Tag: school (Page 6 of 13)

The New Year

August 16, 2018 / DB

Our summer of change, 2018, is officially over. The girls went back to school today. M begins her final year at St. P’s as an 8th grader,[1] C in 6th, L in 4th. The last time all three girls will ever be in the same school building. I think they were relatively excited to go back. M and C were up and dressed before my alarm went off, which was nice. I imagine next week I’ll be shaking them awake again.

Our commute to school is about half what it used to be, but the girls’ mental clocks were still on Carmel time apparently. At 7:25, the time we normally left the old house, they all trooped out and hopped in the car. I had to call them back in, reminding them we didn’t have to leave so early and that we still had to take pictures.

When we got to school, they all turned right as they are all in the same hallway. I said goodbye and turned left to the PTO welcome back coffee for an hour or so of socializing with parents.

Last school year got off to a weird start for me. Right when school began was when we began updating the girls’ bathroom. For six weeks I had to hang around the house most days letting people in and out. In a brand new house…nothing has changed. Today I had to get back to let an electrician in to do some work and wait for a furniture delivery. Tomorrow I’ll likely have a carpenter in the house and his work will stretch into next week. Fortunately these little projects should be done fairly soon.

How was this summer? It was certainly a momentous summer, moving into a new house. I think, though, from the girls’ perspectives it was kind of a bummer summer. Although there was a lot of excitement with buying a new house, getting lots of new furniture, etc., this whole process has dominated my time. I know we didn’t do as much cool stuff as we’ve done in past summers. We never even got around to making a summer To Do list. On top of that, we took the lake house out of the equation. There have been a few emotional moments from the girls about all the changes.

That’s the thing: as a kid you can’t appreciate how some short-term pain will make for a better future. The new house allows us a lot of new opportunities here. We can host friends a lot easier than we used to, for example. Losing the lake house means we can take more trips. I think in a few years when they look back they’ll see that this summer was a momentary lapse that set up more fun stuff down the road. But if you forced them to be honest, they would all likely curse us right now.

I mentioned in my post Monday that we went to a neighborhood gathering on Sunday. The folks across the street invited some of their favorite people from our area over to allow us all to get to know each other. It was a nice gathering. Most of the families were older than us. Two were younger. No one was right in our age range. There was only one kid L’s age, the rest were all younger. But we’ve met some families from further down the block that have older kids the girls will hopefully get to know eventually.

Our host decided to play a game of neighborhood trivia, which was a lot of fun even if we could only guess at most of the questions. We learned our neighborhood was first plotted out in the 1930s – our hosts’ home was built in 1889. We learned that way back, the property our home sits on was owned by a golf pro and he had a several holes laid out over the acres he owned. L thought that was pretty cool. We also learned that our “neighborhood” used to just go back about five or six houses beyond ours. The rest was farmland until the 1990s, when the street was extended and a larger neighborhood was built behind us. We wondered why our street was so narrow and lacked sidewalks and then suddenly got broader, added sidewalks, and the homes looked newer than the others on our street. There’s also a fellow native Kansan on our street. It’s good to know some names and faces for when folks walk or drive by.

Her first day of kindergarten there was exactly nine years ago today. ↩

She’s a Good Egg

May 23, 2018 / DB

Most of my kid posts are a little braggy. But this one is even more braggy than usual.

L wrapped up her soccer season over the weekend. They were playing a crappy team they had played earlier in the week, and this time the other team was missing so many kids that we had to loan them a couple of ours. L had a couple of really nice goals in the first half, both of which involved her beating a defender one-on-one and then ripping a shot from 10–15 feet away from the goal. These goals showed off some power we haven’t seen from her this season.

In the second half she did something that made us incredibly proud. Our team was absolutely dominating possession, even without our prodigy who had to leave at halftime to go play his fourth game of the day with his travel team.[1] The kid that is probably our third most talented player, but has no idea how to play with others, kept getting the ball, refusing to pass to anyone, then taking terrible shots. L saw him waste about five chances to pass to a teammate who had a wide-open chance and had enough. She started getting the ball in midfield, working through the defense, and then trying her hardest to set up two teammates who had not scored all year. She set up her buddy from school for his first goal of the year with a beautiful pass through the defense that ended up right on his foot so he could finish easily. Then she spent 10 minutes trying to get the littlest kid on our team, who really should have been playing down a league but only played up to be with his cousin, a shot. She worked her ass off and gave him at least seven or eight chances, but the poor kid is too small to get to the ball so he kept either helplessly watching it roll by, or not getting a good foot on it. The head coach and I were almost falling over at how many good balls she sent this kid’s way but he just wasn’t physically mature enough to get to them. Meanwhile, if kid #3 got ahold of the ball, he would take on five defenders and refuse to pass away to a wide-open teammate.

