Baseball Mom

Fulfilling day

What a day!  It's still beautiful outside, and I slept in, which made me feel slightly guilty.  I got up at 9:45, and Coach cooked breakfast-bacon, eggs, grits and toast.  I think bacon should be its own food group...it's that good.  I swear, if I was in a religion where you couldn't have bacon?  I'd have to quit.  Anyway, right after breakfast, when I wanted to just veg out and watch Flip That House, Coach started cracking the whip.  The kids went out to weed, and I went out to start planting our flats of plants from the preschool plant sale.  We planted a flat of impatiens, I did half a flat of fibrous red begonias, and six tomato plants (a brandywine, a sweet million, a super steak, a beef steak, and a better boy, and one more that I can't remember the name of).  I also did two zucchini plants, and need to plant our giant pumpkin seeds from the fair.  I love it when the garden is in, and am looking forward to just watering, weeding, and eating the fabulous tomatoes that come out!  I was soooo tired, but it's very satisfying to have it all done.  I still have some fillers to plant in my baskets, but that's it! 

The little things

We have lucked out with awesome weather lately, and it's going to stay that way until about two weeks from now, supposedly.  I just had to share a couple of little things that make me happy...I love when little things please me...

-I LOVE it every year when we get the window A/C out....makes me crave summer.

-I LOVE when my flowers are potted up and on the deck-which will happen today and tomorrow.

-I LOVE handing out the new baseball uniforms every year-it makes the boys so happy and excited.

-I LOVE going to our school when it's summer, the doors are thrown open, and the halls are breezy...it's great to hear the kids playing outside.

-I LOVE when the boys can sack out on the couch whenever they feel like it and not have to get up for school.

-I LOVE sitting out in the shade and watching baseball practice.

-I LOVE seeing the look on my boys' faces when they get a good hit-it's just pure joy and amazement at their accomplishment.

-I LOVE my deck-it's cool and breezy, and covered so it's shady. 

-I LOVE my hanging baskets-the lavendar bacopa is so beautiful right now, and the lotus is starting to bloom.

 

 

The rush

Holy cow...it is definitely the end of the school year!  I've been rushing around, trying to get fundraiser companies signed for pta, doing baseball tickets for pta, working, sending email reminders for both baseball teams, and attending the various baseball games.  Today, I am off, but I am going to pay the electric bill, pick up prescriptions, pick up dog poop, take T's sweatshirts to be repaired, pick up baseball uniforms, and grocery shop, then look for a new bat for T, since his is the wrong size for his league.  Jeez.  I can't wait for the school year to be over and be able to relax a little!  My kids are just DONE too.  It's so hard to get them to go to bed, and get them up in the morning!  Alex is stressed about his homework, and has meltdowns nightly because he's just sick of all of it!  I can't wait to be able to let them stay up until they're tired, and sleep as late as they want each day.  Camping was fun, it was a nice break for everyone.  We brought the boat, and the kids and Coach caught ten trout between them...yum!  Now I have to clean out the trailer and do laundry.  It's never ending!  The weather is soooo beautiful, and I am enjoying seeing sun every day lately.  Here are a couple of camping pics...

 

Alex and Louie (E and C's dog)

 

my boys playing by the creek

and here are a couple of Alex hitting his FIRST HOME RUN!!! notice the kids' faces on the bench...cracks me up! 

 

