I promised myself that I would get to go to more softball games this year. Afternoon games are hard when you have to leave work SUPER early but this year is important. It’s always important. But you know what I mean.
Today, I got to see my kid play AND somehow I was roped into keeping the scorebook. I haven’t done that in a million years. You can tell by all the mistakes I made. Ha.
The games were at my old high school and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t a strange walk down memory lane. I mean…that’s where I met my husband. The guy I was standing next to tonight keeping track of runs and strikes and outs – watching our kid play one of her first games of her senior year.
Time is weird, you guys. My kid is the same age I was when I met The Dude. Watching her play softball where we met is just funny.
It was strange and awesome and completely perfect timing.
Not long ago, I bought a slate heart to hang on the wall. I had no plans on doing so, but sometimes you go to JoAnne’s for very specific heart shaped supplies and then you soon realize that it’s the day after Valentine’s Day and you’re an idiot.
So a heart-shaped slab of slate it is.
I thought of all the bad words I could write on it.
But before any questionable language could be written with the (not at all cheap) chalk pens, it served its purpose for our Disney game night. Our Villaintines Party, if you will.
But after Valentine’s/Villaintine’s Day weekend, all bets were off.
Then, it became something else entirely.
I’ve raised my children the way I was raised: we speak movie quotes fluently. And so the great movie quote heart of sarcasm, wit and, sometimes, inspiration came to be.
Sometimes it was all three.
Please tell me you’ve seen Stick It
I’d like to think that we all pay attention to these in some way or another. I’d like to think the we all get the subtle hint of: You can do this. Don’t give up. With a heavy dose of twin-eating sarcasm, of course.
Okay, but mostly the not giving up part and that they’re totally badass part:
I guess I just hope that they see the quotes and they know that I’m paying attention. Being a kid/teenager/person is hard.
These kids of mine do a bang up job of it. They almost make it look easy.
I need to remember to tell them that I know that it isn’t and how proud of them I am.
“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.” ~ Rumi
We were just on the phone with my uncle to plan a camping trip for the summer. We chatted about the college process, catching him up with the latest news and updates. We still don’t know very much (man, they make you wait) but we told him what we did know. He talked about his experience with his kids. It’s so different now, but was still quite the ordeal back then.
When his youngest, my cousin and his only daughter, was making big college decisions, he wrote her poem. How he has it handy, I don’t know but he read it to The Dude and I over the phone tonight.
It gutted me. He finished reading it and I had to walk out of the room.
I hate talking about this without being able to share the poem, but it’s not mine to share.
During a phone call to plan camping trips, I wasn’t expecting to be completely ruined by a poem. It came out of nowhere and punched me in all of the feels.
You guys.
I keep thinking that I’m doing better with all of this. I actually have excited and happy thoughts about her college experience and decisions. I’m fine! All is well! Until I go to a basketball game on senior night and realize that I’ll have to go to my own senior’s night in a few months for softball. Or my uncle reading a poem about kids leaving home and I’m completely and totally destroyed. I don’t want to be an annoying person who can’t move past things. I expect eye-rolling and “holy crap get over yourself” and don’t worry, I’m totally saying those things to myself, too.
But every once in awhile, the punches to the gut knock the wind out of me.
I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a break from poetry for awhile.
Pictures or it never happened. Even if the pictures are blurry.
With the five of us kids, our spouses, nine grandchildren, my parents and (often) my grandmother, a typical family dinner looks like we’re having a frat party with kids and no beer. It is wall to wall chaos in the best possible of ways. We are loud and obnoxious so that we’re heard over the steady noise of laughing and kids playing. More often than not, we speak in movie quotes so it can often be difficult to follow one of our conversations if you’re not well-versed in a Goonies, Princess Bride, Anchorman, Drop Dead Fred and most Disney movies that have ever been created kind of language. It’s like we created our own version of pig-Latin. With A LOT more sarcasm and obscure So I Married an Axe Murderer references.
Unfortunately, due to a virus that knocked them down, my parents weren’t able to be at our house on Saturday night. We missed them dearly and promised that we wouldn’t have any fun or belly-laughs without them. We’re terrible liars and they saw through the bullshit, but at least we made an attempt. We tried to be as boring and unfunny as possible. But we just so happen to be REALLY bad at boring and unfunny when we’re all together. I mean, according to our own selves.
As it usually happens, we got to the point where we can’t breathe due to the laughing as we end up telling stories about when we were kids and incredibly dumb. Since there’s a bit of an age gap between my sisters and I and our younger brothers, we inevitably tell a story that they’ve never hear or don’t know very much about. And, of course, at some point, there is a story told that I have no recollection of because I can’t seem to fit ALL the memories in my head. (Even if the story involves me saving my sister’s life. Nothing. NO memory of such things.) The broken handlebar/bike crashing/friend riding over my sister story was, hands down (bike down?) the favorite of the night.
That doesn’t sound funny at all when I write it that way. Just trust me. It is.
At some point in the night, a discussion came up about swearing in front of your children. I have a black belt in swearing in front of my children, but I do try not to swear in front of my nieces and nephews. SOMETIMES. But since we were talking about swearing in front of our OWN kids, my daughter, of course, says something about how I used to be better about it.
I said, “Yeah. Apparently I used to care a lot more. NOW? F*ck it.”
