Friday, February 27, 2009
I love Mayberry!
Headlights shined on the gigantic-redskin-head bus as it embarked over Grover's Hill, the end of its journey from the arena in Glendale. Some people emerged from the vehicles to take pictures, cheer, and wave to the passengers on the bus. Others remained in their cars and honked horns as the carrier of champions passed. The fire engine and a police vehicle escorted the bus down from the hill and into town, and all followed. The spontaneous parade continued down the main street, past the post office, the bank, Corky's, the old high school, around the Fina gas station, and back up to the high school. When the bus came to a stop, the fans formed a half-circle near the door and joined in a cheer led by one. "Where you from? St. Johns High! Who's your mascot? Redskins!" The voices filled the space of the cold winter night. The basketball team got off the bus, one by one, to cheers, hugs, and accolades. The fight song was sung. Smiles and tears, surprised faces and grateful embraces, hard-working girls and admiring spectators - these were the sights of this night. One by one the participants returned to their vehicles and their homes, a few minutes of their night gone, but a memory made forever.
Tell-tale Signs My Body is Getting Older
1. When I ate a Costco Polish sausage last week for lunch, I burped it the rest of the day. It did not taste good coming back up in vaporous form.
2. I can no longer drink a Dr. Pepper after three o'clock in the afternoon, or I will not sleep at night.
3. My shoulder hurts. My back hurts. My knee hurts. My neck hurts. . .
4. I need to have bunion surgery. Well, maybe not yet. I just looked it up online, with before and after photos, and those feet are way more misshapen than mine.
5. When I eat fast food, I regret it for the next twenty-four hours that I spend in discomfort. The bathroom must be close.
6. Staying up all night means going to bed at ten.
7. I am going to have to start eating All-Bran for breakfast.
8. Metabolism? What is that? I lost that on my twenty-fifth birthday.
9. I want to use one of those motorized carts when I go to Wal-Mart (just so I can run people down).
10. I order cottage cheese instead of fries as a side.
11. I am saving for plastic surgery.
2. I can no longer drink a Dr. Pepper after three o'clock in the afternoon, or I will not sleep at night.
3. My shoulder hurts. My back hurts. My knee hurts. My neck hurts. . .
4. I need to have bunion surgery. Well, maybe not yet. I just looked it up online, with before and after photos, and those feet are way more misshapen than mine.
5. When I eat fast food, I regret it for the next twenty-four hours that I spend in discomfort. The bathroom must be close.
6. Staying up all night means going to bed at ten.
7. I am going to have to start eating All-Bran for breakfast.
8. Metabolism? What is that? I lost that on my twenty-fifth birthday.
9. I want to use one of those motorized carts when I go to Wal-Mart (just so I can run people down).
10. I order cottage cheese instead of fries as a side.
11. I am saving for plastic surgery.
12. El Camino beans are not a good idea.
13. Ditto for uncooked broccoli.
14. Sit and Be Fit is looking like a great exercise program to follow.
15. Bedtime Activities: Sex=10% chance, Sleep=90% chance
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Ignorant Sports' Fans
I am sick of going to sporting events and hearing the fans yell at the officials. I believe people go to these competitive games and matches to cheer their teams to victory. Perhaps I am incorrect in this thinking. Maybe the real reason they go is to vent their every anger at the injustices in the world. Poverty abounds, our economy is in a near-depression, murderers and rapists commit the unimaginable daily . . . but "Call it both ways, ref!" is what some choose to use their voices to say to confront the atrocities that face us. Their loud, loud, loud voices.
I am all for disagreeing, just ask anyone who knows me, but I am not for disagreeing in ignorance, or worse, stupidity. I follow local high school and middle school sports, so I am at many games and matches. It is sickening, although somewhat amusing, to hear what people have to say.
"Holding! Holding! There was holding!" Really? On a football play? Duh! If you know football at all, there is holding on every play. EVERY PLAY! Do you really want the officials to call it all the time? C'mon now. They should, and usually will, call it only when the holding directly would impact the play.