Enough with the v word

Last night, the internet gods finally smiled on Coach.  Or maybe it was the computer gods, but he was messing around with my computer and it is able to go on the internet...at last!  I don't know if it was the stupid facebook virus thing, or something that I messed around with, but all I'd get when I tried to connect was the 'internet explorer cannot display the webpage' thing that I wanted to punch in the face.  If I clicked 'details', it would say that the computer could not connect to the internet using http, http5, whateverwhatever, because of firewall settings, and even when I turned my firewalls off TOTALLY, it still didn't work.  I hated it.  The kids' computer is up in their messy room, and the chair...let's just say I missed my preshus chair.  So...I missed blog surfing, and finally caught up on some of your blogs last night!  Right now, we're in the throes of getting ready to go camping, which means I've been running stuff out to the trailer and trying to get at least some of it ready so I don't have to do it all in one day.  We leave Thursday morning, and I can't wait!  I'm making the boys go to school so we can pack in peace, then we'll pick them up early to cross the bridge before the crazy traffic.  T has still been practicing with his team, and they're looking pretty good.  We lucked out on the three boys that were placed on our team by the parks district, because they're all good players, and two of them are 14, so we got some bigger boys.  They are so unorganized about reserving practice fields though...we can reserve for three weeks at a time, and four times out of five, there is someone else thinking that they have that field at our same time.  I got a call from the parks dist. the other day, and they had double booked us for the field that we have on Tuesdays, so since we were the last ones booked, we lost our field.  There are no other good ones to reserve, unless we want to practice on a grass field, which would be a waste of time, since they play on dirt and the balls roll in dirt, but stop in grass.  Alex has been really doing great on the team that Coach helps to coach.  He and one other boy play first base, because no one else knows how, and he played pitcher last night, and also short stop.  He got two good hits and made it to third before some of the others struck out.  His other team is a different story.  I am so frustrated, because he is just beside himself with frustration too.  There are 20---yes...20 kids on this coach pitch team.  This happened with the same team during soccer last year, and we were assured that they would be limiting the amount of kids that played on the team from now on.  He wanted to play with the kids that he did soccer with, so we signed up for this second team.  Practices are like herding cats...there are so many kids!  A lot of parents help out, but the coaches are the ones who know how to teach the kids what to do, and they can't get around to every kid at every practice.  There are two teams within the one...so half play at each inning, but they all bat.  It takes FOREVER to have a turn at bat, and the pitcher is not allowed to throw overhand.  Let me say that ever since Alex was able to swing a bat, he's been pitched overhand to.  We knew that he'd need the skill later on, so that's how he's grown up.  He is SO PISSED that this pitcher just throws these huge rainbows, and the ball drops in front of him, and he can't track it in to the bat.  He is very driven and determined...and hard on himself because he wants to succeed, so he was almost in tears after the last game.  I told him to think about it hard, and decide if it was worth staying on that team, because he is wanting to quit.  I told him that he has two weeks before his next game with that team, and he needs to decide if having fun with the kids is enough to keep him happy, and if so, not be so hard on himself, or if he just wants to stick with Coach's team instead.  We'll see what happens!  I wish he wasn't so hard on himself, but at the same time, it's got him reading at a third grade level in first grade, so it's a good thing in some ways! 

insect torture

So.  Here I am on my kids' computer because mine is totally useless from this stupid virus that KEEPS COMING BACK.  I can't get on the internet with mine, because it says it can't access the internet due to my firewall settings.  WTF?  My day yesterday was SOOO productive.  I cleaned the clutter off of the counter, and cleaned off the entire kitchen table.  The counter looks really big now, and so does the table...we'll see how long it lasts!  This morning, I was doing dishes, and felt a little tickle on my hand.  I thought it was a stray hair that fell off, because I am always shedding. It kept going, so I sort of flung my hand at the wall...and a HUGE spider flew off!  EW!  Then, like 2 seconds later, I was going to pick up a cup to put in the dishwasher, and attached to it was the STICKBUG that I threw away the other day because I thought it was dead.  At first, I checked the stickbug cage, to make sure that the other two were in there, and they were, so this must be a reincarnation of the 'dead' one.  I can't believe that it climbed out of the garbage can and made its way back across the kitchen to its home. Of course, I sort of grossed out, and opened the cage and just scraped it back in.  I am DONE with bugs for the day!  Alex is supposed to have a game tonight, but we'll see.  It's supposed to rain.  He's had one with this team, and one with the other team.  He did great in the one with Coach coaching, because they put him at first base, and he loves it there.  He also hit two great balls and scored a run.  The other team, not so much.  There are 20 kids on the team, so they have to sit a lot...and he played outfield when he did play, which is kind of boring since no one really hits out there.  I want him to play where he's placed...it's a valuable lesson for kids, and coaches appreciate kids who do what they are told without complaining, but I can understand where it's BORING out there!  Their coach also pitches underhand to him, and the one on Coach's team pitches overhand, because we asked him to.  Alex has always been pitched overhand to, by us, so he'll be used to hitting like that, but I don't feel like I can ask the other team to do that for just one kid, since there are so many!  T had his best practice ever last night.  He played second and was really getting the turns down to flip it to first base.  He also played outfield and caught several balls that were hit to him.  He hit really well with his big barrel bat too...he's getting used to using such a huge bat!

