Tag: parenting (Page 10 of 72)

Christmas Notes

December 27, 2021 / DB

It is days like this you can’t help but wonder if climate change is a good thing. I’m sitting on our back porch, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, at 10:39 AM on December 27 and feeling completely comfortable. It feels like a May morning. Hell, it wasn’t that much warmer than this around sunrise in Hawaii. We will obviously pay for this at some point. Tomorrow we are supposed to have heavy rain all day and a slow decline until a low in the teens Monday morning. But this is a hell of a way to close out 2021 and we’re going to do our best to enjoy it.

We had a standard, big, crazy Christmas with most of S’s family. Eight of the nine kids are in town and 14 of the 16 grandkids.

Christmas Eve everyone who was in town gathered at the sister-in-law’s who lives in our old neighborhood for dinner and family time.

Christmas morning we realized this might be the first, but second at most, time that our girls have ever opened gifts without us having guests. There were no grandparents, aunts, or uncles staying with us Christmas Eve, so we had a quiet present time to ourselves.

S has loosened up from her Three Gifts for Christmas rule and the girls all got four gifts! They long ago wisened up to this process and only ask for 4–5 things, so they pretty much get what they ask for and know what’s coming. Highlights were all three girls getting new ski pants. M and L got new Nikes. C got some kind of magic hair dryer/hair straightener and a kit to make her own faux-acrylic nails.

Most of the local family joined us for our traditional Christmas brunch. I spent a couple hours on Friday knocking together my usual casseroles and we picked up the must-have Honey Baked ham earlier in the week. A few hours after brunch we busted out the dessert bar and most folks cleared out around 5:00.

S was off to the airport a couple hours later to pick up her sister and family who flew in from Denver. Those four are staying with us through Wednesday.

Their son turned 12 yesterday, so we took most of the family to a bounce place. It was pretty funny seeing our group of kids that range from 17 to almost-two all bouncing together. L enjoyed trying to dunk on the various basketball hoops. M and C did some cool obstacle course that was 15 feet above the ground and required them to be harnessed-up and connected to a safety line.

After everyone was back to our house for pizza, dessert, and some games.

Today M and her five-year-old cousin from Boston are getting their ears pierced together. These are M’s second piercings – one of her other gifts – but little L’s first and she is super excited.

I guess it’s been the standard, pretty good Christmas. Folks are getting along. Kids are behaved. For the first time in three years I’m not having some weird health issue over the holidays (knock on wood). The weather, which has hit 60 multiple times in the past week, is just a huge bonus.

Kid Stuff

December 20, 2021 / DB

Today is a strange day in our house. M and C wrapped up finals on Friday, so (as I begin this in the morning) both are still in a deep sleep. Hell, C probably finally went to bed somewhere in the 2–3 AM range.

L, on the other hand, has class through Wednesday. So the two of us were up at the normal time.

That feels weird because it’s the first time we’ve had a schedule like this. Last year, of course, both schools were locked down and the girls were e-learning for the final month of the semester. Two years ago I’m 95% sure M’s last day of finals coincided with the last day of the year for St P’s. I picked her up at noon, we went to lunch to celebrate the end of her first semester of high school, then I picked her sisters up an hour or so later.

Not sure L is super happy with how this works out for her. Although she goes back two days after the high schoolers in January, so it evens out.

Seems like finals went well for both high schoolers. M complained about how the finals schedule this year. Instead of having two finals a day for four days, they had three finals the first two days, then two on Friday. So they had pretty normal days those first two days, starting at 9:00 and finishing at 2:30. So told me how that was so unfair compared to the old system. I rolled my eyes and ignored her complaints.

We signed C up for the written portion of driver’s ed on Friday. I’m hoping she gets a lot of work done over the break and can knock out her 30 hours of “class time” quickly. We haven’t got her in a car in the high school parking lot, yet. But that is coming soon.

Two more weeks of basketball in the books for L’s team. They’ve split games each weekend.

Last week they lost game one of the day by five. That was a bummer because they led by six pretty much the entire game. The other team threw a half-court trap at us to start the fourth quarter and we gave up the lead in about four possessions and never got it back.

The true highlight of that game, though, was one of the refs. First, he called the game like a first grade game, stopping to explain every call to the players, giving them visual demonstrations of what they did wrong. This got tedious quick.

Worse, he also enjoyed lecturing the coaches and parents about his calls. If there was any complaining, he would stretch these lectures out for a good 30 seconds, speaking loud enough for all to hear. He was in control of the gym. Or at least giving that appearance.

Example: “Ladies, you can reach as much as you want, but if you displace the player you’re guarding, that’s a foul.” He would wave his arms around to give a visual of how you can reach as he spoke. “Until the offensive player is displaced, it’s a legal defensive play.”

The displacement thing became very important. Both coaches complained that their girls were getting hacked. But, as he said, as long as you don’t displace the girl with the ball, you can hack the hell out of her and he won’t call it.

Sadly it was our coaches who lost their patience the most with him, and there were a couple lengthy, and uncomfortable, “conversations.” The word displacement was thrown around a lot. Eventually even parents were sarcastically yelling “Displacement!” from the stands any time there was contact on the floor. Our assistant coach asked the ref, loudly, if he was proud of himself.

None of that was necessary. Refs can explain calls to coaches during breaks in play, quietly. There’s no need to carry on for everyone in the gym to hear.