I’ve written a lot about L’s soccer exploits here over the years. I’ve never been prouder of her than I was on Saturday. She could have scored 10 or 12 goals, easily. But she worked hard on a hot, muggy day to try to give her teammates a chance to score.

Last week we got an email saying that she had been nominated for an award at school that goes to students who sacrifice in order to make other people’s lives better. This morning was the all-school assembly at which the nominees were announced and the awards given. 20 kids from the entire school made the cut. Alas, she did not win, although one of her best friends did, which was very cool. After she said she knew he would win because, “he’s always giving people hugs.” Hugs are tough to beat.

I was given a copy of her nomination after the ceremony. I don’t know who submitted it, although I’m guessing it was her teacher. In it, they wrote how L has a “wonderful, creative spirit” who is friends with everyone and always works to make sure everyone is included.

That kid does a lot to make us proud. But this week was extra cool.

Seriously… ↩

Kids and Whatnot

May 8, 2018 / DB

We are in the midst of our two busiest weeks of the spring.

Last week the family had a combined eight kickball games in four nights. We swept all eight of them, the closest game being the first of the week. L’s team, which played without five players because of injury/illness/conflicts, came from 10 down to win by one. Most of the rest of the games were comfortable, with a couple run-ruled wins in there.

Last night we had a kickball and soccer practice and tonight begin a run of five games in four nights.

M’s team is in the best shape. They are undefeated and lead their division by a game. They play the second-place team, who they beat by one run in 10 innings a few weeks back, on Wednesday. Win that and the go to the City finals for the fifth time. Lose and they will have to play a single-game playoff to determine the division winner.

L’s team has just one loss, but that was to the first-place team by 30+ runs. They play again on Thursday, but I’m not real confident we can manage a 30-run swing to force a playoff game. C’s team has a couple losses, but have mostly played against teams filled with older girls. Spring of fifth grade is often about toughening the girls up for the fall, when they will play on A teams.

I have a few good kickball stories I’m going to save for next week. We will dive into the 10-inning game M had in great detail.

L’s soccer team is undefeated as well. We made sure we got the prodigy who played for us last fall to sign up again. We figure he will always out-score opponents on his own, so as long as he doesn’t have a conflict with one of the other two teams he plays for, we’re good. They did have to play without him in one of their games last weekend and L picked up the slack, creating shots for her teammates and putting in enough of her own to ensure the win. She’s averaging 5–6 goals a game, but that number is padded by a game when she scored 10. The poor team we were playing that day just was not very good and even pulling our kids back and telling them to work on passing wasn’t enough to slow down our goal scorers.

I mentioned we had a few projects that were keeping me busy during the days. One of them involved getting a new car. We still had six or seven months left on the lease on the Suburban I had been driving for almost three years. We were ridiculously past the miles limit already, so just planned on buying it when the lease ran out.

Our salesman called me a few weeks back to check on our plans. When I told him we would probably purchase it, he said, “Come in and see me. We’ll work something out.”

Ominous words coming from a car salesman!

I went in and a couple days later ended up dropping off the Suburban and driving away in a much nicer Tahoe. I’m still not really sure I understand how this works for them, but they bought us out of our lease with zero penalties or fees. Granted, they put us in a new lease for another 39 months and have a Suburban in very good cosmetic shape with decent miles on their used car lot. But, still, seems like we got the better of the deal.

The Tahoe is much nicer than the Suburban, which is cool. Power everything, leather, etc. where the Suburban was the lowest tier of trim. We lost a seat in the process – the middle row has captain seats instead of a bench seat – but the girls like not being on top of each other. One less kid we can haul to games or practices, though. The big thing is the loss of all that cargo space Suburbans have. That was vital to our lake weekends, so we’re really going to have to rethink how we pack when we head south.

That was good, clean, unexpected fun!

S and I went to her cousin’s wedding Saturday. It was nice and fun. We were all well-behaved, so no good stories to share.

M and I were supposed to head south today for her seventh grade retreat which is always held at the CYO camp down near our lake house. There was a scheduling snafu with busses, parents were asked to transport kids, but only a few of us volunteered, thus the trip got cancelled. M’s class has had a rough few weeks; there have been some broad behavior issues and the entire grade had their school-issued laptops taken from them. When she learned their retreat had been cancelled, she sighed and said, “They all hate us…” Meaning the teachers and administrators. So dramatic. I was cool with not having to get up at 6:00 this morning and spend the day with moody teens. Plus I’m headed to the lake Thursday to take care of some projects down there.

The girls are down to 13 days of school before summer vacation. They are beginning to think ahead about what they’d like to do over break. We already have a number of camps scheduled. We’re going to join the local water park. No trips this year, or at least none that involve traveling out of state. At dinner last night we were throwing out ideas for the days when we don’t have something scheduled. It’s going to get here quick.