"Foul! Three seconds! Over the back! Traveling!" and my favorite, "The foul count is off!" So, what you're telling me is this: The officials are supposed to be sitting there keeping a tally of fouls on a Post-it note to ensure that it's all even-steven? While your kid on the other end gets elbowed and begins to bleed, you want the ref. to make sure it's four to four on the fouls? Okay, idiot. By the way, there is no over the back call. Read a rule book, please.
The worst is when a fan picks and picks and picks at the officials, disagreeing with every call against his/her team and then decides to cheer for those in stripes once a call is anti-opponent. It is remarkable how quickly the refs. became good! Weren't they blind and biased just thirty seconds ago? Laser surgery and an attitude adjustment in under a minute, guaranteed!
Can you imagine if all the effort that went into screaming at the officials was transferred to cheering on the team instead, what would happen? Wow! I get goose bumps just thinking of it.
The incessant wailing at officials is getting so bad that one fan wore ear plugs to the last game. Many of us moved from our original seats to watch the game more peacefully, and - oh, the insanity!- cheer for our team.
I am not saying the officials are always right, or even 90 percent correct. I am married to one, so I know. They are human, and they will miss calls. Most of them will admit to this if you ask them. They are not, for the most part, there to hurt either team. If we didn't have them there, the contests would not be able to take place. I also know that a) your yelling will not change a call b) your yelling will not make the official start changing his/her calls and c) your yelling at an official will not help your team win.
For the sakes of all of us who are actually there to rally our teams to victory and don't want to wear ear plugs, please find some other way to release your pent-up emotions.
I am all for disagreeing, just ask anyone who knows me, but I am not for disagreeing in ignorance, or worse, stupidity. I follow local high school and middle school sports, so I am at many games and matches. It is sickening, although somewhat amusing, to hear what people have to say.
"Holding! Holding! There was holding!" Really? On a football play? Duh! If you know football at all, there is holding on every play. EVERY PLAY! Do you really want the officials to call it all the time? C'mon now. They should, and usually will, call it only when the holding directly would impact the play.
"Foul! Three seconds! Over the back! Traveling!" and my favorite, "The foul count is off!" So, what you're telling me is this: The officials are supposed to be sitting there keeping a tally of fouls on a Post-it note to ensure that it's all even-steven? While your kid on the other end gets elbowed and begins to bleed, you want the ref. to make sure it's four to four on the fouls? Okay, idiot. By the way, there is no over the back call. Read a rule book, please.
The worst is when a fan picks and picks and picks at the officials, disagreeing with every call against his/her team and then decides to cheer for those in stripes once a call is anti-opponent. It is remarkable how quickly the refs. became good! Weren't they blind and biased just thirty seconds ago? Laser surgery and an attitude adjustment in under a minute, guaranteed!
Can you imagine if all the effort that went into screaming at the officials was transferred to cheering on the team instead, what would happen? Wow! I get goose bumps just thinking of it.
The incessant wailing at officials is getting so bad that one fan wore ear plugs to the last game. Many of us moved from our original seats to watch the game more peacefully, and - oh, the insanity!- cheer for our team.
I am not saying the officials are always right, or even 90 percent correct. I am married to one, so I know. They are human, and they will miss calls. Most of them will admit to this if you ask them. They are not, for the most part, there to hurt either team. If we didn't have them there, the contests would not be able to take place. I also know that a) your yelling will not change a call b) your yelling will not make the official start changing his/her calls and c) your yelling at an official will not help your team win.
For the sakes of all of us who are actually there to rally our teams to victory and don't want to wear ear plugs, please find some other way to release your pent-up emotions.
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.
Today is a bittersweet day for me. I have been on a leave of absence from teaching this school year, and today I made that permanent. For 31 years of my life, since I was five, I went to school in August, as a student and as an educator. For fourteen years I taught seventh through ninth grade students, and for seven months I have been a mom. The latter role won out for this chapter of my life.
There is a Sarah McLachlan song, whose title escapes me now, that keeps going through my head: "I have the sense to recognize that I don't know how to let you go. I don't know how to let you go." Even though the song seems to be about losing someone you love, I identify with it in a different manner, as I lose a me that I used to be. I'm not saying I am such a completely different person, that motherhood has reduced me merely to a cookie-baking, Yukon-driving, nursing-at-a-wrestling-tournament woman (although those are all a part of me now). I am still (mostly) the same person I have been. For example, I continue to love shoes, reading, cooking, my friends, my family, and being passionate (that is my husband's nice way of saying I am a hot-head). I have changed, however. I am a more complete person. I can relate more fully to the heartaches of parents and their joy in their children as well. I have smiled more in seven months than I have in ten years. It is a wonderful thing.
