Homecoming Gowns, Nail-Biter Football, and Pink

Last night's homecoming game didn't exactly meet my expectations. Don't get me wrong -- the game itself was spectacular. The scoring went back and forth with long touchdown runs, time-eating drives, and a couple of surprises in the kicking game. It would have been so much nicer if we could've won, but it was fun.

In the fifteen years I've kept the scorebook for this school, homecoming has followed strict traditions. Lots of alumni and family show up, a few past members of the dance team participate in the original 1970's routine, and spiffy convertibles drive the homecoming court to the 50-yardline. They used to have fireworks at halftime, until one errant rocket almost toasted the crowd. Unfortunately, I had an extreme front row seat for that event. Sometimes there are streakers (or pseudo-streakers, wearing flesh-toned Spandex.) Homecoming is nice, if not always exciting.

When we got to the field last night, there was a bubbling geyser at the 20 yard line on the home side. Water was erupting from -- an irrigation pipe? There's no real grass within 100 feet of this field! Aha! Suddenly I realized that halftime was going to be something exciting! Maybe the homecoming court would perform a synchronized swimming routine, and the queen would be the one who was propelled out of the water in an aerial spectacular!

No. The grounds crew finally managed to stop the fountain before halftime. Darn. Good thing it wasn't cold enough to freeze.

There were more security officers at this football game than... lemme think... well, there were so many of them that they scared the streakers away. Darn.

On the other hand, the weather was good enough that the girls kept their gowns on through the whole second half. After the game, a few of them came down onto the track to console their boyfriends. Helmets and tulle. What a sight.

But the pink? The pink was very interesting. For the past few years, the football referees use a blue penalty flag for the first game in October. The blue symbolizes Prostate Cancer Awareness. Somehow, some way, it was decided to draw attention this week to breast cancer. The officials at our game were sporting spiffy pink whistles, and had pledged to donate their paychecks to breast cancer research. The only problem was, they hadn't exactly jumped through all the hoops to get this approved. As a result of this act of civil disobedience, they may be required to forfeit not only this paycheck but also could be banned from officiating a couple of playoff games. (You can read about it here.)

In support of Breast Cancer Awareness, and/or in support of the referees, our team was decked out in pink duct tape highlights. There's the pink.

Boy, I sure wish our team could've blocked that last-second field goal and won the game. It was a lot of fun, but it's more fun to win. Oh, well. It was, indeed, a lot of fun.

What I Heard

I was half awake, but here's what I caught on the morning news from a local radio station:

"Thanks for the memories -- there's lots of ones of 'em!"

On the plus side, this comment was made to a friend, and it was only a poor grammatic construct. On the minus side, it was recorded and broadcast because the speaker is the outgoing president of a major university. He's leaving his post here to become head of a national collegiate athletic association. (I won't name him here because I may have mis-heard his statement. Just covering my bases, so to speak.)

Golly gee whiz, we all say things that come out wrong. My mom used to say that she had foot-in-mouth disease. As a kid, I thought she should be able to guard her tongue better than that. It wasn't that she said anything foul -- in fact, she made a point of never swearing -- but either her timing or her content were sometimes very unfortunate. One time, visiting with folks after church, I heard her ask an older man, "Where's your big old fat wife?" His reply? "Right behind you."

Oh, mymymymymy. Unfortunate timing and content, indeed. Mom was always able to laugh at herself, but this was a biggie. She hadn't intended to say anything derogatory; she was just being silly, and out it came.

I did much the same thing recently. In a lighthearted moment, I said something that ended up sounding very racist. Me?! Racist? I'm too embarrassed to recount the details here, but it was one of those foot-in-mouth moments. I didn't realize the potential for harm in my comment until someone else reacted uncomfortably. Oh. (Unlike my mom, this is where I might have said, "Damn.") Well, the words were out, and I couldn't erase them.

The letter of James brings both a little reminder and a bit of comfort.

Let not many of you become teachers, knowing that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect person, able to bridle the whole body as well.

Teachers, public speakers, politicians, and people like me who know better. We all make slips of the tongue, and sometimes these errors are aired for many to hear. No one is perfect, but I'd better pay attention to the silly things I might say... before they escape my lips.

Sigh.

Football Time!

I thought you might enjoy this photo of me on the field at tonight's game. Isn't this a nice facility?

