Writes for Kicks

One of the reasons my blog is titled "Writes for Kicks" is that in addition to being a writer I'm also a soccer player.  I've mentioned in an earlier post that my daughter plays soccer as well.

I am co-coaching her team with another parent and it is really a blast!  These little girls are so much fun and really good little soccer players as well.  They are still learning and like most 6 and 7-yr. olds they look like a swarm of bees out on the field; but that's o.k.  At this age it is about letting them have fun and encouraging them to make decisions for themselves out on the soccer field.

If they are about to thrown the ball in, in the wrong direction, we'll redirect them.  Same thing if they are about to take a corner kick and kick it down the field instead of toward the goal.  But all-in-all they are so busy racing around out there that they don't really hear you too well anyways.  When their teammate is about to take a corner kick and the only players in front of the goal are from the other team, you can scream to them, "Get in front of the goal!"  And they will stare at you blank-faced, like a deer in the headlights.  "Get in front of the goal!"  "GET in FRONT of THE GOAL!"

Honestly, at this age, you are supposed to just let them have fun.  Is it frustrating?  It can be if you let your competitive nature get in the way of common sense.  When I first started coaching my son's teams five years ago I probably gave a bit too much direction and I used to keep score and I wanted to win.  The boys did too.  Then if they lost they were upset for about two minutes, until they got their snacks and juice boxes and then they were fine.  I had to teach myself to focus more on the fun and now second-time around with my daughter, I'm really good at it.  So good, that I forget to keep score at all.  But the refs don't either at this age so it really doesn't matter.  Except to the parents and some of the other coaches.

Last weekend the girls were playing when all of a sudden one of the other team's coaches shouted over to me, "You need to take out number three!  She is going to hurt somebody!"  He kept repeating this over and over and was all worked up about it. 

Number three is fairly aggressive.  She's kind of all over the field and she does push a bit.  But she is not trying to hurt anybody.  She's just still learning and so she will push the other players with her hands.  This is not difficult to do since there are about five or six little girls, in a little pack, hacking away at the ball most of the time.

I responded, "When she comes out we will talk to her." 

I'm not going to go into great detail about what happened, but suffice it to say my answer was not good enough.  He criticized me for "teaching your players to play that way" and demanded that I pull her out RIGHT NOW!  Well, if I had any doubt about whether to pull her out or not, I certainly wasn't going to now.  This coach was unbelievably competitive.  He yelled at his girls non-stop the whole entire game.  You would have thought that we were playing the World Cup.

His team outplayed our team.  And they won.  But I bet our girls had more fun.  If I would have pulled this little girl out and told her to stop pushing she would have burst into tears.  She hasn't made it through a practice or game without bursting into tears yet.  And though this coach was major league upset with her, you could see that all the little girls out on the field were fine.  None of them were upset about the way she was playing.

At practice this week, we will continue to teach the girls about staying on their own side of the field, explaining, again, the difference between a goal kick and a corner kick.  We'll work on throw-ins and passing to one another.  And we'll discuss how you shouldn't push off other players using your hands.  And then next weekend we'll head to our soccer game where I will allow the girls to go out and play and be 6 yrs. old.

Then I will go to my game and let my competitive spirit flow, if I so desire.  Maybe that other coach should join a team too.  Just a thought.

When I mentioned my favorite blog a couple of weeks ago it unleashed this crazy amount of hits to my blog.  By sheer coincidence, I mentioned reading "Single in the Suburbs" that morning and by the next day it had disappeared.  All of a sudden, all these readers like me were searching for Sarah and by the magic of Google, they were finding my blog on Milwaukeemoms.com instead.

It got me thinking that there were a lot of women (and maybe some men), like me, who could totally relate to Sarah and her single parenting lifestyle.  Clearly I am not the only one following her ups and downs!

Because my e-mail is a bit like my office, minus the piles, I have messages that are still sitting there that I never bothered to delete.  At the time, I just saved all my Match e-mails to a folder.  I just went back through the archives and had a few good laughs.

