An End to Football, American and Otherwise

This week marks the end of another season of football in our household – American and Association. For us hick Americans, association football is just a fancy way of saying soccer. Of course, shouldn’t a game called football be played with only your feet? Just asking.

It’s been a fantastic season of soccer this year for Mandy. Her team of 13-15 year olds, the Roos (or the Kroo), finished in second place in the Lincoln Spirit Soccer league. I’ve bragged of this before, but Mandy won the first game of the season for her team. The game was scoreless until close to the end of the game. Mandy pounded a kick past a goalie -- with her left foot – scoring the only goal of the game. It was fantastic. There was screaming and jumping up and down. And I think Mandy and her teammates were pretty excited too.

I’m not exactly sure what came over Mandy the last couple of years. When she first started playing the game in kindergarten, she was not the brawler she is today -- far from it. In fact, when her team went from regular, YMCA soccer to Spirit soccer, the coach told her she might not make the team. On the field Mandy was just too nice. She was one of those players that when someone came up and took the ball, she would back off, as if to say “Oh, you want it? OK, you can have it.” But the team needed one or two subs to warm the bench, so they kept her on the Kangaroos and she got some play time and stood in as goalie when needed. Some years you just need a warm body to stand in the goalie box in the hopes that the ball might accidentally bounce off the goalie when kicked that direction.

Then things changed. I credit the British Soccer Camps. Mandy is one of those examples of a player that just needed a chance to blossom and come into her own. That’s why her dad knows you can never stop teaching every single kid on the team the basics and skills of the game. Because you don’t know who it is suddenly going to “click” for and who is going to grow into a strong player. Some of the girls on Mandy’s team who were the real early standouts just stopped progressing. They were happy with how well they played, and they never really extended their skills. These girls are now very happy that Mandy stayed on their team. They know Mandy will charge up the field, hell on wheels, and take out any girl who stands in her way. Needless to say, “OK, you can have it,” has a whole new meaning for Mandy on the soccer field.

Mandy absolutely loved, loved, loved the British Soccer Camps she attended. She was always signed up for camp in the absolute hottest part of August. Some years the temperature was up in the 100s at 5:30pm when camp started. But she didn’t seem to mind. She always came home grinning. The coaches gave her loads of positive feedback and taught her all sorts of skills on the field that helped her have loads of confidence. And it didn’t hurt that the coaches were hot and talked with British accents. She used to giggle about how they would say “On the come, girls” and how they pronounced “Ah-mahn-dah.” Last year the coaches picked on her the last day of camp, dumping their water jugs on her head (at least those tall enough to reach that high). I think they enjoyed her happy attitude and smiling face, and couldn’t believe this tall lanky girl would prefer soccer over basketball. Go figure.

She loved her British coaches and they loved the kids. Every year Mandy and one of her friends would make the coaches nickname bracelets of who the girls thought the coaches resembled. This year Mandy made one of the coaches a bracelet that said “Cody Simpson.” In his beautiful British accent he asked Mandy “Is this Cody Simpson good looking?” Mandy, boof that she is, quickly replies, “Oh yeah. He is totally hot.” Then realizing what she just said, she slaps her hand over her mouth as the coaches all laugh and high-five. She may be tough, but she is still a blonde in a brunette’s body. 

After the summer camp, this year Mandy also signed up to do a once-a-week British camp session on Friday evenings. Coach Marty is an awesome coach. He was even wearing the bracelet she made him at summer camp on the first day of the fall individual camps. He said she was “a pleasure” to have at camp on the last day. She took a picture with Marty, and I think she put it on her Facebook page. What a great guy. Mandy can do a perfect imitation of his voice. She loves how he pronounces her name and attempts to uses American slang in his British accent. She laughs, however, when he attempts to call the players “Dude” during practice. This, she says, is just wrong. It’s not natural.

It really was the result of the British soccer coaches’ aggressive coaching and love for the sport that has made all the difference to Mandy the past couple seasons. I don’t know if brawler is the right term, but Mandy has become quite aggressive on the field. As opposed to hockey, nobody throws down their gloves and fights on the girls’ soccer fields. But Mandy is the player the teammates look to if they need somebody to take on a really pushy player on the other team. She splits her time during the game playing offensive attacker and defender. This Thursday’s game there was a really aggressive attacker that Mandy had to mark up on during the first half of the game. During the second half of the game Mandy played attacker, but then traded back with the girl who was playing defender against this aggressive attacker. I asked her why she did that (because I really wanted to see her score a goal). Her answer was that the other girl just wasn’t covering that aggressive player hard enough, MOM. Well, OK. I would never have imagined that coming out of her mouth when I watched her ride the bench a few years ago.