Thanks to all his pontificating – plus the other team shooting about 25 free throws – the game took 90 minutes to play. Which is just ridiculous. More so since we played immediately afterward. On the same court. With the same refs. Sigh…

Fortunately we got matched up with a team we had crushed in week one. We crushed them again. L and a girl almost got into it. They ran into each other once and L got the best of it. Then they were fighting for a ball and both refused to back down, even after the refs called a jump ball. This other girl was a little rougher than L, and the second time they tangled a friend of mine said, “I think she is going to look for L after the game and try to kick her ass!” I laughed, but made sure that girl left first just in case!

I think the score not being close and the refs realizing we were starting the game about the time it should have ended forced Mr. Talker to blow his whistle less often. Although one of our coaches yelled “Displacement!” at his partner when she let the defense shove one of our girls without a call.

L’s team is in what is supposed to be in a seventh grade league. The team they played first yesterday had girls that looked like they belonged in high school. And they were good. Really good. We heard after the game they hadn’t lost a game since third grade. It showed. They were better everywhere on the court and smoked us by 30.

Sadly, again, the highlight was our coaches losing it with one of the refs. Our head coach got a warning then two technicals and an ejection for complaining that the other team was grabbing our guards when they tried to run the offense. Which they were. Also the fouls were 8–2 against us in the second half despite our girls being totally checked out while they were getting mauled on the other end. Still, never a good look for a coach to get tossed.

Guess what? Once again we had the same court, same refs for game two. This time our opponents looked like fifth graders. So we beat them by 30. An even-Stephen day. There were no referee issues.

L played ok in all the games. I think she scored six total points last week. She had two in the first game yesterday, then six in the second. Which came despite her barely being able to run thanks to her knee issues. They subbed her out more than they have in any game this season since she could barely walk at times. I was worried about her when she scored the first bucket of the game then immediately went to the bench. But she came back in early in the second quarter, hit a 15-foot jumper, and flexed as she ran up court. OK, then.

She has been frustrated because she’s not scoring much. She was really down after the games last week because two girls who almost never score both dropped 10+ in the second game. The two girls who lead the team in scoring also do it by being very aggressive and taking super-unorthodox shots. One girl just kind of heaves it from her hip, yet she’s probably averaging 10–12 a game. L is always trying to set herself up to take a perfect shot.

I told her as a point guard, it isn’t her primary job to score. She’s supposed to set up others to score. But, I made clear, she turned down some scoring chances. A couple times she had wide-open paths to the bucket that she passed out of. The mom who has coached her for years was sitting beside me and even yelled at her a couple times, “L, what are you doing?!?! Take that shot!”

I added that it’s not being selfish if she has a good, open chance to score and takes it. And, as the best dribbler on the team, she needs to take advantage if she can take two dribbles and get in the lane instead of someone else taking a guarded jumper from the perimeter.

She did better than that in the second game yesterday. Even though that team was awful, I give her credit since she was moving at about half speed. She got to the baseline several times and had three runners spin out. She was aggressive. She made some good passes. I also reminded her that as she gets older, the game changes. Forget her knee issues. At this age, the games aren’t just about being faster down the court than the defense. It’s great when she can get out on the break. But she has to learn to run and play within an offense. Learning to be patient and run the plays how the coach wants them run will pay off one day.

Holiday Notes + Kid Sports

December 6, 2021 / DB

It seems like most of the family has re-acclimated to being in the eastern time zone, but our days are still all messed up. A full, five-day school week this week will surely get us back on track.

Our holiday schedule is all out-of-whack from normal, though. The day after Thanksgiving is normally our decorating day. Since we were hiking through Waimea Canyon ten days ago, that wasn’t possible. L and I got a bunch of the decorations out on the Friday before we left, placing them around the house as we listened to the Cathedral semi-state game on the radio. But we left the tree for when we got home. S and I got that put up last Thursday night, completing our decorating for the season. We didn’t put up any outside lights this year. The five big spruce trees in our front yard we lit last year that remain dark. I’ve heard from several friends who are disappointed that they don’t see them shining brightly as they drive by. We also ordered our Christmas cards yesterday, a week later than normal.

These little things shouldn’t be such big mental hurdles. But everything does seem just a little off. Again, a normal week should rectify that and we’ll all be freaking out that Christmas is just two weeks away when next weekend rolls around.

Saturday was Cathedral’s winter formal, back after a year’s Covid-induced hiatus. It was a much more hectic night that two years ago, when we had just one girl going and she had friends over to our house to get ready.

C asked a guy friend of hers from St P’s to go with her (this is a girls-ask-boys deal), but just as friends, and she was awfully casual about the whole thing. Since it was the first time she went to a dance with a boy we had to give her a little slack. They were going with a big group of kids, and the plans were constantly changing, which was annoying to S and I, who like to have details locked in. We texted another parent Saturday afternoon to see if she knew what was going on. Her response was, “Good Lord, I have no idea what the plan is!” Kids…

M went with a group of girls and left our house before allowing us to take a picture of her and C together in front of our tree. When S learned M had been gone for 20 minutes, she was not pleased.

We took C to the gathering point for her friends. We stayed about 10 minutes and got a few pics before leaving. Before the group departed for the dance, there were something like 46 kids gathered at that house. Bless those parents!

