New School Year

School has started anew this Fall, and every year is different. At the Girl's middle school, she says there are 200 more students this year! I guess the incoming 7th grade class is much bigger than last year's!

I was wondering what was going on the first week of school. I took the familiar route to drop the Girl off, and couldn't believe the traffic. After 3 years of having kids at this school (2 for the Boy and 1 for the Girl), I know the best place to drop them off, how to avoid traffic jams, etc.

But suddenly the street was full of all these parents that have no idea! They park along both sides of the side streets, so that only one car can fit in to drive, so that you have to take turns with people going the opposite direction. Some people are apparently blind or something, as they couldn't seem to figure out that they needed to take turns, and just went ahead and barged into the lane anyway, going the opposite direction!

So far, by getting too far to the right trying to avoid other drivers, I have knocked back a mirror on the van of a woman I know ("So sorry! I'm sorry!") and knocked over a trash can!

How embarrassing. Now I go a little later to avoid the crunch.

The girl is happier this year, since she has more friends and is no longer the younger class at school. Last summer her best friends never wanted to do anything - not even come swim once a week. But when she went to camp, the Girl made friends with a popular girl, and after that got invited to do a lot of things and made more friends. When school started again, her old friends got jealous. But really, what was she supposed to do?

I got a little worried about the new friend, however. The first day of school the Girl said she was sharing a locker with this new friend, as she doesn't really like where her own locker is (bottom row, downstairs). Later that night, the friend texted her that her parents didn't want her to share a locker.

So I was hoping that this new friend wouldn't turn out to be a problem, but so far it seems OK. You know how girls can be.

She is 13 now and I feel her pushing me away. She's taken to calling me "Monkey" - a term less endearing than I'd like. The other day I got excited when she sat next to me, in front, when I took her to soccer practice. It turned out, tho, that she only wanted to changed the radio station at will.

Last weekend her soccer team won a game on Sat., but the Girl was mad at one of her teammates and basically wanted her kicked off the team. The next day they lost a game, but the Girl scored on a great penalty kick and was very happy. She tries to get cranky with us trying to help her (bringing food and offering it to her), but I try to emphasize that we are only trying to support her.

Meanwhile, the Boy has visited us twice already this semester! Wow. He says he's going to try to visit more, as he now realizes how little he came home last year. Really? What about the year before that?

I think that because he's in an apartment now, he's more on his own than ever before. He called me one day, saying, "Mom, I hate cooking SO much!"

One day he called from Costco, asking what he should buy. I made some suggestions, and he said he'd already picked out rice, salsa, and bologna. OK, whatever. He asked what he could do with bologna, and I said, well, you can try frying it.

Later that week he texted me that he HATES fried bologna! He said he cooked it for dinner and couldn't even eat it! He asked what else he could do with it, and I suggested eating it with a lot of mayo, or trading it to his roommates for an egg or something.

He bought about 2 lbs of it, and wanted to bring it home, but I said don't bother. It's not even good for you. Technically, it's bad for you.

But I told K that now that the Girl is pulling away from us, the Boy seems to be coming back our way.

That would be nice.

Colorado Trip

Our trip to Colorado was really nice, I may have mentioned. I had an unexpectedly great time visiting my family. The Boy showed up after I'd already been there 2 days, with his GFF. He called the day before he left to ask us to make him a Dr. appt as his back was really bothering him.

So the next day we went in (luckily they have Kaiser there too) and they gave him stronger drugs and told him to rest it. Then we went to visit my friend in Colorado Springs and show them Garden of the Gods. Luckily my friend went with us, as she knew a lot more about the park than we did!

I was a little annoyed that the GFF slept the whole way there and back, but I guess that's to be expected in teenagers. The next day the kids went to Waterworld, and my Mom had a BBQ afterward. It was good to see everyone.

When we went to my in-laws, I became an unexpected hero when I was able to "fix" their computer so that they could view their email again. Whatever I did was fairly simple and I can't say how long it will last, as mainly it seems that their computer is very old and slow.

But K's sister kept saying that their father just had too many old email in his google account, and that was jamming him up. I said that no, those are actually on google's computers. This opinion was not met with favor.

When we got to their house, the Boy was now suffering because he picked up an ear infection at Waterworld, and had to be taken to ER. The cost of ER was actually the same as it would have been at Kaiser, but the medicine cost almost $200! He said, "Only a few days ago I was thinking, if only my back didn't hurt! Then I'd be happy..." But no, now an earache.

We always go for a hike when we visit them at their home in the mountains, and this time we went up high so that the Girl could see some snow. So the hike wasn't too far, but it was a steep slope and up high, where there's hardly any oxygen left.