Big Weeks

February 12, 2018 / DB

It was a big week for L.

Last Thursday was St. P’s annual leadership day, where they invite other schools to come in and take a look at several of the leadership programs they run for the students. Last year L got to give a brief speech about her experiences in the program.[1] This year she took a big step up and got to be one of the two student hosts of the sessions. She and an eighth grader helped run the central part of the program for the visiting teachers, administrators, and students. She received a script that we worked on for about a week, so really it was just reading and being comfortable in front of crowds. Still it was another fine entry into her resumé for about eight years from now when she’s applying to all the finest colleges.[2]

M and C were also involved in leadership day in smaller roles, and all three girls got their pictures on the school’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts for their efforts. Big week for our Brand!

Yesterday was also day one of the tournament for L’s basketball team. We have no idea how the brackets were made, as there is no explanation on the league’s web page. But somehow, despite finishing in the top half of the league our first round game was against a team that finished higher than us, and then the winner had to play the third-place team, a team that beat us by 3 two weeks ago. I’ll blame this on Indiana, where you can somehow combine a blind draw with byes for the highest ranked teams.

Game one, our girls played really well. One girl, who is normally a complimentary player, must have been pissed off by something because she had like 20 steals. She was just a terror, running around grabbing the ball from anyone that got close to her. We had a comfortable lead the entire game and ended up winning by eight. L had six points although it took her about 30 shots to get those six. She’s become a bit of a chucker. If she ever learns how to shoot she’s going to be trouble.

We were supposed to have an hour off between games, but that stretched to nearly two hours as the other games were getting backed up. The game before ours, which was a fifth grade game, took literally 25 minutes to play a six-minute quarter between all the fouls, timeouts, breaks to settle down pissed off players, and arguments from coaches. At one point the game had a chance of going to overtime. Our head coach walked over and whispered to me, “If this game goes to OT, we’re forfeiting and leaving.”

Thankfully it didn’t come to that. Although perhaps that would have been a good idea.

All the energy our girls played with in game one was gone. Everyone was walking around, losing their defender, failing to help on defense, not bothering to rebound, and generally looking like we did way back in early December. We knew this team had one play, that we had figured out how to stop two weeks ago, and somehow we just let them run it over-and-over. In the final minutes of the first half we had a couple girls that literally gave up and just stood around and stared at people.

We led 2–0 and then gave up 56-straight points. Or thereabouts. I think it was 19–2 at halftime, although we were all so frustrated that my eyes weren’t working right.

At halftime we completely revamped the lineup, figuring to have any chance we needed to put our best five on the court. We also challenged the girls to score eight points while limiting the other team to none. That almost worked. We started the half on a 6–0 run, the girls were playing D, getting every rebound, and actually setting screens so we could get good shots up.

That was too big a deficit to make up, though. And by playing our best five together, we ended up subbing in another group that should not have been on the court together. To their credit, that five played a lot harder, too, but they just didn’t have the ability to keep the momentum up.

We got the lead under 10 a couple times, but ran out of steam and the other team hit several shots late to stretch it out again. I think the final was 31–18. So we won the second half! L finished with six again, although it could have been eight. Like I said, it was all a little blurry. That other team was just better than us. They knew how to play together, were great at helping on D, out-worked our girls for rebounds and loose balls, and had the best player on the court who was really good. I’m really not sure how we had a lead on them two weeks ago and only lost by nine.

So we’re done with hoops for the year. The girls all got a lot better from when we started practicing in November. No official stats but I’m pretty sure L was the leading scorer for the season. There were lots of frustrations – don’t get me started on how our girls refused to run inbounds plays correctly even though we have one for baseline, one for sideline, and we’ve practiced them every single practice for three-plus months – but they were further along than most of the other teams we played. Of course, we were in a C league. I can’t imagine what the A teams are like at this age. They probably already play like 80 games a year together. Our girls are far too goofy for that kind of commitment. Plus it would get in the way of kickball!

M had a good athletic week, too. Her volleyball team won back-to-back games to even their record for the season. The first match they won easily. The second one was a struggle and went to three games. The team they played probably should have been a B team, but our girls fought hard and pulled out the third game. That one was a bit of a grudge match for our family, as it was held at the parish around the corner where our girls all went to preschool. When we walked into the hallways, M said, “Oh! It smells just the same as it used to!” Apparently the odors in the hallway have not changed in nine years. I suggested it was the scent of urine and tears, which made some of the parents around us laugh.