And when it comes to playing co-ed games, all bets are off. My baby is tough. Last year at soccer camp there was a seventh-grade boy who was pretty good, who liked to goad her. (I’m sure this is seventh-grade-boy speak for “I think you are cute so I am going to pick on you a lot.”) During one of the scrimmages, they both went after the ball. I watched my baby lay that boy out flat. And she walked away smiling. A similar situation happened at the NELHS soccer jam Friday. Mandy was playing defender and one of the eighth-grade boys was driving the ball into the goal. Mandy’s brawler instinct kicked in, they collided, and she gave him a shoulder shove that laid him out on the ground, right in front of the goal post. And he laid there for a while. I’m not sure if he was hurt, or if it was his pride, getting laid out by a girl. She should have, of course, helped him up -- and in true American football fashion – given him a slap on the butt to send him on his way. At least, that’s what Rick’s assistant football coach says. What eighth grade boy wouldn’t appreciate that?

Sometimes I wonder if this tough, aggressive exterior is a good thing. The other day she said she almost punched a sixth-grade football boy in the mouth for calling one of her best friends a freak. (Not the same footballer who she told to “talk to the booty, the hands off duty.”) Good thing this boy knew when to cut bait and run. It’s true, sports have given her a load of confidence that she is going to need once she hits high school. And it will probably be OK if she can keep it contained. I’d rather have to ask her where to direct phone calls to Krush’s sister’s booty than calls from angry parents. We may have to work on this.

So Mandy’s soccer team ended their season today with a record of 6 wins and 2 losses. They got beat this afternoon by the other top team in the league. It was a super hard loss, because Mandy’s team would have been first in the league if they had won. Sometimes it seems second place can be so much harder than last place. We discovered this last year in volleyball when Mandy’s team took second in a volleyball tournament. Coming so close, but losing in the last few minutes is a heart-breaker. You can tell yourself all you want that you beat all those other teams, but it doesn’t stop the tears. Today there were quite a few Roos streaming tears as they walked off the field. Coach Scott gave out a lot of hugs, and a lot of girls had their daddys’ arms around their shoulders. The girls played incredibly, with awesome passes and headers and they looked like a grown-up soccer team. I guess it is something to motivate them in the Spring season. As Joe told his sister tonight, you just can’t win them all.

And today was the last day of Lincoln’s midget football season. Joe has been playing on the B team on the offensive line as left guard, holding off much bigger, heavier players. He knows how to use his choppy feet, his short, solid stature, and his low center of gravity to drive his shoulder pads up into a defensive lineman and hold him back. The boy, age 11 in the sixth grade, weighs in at about 154 pounds. He is in the top five of his team for weight, but is probably one of the shortest guys on the team.

I’ve been so proud of how my little guy has played this season. He plays on the B team with mostly seventh and eighth graders. He is just a little sixth grader, so he should be an awesome lineman once he gets to the eighth grade. And he is going to need to be. I’ve seen those A-team eighth graders at the scale waiting to weigh in. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, on the Runza team I saw two boys with full beards. And those were the guys who chose not to shave that day.

But Joe often plays against bigger, older boys. A lot of the time he lines up against guys with double-dots who are about a head taller than he is. Today was a prime example. The guy across the line was a head taller and a lot wider. The first time Joe crashed into him, Joe bounced off him like a rubber ball. But then he remembered to get low and blocked him out. I get nervous, but he always says the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I think he has a secret pride that he can throw down with the big boys and get right back up.

Of course that doesn’t always happen. Joe’s Assurity B team often scrimmages with the Assurity A team. At one practice, one of the offensive lineman on the A team hit Joe so hard he went flying backwards through the air, landing flat on his back. Joe said it totally knocked the wind out of him and so he just laid there for a while. Joe came home after another scrimmage with the A team with a migraine because this same offensive lineman kept hitting him so hard. Consequently, Mandy is seriously crushing on this A-team lineman. I’m not sure if it is because of how he is built, how he can hit, or the fact that he can lay out her brother. It’s probably a little of all three.

Of course, as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, Joe is a beefy boy who can hold his own. In fact, he should be playing with one green dot on his helmet, although he seemed to make it through the season dodging this tag. If you weigh above a certain weight limit for the level team you are playing for, you either have one dot (which means you have to play on the line) or two dots (which means you have to play on the line one direction, offense or defense). When Joe went through the scales at the first game, the guy running the scales took one look at how short Joe is and waved him through. Joe didn’t argue, although the weight limit on B for a single dot is 145. And Joe is 154. At the second game, the guy running the scale hesitated a bit when Joe came in. He stopped Joe and asked if he had a dot. Joe, honest as the day is long, said “well, they didn’t give me one last week.” And the guy waved him through. Well, he can’t say he lied.

This week Joe’s coach let Joe spend some time in on the defensive line. At practice he was breaking through his own offensive line, so he got to try his hand at messing up the offense, instead of protecting it. My fear was that Joe would break through the line and then just stand there looking around, as if to say, well I made it this far, now what? But he did OK. He even broke through and messed up a play or two on the other side. No quarterback sacks, though. Oh well, there’s always next year.

I should also mention Rick’s D team here somewhere. The Rookie and D teams finished their season last week. The Assurity white D team finished their season 5 and 2. Rick and his offensive-coach Brian spent the season doing a lot of yelling and a lot of pushups. Of course, you’ve got to do a lot of that when you are dealing with fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade boys. Rick and Brian are typical football coaches. If the boys mouthed off, goofed around, or just didn’t listen, the boys ran another lap. Or, they did another dozen diamond pushups. And the coaches were right there with them, doing the pushups and scrimmages with the players. (You should see Rick’s biceps.) The coaches, of course, were the biggest kids out there.