We left early because the family who was hosting M’s group was having a parent party and we wanted to get there before the girls left. This group was only nine girls and not all the parents stayed, but it was hectic for a bit. We laughed later at how the ladies stayed upstairs all night while the guys were downstairs. I guess we can’t complain about our kids acting weird when the parents won’t mix. It was cool to get to meet a few new dads, though. We stood around and watched football while having stilted, guy conversations until the group thinned to a more manageable number and the dialog got easier. Meanwhile the ladies were upstairs getting into the wine and having a good-old time! The juniors all left the dance early and when they came downstairs, M said, “They are so loud and you guys are so quiet!” Facts.

It sounds like the dance went well. Both girls said the music sucked. I don’t think C and her “date” spent a ton of time together, but that was true for most of the “couples” who aren’t actual couples. Ahhh, the awkwardness of youth! I can’t judge: I didn’t go to a dance until my senior year because I was too nervous/lacking in confidence/fearful of rejection to ask anyone.

Speaking of CHS, I should note that the football team won the state title while we were away. I was able to listen to part of the game while we were getting ready for our luau. They fell behind 7–0 early and were struggling to move the ball. But the QB snapped out of the mini-funk he had been in and a junior wide receiver went off, racking up over 220 yards on the night, leading the Irish to a fairly easily 34–14 win. That wraps up a 27–2 run over the past two years, with the only losses coming to Center Grove who went 28–0 over the same stretch.

L started her first winter basketball league yesterday. She’s playing on a team that has girls from four different parishes. She was super excited when she heard a friend of hers, who is probably the best seventh grader in our part of the archdiocese, would be on the team. That girl is on crutches, though, and may not play until the second session begins in January.

The team has practiced a lot but Sunday was their first time playing together, and you never know how that will go. After her practice Thursday L said, “We are soooo bad!” She was wrong. They won their first game 44–21 and the second game 39–20. They are really good on D and have two girls who are fearless going to the hoop and can convert. We jumped on both teams early and neither game was in doubt after the first quarter.

L played solid. She scored six in the first game. She missed a couple shots late and I told her she deserved to miss them since her coach told the team to stop shooting. She only scored two in the second game. She moved the ball well, though, and played decent D. She had a couple steals both games and got some tough rebounds in the second game. Once she tried to back a girl down in the post and shoot a turn-around jumper. She didn’t come close to hitting rim. I was running the clock and a mom from the other team was keeping the book. I started laughing and said, “Not strong enough to do that yet!” The mom said, “That was a sweet move, though!”

I think playing with these teammates will help L’s game, as she’s running with legit scorers and will have to hone her distribution skills. They have three more weeks of games – two before Christmas, one after – and then I think most of the girls will stay together for the second winter session.

Real, Live Hoops

November 18, 2021 / DB

With L done with hoops for the time being, I figured I should still get out and watch some live basketball.

Tuesday I went to my first high school game in a long time. C has a classmate that made the varsity team (girl also made varsity soccer as a freshman, so obviously she’s a stud). A few of the freshmen girls wanted to go and support her so I took C.

CHS is usually pretty mediocre in girls hoops, but this team shows some promise. Of course, they were playing kind of a crappy team. They won by 30 and were paced by a junior who transferred in this summer. She can kind of do everything, although I thought she tried to do too much often.

I was watching just to see what kind of system the head coach ran to give L – who did not attend – some scouting. The bummer for L is that there wasn’t anyone on the varsity roster shorter than 5’11”. She’s still growing – up to 5’3”! – but I think 5’11” might be too tall an ask for her body. She’s going to have to dazzle the coach with her speed, ball handling, and IQ if she wants to make varsity when she gets to CHS.

Wednesday I took L and two friends to the Butler-Michigan State game. It was her first college basketball game, so obviously her first trip to Hinkle Fieldhouse.

We got great tickets thanks to S doing some work with Butler on their Covid strategies over the past few months. We were in the eighth row directly behind the Michigan State. I couldn’t quite hear Tom Izzo during timeouts. But if I wanted to be an ass I probably could have reminded the support staff in the row behind the bench of the score from last week’s game with KU.

The game was not great. I don’t think Butler is very good this year, and the Spartans looked a lot better than a week ago in New York. They were just too big and too athletic for the Bulldogs. It was a 8–11 point game for most of the first 25 minutes or so. Butler hit a 3 to cut it to six, MSU immediately answered and went on something like a 12–0 run to put the game away. I was hoping for a more competitive game so we could get the full Hinkle experience.

I had been to Hinkle once before as a reporter. That was for an exhibition game, so a very different environment. Wednesday, the crowd was juiced for the first five minutes or so, until it became obvious that Butler wasn’t ready for this matchup. Those first few minutes were great, though.

Hinkle definitely has that old school college gym vibe that I love. It has a different setup than Allen Fieldhouse, but there are some common threads. It holds 9100, and Wednesday was the first time it has been filled to capacity since Covid’s arrival. Because of how the seats are arranged – very short end zones and long, tall side sections, the building itself feels tiny. Old timers will remember the track that used to run around the seats at Allen. The ground-level footprint of Hinkle is much smaller. It’s hard to describe without walking it yourself, but you get the sense that you’re more in a big high school gym than a D1 college arena.

