And then, upon the Lord’s Day…

…everyone up again for another long day of activities. Breakfast, clothes, iron a shirt for Mommy and for Cat, drive, park, teach, be sermonated, try mightily to stay among the awake, and then get ready for some lunch.

For some strange, mind-of-a-six-year-old reason, Catherine was insistent that we not go visit the new Chinese restaurant close to church that has that good Sriracha hot sauce Mrs. Gore and I are such fans of, but rather she wanted to go visit our old favorite in Trussville, House of Inexplicable Anglo Waitresses.

(For those of you who are new to Possumblog, this is a relatively nice little place in a strip mall close to our house—not the best place, but still a nice and homey family-run place with a small lunch buffet. It’s like every other Chinese family restaurant, with the exception of the waitresses. Maybe it’s a stereotype, but you generally expect to see the kids or nephews or whoever taking the orders and stuff, but for some reason this restaurant has two young white high-school girls as waitresses. The owners and most of the kitchen staff speak English just fine, so it’s not for help with language. One of the girls is really good—sweet as she can be, smart, helpful, attractive in that incredibly attractive sort of way, but the other is rather less than snappy when it comes to service, so in the end, who knows.)

Anyway, we walked in and for some reason, not only were the two normal girls there, but they had gone and hired some redheaded high school boy who looked a bit like either David Letterman or Chuckie from Rugrats. Further, he seemed to be related not to the efficient and attractive girl, but the more sluggish and not quite so well-endowed team member.

“How many?” Well, let’s see, Junior, there’s six of us…

”Six. please.”

“Where would you like to sit?”

“Anywhere is fine.”

“Here?”

“Fine.”

“…Or over there?”

“Anywhere is fine.”

“…Here?”

“Yes, fine.”

“This is okay?”

YES! So he started grabbing chairs and a table and motioning for the Smart Stacked Girl to help him move the table. “It’s okay,” she whispered to him, “that table seats six.”

“But we need some more chairs!”

Then Reba tried to help out, “There’s just six of us.” He stood there for a minute, and it finally dawned on him that the table with six chairs at it had six chairs at it. I was standing there behind the Smart Stacked Girl when she turned around and looked at me and let out a low sigh and rolled her eyes. Yeah, I know, little sister.

Anyway, the food was good.

Then off to home where Rebecca propped her foot up and I read the paper and Reba turned around and went off back to church with the other three for the Bible Bowl contest. Rebecca has once again decided she wanted to try to play so I got to be the chauffeur back across the county for her.

Got time to leave and off we went, this time with a change of clothes for her and a washcloth and some deodorant. Her game was at 4:00, which meant that it would be over with by around 5:10 or so, then we had to go all the way from Riverchase to Leeds before church started because I was supposed to lead singing. Not that we ever cut things so close…

Anyway, the girls warmed up and got going—we were playing a younger, but similarly skilled team, and I take back every bad thing I thought about the unsportsmanlike play of the previous day compared to this team. I have never seen a group who played more dirty. I can’t really blame the girls, in that this is purely learned behavior—I blame their coach, who from his middle-of-the-back length, stringy blonde ponytail to his sounds-fake-to-me British accent to his propensity to argue with the referees, is someone I would like to fall headlong into a ore crusher.

Your girls play dirty, sir. Bad show.

And the parents got in on the act, too. The referee stopped during the course of the game and gave one man a dressing down for talking bad about the girls (remember, these are 10 and 11 year olds), then when play was about to resume, he popped off AGAIN, this time to HER. She then threatened to send the entire group of Riverchase parents to the parking lot.

Once more, bad show.

But as with the game the day before, the best revenge is winning. (Cleanly, I might add.) Final score, 5-0, and this time Rebecca made it through without getting hurt. But then there was the matter of getting across three counties—it was now 5:20 and church cranked back up at 6.

“Rebecca, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

“It’s okay, Daddy.” So I drove and drove with her changing clothes and scrubbing stink off of herself in the back and me trying to stay at the speed limit to keep from getting stopped and we walked in at exactly 5:57. Three whole minutes to spare, leaving me exactly enough time to go to the restroom, and then stride calmly into the foyer as though it was completely normal to walk in at the last minute. And despite not getting a chance to practice, I managed to not get any of the pitches or tempos wrong, nor begin having a fatal coughing fit like usually happens. Not that I want to repeat the exercise.

Then off back to home for all of us, where I found out at the Mommy-Daddy Evening Debriefing that the kids from our congregation had won the junior and senior Bible Bowl events, too! And we got some leftover hotdogs!

Baths, beds, and back up today.

So, there you go.
posted by Terry at 4:57:00 PM