It is strange, too.
In two and a half short years, I have gone from one who was single, teaching, making and spending my own money, doing what I pleased, and caring mostly about myself, to one who is married, staying at home, carefully watching the one-income finances, doing what pleases my son and husband, and caring more about two other human beings more than myself. Heck, since May, I left my job for the leave of absence (I had to vacate the classroom I'd occupied and filled for four years), moved into a new home, and had a baby. It has been an adventure, to say the least.
I wouldn't trade it for anything. I really and truly wouldn't.
That doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to this person I was. I loved her. Yet, this chapter is over, I will keep turning the pages, and what is yet to be written will one day be the ending of another era. I only hope I love this new me even more than the one to whom I bid farewell today.
I sing the Body Electric. I celebrate the me yet to come. I toast to my own reunion, when I become one with the sun. And I'll look back on Venus, I'll look back on Mars, and I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars. And in time, and in time, we will all be stars.
There is a Sarah McLachlan song, whose title escapes me now, that keeps going through my head: "I have the sense to recognize that I don't know how to let you go. I don't know how to let you go." Even though the song seems to be about losing someone you love, I identify with it in a different manner, as I lose a me that I used to be. I'm not saying I am such a completely different person, that motherhood has reduced me merely to a cookie-baking, Yukon-driving, nursing-at-a-wrestling-tournament woman (although those are all a part of me now). I am still (mostly) the same person I have been. For example, I continue to love shoes, reading, cooking, my friends, my family, and being passionate (that is my husband's nice way of saying I am a hot-head). I have changed, however. I am a more complete person. I can relate more fully to the heartaches of parents and their joy in their children as well. I have smiled more in seven months than I have in ten years. It is a wonderful thing.
It is strange, too.
In two and a half short years, I have gone from one who was single, teaching, making and spending my own money, doing what I pleased, and caring mostly about myself, to one who is married, staying at home, carefully watching the one-income finances, doing what pleases my son and husband, and caring more about two other human beings more than myself. Heck, since May, I left my job for the leave of absence (I had to vacate the classroom I'd occupied and filled for four years), moved into a new home, and had a baby. It has been an adventure, to say the least.
I wouldn't trade it for anything. I really and truly wouldn't.
That doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to this person I was. I loved her. Yet, this chapter is over, I will keep turning the pages, and what is yet to be written will one day be the ending of another era. I only hope I love this new me even more than the one to whom I bid farewell today.
I sing the Body Electric. I celebrate the me yet to come. I toast to my own reunion, when I become one with the sun. And I'll look back on Venus, I'll look back on Mars, and I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars. And in time, and in time, we will all be stars.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Fashion Faux Pas
I was at Basha's last week, loading up on a great deal on baby food for the ever-starving boy, when a woman tried to maneuver around my cart. I said nicely, "Oh, excuse me," and moved out of her path. A moment later, I moved again, not knowing she had stopped, and I accidentally hit the back of her ankle with my cart. I apologized. She slightly whimpered, sneered at me, and limped away. I didn't hit her that hard. Really, lady. As she walked away, I noticed why she pulled a drama-queen attitude and acted like I purposely ran my cart into her Achilles' tendon to ruin her Thank-you card shopping experience: she was wearing fur-lined, mid-calf, bobble-laden boots. In my experience, women who wear these feel entitled to go wherever they choose to go and do whatever they choose to do, especially in a far-below-them grocery store with an I-scoured-the-Wampum-saver-sale-shopping mom. I don't get these boots. On little or teenage girls, they are fine. They work for them, well most of them. On grown women? Nope. Sorry, ladies. They may keep your feet warm, but they are u.g.l.y. on us. That got me to thinking about age-appropriate fashion.
