Day 2 in Orlando didn’t go quite as well as day 1. We have two more days, but the girls have a bit of a hole to dig about out of tomorrow. The girls are capable of it. It’s really just more of a question of will, perhaps. Or maybe there’s more going on.
Today was a mixed bag for the girls in their first days at nationals. They lost two and won one, but they should really be able to compete with a lot of the teams here. They didn’t get their butts kicked: instead, they got outplayed a little and kicked their own butts with silly errors that gave their opponents too many free gifts.
The Girl got some really big hits, and she got at least one monster hit that shot like a bullet to the back corner, the sound of the contact still echoing when the ball hit the court. It was a great hit.
The Boy discovered the joys of riding up an escalator and back down and back up and back down and back up and back down.
Yesterday was tough; today was a little better. At least they won a set. “Look at this way,” said a friend, “it can only get better.”
Losing builds character, but I think we’ve built enough character this week.
The Boy — 10 years old today. A decade of the Boy. Double digits.
In the morning, we had his breakfast of choice: bacon, eggs, and cinnamon rolls. Healthy choices. In the evening, dinner too was his choice: crab legs and shrimp.
After cheese cake and ice cream, he and I went to the local guitar store to spend all his present money in one shot:
A third guitar — a bass.
The Girl and I spent the afternoon at a tournament only half an hour away — quite a change.
She’d probably rather not talk about that, though. Let’s just say it didn’t go as well as the team was hoping.
Happy Mess Day
Second Time Around
Third Party
Celebration Day
Birthday
Fifth Birthday Party
Sports and Ice Cream
Seventh Birthday
Day 60: Eighth Birthday
Nine
The Boy and I went on a one-of-a-kind Scouting adventure this weekend: we spent the evening rambling around an enormous cave system, then spent the night in said cave.
We all met in the parking lot around six, gear in hand, all excited, with the adults (well, speaking for myself anyway) a little anxious about how all the details might work out.
Our first stop — our camp location. It was an enormous room, with a relatively high ceiling and a length probably five times or more its width.
After we dropped off our belongings, it was time to explore. We had what’s called a wild tour, which mean we got to go to places most tourists don’t see and crawl through passages and openings that left us covered in clay and dirt.
Finally, it was bedtime. It was then that the fun began: the echoing snores; the footfalls that reverberated throughout the cave as people plodded to the bathroom; and a whole host of mysterious noises.
We made it out at a little past seven in the morning — as instructed — and after breakfast, headed home.
The Girl was in Knoxville, playing volleyball.
The Boy’s soccer team won 2-1 with a literal last-minute goal.
The Girl’s volleyball team won all three of their games in straight sets.
A good day in sports for our family.
We spent the weekend in Atlanta — it was, in short, an emotional roller coaster for the girls on L’s volleyball team.
The first day was excruciatingly tough. They lost their first game in straight sets, but it was even more discouraging because they were winning set 2 by 9 (14-5) before ending up losing 19-25. That means the opponents outscored them 20-5 at that point.
The second game didn’t start any better: they lost the first set 13-25. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a tough loss. It prepared them mentally for the loss in the second set 14-25.
By then, they were wasted — done. The third game went down just like the second game: 12-25 and 14-25.
Today, we parents all wondered how things would pan out. I was worried that they might not win a set the whole weekend. The teams at Atlanta were just much stronger, as a whole, than what they were used to. In addition, they were broken mentally. How would it go?
The first game started out just as we feared: they held it together but at 19-19, it seemed like they were falling apart. They pulled it back together, though, and took it into extra points, but they ended up losing 26-24. So close. Set two — would it continue? At one point, they were down 10-16, and I thought, “Well, there’s another one. And if they lose this set, I’m afraid the day is done.” But they kept fighting and ended up taking the set 25-22. They cheered like they’d won a medal.
In the third set, they were tied at 14 and L made a huge hit to put them within one point of winning their first game. But it wasn’t to be: the opponents tied it up. The next play, L made another monster kill and they had another game point. Again, they lost the next point. It kept going like this, but the finally managed to convert a set point, winning 21-19. It was as if they’d won gold in the Olympics.
