We're Number Two

We are number two. Woohoo!

We seem to be saying this quite a bit lately. (And I don’t mean that in a potty mouth way. I feel I have to clarify for those people who still think like a 12-year-old boy. In this case number two means second place. That is all. Bunch of 12-year-olds.) Mandy’s soccer team started off the fall season coming in second in their league. Joe’s basketball team just earned second place in their league. Mandy’s club volleyball team has come in second in two of their tournaments. And just recently the school basketball team that both kids played on came in second in their division.

So we have been number two quite a bit this year. I suppose some people would be bothered by not being first, but we actually don’t mind. I know, I know, Mandy’s friend Megan would say that second place is just the first loser. (She doesn’t take after her father at all. Ha.)

But we like second place. True, there is somebody better than you, but at least you are not last. For example, Joe’s basketball team started the season 1 and 4. It was no fun to be on the bottom and lose all those games. But the boys battled back and worked their way into the second place spot in their 6^th grade division of Spirit basketball. The last game of the season they beat a team by more than 20 points; this same team beat them by four points in the beginning of the season.

Mandy’s club volleyball team played in two elite Gold tournaments and didn’t win a match. However, they played in two other tournaments and came in second. The last tournament they played in, they won the consolation round. Mandy played fantastic. She only missed one serve the whole day and had tons of great hits. But, well, I have a lot of issues. (Although I don’t have any issues with any specific players.) I am keeping my mouth shut on this one. I will say, however, I am confused why the team takes out its two best passers when they get to the back row just because they are middle hitters. But I don’t evidently understand volleyball. Sooooo, moving on.

We were disappointed that Mandy’s fall soccer team came in second in the Spirit league for the 13-15 year olds. We sure thought they had first place locked up. But that is the way sports go. Oh well. Spring soccer starts in a week or two and we are returning with a lot of the same players. Should be another awesome season. I just hope Mandy doesn’t get any yellow cards. She has spent her basketball season perfecting her shoulder shove, knocking other players to the ground. I will stay on the sideline with my mouth shut and my fingers crossed. If it really gets bad, I’ll just watch from my car. I’m good at that. I spent most of two seasons watching from my car when they tried her as goalie. Mandy is NOT a goalie. Yikes.

I must say that we were pretty thrilled that the kids’ school basketball team came in second in their division during the recent school tournament. It is a NELHS tournament, hosted by the WELS Lutheran high school in Waco. A bunch of schools in Nebraska, and one from Kansas, play in either the A pool or the B pool in a two-day tournament.

The bigger schools have more than one team in the tournament. For example, one team might contain their eighth graders, another team has their seventh graders, and another team might have fifth and sixth graders. Their bigger teams usually play in the A pool. Their smaller teams play in the B pool, with the little schools, like our school.

The smaller schools generally only have enough players for one team. For example, our team had nine players, ranging from third grade through eighth grade. Mandy was our eighth grader. Plus we had three sixth grade boys and the rest of the team was made up of third and fifth graders. Our sixth grade boys are fairly decent basketball players, but we really were blessed with Mandy’s height under the basket to help get those rebounds and to attempt to “post up.” (The entire season Rick, the assistant coach, kept yelling at Mandy to “post up.” She finally yelled back at him during a game to quit yelling that because she doesn’t even know what that means. I’m fairly sure she never did figure out what that meant. Don’t ask me. I don’t know either.)

I should mention that earlier this year our school won the NELHS volleyball tournament in the B division. However, that was because we had our ace in the hole, Miss Club Volleyball Gold team middle hitter. Mandy was doing her spot serving and had a few plays at the net. She didn’t do any hitting, probably because no one else on the team knew how to set the ball. But that’s OK.

