9/30/2011 Whose Underpants Are Those Anyway?

I can't believe I have
strange underpants hanging on
my coat rack next to my front door.
Ewwww with a capital E.
I think this ongoing problem is related
to having a pool or
living on the swamp or both.
I know when the kids have flipped over the canoe
in the creek because I can smell it.
When I enter the utility room it has a distinct
Eua De Swamp odor. Wish I knew how to spell that.
The Laundry basket sitting on a cooler under
the laundry shoot has slimy sides
that I dread touching.
Thank God there is a sink next to it!
Troy and Teddy's friends rotate around with
such variety I can't keep track of this
underpant situation and
I really don't want to!
After a decade of mobs of kids
I have put limits on the number of visitors
so my kids get to eat so
I can narrow the suspected owners to about ten.
But I am so uncomfortable saying,
"Carlos, are those your underpants?"
I mean if they were, does that mean
he isn't wearing any?
ACK!
Those underpants have been hanging there for two weeks!
Don't boys miss their underpants?!

9/29/2011 I Hate Shopping For Unmentionables (for ladies only)

I hate shopping for unmentionables.
When Brenny was here last Christmas she took pity on me
and did her best friend duty to get me ready for my cruise ship job.
We went up to Alderwood Mall and marched in.
Well, she marched in like a soldier
and I ran after her because
she is one inch taller than me and likes to flaunt it.
We went into Macys, which I still call Bon Macys
because I'm a native Seattleite and I'm used to saying "The Bon."
I handed the cute young lingerie
sales girl my bra that I nearly liked
that I had brought along.
She had the biggest "Ewww" expression
for a 1/16Th of a second before she sauntered off to the right rack.
I hate shopping for bras even more than wearing them
if that's possible!
The last time Brenny and I went two years ago,
we spent four hours shopping at all five retail outlets
at Northgate without success before she gently told me
that no bra would be comfortable until I lost twenty pounds.
Well of course she was right
and now that I've lost a few pounds, my bra is
not quite the device of torture it was two years ago.
Well, the day we shopped two years ago we didn't find anything
that I could tolerate.
The next week I went solo to Macy's at Alderwood and found one.
This time with Brenny the saleslady grabbed me three more off the rack
since I had one with me to ID the new ones!
Took five seconds.
The moral to this story is:
If you hate shopping too, take a sample with you
and you don't have to try anything on.

9/28/2011 If You Spanked My Spanx You'd Break Your Hand

After I applied for a cruise ship job,
I panicked about my figure or lack of thereof
and my interview was coming up fast.
So Brenny and I dashed to Alderwood Mall
Nordstroms for my first Spanx.
I drove because you'd think she was from
Ballard not Greenlake if you got in a car with her.
I was so excited because I had heard my young
friends in their forties talking about them!
One thing men never know from experience
is how fattening being a wife and mother is!
Totally brutal to see Terry and the kids eating 10,000
calories a day and never gaining weight.
So we got to Nordstroms and met the most wonderful saleslady in the world.
Her name was Kathy Lauterbach and she was warm, friendly
and very knowledgeable.
Plus she didn't look like she was getting ready to dash off
to a disco like some of the younger salesladies do.
So I told her I wanted a Spanx
and she knew (probably from looking at me)
exactly what I needed!
I was very excited until I tried on what she gave me.
My Spanx could not cope
and rolled right down my back!!!
So Kathy brought me a shorter Spanx and if you
spanked my Spanx you would have broken your hand!
You could have flicked a quarter against my butt
and had a twenty foot rebound.
Seriously.
Well it turns out that Spanx does not make a product
quite generous enough for my well-rounded body
and I felt so dejected.
After pouring my copious self unsuccessfully
into several Spanx,
I appreciated Brenny not laughing at me.
Or worse yet scolding me for being the pig God made me.
Luckily, Kathy knew right what to do!
She told me that there was a product she used occasionally
from a company that has been around forever
that might be just right for me.
And it was!
She brought me a TC brand
EVEN MORE pantie.
And was it even more wonderful than anything I could hope for.
So I bought that and call it my Spanx even though it's not
because Spanx is such a cute name.
Brenny looked so relieved that I was happy
because she knows how much I want a cruise ship job.
You have to look presentable when you are working with the public.
She bought me lunch at the food court
where I made a terrible pig of myself
because I was armed with my Spanx-like product
in my la-dee-da silver Nordstrom shopping bag
with its sturdy twine handle.
Bren naturally ordered the Japanese curried vegetable platter
while I ordered everything they could deep fry in batter.
Ummm, tempura. Yet permura on your booty.
After lunch our crankiness subsided and we were ready
for one more round of earring shopping.
But that's another story.

