Fall

The rest of our Fall has been very busy. After our trip to Indiana, I took Part 1 of a 3-part tax test that is pretty difficult. The whole time I was taking the test I was also praying to God to help me and cursing my bad luck that got me such difficult questions. But, I passed! I do tend to be good at taking tests, but still it was an accomplishment. I got to enjoy it for about 2 days before I had to start working on Part 2.

I'm supposed to be studying for that now, which explains why I am writing a blog post instead. Argh! I hate it!

Then we took a long weekend to visit some friends in Florida. Actually, one of my best friends has a senior attending Stetson Univ, and we went to see her play Vollyball before she finished school. We also have friends who have a condo in St. Augustine, and their son just entered school at Flagler. They were still in town, so we got to visit with them and eat some GREAT food, as well as see two games in DeLand. They weren't having a very good season :-(

I liked that the Charlotte airport had rocking chairs in it. I liked the outside of the Women's room in the Jacksonville airport. I especially enjoyed the BBQ we ate at the Charlotte airport and O'Steens (in St. Augustine), a place that takes no reservations or credit/debit cards. How good can shrimp be? Go there to find out! We really like it in St. Augustine, and it's really affordable housing-wise. I'd love to be able to buy a vacation home there.

That was Halloween weekend, so we left the Girl home to play in her soccer game and go out for Halloween with her friends.

I know I did some brave talking at the end of last season, about how if The Girl's soccer team lost a few girls it would be no big deal. Except that one of our best players left, and some of the others didn't leave until right before the season started. We played in a fun league last summer, where we played boys teams and learned some new tricks. But our official league started up, and we were short 1 player!

Lots of us had tried recruiting girls all summer, but ran into bad luck of one sort or another. We ended up getting our old goalie back, who we once considered too short, but we were now glad to see her. The coach actually recruited one girl at a taco stand, but her skills were behind the rest of the girls, and they were too hard on her. Finally we got a girl who only spoke spanish, but she showed up to almost every game, and that was great.

So even tho I predicted that this season would be a lot easier, it was brutal. We had barely enough girls and NO substitutes. If one girl didn't show up or got hurt, we played short. One ref went out of her way to tell me after the first game how well-conditioned our girls must be, to play a whole game with no subs.

I may have mentioned before that there are 8 teams in our division, and the top 2 go up to the next level (where we were last year), and the bottom two go down to the next lower level. The Girl said more than once that they did NOT want to go down a level, and if the team did, they would probably break up.

They tied the first game and then it was loss after loss. It was painful to watch and live through, and some of the parents took it the worst. One girl was sobbing after games because her parents were being so hard on her. What's the point in that? If I tried telling the Girl ANYTHING about how to play, I'm sure she would quit in a heartbeat.

When they got too negative, I reminded them that every great sports story starts out with a difficulty. I told the Girl, "Everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reason is for your team to be struggling right now, but maybe it will make you stronger." And I think it did!

Then they beat a team in a game when they were short a player. Then they lost a game, then tied another one, then won again! Slowly, game by game, they clawed their way into the middle of the pack. Finally, in the last game of the season, they won 4-1. It was glorious, being able to score so many goals! It was truly the highlight of the season.

I don't know if they were happier about knowing they weren't going down a bracket, or finding out that their enemy Palmdale Thunder WOULD. Even the team we beat in that last game was happy about that.

Right before Thanksgiving we had some work done on the house. It turned out to be Asbestos in our popcorn ceiling downstairs, so first we had that removed. (Well, first we moved everything out of the basement! What a job!) Then we had the asbestos removed and primed the wall of my bedroom. Next we had a guy come in to redo the ceiling and also put in the new floor. He brought some relatives with him, and it was strange. At one moment they would be yelling at each other in Spanish (such language!), and 2 minutes later they'd be singing (in Spanish.) One guy in particular seemed to be behind most of the singing.

After they left, the weekend before Thanksgiving, the Girl and I started painting. She is really a blessing to me because she's so helpful and energetic. I couldn't have gotten it finished without her. We also roped K into helping paint every now and then. It still needs molding, but the walls and flooring now look great!

Just in time for Thanksgiving!