Restless

 My May calendar...so far...

I don't know what it is, must be some sort of spring fever-y thing, but I just can't sit still!  I keep jumping upto do things, and usually they're insignificant little things, but when I sit still, I can't calm down.  I'm constantly worrying about what I *should* be doing, or wondering what I'm not accomplishing!  This week was teacher appreciation week, and I was super busy with that, which was a good thing.  T's school had early dismissal on 2 days for conferencing, so I helped out at his school, directing people to where they were supposed to go.  Today is our fundraiser reward thing over at Alex's school, so the kids who sold enough items get to play Deal or no Deal for prizes and money, so I'm going down there in a bit.  Today I went out to the trailer to take a few things out that needed to go in there, and ended up laying on my bed in the trailer, sorta pretending that i was on vacation!!!  I love it in the trailer (I know, I'm a nerd) and could just sit in there and read and be happy!  Later, I'm going to go clean out my pit of a car, and get it washed, because it is BAD.  Once baseball starts, everything goes to hell in the car.  Speaking of baseball, I am so glad it's finally getting underway!  I'm used to it starting back in February, and it's been a long wait.  It's weird that we are just collecting money for uniforms and picking numbers, sizes, etc.  Alex's games last weekend and this week got rained out (it was like November here, I swear), so I'm looking forward to watching his game tomorrow, even though it is at the ungodly hour of 9:00 am...on the WEEKEND.  T has a practice, and we'll get to meet the three new boys that have been placed on our team.  They are all 14, and seem like they have a lot of experience, according to their parents, but we'll see how it goes.  Sunday we're going out to Hood Canal to my mom and stepdad's place for a bbq and to play on the beach and see their new little boat.  Should be really fun as long as the weather holds!  Have a fantastic Mother's Day...you all deserve it!!!

Frustration and head banging

I swear, if this computer doesn't get its act together, and stop with the fuckery, I will scream!  Not that I haven't been screaming, swearing, and banging my head against the wall already!  Now that the 'old' virus was obliterated, my computer picked up a new one.  The other day, I spent hours on there, trying to be quick enough with the Yahoo anti-spy to do a scan before the virus kicked me out of there, and was successful.  I removed a trojan, and life went on.  I told my little darlings that under no circumstances were they to play the free online games on my computer.  What did they do last night?  Yep.  I came into the room and saw the zombie game sitting there, and lost my shit.  They tried to tell me that it was a 'different' online game site, and not the one that they used before, and also tried blaming each other for the other problem.  This one was a stupid little popup that said that 'the picture is corrupt and cannot be opened' or something like that, and it sat RIGHT in the middle of my screen.  I kept trying to close it, and after that I ran the damned anti spy again and removed 6 trojans and a couple of 'rogue security sites' which were the ones responsible for the last problem.  After that, my computer didn't want to let me access http sites because it didn't recognize them, so I could not get on the internet at all.  This afternoon, I was playing around with it, and clicked on the IE 8 setup icon, and it started recovering files and magically works again.  dI dunno, maybe I'm like some kind of idiot savant of the computer world or something. 

Compounding the frustration of the computer is the fact that my kids are running around with their soft air guns, screaming at each other and slamming doors and just being general assholes.  I lost my shit with them, and took the stupid guns away because "he's shoooooting me!" got a little annoying...I mean, what is the point of a soft air war if you can't shoot each other?  They have now lost the guns for a week, and it's quiet.  If this rain doesn't stop soon, they may die...

Alas...

I finally, finally got rid of this stupid bitch of a trojan virus std thingie that was infecting my computer and making it misbehave.  I was sooo pissed-I messed with it all day yesterday, and it would keep kicking me off the internet, and flashing up this popup that said I needed to buy their security/virus protection.  Yeah, that's gonna make me want to give you my credit card number!!!  Very frustrating.  I told the kids that they are not allowed to play games from the internet on my computer-only theirs, and not to click on anything that pops up EVER AGAIN!  Their computer has been infected soooo many times.  I finally just had to download IE 8 and run the Yahoo anti-virus (luckily I managed to run it before the thing kicked me off) and take the trojan off that way.  Crayzee!!!  It's 70 degrees today, so I'm going to go enjoy the sun at Alex's baseball practice!  Last practice he caught a fly ball and hit a homerun and a triple.  That's my boy! Have a good weekend, y'all...