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Every spring I watch for the NFL schedule like a fat kid watches a cake in the oven…

The schedule is released in 3 parts: opponents are decided (cake comes out of the oven), home/away is announced (icing) and then finally the dates are made public (get.in.my.belly.)…  This year was a slam dunk (wrong sport), this year was a deep ball thrown against the Green Bay secondary…

My boys were coming to DC (well… really Landover, Maryland); Dan’s team hosting my team… what could possibly go wrong?

If football bores you and you want to ‘X’ right outta this blog – I assure you – it’s worth reading til the end (it has a feel-good Thanksgiving-type ending); if I bore you and you wanna ‘X’ right outta knowing me – well that’s just plain mean….

This specific story started with the release of the schedule back in April – I told, er… uh… I mentioned to Dan I might like to go to the game.  He, being fairly bright, simply said, “ok.”  Fast forward to October 3rd when I told… that is… I asked Dan about going.

LET THE PLANNING BEGIN

Listen, I know my way around planning a game-centric trip.  We’ve been to games (NFL, MLB, NHL) in at least 12 different cities – I’m pretty well versed in this stuff.  I won’t go into specifics – suffice it to say, hotels near Fedex Field were ‘spensive – I mean rent-a-house-at-the-beach-for-a-week expensive (I’m also extremely well versed in the limits to which I can push Dan Iseminger… I certainly wasn’t ok with the prices but I’m pretty sure Dan’s head would’ve disengaged from his body).

I needed to expand the search area.  To that end, I pulled up the DC Metro website and picked a few stops that were easily accessible to hotels and the highway home – Bethesda was perfect; hotel was booked.  I also checked run times – it clearly stated no trains would be running at the time we’d be headed back to our hotel, but it even more clearly stated that trains run late for special events.

you already know where this is going, dontcha?

On Friday we enjoyed 78° – at game time on Sunday we were treated to 34° with 20-30 mph sustained winds and gusts greater than 40 mph.  I’ve sat through a game (that went into overtime no less) that started at -2° with -24 windchill… I’m no candy ass.  Bring it Mother Nature….

We put on our first 3 layers at the hotel and carried the other 2 – nothing is colder than sweaty base layers… ya gotta be smart about it after all.

We walked over to the Metro and bought our tickets.  Interestingly enough – we are considered ‘city-folk’ in the rural town we call home; in the DC Metro – we’re the friggin Clampetts (for you millennials, google: ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’).  I was thoroughly befuddled by the fare-purchasing situation; Dan didn’t seem at all fazed; I did cause a little confusion by running my jib, he muscled through, though and the next thing you know – we were on our way.

Look – we’re so urban:

We had to switch trains 1/2 way through – there’s 4 college degrees between us so obviously…. we hopped on the wrong effin’ train.  I was at least smart enough to question why I was sitting in the very same seat (albeit, on a different train) with us needing to continue in the same direction we had been traveling yet now I was traveling backwards… it took ol’ Elly May here only 2 stops to figure it out (then I had to convince Dan… Mr. You Just Buy The Fare Card And Go, It’s Not That Hard Babe….).

A little bit of swearing, hauling ass and sweating later and we were back on track (ha! see what I did there? back on track – we were on the train… the pun… get it?).  An hour of Metro-ing later and we disembarked (I’m gonna be honest here – the only reason we got off at this stop was because every other person wearing NFL shit got off, I thought we wanted the NEXT stop… how I get out of my house everyday unscathed is anybody’s guess).

The stadium is 0.9 miles from the Metro stop.  We had walked about 0.4 of those miles when I saw a sign: “The Metro closes at 10:56”.

beautiful

The guys behind us explained that the Metro people want part of the Redskins’ action – Dan Snyder, the owner of the the ‘Skins countered with, “take the extra fares from fans and be happy,” the Metro said, “ok then, we’re closin’ at 10:56 MFer…”

We carried on a conversation with these game-wise guys and they mentioned grabbing an uber.  The Uber, while being a fairly new concept, has become a ubiquitous commodity – clearly not a huge need for one in Everett, yet I’m keenly aware of their existence and was excited about using the service (I’m so worldly).

Cool.  We decided to figure it out on the fly (we’re chill like that).  We got to the stadium at 6:10 and decided to suit up with our final layers.  Cal had already donned all he could don – still cold, he looked over longingly at the Packers fleece I was saving for last…  I’m not proud to admit I contemplated acting like I didn’t see him – damn it, 34° and 40 mph wind gusts – don’t judge me.  Meanwhile, ol’ “it’s not cold ya coupla pansies” was over there layering up like Sybil and her personalities – with no intent, whatsoever, of sharing.

With Cal wearing my sweatshirt, Dan looking like the overdressed brother in ‘A Christmas Story’ and me wondering why I had kids, we set off in search of our seats…

This was at the bottom of section 401 – and while our seats were in section 401, they weren’t actually in this same atmospheric layer.  By the time we climbed to our seats I was looking for a sherpa…

About halfway through the 2nd quarter I saw a humungous individual enter our section from the concourse; as he lumbered up the steps I thought, “no way that guy is sitting anywhere but in front of me…” – well…. I was close, look at Cal’s view of the game:

At 10:15 we had to make a decision – Metro or Uber… it was still a game at that point so we decided to tough out the dropping temps and hurricane strength winds (not to mention, the only time I’ve ever left early was during preseason in Pittsburgh when Jordy went down on the 2nd play of the game; further aiding that decision was the 90° temps with 12,042% humidity).  We were gonna uber it…

Dan downloaded the app during the 2nd half of the game in between Redskins touchdowns and rubbing my head, saying, “Sorry babe” (if I could’ve felt my hands and gotten the uber thing taken care of myself I’d currently find myself embroiled in a “when’s the last time you heard from Dan” type investigation).

The game turned ugly (for me and the boy) but we continued our (as yet, unsuccessful) quest for national recognition:

 

 

 

PS – these were fun in the wind.  But more importantly: how are we constantly overlooked?  These signs are funny dammit AND Cal was wearing a homemade shirt AND my hat had blinking Christmas lights… boo NBC… boo

Meanwhile, Cal was breaking my spirit with his whimpering about the hand and foot warmers not working.  He asked to feel my hand warmers… Here’s a pretty useful tip: if you are hangin’ with a person who starts to complain about their hand warmers being subpar – just give them the ol’ man-that-totally-sucks look and go on about your business — do not, I repeat DO NOT – let said person check out your perfectly fine hand warmers.

Did I mention that Dan never even took his hand warmers out of the packaging?

Just to recap:

Dan – in possession of all his layers and unused hand/foot warmers, his team winning their asses off

Cal – in possession of all his layers, one of my layers, my hand warmers, his hand and foot warmers, his team losing, but his beloved dad’s team winning

Me – fucked

Eh… over the course of our life together I’m more often than not on the good end of this in-house rivalry and while I was far from happy with the outcome – I not only expected it, but was somehow ok with it (at least nobody got hurt – a la Favre v. Arrington back in ’02… that did not end well for Dan).

Now… to uber.