An audible alarm should sound when women try to enter a store with clothing that is just not for them. A silent alarm DOES sound when the salespeople in Forever 21 approach us and ask if we are shopping for our daughter, or when they simply give us the look. You know the one. Um, does she think she can fit her birthed-a-kid butt into OUR skinny jeans? Whisper whisper. Just go across the mall to Sears, where your kind are welcome and loved. I know. I've been there. It is a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. I bought some socks and left, looking for the nearest Cinnabon to drown my sorrow at being too old for some things.
It's not so bad to be older, though. I'm learning to accept and even enjoy it. I don't have to follow fashion trends. Instead, I have a license to avoid them. Things like too-tight jeans, tee-shirts with cute sayings or cartoon characters, short skirts, hooker boots, tube tops, bikinis, and anything that shows too much. Leave something to the imagination, please. Don't get me wrong - just because I'm in my late thirties, I'm not turning to muumuus and velvet jogging suits, but I am steering clear of the styles worn by those twenty, or even ten, years my junior. I had my day of being "in"; now, it is their turn. Okay, stop laughing, I know I never was really "in." After all, I grew up in the high-hair, legwarmer eighties and lived in SJ. Yellow Front and the JC Penney catalog made up our shopping mecca. Nevertheless, I am 36, and I know I should try to dress my age. Then, maybe I don't have to act it all the time. That's my rationale, and I'm sticking to it.
Furthermore, we should try to dress as our bodies dictate. I know I am short and also short-torsoed. Therefore, I don't tuck in with my belt showing. It makes me look like I've been chopped in half. Come to think of it, most women aren't flattered by this look. Some are, and they are making millions walking catwalks, posing for photo shoots, and eating celery for their three meals a day. Because we real women eat ice cream (yum!) and greasy French fries, when we tuck and belt, we roll - as in showing our rolls. Again, I know. I look in the mirror.
I'm no fashionista, trust me. I have a closet full of style-questionable items that I still hold on to and wear. Plus, I am sitting on my couch in my pajamas at five typing this post. I just think we should do our best to be proud of our ages and our bodies, thus wearing what will make us project that image: Strong, older, sexy women, who don't have to dress like they're sixteen to show it.
Just my opinion.
An audible alarm should sound when women try to enter a store with clothing that is just not for them. A silent alarm DOES sound when the salespeople in Forever 21 approach us and ask if we are shopping for our daughter, or when they simply give us the look. You know the one. Um, does she think she can fit her birthed-a-kid butt into OUR skinny jeans? Whisper whisper. Just go across the mall to Sears, where your kind are welcome and loved. I know. I've been there. It is a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. I bought some socks and left, looking for the nearest Cinnabon to drown my sorrow at being too old for some things.
It's not so bad to be older, though. I'm learning to accept and even enjoy it. I don't have to follow fashion trends. Instead, I have a license to avoid them. Things like too-tight jeans, tee-shirts with cute sayings or cartoon characters, short skirts, hooker boots, tube tops, bikinis, and anything that shows too much. Leave something to the imagination, please. Don't get me wrong - just because I'm in my late thirties, I'm not turning to muumuus and velvet jogging suits, but I am steering clear of the styles worn by those twenty, or even ten, years my junior. I had my day of being "in"; now, it is their turn. Okay, stop laughing, I know I never was really "in." After all, I grew up in the high-hair, legwarmer eighties and lived in SJ. Yellow Front and the JC Penney catalog made up our shopping mecca. Nevertheless, I am 36, and I know I should try to dress my age. Then, maybe I don't have to act it all the time. That's my rationale, and I'm sticking to it.
Furthermore, we should try to dress as our bodies dictate. I know I am short and also short-torsoed. Therefore, I don't tuck in with my belt showing. It makes me look like I've been chopped in half. Come to think of it, most women aren't flattered by this look. Some are, and they are making millions walking catwalks, posing for photo shoots, and eating celery for their three meals a day. Because we real women eat ice cream (yum!) and greasy French fries, when we tuck and belt, we roll - as in showing our rolls. Again, I know. I look in the mirror.
I'm no fashionista, trust me. I have a closet full of style-questionable items that I still hold on to and wear. Plus, I am sitting on my couch in my pajamas at five typing this post. I just think we should do our best to be proud of our ages and our bodies, thus wearing what will make us project that image: Strong, older, sexy women, who don't have to dress like they're sixteen to show it.
Just my opinion.
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