I think L and her buddies’ highlight of the night came after the game. Once the teams and support staff clear out, they open up the floor for anyone to shoot around. Which is very Indiana, right? One of L’s buddies brought a ball so they went down and shot for about half an hour, having a ton of fun. I laughed at all the older, Michigan State dudes who kept taking their ball to get their own shots up. It never got uncomfortable where I needed to step in, but there was like no realization that they had taken the ball away from a group of 13-year-olds. I guess normal playground rules should apply, but even when the kids were making shots these green-clad goobers were taking the ball for their own shots. I blame alcohol.

One of L’s CYO teammates and good friends was sitting with her family directly opposite of us. That girl’s older sister went to Michigan State so she and her brother were wearing Spartans jerseys. I was shocked I didn’t see a Magic Johnson jersey, although I’m sure there was one somewhere in the building. I did see a woman in her 20s who was wearing a Scott Skiles jersey. There HAS to be a family connection of some kind, because that’s entirely too random. Skiles is from Indiana, and played for the Pacers at one point, so perhaps that’s the connection. I wanted to go thank her for Skiles, a 90+% free throw shooter, missing two huge free throws against Kansas in the 1986 NCAA tournament, but figured A) that was a dick move and B) she would probably have no idea what I was talking about since she was born 20 years after the game.

Tough result, but fun night.

Halloween 2021

November 1, 2021 / DB

I swear October is the fastest month. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating L’s birthday and now here we are on November 1 bracing for the onslaught of Christmas commercials. Hell, they started Saturday, from what I could tell so we’re already in it. Fall break, a trip, and lots of basketball helped to make the month speed by.

Two weeks ago we were in the midst of one of the warmest Octobers in Indianapolis history. Today it was 33 when we left for school, and the high temps may not top 50 until next weekend.

Yep, things move pretty fast in October.

We had a split Halloween weekend this year. M and C both went to parties on Saturday. For the first time we were a little concerned about M’s plans. She and some school friends were going to some vague “party” hosted by some public school kids. Not that CHS kids don’t make stupid, typically teenage mistakes. Nor that there aren’t CHS parents who allow kids to get wild. But we feel pretty confident her circle of friends comes with parents who will not let kids get out of control in their homes. Plus, the public school is three times the size of CHS, so that makes it at least three times more likely something sketchy happens.

We just reminded her to make good decisions before she left. After she left S muttered to me, “And don’t get caught drunk if the cops show up.” Not that we worry about M acting out too much, but Halloween is the perfect night to start doing stupid stuff.

We checked in on her location occasionally. At one point she was on the total opposite side of the city where she was supposed to be. But she was also constantly moving. We guessed, and later had confirmed, that the “parties” they heard about were either non-existent, lame, or M and her friends didn’t feel comfortable and left early. Sure enough, she said the first public school party was filled with people they didn’t know, a second was mostly older CHS kids and they felt like outsiders, and they finally ended up at a small party about three blocks from where she was spending the night. So it all turned out ok.

C went to a party with a group of kids she’s been hanging out with all fall. They were at the home of people we knew, so we were confident things would be fine/safe there. Apparently two kids who were dating were acting “weird” all night and kind of ruined the party for everyone. Only 15 and she’s already run into the “awkward couple who might be breaking up at the Halloween party” phenomenon! She had a lot more fun at the sleepover she went to after the party.

L, on the other hand, stayed in on Saturday but went out trick-or-treating Sunday. She stressed for weeks on which group of friends to go with. She finally picked her group of guy friends because her girl friends were arguing too much about what to dress up as. Turned out the boys didn’t have much better of an idea, but at least they weren’t fighting as they changed their minds.

She went as an inflatable dinosaur. That was supposed to be the group plan but two boys in her group never got around to finding costumes so had random ones they found in their homes or borrowed from other friends. It all worked out. She went to a fancy, gated neighborhood where one of the kids lived. There were lots of full-sized candy bars which she was thrilled with.

S and I stayed home. This was our fourth Halloween in our new home. The first year we went to our old neighborhood and left candy at our door. According to our porch cam, we only had one group of trick-or-treaters that night. Year two it snowed and was insanely windy and we had no guests. Last year we had nice weather and only had a couple.

Last night we had four groups of trick-or-treaters totaling 10 kids, so a new house record! Two groups of neighbors and then two other groups of randoms. We live in kind of a weird spot – off a very busy street with no sidewalks and on the opposite end of the proper neighborhood – which really cuts down on the traffic. In our old hood I always stressed about whether I bought enough candy. And every damn year we had way too much. That’s not a problem here. I bought three small bags and we still have over half of it left. But with only one trick-or-treater, that means M and C have some to split for the next few days.

Now that November is here, there are a couple very big things on our calendar. One is this week for one kid; we’ll discuss that later. The other is a family thing that we’ve been waiting a long time for. We are praying that Southwest Airlines gets their shit together and we can pull it off. More about that, also, down the road a few weeks.

An Old Man on the Court

October 7, 2021 / DB

I’m a little shocked that I am upright and able to walk today.

You see, L’s coaches cancelled their practice last night and decided to have a loose shoot-around/scrimmage. I took L then hung around in case they wrapped up early. The coach, who I’ve coached with four different times, roped me into the fun.

