Life of Wry

Just hours away from June and here are parents in the stands, bundled up for a baseball playoff game. Long underware, mittens, fleece blankets, ear warmers.

Sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel here for something to write about that says Monday, May 30.  Nothing’s coming to me; just going to type and see what comes out.  Here goes:

We had friends over for dinner; that’s twice in one weekend.  It turned into a good weekend for hanging out with friends and cooking (and recycling dishes from the previous night, as it turned out).

It’s Memorial Day.. so at one point we got to talking about that, and whether any of us had any family members or friends who’d died in a war.  None of us did.. that we knew about, anyway.  Talked about various wars, shared various war stories from various people we’d known who had fought.   Jim told one of my Uncle Bud’s stories.. a pretty good one from WWII, and a story or two from his dad.

That was that.

It was so chilly we decided not to barbeque.  I mean really.  So, instead of grilling stuff, we served the black beans we’d made a couple nights ago.  Not the usual summer-kick-off weekend.  Cloudy, unseasonably cold weather forecast for the rest of the week, and the possibility of more rain.  Meh.

Guess we’ll keep the bean pot out.

If I were going to try to draw a picture of Peter’s childhood–the activities, events, and people that define his young life–it would include: a fairly steady circle of friends; school (of course) and, related to that, Spanish; definitely baseball; a bunch of family trips; and probably music.  I’d also have to include regular weekend dinners with a certain other one-kid family which have become, more or less, an ongoing, nearly-every-weekend tradition.

If you’re a one-kid family, and especially one that doesn’t have extended family within easy reach, you really rely on friends to help broaden that support base.  We all need our villages, right?  We’ve hung out regularly with a family we met in Peter’s first (and only) season of soccer seven years ago.  Most of the childhood years that Peter will eventually look back on–we hope with fondness, mostly–will undoubtedly include this family, and the absolute best part of this whole deal is the close friendship between Peter and their son.  Friendships can be fickle (don’t we know), especially with kids… especially as they mature and pass through various developmental stages.  In this case, the boys are a year apart, have their own social circles, and are in different places maturity-wise… which could make the friendship hard to sustain…

But, in fact, they’ve been companionable buds all these years.

Which makes these evenings so easy and such a win win.  Parents get to cook, hang out, have a few hours of grown-up conversation, while the boys are totally, happily entertained.  Usually in another part of the house. (Bonus!)

We do eat together, however.  At their house, the dining room table’s big enough for six.  At our house, our table’s small, so we pull out the card table (which is why you only see four place settings above).  But eating together is an important part of the tradition and we’ve had some pretty interesting conversations over the years.

So… it makes sense that this 2011 year-in-pictures thingie includes the traditional weekend dinner with our other one-kid friends.  This particular evening Jim made chicken fajitas, rice & beans and fresh baked oatmeal cookies.  I did appetizers and a weird salad.

Peter’s ringing endorsement: “Dinner was actually good tonight.”

Clue: it’s not the angle.

This was my view for most of the afternoon.  I’m lying on the floor next to the fire, reading, sipping hot tea.

Nice, yes.  But, it’s May.

I might be temped to complain, rant a bit… but I’m enjoying my book too much.  So going back to that.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone.

Vilken dag! Himlen är alldeles blå och fåglarna sjunger.

(I’m sure you’ll figure that out.)

It’s a beautiful day to be a nascent tomato.

This is the kind of day you say, yeah, I live in the middle of farmland, and it’s ok.

This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote (which is a very cranky rant, so I apologize).  But it rained like crazy today which brought out all the snails.  Saw these on a walk downtown and liked them. (Though I think, with the title,  I just found a way to tie the picture in…)

Experiencing a clash of sensibilities.  Need to vent.

A person I live with (I’ll not name names, but..) is really messy.  So messy, it nearly literally takes my breath away.  It’s boy messy, it’s a classic story, I won’t go into detail.

Well, except.. here’s a good example.  Last night, I went into his room (for something.. I’m sure I didn’t find it) and found a half-eaten snow cone (or the remnants thereof) that he’d rested on a pile of books when he’d rushed in from a baseball game and left quickly for a band concert.   Snow cone.. sticky.. wet… spready and seepy.   I just can’t tell you.

Anyway.  He’s seriously messy.  His room, his backpack, the back seat, his pockets, under the dining room table, his bathroom… all disasters.

Worse than his boyish messiness, though, is his destruction. I’m talking unimaginably destructive.  It’s stunning and heartbreaking what he’s done to the furniture in his room, for example, and the walls, carpet, and too many toys, books and clothes to fathom.  Holes in desk tops, shards of pencils used as projectiles everywhere, chipped paint, felt tip stains on rugs, and broken everything.  It’s just not right and I’m sort of at my wit’s end.  I look at the stuff we’ve bought him, or the stuff other people have given him, and I can’t stand it.  There is a lot of material waste, of course, but there is also a lot of loss.  People give you something, they do it with thought and care, there’s sentimental and nostalgic value to many of these things.  It just truly, deeply saddens me.

An hour ago, upon surveying today’s destruction (now a broken desk top), I suggested to Jim that we remove everything from his room, leaving only a shell.  I was serious.  A basic mattress, clothes in the closet, maybe retain the dresser (works well as an organizing tool, at least in concept).  But everything else.. out of there. This solution, histrionic as it may seem, came from a place of reason, I thought.  Not anger.  I am just plain defeated and trying like hell to come up with a workable solution for all concerned.  I actually thought it was kind of a win win.