Mandy and I enjoyed coming to several practices to watch Rick and Brian drill the fundamentals of tackling and passing and catching over and over again. We had our favorite players. Of course we enjoyed the football studs on Rick’s D team, like Appleget, who could just take the ball and fly down the field. But we also loved several other little guys because of their determination. We loved little Morrison, the second-string nose tackle. He was short and little and round with the cutest freckles and glasses. When he got knocked down, he just rolled and bounced right back up. In fact, sometimes he would run and fall down for no reason, and then bounce back up and keep running. Nothing kept him down, or dampened his spirits. We also loved little Pinkerton, or Pinky. The boy is a repeat D-team player, mostly because he is in the sixth grade and 70-pounds soaking wet. So what does Rick do? Rick puts him in the middle of his defensive line. Pinky army crawls his way through the offensive line and either sacks the quarterback or really messes up their plays in the backfield. This is also the player that never forgets. He reminds Rick that he owes the team a dozen diamond pushups for causing a penalty for sending too many players out on the field. He is somewhat obsessive/compulsive, so Rick puts him in charge of getting out and putting away the kicking T. And he never lost it all season. Pinky also is the guy on the team who has the audacity to pancake each of the coaches when they were scrimmaging with the team. This boy takes no prisoners. Heaven help his mother.

So it was with a somewhat heavy heart that I approached this Sunday, which will end both our football and our soccer seasons. We packed up the folding bag chairs and the water bottles. We threw in a couple blankets and sweatshirts. And I took my pictures. There are pictures of the team, pictures with their coaches, and pictures with their best friends. It’s a day you want to make sure you’ve got your battery charged with plenty of memory space. And guess what? I even had room to take a picture of Krush’s sister’s booty for a football player or two. Her hand is off duty. We seriously don’t want anybody getting punched.

Just Say No To AM Radio

Sometimes I look at my husband and I think “who is this guy and when did he start listening to AM radio?” I mean seriously, AM radio? My grandparents listened to that stuff. We aren’t that old, are we?

I spent the weekend with my husband’s pickup, traveling back and forth to a craft show in Council Bluffs (a blog all by itself). I started the pickup and out pops some yeehaw talking about government and economics. I push another button, and out pops some wanna-be talking about a football game. Another button brings up a station with a call-in version of Craig’s list. Talk about a parallel universe.

I hear enough yeehaws on television, walking around town, and especially out at the football field. I don’t need to invite them into my vehicle, becoming their captive audience for an hour. I mean they let just about anybody have their own talk radio show, the stupider and more confrontational, the better. And even worse, they let just about anybody call into these shows and express their rambling, inane opinions about the most mind-numbing topics. Is this supposed to keep me awake while I am driving? Life is too short to waste time listening to dumb people.

I should have known this love of news and talk radio was coming. Rick’s parents keep their television tuned to CNN or FOX news, 25 hours a day. (Yes, I know, I said 25 hours. I am making an attempt at sarcasm here. I would have said it was an attempt at humor, but it loses something when I have to explain it.)

News was never my favorite program growing up. I thought it was something they put on television following Scooby Doo and before the prime-time comedies to waste time while you eat supper. This probably is somewhat ironic, considering I got my bachelor’s degree in the News/Editorial program at the UNL Journalism college.

News is fantastically exciting when you are in the thick of it, calling people for interviews, doing research, studying products, and getting quotes. But when you are on the other side of the news -- in the general public -- it loses its charm. You know that the writer (or editor) left out all the quotes and statistics that didn’t quite slant the story the way he or she wanted it to go. You can make most stories lead whatever direction you want them to go, if you search hard enough. There really are two sides to every story, it just depends which direction you want it to lean.

But as I said earlier, I should have known that someday my husband would be a talk radio junkie. It’s in his genes. His parents often discuss the happenings half way across the world that seem to me to have little to do with our everyday life. And I really don’t want my kids exposed to school shootings and child disappearances, especially back when they were younger and a lot more impressionable. Kids have enough bad dreams the way it is. I used to have to spray the exterior of Joe’s room with Lysol, because it would kill and ward off all the spiders, crabs, wolves, or bears while he slept. Yeah, I know, I was really pushing it. Even then he was skeptical. But he probably thought if I believed it, who was he shatter my delusions.

I just am not an AM radio person. I have to listen to music when I drive – happy fun music -- cranked up loud. It keeps me moving. It keeps me conscious.

So I changed the radio over to FM. Did I change all his presets? I really, really considered it. It’s not beyond me to mess with Rick like that. I do take his little to-do notebook he keeps in his pickup and I add random messages here and there. Along with his list of lumber, screws, cleaners, and other items for apartment maintenance, I like to add “candy bottlecaps” and “flowers for your wife.” Or in his list of around-the-house chores, I might add “take your wife out for supper.” I’m still waiting on those bottlecaps and that supper out. I suppose the handwriting gave me away.