But I guess all our "walking" around the neighborhood has finally paid off, and I was for the first time able to keep pace with everyone else. Well, at least I wasn't the slowest this time. K's mom complemented me on being in shape, but I think I picked up a little sadness from her about being a little slower herself.

Getting old is hard on all of us. I was telling my sister how I expected to get wrinkles, but I don't like the ones showing up on my forehead. I told her I was going to have to cut my bangs again, and she laughed and said it's the poor woman's botox!

One of the most fun moments of the trip was when we were in the airport waiting for our flight, and I pulled out a pack of cards I always keep there, but seldom play with. We played a few games of crazy 8's and then a game called BS, and it was really a lot of fun.

We got home late and ran into some unexpected delays (our highway exit was closed, we had to wait on the runway, etc.) so it felt good to finally get home.

Sunday dinners

My sister closest in age to me, M, recently finished a LONG educational experience and finally earned her long-awaited Nursing degree. Yay!

Then, she found there's currently no shortage of nurses, and she was discouraged at not finding a job right away. Then right when we visited, she got a job in a psychiatric hospital. Yay again!

So she was training much of the time we were there, although we did get to see her a few times. As part of her training, she spend two days learning defensive moves and how to "take somebody down" if she had to.

She told a co-worker, "Well, if nothing else, it might come in handy at Sunday dinners with my family."

And the guy laughed. He just doesn't know....

Cruise dream

I often have dreams about being on vacation, often around water. Last night I dreamed I was on a cruise ship. I went outside to look at the water, and saw that the waves were really high. In fact I looked up, and the wave seemed to be as high as the sky, ready to crash down on the ship. So I ran back indoors and everything was fine.

If water often represents emotions, this dream would seem to say that I'm overwhelmed and scared of strong feelings. My own or those outside of me? Probably both. I'm scared of feelings so strong that they might destroy me.

Back inside the ship, I had trouble finding K. When I found him, he was busy with friends and promised to meet up with me later.

I went into a room with some other people, and there was a guy sitting next to me. I was visiting with these people, and the guy put his hand on my leg. For some reason I left it there, and didn't tell him to move it away.

Later I was back to looking for K, and ultimately ended the dream feeling frustrated and disappointed that he wasn't around for me.

In real life, this is possibly because he stayed in CO a week longer than I did, and therefore is literally not around. Or it might reflect my frustration that when he gets around his friends, sometimes the needs of his family are put on the back burner, and I feel hurt that I'm not getting the attention and affection that I normally get at home.

Anyway, I don't often remember my dreams anymore, so I thought I would write this one down.

The Picture Police

This is a tale of two families. One, K's, is confrontation-free. Not that things don't happen that people don't understand, but we are not to ask about them.

Then there is my family, who is pretty much the opposite. From one family we have a history of yelling, and in the other we have the Mystery of the Jade Necklace. For some reason, K and I moved far away from both families and started our own in sunny CA. Possibly because of this distance, we have had pretty good relationships with both families.

All my life I have loved to take pictures. My first was a tiny camera I bought from the back of a comic book when I was around 9. I had a vivitar for a long time, and took a Photography class in college. I loved developing the black and white images, watching them appear on the white paper.

When I grew up and had kids, the picture-taking only increased. Plus now with digital images, why not take 300 instead of 24?

So anyway, you get the picture. I have always tried to be generous with sending and sharing my photography, although at one time I sensed that K's sister E was somehow upset with me about pictures, and was no longer sending us any. It's so easy to offend women, and most of the time they never even tell you what you did wrong. And again, this was the non-confrontation family.

Back in my own family, my own sister E is living with my parents. She has OCD, and lately this has manifested itself in her claiming that people have stolen things from her, as if somehow we've stolen her childhood. BTW she is 12 years younger than me.

So I ask you, what could I possibly have of hers? Pictures. Pictures she says I have taken out of albums and absconded to California with. Most painfully, she even has my parents now questioning where I got the pictures of themselves that I enlarged as gifts for them! So even my most thoughtful gifts are coming back to bite me in the ass.

How do I know after all these years where I got the picture? One thing I know is that I never rifled through someone else's pictures with the idea of stealing them! Unless of course I am evil unknown to myself, like the man in Angel Heart, or delussionaly crazy like the girl in The Double Bind (don't read it!). In that case I'm probably not responsible for my actions anyway.

Then I gave my Mother an electronic picture frame for her Birthday (replacing the one stolen at Christmas) and included a flash drive with some recent pictures from my computer. Guess what? There were none of my sister AND IT WAS NOTICED!! Nevermind that another sister was also left out too, that was NOT noticed. Please people. I only had time to go through my most recent pictures. They're just lucky there weren't all of the cruise last year!