Being good at volleyball is one thing. Being good at basketball is an entirely different thing. Being able to jump and being tall is a good thing for both sports. But volleyball is not much of a contact sport. In basketball you have to be willing to box out and sometimes get other people’s sweat on you. This is not something Mandy does well. She often comes to the bench saying “Ewwwww, she dripped on me.” Plus, you have to be willing to get in there and “throw some ‘bows.” This is something that Mandy excels at. We were not aware of this until just this year. I guess all those seasons of pushing and shoving on the soccer field are coming in handy.

Mandy’s ability to push and shove were some of the highlights of the tournament for me. She always wanted to go up against the biggest or tallest player on the other team. She was always backing her butt into them, moving them out of the way so one of our boys could dribble in and take a shot. She also liked to fight for the rebounds. It was hilarious when she was the tallest one out there and she would come down from the basket with the ball, and then just hold it above her head, well out of the reach of everyone else on the court. That was fantastic. You go Big Red.

She did get a little rough, on occasion. For example, during two games she had to sit out a good portion of the third quarter because she had four fouls. Sometimes she couldn’t help but do her volleyball moves. She would try to swat the ball out of the other player’s hands, bringing her hand down in a volleyball hit. Most of the time this resulted in a foul. And one time she used her soccer shove to keep another player from dribbling in to make a layup. Unfortunately she used it on a little girl. When Big Red and the little girl made impact, the little girl ended up on the floor, crying. This was not good. Mandy ended up on the bench with tears in her own eyes. But when Mandy came back in, she ran over to the other bench first, hugged the girl, and told her she was sooooo sorry.

Mandy was quite a character. During most of her games she was cheering and joking on the court. She would always come out screaming at the beginning of the games, and joked with her opponent before the jump ball. A few of the refs got a kick out of the way she would ask what basket she was supposed to shoot at whenever the second half started. She didn’t want a repeat of an early wrong basket episode down in Plymouth. Let’s just say it is a good thing she is not an ace shot.

But while Mandy enjoyed “performing” out on the court, Joe was Mr. Slow and Steady wins the race. He didn’t run until he puked, which is fantastic. He used his keen football “catlike” skills under the basket to seal us a ton of rebounds. He is an awesome rebounder. It’s something he excels at on both of his basketball teams. And he keeps a cool head under the basket, and knows how to throw out his elbows and pivot to ward off the other team, until he can pass the ball to the point guard and jog back down the court.

I’m super proud of Joe. He doesn’t like to shoot the ball, but he forced himself to take some shots, sometimes dribbling into the basket to make them. He got fouled quite a bit and ended up shooting a lot of free throws. Unfortunately this is something he does not excel at. Oh well, there’s always next year for that. He also ended up on the floor quite a bit. The day after the tournament his knees were one solid black and blue bruise. He even wore a hole through his shorts getting “court burn” on one knee. Yikes. He still has the giant scab from that one.

And of course it was mild mannered Joe that caused the biggest drama for our team. At the final championship match, Joe tripped and caught the other guy’s knee with his nose. He laid on the court sobbing, and yelling that it hurts, it hurts. And yet I didn’t run out there. I stayed in my seat. He wasn’t dead, and I am only allowed to come out on the court over Joe’s dead body. (Because it is a fate worse than death for your mom to run out on the court. Once you’re dead, you are evidently beyond caring.) Rick did run over to him, which is OK because Rick is one of the coaches. Rick said he was afraid to pull back Joe’s hands, afraid he would see tons of blood, a smashed nose and broken teeth. But, it was just a bloody nose. We don’t think he broke his nose. It wasn’t crooked, although he said he felt it crack when it happened. Well, chicks dig sports scars, at least that’s what Coach Reed always says.

So the tournament overall was pretty exciting. We were hoping to win a couple games -- at least more than one game. We were expecting to finish somewhere in the middle, probably in the lower half. Let’s just say we weren’t getting our hopes up.