Dan had read up on the uber situation at Fedex Field in between cheering and mentioning how toasty he was… it seems we needed to be in lot D – easy enough, especially with the “uber ↑” signs.  We found a long line of people lined up in lot D – all asking “is this the uber line?” (clearly Clampett’s… all of us).  The 3 of us huddled up andDan did the uber app thing, requesting a ride…

A quick primer: you request an uber, accept the rate, it gets charged to your PayPal account then the uber calls and you find each other in a sea of people all trying to do the same thing.

“please accept the rate of 2.7 times the normal rate due to the surge”

(translated: you dumbasses are out in the cold and don’t know what the hell you are doing so we are going to make as much money as possible off you)

Dan hits ‘accept’ because – what other choice do we have?

“you have accepted a rate of $84.35”

…at this point I’m hoping the ambulance will just give us a lift since they’ve spent so much time defibrillating Dan.  To put it in perspective – the Metro cost $10.80 total for all 3 of us, it was 13 miles.

The (barely English speaking) uber guy calls – he and Dan go ’round and ’round for easily 10 minutes with neither understanding the other.  The uber disconnects the call.  We then (serendipitously) discover the uber area – it’s about 1/4 mile further down; we discover this while Dan is running around in search of street signs while in a telephone queue for a cab company.  “I’m not talking to anybody, I’m just waiting…”

Meanwhile a girl walks up to us and asks to use a phone – it seems her friends left her behind due to illness and due to her refusal to get into a car with a bunch of drunks; she is not a Clampett – she is an urbanite who’s phone couldn’t handle the cold and shut down in the middle of her own uber call.

She’s quite clearly single because she got wide-eyed when I started yelling at Dan to hang up with the cab company and try uber again (three weeks into her first real relationship she’ll look back and understand it all).  “HANG UP! I can see 8,000 uber drivers right in front of us – not picking people up… we’re people… we need to be picked up… WHY ARE YOU STILL HOLDING FOR THE CAB????  DO YOU SEE THOSE CARS SITTING THERE NOT DRIVING PEOPLE ANYWHERE???????”

So Dan hung up and retried the uber app.

“please accept the rate of 4.9 times the normal rate due to the surge”

Now… what you need to know is: Dan is driven by 2 things – frugality and sex… I could sense his personal hell at this point; in an effort to help him along I shouted, “REALLY?!?!?!?”

he hit ‘accept’

“you have accepted a rate of $143.95”

Our eyes met through the gusting wind and the frigid temperatures… I rolled mine – who the hell even questions it?  We were minutes from death.

Meanwhile the girl is almost in tears – she’s 24, stuck by herself in a pretty nasty area of town and is beyond thankful that she’s found a family she can trust (although she’s a touch nervous around Dan… ok, ok, maybe it’s my shouting that’s catching her slightly off-guard).

Cal says something about being declined… “what dude?”  “It said, ‘card declined’ after you hit ‘accept’.”  Dan looked and the page never advanced so he hit ‘accept’ again – Cal was right… our card declined.  PayPal locked up because the first uber driver held the charge on our account.

So now… we can’t even call an uber.

good times

I yell at Dan to call a different cab company (by this point – the girl is starting to understand me better).  He calls, they tell him they are 2 minutes out… we all start to relax.

In the 25 minutes we stood there waiting…

we learned the girl is from Wisconsin, lives not quite 2 miles from our hotel, works for a lobbyist in the healthcare realm and wanted to know how the Affordable Care Act has affected us so she can take the information back to her boss…

Only if she were the daughter of a member of the Ways and Means committee sitting in a warm bar could it have turned out better…

The cold was biting through me so I had no choice but to yell at Dan to call the cab company again.

He yelled at me, saying I needed to be more patient; he wasn’t calling them…

The cab company told Dan they were having trouble finding drivers.

It was 1am, the streets were clearing out, very few people milling about, it was COLD and I was actually starting to feel like we had no hope… when all the sudden a car which had been idling near us for quite some time, flipped around and asked if we needed a ride.

He was an uber with no fare and offered to take us to both stops for $50 total.  The girl paid the entire fee in an effort to thank us for saving her (this one was tough to swallow but I told Dan, I’d hope Alex or Abby would do the same in that situation – let’s be honest… Abby woulda pulled a shiv from her sock hours before and gotten where she needed to be with little to no fanfare).

We had a remarkable conversation with our driver who immigrated from Taiwan with his family when he was 10, is a graduate student studying finance and gave us eye-opening reasons for his pro-Trump stance.

After standing in that weather for 7+ hours it took quite some time to wind down and thaw out.  We got ready for bed and all agreed, the 2 hours post-game were rotten, but the night worked out just as it was supposed to – if that original uber had picked us up… if the game had ended differently (with a Pack win, I would’ve sprinted the 13 miles back to our hotel)…. who knows what would’ve happened to that girl; on our drive to our hotel we heard a news report of a shooting only 1 block from where we caught our ride.  I keep thinking of that young lady stuck, with no phone, in that area…

Call it whatever you want – kismet, God’s will, luck…  we were meant to help that girl, of this I have no doubt.

 

As soon as I got home last night Cal started telling me and Dan about his afternoon at Pop’s.  It’s pretty neat that the kids can just hop on a different school bus and ride out to Pop’s on a whim… oh…. did I say ‘on a whim’? I meant “in a childcare emergency” :/

Apparently there were some tree stands that needed to be moved.  I have a vague idea of what goes on in these situations – that is to say I know what a tree stand is…  anything beyond that – I got nothin’.

So after a day of academic education, Cal headed south for his, uh… more real life education.

I think only the people who know my dad will appreciate this story fully; those people will be able to “hear” him in my words.  I’ll try to help out those of you who’ve never had the pleasure….

I’ve been told I have gift in developing characters – my readers often say they feel like they know the people I talk about… yet I can find no words that will do justice to the man who is my father.  He is absolutely, without question and without compare my true hero – he also competes pretty tightly with Dan as the biggest pain in my ass (meanwhile – for both of them – I’m simply a dream-come-true).

We spend many an evening sharing Pop stories – the 5 I’s often sit around the dining room table, cracking up to the point of tears, telling our stories;  Dan has the most entertaining tales because Pop can really let himself go unchecked in adult male company (based on Cal’s retelling of his day with Pop – he clearly considers Cal, “adult male company”).

My dad is a walking ball of testosterone – period, end of story.  He worked construction most of his life, he hunts, he drinks rum and pepsi, he – to this day – cuts all his own firewood, his heroes are John Wayne and Dale Earnhart – you know…  MEN.

My dad is also a very funny guy – mostly in a cynical, sarcastic way; funny as hell, though.  I get my sense of humor from him – he’s quick witted and (without the benefit of a multi-thousand dollar college education) has the ability to make words his bitch.  His phrasing is what makes him so funny – scratch that, his bitterness in completely benign situations in addition to his wording – is what makes him so funny.

His relationship with my son is one for the ages.  I marvel at the bond they share.  My dad and my brother never had a relationship to speak of – there’s plenty of blame to be passed around in that situation but the crux of the matter is an absolute lack of commonality.  My dad had completely different interests than my brother – neither tried to understand the other.

Along came Cal… a boy who only wants to do what Pop does.  They hunt together, fish together, watch NASCAR together, Pop was Cal’s little league coach for years… they are besties – inasmuch as a 12-year old can be besties with a 67-year old.