For example, read this e-mail that I got from a guy who I had literally sent one e-mail to, asking him what he liked to do for fun in his spare time (I kid you not, I am not making this up!):

"I enjoy many things for fun...kissing and all that goes with it is definitely on the list, and downhill skiing, the shooting sports, golf, tennis, riding my motorcycle (with you), riding ATV's (I have one for you too), swimming, hiking, and so much more...I also enjoy doing things that include the kids...the list is endless...Do you like to kiss?"

Puking was more what I felt like doing after I read that!

Another interesting response was one I got from a man who lived in Portugal.  He seemed nice, but I thought that the distance would be an immediate issue that would be hard to overcome.  Plus I thought his comment about meeting his family was just a little too bizarre for me.

I was thinking it would be fun to hear about some of your more interesting responses!  Since I am no longer on Match and have not been for quite awhile, I'm no longer living Sarah's life in that respect.  If she ever gets serious with any of her possible suiters, then we'll be on the same page.  But none-the-less I still find Sarah's experiences entertaining and I'm sure she is not the only one with stories to tell!

I got my Sara Susannah Katz fix tonight thanks to Sophie and Donna who sent me the link!  Thanks to all of you who also sent me the link before now.  Since the articles had stopped at installment 64 I hadn't held out much hope for the Match.com site; but what a great surprise to finally find installment 65 posted there. 

If you haven't found installment 65 yet, click here.

Enjoy!  (And make sure and read it before the rest of my blog if you want to be surprised!)

Now we finally know that Chris did, indeed, break it off with Sara.  It didn't come as a huge surprise to me since he really didn't seem that in to her.  And I definitely think she is better off without him. 

Not to mention that we are better off without him--he didn't exactly add a lot of interesting dialog to her blog!   

A lot of their interactions were almost painful to read and they couldn't have been too much fun to experience in real life.  I'm not sure when her next installment will be on this new site.  Wouldn't it be great if she upped it to once a week?  Regardless, I will be staying tuned and rooting for her as she continues her search.

I just got finished reading my favorite blog:  "Single in the Suburbs."  Click here if you want to check it out.  This writer, a divorced mom, posts a blog entry every other Monday about her dating life on-line.  I stumbled across her blog a couple of years ago and I have been keeping tabs on her love life ever since.  I find her to be witty, brutally honest and just plain entertaining.

And I think we have a lot in common.

I tried match.com.  My ex-husband had been moved out of the house for over a year and our court date was set.  He had been dating someone for about 10 months and I had accepted that there was no chance of us getting back together. (Yeah, I know...slow learner.)  I had stumbled upon Match.com by accident one day when I thought I was clicking a link to an article, and instead found myself on this online dating site.

After ignoring the invitation to "try it three days for free" or maybe it was "look all you want," I left the site and thought that maybe I had gone temporarily insane.  But then I was back a couple of days later and decided what the heck, it couldn't hurt. I really wanted to meet someone to go out to dinner with or see a movie. 

I've been on and off that site a couple of times in the last few years.  I haven't been on since last fall and don't plan on checking it out again. (I'm happily dating someone.)  But at the time, it was great.  I realized that though I never came across any single, eligible men that I wanted to date, in my day-to-day life--they were definitely out there.  As a divorced parent, it had renewed my hope that I did have a future I would be able to move on to, when for so long I could never envision it.

If you are newly divorced, and wondering where in the world you can meet eligible singles, you should check it out. And don't forget about the blog I told you about.  I find it so entertaining; and if you like it, you can read 64 installments right up front.  I hate that I have to wait two weeks to hear what this midwestern mom is up to next!  Personally I think it is a no-brainer that the guy she is dating now is not for her...

I went to the Brewer game last Friday night.  I was with my boyfriend and some friends.  My son coincidentally had tickets to go to the same game with his dad.

When Eric Gagne took the mound, it seemed that the entire crowd at Miller Park started booing.  Then Gagne gave up a home run and the crowd booed even louder.  Than he gave up a double and who would have thought that the crowd could get any louder?

