Author: Big Mama

So many of you asked about yesterday’s pictures that I wanted to let you know that they were taken by P at our friend’s ranch this past Saturday about forty-five minutes south of San Antonio. Which explains not only the mass quantity of wildflowers, but slightly better photography skills that what I usually feature.

Other than the wildflowers, I can’t remember everything we did last weekend but I can assure you that it involved nothing to get me closer to my goal of having a turquoise kitchen. After I spent most of Thursday afternoon picking up various paint chips from all manner of hardware stores, P wanted to kill my buzz by reminding me that we have cracks in our sheetrock that will need to be taped and floated.

I don’t really understand all the specifics of the situation but know enough to realize it involves things that are beyond my skill level. Part of me was really tempted to just grab some caulk and throw caution to the wind. However, our kitchen is the first room people see when they walk in our house and it deserves better than my rudimentary floating and taping skills. Hopefully Shorty can get to it at some point in the next few weeks, but P seems to think he needs Shorty to perform his actual job instead of helping me with my home decorating whims. I’ll keep you posted on Project Turquoise because, as God is my witness, I will never go hungry again and I will have turquoise walls.

On Saturday we had our first soccer game of the season. I can’t really tell you how sad I am that every single one of our games this spring are scheduled for 8:30 or 9:30. Whatever happened to 11:00? Why do people hate 11:00 so much?

We showed up at the field a little before game time. Caroline had spent the night with Mimi and Bops and she came running across the field to meet us and express her excitement about the beauty of her lavender uniform. As we gathered all the Cheetah Girls around us for a little pre-game pep talk (Remember to kick the ball! Don’t forget to run down the field! There’s no crying in soccer! Mental toughness!) the coach of the opposing team walked over and asked to speak with us. The poor woman appeared to be on the verge of tears as she explained that she didn’t know anything about coaching soccer. She said the only reason she was coaching was because her daughter’s team needed a coach and she didn’t know how to contact all of her players and only two of them had shown up to play. She was afraid the Dragonflies were going to have to forfeit the game.

Our hearts went out to her because that was us last season. P and I signed up for the whole coaching gig because we played the email version of Chicken with the other players’ parents for an entire weekend before we finally caved and agreed that we could coach the team, forever branding ourselves as BIG SUCKERS. Never mind the fact that what we don’t know about soccer could fill a large, highly uninteresting book.

Of course I think it speaks volumes about our coaching ability that all of our players wanted to be back on our team for the spring season. Or maybe it just indicates how much their parents don’t want to coach. Whatever. I choose to believe it’s the level of skill and quality of snacks that we’ve brought to the team.

Since each team needs a least four players to run up and down the field aimlessly, P suggested that we just let the other team substitute in some of our girls so that we could play the game and the girls could have a good time. Their coach was overjoyed with this suggestion and tearfully thanked us for our understanding.

None of our girls wanted to play for the Dragonflies but we explained the concept of good sportsmanship and that the alternative was to go home and clean their room for a quarter. That seemed to persuade them, so the game began with two of the Cheetah Girls playing for the Dragonflies.

Well, about two minutes in and after one of our girls had scored a goal for the Dragonflies, their other team members showed up. We immediately pulled our girls back to our side and proceeded to play out the rest of the game. I am sad to report that the Dragonflies promptly destroyed the Cheetah Girls. In fact, I told P that I believe the whole thing was some sort of elaborate Hustler-like scheme to throw us off our game. We were conned into feeling sorry for them and then they laid the SMACK DOWN.

The coach walked up to us after the game with a big smile on her face and said, “I don’t know where they learned that. It wasn’t from me.”

Then, clearly, she is fielding a team of future Mia Hamms. Or con artists.

But I take pride in knowing we had the best snacks and the cutest uniforms. Because that’s what soccer is really all about.