Pop, being Pop, thinks Cal is the smartest kid, best athlete, funniest boy ever to grace this earth all while having no tolerance for his air-headed ways.  He will brag the boy up to anybody who’ll listen (and even to those who’ve stopped listening) and he’ll just as vehemently call the boy out for being a bonehead – and I mean, he REALLY calls him out…  Cal takes it all like a champ, and gives it back – much to my horror…

Pop will be scolding Cal for something he’s done that’s not very bright or for simply acting like a goof and Cal just laughs him off – HE.LAUGHS.HIM.OFF!  oh dear God… I cannot put into words the fear which snuffs out my entire soul – my heart starts pumping hard, the sweating begins, I frantically look for an emergency exit…  then Pop just smiles.  Waitttttt… whaaaaaat? Who knew this tactic worked?  All those years I was getting my ass beat – I should’ve just laughed at him…

It would take years and more words than I know to fully and accurately detail the relationship between these 2… Pop loves the girls, too – he thinks the sun rises and sets wherever Miss Alexandra happens to be standing; Abby hits him right where he lives – she is me, a generation later, I am Pop, a generation later…  God help the person who hurts one of those girls….

So back to the point of this story – Cal telling us about his afternoon with Pop.  Remember me telling you several paragraphs ago that Pop clearly considers Cal ‘of age’ – well, I know this because Cal’s recount of the day was mostly a barrage of ‘beep’s and age-appropriate abbreviations (listen…  I know my kid swears, he learned it from me for chrissake… he’s just not old enough to do it on my watch, even if he is retelling a story).

Cal started the conversation wide-eyed and giggling, “Oooooooh I heard Pop drop the f-bomb today….” Dan and I settled in for some good Pop stories…

“So we were heading out to the furthest tree stand and Pop asked if I wanted to drive,” [Pop has an Ace – it’s an all-terrain vehicle with a steering wheel and cage], “so… you know, I said ‘yeah’.” [Cal can barely speak – the laughing is starting], “I mighta, sorta ran him into some briars…” [laughing, bent over laughing], “he was standing there, trying to get untangled from the briars and he got all mad and said, ‘Calvin… there’s 10 acres of field to your right and you ran me into the *F-ing* briars?!?!?!?!”

To be fair to the boy here – Pop is a master of hyperbole… the ’10-acre field’ was probably a 4 foot swath of clearing…

“Then I dropped a coupling,” [it connects 2 lengths of ladder – I know this only because I asked], “Pop was bent over looking for it and all I heard,” [Cal is bent over laughing], “all I heard,” [laughing], “all I heard was Pop… mad… ‘bare ground all around and this *GD*SOB* has to fall in a big *A* pile of rocks, sticks and animal *Sh–*.'”

By this time the 3 of us were in fits of laughter.  Cal just kept shaking his head, laughing and saying, “Pop….”  (As a side note – had I been the 12-year old dropping that coupling… well, he woulda made me climb down and find that *GD*SOB* myself)

I guess at one point Cal was up a tree, on a ladder and it started to fall backwards [think Clark Griswold]; I guess Cal was a tad scared and started shouting, “Pop! Pop! POP!” [the man is cool as a cucumber – I’m sure he was caught off guard but apparently he casually reached out and pushed the ladder back].  Cal said, “He grabbed the ladder and [Cal starts giggling] said, ‘*JC* Calvin, if I had known you were gonna be such a sissy, I’d have done this by myself…”

Cal giggling, “At the last tree stand Pop got his hand caught in a greenbriar… [giggling] so he’s all standing there shaking his hand like this, swearing at the briar,” [Cal is difficult to understand because he’s laughing so hard], “he was just swearing like crazy and I was laughing at him…  he looked up and said, ‘why the *H* is everything so *GD* funny to you, boy?’ [Cal busting a gut]…But you shoulda heard him swearing at that briar!!!”

Yeah…. Cal got quite a lesson yesterday afternoon.  I marvel at Cal’s resilience – my word, if Pop yelled at me like that – I’d probably still be laying out in the woods, curled up in the fetal position, crying; not Cal, he just laughs and says he can’t wait to go hang with Pop again…

The upside is: the tree stands are up and ready to be occupied and Cal is learning stuff that only Pop can teach him (the tree stand stuff… we all have a hand in teaching the swearing part).  The downside: eh… there really is no downside – this kid hears (and apparently SAYS) worse on the bus and in his circle of friends…

At the beginning of bow season Pop was bustin’ Cal’s chops a little, saying one of them had to lose some weight, the stands were getting a little tight with both of them perched in one…  Pop said it in his way, poking fun of Cal’s stocky build – but I saw through his sarcasm… I heard the melancholy through the bite, Pop knows it won’t be much longer ’til his boy is out in those stands by himself and I think he already misses his little buddy…..

 

Soooooo…. y’all dyin’ to hear about The Day of Karen 2016, huh?

Save your enthusiasm… 46 sucked the fatty.

I don’t even know how to go about relating this disaster…  I’ll start by quoting Annie… “you definitely need a birthday do-over”

Let’s see, it all started on Karen Eve as I sat watching “A Few Good Men” for the… I don’t know…. 12,943rd time.  But let me say this about that – A) it’s a great fucking movie and B) my kids commandeer the tv every.single.night – it’s was Karen Eve for chrissake…

Abby came down with her Math24 cards (4 numbers on a card, you gotta figure out how to make them equal 24).  So, she sits down and starts doing them OUT LOUD next to me.  Yes… I’ve seen “A Few Good Men” A LOT of times.  Yes… I love that she was interested in an educational experience on a Friday night.  But it was Karen Eve…  it was Karen damn Eve…

I asked her to be quiet – in MY way… “do you HAVE to be doing that NOW.  Can I FOR.ONE.NIGHT. watch something without listening to somebody run at the damned mouth right next to me????” – real classy, real parental like…..  She acted like an ass in response.  I stormed off to bed (it was 8:15).  Dan punished her then I spent 15 minutes explaining to her why she’s a pain in the ass.

So… the next morning – Karenday – she got up, looked at me and said, “happy birthday mom,” and went about her business.

Abby is me – we are celebraters – this was a shot; and make no mistake, it landed a bullseye.

I got ready for work.  I left early to have my brows and lip waxed… listen – I have a facial hair problem… let’s not make it more than it is.  (Ironically, the waxing was so I’d look decent for celebrating… keep reading to discover the irony).  As I walked into Pinkies (my waxers extraordinaire…) I ran into an uncomfortable situation.  Let’s just say – I had a not-awesome interaction during the week with an acquaintance; and in walking into the beauty salon, found myself face-to-face with the acquaintance’s spouse.  It ended perfectly – we had a very pleasant chat (the initial issue had righted itself earlier in the week) and I think we will move on seamlessly.

Still… this kinda timing only happens to me… I’m sure of it.

So… with red swollen eyelids (1/2 waxing, 1/2 crying) and swollen lip – I headed off to work.  My work day wasn’t awful – but does anybody REALLY want to work on their (Saturday) birthday????  Sara brought me a caramel frappuccino (a.k.a. orgasm through a straw) and we got down to business.

