Footballs and armchairs don't mix

Yesterday, Alex's team lost the city championship.  It was an exciting game, but in the end, it was still a loss.  Some of the kids were like me- for a second they were mad and then they were sad and then they realized it was *one* game.  My son realized it first, I think.  He looked at the teary-eyed kids and told them there were ten other teams who would have loved to have played that game and they knocked them out of the competition by beating every one of them.  A win would have been nice, but it was still a great season. 

I was at every game, every practice... cheering my son on...and my ""adopted"" sons.  Alex calls two other kids brothers.   The coaches call more of them our step-sons.  We've had half the team at our house at one point or another.  The birthday party, Six Flags, sleep overs, whatever.  I really love some of those kids.  It's been a great two years being an Eagle. 

Chris ran the website for the team this year and gave rides to kids to the games and home from practice.  I organized the parent t-shirt sale and the end of the year potluck.  We've volunteered any time we could because we wanted the team to be successful. 

I can tell you that I wouldn't have driven from Dallas to Grapevine to Irving three or four days a week for any other team.  I really respect and admire the coaches.  Those men are truly dedicated.  They took a  group of twenty-five hard-headed, very dissimilar kids and made them into a team.  It took way more than a uniform.  They worked them out and taught them everything they could.  They treated all the boys the same.  So why are parents complaining it wasn't fair? 

Our head coach explained at the start of the year that the 11 best kids would start offense and the 11 best would start defense and come play-offs, if your kid wasn't in either group, your kid wouldn't be playing.  I think a lot of the problem is that the complaining parents didn't go to practice.  And the ones that did sat there on their laptops or in the parking lot smoking and gossiping.  Our team is not the team to join if your child needs to be treated as an equal.  All the kids are treated the same, but not as equals.  My son had to run to the first pole for every fumble he made even though league rules say he's too heavy to run the ball.  Is that fair?  Yes, it is.  He is expected to play just as well as any other kid.

It absolutely chafed my ass during the game to hear our coaches being second-guessed by an absolute moron.  This guy was telling the coach's wife that we needed to run this play or that play.  He was too stupid to realize that those were the plays being run, but the kids had made a couple of mistakes.  He was supposed to run one way and went another.  Not the coach's fault.  So what are you gonna do?  Yell at a ten year-old?  That's exactly what that ass did after the game.  Yelled at his kid right in the face.  What purpose did that serve?  He went on about how if HE was a coach he would always win.  I finally had it.  I told him to get a team and next year when he played the Eagles I'd come and laugh right in his face when he lost.  He said ""all you have to do is pass.""  We passed and were damn-near intercepted.  He went on and on.  I went off on his retarded ass..him and his loud-mouthed wife and whoever else was there egging him on.  Told them kids need coaching and if he didn't know that then all his arm-chair coaching was pointless.  I made him feel pretty damn stupid.  I looked at each of them right in the face and just wanted someone to say something.  No one did.

None of the kids on our team came out of the womb as superstars.  My son was lost when he joined the team last year and this year he started on defense in the start of the year and on offense all year.  That didn't happen cuz of genetics.  God knows the kid didn't get it from me.

I didn't get to play in sports as a kid.  I was clumsy and the parents wouldn't allow it anyway.  I am very happy that I was able to give my son a chance to play.  I was so proud when he would take the field.  I'm proud of the way he kept trying when he didn't get it and the way he helped other kids get it when they were struggling.  It's made him more confident, eat healthier and want to exercise.  It's made him tougher and more independent.  Playing football as an Eagle has been an important part of making him the man he will become.  I am very thankful to Bob, Robert and Larry for pushing Alex to be the best person he can be and not content to be just like everyone else.

No Honey for me :-(

My husband flew to Arkansas yesterday on business.  And from what he said, they don't even have the stuff set up right so he can do anything there.  They were supposed to, but they don't.  So he's there eating up to $75 worth of dinner on the company credit card and I'm here eating San Diego's Tacos.  Well, actually, I like San Diego's Tacos, but that's beside the point.  Point is that I'm here and he's not.

 I'm so bummed.  I didn't realize how big this house was.  I couldn't fall asleep last night.  I've eaten lunch two days in a row with NO Honey.  Hogging the bed is not as much fun.  What's the point of lying across the bed diagonally if there's not legs to put mine on top of? What's the point of wrapping myself up like a burrito if there's no one to try and get the comforter away from me? 