We started with a game of knockout that included everyone in the gym: our team, a girl from the B team who was there, a younger brother, plus three parents and one grandparent. L made sure she was behind me in line and knocked me out our second time through. Afterward it felt like I had pulled something in my glute area. That’s a classic 50-year-old man injury right there: “Yeah, I pulled a glute playing knockout with my 13-year-old. Happens more than you would think…”

After knockout the coach said we were going to scrimmage. Three parents, the B team girl, and the sixth grade brother against the A team. Grandpa was going to watch from the sidelines. That was the smartest move of the night.

Over the next 45 minutes we went up-and-down and did our best to get our girls to stop giggling and actually run their offense.

I was soaked and thoroughly winded after about four trips up the court. L even told me I looked “gross” because my shirt was so sweaty. We scrimmaged with the girls a few times last fall and I’m on a better cardio workout regimen now than I was then. Yet I felt like I had never played before. That glute was tight. I dared not sprint for fear of blowing out an achilles, hamstring, or really anything below my hips. Each time I wiped the sweat from my eyes I was reminded that I had cut up an onion while I was making dinner.

In short, I was a mess.

I was having a good day with my vertigo – which still pops up a few times a week – but, man, it was hard running and rapidly change my point of focus. I never felt dizzy but my vision wasn’t the greatest. I also was trying my best not to kill any of the girls by barreling into them.

I kept getting inside for offensive rebounds then missing the put-backs. Grandpa, who has also coached with me a few times in the past, loved it. After we were done he came over, cackling, telling L, “Now I know where you get it, missing all those layups!”

I got sick of missing bunnies and jumpers so started posting up. When I hit my third-straight turnaround jumper the other dad playing started yelling, “THAT’S HOW THE KANSAS JAYHAWKS DO IT!!!” He’s a Purdue guy so I appreciated his appreciation.

I would tell you I also made some sweet passes, but since the team has no idea how to play help defense or watch the ball and their man, I can’t really take credit for them. The passes were there if you were willing to throw them.

When we were finished all us adults were complaining while we hobbled out of the gym. But the girls were all laughing and having a great time. I guess you call that a success. We agreed to invite the other team parents to join us for a parents vs. kid scrimmage while we are in our three-week lull.

I felt awful when I got home. After watching baseball for an hour or so it was really difficult to get up off of the couch. I dreaded how I would feel this morning.

Yet when I woke up I didn’t feel much worse than any other morning. I even made it to the gym and got my regular workout in. There is some tightness, but no soreness, which is amazing. I guess all that gym time is paying off.

Anyway, all of that, and sharing it with you, reminded me of back in the spring of 1998, when I had just started at C Corp. I had a lot of free time as my bosses were slowly figuring out what to do with me. All of the guys in Finance would often go play basketball at lunch on Fridays at the campus gym. On days when I played well, with nothing to do between 1:00 and 5:00, I would send braggy, slightly exaggerated email accounts of my efforts to my friends. The kind of shit I would post here if I was still out playing lunch hoops and having one good day a month.

One of those buddies, E$, made fun of me once by sending an account of his lunch in the style of my hoops breakdowns. I thought of it last night. Lucky for us all, I have saved that email for over 23 years. I don’t know if this will resonate with you at all, but it made me laugh my ass off. It’s a real shame I don’t have one of my hoops emails so you can see what inspired E$ to mock me.

Here is that email, sent to me on June 19, 1998.

I thought I would share some details from my lunch today. I was a little worried that I would be dining alone, but then Doug, an old buddy from law school, e-mailed and said he could make it. I was stoked. Unfortunately I got wrapped up in my work and almost was late. Doug wouldn’t have liked that. On my way there, I felt pretty good. I had a spring in my step. Both ankles and knees felt great. I was a little hungry, but not starving.
As I approached, I pondered what I might get. Due to stomach trouble, I haven’t been able to eat up to my potential lately. I was torn between four choices: the southern style, a large turkey sandwich, quarter chicken, or rib sandwich. I was feeling more carnivorous that usual, so I went with the rib sandwich. As Doug and I discussed the events of the day, I began sweating with anticipation. Would I be able to complete the mission? Would I be my old self? Would I finish the rib sandwich? When the order was brought to our table, I noticed that the ribs were even bigger than usual. I had my work cut out for me. I dug in with a vengeance. I drove hard into the pickles, posted up the wonder bread and put a sweat move on the sauce. I felt good and I was kicking ass. Within five minutes I new I was back to my old form. I finished the rib sandwich in less than fifteen minutes and had time to really enjoy my side of Cole slaw. I kicked everyone’s ass. No one ate as fast, or as much, as me today.
It was great. I now understand why I am continually drawn to the table. It’s where I belong. It’s my true love. It’s my destiny. As my uncle Leon used to say – eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.
Peace

Peace, indeed.

End of the School Year

May 24, 2021 / DB

We have reached the final week of the 2020–21 academic year. It’s kind of hard to believe the year was as “normal” as it was.

To be very clear, it was not normal. There were all kinds of mandates and limits and headaches compared to what our girls had done every year before Covid hit. There were lots of bumps along with way, especially with C’s grade at St P’s. As we are almost done I won’t get into the details of those, but it’s the first time we’ve had any serious problems with school administrators. And, of course, the county sent everyone home for the final month of classes of 2020 as Covid rates were skyrocketing.

Even with all of that, though, it feels like the girls had a fairly normal academic year. I don’t know that they got everything out of the year they would have gotten if schools had operated under 2019 conditions. But I also don’t think any of them are going to be lost next fall when they advance to the next year’s worth of course material.