Listen… I try not to be an asshole, but the truth is – some patients drive me crazy.  Of the 10 or so really trying customers I have – 6 of them visited me yesterday.  I think we had 11 customers total… it was essentially long stretches of face sliding off boredom broken up by people who make me want to chew on Decon.  (I’m a bad person… I’m acutely aware of it).

To get the full effect of how less-than-desirable The Day of Karen really was… I have to get a touch personal… Dan and I are currently deep into a rough patch.  You need no details, just know that – like every couple… we, too, struggle.  Outrageously active kids, overwhelmingly daunting jobs, and 19 years of learning each other’s weaknesses…  We’re dealing, we’re talking, we’re mapping out a plan… it’s not the most “Karen-centric” ideal…

At this point it’s been a rough day.

And then the Dinnocenti’s walked in……..

My saviors.

Abby is holding the balloons they brought (not pictured are the cupcakes and tub of peanut butter icing… A.TUB.OF.ICING.).  Let’s start with the flowers…  that didn’t have a signature on the card.  And when I texted her a picture of them, she responded with, “Those are awesome, who are they from?”

so much fun

But the balloons!!!!!!  They each wrote why they love me…  Annie’s was typical – it had to do with my being agreeable to the purchase of an MRI machine.  Barry’s was about our mutual love of the Packers, tailgating and Annie.  The boys’ were spectacular…….  Gavin’s said, “I love her because she makes the best cereal”  I do, too… I fuckin’ rock cereal.  Jackson’s was my favorite… “I love her because she likes football and she’s pretty”  Jackson is now ahead of Alex in my will.

Abby was invited to a birthday party in the evening, and being who I am – I pushed my other 2 on the party mom (it’s a small town… we do this sort of thing…  I mean, it’s an asshole move, but it’s a common asshole move).  On the day of the party, after about 35 texts with 19 people – the transportation situation was a total cluster fuck.  We got it straightened out (some of the people involved might read this – please don’t think anything of it – Dan and I did not communicate well… it’s my life in a nutshell.)  My friend Mia was on the receiving end of the Iseminger life-style all day.  I sent her at least 5 texts changing things up – only to not even follow through with what we had FINALLY settled on… each text got increasingly more embarrassing…

I snoozed while Dan dropped off kids; he snoozed when he got back home.  By 7pm I was starving, there was no chance for a dinner out and there was some sparring.  I went to our local grocery store, got a couple of frozen turkey pot pies and popped them in the oven (I genuinely thanked Dan for not being stubborn, he graciously accepted my offering of frozen pot pie).  I had it time perfectly… about 7 minutes after he returned with the kids – our Day of Karen dinner would be ready.  Only…

when he got back with the kids, they decided they wanted to stay the night at Pop’s.  Sooooooooo…. the pot pie burned.

The

 

 

 

pot pie

 

 

 

 

burned.

Did I mention Alex didn’t tell me happy birthday until 20 minutes after I got home from work?  I’m sure she didn’t have her phone beside her all day, texting stupid shit, to people who didn’t give her life…  Cal did actually text me at 10:45 (after 4 hours in his tree stand), so there is that…  Pop told me ‘happy birthday’ after I called him to get Cal’s baseball practice snafu cleared up (this was another fun situation – 5 phone calls, a few texts and a lost baseball bag later…  wouldn’t be such a big deal but… Wednesday I said, “I’m working, Dan will have Abby at cheerleading, Pop will take Cal to baseball”… by Karenday – this, too, was a cluster that I had to straighten out).

I did come home to a card from my mother-in-law.  It was a very nice card – with no signature.  She felt the sentiment enough to purchase the card but not enough to own up to the words, I guess… I would never point this out to her – she’d be devastated…  it just kinda fit the day.

I had a card from a very dear friend of mine from Minnesota – one of the best people I know.  Jess wrote, “Minnesota loves you…”  I’m trying to talk myself out of correlating this with the recent emergence of the Vikings in the NFC North.

Claudette – who is infinitely more than family – sent me this beautiful bracelet:

…apparently they were out of H’s for ‘Hot mess’.

The night kinda slid on without event… I did get perfect messages from Gary and Missy separately – some people just know how to save you without realizing you needed to be saved.

And then there was Facebook…  say what you will about the Book of Face – the stupid posts, the political nonsense…  but the most smiling I did yesterday was while responding to the almost 200 posts that graced my page.  Wow… I have some amazing friends.  I’m always amazed by the people who take time to say ‘Happy Birthday’ – one in particular blew me away… a guy I went to college with – Jim.  He mentioned his anticipation regarding my day-after Karenday Facebook post…  I had no idea he even paid attention to my posts.

The ‘Day After’ has been ok… lots of guilt laid on my sloth kids, Dan and I had a good day, a non-Packers-game day tailgate with the 4 D’s, my dad sent me a ridiculously touching text and the Facebook messages are still dribbling in…

…still… 46 didn’t come in with as much hoopla as I’d hoped :/

Hey 47… it’s lookin’ pretty good for you 🙂

 

There are a number of customers whom I refer to as ‘one of my favorites’…

There is only one who I refer to as ‘my favorite’…

He’s a crotchety old guy in his late 80’s, only… he’s actually a big ball of sweet dipped in grump giving him an outer shell of curmudgeon.

He usually walks into the store, slams his hand on the counter and says something along the lines of: “Could a guy get a little bit of customer service, here – cause that’s all I ‘spect outta you people… a little bit….”

His eyes light up when he sees me, my eyes light up when I see him.  I’d say, “wha’d’ya want?”  He’d say, “A bag full of 20’s.”  So I got some fake $20 bills and put them in with his meds one day.

We are in the midst of a wonderful, exceptional, platonic love affair….

For 3 years I watched him take care of his dying wife of 70 years.  He was mighty surly in those days… understandably.  I could always seem to coax some banter out of him but as her condition deteriorated so did my ability to cheer up the old grouch (again… understandably).  Inevitably, the day came when she passed.  As expected, he did not handle it well.

The next thing I knew, he was in a nursing home.  I went to visit him and it was awful.  He had lost his will to live.  This vibrant, charming, pain in the ass character was neglecting himself to death.

We sat and talked at the nursing home; him… asking me to break him out of there, me… feeling helpless and so sad to see this man brought to this…  A nurse walked by as he grabbed my hand, he looked up at her and said, “I’ve loved 2 women in my life… my wife and this girl;” then he kissed my hand.

Wow…

Life, as it does, got in the way and I’m embarrassed to admit… I didn’t visit him again; I wanted to… I’m an ass.

There was a period of time when I didn’t even know where he was – he’d been moved to another home but I had no idea where; he has only distant relatives in our area and I don’t know them.  Months passed; every once in a while we’d wonder where he’d gone, but I had no way to find him.

And then randomly… his son from Ohio stopped in to the store – I got an address and an update on my favorite customer.  It was not good.

The next day I wrote him a 3 page letter.  I got nothing back and again weeks passed.  Then… outta the blue… he called to say he was coming home.  I hate to say it but… I didn’t give this much credence.

Lo and behold – the next week I got discharge orders for him.  Apparently he was due home on the 1st of the month (today).  I won’t get into the ins and outs of how we go about this stuff but suffice it to say – we struggled to get the meds ready for him and of course… today was my Saturday off so I had to dump that on Tyler.

