he suddenly beaned one of the kids in the head with the football. Luckily, it was his own kid.
This year, new coach. An old guy who has been coaching forever. Why did I think that would be better? At one point during the season, he told the boys that they were the worst team he has ever had. Perhaps it's true, but not exactly inspiring. Then he told them they sent him to the hospital with chest pains because they are so bad. When my son came to me concerned, I told him the coach was a grown up and he needed to decide how much stress he could take.
Now we're on to basketball and, so far, his team has lost every game, although one game was close. Another new coach. This one is younger with a 5-year-old as his oldest child. Apparently he doesn't like losing either. He told the boys last game that if they couldn't beat the team they were playing, they might as well cancel the rest of the season. Guess what? They didn't win.
When my son asked the coach about practice Friday night, he said there wasn't much point in practice for this team.
All of this is culminating, in a kid who actually still loves sports. And if losing and lame coaching make for character, my son is brimming with it.

Glamour Life

It's six a.m. and so far I've fed the cats, cleaned up the sink, taken about 50 vitamins, emptied the dehumidifier and cleaned up cat puke. No wonder I never get any writing done.
I'm going to run, then I'm leaving and taking my computer with me. I vow to get some writing done this morning.

Paulita's Ponderings

I didn't really mean to start this blog. Iwas only trying to respond to Allison's blog and I had to jump through all of these hoops.
Anyway, I would love to set a goal of writing 1000 words a day.
When I write, I use single space, then later I go back and change it to double space. So 1000 words would be two full pages. Better than my current output, which for this week stands at 0 (I wish I could make that a capital zero.)