We played three games the first day. We won the first game against Plymouth. Then we played the second Good Shepherd team from Omaha. We didn’t think we would win; the game was pretty close. But somehow we finished the game with a one-point lead. Poor little Michael Hemphill. I think Mandy hacked him under the basket on several occasions. But yet he hugged her after the game, so it must not have been too painful. The third game of the day we knew we couldn’t win. Waco beat us by about 15 or 16 points earlier in the season, and we were expecting they would really kill us, considering it was our third day of the game and we really only had five or six kids that would play. Waco beat us by about 15 again. But we figure we were lucky. At least they didn’t beat us about 70-something to 4, like they did another team earlier in the season. Painful.

The next day I think we started as the third cede. We had to play Mt. Olive from Overland Park, KS. We looked terrible. They were ahead by 12 points in the third quarter and Mandy had four fouls. Things were dismal. Then somehow it turned around. Somehow we got a few steals and lay ups and started to catch up. Soon we were within a few points and it was close to the end of the fourth quarter. Then Joe put in a shot that put us up by one point. There were thirty seconds left and we had the ball. Joe and Braden just kept possession of the ball and passed it back and forth. Before the other team could steal or foul, the game was over and we won. We couldn’t believe it. And Mandy didn’t foul out. Miracles never cease. There was a thunderous amount of screaming and jumping and hollering. But enough about the moms, the kids were pretty happy too.

We played the second cede next, a Central Lutheran team from the Norfolk area. We didn’t think we could win, but we took the lead and kept it the whole game. In fact, we pressed the other team. It was incredible. Somehow we were going to the championship game. Of course it was against Waco again. Of course we knew we couldn’t win. But at least we knew we were getting a trophy. It was such an incredible accomplishment that it didn’t matter.

So we played Waco – and we got killed. We stayed within one point the first quarter. In fact we were ahead by a point every once and a while. We made Waco’s Coach Stern so concerned he had to actually take his jacket off. But then we lost momentum. I’m pretty sure our five starters were completely out of gas. Then Joe got injured and we kind of just folded. Mandy went the majority of the game without fouling. That was miraculous. However she had a big foul late in the game and I overheard her ask her dad if she could start using her fouls now. I noticed soon after she sat on the bench and the third graders went in. Evidently Rick wasn’t taking any chances.

Sure we got beat in the championship game, but the tournament overall was fantastic. Two trophies in one year. Wow. I think that is unheard of in all the years my kids have been at the school. Mandy and Joe are pretty proud they were able to earn two trophies for St. Marks. (Just don’t be expecting any trophies for track.) True, the second trophy is a lot smaller than the first. But it’s still exciting.

Yep, we’re excited about coming in second. It’s not a bad place to be. We’ve seen last place before. It is a bad place to be.

This weekend will be full of more sports. Joe has a MIT basketball tournament with his Spirit basketball team. Mandy is filling in as a sub for a Magic volleyball 17-year-old team on Sunday because it is short a couple players. Two more chances to come in number two? Who knows? One thing is for sure. Silver is our color.

                                      Our team intro at NELHS championship game

Wax On, Wax Off

If I am ever feeling a desire to count my blessings, I can always find an abundant list after I visit my Grandma’s apartment house.

I’m not saying everyone in the building that my Grandma owns is financially challenged – some are just starting out. But somehow the cops show up about 50-75% of the times Rick and I come to clean. So I think I’m safe to say that several of the residents are severely legally challenged.

If you do the math, that’s a lot of uniformed visits -- especially when you consider we clean/mow the grounds twice a month, and clean out the occasional apartment once every couple of months.

Rick and I take care of the building for my 90-year-old grandmother who has alzheimers. We take care of the hallways and laundry, mow, collect the laundry quarters, clean apartments that are vacated, and do general maintenance around the place. We fortunately don’t have to collect rent or find new tenants. Grandma has a manager that takes care of the money matters. We just do the grunt work, literally.