That weekend, I was talking with my son and discovered that he and his dad had booed Gagne as well. I said that I hadn't, and that I thought it was kind of bad that we would boo one of our own at Miller Park.

We were in the car at the time and my son and his friend immediately started explaining, with great exuberance on both their parts, why he got booed.  "He's pitching terrible!"  "He used to be good!"  "We are paying him eight million dollars!"  "If it weren't for him we could afford Sabathia!"  And so on and so forth.

I said that I thought that if people were upset with how he was pitching--and thought that he shouldn't be--then people should be upset with management, not Gagne.  After all, I reasoned, he is doing the best he can and it is not as if he wants to do horrible and have all of Miller Park booing at him.  At this point both their arms shot up in the air (How cute is that?) and they went into great detail about how much he is being paid.  Since he is being paid so much he shouldn't be pitching so badly, they argued.

I asked, then, that if they made the Select team for their little league--because they played really well at try-outs--and then they ended up being terrible, should I boo them?  They said that they weren't being paid eight million dollars.  I said that I thought that Gagne would probably rather make five million and pitch well then make eight million and pitch terribly. (I've since learned that he was paid 10 million, but why split hairs?)

Regardless of how much money he makes, he's still just a human being out there doing the best he can.  What is he supposed to do, go to Brewer management and say, "I really stink. I quit."  Seems to me that he should keep trying.

Finally, I had to pull out my big guns:  "But he has a mother!  How do you think she feels?"

There was more talk on the boys' part about steroids and other questionable behavior and quite frankly, they know way more about baseball than I do.  In the end we had to agree to disagree.  But it was a fun way to spend a car ride.

Earlier this week, before Monday's game, Gagne made a $50,000 donation to the MACC Fund.  It was the largest single gift ever made by an athlete in the MACC fund's 32-year history.  I hope the crowd didn't boo him.

I was helping my daughter pick out her back-to-school outfit last night. 

At our house this entailed picking out either the navy blue uniform shorts or one of the two uniform jumpers and a red, white or blue polo shirt.  I thought she was going to love her jumpers; but for the last two weeks she has been complaining that she has to wear a uniform.  I half expected her to pick out the shorts over the jumper since she has been protesting mightily that the jumper isn't pretty enough.

Anyway, she chose the jumper.  When I asked her which one--because we have two different styles--she pointed at one and asked: "Will that one make me look fat?"

I have to admit that even though I know that society starts bombarding our girls early with these sort of messages, it is still is kind of a shock when you hear these words our of your little girl's mouth for the first time.

My daughter has the most beautiful, muscled, lean body.  She is so active.  There is not an ounce of fat on her.  And then, of course, she is only 6 yrs. old.

I know she didn't learn this from me.  Not because I have the most beautiful, muscled, lean body but because I don't ever call myself fat in front of my children.  I have always been particularly careful about the comments I make in front of my daughter.

You know though, even my son has made comments about being fat.  Like his sister, he is very muscled and has always been height and weight proportionate.  But I've watched him and all his friends grow the same way over the years.  They shoot up and then they thicken out a little.  Then they shoot up and then they thicken out a  little.  All the boys in his fifth grade class have these little bellies.

When my son said he was fat one day, which is so ridiculously far from the truth, I replied that it is normal and healthy for boys his age to have a little fat on them.  I told him that his body needs it and that he should look at his friends--they all have it too. 

I asked my daughter why she would think that the jumper would make her look fat and she quoted some person she had heard on t.v. on some Nick Jr. or Disney show.  She didn't really think she looked fat.  She was just repeating something she had heard.

The good news is she bounced out of bed this morning and was really excited to put on her jumper--even though it doesn't twirl enough for her tastes.

I drove carpool this morning and at the parking lot at school I commented on another mom's cute outfit.  She replied, "oh, I'm so fat!"  (She isn't.)  Good thing the kids were already in school.