Tyler handled it like the champ he is (I love me some Tyler) and Trish agreed to deliver them on her way home (this is how the awesome Everett Pharmacy people roll).  I was making the most of my Saturday off – I was on the couch dozing.

I had kinda forgotten all about the situation until I got a frantic text from Trish – I’ll spare you the details, you just need to know it was an SOS.

He wasn’t understanding our system of packaging meds and was getting a little belligerent.  Trish asked me to come to his house right away.  (At this point you also need to know – most people would’ve just left the meds and gone on about their day, Trish is not most people).

A few minutes later I walked into his house and it was uh… tense… for a bit.

“Quit being so mean, I’m trying to help you.”

“Well if this is what you call helping somebody – you’re in the wrong business.”

It went down hill from there.

He wasn’t understanding me, I surely wasn’t understanding him…  Not to mention it was 97 fucking degrees in there – why in the hell do old people keep it so damned hot?  I couldn’t even think with the sweat literally pouring down my back….

I’m not sure when it happened – but at some point, I broke him and he softened up a bit; he was finally picking up what I was throwing down.  Well… to be honest, I’m not sure he was picking me up but at least he wasn’t fighting me.

90 minutes later I was melting and ready to leave.  I looked over at his meds that were sent with him from the nursing home, “Hey… you already missed 2 doses!  Come on now… you need to take these…”

“Well, what good does it do for you to be standing there talking about it?  Give me the pills girl.”

I tore open the packaging and said, “Give me your hand; I don’t want to put them in my hand ’cause I was eating chips before I came over…”

“Eating chips…  well… it’d be no wonder you’re so heavy…”

 

poor alex.

…our quiet, stickler-for-the-rules, over-achiever…  stuck with a family in which this is a disadvantage.

Any parent can inflict middle-child type issues – that’s rookie stuff.  We Iseminger’s… we strive for screwing up our kids via innovative, unchartered paths.  We completely shun our first born.

I can’t even imagine if she should read this – she’s a drama queen, she’ll  run with the ‘woes me’ pity party; so let me clarify:  Alex is far from neglected, it’s just that Cal is the only son for this blogger who wanted a houseful of boys (oh shut up… the girls are keenly aware of the fact I only wanted boys, we have counseling funds set aside for them), and Abby has 319 cubic yards of personality crammed into a little sprite of a body.

That leaves Alex, our first born, our reliable, serious, accept-nothing-but-perfection, beautiful girl for us to forsake (case in point – I started this entry almost 3 weeks ago……. oh that poor Alex).

Again… let’s be clear… we spend copious amounts of time toting her ass to softball tournaments all over this state (and neighboring states) and we never miss her other events – it just seems… we don’t record them… you know, for posterity.

Of course, she hates having her picture taken so I will have that to fall back on; unfortunately she’s also the premier authority on the dissemination of guilt so it’ll still be my fault.  “Mommmm, I can’t BELIEEEVE you didn’t MAKE me have my picture taken….” I’ll just look her square in the eyes and holler, “I only ever wanted boys anyway!” then I’ll throw some of her psychiatry fund at her and storm off (I’m feeling pretty good about my odds if I come off as the offended party).

So, in the name of putting her therapy fund to good use…..

She had her first marching band outing 3 weeks ago and I have not a single picture.  NOT.A.SINGLE.PICTURE.  We stood right in front of her – seriously… we were nowhere to be found for the football game and then at halftime, there we were… front and center on the 50.  (you can bet your sweet ass we’ll be found when Cal is out there playing….)

This girl lugged a bari-sax around the field in 85 degree heat wearing wool coveralls, jacket, one of those ridiculous hats and awful, awful, horrendous shoes. Stop it all of you marching band people, stop it now – you know those outfits are outlandish (the fact I didn’t get a picture just to taunt her with shows my mental decline).

My favorite part of the get-up is – none of those football players will give my girl a second glance while she’s prancing around in those shapeless……. pants(?) – I don’t even know what the hell you’d call ’em.  In a group of similarly clad individuals, marching on the field with various instruments, it’s at least excusable… walking around the sidelines – not so much (yay! she can date AFTER she completes her residency).

As far as not getting pictures goes… does anybody besides me wonder what the hell Dan Iseminger was doing during all of this???  I was, after all, doing my part – standing there with tears dropping, wondering how I made this amazing person who absolutely slays every single thing she tries….  He’s the music guy – he’s the band parent.  All of this musical talent stems from him and his kin – why wasn’t he taking some damned pictures?

Anyway… at home later, I told her we had no photographic evidence of her first outing; in true Alex I-am-the-worst-at-everything fashion, she lamented  “oh I so don’t care… I was awful!  Weren’t you paying attention mom?  I played the wrong note a few times, I stepped in the wrong direction twice…”  I stopped her, “Alexandra…  it’s me.  My musical prowess begins and ends with the on/off button of the radio – of which I have about an 85% success rate.  I have zero idea what you’re supposed to be doing or playing – frankly: I’m the best fan you could ever have.”  She’s 14, she’s ostentatious, she beat me down… in defeat, I finally agreed she sucked….

Earlier, when she emerged from the locker room (is that where they ditch those heinous outfits???  I should probably know more about this….) she was carrying the box which housed her new marching band shoes (trust me, they’re as ugly, if not uglier, than they sound);  she handed me said box, I peered inside and said, “well hell! This is fantastic… now we don’t have to shop for Homecoming shoes!”

She cried.

 

(for the marching band record: Dan told me the Everett Band was fantastic)

 

So last weekend, I spent an hour locked in a room with a zombie…

Wait, wait… I wanna do this chronologically; forget I wrote that.

Let me start with this:  My “sister” Missy celebrated her 50th birthday last weekend (I used quotation marks because – well, I don’t actually have a sister).  We refer to each other as ‘sister’ because in many ways we are sisters – we snip at each other, we get on each other’s nerves (her more than me obviously…) and at the end of the day we have each other’s back unfailingly.

Another reason for the ‘sister’ moniker is because my father frequently tells Missy he is really her biological father.

This is a fun joke in a small town…

With half a century of friendship between our parents, our own close friendship and the fact our daughters are besties – it’s just easier to say we’re sisters than to explain all of the stuff I just made you slog through.

So Missy turned 50 and we decided to make a weekend of it.  We decided to spend 3 days at Cedar Point – only, it didn’t really work for any of the 12 of us involved to go to Cedar Point for 3 days.  Instead, we hit Pittsburgh for 30 hours and let me say this – we hit it hard (I think).

The Five I’s decided to make this our last hoorah of the summer (we’re asshole parents – it was our only hoorah of the summer).  We started with Cal’s 1st Junior High football game – it was a win (8-6).  The important things to know about this part of the weekend are: he’s a tight end, he played every snap on offense, had 2 targets (neither for completions) but blocked like a beast and opened the hole which allowed the 2-point conversion.  OH! and the showers at the gym weren’t working – we drove to Pittsburgh with a bunch of stank.

Our first stop was Skyzone – because the trampoline in our backyard isn’t sufficient – we had to spend $58 for an hour of listening to our kids bitch about other kids jumping “in our area”.  I have not an inkling of how much money the Skyzone ‘team members’ are paid – but I can tell you, it ain’t enough.  We cut out after 50 minutes (keep the change Skyzone – use it for drool cups for your employees).

