Oh, kay. As I said, long old weekend—Boy had practice Friday night, which actually wasn’t so bad in that I got to be a taste testing guinea pi…possum for the guy in the concession stand. He had found some ribeye cutlets at Sam’s Club and wanted to know what they might taste like as a sandwich. Pretty darned good, overall. He heated one up on the griddle and threw some of those Chef Emeril spices on there (all the great taste of Emeril in a bottle) and it was really good. I asked him if they were going to have some steak sauce standing by, and he gave himself a Homer D’oh slap on the head for forgetting, but promised to have some for Saturday. Then I started getting all fancy and told him it would be good with some grilled onions, and maybe some of that cheese sauce from the nachos, but he was already shaking his head no. With as much business as they have, all that stuff’s just too much work.

But, I did get a free sandwich for being a test victim, so who am I to complain?

Saturday, we had a change in schedule so we wound up having to take two vans to all the various places—Boy’s game was over in the Clay pasture field (I’m not saying this to be mean—not really—but the only leveling their field has had was whatever the Bush Hog sliced off. Full of dips and rolls and it all slopes downhill.) We loaded up and got there around noon, and sure enough, the one field in our whole league without a restroom, and he has to pee. ::sigh::

“There’s the bushes, Son. You should have gone at the house.” This caused immediate cessation of the urge and a tiny pained expression at the thought of someone seeing him wander off into the scrub. Head shake no. “Son, you have GOT to go…you won’t be able to make it the whole game!” Head shake no. “I’LL go with you!” Head shake no.

I got his hand and we started walking over to the fire station. There were a couple of trucks parked outside, which made me think someone might be there. That, and it was a fire station. You just figure it ought to have firefighters. Rang the doorbell a couple of times—nothing. “Okay, I tell you what, buddy, we’ll go over here behind the community center—I bet they have a portable toilet back there you could use.” He seemed rather dubious about this possibility, and I was even more so, but I figured once he saw that he was hidden he would go ahead and kill some weeds. On the way over, salvation came in the form of a Mason—there was a lady at the Masonic lodge apparently cleaning up and about to leave and we caught her right before she came out the door. Poor little Jonathan was beginning to hop a bit, so she kindly let us in so he could use their restroom. Interesting place—I’ve never been in a Masonic lodge before. Probably broke all kinds of secret rules. One thing that mystifies me is why it wasn’t made out of masonry.

Anyway, he finished up seeing that man about a dog and we thanked the nice Mason lady for allowing us into their inner sanctum and it was back on down to the field.

The other team and ours were…uh…let’s just say we were equally matched. We held each other scoreless for the first half, and then we made the mistake of changing goalkeeper. Which meant that the score wound up being 0-4. ::sigh:: Little Boy played pretty good, but it was hot and all of them got tired out.

The worst part was having to share the sideline with the guy that coached his team a year ago—the loudmouthed lisping lumpen loon from Lackawanna. I SOOOO wanted the referee to send him away—he kept yelling and telling the kids to do stuff that was completely WRONG, and generally created confusion. Make it worse? He was fussing at other kids for making mistakes—he just doesn’t realize how fortunate he is that one of them wasn’t Little Boy. I put up with this joker being his coach for three months and didn’t say anything—because he was the coach, but he’s NOT the coach ANY MORE. I may have to oppress him, and show him the violence inherent in the system. He just better hope I get to him before Miss Reba does.

She and the girls left early to go on to Catherine’s game back in Trussville, and as soon as Jonathan got finished, we went on, too. Got to the park and it was packed to the gills, but luckily we managed to get a parking spot right by the concession stand. Cat’s game had started, but Jonathan was hungry, which touched off a bout of hungriness among the rest of the crew, which necessitated getting food. Ashley, despite being a pill about having to go watch stupid soccer (rather than being allowed to stay home and piled up in the bed watching teevee), did come with me to assist in the hauling of our food.