I got a pretty good idea of what we were in for when we were cleaning our second apartment a year or two ago. I asked Rick why the apartment door didn’t fit and had so much foam stripping around the edging. “Um, yeah,” he said, “that would be because the cops had to kick in the door so many times on the last tenant.” I guess the couple that lived there had domestic abuse issues that involved several 911 calls. So it’s that kind of neighborhood.

The apartment house is a real challenge. The family is in the process of selling the building, so along with keeping it clean and maintained, we need to watch our costs because we don’t want to sink a bunch of money into a building that they will hopefully soon be selling. But they’ve been selling it for quite a while. There’s not a huge market for a six-plex apartment in one of the lower-rent areas in Lincoln -- especially one that has such an interesting range of tenants.

I am not supposed to go to the apartment house by myself. One of the tenants is on the sex offenders list, so Rick always comes along when I clean the hallways and apartments. He likes to tinker around with mowing, raking, branch trimming, light bulb replacement, and any other random thing that someone could spend countless hours working on. Before we can leave, there’s always one more thing he has to do. Ugh. Good thing I’ve got solitaire on my phone. And just so you know, looks do not kill. In fact, Rick is pretty good at being totally oblivious to them.

Besides the sex offender (the one tenant we know will never leave because he will have a devil of a time find another place to live), we know pretty much everybody who lives in the place. We are relieved that one of the tenants has moved out, the one who would steal electricity by running an extension cord from his apartment into the laundry room. Yes, we are well aware of why a tenant might want to camouflage their electricity consumption. That is why we are glad they are gone.

We are currently cleaning out the apartment of one of his neighbor/friends who had a gang insignia scribbled on the woodwork right outside his apartment door. We aren’t sure if the move was caused by the graffiti, but it’s good riddance. Unfortunately magic eraser doesn’t seem to do the trick. It may require the use of the electric sander. Oh shucks, Rick might have to break out his power tools.

Actually this apartment is the fourth apartment we’ve had to clean in the last four months. The manager fills the apartments about as fast as we clean them. But oh boy, have we had some doozies. There is nothing more yucky than cleaning up after other people -- especially people who don’t plan on getting their deposit back.

Rick is getting to be an expert at repairing large holes in the drywall and I purchase my plastic gloves in bulk. If you don’t have to actually touch it with your bare skin and if you can kind of remove your thoughts from what you are cleaning, you can clean up about anything. Then you just throw those clothes away when you get home.

And we’ve cleaned up about everything. I won’t go into the list, because the list is long and gross. If I was to try to decide who was the worst renter we’ve cleaned up after, I think two renters might tie for the worst. One guy never cleaned. Never. And I’m certain he didn’t own a vacuum. There was black mold all over the ceiling of the bathroom, not to mention the black furry stuff growing in the shower. He liked rice (which we had to vacuum out of every drawer and cabinet), beans (which I had to scrape off the walls of his bedroom, really) and he liked fish. Not the nice filets you buy in the frozen department. He liked to clean his own fish. And the scales were everywhere: on the walls and the ceiling and the cabinets and the drawers. And fish scales do not come up easily. Yikes. Plus, he enjoyed his knives. He liked to stick them into the cabinet doors and the walls. The holes were lovely. They matched all the lovely holes he liked to punch in the doors in the apartment. I think we were able to patch two of the doors; most of the other doors we had to have a handyman cut to fit and stain to match the apartment. And he seemed like such a polite man. Yep, just lovely.

But it ties with a young woman who left her basement apartment abandoned. We weren’t able to get inside for a month after the electricity had been turned off. When the electricity goes off, bad things happen. Especially when you leave food in the fridge and you leave the toilet plugged up for a month. Needless to say, it was very, very bad. Plus, Rick had to repair a large hole in the wall in the kitchen that was just about the right size for someone to have been thrown into, about shoulder high. And if that wasn’t enough, she obviously had a dog. She left the dog’s shampoo under the bathroom sink and sprinkles of his food in the hall closet. Just delightful, especially for a pet-free apartment.