Our next stop was the hotel – to get the boy showered and meet up with the birthday girl and her brood.  These people are some of my favorite people on Earth – Missy, Gary, their daughter Carlie, sons Josh and Wes, and sons’ significant others Leah and JJ (who also goes by Janette.  This causes me a tremendous amount of stress because I don’t know which she prefers so I mix it up – I put WAY too much thought into mixing it up, though… I’m gonna hafta pick one soon and just stick with it, for my own mental fortitude).

I had the genius idea of all 12 of us taking part in an escape room; have you seen these?  You get locked in a room for an hour and have to solve puzzle(s) to get out.  Sounds fun, right?  Yeah, well… Josh went a step further, “…here’s one called ‘daring escapes’ – there’s a zombie in the room with you…”  Why any of us thought that sounded like a good idea – I’ll never know.

Once Cal was (for the most part) stink free – we all took the elevator down to set out for the escape room and literally… the 12 of us walked in circles for about 5 minutes trying to get the hell out of the hotel.  Nobody could remember how to get to the damned parking garage.  I ran in to Dan once and I think I saw a few others collide – for chrissake we couldn’t even get out of a free roaming hotel –  this did not bode well for the zombie escape adventure.

Finally we got to our cars (I still have no idea how….) and arrived at the escape room a few minutes late (those of you who know us and the Shetters are sitting there thinking, “shocking”).  As the “tour guide” explained the ins and outs of our mission – the zombie screamed and banged on the  wall behind us – the group of 12 quickly dropped to a group of 10 (Cal and Abby were out).  We went in, the “door” (which the 2 sissies could see through) was locked and we went to work.  …scared the ever luvin shit outta me when that zombie came out of a closet.  She was chained to the wall – every 5 minutes that passed without us unlocking the door – she got another foot of chain.

This woman screamed – and I mean – screamed bloody murder for a full hour.  She crawled around on her knees and screamed and pulled on that chain; all while we tried to figure out why in the hell we decided to do this…  It was something.  Tons of riddles led to a larger riddle. At some point Gary determined clapping his hands mesmerized the zombie enabling us to move about the room freely without the mind numbing screaming – I was dying later, listening to the boys bitch about the clapping – what kind of weirdos would prefer the screaming????

Everybody gave all the credit to me, Wes and Josh (truthfully, I didn’t do a whole helluva lot but if they wanna say I helped, then by god I helped).  We made it out with something like 5 seconds left and with only one of us being captured by the zombie (it doesn’t matter who… why’s everybody always want to know “whooooo”).  It was a good time – we all needed headache meds afterward – but it really was fun.

Next up was the Pirates game.  First things first, though – we stopped at the hotel and all gathered in the boys’ room for a coupla beers and ibuprofen (ugh that screaming zombie…); Missy went off to her room for a few minutes and I let everybody in on the surprise I planned – a birthday message on the jumbotron (I also informed everybody that while I felt Missy was worthy of a jumbotron message, apparently she wasn’t worthy of the extra expense of a “memory print out” of the message – my sisterly love clearly has a set budget).

Everything was a go – we just had to make sure Missy was in her seat in the middle of the 4th inning; seems easy enough… until you throw in the fact that I was involved.  I won’t get into the minutiae of how it happened that she was still at the food and beer vendors at the top of the 4th inning but I will say this – those of us in our seats were panicking (AND wondering where the hell our nachos and beers were).

Gary and Josh went to remedy the situation.  Only… it wasn’t a terribly smooth mission.  I’m not really sure what went on down in that concourse but – not one of them came back happy.  I believe there was snipping.  So when this popped up on the jumbotron:

Missy was busy hating everybody…

Anticlimactic: (adj): anything connected with turning out to be far less meaningful or exciting than was hoped.

The game wasn’t great for the Pirates and their fans (the I’s are mainly O’s fans so we had a little less invested), there was yelling from the crowd (ok… I had a few beers… it might’ve been me) and we left the stadium with a little less hop in our step than when we got there.

Gary led us back to the hotel and I’m here to tell you we hoofed it – “it” being the most indirect route possible.  It should have been a 15 minute walk, give or take – I’m not sure how long we did walk but I swore I saw the same paper boy in 2 different outfits.  About 1/2 way through our trek, Wes noticed we had dropped 5 of our people…  He and I looked back, said, “oh shit…” and kept walking.  I gotta say – not my shining moment as a parent considering I did not have Cal with me and Dan isn’t known for his attention to details – like our kids – in situations like that.

We finally reached our hotel – Gary cracked me up by ushering our girls towards the crosswalk in the parking lot after we had just jay-walked across 9 lanes of traffic including an off ramp to get into said parking lot.  We walked into the hotel and there sat Dan and Cal – they had clearly been there a while (show offs).  The rest of our group made it back about 5 minutes after us.  After a few drinks at the hotel bar I woke Dan…

The next day was Kennywood Amusement Park.

I’m not sure why I thought an amusement park seemed a good idea after a day with Josh (he’s a VERY bad influence on me)… I’m also not clear as to why my husband decided we’d meet his friends at 9:45am after a day with Josh…  Missy, Gary and Carlie showed up to the park at 2:30 – they’re my kinda people.

I rode 3 rides all day …..one was a Garfield boat (I explained myself by saying Cal, a non-rider, needed me by his side; they’re my family – they spoke nothing of me possibly leaving him to fend for himself in the streets of Pittsburgh 12 hours earlier). Thank god for Missy, too – she rode with Abby all day; Dan did ride quite a bit, but looked exceptionally pale after one and backed out of another because he got nauseous during the wait.

Parents of the Year here ladies and gentlemen.

Happy Birthday Missy… we’ve got 4 years to recover…

I’ve never really been a bucket list kinda person.  I did – for a very short time – think I might like to jump out of an airplane…  I’ve since come to the realization that after having spent the better part of my adult life saying to myself, “ya gotta be fucking kidding me” maybe skydiving isn’t in my best interests.  Don’t take my word for it – ask Annie…  she has a shortcut key in her texting app for ‘how does this shit happen to you constantly?’ she just types ‘K’.

So… no, I’m not a bucket list-er but I am a “hey wouldn’t that be cool…”-er.  And, when Brett Favre retired (that last time) I said, “I was at Cal’s hall of fame enshrinement, wouldn’t that be cool to be at Brett’s.”

…and it was.  That’s me in the jersey Dan and I made (ok, DAN made – but it was my idea).  I wanted to sew together his 4 NFL jerseys – since I didn’t have a spare $300+ I settled for some clearance jerseys that had the right emblems/numbers.  Some spray adhesive later and I was a hit in Canton.  Players go into The Hall without regard to team affiliation… that being said – when the old man said, “Make no mistake about it.  I will be remembered as a Packer!” the crowd went absolutely bonkers (if I were 60 pounds thinner – I’d’a ripped my clothes off – it was THAT kind of moment).

So, to put it into perspective – the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony is free – first come first serve.  We had rooms an hour from Cooperstown; the night before Cal was inducted my dad said, “You’re a nut, we are not leaving at 4am…”  The next morning when he met me in the lobby at 4am, he said, “This is ridiculous, we’re going to look like idiots sitting in an empty field at 5 in the morning for a 2pm ceremony.”  When we got to the venue we set up our chairs right in the middle – behind the 74 rows of people who got there before us.