Four sandwiches (including one of those ribeye sandwiches), four chips, four large, tall Cokes. All in a nice cardboard box with a handle in the middle. This was actually a box for some of the other food service stuff, so the drinks didn’t quite fit exactly right. (This is what real writers call ‘foreshadowing’.)

Walked all the way across the hillside—rocks, slick spots, holes, and every other obstacle—all the way back to our spot on the other side of the field. Didn’t spill a single solitary drop…until I bumped the corner of the box on the back of Jonathan’s chair, which knocked over one of those big tall Cokes into the bottom of the box. ::sigh::

I was so flustered I didn’t quite know what to do at first, and to make matters worse, there was some old hag sitting on the stands who thought my predicament was funny as anything she had ever seen on that there Carol Burnett Show. She laughed and hooted and cackled and snorted—yeah, it was kinda funny, I suppose, but not THAT funny—and I had Coke trickling out of the corner of the box. I distributed the unspilt ones to the kids and Reba, grabbed the cup that got upset and tilted the box over to one side, so that it drained into the cup. Reba got the sandwiches and chips out, and after the box quit trickling, I dumped out the ice into the cup.

Hmm.

Still more than half a cup’s worth in there, even if it did taste a bit corrugated cardboardy.

Take that, you crabby old blabbermouth!

Cat’s game was pretty good. Poor thing still can’t run worth a hoot—she has a sort of stiff-legged heel pounding gait that in addition to being slow looks rather difficult and painful. But, she has a wild time—no goals this week, but she did manage to kick it several times in the general direction of the other end of the field. As with Jonathan’s game, there was a parent of one of the kids who just made the whole thing miserable—screaming and ranting like a lunatic. Hey guy, they’re just little kids. The other team’s coach also got in on the act, but fortunately there was one of the commissioners around who told him to cool it. I talked to the commissioner later, and he said the guy agreed to tone it down, but still didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

Putz.

Rebecca’s game got started while Cat was still playing. They played okay, but the heat was again a real killer and they got very tired. They managed to play to a 1-1 tie at the half, and kept it that way until the last two minutes, when the other team managed to get one over the top of our keeper’s head. Almost got it, but not quite.

Then we went to the store.

I SO wanted to go home and let them change, but there are sometimes Things Which Must be Done, so we made the rounds of the Big K and Wally Mart before finally getting home sometime past six. That was one long day.

Supper, baths for all, to bed, then right back up.

Get dressed, fix breakfast, then off to church. Gave a big handshake to our preacher, who just got back from three weeks in Russia, rode herd on my class of 5th graders, stayed awake just fine during worship, ran around afterwards trying to talk to everybody, then off for lunch at the place with Sriracha on the table, then to home, then change everyone into their soccer uniforms.

Team picture day, doncha know. And Rebecca actually had a game, in addition to getting her picture made.

Off to the park, stood around, Cat got hers made, Rebecca got hers made, and Jonathan didn’t. Seems no one except one other little boy from his team was there. And then, there was the sudden downpour! All the kids had been out on the field with three guys and their cameras, and then it was like someone turned on a hydroelectric plant. Buckets of rain. I had told Reba we needed to move up under the porch of the concession stand beforehand, so we managed to stay dry, but everyone else got soaked. During this time, Rebecca and her team had been down warming up, so they got drenched.

After about ten minutes, the rain stopped so Reba went on back home with the two little ones, and I got my chair and umbrella and headed out to watch Bec’s game. Almost a repeat of the day before. We were tied 1-1 until the last two minutes, when the other team cleared one over our keeper’s noggin. The girls seemed very down about this one—they had played very well, and to get beaten right at the last like that took a lot of steam out of them. But, there’s always next week.

Back home, five minute scrub down, back to church, long meeting afterwards, back home, supper, bed, snore, dream about ceiling leaking from all the rain, wake up, come here.

Whew.
posted by Terry at 12:08:00 PM