9/29/2010 Connie and Babs Go To The Casino

Last week Connie organized going down to the
Emerald City Casino to see a show!
Oh my God!
I never had so much fun in my life!
Connie and Babs picked me up in Connie's minivan
and we sang along to old eighties hits
at the top of our lungs all the way to Tacoma!
She reserved a room so we could have drinkie winkies
and we checked in
had a few margaritas
and then went to see
Spike and the Impalers.
It was a great rock-n-roll show
with many of the classics from when I was a teen
from Led Zepplin and Jimi Hendrix.
Thank God I could surreptiously sneak my foam earplugs
into my ears sine the music got louder since 1972.
After the show we went to the casino and Connie
gave me roulette lessons. I had always wanted to try it.
I had broken even and it was midnight and Babs
came to go with us back to the room.
Connie looked at me and said,
"Gretchen. You have not been to a concert since 1972
or had a 'Girl's Night Out' all year.
I want you to play all your winnings right now."
So I put out my twenty chips all over with triple on
Troy's birthday and then right before the ball dropped
I yelled at the top of my lungs, "RED SEVEN!"
When it dropped there the two dozen people there
let their jaws drop open
and they all just stared at me.
Well, I won eighty dollars which paid for my share
of the concert and hotel.
When we got back to our room,
We made more margaritas and put on our jammies
and laughed all night long.
I'm not kidding.
I woke up hoarse from laughing so much.
Connie is a natural born comedian and
Babs has a personality is one of those very rare combinations
of friendliness, warmth and good humor
combined with intelligence, creativity
and acceptance.
I've rarely heard her say one bad word about anyone in
the decade I have known her.
It is rather shocking
how wonderful she is.
I wonder if she knows how people see her
with amazement?
So, when I start this new job I'll
start a 'Babs and Connie Fun Fund"
and look forward to going to a show with them again.

9/27/2011 Wrestling Match With My Chair

If you booze you lose.
It's that simple and I shoulda' known better.
I can NOT hold my liquor one little bit.
Makes me sick as a dog for days.
But Friday, after subbing all day I needed to unwind
so I made the nastiest drink in history:
"The Substitute"
Recipe: 2TBS sugar, 1TSP cherry Kool Aid powder,
one cup brandy. Stir over 6 big ice cubes.
Sure I was asleep in five minutes.
I woke up Saturday morning feeling like a zombie.
I got my coffee and sat down in my little green Lazy-Boy
and started my daily ritual of job hunting.
After a half hour, I needed more coffee.
My laptop power cord had fallen down the footrest of my chair.
No problem right?
I went to pull out the cord
and it got stuck in the metal bars under the
main part of the chair.
I didn't feel good.
I put the footrest down and turned the chair on it's side.
I crawled down and looked at the cord and decided to
put the footrest up.
But doing that made the cord more stuck.
So I tugged on the cord
and effectively got it totally wedged in the metal bars.
So I put the chair back upright
and pushed down on the backrest.
Now the cord really stuck in the bars under the chair.
So I pull up on the backrest.
Who knew a backrest can come off the tracks
right into your bare hands?
Trust me.
It can.
So I turn the chair upside down and I'm
seeing the tiny end of the power cord stucker than stuck
in the metal bars and decide to bite the bullet.
I pull as hard as I can
and the cord dislodges!
I couldn't believe that when
I plugged it in and it stilled worked.
I very carefully lifted up the heavy backrest
and lined up the metal fittings and slid
it back onto it's tracks.
Then I got another cup of coffee
and sat down on one of my wooden chairs at the
kitchen tables to read the paper.
Good old trustworthy wood.

