matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

the girl

Outside Lighting

Sunday 08 December 2019 | 1 Comment

K and I decided we were going to forego the usual outside decorations this year and try something new. With two trees in the front yard, there seemed to be only one thing to do: transform them into Christmas trees.

"It should be faster than putting up the icicle lighting," K said.

"Should be," I agreed.

So while K was running her first open house as a real estate agent, the kids and I set about wrapping some 344 feet of lights (8 lines of 43 feet each) around our crape myrtles.

I wasn't sure how it would turn out because of the random places we had to string a line from one branch to another, creating a strange horizontal bit in an otherwise verticle orientation.

In the end, I think it turned out fairly well.

"How long did it take?" asked K earlier this evening.

"About as long as the icicle lighting."

Maybe next year we'll do both...or neither.

Volleyball Practice

Thursday 05 December 2019 | 0 Comments

I swear, it looked better on the phone…

Rainy Saturday Chores

Saturday 23 November 2019 | 0 Comments

Signing

Tuesday 19 November 2019 | 0 Comments

The Girl joined her first club volleyball team this week. She’s with nine other girls on a team for girls aged 14 and under. There’s also a team for 13 and under. Why the 14s? I like to think it was because of some skills the coaches saw.

It’s quite a commitment for us, though. We’ll be traveling to tournaments throughout the southeast. This means the price of the season of club play (a four-figure number) gets additional augmentation with travel costs.

I bring this up not to complain but to compare it to other countries, where such clubs are subsidized through tax funding. The cost of travel might still be there, but there’s not that initial, up-front cost. “Well, you pay for it with taxes,” someone might counter. True, but I think the development of a country’s youth is a far better way to spend tax money than some of the ways we spend our tax money.

New Park

Sunday 17 November 2019 | 0 Comments

Table Rock

Sunday 03 November 2019 | 0 Comments

Halloween 2019

Thursday 31 October 2019 | 0 Comments

Halloween Preparation

Wednesday 30 October 2019 | 0 Comments

L baked cupcakes for the party we'll be going to tomorrow evening.

The Boy and I made the jack-o-lantern.

Then the kids played Go Fish, even during a bathroom break...

Free Monday

Monday 28 October 2019 | 0 Comments

Today was a teacher workday, one of three that we are able to take off without worry. Exchange days, they're called. If we've gone to meetings and such after school, we use those hours toward the time we would have ordinarily spent in school. I didn't have those hours, so I took a personal day.

E and I spent the morning working on the large tree that had fallen in the drainage ditch -- which we call a creek -- that runs behind our house. I knew that if we didn't, the first big rain storm would cause flooding.

I didn't realize how much of the tree was under brush and vines that I'm assuming it took down with itself as it fell. We cleared all that away so we could get to the tree, and we cut and removed as much as we could with just two of us.

E is of an age that he actually is starting to be helpful. I can pull on a large tangle of vines and have him cut the critical vines that are keeping everything locked and immobile. He can bring tools to me, help pull things up out of creekbeds, offer helpful commentary on the whole process.

Once we got that done and ate some lunch, we spent the afternoon at Denver Downs -- fun with hay, ropes, and corn...

Looking for a Place

Friday 25 October 2019 | 0 Comments

Everyone is looking for a place. I see it every day as a teacher of eighth-graders who try on different roles throughout the year and toy with various career goals as the months roll by. Today, we tried to help them a bit by providing a career day -- probably close to fifty professionals came in to talk to kids about what their jobs entail, what they require, how they're rewarding, how they're frustrating. A little bit of everything.

We guided our homeroom classes through three sessions, and my homeroom's second session was with a police detective. It quickly stopped being about potential jobs and transformed into a "... ever ... ?" session. Have you ever shot someone? (No, but I've pointed my gun at someone.) Do criminals ever leave notes like in movies? (No, but we've investigated some guy who was harassing females by leaving weird notes under their windshield wipers.) Have you ever been in a car chase? (Yes, but he was intoxicated and our top speed was 38 miles per hour.) Do you ever question people in those rooms with the windows that look like a mirror? (No, our interrogation room has cameras, and any officer in the building can watch the interrogation from his or her computer.) The vet and waterworks specialist didn't get a third of the questions.

The Girl is looking for her own place as well, specifically a place to improve her volleyball skills in the off-season. We as parents thought this would be fairly simple; we thought she'd get into any club she tried out for. After all, she played for her school, which went undefeated and won the final championship tournament. She'll have her pick. So why waste time trying out for more than one? We never thought about the obvious: clubs that have their regulars will choose their regulars over newcomers. And so this afternoon, I got an email:

Thank you for attending tryouts for X's 2019-20 club season. We had a record number of players trying out this year, so unfortunately we were not able to place everyone on a team. We are sorry to say that your daughter has not been selected for a X team.

I sent it to K. She texted back the obvious: "She'll be devastated." And she was. And we felt like terrible parents because we didn't do the research, didn't do the thinking. "And now all the other teams have finished tryouts -- what are we going to do?"

I was angry because I thought, "If she doesn't have the requisite skills, how is she going to get them if you don't let her on your freaking team?!"

It turned out, though, that two teams had make-up tryouts. One was at six this evening. We learned this at 5:05. So off we went.

The club owner said at the end that every girl will get some kind of offer: "If your daughter wants to play volleyball, wants to learn volleyball, we want to help." Already, I liked the team.