And you may recall that in the fall of her second grade year she was asked to introduce Sean Covey at a regional conference as part of the same initiative at St. P’s. ↩
She now wants to go to Purdue to study engineering, then go to Stanford for law school. All while playing soccer at the international level. Which is more ambitious than I ever was, or have ever been. ↩

Wrapping Up (+ TWOD)

December 22, 2017 / DB

We are in the full-on holiday frenzy around here.

Yesterday was the girls’ final day of school of 2017. St. P’s always dismisses early on the last day before Christmas break which adds even more excitement to the day. While sitting in the parking lot at dismissal, a friend said he was taking his kids to Dairy Queen and asked if we wanted to join them. Of course my girls did! So the first act of Christmas vacation was having some ice cream.

About an hour later it was off to the airport to pick up my in-laws. They’re staying with us, so I had spent the morning getting the house ready for guests.

Right now the girls are having a major cookie and cake baking session with their grandmother and three aunts. The house smells really good! We have only done our normal weekly baking this month since we’re leaving town Monday.[1] Thus the girls are extra excited to be spending hours baking.

I had to go run a couple small errands this morning. But it was a little odd popping into the grocery story for just milk and a couple other things, rather than making a huge trip to get all the goods for a large gathering. One of S’s sisters is hosting our Christmas Eve get together, and then the family is doing a Christmas afternoon event at our house, but after we depart. Odd but nice. Our grocery store of choice was a complete madhouse when I stopped in today. I saw one accident in the parking lot. I needed to get gas but there were lines for the pumps two cars deep that spilled out into the street.

I also hit three liquor stores looking for a specific kind of beer. My favorite beer of this holiday season has been Sam Adams’ White Christmas. Apparently it’s very popular because it had been unobtainable for about a week and no more shipments are coming. I’m still drinking Nutcracker Ale, Celebration Ale, and Sam Adams’ Winter Lager. But I’m disappointed I had my last White Christmas a couple weeks ago.

Oh, and one other thing has been a part of our week…

S and I attended the sold-out War on Drugs show last night. It was, simply, the best small-mid-sized venue show I’ve ever been to. Sixteen songs stretched out over two hours and almost all were magnificent. The show was perfectly paced, as the songs just kept getting bigger and bigger, some in surprising ways. A couple of my favorites were offered up in new formats, slightly stripped down, which I loved. Both of my songs of the year, “Pain,” and “Strangest Thing,” were played. The guitar solo in “Pain” ended up being better than the one in “Strangest Thing.”

“Thinking of a Place,” which lasts over 11 minutes on the album, was stretched out over an insane 15 minutes, complete with an epic, five-minute solo in the middle section. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple people’s heads explode because they couldn’t take so much brilliance.

And “Under the Pressure” was a bit of a surprise as a highlight. I thought they played it OK in their last appearance here three years ago. But last night? HOLY FREAKING SHIT! It began with a nearly three-minute solo effort by Adam Granduciel, as he slowly built up layers of feedback-heavy riffs. Then they launched into the song, which kicked ass for about five minutes until they reached the final section of vocals, when the band built-and-built-and-built and just exploded the understood rules of physics and they raced into one, last, lengthy jam. Oh, and they had a snow machine blowing out on the crowd during this final section. Or perhaps those were just the souls of all the attendees being plucked up and thrown around because of all the pure joy in the house. I may or may not have passed out during this stretch.

From there the segued immediately into an absolutely lovely, Bob Segar-like take on “In Reverse,” which has my vote for best album-ending track ever. It was really a beautiful way to ease us down after about 105 minutes of music.

A two-song encore capped the night off really well. I must admit we snuck out a hair early, during set-closer “Eyes to the Wind,” which is one of my absolute favorite TWOD tracks. But my poor wife, who did not complain all night, had been up since before 6:00 in the morning so she could make a 7:00 meeting, saw over 30 patients during the day, was on call that night and had to sneak outside to take several calls during the show, and then had to be back at the hospital early this morning to round. She was hanging in there but I could tell as it approached midnight that she was stressing a little bit. Last thing we needed to do was get stuck in the parking garage for 30 minutes, which always happens at shows at this venue. So we eased back through the crowd during “Eyes to the Wind” and headed out the door about halfway through.

The War on Drugs is a band that is absolutely locked in and confident. They were even missing a key member – for reasons unexplained Jon Natchez was absent – but did not miss a beat. His understudy did a fine job on keyboards but Natchez’ gorgeous sax solos were missing from “Red Eyes” and “Eyes to the Wind” most notably. They were really good three years ago when I saw them the first time. Now they’re without a doubt one of the best live bands in the world. Seriously, they absolutely destroyed last night. One day my face might return to its original state after being melted so many times.

We will return home in December 30. I imagine I’ll save my trip breakdown for the following week. But I do plan on posting something for the year’s end on the 31st. Until then, though, this is likely my final post. I hope all of you have wonderful, merry Christmases. If you’re traveling, travel safe. If you’re gathering with family, hopefully those gatherings are drama-free. Mostly, enjoy the most wonderful weekend of the year.