9/26/2011 What Does Bother Me On Our Wedding Anniversary

I remember sitting at the Bothell Post Office
break room in 1986 eating a sandwich before
going out to deliver the mail in Holly Hills.
The "New kid", Terry, was about twenty-five
and he was babbling on about his job at a marina
on Vashon Island.
I was struck that his head looked perfectly round
like Charlie Brown.
His awful, long straggly beard reminded me
of serial killer Charles Manson.
He seemed friendly enough.
About a month later he called me at home.
I had no idea who he was since he hadn't generated
much interest to me but he said he worked with me.
That seemed odd because our personal information
is not allowed to be given out.
He admitted years later that while he was working
late one time he went in the supervisor's desk and
got my phone number.
He sounded nice and I had been looking for a
health club buddy and invited him to go.
We went for about six months and got to be friends.
He was still nasty-looking but when I showed my
sister Pam a photograph of him she exclaimed,
"He looks like a movie star!"
I thought he looked like an ugly cross of
Charlie Brown and Charles Manson.
So I asked him to trim his beard one day
and low and behold, he did look like a movie star.
Geez I was so shallow back at twenty-nine!
So we started shacking up at the end of 1986
and got married in 1992.
Now on our nineteenth wedding anniversary
It does not bother me that he is very fat
because there is more of him to love.
It does not bother me that I need to run
my weed-wacker over his chest and back
if I want to feel his skin
because he is my giant 270 LB Teddy Bear.
It doesn't bother me that his front tooth is black
from getting elbowed in a basketball game
because some hot forty-year old won't want to steal him.
What DOES bother me is that
when he sits in his gold recliner,
and I walk past him,
I see his expiration mark
showing through his thinning hair.
And I know I only have twenty or thirty years left
to love him.
Now THAT bothers me.

9/25/2011 Teenage Boys Sawing Trees Dangerously

My goodness,
what the kids won't do to kill me!
We live on the edge of a forty acre swamp
and the squirrels continually plant trees
of every kind everywhere.
The hazelnut trees started scraping the paint
off the sides of my mini van this summer
along the side of our driveway.
So I bribed the kids to let their friends
sleep over in the land of Kool Aid,
popcorn, pizza and zombie destruction
in exchange for sawing down trees.
I have small, sharp handsaws that I let them use.
We've only had to go to the ER once
and that led to the implementation of
the leather glove to saw rule.
We've had no accidents since the rule began.
But last night, I made the mistake of
spying on Troy and Sean.
What did I see?
Two teenage boys sawing the same small tree
at the same location opposite each other
with very sharp saws.
What did I do?
Nothing much.
Took out my foam earplugs, and removed
my orange Home Depot noise-blocking headset
and waited for the yell down the stairs
that there was blood.
No blood, no foul.

9/18/2011 My Ugly Backyard Reality TV Show

I just applied for a job on reality TV.
My pal, Murray Sawchuck, the magician from my
Pride of America cruise ship stint this spring,
just put an ad on Facebook.
My Ugly Backyard is probably not what they are calling it.
I was on the way out the door to work in my
ugly backyard when I saw his advertisement.
I am highly qualified for that job!
In 1978 I spent an entire year digging ditches
for the City of Seattle Engineering department.
How cool would it be to work on a backyard
with a magician?
Whenever we got tired of digging,
he could just make the dirt disappear, right?
On the ship he had an awesome trick where
he made a bouquet of flowers disappear.
It was so funny I nearly fell out of my chair
all eight times I watched it.
So if the show is in Las Vegas,
he could modify the trick to make like a giant
Suargo cactus disappear!