C’s final day of 8th grade is tomorrow, with graduation slated for Wednesday.

L’s final day is Thursday.

M begins finals tomorrow and will have half days of exams through Friday.

It is Awards SZN at schools. C will learn if she was nominated for and receive any awards at graduation.

M earned an award for the most outstanding AP chemistry student. We don’t really know if that means just in the four classes her teacher has, or across all sophomore AP chem courses. Regardless, she and her teacher FaceTimed me last week so they could share the news with me. That was fun.

She also got notified a week ago that her PSAT score qualified her for a recognition program. She asked for help going through the paperwork to apply for it, and as I was reading through I noticed something odd about the language. In the first paragraph, it mentioned that it was intended for Hispanic students. Later on it stated that the award was specifically designed to highlight students from underserved communities. We were pretty sure the white girl who drives a new car should not be up for this award.

We had her check with the sponsoring teacher the next day, who confirmed this was a mistake. We are guessing M got confused by some of those demographic boxes as she registered and clicked White-Hispanic rather than White-Not Hispanic.

What really made us laugh, though, was that an hour or two after it was confirmed that she was not eligible, she got a message from her counselor praising her for her accomplishment and offering to help her if she needed any assistance completing the application. Right in the subject line of her message it mentioned the name of the award: College Board National Hispanic Recognition Program. We don’t know if that means the counselor didn’t read the restrictions for the award, or just assumed that maybe M is a super pale Hispanic girl and didn’t want to question things.

Oh well, her PSAT score was still pretty good.

L won the girls Leader in Me award for her grade last week. Parents were notified if their kid was going to win something, so I was able to attend the ceremony. She was surprised when she saw me sitting in church as her class filed in. It’s always fun to surprise your kid that way.

C’s class got robbed of their traditional trip to Washington, D.C. A few schools in our area still went to DC, but St P’s pulled the plug fairly early due to uncertainty about what would be open.

Instead the plan was to go to Cleveland and visit the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, spend a night at the Kalahari water resort, then a day at Cedar Point. C was pretty ok with this, as she loves amusement parks and roller coasters.

However, for some reason the Cleveland stuff got cancelled because of some weird Covid restrictions. We really don’t understand why, but the Hall of Fame and other sites in Cleveland that were used for the NFL Draft were put into a three week shut down and made unavailable to visiting groups. C’s class would have visited over two weeks after the draft so everything should have been thoroughly sanitized by then. Very strange.

The day in Cleveland was replaced with a morning at the US Air Force museum in Dayton then the trip up to Sandusky for the water park and Cedar Point.

C had a good time. She said the museum was kind of boring, and the parks mega crowded. She had to borrow money from a friend to fully fund a fast pass so she didn’t spend the entire day in line.

At least they got to go somewhere.

C gets a whole week off before starting her freshman year with summer school gym next Wednesday. She’ll be up bright-and-early for the 8:00 session for most of June. She will then get six weeks of sleeping in before high school really starts.

Summer is coming up quick. Our pool house was (finally) completed a little over a week ago and the landscaping installed last week. We’ve already had a couple small pool gatherings and anticipate this summer being a lot busier than last since we are comfortable inviting more than one family of guests at a time. I’d better start getting those summer playlists updated.

Weekend Notes

March 8, 2021 / DB

Compared to other recent weekends, this past one was pretty laid back for us. It helped that there was no KU game.[1]

The biggest factor in the lazy weekend was that my latest round of balance therapy really triggers my vertigo, and Sunday I spent almost the entire day on the couch giving my body a break. My therapist said making the vertigo kick in is the best way to speed the re-training of my brain, so I’m going to trust it was a good thing that I was worthless yesterday. And only slightly better today.

Friday night was busy, though. That was L’s basketball tournament night. Her team opened against the second-worst team in the league, a team they beat easily in the regular season. That game had been one of L’s best of the year, when she knocked down three quick jumpers to build an early lead.

Friday was not much different. She opened the scoring by swishing two free throws. She hit a baseline jumper. She pulled up on a drive and hit a ten-footer. And she made a sick move into the lane, getting the defender leaning one way then crossing her over and tossing in a nifty little runner. That move got some oohs and aahs in the stands. She had eight points in the first half, added four in the second, but missed two wide-open shots on inbounds plays that could have given her a career-high 16. Twelve points in a 16-point win was plenty.

We were a little concerned at how long her coaches both played L and kept pressing. L played almost the entire second half and they were still pressing up 15+ with under 5:00 left. Their opponents only made two field goals all night. The championship game was immediately after, so seems like you would want to rest your top scorers in an easy win. L said she was fine afterward, though, so we didn’t sweat it.

The other highlight of the semifinal was a dad in front of us from the other team. He was getting all worked up about everything. The poor play of his team. The calls the refs were/were not making. He wasn’t yelling loudly but just looked beside himself about everything.

The greatest parent moment all season came as we were starting the second half. We were sitting right at mid court and he was directly behind the ref. As she prepared to hand the ball to our girls to start the half, he starts berating this poor lady. It went on a few seconds as the girls were lining up and eventually we caught his point of contention: he believed it should have been his team’s ball because we took the last shot of the first half. He was 1000% convinced he was right. Finally the ref took the whistle out of her mouth, gave him a shitty look, and with much disdain said, “The team that has the possession arrow at the end of the first half gets the ball to start the second half. It doesn’t matter who took the last shot.” She popped the whistle back in, blew it, and handed the ball to our girl. Meanwhile the dad angrily shook his head.

