Save it for the fall Moms!

“Save it for the fall” has become our mantra around here. My sister's two children and my two children, all four of them, will be in school this fall. For the first time in our lives, we will have the house to ourselves to work on GTWoman Magazine.

While we admit this is a bittersweet transition, we’d like to outline some of the celebrations that will be unfolding.

Any and all fantastic, mind-blowing ideas are now on a time line. Instead of worrying we don’t have the time or resources to blow minds, we simply table the fantasticness and announce that we shall “save it for the fall.”

For, in the fall, we hope that time will unfurl and hand us back our minds after running the magazine with chillins’ at our feet and in our minivans for 7 years.
Here’s how we sound day or night:

Kerry: “Let’s go to a dude ranch and rope cattle.”
Kandy: “Save it for the fall.”

Kandy: “Let’s go national with GTWoman.”
Kerry: “Save it for the fall.”

Kerry: “Let’s clean the house.”
Kandy: “Save it for the fall.”

Of course, once the semi-empty nest is upon us, we will surely be plunged into a deep depression. Even now, we’re a little haunted, wondering what we will do with the booming echo of a house empty from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. five days a week.

“Save it for the fall” has been our coping mechanism. Perhaps we’ll be so busy this fall we won’t notice the loneliness, what with our clean houses and coiffed style?

Well, for the first week, we can guarantee that there won’t be a lot accomplished. We’ll spend a good 15 minutes moping about the house, looking at their pile of discarded trains and feel a yearning for the “good old days.” Then we’ll snap back to reality and remember the good old days also involved diapers and the ever-present threat of a double homicide.

Here are our plans focusing on the positive and not the emptiness:

• Watch a full episode of The Young and The Restless. Uninterrupted. Volume below ear-splitting. Daily. 
• Eat cookies. That we don’t have to share. Hourly.
• Clean our offices. Put our stapler where we want it. Find it there the next day. With staples still in it.
• Feed the cats. Have the food remain in the bowl and not become cargo for Thomas, James and Percy, Sodor Island’s trio of steam engines.
• Feed ourselves. Not last. Not after cutting, buttering and arguing. Have pleasant conversations with others without removing a child from the ceiling fan of an eating establishment.
• Open the porch door. Not have the screen banged open and shut 15 times during Y&R and walked thru during B&B. (If you know what B&B stands for, you’re in the club. Details below.)
• Start Moms Survival Club. This is for moms who have worked from home through the preschool years and survived. This club will entail ice cream not dropped on the floor, salon outings without a battle of wills ensuing and shopping where no one crawls under a locked door or announces they can see your underwear
• Work.
• Return phone calls without hunkering down in a bedroom with a barricade made out of dresser drawers and laundry.

Besides these basic goals, we are also having daydreams of houses that are cleaner, laundry that is doner and dishes that are dryer.

There’s probably a slew of moms who will tell us that even after the kids are in school, things will not get done. To them we say… “save it for the fall.”

Tball Angst

If I sit long enough at a t-ball game, I start to buy into the end-of-the-world speeches my dad likes to give. My dad believes that everything is being watered down, muddied, ruined in the name of equality, where no one gets their feeling hurt or, worse, loses.

I thought he was being a little dramatic until Nelson started t-ball, a game that has turned into random ball throwing and catching with no rules. At every game, I look about at the other parents, desperate to catch the eye of one brought up in the day when you’d kill for a point made in dodgeball off a kid with a busted arm.

Last night’s t-ball game was the topper for me. One little dude, we’ll call him Chicken Little (CL), outranked everyone in his total disregard for competition.
He was playing pitcher. Of course, in t-ball, there is no actual pitching. But the pitcher gets a lot of action because most balls don’t go much farther than the mound. This makes the pitcher the go-to guy, the one moving along the non-scoring game, throwing to base for not-really-out outs and occasionally catching doesn’t-really-count fly balls.

So, CL was playing pitcher when — wham! — another player, having first maimed a slow-moving coach with his back swing, hit the ball in a line drive — into CL’s knees.

Here’s when I knew I had a story worth telling: It took a moment for CL to realize something had happened. Several moments later, he still had no idea what.
The crowd went nuts: “It’s in front of you! On the ground! At your feet!” These came from our side, as CL was our secret weapon, our ace in the hole.
On the other side, they were screaming “Run!” at the assailant, followed calmly by the coach saying, “but only if you want to.”

Finally, CL figured out that we were all screaming at him. He realized, too, that his left knee was swelling up to twice the size of his right. By Jove, the ball was there, at his feet, a gift from God. He scooped it up, re-adjusted his glasses and made to throw that ball out of sight.

But, representing t-ball players everywhere, he released the ball a tad early, delivering it a few feet behind him and, just barely, under.

This may have been all a part of CL’s act. He had the crowd riveted. Would he? Wouldn’t he? Could he stop the hitter who was meandering to first base? Would he break the tie in the untieable game? And if he did, would it matter? 

This total lack of suspense is where I take great issue with t-ball. If these children are old enough to brave an elementary playground, they are surely durable to the blows a t-ball game might dole out. 

As for my own children, last night Nelson hit a biggie. Up it went, landing atop but not within, the 2nd baseman’s glove. For 2nd baseman had spotted a sheep in the clouds above.

“Good (dropped) catch!” I screamed out of habit at the second baseman, but to Nelson, I bellowed, “Run! Fast!” The other parents looked at me, Easy there, girl in the red rain coat a size too big. And I sent back telepathy along the lines of Your feet are too big.

But by then, Nelson’s run had turned into a sideways set of lunges and squats to give him a better view of the sheep sighting. Why even running is going out of style in this non-game.

I want to boycott the game, rally the troops — that we should teach them rules, skills, good sportsmanship, about how bad things befall slow runners and distracted catchers, and about how good things befall those running in a straight line and catching with their mitts open.

But when I talk about these things, the parents all look at me like I’m a monster, broke loose out of the backyard of a couple Yooper parents. But to you, I plead my case: All I want is for these kids to get a kick out of winning, which is even better after having lost.

For the record, CL never did complete that play. He landed his second wild throw in the dugout, and the coach snatched it up, offering him great kudos, and, I think, a trophy.