Each week one girl picks the dessert for the week and we make it together. So we’ve made three kinds of Christmas cookies as a part of that rotation. But no big piles of cookies for Christmas day, so a couple of my regular Christmas cookies did not get made this year. ↩

Holiday Vibes

December 14, 2017 / DB

Tonight’s the night. Last school Christmas program ever for our family. After fifteen total performances between preschool and 1st–3rd grades, L will close it out this evening when she stars as Ms. Jingle, the mayor of Jingle Bell Hills.[1] She has one of the three biggest roles and has taken to it in classic L form. She had all her lines memorized before Thanksgiving weekend was over. She’s added a little bit of flair to them over the past week. Not sure if that was because of urging of her teachers or it is all on her. She really gets everything out of her lines that she can, though. She’s also frustrated because some of her classmates still don’t have all their lines down.[2] I’m sure it will all be fine tonight.

With the Christmas program coming tonight, I should probably offer an update on the state of Christmas spirit in our house. As you would expect with our girls’ ages, it has dipped significantly this year.

M rolls her eyes and mutters “Ohmygod” under her breath at things she used to go crazy for. She wants nothing to do with the traditional kids Christmas shows, although she will pay some attention to Elf and Christmas Vacation. Her gift requests are decidedly teen: expensive headphones, new shoes, new clothes. She’s repeated her crappiness from last year where she ruins where our Elf is for her sisters. I knocked that shit off early this year, and for the most part she has little interest in where he ends up each morning. Although this morning, when he was in the refrigerator door, she jumped and laughed and put a warning sign on the fridge door after her sisters had seen him.

C isn’t quite to M’s level of disinterest yet, but it’s certainly coming. She’ll sit and watch part of Christmas shows, but generally disappear to do other things. She’s been doing some Christmas crafts on her own. She has also asked for very practical gifts: she wants a new desk and some new sheets. She and L also got all excited about making gifts for each other on their day out of school Tuesday.

And L is hanging in there, but I can’t help but think it’s mostly for show and for my benefit. She and I faithfully watch a Christmas show every night, although she finds the classics like Rudolph boring and prefers to watch all the Food Network holiday baking shows.[3] She excitedly looks for Elfie each day, although she doesn’t write him cute little notes like she used to. L is the pleaser of the group, so I figure she’s always going to have Christmas spirit just because she knows it makes me happy.

We have an Advent calendar on the wall that uses a felt candy cane to mark the current day. The girls used to fight over who got to move it. Now some days it doesn’t get moved until well into the evening, and I think L has kind of taken over that duty.

And only L has requested driving around and looking at lights in the evening.

As I mentioned earlier this week our big family Christmas gift is going to Denver to spend Christmas week with family out there. The girls are CRAZY excited about that. We fly out on Christmas day, and their cousins[4] do not know that we’re coming. We bought Santa hats to wear when we surprise them at their front door. Our girls CAN NOT WAIT for that! Which, as I think about it more, means they are getting a more mature view of Christmas. They’re excited to make someone else’s day special and memorable. So I guess we’ve done something right.

I believe I called it Jingle Town in our family Christmas letter. I regret the error. ↩
Her emphasis. ↩
We had begun watching ABC’s Great American Baking Show. I just read how the show has been cancelled because of sexual harassment claims against Johnny Iuzzini. I guess it’s time for that talk with the girls. ↩
Eight the day after Christmas and five. ↩

A Day Off

December 12, 2017 / DB

A weird start to the week. I had planned on going into hermit mode for a couple days, as I had a large library book that is due Wednesday and I still had to plow through about 200 more pages of it. I tried to renew, but there’s a waiting list for it, so I endeavored to dive in and finish it up, avoiding online time as much as possible.

Then I got a call at 12:30 yesterday that threw everything out of sorts. The main water line just outside St. P’s had burst. They were closing school at 1:30 so I had to run down and get the girls earlier than normal. Apparently there’s some kind of law that you can’t have school without running water. Weren’t kids educated just fine without running water until only about 100 years ago?!?!

I got the girls home and they were just a little wound up, as you would expect. Being so close to Christmas break did not help. The initial word from school was that they expected the line to be repaired on Monday and school to resume today. But less than five minutes before the girls would go to bed last night notification came that the repairs had not begun yet, so school was cancelled for today, too. There was much rejoicing, especially from M who was supposed to have a big science test today. Even if they go back to school tomorrow – and crews are apparently working as I type – the middle schoolers are off to see a performance of A Christmas Carol tomorrow, which gives her another day to prep for the last big science test of the semester. She’s pretty fired up about it.