WHAT. THE. HELL. DUDE?

Maybe that’s why he was arguing so much: he had no freaking idea what the rules of basketball are, or have been for roughly 40 years. Shocked the Indiana Basketball Police didn’t come out and force him into an education camp.

On to the final, where we would take on a team we beat 12–10 in the regular season. That game was physical and ugly. We had an 8–2 lead and had to hold on for our lives to win.

The first half was entirely back-and-forth. They lead by three, we scored four-straight, they scored, we scored, and so on. We had a three-point lead late in the half when L made a bad turnover at half court and have up a layup. It was 11–10 at half. So progress from the first game, I guess. Our best inside player had three fouls, though, which caused some concern.

Midway through the second half we had a 15–12 lead and then it all went to shit. We had all ten players and our coaches, good guys that they are, made sure that every girl played. Coaching a big team is tough. I’ve done it in basketball and kickball. You do your best to give girls equal opportunity. But I’ve always thought you throw that out in close tournament games. There is a significant drop off in ability from the first five to second five on this team, and I’m not sure a few of them needed to be on the court as much as they were. Still, I give the coaches props for giving every girl a chance.

The other team started pressing and trapping and we lost our composure. Girls who can barely dribble against no pressure were just melting against this defense. We made bad passes. We couldn’t get the ball inbounds. When we got the ball to one of our guards, everyone abandoned her to face the traps alone. It was a disaster. I think we went four-straight possessions without getting the ball across mid court. Next thing you know it was 24–15. 12–0 runs in sixth grade C-leagues are are killers. We had some chances to get back into it but just missed too many shots late. We were 1–8 from the line, which did not help. Final score was 27–20. L finished with three points.

A disappointing score but L said she had fun. She made some new friends from other schools, and she’s excited to see them at future CYO games. Amazingly she said she’ll miss the practices most. She’s normally not a big practice fan but said they were fun because they goofed around a lot.

One funny ref note from the championship contest. It was the classic “One ref calls everything, the other ref calls nothing” game. I hate these. The active ref got into a yelling match with the opposing coach before the opening tip because his team wasn’t ready to play when the ref was, and again during the first half over a call. But he was generally making decent, fair calls. In the second half, when the game was especially frenetic, L was bringing the ball up the sideline and getting bodied by her defender. Eventually the ref blew a whistle and called a pushing foul. Before he signaled who the foul was on, he yelled down at the defender, “HEY! Get off her!” I was thinking the same thing so was glad we were on the same page.

Now we are off to spring sports. C is playing soccer for the first time in four or five years, joining a bunch of other eighth graders on the St. P’s team. She has already had to leave a practice because she got hit by a ball that was kicked hard, so this should be great. In another upset. because her eighth grade trip to DC has been replaced by a trip to Cleveland/King’s Island, and will be later in May than normal, a bunch of girls decided to play kickball one more time. The head coach and I thought we were done; 8th graders don’t normally play in the spring because the DC trip falls right in the midst of the season. Now we both have to mentally prepare ourselves for another season. I tried to talk C out of it, reminding her of how her fall season ended perfectly. She wasn’t interested in my logic. Oh well…

C will also run track, which she is very excited about. There are a couple new coaches on the team who have a ton of experience, so it will be fun to see if that translates into better training and results.

L will also play kickball again. There is no 7th grade team this spring so the girls teams will scrimmage each other, which should be awesome. The head coaches of both asked me if that would work for my girls, and I told them it would be fine. L will also run track for the first time. Two springs ago her classmates tried to talk her into it but she declined. After going to C’s meets and hanging out with her friends who were running, she decided it looked cool. It helped that she beat some of those girls when she would help them warm up. We’ll see how that translates to actual races.

In a huge upset, L has told us she’s done with soccer for the time being. She really wants to focus on basketball. This has been a source of controversy, as S and I debate whether should she focus on what she’s having more fun with or what she has a better chance to play for four years in high school.[2] We’ll see what L decides to do in summer – try out for club soccer or find a basketball league/clinics – but after years of soccer we appear to be done with it for at least the short term.

Oh, and M is about to try out for the tennis team at CHS. She’s been taking lessons for six months, but this will be the first time she has ever played. Sophomores can normally get cut, but since that class missed last spring, that grade will be no-cut with the freshmen. She’s very excited about it, and has several friends playing, too. She also thinks the uniforms are super cute, so there you go.

Obviously there was some massive KU news, which I’ll get to in the next day or so. ↩
I take the “She loves basketball, sports are supposed to be fun, and I don’t want her burning out, so dropping soccer is fine” tack. S takes the “She’s short and will only be able to play one year of basketball in high school, but if she plays club soccer she’s easily a four-year player if she stays healthy” line. L thinks she can play both at CHS. ↩

More Snow Day Ramblings

February 17, 2021 / DB

Our girls are all back in school today. Quite a few area schools either delayed or cancelled again, but we are on a normal schedule.

The mechanics of snow days are very different now than they were for my generation. Remember having to sit by the radio or TV, breathlessly waiting to hear your school’s name be read out, or to see it scroll across the bottom of the screen? I recall several days where I was ready to go to school – dressed, bag packed, coat on – and stood in front of the TV until the last possible moment to see if “Raytown Consolidated School District No. 2” suddenly popped up.