But I didn’t mess with his radio presets -- at least not this time. And as far as his preference for AM news radio, I suppose I have to take the good with the bad. After 19 years of marriage, there are going to be compromises. He may have more grey hair than black hair. He may spend most of his spare time drafting new midget football plays with his pal Brian. He may listen to talk radio and occasionally talk back to the callers. But, we are stuck with one another, for better or worse, thick or thin. He’s just lucky, I guess, that I’m so perfect. Don’t worry. If he didn’t know his wife is perfect already, he will the next time he checks his apartment to-do list. He will read that I’m perfect and that he really needs to buy more candy corn…….

The Proverbial Soccer Mom

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself if you are the soccer mom that you’ve been warned about.

Are there soccer games in which you have to sit in your vehicle because you will yell too much during a close game and embarrass your child?

Do you honk when your team scores a goal from said vehicle?

Do you change seats at volleyball games when you find yourself sitting next to the opposing crowd?

Do you update your kids with a scouting report of the other team’s players, based on their warm-up?

Does your husband make you do the stats book at baseball games to keep you busy and out of the crowd?

Oh crap. That’s me.

I yell loudly at my kids’ games. I’m that mom yelling “go Assurity” or “block somebody red” at football games. I have bellowed “move your feet” or “serve receive ladies, serve receive” at volleyball games. I’ve also been known to yell “that’s you’re ball” or “Mandy, that’s you” at soccer games. I often lose my voice. I jump up and down when we make a big play. Yes, really. I have caught myself leaving my seat and jumping like a goof. Really.

My husband may be turning into a grumpy old coach, but I’m the proverbial soccer mom. I’m always sporting the folding bag chairs and water bottles for every game. I’ve got the sports sticker on the back of my Traverse. I’m styling with my Assurity t-shirt and giant player button featuring my kids’ smiling face. (Except for the football one. Joe looks totally bad-a** with his glowering stare.)

But I do have my limits. I try to never criticize anyone else’s child or the officials. And I never cheer at the other’s teams’ failings. If I yell anything, it’s to rally my child or to encourage someone else’s child. Anything beyond that crosses a line that I expect everyone at the game to respect. I have no patience for parents who put down someone else on their team or blame the officials when things aren’t going their way.

I expect my kids to do their best. Sometimes I suppose that if I yell louder that will somehow motivate them to work harder or run faster. Sometimes, however, it just results in a bigger eye-roll.

We are rounding the corner to close the football season for Joe and the soccer season for Mandy. Joe’s team is rated third in the B league and Mandy’s soccer team is undefeated. Joe, or Krush, plays left guard as a 6^th grader, playing with mostly 7^th and 8^th graders. In two years he is going to be an awesome lineman for the A team. Mandy splits her time as a defender and an attacker for soccer. The first game of the season she scored the only goal of the game – with her left foot – to bring home the win for the Roos. Mandy’s spirit volleyball team has one win and one loss, with the majority of the season ahead of them. So far, she’s had some incredible serving series and her hits are going down hard. But who can help but brag a little? They are doing awesome. (I can’t help it. The soccer/helicopter mom in me keeps peeking out.)

So if you see me on the sideline, with my hand over my mouth, remember that I am trying to do better. We all are learning that you can’t win every game. You have to be a good sportsman, especially when you lose. And one person can’t be the whole team.

I’ll try to keep the pictures to a minimum. I’ll stay off the field if they get injured (an embarrassment evidently worse than death). And I’ll refrain from yelling “that’s my baby,” when they make a big play. Oh wait. I take that last one back. I may have to be a little trailer park and embarrass my kids a wee bit during the big plays. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To Practice We Go

Can you call yourself homeless if you find that you more or less live out of your car? Honest to goodness, I spend as much time in my vehicle as I do in my house most days of the school year.

It’s not that I don’t love my house. I’ve got the best comfy recliner. But I rarely get to sit more than 20 minutes at a stretch in my chair. My poor kitty feels so alone.

But I have children. And they have school, and sports, and lessons, and social lives. All of which I am the designated chauffer for once it hits 3:30. Just the sport practices and games are enough to make you weep. Monday is school volleyball practice. Tuesday is volleyball practice, soccer practice, and football practice. Wednesday is piano and two hours of volleyball conditioning. Thursday is school volleyball practice, football practice, and a soccer game. Friday is British soccer camp practice. Saturday is football chalk talk and a possible soccer game. Sunday is multiple football games and multiple volleyball matches. Then Monday we start it all over again.

Plus, I am generally on call for any school event that requires a driver. Because if you don’t have a regular 9-to-5 job, you don’t have anything better to do than drive the school kids to their game or the field trip, right? You don’t mind staying up ‘til 11 or 12 pm doing the work tonight that you would have done during the day, right? You don’t mind footing the bill for the gas either, right? Sure I can drive . . . yes I am a sucker. (Actually I’m not bitter. I really do enjoy going to these events now that Joe is no longer in the lower grades and I don’t always have to drive his class. Thank you Ms. Marquardt.)