We gave the girls a little extra awake time last night, and I let them sleep in this morning.[1] It’s crazy cold here today, so we couldn’t go do anything outside. I figured a movie would be a good way to waste some time. We just got back from seeing Coco which was completely fantastic. We went to the fancy theater where you can order food, so the girls all got treats along with popcorn. But the best part was we had the theater to ourselves. Which makes sense for 1:00 on a Tuesday three weeks after the movie came out. It was kind of an odd experience.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first day that school has been cancelled at St. P’s since our freak snowstorm that wiped out the first day after spring break back in March of 2013. We’ve had a couple delays here-and-there, but no snow days since then. Hopefully this isn’t a sign that this winter will be filled with days off.

Oh, and I finished my book with a big push last night and this morning.

Our Christmas break is going to be a little different this year. We’re headed to Denver on Christmas day to spend a week with our family out there. So I need to cram some decent content into the next week-plus. Be looking for my breakdown of TV I’m Watching Now, which I haven’t done for awhile. A new Reader’s Notebook entry. And at least two posts revolving around my favorite music of the year.

Except for L. I wake her up at 6:50 every school day. But on weekends or days off, she somehow gets herself up at like 6:30 every time. Kind of maddening. ↩

On The Academic Tip

November 13, 2017 / DB

A couple cool things M has accomplished recently.

Earlier in the year, a big group of girls in her grade attended the induction ceremony for National Junior Honor Society. M had never mentioned a thing about it, and when I asked her, she just shrugged. I dug into the student handbook and saw her GPA last spring was 0.3 points too low to get admitted.

M worked really hard in the first quarter of this year, raised her GPA up over 3.6, and a week later came home with an invitation to join NJHS. When she handed the letter to me, she was trying to act cool about it, but you could tell she was really excited. She filled out the application, turned it in, and last week came home with her certificate recognizing her admission into the hallowed halls of that august organization. I mean, I guess it’s august. I have no idea what they do, and neither does M at this point. Not sure if there are meetings, secret handshakes, honors and privileges, etc.

A quick aside to point out that I was never in National Honor Society in high school. I was only a solid 3.3 student throughout my years, for starters. And when I was a freshman, I got in trouble for the one time in my high school years.

Our science teacher floated between our high school and the rival school across the district. Like any teacher worth their salt, she harnessed a class full of kids to do her grading for her. She’d pass out papers from the other school to us, run through the answers, and we’d grade them. Her nights were suddenly free! She was young and attractive so I approved.

Anyway, our papers always came back from the other school with good natured comments on them like, “Ray South Rules, Raytown Drools!” Well, one day we were a little wound up at our table, and I decided I would not stand for the name of our good school to be besmirched by the hooligans from the south side. On a paper I was grading, I wrote, “Q: Why is Ray South so good at basketball? A: Because they’re good at playing with their balls.” Dude, everyone around me thought it was hilarious! Especially since I wrote it on the paper in red ink. And we had to sign our names next to the final graded score, so there was no way they could get blamed for my heroic act.

You can probably see where this is headed.

It took a day or so, but there was blowback. I was sent down to the assistant principal’s office to discuss my transgression. He also happened to be the athletic director, and Ray South had been kicking our asses for years in basketball. He read what I wrote and literally laughed out loud. It was the 80s, he could do shit like that. He quickly coughed, composed himself, and issued me one day of in-school suspension. But there was a gleam in his eye, and a wry smile that let me know I had impressed him with my gumption.

When I reported for my day of in-school suspension, the teacher monitoring the morning session did a double take and said, “I never expected to see you in here.” Same thing for the teacher that came in at lunch. And then the teacher that covered the afternoon. And several of the deadbeats who spent most of their time in the ISS room. “Man, what did you do to end up here?” I thought about saying, “I stabbed someone.” But since most of these kids were headed for jail eventually, I figured they might see me as a threat rather than a badass. I remember getting through all my work for the day well before lunch and then spending the rest of the day reading Basketball Digest and Sports Illustrated. All-in-all, not a bad day.

One of my teachers, though, shook her head the next day and said, “You know you can never be in National Honor Society now, right?” I gave her a dumb look because it never occurred to me that I would want to be in NHS, let alone writing a stupid joke on someone’s science quiz would eliminate me from ever joining.

Oh well. I have a solid story and what are all those geeks who were in NHS back in the late 80s doing now? Probably being lawyers and doctors and titans of commerce and whatnot. But still, I think I came out ahead in the deal.

OK, back to M. Middle schoolers at St P’s have to do a monthly service project. For October their assignment was to get involved in a local issue. They were to research things going on in the community, find something that required government attention, and contact a local official about it. She read about homeless kids struggling to get their homework done and came up with an idea for secure spaces where these kids can do their school work. They would be small kiosks that were covered to keep the weather out, supplied with pencils and papers and good lightning, and had security cameras to keep the kids safe. After putting together all the details, she wrote a letter to the governor with her idea.