Mustering the Gumption to Catch Up

Hot dog! Here we are again, ready to tackle a bit of writing. There are several things worthy of some catchup, so let's take them one at a time.

Today, more football!

My new scorebook is working well, although it needs a few minor design changes. After Week 2, I realized that there should be a master column/row for turnovers. (We had seven that night. It was ugly.) I plan to use the book as is this year, but at the end of the season I'll make up next year's model and get it printed while it's fresh in my mind. Coach O likes it, and the Athletic Director said, "You're the one doing the work -- it should be whatever you want!" I appreciated those affirmations.

For the first game of the season, my brother was visiting from the Midwest and got to patrol the sidelines with me. What a treat it was to be able to show my bro what I've been doing for about 20 years! We had fun chatting a little and watching the game. It was his first time ever on a varsity sideline. Pretty cool when you get to give your big brother a new experience! (He's way older than me, so aside from teaching him how to give me a bottle when I was a baby, I haven't had opportunity to expose him to many new skills in life.)

Week 2 of our season was an away game, but still at our district's stadium. It feels a little bit different to be on the other side of the field, but it's hard for me to remember is which locker room the guys are using. Not that I've ever been inside, but I'm used to them heading for the north room instead of the visitor's room on the south. Oh, well. The big deal this game, aside from losing big time and committing seven turnovers, was that the National Anthem singer's microphone didn't work. The kids got quiet enough that we could hear a little of her, all the way across the field, with no amplification. Cool! Eventually the home fans joined her, and by the end of the song the whole stadium was singing. The kids were kind of goofy about it, but it was a nice gesture anyway.

Week 3, this past weekend, was marred by rain. As I've noted before, I hate rainy games because I have to move up under cover to keep the book dry. But it's not all bad. This time, I stood next to Mr. F, who knows all three of my sons and remembered me from junior high conferences. Wow! He's a very nice guy, too. In football news, this other team is being led by its seventh head coach in ten years. Sad, sad. How can they ever feel like a team when everything keeps changing? But enough about them. My experience Friday night was filled with rain. Here's the rain, and then a shot of my view of the game from up at the top of the stands.

 

The other good thing that happened because of the rain was that I found a couple more friends in the stands. Their daughter is now in the band, and their son is playing football in middle school. They could be around for several years! Cool -- someone else for me to say hi to and (if it rains again) people to sit with during the breaks.


Looking back over this post, it looks more like a report than a blog entry. Why do I care about high school football games? I love hearing the bands, I love the excitement of the games, I like the coaches and their wives, I love watching and listening to the players on the sidelines when no one else can hear them, and I get excited about everyone else's excitement. I'm not there to be noticed, and this is an activity that's definitely not about me. It's just fun, and I'm thankful to be allowed to be there.

Football! Football!! Football!!!

Bad news this week: Apparently no one in the Greater Puget Sound region has a football scorebook to sell.

Disclaimer: Okay, one store in Redmond had three books available. We drove up there to buy at least two of them, but stopped to look at the pages first. Uh, oh. These books might work well for college or professional ball, but high school football doesn't move fast enough to require one whole page per quarter. Since I do the offensive stats for both teams, that equals eight pages per game. Hey, it already takes me far too long to total everything up when each team is on one page!

Great news this week: Finally, after ten years of wishing, I took the plunge and designed my own scoresheet. Yay! Woo hoo! As with any standardized form, there were things on the old scorebooks that were great and things that I wanted to tweak. The form has to be easy for me to use, and also must be easy for the coaches to interpret later. I have no idea what Coach O will say when he sees my creation, but I'll do my best to butter him up when I drop the completed stats into our milk box tonight. (That's our routine -- I take the book home, tally up the numbers, my husband calls the media, and we leave the book in our milk delivery box so the coach can pick it up early the next morning. Very clandestine!)

Wish me luck with this endeavor. Coach O does not embrace change.

For your review, here's one of the old books and my new creation:

Question of the Day

I have this friend...

Hypothetically speaking...

Have you ever wondered...




Is it okay to clean your oven with a vacuum?




I mean, not that I'd ever do something like this... Except if it came to be that there was a bunch of crusty stuff sitting there... And a vacuum is a tool of expediency...