What are, WORDS THAT I’VE NEVER SAID IN FRONT OF MY GRANDMOTHER, ALEX.
In fact, it’s not a word I (generally) use in front of my family. No really, I’m being honest. And while I was peripherally aware that my grandmother was right there, I don’t think all of my brain had really thought that sentence through.
My husband swears he’s never seen my grandma laugh so hard.
But this might be the last time we’re all allowed to gather without parental supervision. Some of us can’t be trusted.
I took a couple days off journaling and posting. If I’m being honest it’s because I was avoiding all the feelings that sometimes come with writing. I’m not quite ready for all that but when I was gathering up some of my favorite January moments on Cap City Moms, I realized I had quite a few to mention over here.
January was good. Some tough moments (dental jury drama), but good. It flew by and I can’t believe it’s already Groundhog Day. But here we are with six more weeks of winter. You know, if winter had actually shown up in these parts.
I’m kinda proud for me (mostly) sticking to a “post every weekday” schedule. Having a functional website totally helped. (Thanks again, Husband!!!) Yes, I missed (or skipped) a few days but I’m not holding my feet to the fire for all that. I set out to remember this year and I’m doing just that.
Although, I started writing this post two days ago and yet here we are. Just now posting. Apparently I can’t be a responsible adult this week. Or any week.
I should hit publish before I get distracted. Clearly I’m winning life right now.
I am so tired of only being able to chew on one side of my mouth.
I’m also tired of being the dental patient that defies normal practices.
Not on purpose, obviously. But if a procedure is supposed to take 20-30 minutes, you can be sure the same procedure will take 45 minutes to an hour with me. Or if it’s very unlikely for someone to have more than 3-4 roots per tooth, I will have FIVE. (And they will be impacted. Freakishly long roots! Kinda like the freakishly long legs I’ve been known to have!)
Long story, short: stupid and dumb tooth turns into a (complicated) root canal turns into a stupid and dumb broken tooth turns into broken tooth with stupid and dumb infection…stupid and dumb tooth must come out.
Fast forward to the Monday before Christmas and the extraction of stupid and dumb tooth.
Thank goodness I had a couple weeks off for Christmas because it took me that long to even feel better. It was pretty brutal.
Which, to be honest, is kinda how I’m feeling today. Which sucks so freaking bad, you guys.
Today was phase two of Torture Jill with Dental Work. AKA: bone and tissue grafts and way more stitches and swelling than I was expecting this time around. Because I’m a ginormous, oblivious idiot.
Sigh.
I’m pretty cranky about all of it. And, yeah…it’s pretty swollen and painful.
Just in time for my jury duty gig to continue on Wednesday.
There were about 16 different times tonight when I thought my brother had blown a gasket from yelling so much at my nephew’s basketball game. These are some of the best humans on the planet.)
My kids got Taylor Swift concert tickets for Christmas. It was all they asked for what they really, really, really wanted and swore they didn’t need anything much else. And for reasons I can’t completely explain, there are also two tickets for The Dude and I.
Don’t hate me, but I’m kinda excited.
The past couple of times ‘ol Swifty has been in town, we weren’t able to get tickets. Heaven knows we tried. But there’s a fine balance of wanting to do something for your kids and being able to afford your mortgage payment because the only tickets left by the time you actually get through cost nine million dollars. Being a grown-up is so lame, you guys.
With this particular album, we made sure we were on some sort of notification email list-thing that would give us behind the scenes info and the code for presale. (Super technical terms meaning that teenager of mine told us when all the things were happening.) Even knowing all this, getting enough tickets was quite the ordeal. Let’s just say that the two separate ticket buying experiences (there are friends going with us and you could only buy a certain amount of tickets per household) left us all with heart palpitations and PTSD. It also leaves The Dude and I sitting by ourselves (with thousands of other people) so the girls can all sit together and I find this perfectly hilarious.
Timing is a funny thing, though. We’ve been TSwizzle fans for years and years. Yes, I said we. Some of my favorite memories with my girls have been singing TS songs over and over on repeat because they’re the quintessential growing up songs and super fun to sing at the top of your lungs. Even for an alleged grown-up. And this huge concert event in August comes right at a time these girls, and their parents, might need it the most. Because just a couple short weeks later, a few of these girls will be heading off to college where the soundtrack to this next chapter in their life might sound a bit different.
So maybe the title using Taylor Swift song lyrics on yesterday’s post makes the lump in my throat grow into a huge bolder every time I read it. Because obstacles and mountains and expectations and goals and dreams and surviving and hoping that everything will be okay and then getting to a point where we’re more than okay. But also because these girls are the epitome of all the Taylor Swift albums, as silly and cliche as it sounds. They’re young and hopeful and scared and excited. These girls, man. They’re crashing through walls, moving mountains, making magic, fighting dragons and having the time of their lives. And all of this just…fits somehow and the timing is perfect.
The first college acceptance came in today. It’s not her first choice, but as she’s reading the letter she said, “I’m actually going to college, you guys!”
She was worried.
Me? Not so much. I knew. But I understand what she means.
I also understand what it means to ME.
She got in to college, you guys. How the hell are we here already?!!
I mean, I can do math. But it’s hard to believe I’ve worked for the same company for this many years. I was 19 when I started. My baby was just a couple months old. I had been married for only a few weeks. 1997 was a really busy year for this jerk. Time is freaking flying. Blah, blah, blah.