It was free, it was an afternoon.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame ceremony is so very far removed from free they’ve had to make a weekend of it to justify the expense.  My husband, having grown accustom to my whims and never feeling threatened by my unabashed lust for Brett – was all in (our promise to pay off the credit cards be damned!).

I wanted the diamond package, hoped for the platinum package, asked for the gold package and got the silver package (btw, I looked down my nose at the bronze package people all weekend).  The problem with being Dan and Karen is – we get screwed at the diamond level… chances were pretty danged good we’d have issues as silver people.

Nonetheless, ever the optimists (or just plain stupid…) we showed up for the first event – a Tim McGraw concert.  We shuffled to our section like prodded cattle and…wait…first let me say something about myself here.  I consider myself of above average intelligence – I’m not a shit about it, I just think I’m ok smart; yet for some reason – venue seating confounds me.  It never seems to be as easy as it should be.  Section, row, seat… easy enough – but it just never is.  So, I sort of fret – it is the most embarrassing inducer of panic to which I will admit (the other panic inducers generally involve the shower, not feeling well and thoughts of dying naked).  Anyway, it goes without saying – when we got to section 115, looking for row 9, I was already on edge – and then… the unthinkable… section 115 stopped at row 8.  Oh.dear.god.the.sweating.

Long story short – my worst fears weren’t realized – I wasn’t just stupid… section 115 DID indeed stop at row 8… our seats didn’t exist.  Yes, for me, absolutely, this is more agreeable than finding out I’m a dumbass.

There were about 25 of us hoping section 15 didn’t end at row 8 – the other 23 of us were ANGRY.  Dan and I couldn’t have cared less.  While the others were seeking a pound of flesh, I was goofing around demanding free beers (which we got) and wondering why people need to see anything at a concert.  It ended like this – we went from seats just slightly better than those bronze suckahs to:

I sat there drinking my free beer thinking about all the diamond people who paid a shitload more money sitting behind us…

The next day was the enshrinement ceremony.  Again… being Dan and Karen – we had to fight our way to our seats.  The entrance to our section serviced 3 sections – this was the case for sections 124, 125, and 126 only… every other section in that stadium had an entrance dedicated to only 1 section.  We stood in line for about 20 minutes just to get into our seats.  Oh!  it should also be mentioned – the only beer of reasonable access was Bud and Bud Light – in a stadium… it’s like going to the beach and only being able to find breaded shrimp.  Anyway, we finally got to our bleacher seats (a la Lambeau) and looked down at this:

…an entire stage of HOLY HELL!  The talent on that stage… (Chris Berman notwithstanding).

The speeches dronnnnnnned onnnnnnnnnn. About 40 minutes each.  I tried to be patient – only 303 people have busts in the HOF – when my boy is standing there in his gold jacket telling the world about me and how wonderful I am (he’ll probably even mention his dad, pop, the magnificent kids he’s bound to have and that bitch he’ll have married…) I want people to sit and listen to him, really listen to him… so I kept my sighing to a minimum.  I’m not gonna lie – the 2 men enshrined posthumously – were my non-Favre favorites.  (Again,  because I was involved – this class had more people than most, some years had TWO, 2016 had eight…).  Finally the old man took the podium.

I was enraptured, but then…  I could listen to that man read a medical journal.  The next time you have 36 minutes to kill – youtube his speech, it was sweet, honest, funny, poignant… it was Favre.  I cried, I jumped up and down, I laughed overzealously, and I sat there wondering if football will ever know another player like him… When he walked away from the microphone, I mourned his retirement all over again.

The next day was the Hall of Fame game – the kickoff of NFL 2016.  I wasn’t crazy invested – watching 3rd stingers vie for a roster spot is not loads of fun but I’d read that Andrew Luck was starting for the Colts so… it couldn’t be all bad.

We parked in our regular spot and began the short walk to the stadium, passing the same home owners we’d passed the previous 2 days; nodding as if we’d developed a deep bond…

“Game’s cancelled”

we laughed…

“no… seriously!  They canceled the game!”

heh?

True story.

The teams took the field like this:

…no pads, no helmets, just jerseys, shorts and bad field paint.  We were neither devastated nor surprised – it’s our life.  In this situation as in the concert snafu – I think Dan and I were the only fans who didn’t really care.  The fans were going nuts…  I never understand that – I mean, I’m pretty sure the NFL and the Hall of Fame didn’t want for this to happen.

The beauty for us was: we hadn’t allotted time to check out the actual Hall of Fame; so we took this opportunity.  It’s pretty neat.  Along with not being a bucket list kinda person, I’m also not a museum type – too much to see and read and it never seems to be organized in an easy to follow manner…  it’s overwhelming.  They got shit on every wall, all over the floor…  You lay that stuff out in a straight line and I’m all in.

We checked out all the busts (I missed Lombardi – didn’t look for him till ’75… apparently back then there was no 5 year wait period… he was ’71).  The ’15 and ’16 enshrinees were around a corner; when one rounds this corner, one comes upon a HUGE pole/column which blocks one’s view.  So, I stood there looking at the crowd standing in front of the bust I wanted to see – wondering why they all seemed so frantic to get a picture of a bust (ha! I’ve read that last sentence 6 times… this is the first time I read it dirty – I’m losing my touch).  Anyway, I was all, “it’s a bust, …’ll be there for a while,” (I thought this – I try to only be an asshole at home).

Something made me lean around the pole.  I saw a gold jacket – wrapped around a shoulder!   wait… WHAT????

Tony Dungy – no shit… standing 3 feet from me (being me…  2 of those feet were consumed by column).  He was at his bust with his special needs son; graciously took a few fan pictures and walked away before I could get my phone out… (I told you I’m not a museum person – I rolled my eyes at every picture taker there).

But… I did get a picture of this:

Welcome home 4….

And then I got a picture of this:

…just waiting for “the Green Bay Packers” to be etched in.

Meh… it was a good weekend all-in-all (and we’re getting some refunds, to boot).  The lack of good beer was troublesome, the lack of concert seats started out bothersome but ended well, The Speech, as it will now be called, was perfection, the cancelation of the game was neither here nor there for me, so I’d say the beer was the only disturbing issue….

Dan and I had a few days to ourselves.  We weren’t on an oppressive schedule.  And there was Favre… everything is better with Favre….

 

 

 

Well… I sat down to tell ya all about the cute/funny things my kids said this evening (and I will in just a second here) but in the 3 seconds since I opened my blogging app this happened:

Me: oh… looky here….  I can just prop my computer up on my gross belly… how convenient…

to which my less than bright husband responded: “lose the butt, gain the gut…”  I looked at him – mentally weighing the pros and cons of different forms of torture, when he looked at me, apologetically and said, “you know… that’s what they say when a person gets old.”

wait… what????

Anyway, back to my evening with my children.

Abby was explaining to me how she no longer needs to attend gymnastics – “mom, I don’t love the beam or vault.  Honestly, I hate them, ok they scare me.  I love the uneven bars, but I have my own – I’ll youtube lessons and teach myself.  All that’s left is floor and technically – cheerleading IS floor… you know, except the toe touches and the cheering part.”  She’ll be a lobbyist for the cigarette companies, no doubt.

