Soccer and Internships

Things have continued to be challenging with the Girl's soccer summer. First, she yelled at me to be quiet ("Shut up" were her exact words!) during the game (when I wasn't even talking to her BTW) and got duly punished by not getting to go to a party that day.

Next, at another game, she shouted at her teammates to "get the fucking ball!" I said "Girl! Watch your language!" The coach asked what she said, and I just said she cursed. He thought about it and said, "It's nothing I wouldn't have said. Just let her play." At home she did get punished, however, because we had an agreement about cursing, that we wouldn't censor her TV or movie watching at this age as long as she doesn't say those words.

I told her I like it that she cares about the game, I don't mind if she has an edge, but she can't go around cursing like a sailor! So she'd made her peace with not seeing R rated movies for awhile, when she discovered that a TV show she liked was rated TV-14. And she's 13. Arghhhhhhhh! She didn't even know there was such a thing.

So the next game, instead of cursing, she took off running after getting scored on and pushed a boy on the other team! I knew as soon as she took off that she was very angry, but it was a long way to run, and I saw her rethinking the whole thing by the time she got there. But she couldn't just stop after running all that way, so all she did was give him a little push. But still. She got a red card and miraculously, the kid on the other team got a yellow card. So I guess the ref knew that the boy had done something to provoke her.

I wasn't going to punish her because I figured she got a red card and had hopefully learned another lesson. When she came over to where I was sitting, she was crying and saying I didn't hear what the boy had been saying to her. I didn't really say anything, but then she demanded to go home. Well, I didn't like that idea at all. It was bad enough she could no longer help her team (and she's the sweeper), but to just leave?

But she was very upset and beseeching me "Mom can't you just try to understand?" when it was halftime. I decided to go ask the coach what he thought.

But when I got to him, he said, "Go ask the ref to change it to a yellow card!"

So I did. He knew me because I was the one who paid him and gave him the cards at the beginning of the game, so I ran over there and asked him if he couldn't please change it to a yellow card because the boys were saying bad things to her and upset her, but she's very sorry and will never do it again. And he said OK.

I didn't know if he meant OK, go away, or OK I'll change it. But he did say OK. Like I said, this league is somewhat casual.

But the coach went to the other side and I couldn't get the girl to go onto the field or to see the coach! She insisted she was out no matter what I said. So I stalked over to the other side and asked the coach if she shouldn't be in since the ref said ok. He said, "The ref said OK?" and I said yes. So he shouted "Girl!" but she didn't come over. He told me to go get her.

So I stalked back and I was SO, so mad at her. If she didn't get her butt into that game I was planning all sorts of punishment and possible torture. But I went and told her that the coach wanted to see her. She said she was too embarrassed to go back, but I told her it was a better way to get out her energy than crying.

So she went over and after some discussion with the ref and a kid on the other team and mutual apologizing, she got back into the game. She played well and there were no other incidents or issues.

The coach didn't get angry with her, because frankly he wishes some of the other girls cared as much as she does. But her brother advised her to just take her anger out by playing harder or better. Her father told her that letting the other team get to her head is letting them take her out of the game - she's taking HERSELF out of the game. I told her that she needs to learn to control her temper or I'm going to send her to a counselor, which I totally mean, because I'm hyper sensitive right now to violence and cursing and people not being able to control their tempers. (ie my sister)

And any time we get everything together and take her to a game, we're staying for the WHOLE game (unless the police are called.)

Thankfully things didn't escalate this last weekend, but she did manage to lose the bag with her cleats and shin guards. It was around 7am and we were a little cranky anyway. K kept asking her where they were and she got frustrated and yelled at him to let her think. So K and I were desperately searching her room, our cars, etc,. and every time we went into the living room she was standing there, thinking.

She never did find them, so we moved on to Plan B - my old cleats from my brief coaching career. A week later we still have no idea where they are.

She claims I probably moved them and don't remember because I'm getting older and that's the kind of thing I do now. Unfortunately, this could be true.

Meanwhile, there's the Boy

During his spring break we put together his resume and he applied for a lot of internships at once. One company in Santa Monica was interested in him, but he wasn't ready to start yet as he had to finish his semester at school. When he finished his term, he emailed her again but this time got no response.

When he got home he started applying for jobs like crazy, but seemed to give up on internships. I looked on Craigslist and found some and emailed them to him, but he didn't follow up on them. It made me sad, because it reminded me of basketball - how he gave up at the first sign of an obstacle.

I hate to see him give up when things get difficult, but I also remember how hard these things were for me at his age. So I offered to help him, because it's very easy for me - being in marketing and sales for all these years. So this time when I searched Craigslist, when I saw something interesting I'd just send an email and his resume from his email account.