The final game of the day followed the same pattern. They lost the first set 20-25 but tied it the second set after almost letting a 23-19 lead slip through their fingers: they won 25-24. And finally, in the third set, they dominated: 15-6.
We’re in Atlanta currently, and I’m not sure I can post from here, so this is pre-posting to keep up a meaningless streak: 797 days at this point.
The girls spent the day in Tennessee playing volleyball — well, one playing, one watching.
The boys woke to the promised dusting of snow,
and ended the day with a dinner of chili, corn chips, and ice cream.
“That was a pretty good day,” the Boy concluded.
We had an online meeting tonight with a company that helps student-athletes navigate the challenge of getting an academic scholarship. It’s something that I have absolutely no firsthand knowledge and little to no general knowledge about. The question is, given the cost of the service (it’s not cheap by any stretch), just how much will this provide us in the long run. Its cost would certainly be justified if we ended up with major savings to L’s college costs through a scholarship to play volleyball. Yet if we just get nothing for it — no real offer, no real scholarship, no real hope — then it was obviously money poorly spent.
We had a teacher workday today, and the day concluded with a presentation from a therapist about trauma and its effects on learning. It basically boiled down to, “Don’t be a dick and compound these at-risk kids’ issues by taking everything personally and letting that trigger you into a power struggle that damages the relationship.” That’s laudable, and certainly a very basic best practice for classroom management, but it got me thinking about how much we never know about our students in a given moment: what taught a kid to react this way to this stimulus, what’s going on in the kid’s head at the moment, how we’re contributing to it, what other social forces, unseen and unknown, are contributing at that moment due to peer pressure and the idea of lost face — the whole miasmic mess we find ourselves in when an at-risk student is in full panic mode. Not an excuse for disregarding the processes we went over today. Far from it — a full admission to their basic necessity. Yet it still leaves me feeling a bit like Sisyphus.
One of our final renovations on our house will begin tomorrow: the guest bathroom will get a complete makeover.
Heaven knows it needs it. In a lot of ways, it was always the room most in need of renovation. Ugly subway tiles on the counter, some god-awful trim around the sink, old toilet — it was all awful.
Was?! It is awful. It has been awful for years. And tomorrow, we start renovating it all. Well, we’re not doing anything — we’re hiring our Polish friend who’s done so much already in our home.
This last unknown is finally known: when will we ever get that bathroom done…
I went to a volleyball game for our school team tonight — in part to take pictures, in part because I have to attend a given number of school events, but mainly because several of my sweet new students play on the volleyball team. It was a tough match against Mauldin, the middle school L would have attended if she hadn’t gone to a charter school. Our girls were out in front at the beginning, but soon fell behind. And then fell further behind. And then lost 10-25. The second set looked better, but they still went down 19-25. The third set was much like the first: 11-25.
I still haven’t attended one of L’s high school games, so all my associations with school volleyball are with last year’s perfect season: not a single set lost. I sat watching and thinking: L’s team from last year would beat Mauldin like Mauldin beat Hughes tonight. And versus Hughes? It would be brutal.
It was a good reminder of how much our L has improved.
The Girl finished her summer volleyball season tonight by winning the grass championship for her age group. Her partner was a young lady she met while playing club ball this summer and with whom she immediately bonded. Birds of a feather and all that.
She was also my student last year, which made for some amusing situations.
“What are you doing, M?” I might ask when the team was taking a break between games.
“Studying for your test, Mr. Scott.”
When Papa was in his late thirties or early forties (I can’t really remember), we had a family membership at the local YMCA, and he liked to play basketball. He didn’t like playing with men his age — too slow. He played with the twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds. It was hard and aggressive, and while I can’t really remember how good Papa was at basketball, I do remember how tenacious he was, how he never gave up.
One time he was breaking for the basket, forcing his way through a couple of defenders, when he leaped, shot, landed on his ankle at an angle, and fell in agony with a snap that everyone heard.
As Papa lay there on the floor, rolling about in agony, one of the other players leaned into the group huddled about him and said, “If it’s any consolation to you, sir, you made the basket.”
Tonight, L made a block that won the point but resulted in an ankle injury. A young lady on her team told her, “But L, you won the point.”