As we travel down the happy road known as life and the children become more and more familiar with the back of my head, numerous items accumulate in our vehicle. Somehow our roomy seven-passenger Traverse seems cramped with just the three of us on these weeknights. Life gathers a lot of junk. The vehicle collects wrappers, sports equipment, clothing, and all sorts of other clutter that give off all sorts of disturbing odors.

If I went out to my Traverse right now, I bet I could write a novel about all the junk in that vehicle. But instead of a novel, here are the highlights of the random items found in the Traverse on any given day:

--half empty Gatorade bottles

--hundreds of ponytail holders (unless we need one for practice, then they all go into hiding)

--one soccer cleat

--mittens and gloves from last year (none of which match)

--wadded McDonalds napkins (sometimes handy if you can make out if they are unused)

--ketchup packets

--at least three jackets or sweatshirts

--a volleyball kneepad

--one to five folding bagged chairs (unless I leave the house for a game without checking, then they have all been removed)

--a ratty blanket

--numerous empty CD cases

--at least one volleyball or soccer ball that rolls back and forth in the back seat every time we turn the corner

--a broken phone charger (still plugged into the lighter socket)

--expired coupons

--old church bulletins

--hundreds of unsharpened pencils and old pens

--bottles of hand sanitizer

--a hospital puke bag (thank you Melissa, this is vital)

--dozens of half-eaten granola bars

--a half-torn drawing pad

--dead French fries

--knitting needles

--a partly broken red umbrella

--unmatched dirty socks (oh, Joe)

This happy family of discarded and lost items contentedly travels to the far reaches of Lincoln for all the sports practices, piano lessons, school events, movie dates, restaurant dashes, or any other thing I try to fit into my schedule during the waking hours, and even a few sleeping hours.

I’ve tried to clean it out, but these items keep finding their way back into the Traverse. At one time or another, almost all of these items have come in handy in a pinch. Of course, when you need one of these items desperately, someone will have thoughtfully taken it into the house the last time they got out of the car.

When I say I live in my vehicle, I mean live. Some days as I leave the house, I pack a little travel bag to keep me going. I throw in my knitting, my low-cal granola bars, a couple cans of pop, and a few random magazines. It’s not as if I can do a quick drop-off and go back to the house on my own. Why? Take, for example, soccer practice. Because Mandy continues to play with the same soccer team she’s played with since she was about 5, we have to travel to Airpark for practice. That takes me 25-35 minutes of travel time, one way, depending on the construction and train traffic. Practice is one and a half hours, so there is no point in driving home. I stay, read, knit, walk, text, call, watch, text some more, and then maybe take a nap. Then we drive to volleyball practice. I try to walk her in and leave, but funny thing, I seem to get sucked into conversation with the other volleyball moms, and by the time I look at the clock, there’s 15 minutes left of practice. I know, right? Me, talk? Also I am aware I’m not technically in my car for volleyball, but I’m not home either. You caught me on a technicality. My bad.

I know I am not alone. I see you out there, you other mothers with children in umpteen activities. You have that same haggard look. Sometimes I see you at the stop light, trying to hand out the drive-thru food on the way to the next practice. Sometimes I see you sitting in the parking lot, trying to catch a quick nap before the next trip. We are easily recognizable, if not by the type of vehicle we drive, but by those silly sports stickers on the backs of our windows. I’m Magic Mandy. I would also be Assurity Joe, but my husband, who only COACHES for Assurity, forgot to order a sticker for his son. But once again I’m not bitter…

For my birthday, which was in the middle of September, I asked my children to wash the Traverse and vacuum it for my present. Following a rainy midget football Sunday, the vehicle had become coated with chalky mud from the parking lot and the floor mats were filled with gravel and dried mud. It’s almost October and the mud and gravel are still in residence. I keep waiting. I keep hoping. But you know how this is going to end.

I’ve about a good hour until I have to saddle up and make the haul over to the school and start the week all over again. I’ll sit there and wait at practice with my knitting and my dirty floor mats, fuming that nobody loves me, at least not enough to pull out the shop vac. If only someone would vacuum. Maybe I’d lose a few of these French fries and ponytail holders along with mud. Oh well. Good thing I’ve never been bitter.

Bromance

I think my husband is involved in a “bromance.” I’m not jealous or anything. Actually, it makes me laugh.

This bromance, as they say, is with his assistant midget football coach, Brian. It’s not a new bromance; it carries over year to year and goes into high gear once the summer comes to a close.

About a month or two before football season starts, the phone calls begin. Once practice starts, I don’t even need caller ID. About 8:30pm after practice, just as we sit down for supper, the phone rings. We pick it up and say, “Hello Brian.” Same thing happens about 9:30 Sunday mornings before church and the boys’ football games. I know it’s going to be a long conversation if Rick takes the phone into the garage. They’ve got serious plays to consider. How are they going to win the corner today? Who can “man up” and shut down the hole if one opens up in the line? Will it be Carlos O’Kelleys or Las Margaritas on Friday night?