AND I don't even get him back until Thursday night.  As Jessica says, ""super-duper sad face"".   Super sad...

I don't know what to think

Currently, I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and we have enough money to pay all our bills and still afford a nice Christmas without putting a dime on a credit card.  Life is good, but it was not always so. 

Once upon a time, not so long ago... wait, that's a Bon Jovi song. 

*sigh* 

Ok, let's say: About 11-12 years ago, I was the definition of Working Poor.  I worked and had no money.  I was always struggling and stressing and then I was pregnant.  Although my ass didn't have insurance from my shitty part-time job, I did get prenatal care from a clinic I was referred to by the pregnancy crisis center before I moved back home.  They had a nice facility that had evening hours with doctors, nurses, lactation consultants, the works.  I am very grateful to that place.  I may have to Google them and mail them a check.  Places like that need support.  Yes?

Chris and I were watching a recording of 20/20 tonight that focused on Memphis and the high infant mortality rate.  In Memphis, a baby dies every 42 hours.  That absolutely Blows My Mind.  And I want to help those babies.  And I want to beat their mothers.  These girls, some 16, some 12 years old are getting pregnant. I'm so conflicted.  Alex wasn't planned.  It happens.  I understand.  What I don't understand is how it keeps happening and happening.  One girl had FIVE premie babies and two died.  FIVE!  What the bloody fuck?!?  Nothing on tv?  Read a damn book. 

The show said something like 250 premie babies died in 2006.  Where is the personal responsibility and accountability of the 250 mothers and fathers?  Yes, let's not leave out their MIA daddies.  The girl they focused on said her baby-daddy didn't talk to her after he found out she was pregnant.  As the show went on, they shared that he was a thug and shot dead when the baby was two months old. 

They showed the mass burials the county provides.  It broke my heart seeing those little coffins made out of scrap lumbar laid side by side in one big hole and covered up like a landfill.  I am so confused.  My compassion and my anger are at odds with each other.  The whole thing just irritates the living piss out of me.  I don't have a point.  I don't know if the city should just put birth control in the tap water.  I want to help babies but their parents are so stupid.  Maybe that's the reason for the infant deaths.  I don't know if you subscribe to God or Darwin, but either way...  They're just too damn stupid to reproduce and maybe those deaths are mercy for the life they would have lived.

what am I going on about?

My son said to me that dinner tonight was the best Mexican food he ever tasted.  Shh.  Don't tell Mama.  I've spent some time trying to duplicate her cuisine and I think I'm getting closer.  That lady is something else.  I think I ate beans and rice at least five times a week from the time I can remember until I was 18 and it always tasted good.  I don't think I ever got tired of chicken and rice.   I can't speak for every member of the family.  I distinctly remember Veronica and Kristina talking about clucking and growing feathers if they had chicken one more time. 

We were a six-member, one income household and Mexican food is inexpensive to cook.  Rice, beans, chicken, tortilla ingredients...I think I probably spent $8.00 on dinner for the three of us tonight and still have leftovers. 

Is it weird to identify FOOD with fun, family, gatherings and a sense of satisfaction with life?  maybe that's why I'm so fat. 

Irene brought breakfast to work on Friday.  She made chorizo-bean and chorizo-egg tacos.  I had three with her fabulous homemade salsa.  We got to talking about making tortillas.  Both our moms used a whole bag of flour everytime they made masa.  We both use a couple of cups of flour when we cook.  I told her that I never wanted to learn how to make tortillas when I was young.  My mom used to tell me that my husband would expect me to make them.  (I think at the time she still expected me to marry a Mexican)  I told her I couldn't imagine a man worth the effort.   My guys are worth it and now I make them... mostly on weekends and nights there's not football practice.  It's taken some trial and error, but I'm pretty happy with my current recipe.  Ok, I don't really have a  recipe, but I throw stuff in a bowl pretty much in the same ratios more consitently.

Yeah, I'm turning into my mother.  This isn't news; it's been happening slowly over time.  The process seems to be speeding up as time goes by.  I don't fight it.  I just buy more hair dye.

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On a different note...  This is the time of the year when I start asking when the family is gathering next year.  I'm asking.  What city are we invading come summertime 2009?