I only did this a few times, and miracle of miracles, he got an internship in nearby Burbank! SO much closer than Santa Monica! So he's all happy and thanking me, but honestly it was his resume that got it for him. And being available immediately seems to be somewhat important in getting internships.

I'm hoping once he gets some confidence he'll be less easily discouraged. I tried to show him how putting it out there and just trying can actually get you what you want, so hopefully he will learn to keep trying.

Next, K and I are in a dilemma regarding getting another car. I don't want to keep driving the Boy around and would like to get another car that's good on gas, but I've been meeting a lot of resistance from K. Finally he said that he should be the one to get a new car, and he wanted an El Camino. So I found him one in our neighborhood, and he thought about it, and it just doesn't make any sense gas-wise. So hopefully we've decided to get another small car - now I just need to make it happen.

I have to say that I've been loving life lately - soccer in the daytime and Laker games at night. It's been a lot of fun.

Jury Duty 2010

Today I was excused from Jury Duty. Yay! I was willing to try, but the Prosecutor was right to cut me loose, as I had a low probability of finding for his seemingly preferred punishment.

It was interesting because it was in Lance Ito's courtroom, and he's a familiar face. It was kind of fun getting asked questions by him. I like seeing people from all over and being downtown.

It was bad because it was a murder case, a 5-week trial, and we'd be hearing bad things and seeing bad pictures the whole time. The defendant even looked pretty scary, and kept looking over at us and writing something in his tablet.


I like my drive to jury duty, and I always go the same way. I take the 2 Freeway south to where it runs out, by my old house in Silverlake. It turns into Glendale Ave, which I take south and to Echo Park and the huge Foursquare church built by Aimee Simple McPhereson. I think that was her name. I find her interesting.

I drive by Echo Park and see the big water fountain and the big birds in the water (swans? ducks?) I go left at Temple, and it takes me right downtown. I turn right at Grand and go right past the Music Center and the Disney Somethinghouse, where jurer parking is currently located.

If you walk downhill from there, there is a walkway between the court buildings, where you can buy a Starbucks before court. These don't seem to be a problem at Security, which you have to pass downstairs. Then there are only 4 elevators that go upstairs, of which only 2 are usually working. Today there were 3, but there were SO many people, and I was SO hot. And I was wearing as sleeveless a shirt as you can get!

Anyway, I will miss my pals, Juror #189 and 198, but maybe we will meet again some day.

Later, I went home and voted.



How's that for doing my Civic duty?

Interesting

Lately my life has been a little too interesting. For instance, I went out for a walk yesterday with K and my dog. Our home is in a hilly area, and we've been trying to get into shape hiking up the hills.

We were almost home when a little girl who was riding her bike asked if she could pet the dog. I was about to answer her when K yelled out, "Don't hit your sister!" and I looked up to see the little girl's older sister barreling down the hill toward us!

She didn't seem to know how to use her brakes, as that never seemed to be an option. It all happened so quickly. She could have turned, but she was going too fast. She could have hit her sister, me, or the car. But she aimed for the space in back of the car, and went flying off the retaining wall into our neighbor's yard!

I don't know HOW she didn't get hurt, but she landed on a bouncy horse which could also have been bad, but it seemed to have broken her fall. K picked her up out of the rubble of her bike and the horse and only her wrist seemed to be hurt. It's strange that our neighbor even has one of those, as they don't have any children! Not young ones, anyway.

When we got home we could laugh about how bad it could have been, but just because she was OK. It was very nearly tragic. I asked K, "But the horse was OK, right?" and he said, "Uh,... no."

On another front, I'm still in play for jury duty. The few times I've gone, they've been full of very hard questions (What's the hardest decision you ever had to make?) that have been heavy on my mind. Of course I'm not thrilled about having to "judge" someone else, but then it's the system we have. I wasn't trying to get out of it, but ultimately I don't really know if I'm capable of making the decision they're asking me to.

Or if I really want to sit and listen to all the bad things that have happened to get to this point.

So that's been heavy, but I do love going downtown. I take the little Dash downtown bus for a quarter, and I can go all sorts of interesting places. Next time I'll try to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), as I hear they'll let in jurors for free.

I also like to go to Union Station as it's so retro and cool. Olvera street is right nearby, too.

Off-season tax work so far has been fraught with headaches, but then I guess most people that come in at odd times usually have some sort of problem with the IRS. I like helping people and everything, maybe the hours were just too long. But right now I'm on a break because of jury duty, and might try to stay off the tax schedule for awhile.

And make more money, hopefully, doing other things.