“Bromance” is a relatively new term, recently validated by Misters Merriam and Webster, that describes the complicated love and affection (fist bumps, I’m sure) shared by two straight males. You hear it now and again on television and around town. It’s one of those slang terms turned mainstream that everyone thinks they are cool to utter.

Rick is a man’s man. He has lots of buddies that he hangs out with, doing all sorts of man things, like fishing, camping, carpentry, and golfing (back when he had more time to do it). Actually, Rick has had a “bromance” with one of his partners at his office for many, many years. There are so many inside jokes that even I am not privy to, and that is just fine. The guys love to play poker, garden, fish, use their smokers, and use salty language. Our kids are the same age, so they have lots to talk about regarding children and wives (although Rick’s wife never causes him any stress, at all, so I’m sure that is a short, happy conversation.) When they worked downtown, they would go on walks after lunch on the UNL campus to get ideas for their home landscaping. How bromantic.

Now Brian, it makes me laugh really hard to use his name and the word bromance in the same sentence. You would too if you ever saw him. Brian played football in high school and college and, although he is much shorter than Rick, Brian could probably kick Rick’s butt from here to the stadium and back. He’s an intense, bald football and baseball coach who loves to make the boys take another lap if they aren’t working hard enough at practice. (Really, he enjoys making those boys work.) Mandy and I laughed so hard at practice the other day when Brian took one of the players aside to tell him that boys don’t cry in football. Those bruises and scars you get in football, well girls dig football injuries. Well that, and the uniforms.

The boys try to include us wives. Tammy and I, we arrange to eat out about once a week so we can drink our margaritas while the boys talk about hard-hitting linemen, fast-footed backs, and teenage daughters. We both clearly struggle with that last one. Tammy’s oldest teenage daughter is a senior cheerleader; her younger one is a twin and turns 13 soon. She and Mandy enjoy scoping the boys their age at games and practices. However Brian says Mandy has to quit getting out of the car at football practice. Evidently 12- and 13-year-old boys are easily distracted, even the ones without ADHD. Really? Is this new information? Doesn’t he know that is the whole idea?

Sometimes I feel a little like a football widow during the fall when my husband spends the time on the phone figuring positions and plays, and the rest of his time buried in his three-ring binder playbooks and his computer spreadsheets. Saturday mornings are chalk talks, and after early church, Sundays are a day of midget football. The days start about 9:30am if Rick’s team plays the first 10:30 game and can last until 6pm, if Joe’s game is the last game at 4:45. Rick and Brian use the entire day to make the rounds, scouting other D teams and talking to other coaches. And now that they have coached together for several years, Rick and Brian especially love watching the boys they trained a few years ago take what they’ve learned and pound the other teams. Assurity A team is undefeated so far this season, making the day so much more fun.

But I’m just fine with Rick’s football fixation. We each have our own activities in our lives that make us who we are. I love Rick because he is such a good coach and because he can’t do anything halfway. If he coaches football, he is going to do it right and spend as much free time devoted to his team as he can. I’m glad he has Brian to make that part of coaching happier. That he has someone to talk over the trials and mistakes and to celebrate the improvements and wins. And he has someone to do diamond pushups with at practice when the boys think the coaches need to pay for the two penalties they cost the team at the last game for having too many players out on the field. Whoops. Evidently 12- and 13-year-old boys have good memories in spite of the ADHD.

I’m here hanging in the background, washing the uniforms and coaching shirts, filling all the water bottles and making sure everyone gets to the game with their pads, hats, and whistles. I’ll sit on the sideline like a good woman should (tongue in cheek). Just as long as he takes me out to eat every once in a while and remembers my birthday this month, he is safe. I’m glad to cheer him on. Because diamond pushups, well, that’s one activity we will never share.

We Are the Champions by Queen

Like Mom, Like Daughter

Daughters are fascinating creatures, especially for moms. They are beautiful. They are frightening. They are like the weather in Nebraska. If you don’t like it, wait 10 minutes and it will change.

It’s scary to see so much of ourselves in our girls. Particularly when what you see are some of the things you would rather she wouldn’t have inherited. But it is wonderful, at the same time, when moms see that our daughters have taken what they are given and have made the best out of it.

I can not believe that I could have given birth to this tall athlete. She is currently two inches taller than I am. And I am pretty sure I am full grown. She’s definitely got her dad’s athletic abilities. I was a terrible athlete. They would stick me in at goalie for soccer and put the best player in as defender to make up for it. I was always the last one picked for teams. I was all skin and bones and pop-bottle glasses.

Mandy, however, loves to barrel down the field after the soccer ball, jostling and elbowing girls for control of the ball. She used to be timid on the field, but has recently discovered that little spark that makes her want to win. Every soccer season she scores a couple of goals, driving her back for more. She doesn’t score every game, but she keeps pushing herself in the hopes that she will.