It’s not like he’s an angry kid, not at all; this is not acting out.  He’s guileless and as happy go lucky as can be.  He is utterly unconcerned and far more oblivious than intentional.  Jim came up with an analogy that made it seem less pathological.  He compared Peter to a good natured dog whose owner returns home to find wanton destruction–couches scratched to smithereens, walls chewed through, toilet paper everywhere. Dog just wags its happy tail and wonders about dinner.

So, it’s kind of like that.

The clash comes because I am on the extreme other end of that spectrum.  Surprise.  I’m not messy in the least.  In fact, my need for uncluttered order is a wee bit pathological in its own right.  I don’t function all that well in chaos and disorder.  Wish I did.  I don’t.

On top of that, I place a very high value on aesthetics and my own personal sense of feng shui.  It’s really important to me (well, sort of necessary) that my living space be pleasing and artful, tranquil, and functional in its orderliness and design.  At least attractive to me.

If I can contain Peter’s messiness to his room and bathroom (which takes some effort), it sort of works.  And I do this.  But then I have to go into one of his spaces, or his mess slops into communal space, or, heartbreak, I see something in a thousand pieces.  (You can’t imagine what he did to his ligature.  He also is a person who should not play a reed instrument.)

Anyway, Jim’s kind of a go-with-the-flow guy; none of this bothers him.  But Peter and me?  On totally opposite ends.  I guess I’m the only one who’s really bummed.

Of course I could write volumes about all that works, and how wonderful this little boy is in so many other ways.  So, no lectures about how trivial this is… please.   It’s what it is, and the time is a blip.  For sure we’ll all survive, and there are a ton more important things in the world to worry about..  I know all that.  But I’m very bothered.  I have to find a way to teach him to respect property, at least.  Or find a way to get property out of his hands.  Or something.

Any guesses?

May’s a busy month.

For starters, it’s Little League season.  Which alone is big.  But if your little baseball fiend also plays on a travel team, and also takes private lessons, you are juggling up to five practices a week and lots of games.  For example, we’ve had eight games in each of the last two weeks… THAT kind of lots.

It’s also the end of the school year, which means all the end of school year stuff: finals and final projects, the last dance of the year, special events and parties, the end of year band performances (two this week).  All that.

People with lots of kids?  I’m not really sure how that works.

Anyway.  Here’s my nearly stealth shot of Peter in his bathroom (the only thing missing is the sideways sneer I got when I took the picture).  It’s about 6:45pm and he’s got exactly three minutes to get dressed and ready for tonight’s band concert, after having just finished playing game #1 of THE LITTLE LEAGUE PLAYOFF TOURNAMENT (yes, shouting, cuz it’s a big honking deal) which happened immediately after school today (which meant I had to meet him at the field with his uniform and he had to change in the bathroom).  So never mind the hat hair.. and the mustard on his mouth (from dinner between innings in the dugout).

(Oh, and they won their first game.  Yay.)

That kind of day.

I know our family’s one-kid schedule is very manageable, especially since one of us doesn’t work exactly, and the other one of us works from home.  We’ve got mathematical advantage plus flexibility.  Insane are the families with 2 kids and up, two working parents, or divided families.  Those are way harder.  Hats off to you guys.

I’m still thinking, man, summer can’t come soon enough.

The Crush began this weekend’s tournament inauspiciously but ended up winning the whole enchilada. After losing their first game to the Defenders (7-9), they came back to win all their other games, including the championship game against… the Defenders (7-3)!  Love those full circle things.

In their semi-final game, the Crush beat a team considered to be one of the best in the region, if not the state (maybe the world).  In fact, that was the highlight of the tournament and it was a beautifully played game.  In the second inning, Peter hit a weak grounder to second but beat out the throw with a stomach slide into first base.  Not elegant, mighty unconventional, but it did the trick…he got on base and got Eric to third.  That would set up that cute play they do where: the-runner-on-first-distracts-the-pitcher-by-attempting-to-steal-second-while-the-runner-on-third-scores. Which they executed perfectly.  For the first run of the game.  Yay us.  (Of course a whole lot of other very spectacular playing occurred–some mind-blowing fielding, some artful, powerful pitching, a few eyebrow-raising hits… I just particularly liked that move.  Plus, I’m the mom.)

This was only Crush’s third tournament win in three years of playing together (if I remember correctly), but it comes during a season where they’ve grown significantly stronger — probably a combination of experience, a new coach this season who is beyond awesome, and hormones.

I could go on and on.  But, hard as it is to do, I’ll refrain from further baseball talk, in deference to non-baseball fan readers.

You’re welcome.

Anyway.. here they are:

Back row: Ben, Tim (aforementioned amazing coach), Peter, Daniel, Andrew, Dustin, Alex, Pierce, Gavin, Mark (dugout coach). Front row: either Eric or Andrew, either Eric or Andrew, Jonah and Brendan.  Just out of the picture to the left is Floyd (I kept asking him to move into the picture), our sign-stealing first base coach and another of the many reasons Crush is such a wonderful experience.