I think my Mother is brainwashed into believing these things herself, and every now and then will say something like "Well there was this one album...." So being worn down from all my sister's obsessing, she asked me a week before my visit to gather and copy all the pictures I have of my sisters.

So I did this, wishing to be done with the subject, and gave a copy of the disc to ALL of my 3 sisters.

In spite of all this, my sister managed suck it up and be nice while my family and I visited there, and we had a very nice trip and visit with her. All my practicing saying, "I don't want to fight with you." was not needed! I was thinking that the situation had improved.

Then the Girl went through my pictures from the trip and pasted some of herself on FaceBook. Then my sister asked why there were none of that side of the family. The Girl said she didn't have any, and my sister said she'd send her some.

Now my Mother tells me that she's offended that the Girl posted more pictures of K's family than mine, and that it isn't the first time that she and Dad have noticed it! She wonders if the Girl doesn't have some sort of identity crisis and wants only to acknowledge the whiter side of the family.

I wish I could say I was completely surprised, but my family often tends to see race as an answer to lots of things. I explained that the Girl only posted pictures that SHE WAS IN, but that didn't pacify my mother at all. She's entitled to her feelings, and she feels offended!

Later, my sister called to say that she finally looked at the disk I'd given her, and it was "bittersweet" because she sees pictures that she KNOWS are hers. She says she knows it was from her disposable camera, and I just told her I didn't see how that could even be true. I took a picture from her disposable camera?

Finally, all my practicing came in handy and I said that no one can make me feel guilty for something I didn't do. She says that is sad, as that means I am delusional.

Am I? Someday she's going to finally convince me that I am going crazy!

It's a short trip, my friends.

Club Soccer

Part I

The Club Manager of the local Gold team sent a formal invitation to The Girl to practice with the team, and come play a scrimmage with them on Saturday. So I sat down with her and told her about the offer, and she wanted to go. But her ankle was still recovering from a sprain, so we decided to go watch the scrimmage instead.

I talked to her about the fact that this team had moved up to Gold last year and then lost some players, reminding her that she'd been through such a transition before and it was a lot of pressure to step up your game and frustration at losing. And I reminded her how lenient her coach has been with her about her drama, a result of frustration, and not every coach is going to appreciate her like her current coach.

Trying to be honest, I told her coach about it, and that she probably wouldn't want to change teams now, but she's curious. He answered that without her the team would probably fall apart and he'd lose a ton of money, but that he'd never stand in her way. He said they'd promise us the world, but will most likely go back to the club down the street next year. Nothing like a little pressure!

So we got a ride to the Scrimmage (which was an hour away!) with a former teammate of Gracie's (M). My first surprise was that when I was introduced to the Team Administrator, she was polite at best. She greeted us, but didn't look happy to see us at all.

The next surprise was that the coach didn't show up on time. In fact, he was nearly an HOUR late! Which he says isn't really like him. Sure! He did tell me thanks for coming, which I thought was really nice.

The next thing was that I was really curious to see what skills a girl on a Gold team must have, and I didn't see anything that looked outstanding. No moves put on anyone, no slide tackles, One girl was super fast and a few had really big kicks, plus the Goalie was good. Other than that, I think the Girl was at least as good as any of them.

The Girl's former teammate (M) didn't take her into the group or introduce her to anyone, which I also found a little surprising. I'm not sure M wants the Girl on her team at all!!= Maybe it's her Mom that cares. And I'm surprised at how helpful the Mom was being, as she never wanted to help our team when she was on our team in the past!

So nobody promised us the world, they barely noticed we were there (except for M's Mom.) A few people were friendly, but gradually I realized that a few girls were trying out, and everyone was just thinking about their own players on the team. So much for the glories of being recruited by another team! Hah!

Club Soccer Pt. 2

So after our visit to the Gold team's scrimmage, we attended a practice. I think the Girl wanted to show everyone her skills, but that too was the opposite of what I would think should happen.

First, the coach had them do drills that the Girl has never done before, and frankly don't seem that useful in a game. So the Girl was not especially good at bouncing the ball off her head a lot of times in a row, or similar drills. And when it came to racing, she wasn't nearly the fastest, as this team has a girl that is one of the fastest in the nation in track meets.

Plus she hadn't worked out in awhile because of her ankle, and she got tired after all that racing.

But it was such a beautiful day at the local high school, and the Boy, home from college, was playing basketball outside there too. I could pretty much watch both my kids from the right vantage point. So I called K and told him to come down and watch.

It was right after he got there that the Girl wanted to go home. She was tired from the running and afraid she'd throw up, but the team was just starting to hand out pinnies for a scrimmage. So K got there and she told him she wanted to leave early, and he was very confused and disappointed, saying, "What?" and "Why?" a lot.