And volleyball, well, Mandy is starting to love to hit. Last night the coach’s wife told me Mandy had some awesome hits at practice. She told me this three times. That’s fantastic. Most volleyball teams Mandy plays for, she plays middle hitter because of her height (she’s 5’8’’ at age 13). As other girls start to catch up, she will probably change over to outside hitter. She also is a great passer. The head guy at her volleyball club moved her up to his number two team because he discovered she is a good passer. Evidently if you are tall and can hit, you generally can’t pass. She’s good at both, so that is awesome. On the drive home from practice, she has been so excited that she is learning to hit harder and harder and that her serves go over the net. It is so much fun to watch her do well at the things she loves. I hope she can continue to improve and she can continue to be a good sportsman.

But she’s got a lot of her mom in her too. The girl can talk. Every team she is on, she’s Miss Congeniality. Mandy easily makes friends. I suppose part of that is the result of going to a small school in which she has only one other girl in her class. If she wants friends, she has to make them. I drop her off at a sports camp where she knows no one, and by the end of the week she has a gaggle of new friends she messages via Facebook every day. Mandy is the girl on the team who is the first to welcome new players, is the first to slap someone a high five for a good play, and is the first to pat them on the back when they mess up. She also has a lot of “best” friends. Currently she splits her time with three best friends, going to football games, going to the park, and going to the mall.

Strangely, all of these best-friend activities involve checking out boys. It is one of the biggest past times in her life right now outside of sports. Thankfully none of the current interests are too serious. She had a taste of that and had her first heartbreak. So now I think she is happy to have lots of new friends who are boys. Several are pretty interested in her, one or two are very interested in her. But she is just enjoying the whole crazy, spinning whirlwind of teenage crushes. She likes to “enjoy the scenery.” Some boys are best enjoyed from a distance -- especially when she discovered that good looks and smarts don’t always come in the same package. One plus is that none of the new boy friends have cowboy hats and boots, plus all seem to be too young to drive. This is fantastic. But some have bikes and know where we live. It’s a give and take I guess. I remember having a lot of boyfriends in high school. In fact, I believe my dad stopped calling them by name and began numbering them. No lie. I think number 42 turned out to be a keeper.

My baby also loves to write. This makes me so proud. Most nights and weekends I can find her up in her room with her homework done, busily typing away on her laptop. She just thought she might add another chapter to a new story she is writing. This is her idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday night, researching story locations, new character names, and dog breeds online.

So that’s the whole reason we bought her the laptop. She used to write stories long hand, some a couple hundred pages long, and I was so afraid they would get lost or damaged. I want to be able to save all the stories she writes. Some day she will write books. I know this deep in my heart. While I enjoy writing non-fiction and smart-aleck prose, she is a fiction writer. One of her teacher’s once told me that she has a gift for writing dialogue. I can’t even say how proud this all makes me. Perhaps we can be the next Higgins-Clarks.

But there are days I wonder who this person is. I never considered Mandy a drama queen, but her emotional hormones have kicked into high gear. There are a few days every month that there is no reasoning with her. Life is miserable. The world is ending. How can you face the day when you can’t do anything with your hair?

It’s difficult to remember that we can be very different people, especially when we share the same keen knack for embarrassing ourselves. She has her own life, her own decisions to make, her own mistakes to learn from. I have the hardest time not stepping in when I see her making a bad decision. I have to leave the room when I don’t agree with how she is handling a situation. I always thought she was like her dad when she got mad: it’s a big whoosh of anger and then it’s over as fast as it began. Everything is all smiles and fine. But maybe she’s more like me: silent with a long memory. Heaven help her future spouse.

I will always give her my opinion. Heaven knows I can’t completely shut my mouth. But I guess she has to learn. She will have to live with the choices she makes. This is one of the hardest parts of the job for me – one hundred times harder than 2am feedings and toddler timeouts. I have to learn how to walk away.

If I had her abilities, I would find a high school that allowed me to use those abilities, maybe a smaller parochial high school. And there are several parochial high schools in the area. But she could care less if she plays high school volleyball or soccer. Sure, she says, she will try out for the team. But if she doesn’t make it, oh well. (Yes, really, all this time and effort growing up playing sports season after season and she says oh well.) She says she can play for her club volleyball team until she is done with high school. And with soccer, there is always the city rec league. Plus, mom, she can just run with dad a couple miles a few days a week to keep in shape. (I may need a blood test to check our DNA after hearing that statement.)

She wants to go to high school where her friends go. Right now she is looking at Southwest (MaRiah and Mikayla are going there), Southeast (Anne is going there), and East (Megan goes there). Southwest is just a few blocks from Rick’s office and has block scheduling, which most of the kids really seem to like. A lot of her sports friends are going to Southeast, so she would have a ton of friends there. And East, well Megan is there and those two girls are a party waiting to happen. But this can all change, just wait 10 minutes.

She has a lot of decisions to make this year regarding where her future will take her. And this is just the start. I pray for guidance, I pray for patience, and I especially pray for my sanity.

How am I going to survive the teen years? How am I going to keep my mouth shut? OK, so maybe I know where she gets the high drama thing from too. And we haven’t even started driving yet. Talk about driving me crazy….