Old Floor, Solid Heart

Here's a 1970s-era photo of our house:
Isn't that ugly and sad? I'm sure that whoever lived here at the time thought that sun room was just groovy, but I'm thankful that a later owner chopped off the greenhouse and replaced the front deck. Someone before us put a lot of effort into a major interior remodel, as well. They moved the stairs to the basement, opening up the space down there to make it nice and modern. Although it looks like the budget ran short, they scraped up enough to install new kitchen cabinets and make new bathroom cabinets too.

Fast forward to here and now. Thanks to an inheritance, we've replaced the flooring in the main living areas. New vinyl in the kitchen looks superb, and we picked out a very nice carpet for the living room and hallway. It's wonderful to have such beautiful floors!

Before we ripped up the old carpet, I wondered whether we might possibly have hardwood in at least part of the living room. After seeing that sun room addition, and knowing that the front door has been moved, I figured that some of the original floor had to have been replaced. But what if we had a nice section of hardwood? Wouldn't that be something?

The day of the rip-up came. I was at work when the process started, and didn't hear anything about the progress. Guess what? WE HAVE HARDWOOD! Guess what else? IT'S COMPLETE! The whole living room and all the way down the hallway is original oak! And there's a gorgeous green slate hearth, too!

This floor is 48 years old, but when we're ready to tackle the mess, we can restore it to its full luster! I love old, I love original, I love natural materials. I love my house!

This made me think about endurance. Oak trees are sturdy. Oak lumber is strong. That floor was made to last. Even though it's been covered and stapled and walked on for many years, it can be made beautiful again because only the surface has changed. That's how I want to be.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be complete, lacking in nothing.

Okay, I have never been known to cheer about facing a new difficulty. In fact, I've always been susceptible to depression and I tend to think too much about the negative things in my life. But, the truth is, I know that God has allowed discomfort and sadness and obstacles to affect me for His good and His glory. May I, like that hardwood floor, stand the tests of time so that my heart may shine all the more brilliantly for Him in the end.

Good Thing Neurotic Rufus Wasn't There

It felt kind of like a command performance. The Big Boss wanted to come on our first day of driving the Really Big Red Van to visit daycares. My driving partner and I were *not* the envy of our coworkers, let me tell you. This Behemoth Red Van (think bookmobile but 2010) is brand new, and the bookmobile procedures are new to us. Oh, and then there's the driving. It's a good thing I'd had some recent experience driving a large van under stress. It's also a very good thing that I've learned a few tools and life skills, so that I could assess which worries were out of my control and let them go. In this case, I had to jettison most of my concerns once I realized how little control I would have over this situation. Whew!

Fortunately, the Big Boss and the Outreach Overseer were very understanding of the anxieties of the situation. My driving partner and I completed the pre-flight checklist and successfully backed the Behemoth Red Van out of its parking place. The Big Boss declined our invitation to ride in the van right away, rather suggesting that we'd be more comfortable if we had a chance to get used to it first. Ahhhh. Nice!

The trip went well. There were a couple of mistakes (the biggest one was mine) but overall it was smooth. After our second stop, the Big Boss rode along with me for a short distance.

Guess what?

It was fun!

 

(pictured: me, my driving partner, and the Big Boss, all unscathed)

There are Appointments and APPOINTMENTS

A misunderstood schedule... taking the scenic route... trying to avoid most of the traffic... an appointment with fate?

We were going to pop down to Tacoma to get my husband's overseas immunizations. Yes, in the mid-afternoon, on a Friday. Mega traffic. Ugh. You know how it is -- the traffic clogs up, crawling for a while, then opens up again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And then...

I remember when log trucks were an everyday sight. Back when I was on the school safety patrol in the 1970s, we tried to get the truckers to blow their airhorns on the highway in front of our school.

There aren't many log trucks here in 2010. But there was one today, on the freeway, trying to merge. Merging toward a little car. Still merging. Merging! The car was boxed in, the trucker didn't see her. MERGING!

Fortunately, the damage was minimal. Truck clipped car, side mirror flew off car, traffic made a hole, car pulled to shoulder. Truck kept merging, not stopping. He never saw her.