On Friday she got a letter back from the governor’s office. One of his outreach staff wrote M a letter thanking her for sending the letter, saying she had some good ideas, and how important it was for citizens to get involved in issues like this. She said the governor thought M was a “fine young Hoosier,” which caused me to laugh out loud. I’ve been here 14.5 years and folks willingly calling themselves Hoosiers still makes me laugh. I’ve been calling her a Fine Young Hoosier ever since.

Anyway, M was beaming after reading the letter. She realized on her own the governor probably didn’t see her letter or direct someone to respond on her behalf. But she still was thrilled to get something back. She carefully examined the signature at the bottom and said, “I don’t think this is a stamp. She really signed it!” which I thought was sweet.

Weekend Notes

October 17, 2017 / DB

A quick (and late) rundown on our weekend. Which had a little cray-cray in it.

Saturday was a freaking perfect day. Low 80s, breezy. One of those mid-October days that you wish you could hang onto for the next five months. So of course we spent it blowing leaves at the lake house and then hauling the boat out for the winter.

There was a wrinkle to our winter boat plans this year. The place where our boat was originally purchased, and where we’ve stored it the four winters we’ve had it, went out of business at the end of the summer. We used it not just because it was where the boat came from and because they were an authorized dealer for our brand, but because it was about the easiest major boat place to get to. Once we got it off the rickety, country roads near the lake, it was a straight shot up a county highway. Only two lanes until you hit the city, top speed limit 55. As long as I kept it straight, I was good. And things got much easier two years ago when we upped the size of our vehicle that pulled it.

But now I would have to get on the interstate for at least part of the jaunt to the boat place. I don’t know why, but hauling a trailer and a 3000 pound boat at 65–70 miles per hour stressed me out way more than driving those curving, hilly roads that have nowhere to bail out if you get into trouble. I guess it was because I don’t really know much about trailers and was concerned maybe something was wrong with either our trailer itself, or how we hook it up, that would present itself at 65 on a four-lane interstate but not at 35 on a rural, two-land road.

Everything turned out just fine. Those 10–12 minutes on I–465 were a little white-knuckley, but we made it to the shop without losing the trailer or boat or causing any accidents. She’ll sit there for six months before we get to make the trip back south for the summer of ’18.

BTW, it was in the mid–30s down near the lake this morning, so we got it out right in time.

Sunday was supposed to be L’s last soccer game of the year. The weather turned cold, blustery, and rainy that day, though, so we rescheduled it for tonight.

Our wackiness kicked in Sunday night. Or Monday morning, rather. I heard something kind of bang around that was loud enough to wake me up. Moments later I heard a car door slam and pull away. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after 2:00.

We have a Nest camera at our front door, but at night I silence the notifications so I don’t get woken by every moth that flies by. Or spider that builds a web right on the lens, which happened a couple weeks ago.[1] I picked up my phone and there were two new notifications from the camera. I swiped, watched the clips, and ran downstairs. The video showed a couple kids running up to our front door, grabbing some of our Halloween stake lights and the pumpkin L had carved the night before, and then running back to a car parked in front of the house. The banging around I heard was because the dumbass who was harvesting our lights didn’t unplug them from the extension they were on, and a large, plastic pumpkin “chased” him until the cords finally decoupled.

When I got downstairs, they were already gone. I looked around and made sure there was no damage or graffiti or other nonsense, and all appeared fine. I watched the video again. One kid had a hoodie on, but the other kid’s face was partially visible. Unfortunately the headlights from their vehicle kept me from being able to identify the make/model.

I tried to go back to bed but I was a little wound up. It was close to 4:00 before I was out again.

After I got the kids to school I checked with my neighbor, who also has a Nest cam, to see if his video showed anything. On his we could see a couple more kids walking around, that they were driving a Jeep, and that there appeared to be other pumpkins thrown in the back.[2] But the taillights blinded the night vision camera and we couldn’t grab a license number.

Since there was no damage and we were only out about $10, I didn’t file a police report. I just let our HOA know and then sent the videos over to the police in case there were other reports of theft/vandalism at the same general time.

Now what the hell were teenagers doing out at 2-something AM on a Monday morning? Because it was freaking fall break in the district we live in.

I loathe fall break. I think it’s a useless interruption in the academic calendar for schools that remain on the traditional August-May school year. Why the hell do we need two days (or more) off this time of year? It’s not like spring break, when we’ve been suffering through 2–5 months of brutal weather. And it totally screws up youth sports, as different schools being on different break schedules means you go through a three-week period where at least one kid is going to be gone.