Now? We get automated calls, texts, and emails as soon as our schools make a decision. You can go to any number of media websites to browse the entire list at your leisure. Sometimes those messages come at 5:30 AM and you can sneak into your kids’ rooms and turn off their alarms, leaving a note that school has been cancelled.

I think kids today still wait in anticipation of the announcement. But that moment of revelation seems to have a less mysterious quality than back in the 1980s.

The whole eLearning thing obviously makes snow days very different than in my childhood. I remember a few occasions when everyone knew a big storm was coming and teachers would give us a couple days of assignments and encourage us to take all our books home so we didn’t get too far behind. That work was generally put off until the evening before we went back to school; there was no working on them during school hours. That time was meant for playing in the snow, watching TV, playing video games, or otherwise taking advantage of the pause in our educational lives.

Covid has obviously changed snow days, too. Not just because eLearning is an option, but also because the girls are used to being home. After spending the last 10 weeks of the ’19–20 school year and about a month of the first semester of this year at home, I don’t think it feels special to them to spend a Monday-through-Friday at home. The distinction between weekday and weekend has been blurred somewhat.

When we were kids, though, snow days felt like magical departures from the norm. Once I was nine or ten, my mom left me at home to fend for myself. I had general rules of “Don’t break any bones, kill myself/someone else, or get into a situation I’m going to regret mom finding out about,” but otherwise could do whatever I wanted.

I remember taking full advantage of snow days, making detailed plans for the day. Yep, I was one of those kids who still got up early rather than slept in just so I could get to work on my list of activities. Whatever my weird hobby of the moment was would get some extra time. That could mean rolling up some new D&D characters, listening to shortwave radio stations I would not normally have a chance to hear, or just playing Pitfall for three continuous hours. I would make elaborate lunches. Or as elaborate as I could manage with what was in our cabinets and my meager culinary skills. There would be the inevitable neighborhood snowball fight. Good days were the ones when a football game broke out somewhere on my block. There was nothing better than football in the snow, diving for balls and making tackles while landing in piles of the fluffy stuff. Of course, this came with the danger of breaking my glasses, which I did once when they flew off my face and got crunched as I was thrown to the ground.

When I got to high school and either had friends who could drive or could drive myself, this meant a bonus trip to the mall. The food court would be charged with extra energy as kids who would normally be at school cruised around and checked each other out.

The first time I had a chance to do this was shortly after we moved back to Missouri from California. My mom took me out to show me how to drive in snow, and I had to earn her approval before I could go to the mall. Monday I took M across the street to drive around in the high school lot so she could get her first snowy driving experience. Anti-lock brakes, traction control, and all-wheel drive sure make it easier to get around safely than the Oldsmobile I learned to drive in. Of course, with Covid, she didn’t rush to the mall to meet friends immediately afterward, but rather just came home and got back to chatting with them on her phone.

Snow Day

February 16, 2021 / DB

Our long weekends got a little longer thanks to about nine inches of new snow yesterday. C and L were home Friday and Monday thanks to St P’s traditional President’s Day break, while M was just home Monday. All are eLearning today, although L had her assignments done in about 40 minutes and is currently playing Fortnite.

This was the biggest snowstorm we’ve had something like seven years.[1] It was nice for it to happen on a day when the girls were already out of school. We didn’t have to leave the house and could just sit and watch it slowly pile up. Mondays are S’s half-day so she was able to make it home before the roads got too nasty.

For awhile it looked like we could get well over a foot of snow, so just getting 9” seems like a bit of a letdown. It was still plenty to have to move this morning. Fortunately the snowblower worked after not being started for over two years. It took about an hour to get the driveway and walk cleared off. I’m not sure if that was too much for the machine or the snow was different across the street, but when I took it over to help clear our retired neighbors’ much larger driveway, it refused to move any of their snow.

In our backyard the snow of the past three weeks has made it nearly impossible to see where the pool transitions to deck and vice-versa. A crew has been building a pool house for us and that project has been frozen – literally – for two weeks because of the cold weather. They have piles of materials that are buried in the fresh snow.

Somehow, for as cold as it has been here the last two weeks, we’ve missed the worst of this cold spell. I know I have readers in Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska who have had much colder temperatures than we have. Tomorrow morning our low is supposed to be 0, which will be our lowest low of the year. We’ve had lots of days in the high teens and 20s, but none of the air temps below zero so many of you have experienced.

It’s been crazy reading about the weather in Texas, especially. I have a few friends down there who have been sharing their experiences. A couple have been out breaking up ice in their pools, because Texas pools don’t have covers or heaters. One friend lost power for most of yesterday and her home was down to 48 degrees when service was restored. And the whole rolling blackout thing that several states are going through blows my mind. I’ve never heard of those in the winter before. Nutty times.

The good news is that the sun is out, and its warmth is making the areas where snow has been cleared melt completely to reveal the concrete/asphalt underneath. I think that means it is officially pothole season! The forecast says it may actually get into the 40s early next week. It’s probably too much to hope for, but perhaps these past three weeks have been our winter of 2021 and more moderate days are ahead.

Indy officially had a bigger storm just three years ago in late March. But I don’t think our house got the 10” that the airport got. ↩