The new manager told Rick that this last apartment – the one we are cleaning now -- is going to be a hard one to get ready. Rick checked it out and said, “na, we’ve had much worse.” The guy left the place full of broken furniture and mattresses, old food in the fridge, and an incredible patchwork of stains in the carpet. It took the good part of an afternoon to take out all the furniture for three guys. But the beauty of the neighborhood is that you just leave the furniture out by the dumpster and it will be gone in 30 minutes. Sometimes it’s gone before you can make your “Free” sign to put on it. Fantastic.

I know, I know, I paint such a pretty picture of apartment ownership. But we do have parts of our caretaking that we enjoy.

There is always, ALWAYS something going on there. Like I said, the cops show up about 50-75% of the time we are there. Sometimes they are simply serving someone some papers. One time they were bringing home a little girl who lived with her dad and was out wondering the streets alone. I know, nice. One time I was cleaning the basement apartment and got a front row seat for an altercation. I was actually cleaning the front basement window blinds when a police car comes screaming up the street with the blue lights blazing. They pull up on the curb directly in front of me and go running into the house next door. I could almost hear “Bad boys, bad boys” booming over the air waves. I stood there for a minute wondering what was going on, and then decide I probably shouldn’t be standing by the window, just in case any shooting will be taking place. Eventually they bring somebody out and put them in the back seat. Cool. Another time Rick and I were cleaning the hallways when we realized we might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A girl and her family were moving her things out of one of the apartments. Apparently her boyfriend and his mother were not ready to move out just yet. It got a little intense and we quickly wrapped things up and got out of there before any shooting or fighting could begin. It’s just a laugh a minute.

Actually there are tenants that we really enjoy. There is a pair of Iraqi gentlemen who are SO meek and SO nice. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of them when they first moved in. I was vacuuming in the hallway when one of the guys opened his door and started visiting with me. He asked me if I was there by myself. Whoa. Just whoa. I quickly told him that my large husband was just right outside the front door, mowing. I later realized that he was asking this because he was looking out for me. Rick has fixed a few things for them, and they invite him in to eat supper with them. They bring him a water bottle when he is out mowing in the summer. They are so nice. They told Rick that they moved to the United States to escape the jihad back home. We hope things work out for them. We always offer them first dibs to any furniture left in the apartments because they have been living without almost anything and sleeping on the floor. Super nice guys.

They make me laugh too. Apparently the sex offender and the gang member had an altercation in the hallway outside of the Iraqis’ door. The Iraqi gentlemen called the police and held their phone up to the crack in the door to let the 911 operator hear what was happening because they don’t speak English fluently. They then called the manager and said that someone had made a hole in the hallway wall that we might want to patch. The next time Rick and I went to the apartment, I checked the halls as I was vacuuming and didn’t see anything major, until, of course, I got to the very bottom of the stairs. A little hole, HA! There was a hole in the wall that reached from my ankles to above my shoulder. Someone evidently got thrown through the wall into the space under the stairs. And someone thought this tiny area under the stairs looked like a good place to sleep. So they moved in a blanket and a jacket and some other random items. It almost looked homey, as if you might want to curl up and take a nap. You just have to be sure you can sleep with one eye open.

Yep, you just don’t know what will happen next around that place. There is always something happening.

But, like I said, it makes me pause and count my blessings. First of all, I am grateful that Rick and I are able to house and feed our family. I am glad we have a yard for kids to play in with their dog. We are glad that we have never had a child returned to us after wandering alone in the street.

It makes me grateful for the invention of SOS pads and magic erasers. I am glad that Clorox bleach comes in big gallon jugs.

I am also grateful for the solid biceps I am building up from all the cleaning and wall washing I’ve been doing. (Rick never thinks the walls need painting. He always says we can just wash them. I’ll give you one guess who does the wall washing and who does the painting.) Granted, I may not be able to punch very hard if I ever need to defend myself. But, mind you, I can wax on and wax off with the best of them.