9/18/2011 They Called Me Lollipop

I've been applying for some seasonal jobs
on the cruise ships down in the Caribbean.
I haven't given up on a local job
but I quit holding my breath.
When I worked on The Pride of America cruise ship
last spring, all the youth staff had to have silly names.
I really wanted Grouchen, since that's what I was at the
post office because hitting the time clock at six AM
for ten years never sat well with me.
But the ship staff thought that might scare the
younger kids so I picked Peaches.
Well the safety officer, Priscilla, said
she didn't want me to have it since it
was her childhood nick name.
So a darling little five year old named Hannah,
named me Lollipop
and it stuck.
The only snag was I didn't answer to it for a month.
When you are Gretchen for fifty-four years
you get used to it.
That was why I wanted Peaches.
It at least has that cha cha cha sound in it.
So they called me Lollipop for two months.
But did you know if you are typing really fast
that it comes out Loolipoop?

2/16/2011 Acronym Overload for The Cruise Ship Job

My cousin Elizabeth forbid me from talking
to her in acronyms yesterday.
When it comes to the government,
there is obviously no such thing as
too many acronyms.
My MMC went through the USCG and that credential replaced
the old MMD and MML,
but I was still required to get my TWIC.
I found it very fascinating to read about the
ISO and the SOLAS!
I printed a few pages for Terry to read
but when I saw the SOLAS was in response
to the Titanic,
I stopped printing!
He would NEVER come visit me at work if he read that.
He loves that Titanic movie
and I thought it was okay when it came out
but I'm sure not going to watch it again before I
start my new job on the cruise ship!
I'm afraid of the dark!
Seriously, I will be lucky to make it through
one contract on The Pride of America.
When I was a flight attendant,
I was homesick, airsick and terrified of take offs
for the ENTIRE eight years.
The LAST thing I need in my little brain
is the idea of a sinking ship!
Imagine an old lady like me at fifty-four
passing those five levels of USCG requirements.
As the kids say, TTYL.

2/28/2011 Don't Touch My Washing Machine!

I am so fed up with my husband.
I can't WAIT to go to work on the cruise ship!
So, six months ago the dial on my old, rusty Maytag
began to act up.
I had to manually advance it through each cycle.
Sounds easy right?
That was for the first three months.
Then the dial and machine
had a fight and weren't talking to each other.
It was like playing roulette to rinse
the clothes.
Then I'd pray to find a working spin cycle.
So two months ago, Terry decides to "FIX"
my washing machine.
He snaked out the drain.
Well, the drain wasn't broken!
But he managed to prevent the machine from draining at all.
Well, you know I am a bad wife.
I decided not to get it repaired before I fly out to work.
I have been manually wringing out the wash for two months.
I could probably beat you at arm-wrestling!
Last week I was in my room and I could hear Terry
spinning the dial on the washing machine.
I yelled through the wall, "Don't touch the washing machine!"
I told him I had to add fabric softener.
Like I have bothered with that in twenty-five years of marriage.
When he drops me off at Sea Tac Saturday,
I just KNOW he'll get all excited to be Mr. Mom.
And then...
He will try to wash clothes.
And then...
I'm a horrible person!
People are always surprised
to find out how evil I can be.