Turns out, it was two ladies. The driver was totally shaken. The passenger, despite having had the wheel of a loaded log truck just inches from her shoulder, was okay. We stopped, called the State Patrol, and waited until a trooper came. It's what we hope someone would do for us in that situation. Just. Be. There. Oh, and their cell phone battery was dead. Mark and I both had our phones in hand, ready for action.



P.S. Oh, the immunizations? By the time we got to our destination, minutes before closing time, we were told that that pharmacist doesn't work on Fridays. "We need to change our recording." Um, please do. Now that we helped those ladies, Mark's ready for his shots.

Dinner in the Dark, Day Without Sight

In the last two weeks, I've had two experiences with simulated blindness. First was a Dinner in the Dark, an event hosted by a church that's getting ready to open a Blind Mission outreach center in Portland. The second opportunity came when a home school family visited my library during their "special needs week" and happened to check out a Braille item.

See? There I am, in the background, in the spaghetti-colored blouse. (Rufus would have had a heyday cleaning up the floor!) The purpose of a Dinner in the Dark is to show sighted people how inept we can be without sight. It's effective, lemme tell you. Dishing noodles was no fun, but I finally realized that no one could see me so I might as well use my fingers to help.

Actually, eating wasn't the biggest challenge I felt. Rather, it was the disorientation of conversation. All of a sudden, a man's voice right above my shoulder said, "I'm going to take your plate to put the sauce on for you." Oh! Chatting with my neighbor was okay, but I made sure to point my head in her direction so maybe she'd know I was talking to her and not Mr. Deep Voice.

Thinking back, I guess it felt like I was in a bubble. I knew there were lots of people in the room, but I didn't have a sense of where they were. The sighted helpers' footsteps were silent, allowing them to appear and disappear without warning. (Also, the blindfold was over my ears, muffling the sound just a little.) It was kind of spooky. If I'd had more time, I would have been more careful of what I said and when, not knowing if there were other ears listening.

I've had one other dining in the dark experience. Several years ago, during my second conference with Lutheran Blind Mission, I put on a blindfold to go to dinner. Someone loaned me a white cane, and another person guided me through the food line. Again, eating was okay, but conversation was difficult. I could concentrate on my dinner or I could really listen to what was happening. Navigating with the cane was fine, because I knew the hallway well. When a blind friend offered to guide me back to the conference room, I relaxed and let him lead the way. I even trusted him not to walk me into a doorpost!


Back to the present. The mom and three elementary-age kids said no, they didn't have any Braille besides the library book, and no one to help them with it. Thanks to my friend's quick thinking, we came up with a plan for them to come to the library when I got off work on Thursday. I subscribe to a monthly magazine in Braille, and have lots of old copies sitting around the house. I brought one for each of them to use.

We talked about their one-day taste of blindness, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on this experiment. These kids are confident, self-assured folks, and they approached each day of their "special needs week" with a can-do attitude. One day was spent being mute, another day in wheelchairs, yet another day on crutches or wheelchair, and then came the eye patches and sunglasses. Oh... a funny aside. One of my coworkers offered the family a tour of the library. It didn't dawn on me until much later that the librarian couldn't see their eye bandages because the sunglasses covered them! I'm sure she was not the only person that day who thought they really were blind!

One of the girls realized that she had never seen the room we were using. "I wish I could take my patches off just for a minute so I could see where we are!" That reminded me of when I lost my sense of smell. I said much the same thing, many times, wishing for just one more chance to get a whiff of my sons' heads or a new recipe or a wild rose. In my case, memory will have to serve.

There wasn't time for a full-blown Braille lesson (as if I could teach one anyway), but I had them search in their magazines for a full cell of six dots. That represents the word "for" and is, obviously, pretty common. A page of Braille is about equal to a third of a page of print, and that gave them a better understanding of why their magazines are so bulky. I read a sentence or two for them, using touch only, and did not wow them with my speed.

We discussed some statistics about the blindness community -- 70% unemployment, 18% Braille literacy rate, 60% unmarried, 95% unchurched. Isolation is very common. Towards the end of our time, one of the kids sank into a very deep state of (ahem) contemplation. His breathing slowed enough that one of his sisters noticed and asked him if he was sleeping. "No," he mumbled, sitting up straighter. "Just thinking a thought that needed thinking," or something like that. Hahahaha! The hidden danger of wearing eye patches!

Good opportunities for learning, for thinking outside of our own boxes, for trying new things.