Spinnin' Around by Jump5 (lovin all the braces)

Teenage Daughters by Martina McBride 

First Cut Is the Deepest

I think it is time the bandages come off for good. I got the last of the stitches out this week. It’s time my scar sees the light of day in public.

Visited the plastic surgeon about two weeks ago, but it’s not what you might think. I’m not trying to be anybody’s hot mom. I have skin issues. They are issues I’ve been putting off for some time and should have taken care of sooner. I have melanoma on my leg (or some form of it) and I’ve been in and out of the dermatologist for about a month and a half.

I’ve had this large mole thing on my lower leg for about a year or so. It was a weird mole, and I thought, oh well, I’ve got lots of moles. But this one was bigger and kept getting bigger and blacker and red around the outside. I knew for a while I should do something about it, but what you don’t know can’t kill you, right? Not when it comes to cancer evidently. Ignorance is one thing, but dumb can kill.

I had a wake up call when doctors discovered my dad had very early stage colon cancer earlier this year. He had surgery at the beginning of the year and is still recovering. The doctor caught the abnormal polyps on a scan for something entirely different, way up in the top corner of the scan. I am sure God’s hand was in those tests, making sure everything was caught early -- early enough to take care of it with surgery, before he would need chemo. And he had a hard road to recovery, requiring two surgeries, blood clots, and a wound vac.

But it was a sobering event. So I made appointments to get all those fun tests done, like my mammogram. That’s a party waiting to happen. And then I bit the bullet and went to the dermatologist (although I had to wait two months just to get in.) I had made the appointment for a mole removal, but after one glance, the dermatologist said, yeah, we can’t take care of this with a simple office visit. Uh oh. You know that isn’t going to end with a little poke and a lollypop.

After she went out of the room for a few minutes, I caught a glance of a poster about all kinds of skin cancer on the back of the door. The picture of melanoma? Yep, that was me.

You know how the doctor over and over tells you all the worse things that your issue can be? You know how you start to get the hint that your issue is probably that bad thing the doctor doesn’t want to come right out and tell you that you have before the tests are complete? Doctors need to get trickier.

So I got to have a little surgical procedure done on my leg to take off the atypical cells. The little football-shaped incision wasn’t terrible. It was originally about one to two inches long. But the stitches looked really ugly. They looked like the stitches on the side of a football, only black. Actually, they looked a lot worse than they felt. And the scar probably would have healed up better had I not worked out as much as I did and pulled the stitches so much. I guess I just have a thing for Billy Blanks. That and my life does not allow me to sit on my butt for more than 15 minutes at a time, unless I’m driving to soccer practice. That takes 30 minutes – one way – up hill – both directions.

But the ugly scar turned out not to be an issue when the results came back and the dermatologist told me that she didn’t take enough. I had to have a second surgery. And because they needed to take such a large chunk, this time I had to go to the plastic surgeon. Fabulous. I always wondered what the waiting room would look like at a plastic surgeon’s office. I don’t think I have fancy enough jewelry to sit in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room.

But the waiting room was pretty much empty the times I was there. I didn’t have to wait in the waiting room long. I did the surgery at his office, and got to be awake for the whole thing again. It wasn’t too terrible. Dr. Orchard was the plastic surgeon and I would highly recommend him. We talked about midget football during the whole procedure because his kid is out for football, as well. Evidently all football coaches like to yell and nobody’s kid gets to play as much as their parents think they should. Imagine that? However, I could have skipped being awake for the part where he cauterized the wound. Nothing worse then smelling something burning and know it is you.

I don’t know if I should say I officially had skin cancer. I think the plastic surgeon put it best. He said with melanoma, it is not really black and white. What I had is more in the middle of the greys. I don’t have to have any kind of lingering treatments. But I do have to go back to the dermatologist a couple of times a year so she can keep an eye on me. Clearly she will miss my witty repartee while under the knife. Even during surgery I can’t shut up. I think that’s also why I don’t come out of my massage appointments as relaxed as I should. I must always bring the comedy.

The whole skin cancer thing is not unheard of in my family. I remember that my grandpa had to have little skin cancer things burned off his face when he was older. He farmed his whole life and I’m certain I never saw him take a break for sunscreen, and certainly not moisturizer. And one of my sisters had to have a patch removed from her neck. She also had to go back for seconds for surgery. She also thinks that was just fantastic.

I can’t sit here and blame all the years I suntanned, or the fact I never was slathered with sunscreen growing up. I think I seriously laid out in the sun for hours in high school and college coated with baby oil. Talk about cooking in the sun.

But it is what it is. I’ll deal with whatever future skin issues I have as they come along. Things could be so much worse. In fact, my difficulties seem so little and minor compared to the huge challenges so many people face. And they do it with such patience and peace, persistently facing whatever challenges God passes their way with a Christian attitude.

It’s an attitude I hope I can pattern my own after. Of course, I also will add a few jokes here and there. I can’t help but bring the comedy. Life goes better with a little flavor, no matter what you are served.

Doctor Doctor by Robert Palmer

First Cut Is the Deepest by Sheryl Crow