Post Softball Summer

Well, softball is over. Our girls got wallopped 21-2 on Friday evening, but played some respectable softball to meet the South Columbia team in the District 13 Final on Friday night. There was no question who was the finer greased softball machine, but it was great to see the girls be able to make it to the championship game. The opposing team is coached by Gary Grozier, who is a guidance counselor at Danville HS. Personally, I love the guy; I think he is a saint. He was Matt's guidance counselor through his stormy HS years and never gave up advocating for him and believing in him. He is just an incredibly positive guy who always sees the cup half full. I have a lot of respect for the guy, and even more after seeing what a job he has done coaching his girls.

But now that softball is over, there are a few things this means:

• My ice cream eating days at Hunter's are over, since I could only rationalize doing so as post game celebration or sorrow.
• Tianna no longer is banned from swimming on game days, since there are no more game days.
• We can go on vacation as a family.
• My dinner menu will consist of more than chicken fingers, soda and french fries, not to mention candy.
• My hearing may return to normal since there won't be any more softball cheer screaming.
• I can put away my baseball/softball earrings till next spring.
• I won't put quite as many miles on my car...BUT

• I will miss the joy and pleasure of hanging out with the team and team parents who are proud of their girls for playing hard and being part of a team experience.

Good Luck, South Columbia, you are a great team, and I hope you win states!

My Friend, the Phone...

Admittedly I must not remember being 11 going on 17, but it must have been sometime around then that I became somewhat connected to the phone. Here is Tianna, connected to two phones. Inevitably half the calls are for her, and I have to admit that I end up feeling like a social secretary. Now she is even asking me to ask who is calling when I holler, "Tianna, phone!"One of her friends is in Egypt for the summer and even calls from there to stay in touch.
She is still begging me for a cell phone, but I refuse to cave, at least for the foreseeable future. I spent some time this evening in the opponent's camp (Danville vs. Milton, 9/10's softball game, too much of a nail biter, but ultimately Danville prevailed after two, or was it three lightening delays?) and sat with friends from church. I asked if their daughter had a cell phone, and unfortunately the answer was yes...I have a feeling I am fighting an uphill battle. I was, however, encouraged to prevail.
On another note, I did my favorite kind of shopping today, at a thrift store, where I did purchase several brand of choice shirts for Tianna at a fraction of the cost. Aeropostle, AE, and Abercrombrie were all acquired for what I consider a reasonable cost, no more than $4 each. Now that's my kind of shopping! Not to mention the purchase was made at a great discount center (NOT thrift store, they are pretty adamant about the distinction...) Hand Up Foundation in Milton in the Ben Franklin Plaza (www.handupfoundation.org) where they support lots of great programs in the Milton area. It is also a great resource as a recycling center, everything from paper to washing machines, so be sure to check it out.
Got to rest up for more softball tomorrow. Since it is too late for Tianna to be on the phone, she is on the computer instead...Peace.

Softball WIns and Ice Cream

I'm not sure who likes ice cream more, the moms or the kids! I have to admit, I have a terrible weakness for ice cream, especially if chocolate and/or coffee flavors are involved. My friend and faithful reader Maria headed up the celebration by treating everyone, me included, to ice cream after our (wining ) game. Here, I can be seen stuffing my face with chocolate moose tracks (by the way, my C key is back working...) capped off with cappuccino crunch. Yummy. I think Maria had some kind of almond concoction.

Anyway, I have an ice cream digression. Years ago we lived in Vermont not far from a Ben and Jerry's factory store. Now that was dangerous! A pint could be had for 98 cents because there was just a little too much air whipped in. My favorite was a fudge brownie sundae with white Russian ice cream. Unfortunately they don't make that flavor anymore. And have I mentioned that I have a problem with a half cup as a serving size? I always thought the pint container was one serving. Too bad we didn't have money to buy Ben and Jerry's stock when it first went public and we lived there...Of course that didn't impress our twenty something sons (Matt in particular) who can't believe that we lived so close to Stowe and weren't on the mountain all the time, and that the band Phish made their debut right around the year of his birth in Burlington coffee shops. I patiently explained that during those years his dad was in medical school and we were living on less than a shoestring (seems to me there was a problem with the price of oil then, too, which prompted us to keep our thermostat set at 60 degrees) and besides, I was either pregnant or nursing a baby much of that time, and a prego swooshing down the slopes wasn't an option.

Back to softball.

I was having some more deja vu tonight. Most of it involves Nicole, but tonight it was softball.

Years ago we played at the same field with Matt. Tonight we played the same team the girls had played last week and lost to, Berwick. It was quite a game...

The winning pitcher, Blair, (her mom Joyce was pictured with Tianna a couple of days ago) is pictured above with Tianna.