You’d think with our kids going to Catholic schools things would be regulated, but they’re not. A few schools in the Archdiocese had their break two weeks ago. Ours is this Thursday and Friday. So while we’re not in any CYO sports right now, plenty of our friends have had to deal with reschedulings because St. Whoever is on break and none of their girls can play basketball on a given weekend.

Garbage.

I have two ideas to fix fall break:

1) As most schools give 2–3 days for fall break, let’s move those to November and give everyone the entire week of Thanksgiving off. That’s when kids need a break, and every year it seems like more families duck out a day or two early anyway.

2) Or even better, GET RID OF THE FUCKING BREAK. It’s useless. Take those added days to bump the beginning of the school year back. Our girls have been starting on a Wednesday or Thursday for several years. Push that back to the following Monday and we have one more weekend of true summer.

I think I’ve found a new cause…

No shit, I had 60 notifications the next morning. In each one you could see the spider slowly moving back-and-forth across the face of the camera and its slowly building web. ↩
My first thought was that these were all going to be placed in one person’s yard, likely a friend or rival from school. Not that I did anything like that with election signs back in the fall of 1988. ↩

Busy From the Beginning

August 15, 2017 / DB

The first full week of school is now underway. the girls were a little grumpier the last two mornings than they were on Thursday and Friday. I admit so was I.

I’d love to get into some kind of daytime routine, but we also started a bathroom remodel yesterday. It should be pretty quick – knock on wood – but it also means I have to hang around during the day to let people in, answer questions I don’t know the answers to,[1] etc. I had hoped to get back to the gym this week, maybe get out and take some pictures. No luck yesterday or so far today, but still three days left to try to get that part of the school-year routine kicked off.

Our family calendar is a complete mess. Last night we had a kickball practice, a cross country practice, and an athletics meeting. Tonight we have two kickball practices and a meeting for S. Tomorrow we have two kickball games.

Next week it even more fun: seven kickball games! We are trying to reschedule one, but that just means we’d have seven the following week. We’re trying to get C to at least one cross country practice a week, but that’s tough with all of these games.

On our initial schedules we had five nights with two kickball games, always at different schools. If we reschedule one of L’s game because of a school conflict, we will have a night when we have three games at three different locations. Joyous.

And we still haven’t added in L’s soccer schedule yet. We should get that next week, but fortunately kickball will be halfway over by then.

Whew! I keep telling myself to relax and not stress over how busy our afternoons and evenings will be, not to worry about traffic or feeding the kids in between all our drive time. Focus on the girls getting to spend time with their friends, representing their school, and having fun. I’m hopeful that will keep my blood pressure in check for the next month.

As for the game schedules our girls got, well, they could be better. We don’t have to travel to any of the farthest-flung schools like we have in the past. But M’s and C’s teams especially have very difficult schedules.

M’s team starts tomorrow against their arch rivals who have beaten them all three times they’ve played, including in last fall’s city championship game. That class hasn’t lost a regular season game against a same-age team in four seasons.[2] It could happen in game one of this season. After that they play three more games against schools that are usually pretty good.

C’s team has a brutal schedule. They play three games against two different teams from the north side’s best program. She’s in the 5th/6th grade division, so odds are at least one of those teams has sixth graders on it. The only good news is that school also tends to lose a lot of their best players to club soccer right around this age. And then C’s team also plays two other games against schools that almost always send teams to City.

Third grade is such a crap shoot we have no idea. L’s team plays a couple games against a really good school. But are their third graders any good this year? Are our third graders any good? We won’t know until we play.

Practices have been funny to watch. M’s team has been playing against the 8th graders. Before their first scrimmage, a lot of us wondered if the 7th graders might win. That was silly. The 8th graders have slaughtered M’s team all three times. So maybe that bodes well for the season, because playing against 7th graders will seem easier now.

C’s team is pretty solid, although they lost one of their better players to a broken arm.[3] They’re starting to show a much better understanding of how to play defense, which the good teams start doing in fifth grade. Now if we can just get some of these girls to kick the ball through the infield.

L’s practices have been wild. Third grade kickball is kind of a nightmare because roughly three girls out of 15 will have even half a clue how to play, no one can play defense, and the ball tends to get thrown to the wrong place a lot. The games promise a lot of 20-run half innings because neither team can get three outs on defense. I’m helping coach this team, which I may regret when we’re in the midst of our third-straight two hour game.

But all three girls are having fun, which is the most important thing.

“Where does she want the lights to go?”
“I don’t know, I better text her.” ↩
They lost two games as fifth graders to a team of sixth graders. By six total runs. Not that any of us remember. ↩
M’s team lost a girl to a stress fracture, and L’s team also lost a girl to a broken arm. None of these injuries happened playing kickball, I should note. ↩