Earlier in the evening, the eldest 4 Isemingers went out to throw the ball around – and boy did we throw the ball around.  I’m dumbfounded by the amount of running we do while playing catch; I’m no expert (obviously) but I really think ‘playing catch’ – if done correctly – should involve little to no leg work.  I’m pretty sure I logged a half marathon this evening.

My sub-genius husband is, at the very least, exceptionally chivalrous and offered to grab an errant ball for me (nice enough, yes… but let’s be honest – he was chasing his own miscue to a nearby spot).  Anyway, he grabbed the baseball I was too inept to catch, ran towards me and in true Dan fashion… at about 20 yards out – heaved the ball… right into a tree limb.  He then chased the ricochet while the rest of us worked on not pissing our pants.

Incidentally, Dan and I texted quite a bit today about the kids and their need for long-toss training.  He kept telling me what they needed, I’d then send him a screen shot of the instructions I’d sent to the kids an hour prior which included exactly what Dan had suggested.  Being who he is… (he can’t stand to have ZERO input into a situation) he texted me (and I quote), “Hopefully they have the sense to warm up first and gradually increase the distance.  I probably wouldn’t have when I was a kid…. then again, I still wouldn’t warm up first.”

hold that thought…

We headed to the field after grabbing our gloves and a couple of balls; while we were walking Cal threw me a laser, which I missed… it rolled roughly 4.16 miles.  Dan , who was just coming out of the house (cold), ran it down and came up firing.  “Ooooohhhhhh… owwww.”  I mean… who does that?  who has that little sense? especially after discussing this very situation not 5 hours prior????

Ok… back to the purpose of this entry – my kids and their funny comments.

We came across a kitten during our outing.  Yeah…. you know where this is going.  It started out innocently enough: Alex, Cal and I were taking turns being the kitten’s favorite.  Alex mentioned how thin the kitty was and compared it to BrettFavre (the cat… not the man).  I said, “I know, right?  Brett is outside running around, playing constantly, yet he’s still so fat.”  Cal gave me the ‘I feel his pain’ look, patted his own gullet and said, “Maybe we shoulda named him CalIseminger insteada BrettFavre.”

As the kitten continued it’s attack on my steadfast refusal to take him home, Alex and I marveled at how smitten the kitten was with Cal.  I puzzled over not only this attraction but our dog’s loyalty to the boy and mentioned my surprise that Brownie sleeps in Cal’s room every night; Alex, with an offended air, said, “He has absolutely nothing to do with any of the animals and they love him… I don’t get it!”  He said, “Clearly those animals know who’s the bees knees in that house.”  I can’t explain it… but hearing him refer to himself as the ‘bees knees’ knocked me on my ass.

The kids begged, implorrrrrred me to accept the kitten into our home; I was in urgent need of reinforcement when Dan joined us with Abby in tow.  The kitten (trying to manipulate the situation) was all over each of us without prejudice.  The kids were begging, unmercifully – but Dan and I stood strong, openly scoffing at the “…this time will be different” lies.  Finally Cal looked at me and gave the most convincing argument of all: “Mom, we HAVE to take this kitten… we’ve never known anybody or anything that likes all 5 of us.”

…it was such a sadly true statement… it ALMOST worked

 

 

As we left the restaurant last night, Cal walked up behind me and with a voice withered by defeat, asked if we could go on a date (this is code for ‘hold hands’).  I put my hand out, he laced his fingers in mine and with a weariness no 12-year old should know, he said, “It’s getting really hard to walk onto the field anymore.”

In the 3rd inning we were up 10-0…

There are plenty of excuses I could cite for this team’s 2-7(?) All Star record; some valid, some questionable, none of any importance.

What I do know is: ol’ number 31 is tired.

It ain’t easy to watch your kid lose; it’s crushing to watch him break…

A game of catch between Dan and Cal summed up nicely in 1 little picture collage:

First… the glove.  Luckily… we are a multi-sport family; when all of your gloves are in Poppa’s car, you can go to your hockey equipment in a pinch.

As the 5 of us began our family fun day I asked, “where’s your first baseman’s glove?”  Cal (with the uhhh-you’re-a-dumbass tone), “it’s in Pop’s car.  I play first base mom.”  Interesting… you see… I was “being ridiculous” when I bought the boy a first baseman’s mitt.  I’m pretty sure it came in the mail on a practice day, Pop stopped to pick up Cal, Cal showed Pop the glove and Pop said, “…stupid, leave that thing here…”  and off they went; I stood there, thinking, “hmmmm that’s not quite the reaction I was expecting”.  Well so much for my “stupid” purchase… Anyway, he had no ball glove at home, thank garsh for our house overrun with good intentions – we have no time/opportunity for Cal to play hockey… Dan however, will not give up the dream.

We got to the field – the 5 of us – with 3 bats, 2 water bottles, 4 cell phones, a goalie’s glove and a bucket of balls.  The bucket of balls contained 3 baseballs, 2 t-balls, 3 regulation softballs, 3 smaller softballs, some whiffle balls, a  few hockey pucks and a thing that used to resemble home plate.  Basically…. we suck.  It seems to me – a family of sports fiends should be able to scrape up more than 5 usable balls; to reiterate… we suck.

So, anyway, back to the picture collage…  We all don our gloves – Cal looking ridiculous – and begin to spin our arms in an attempt to loosen up.  Cal immediately shouts, “I’m warming up with dad!”

Now…….

 

this pisses me off for myriad reasons.  First and foremost – I can’t stand not being picked first – plain and simple.  The thought of throwing with Alex was far from repulsive (my girl can play her some catch) but for Cal to jump all over throwing with Dan right off the bat… whadabbuncha bullshit.  (As an aside, Alex and I got Abby – there was no discussion, we are just better people than those 2 assholes).

“I’m warming up with dad!” – gah… so irritating.

The main reason I was ticked is:  we all fucking know I’m the best catch player in the family…  in any world other than my jackass son’s – if it came down to asking me to play catch or asking his father to play catch – there is not a single person on earth who would pick Dan.

Take a look at the pictures my friends…  Remind yourselves that earlier in this blog I mentioned Cal is a first baseman – you have to be pretty inaccurate for him to miss the catch (especially with THAT glove).  When I took these pictures – we had just started throwing, I was simply recording for prosperity, just randomly snapping pictures.  Only after looking through them did I notice the theme – Dan can’t hit shit.  It brings to mind my very favorite comment after an ESPN article (I’m a comments whore – I could spend all day reading people’s wit), anyway, a reader wrote, “Tavaris Jackson couldn’t hit a toilet with his own turd.”

Anytime I think I’m even remotely funny I humble myself by perusing the comments following sports articles.

So… I sit here laughing.  Cal had to know what was coming – he’s spent plenty of time playing catch with both of us…  He’s spent loads of time chasing errant throws from his father and he’s spent equal or more time playing ‘hit the glove’ with me (we put our glove in a spot and the thrower tries to hit it – I am the champion).

I don’t care… let ‘im chase baseballs with his dumb ol’ hockey glove – it doesn’t bother me at all….

I’m fine with it…

…you and dad have fun over there…. warming up…. your legs….