Not Today

Today I was feeling overwhelmed, looking around my house I see so many messes that need to be cleaned up. But today my horoscope said not to worry about it. Really!

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Resist the urge to run around tidying everything up today. The messier things are, the more possibilities reside within them. If you just shove everything in a box, you might cut yourself off from some extremely important opportunities. Give yourself plenty of room to grow and expand today. Try a little stretching or yoga to keep your body flexible -- and work the same kind of magic on your mind!
*******

So that's it folks! Not today....

This & that

Phone trouble, Vegas

We went to Vegas for a few days to celebrate all of our birthdays and K's end of the Basketball season. For a few months we don't see much of him, so it was nice to have some down time.

Honestly, some of the things we do there we could do at home, but I feel more relaxed getting away. At home if I read I'm often thinking of other things I should be doing instead.

We stayed at the Flamingo again, in one of their redone "Go" rooms. It was really nice - retro white plastic furniture and a frosted glass bathroom. The bathroom had a TV with its own remote, and K would say "I'm going to the bathroom to watch the game!" It was fun. There was even a Bose speaker in the ceiling of the bathroom.

We've been having all kinds of family telephone and other technical difficulties. K dropped his phone in the street one night, and it's never been the same. On the trip, however, it decided not to hang up anymore, so he spent 30 minutes trying to end a call! We have lots of minutes, but not unlimited.

K was so frustrated and angry that he cracked his phone in half. When that happened, the battery popped off the back, and I felt like saying, "Duh! We could have just taken the battery out!" But it was quite a problem for a little while. Later my battery died while we were trying to find each other, and it nearly led to a complete meltdown.

Why, oh why are we having so many technical difficulties?
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Getting some credit
The Boy was home for K's birthday, and had reached a crisis point in his college career. The school raised the GPA requirement for the Film School, probably just because they have SO many applicants, but the Boy's GPA is just under 3.0.

So funny enough, he's thinking of majoring in something where he can be a sports coach, which is what I suggested he do in the first place. But instead of trying to get onto the boy's basketball team, he took a basketball class where his skills were noticed and he was invited to practice against the girl's team. So he still will end up with a Coach's recommendation.

He's going to try to bring up his grades and see if he can get into the Film school later, but he's now working on a Plan B too.

Anyway, we decided that instead of getting a summer job, he should try to get an internship to get experience and contacts. Which is how people really seem to get jobs in Film, anyway. So he asked me to help him with a Resume, which is one thing I happen to be really good at. So it was easy for me to help him, and within an hour we'd banged out a pretty good sounding resume.

He sent it out on some web site and got 2 replies! But he still has to finish his semester, so he can't intern quite yet.

So it made me happy that I could help him and hopefully I got some credit with him, which is a good thing. Plus I cooked bacon for breakfast, and my kids are always appreciative of that.
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Soccer in springtime

The Girl's soccer team is playing in a Pasadena league that's really flexible - like sometimes we play boys teams or mixed teams or sometimes the kids seem a bit older than our kids. So I think of this league as not being that important, but good practice for them.

Eighty percent of the time the Girl is one of the best girls on the team, fastest, fiercest, great kicks, and I am so proud to be her mother. The other 20% of the time, if she gets hurt or even too, too tired, she gets mad and wants out.

And the coach resists taking her out, as she is so important to the team's defense. So lately she has taken to just stopping playing. People just run by her and she hunches over and lets them. In the last game she sat down! In the middle of the field, in the middle of the last quarter, because she'd been stung by a bee in the first quarter.

That was so embarrassing. I feel her pain; she says since there's no subbing except at certain times, she has to go down to come out. OK then, take a knee, but sitting down? I have to be careful how I respond to her, mostly I can't say anything. If I even ask how she is, she tends to snap at me because she knows everyone wants her to stay in the game. So I try to be supportive and yet not say much of anything.

K wants me to have a talk with her and tell her she has to stay in the game for the sake of her team, but I don't want to have that fight with her. I try to pick my battles, and I think telling her that will just make her more negative, and she'll accuse us of not caring about her. And of course, I do care about her and don't want her to be hurt.

He can tell her that if he wants to, and see how far that gets him.

Bad Mood

The other day I was in a bad mood. First, I woke up at 4am because of a 4.4 earthquake, and then had trouble getting back to sleep. I kept waiting for an aftershock or a bigger quake.

When I finally got back to sleep my dreams were tiring. Often I dream I'm on vacation, which is nice. But sometimes I dream that I'm packing, and those dreams can make me wake up feeling drained. I kept dreaming about things I'd forgotten to pack, so I kept going back for things and sometimes not finding them.