But back to the deja vu thing...I used to get really worked up watching these games as if they were more than games. Sure it is great to win, but it doesn't always work out that way. I remember one game Matt played in his Senior Year in HS. It was the semi final game of the PIAA Championships. They were ahead, and they ended up losing. Parents were bawling left,right and center. So was I, but I was crying for a different reason. I was crying because he had had the chance to play and I had been granted the opportunity to watch. You see, he hadn't been home the beginning of his senior year; he was at therapeutic wilderness aftercare program. Marijuana had seduced him and he had been away, and even though his team mates he had won a state championship with as a nine year old were going to play ball together their senior year, I didn't think I was ever going to get to see him play ball again. And when I did, it didn't matter if they won or lost.

But I have to admit, I did want these girls to win. So it is great to see another Pride child wear an all star jersey.

I think Berwick really expected to win. But our girls had confidence from their win on Wednesday...and they played with their heads up. I have to say, I was disappointed in a couple of the tactics employed by the Berwick coaches. Come on, these people are adults and supposed to be leaders and role models. It seems to me that they modeled intimidation and confidence shaking. First there was a discussion about the fact that the pitcher had to have both feet on the rubber (no, that is ASA, not Little League, but there was enough uncertainty about it that it was a bit rattling to our pitcher). Then, when our starting pitcher was trying to overcome that, and threw a string of walks, the third base coach clearly and loudly announced the count to the batter. "That was eight...that was nine..." Come on. It got a couple of our parents wanting to count back at him when she threw strikes, but I gently pointed out that was stooping to their level. Apparently after their victory the other night, they also smeared some of our car windows that had been decorated with our girl's names. Is this eye for eye behavior? I like the grace version better...

So after two innings we were down 4-3. Got through the next two innings leaving them with the bases loaded and no further scoring, and then in the fifth our girls exploded and scored seven runs. Berwick simply fell apart. Thank God we didn't have a third base coach issuing running commentary...and the most beautiful thing I heard was the coach reminding the girls to be humble in victory. Don't take it for granted...they played a good game...but it could have gone the other way.

The girls will play again Friday against a powerhouse team. They are definitely the underdogs, but they have a healthy determination...and desire to go eat more ice cream!

And Maria, thanks again for the ice cream; it was delicious!

So, here I sit at Dunkin Donuts at 10:55 pm Monday to stay connected. It was bad enough I couldn't blog yesterday, as we were travelling home (an unusually uneventful day of air travel, thankfully...) and couldn't blog when I got home because our Internet wasn't working. And obviously still isn't working, or I wouldn't be sitting here at DD this late at night. What is working in my favor is I am still on Mountain Time...I guess I must be hooked on this blogging business.

So first, before I even label the photos, let me apologize to my dear friend Maria, one of my faithful readers. It was actually Maria who had the conversation with Erin, not Gwen, so Gwen, get reading, and Maria, I am sorry :)

The first two photos are from Saturday in Utah. The first shows real spring water. I decided that I was not to be outdone in the hiking department by my triathletic crazy husband, who hiked to the summit of the mountain at snowbird and took the tram down (I admit, a bit backwards) but since he did it, I decided I was going to do do it too. So off I went on my hike UP. I only had my one bottle of water and it was pretty warm and did I mention UP? over 3,000 vertical feet to just over 11,000. Did I mention altitude woozies? Well, I had them. And I got thirsty about half way up too, and had had my one bottle of water. So what was I supposed to do? Well, I knew better, but I filled the bottle with "fresh" spring water from the runoff of melting snow. If I don't get sick in the next couple of days, I made it through...I will say, it was COLD!

Then, there was plenty of snow still on the face of the mountain. So much so that some really crazy people lift up and then hike to the patches and are still skiing and riding. If Matt were there, he would be one of them. So that is my foot in the snow. I just couldn't resist!

In the meantime, Tianna missed our trip and all the opportunities it would have provided for her to fight with her sister so she could stay home and play softball. They lost their first game, but won tonight! I even pulled out ball (ten years ago they were baseball mitts, now they have morphed to softball mits) earrings for good luck. And tonight it worked they won twenty something to single digits, and the photo is Tianna with her friend Blair's mom after the game.

So what did I do today?

Before the game I cleaned one of the bathrooms in desperate need of cleaning. There were even several splatters of nail polish, pink and shimmery lavender on the tile. Then Tianna went through her clothes informing me that she needed to wear her things at least five times each. The next sentence was a request to go school shopping to Hollister and AE since she is getting older now. I guess Old Navy is chopped liver. Well, I said you will need to wear things a whole lot more than five times, honey if you expect me to shop at Hollister or AE. Doctor's salary or not (Don't get me started on that topic, anyway) I prefer to shop at the Salvation Army, where in fact, I can find lots of H and AE. So I got two whole rooms cleaned! Woo hoo! You absolutely SHOULD NOT see the rest of the house. Maybe by September...

OK, it is way late, even for Mountain time!