9/18/2011 A Canteen for my Birthday, How Romantic

I'd like to thank the inventors of flannel PJs,
polarfleece pullovers and most importantly, GORTEX.
When Terry bought me my jacket in 1986,
I didn't think it was very romantic-
but it still keeps me dry!
When you live near Seattle,
gortex is the Holy Grail of fashion.
Today was the first cold, rainy day
of what will be the norm here for the next nine months.
I'm still shocked when people tell me they
actually moved here from Southern California.
I wouldn't live here in a million years
if I hadn't been born here.
Not the spot for a sun-loving girl.
But with the right equipment,
I've survived.
Like when I turned thirty and opened my gift.
All I could think was,
"A canteen, how romantic."
But you know what?
That canteen saved my life one time.
It was a hot August day and Troy and Teddy
and I jumped in the van to pick up gear
for scout camp and we got so thirsty!
We were stuck at that horrible
five way stop in downtown Bot hell forever.
I reached down for my trusty canteen
and realized that my husband is a saint.
The patron saint of survival gear!

9/17/2011 KJH Inglmoor Viking Football Sleepover

I must have half the KJH football team
on my living room floor.
They look so small and innocent
all curled up in little balls...
Teddy has such nice friends.
They all pitch in and clean up after themselves.
Last time they were here I almost
passed out from shock when they got up
and put the sleeping bags away
and did the dishes and swept the floor!
Is it an age thing because
they are fifteen now
and when they are seventeen they will
turn into total slobs like Troy's friends?
The shocker was when I asked if I could sit in
my own chair.
The blessed green recliner that I covet.
I'm so used to Carlos
draped over my chair
like some big hairy unmoveable starfish,
that when Hanna got up
I thought the world would stop spinning!
Young teenagers.
Only time will tell.

9/16/2011 The Jobless Olympics: Senior Division

I woke up feeling lucky.
I'm going to drop off an updated resume
at the new Kookmore library.
Just because I've now been passed over
for close to 1,000 jobs for eight years
by five school districts doesn't mean I'll give up.
If there was a senior division for jobless Olympics,
I'd get a gold medal!
I can see all us jobless Baby Boomers
down at QWEST Field.
We'd be lined up at one end
and at the other end would be the challenges.
Run down and type a flawless resume with no errors
Run down and type a flawless cover letter with no errors
Run down and select a Dress for Success outfit
Run down and give a panel of judges perfect interview
answers with perfect elocution and ennunciation
And the GOLD MEDAL goes to:
Gretchen Nixon

9/14/2011 Year Eight in the Sub Pool

Uh oh. Looks like another school year started without me.
Year eight in the sub pool coming up.
So what is funny or cheerful about being a sub?
Well, at the Inglemoor Varsity football game
last Friday night at Pop Keeney Field,
I was face painting Blake Elliot,
an 11th grader I knew and he said,
"I remember when I was in 5th grade and
you were helping Jacob with his essay
and you were so hungry you grabbed a french fry
off his tray that he had already taken a bite of."
I just about died at the thought of the boy spit,
but that lumpy essay had a strong voice about
his fifth grade football experience and after an
hour of editing through lunchtime together,
it was great. He was brilliant.
He won free tickets to something for it.
Some things
you just can't put a price tag on.

9/13/2011 Trade Ya My Couch For a Tree Cut

Teenagers have a price.
The fastest way to get them to move
is to offer cash.
Nasty jobs they do for free
always require the removal of the X-Box.
But there are a few other things teen boys enjoy.
Like sleeping over at my house
and demolishing it.
The damage is always accidental,
but still.
Luckily, I made the decision
a few years ago,
to just replace my house after they move out.
My stress level dropped to nothing.
But, we live next to a forty acre swamp
and the blackberries and volunteer trees
are constantly trying to eat the house.
So, one of my newer strategies
has been the removal of trees that
scrape the paint off my mini-van.
I can always count on Troy's best friend
Carlos to saw the trees down
in exchange for my couch.
I can't even call it my couch anymore
because it really belongs to Carlos
by squatter's rights.
So come Friday I'll have a little tree
picked out that needs to go.
While I still have paint left on my van.

9/12/2011 Not My Pewter Ladel!