When I was on my way and it was too late to turn back, I realized (in my dream) that I'd forgotten my migraine medication, and was duly worried about that. That was my first clue that I was getting a headache (in real life).

So I awoke headachy and tired, but I took a pill and tried to rally. When it got to be around lunchtime, K started telling me that Dan was coming over, as though I might want to be gone when he got here.

About the whole home-sale situation, K just told Dan not to talk to me about it, and that pretty much told him how I felt about that. Since then I've seen them at one of K's games, but I was perfectly nice. His wife looked scared that I was mad at them, but I was nice as always.

As I said, we almost lost him last year. So because of that, I can't very well get too angry with him. If he says we shouldn't work together, I'll just trust that he might have a good reason (his wife).

But I did have to go to the store to get some food for lunch, and when I finally went out, Dan was sitting in his car talking on his cell phone.

So I went ahead and got in the car and suddenly he said out his window, "Is that how it is now? I come over and you leave?"

I told him I needed to get some food for lunch, and before I knew it he was out of his car and sticking his head through my van window! So I hugged him and asked, "What's this all about?"

And he said, "I just need a hug."

I asked K about it later and Dan didn't tell him anything that was bothering him or that he needed a hug. And K doesn't usually like me even talking to men friends, let alone hugging them. But he didn't say anything about it.

I thought it was weird, but then I was in a bad mood.

Odds and ends

Today the maids broke our shower holder. We still have the spray part, but you can't really put it back in it's holder because it's broken.

It used to be a joke with us that nearly every time they came they broke something. There are two of them and they work together for about 2 hours every two weeks. They broke my coffee maker, unraveled a rug, got the sliding glass door off its track, the list goes on.

I like them because they clean to my Mother's standards - really scrub things down. But I think all this breakage just goes to show that you CAN be too clean!

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The Girl came home from school on Friday outraged because there's a new girl at the school, and all the guys are ga-ga over her. They even have a "dibbs list" or depth chart among the guys as to who can ask her out first, and she was impressed that the guys were really going to honor it.

She's outraged, though, because it's not that the new girl is prettier than all the girls at the school, its just that she's NEW.

I thought that was funny.

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I had my 50th birthday and it was fun. I had been thinking of doing something big for it (and I still might go to Greece or something), but I accidentally offended my sister E, so I might not. I had invited my Mom to do something with me and the Girl (she turns 13 in March), but she only called back to see if I asked her because I wanted her to pay. So I'm officially giving up on her, as far as doing "mother/daughter" things together. She just doesn't seem to understand why anyone would do that.

Anyway, we made reservations for one night at the Bonaventure downtown, because it promised us a view and room service, which seems terribly extravagant to me. We got there early and walked around downtown. I love the library and Angels Flight, the rest of it was pretty new to me. They are converting lots of the old buildings into lofts, which look pretty cool. We stopped at Wolfgang Puck's to eat, which was good. K got bacon-wrapped meatloaf, and it came on a big bed of mashed potatoes, with a ketchup sauce decorating the plate. He loved it. I had pasta Putanesca because it has olives, and no one but me in my family likes olives, so I can't make it at home.

We had a great view of lights when we got back. We didn't know about the revolving restaurant at the top, or we would have gone up there. The next morning there was some mixup where the kitchen didn't seem to know anything about our coupons for room service. But when K explained we were there for my birthday, everyone got so nice! They even rolled it in on a tray and kept wishing me Happy Birthday. It was fun.

The Boy came home the following weekend. I was pretty impressed that he remembered my birthday at all, so I was happy when he came home. He and the Girl made me breakfast on Saturday morning, and we went out to dinner that night.

Before he came home, the Girl was doodling or something, but I noticed she had made a post-it note say "TV" really big. Then when the boy came home he brought an "extra" TV that he wants to keep here for his apartment next year. The Girl went and stuck the post-it note onto the TV.

I wondered out loud, "Wow, you wrote a note that said TV and a TV showed up!" She got excited and said, "I should say "boyfriend" or "laptop"!" So right now there's a post-it note on the front door that says "$1,000".

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The Girl's basketball team played about 4 more close games, and only lost one. Wow! Tonight they won the championship. Yay!

K's team won their Division, which had never been done before by that school. They were really looking forward to their first game at State, where they'd play Sierra Canyon, the top team in the League that K's team beat during the regular season. They were the only team to beat them all season, so a rematch would have been fun.

Unfortunately, they found that one of the boys had too many credits or something, which disqualified them. It's hard to keep track of the kids credits because they change and quit schools so much, so it's really a shame.

Anyway, it was an exciting season.

Now back to soccer.