So it was kindof funny that neither the team nor the Girl put their best foot forward on their first opportunity. But on Wed they had a scrimmage against some older girls, and both the team and the Girl looked very good. The coach gave her a few instructions, and when she could understand him, she said what he told her was really smart.

But since it was right before the season started, we decided that we couldn't abandon her old team right now. But we feel like if the team stays in our community, the Girl would like to go there after this season ends. The Girl told the Gold team's coach (the crazy Hungarian), and he said she could still practice with them if she wanted to, which I thought was very generous.

She had the idea that if she played Club soccer instead of High School soccer, she'd be able to play basketball in High School. I don't know if she'll still want to be that busy when we get there, but right now it seems like a good idea.

Soccer Angst

The Girl's soccer team is at a critical point right now, having lost one of our best players to basketball this summer. Last year we didn't have enough girls, and no one wants to go through that again. So already we're challenged to get more (hopefully good!) girls.

Then a few weeks ago, the team was dealt a blow by the League when her team was demoted to the Bronze division. You may remember that they fought hard to not have to move down to Bronze from Silver last year, and their success was a true achievement, as a few games they even had to play short, with not enough players. That was seriously their main goal last season.

Well, apparently there's this whole bunch of processes that we parents know little about, and someone took his team to another Club, and challenged our place in our division. And they won on points for the season.

I sent a strongly-worded email to the "Commissioner", and she basically said it's a done deal and it's something that happens. That was hard to accept, but our coach said he was fighting it.

Then I heard him talking later about how maybe Bronze was better because we wouldn't have to drive so far. I told K and he said, "No, if they move down, the Girl is leaving the team." We hate to do it, but she's one of the best players on the team and she doesn't deserve to have to go down to Bronze. If anything, we could be trying to get her on a higher-division team (like Gold, which at this age is the best.)

It's hard because the Girl tried out for this team when they were first starting it, when she was 9 years old! We've always been loyal and I'm even sortof the team manager.

So I told K he'd better tell Coach that, as I didn't want him to get any bad surprises later. So K told him at the last practice, a week ago, and K said he looked SO sad and was saying, "No, K, don't leave us! That would just kill us!" So of course we felt even worse. It was maybe the worst thing he ever had to tell somebody.

The way we found our, actually, is that a friend of ours who lives in our neighborhood called, and said that her husband noticed we were moved down to Bronze and did we want to join HER team, which is still in Silver. We started out in soccer together when both our girls were about 5, and she was previously with the local (expensive) Club, VC, but last year moved to an even more expensive Club down the way (LCFC). Actually, this LCFC had been taking players from lots of teams, and were up to 3 teams in this age group.

This friend (Mary J) has a daughter that is also good (if short), and is on the Silver team that moved up from Bronze last year. We told her the Coach was trying to appeal our drop to Bronze, but we'd get back to her if it didn't change.

Then we told the Girl about the team getting moved, and she surprised us by saying, "Maybe I should check out VC." Since it's in our area, some of her friends are on the team, and this summer she's been all about making new friends. But VC's only team in our age group was at the bottom of the Bronze league, so that wasn't really a better option.

So K started looking on the internet, and saw that VC's web site claims that they have just started a Gold team! How the heck did that happen? Where did this Gold team come from?

Out of curiosity, I emailed the person indicated on the web site, and asked him where the girls for this team came from. He never answered that question, but instead was saying my deadline to change teams was this Friday. Finally I convinced him that we haven't signed yet for the year, so there is no need to change by Friday. A few days later I got an email from someone else saying he is the coach of this Gold team, and asked that I call him.

I felt a little guilty about that, as I wasn't really trying to start the ball rolling somewhere else, I was just trying to get some information. I felt like I was cheating on our coach! So I said a prayer that the "Commission" changed their minds and moved us back to Silver.

That night I got a call from our Coach, saying we were moved back up to Silver. Yay!!! He said it took a lot of work, so maybe it was good that we lit a fire under him. He even got us into a better division geographically, so that we don't have to drive as far as we did in Silver North. Now we're in Silver East.

Coach was so happy that he had an impromptu BBQ at his house, and we went to celebrate a little bit. He was joking and thanking K for sending him into a depression last week.

I was talking with a friend who was there, whose daughter is on a Gold team, and she said that the coach for LCFC's Gold team took his team to VC, and you have to take a minimum of 7 players to stay in the same bracket. So THAT's where VC got their Gold team! And the Girl probably won't know most of the girls on THAT team, if any.

Now all the Girl's current team needs is a few more (hopefully good!) girls! Maybe I'll say a prayer for that next.