Having two teenage sons has
desensitized me to the household damage
to some extent.
Especially when they have their friends
over.
For each teenager, the damage is
exponential, not additional.
I'm not sure why that is
but I know it to be a fact.
I have tried to detach emotionally
from all my possessions for this reason.
I'd need the whole world wide web to list
all the things my kids and their friends
have demolished around here.
Usually I just accept it and figure
someday they'll have jobs and they
can replace the walls, floors, furniture
and items that have been damaged.
But this was different.
As I looked in the kitchen garbage can,
there was my pewter ladle.
It was a wedding present from my Auntie Lois.
Troy's friend Devin had used it for an
ice cream scoop!
Does a ladle REALLY look like an ice cream scoop?
I guess it did to him.
I took the pieces to the living room
and held it up to the circle of teens
busily killing zombies on their video game
and asked who had broken it.
Devin had the good manners to admit
his crime and apologize.
It's nice to have at least one Eddie Haskell.

9/12/2011 My Ugly Kitchen Towels

Well, Teddy was right this time.
He held up a rag last week and said,
"When was the last time you bought kitchen towels mom?"
I looked at the rag and tried to remember.
Here's a good rule of thumb:
If you can't remember when you bought the towel
it is too old.
I couldn't even see the cute pale blue goose
on that old towel that I knew was there in...
What year did we buy the house?
1991.
No wonder that towel looked bad.
Time for the rag bag.
I did have some marginally better looking towels
that my sister Pam has given me over the years.
She knows that kitchen towels are something I
never remember to replace.
Do you have something that you hate to shop for?
Or something that you dislike shopping for?
Kitchen towels fall into both categories for me.
So, luckily a brand new Ross store opened
last month and I went down and found a
smokin' hot deal on cute kitchen towels.
Five for $3.99!
Since I hadn't shopped for kitchen towels since 1991,
it was a rather time consuming endeavor.
I had to sit on the floor because they
were all on the bottom racks.
I chose four matching packages that contained a
variety of colors and some cute artsy chef on a bicycle
that I know I have seen on art somewhere.
So last night Teddy holds up a bath towel
with frayed edges and says...

9/12/2011 You Left Your Retainer Where?

Caution: This blog may cause
nausea. Do not read before or after meals.
So just as we were falling asleep around
ten last night I went upstairs
to remind Troy to put in his retainer.
He was already asleep and said groggily,
"I left it by the pool on a beach sheet in a bag."
I went in his room and looked at the sleepy
lump and said, "You left your retainer where?"
I remembered it. I had gone to gather up the sheets
for the laundry and seen a wadded up piece of plastic
and I had tossed it in the garbage.
Normally this wouldn't be a big deal,
but the stars were in a grand trine.
This meant anything orthodontic
would be icky and dangerous.
Terry and I shuffled up to the road
where our trash tote sat under the
beautiful full moon.
Under the moonlight we dumped the
last two bags of garbage onto the
edge of the road.
Twenty years ago this was not
what we usually did under the full moon.
I had the short straw this time
and ended up with the kitchen sack.
Luckily for Terry and unluckily for me,
he had caught a nice fat six pound
humpy salmon on the Snohomish River in
the morning. So, not only did I have the
cooked fish remains to sift through,
I also had the bloody head and spine
to add to my trauma.
Toss in the ubiquitous coffee grounds
and cantalope guts and rinds
and it was a LONG half hour.
I went through that mess three times
before I recognized the walnut-sized
wadded up Saran wrap containing
the small red prize.
Troy's retainer.

9/12/'11 Walking Around With a Eighty Pound TV

Well, that was something different.
Surprising the sheriff didn't
turn up at my door!
Teddy went to a birthday party
Saturday night and came back about eleven
and yelled down the stairs,
"Mom, I got invited to sleep over
and came back for pajamas."
Well, that triggered my Momdar.
He hasn't worn pajamas since he was twelve.
So I go back to reading my latest
trashy Jackie Collins novel
and at eleven-thirty I hear Teddy yelling,
"Mom! Mom! I'm back!"
I race upstairs and he's covered with sweat
and I asked him what had happened.
Apparently, his friend Mikey
convinced him that their friend
Michael's party would be so much
better with a second TV.
That way, more of them could play video games together.
Teddy and Mikey came and picked up
Teddy's "pajamas" while I was downstairs
reading, only to have dad Jon say, "NO."
Only Mikey wouldn't help with the
return trip, which left Teddy
carrying an eighty pound television
ten blocks through downtown Kenmore!
I'm lucky the sheriff didn't notice him.

