Geoff's football team won their first game yesterday, and by their behavior at the end you would have thought they won the Super Bowl.
There are a few boys on our team who are just one man wrecking machines. A danger running and a danger blocking. They're amazing. Our neighbor Will, who Geoff rides to practice with every day, sacked the other team's quarterback in probably the most amazing and cool play I've seen yet this year.
It is funny how yesterday something clicked. No one fumbled, no one made any bad throws into quadruple coverage... They beat an undefeated team, who looked like they were having just an incredibly hard time with everything yesterday. It was amazing to watch.
They celebrated and ran out on the field and jumped on each other, screaming... yelling... cheering... helmets in hand. The coaches corralled them and got them in line to shake with the other team, which they did politely.
After they walked back to our side the boys unleashed. They threw water and ice at each other, dumped water on the coaches' heads and backs, shook up their Gatorade and dumped it on one another and their coaches, cheering, screaming and yelling... fists pumping in the air, smiles everywhere. It honestly looked like they won the Super Bowl down there.
All the parents were cheering, everyone was elated... it was a riot. My face hurt from smiling. The coaches could have gotten pissed but you could see them laughing too... as their own sons were pretty much the ones who started dousing them in the first place. I'm sure they got a talking to after the game in the post-game huddle as they were eating their oranges.
I'm also sure the coaches didn't rip them too hard.
They did great. They played so well. And I'm so happy that all the hard work paid off.
Geoff got to be a "captain" yesterday. They send five kids out to the coin toss and it rotates through the roster. So he was feeling really big and happy yesterday. And that felt nice, I'm sure.
So whew... finally. A win. So they're 1-3-1 for the season... and that's better than a zero starting things off.
As for our little victories, it is three mice down here in the old house.
Two really huge ones and a small one this morning up in the attic. Doug forgot to set the traps on Friday night so I bet we could have had four. I think all winter long this will continue.
My buddy Aaron and I were talking on the phone the other day about the mice, and he was telling me that he has friends who have three guinea pigs who "free range" in their house. They trained them to use a litterbox, and the pigs do their things there... and I thought it was funny that here we are killing rodents while in another house the rodents run free.
This gave us a really huge laugh for some reason.
I will keep you posted on the body count. I feel so gangsta.
Jess went to a 16th birthday party last night and slept at a friend's house. All her friends start switching over to the magic of 16 this year. There is one girl who is 2 months younger than Jess, and she brings up the tail end of the age change. Last night she was mopey because "not only am I the shortest, I'm also the last one who will turn 16, in AUGUST of NEXT YEAR! Almost a whole year from now!"
She was actually pissed about it. "I just turned 15 and now everyone turns 16!"
What can you do? I tried to talk to her, but you know at this age there's no counting for nothing when trying to talk sense into a pissed off semi-goth 15 year old girl. So I left it and walked away laughing. I have to go get Jess at some point today.
I was hoping to hear from my old roommate from college, who came out here for homecoming this weekend.
Last night they called at 6pm and said they were going to dinner with a bunch of people, and wanted to know if we wanted to join. Kind of short notice, I wish they'd let me know earlier in the day. I was already in pyjamas, taking Jess to the party, and Doug had taken Geoff out for ice cream to celebrate his great captain/nose tackle/tackle football victory day.
They said they'd call today, but so far no sign of them.
We never go to homecoming. It is always such a mess, I am not interested in seeing the soccer game (we didn't have football, and still don't), and it just isn't appealing to me to go stand around and wait to get noticed by an old friend, or to scan the crowd without ceasing, looking for that one person you long to see and never finding him or her.
To be completely honest, I have no real desire to go back to my college. I love the education I received, loved the experience, but really ... meh. Have no burning ken to be back there. I feel really detached from the whole Evangelical Church kind of scene.
I love the Lord, I just don't really groove with the whole holier than the rest of the planet American Christianity thing.
When I was a student there, I was often the girl in the sweatpants, rock and roll t-shirt she'd slept in the night before, dirty hair pulled up in a pony tail and stuffed under a baseball hat. I'd have my 20 ounce cup of coffee, and be sitting in the back row of the philosophy of education class, which I took as an elective because I liked the prof. All the other people in the class were education majors, primarily really nice, pretty Christian Girls. They were the types who woke up at 5am, did their daily devotionals, their runs on the treadmill, and their hair... and were at the 8am class ten minutes early looking like they were ready to go teach... well groomed, well dressed, well coifed.
I was Ally Sheedy to their Molly Ringwald (Breakfast Club reference for those who don't get it). And I was okay with that. I got the A in the class by doing a project on faith and fatherhood as explained by comedian Bill Cosby, where they pulled some great Christian Philosopher up and got a B.
And I got stared down the nose at. I got "But Bill Cosby isn't a Christian Philosopher! She can't get an A for that?!" Yes I can, because I integrated faith in learning with Pop Culture. You didn't think outside the box, and you pulled the expected. Sorry.
I'm smarter than you. Get over it.
Doug felt the same way when he started a graduate program at Emory University after we got married. He would show up for class ready to argue and discuss and fight and dissect the literature or scripture... and the other people in the class were afraid of him and his passion. They were looking for the three scriptural references that go together with one pop culture reference so they could write a good sermon. Doug wanted to yell and scream about how Emerson is not a Christian Author but is a Pantheist! Discuss! He got that look too. And he ended up quitting the program because the quality of learner wasn't where he was.
I was most comfortable with my friends in the English department, and the theatre kids (even though I never got up on the stage because I was scared out of my cotton picking mind). I keep in touch with a lot of them. I can name you all off here... all weekend long I played Scrabble on line with two of you... far far away from campus.
Homecoming happens in my heart pretty much all the time. Last night I had a lot of good laughs, sent a lot of fake drinks to people on facebook, and just generally am happy and comfortable with the individuals I took away from college who I am in touch with today.
I do with that I'd heard from L and C, perhaps later tonight... who knows. But no matter. I love them. They love me. And even if we don't see each other too much... it is what it is.
Now, if you'll excuse me there is a young man in Bahrain or somewhere like that who I am trying to beat at Scrabble. I'm gonna getcha Russ! Watchout!
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