9/11/2011 I Miss My BOSS Vacuum Cleaner

The people that designed bagless vacuum cleaners
never cleaned my house. Yes, I'm grateful Terry
bought a new one while I was working on the ship,
BUT, I don't want to see the dirt,
let alone think about where it came from.
I miss my Eureka BOSS. It was comforting to pat the bag,
like you would a baby diaper and think,
"All full, time to go."
It was a happy shock to open my closet
for the first time to clean the rugs
after working on the cruise ship
and finding a brand new vacuum cleaner.
My BOSS had broken six months before
I deployed and I had been using an electric broom.
That only took six hours to clean our small house!
So I vacuumed the first time with this new-fangled
vacuum cleaner with a clear plastic canister.
It was like watching a train wreck.
I was repulsed and thrilled at the same time.
More repulsed than thrilled seeing the dirt
come swirling around as I progressed
through the house.
The next three times I vacuumed,
I was liking being able to see
the results of my efforts.
And then yesterday,
I had had it.
While emptying the canister,
which reminds me of a blender but instead
of getting a fluffy margarita I'm getting dirt,
I hit the wall of revulsion.
I imagined all the teenagers stomping through
the house in their giant size thirteen shoes,
and where the shoes might have been,
and decided this new machine has got to go.
If I'm not getting a fluffy margarita
from the canister,
I'm going back to bags!

9/8/2011 Teddy's First Football Game

That was exciting.
Watching my kid play in his first
football game.
Only snag was, I didn't see him.
With his freshman group mixed with the
Viking sophomore group, there were
over sixty guys on our team!
Perfect night for football though
with my furry husband and friend Angela.
She is Teddy's pal Mike's mom.
Clear, hot night with a near-full moon rising over the
field bursting with testosterone.
Geez those kids had fun.
I watched my kid standing on the sideline the whole time
and darn if they didn't put him in the last ten minutes of the game!
On the last play, I could hear a familiar young voice
shouting out the numbers
and I was thinking he sounded
just like Teddy.
Well it was Teddy.
Boy was he hopping mad I didn't see him run out
on the field and see him play.
Wasn't until we were all in the mini-van riding
home and Angela and I were gasping for air
over the vile smell of the players,
that I found out he got to play.
Once it got dark,
I had trouble seeing the numbers
even with the field lights!
Drawback of being an old mom.
So I told him to yell at me next time he went in.
That went over like a lead balloon,
but we'll work something out.

9/7/2011 The New Football Mom or Statman Strikes Again!

We are a basketball family.
I LOVE watching my kids play that
fast and exciting sport,
so you can imagine my surprise
when out of the blue,
my mini-me, Teddy, tells me he
wants to play football.
The most brutal sport of all.
I have anxiety attacks every time someone gets injured
so it is hard to watch for me.
But, apparently, boys like to get injured
and injure each other, so I did not
object to my fifteen year old ninth grader
starting football this summer.
It has been fun and interesting and surprising so far.
They had a jamboree last weekend
and I nearly came off the stands
when some sophomore he pushed back
was roughing him up.
I'll have to learn to stay in my seat.
Yesterday,Teddy came home from football practice
with his first yellow and black game jersey on and
sits down to dinner. Terry looks at him and says,
"58 is a great number. Hall of Famer Jack Lambert had
that number from '70 to '80 and he was the
best middle linebacker in history.
No one could get through the Steel Curtain."
This from a man that can't put the dishes in
the right cupboard after twenty years in the same house.