Youth Soccer

My son's team has NY Red Bull coaches, it's weird, I drove to the game with one of them this weekend, he was at least my age most likely older, most int'l youth coaches I have met are young guys in their 20's. There is this world wide network of coaches that, a high percentage of which are from the UK, and they coach in Ghana one year, move to USA the next, are an assistant coach to a low level pro team in Wales, then become the head coach to kids in NJ, it is very weird transient lifestyle that I was not perviously aware of.
So we roll into our first league game on the road last weekend with a professional coach decked out in Red Bulls gear, and our boys are rocking Adidas kits, we arrive in a nice upper middle class town in North Jersey and they have t-shirts and dads coaching having them do jumping jacks before the game. My son's team had to stop scoring at 7-0 our else the club would have been fined for each additional goal. Not growing up with soccer it is interesting for me at least to see the vast range of how towns develop players.
The day before another team my son plays with sometimes got demolished in a scrimmage by Portuguese and Brazilian kids from Ironbound SC in Newark. So I saw the whole spectrum from kids who just kick the ball around for fun to upper middle class and rich kids with the best training money can buy to those whose families live and breath the game, you can guess which one looks the best so far.

Less Distractions On Campus

So after missing three weeks of class I has a midterm last week. I am not going to try to make up all of the reading I missed, but I have a paper and some blog entries due that I missed, plus keeping up with the current reading and and starting to research my major term paper.

Studying at home is often hard, we have had all of these house issues like possible two dead animals under our back deck that stink to high hell once the temperature sniffs 50 degrees, our heater has cut off twice and we have had to have someone come and service it to get it running again, and we had people come by to give estimates for trimming trees on our property, the guys we picked were suppose to call to give a heads up as to when they were free to come.

Well as I sit trying to figure out what the hell I am going to write my make-up paper on, and where am I going to find the research sources online, and being mad at myself for not getting any of it done earlier in the week, particularly because my kids have a half day to day and a play date at our house, so I will have less opportunity to work on the paper today than any other day this week, the tree trimmers show up. So there a bunch of Latin dudes high up in trees over my house with chainsaws and a giant truck sized wood chipper buzzing away as I type, not exactly an environment conducive to higher level conceptualizing. Also two worries have begun to creep in, one, this service was so much cheaper than the others, are they insured if one of these giant branches falls on my roof? Secondly, are we removing enough or too many branches? Too many may be safer and have less leaves to deal with in the fall, but it may look bad, and make the tree lean and force the roots to start coming up. Too few and we are still in danger of having a large branch fall on our house during a storm.

Oh and there are the squirrels who live in the tree, I am a little worried about their stress level.

Evil Baby Killing Tampons

My 3rd grader notice some of my wife's tampons on a counter, and asked my wife about them. I did not hear all of her explanation but I heard enough to know it was too much information for him to deal with.

I was laying on the floor of his bedroom and he sat on top of me put his face close to mine and asked, "Is there something you can take to kill a baby inside a mommy after you have made one?"

GREAT

Me, "Mom! what exactly did you say to him. Son do not worry about that, though you are definitely not the first person to come up with that idea."

My wife, "He was asking me about what tampons are for."

He knows that his mother takes pills so she does not get pregnant. My wife explained that the tampons have nothing to do with making or killing babies. She then began to explain how the pill works and I had to cut her off realizing that to an eight year old or an extreme right to lifer the process of how they work may be considered "killing a baby," so I just chimed in that the pill keeps the mommy from making a baby.

We have told him that to make a baby you take a little piece of a mommy and little piece of a daddy, put them together inside of a mommy and it grows.

So last night he asks, "Do you make a baby if you cuddle too much and your hair gets tangled and it gets inside of the mommy?"

This morning the tampon box is still out and he says, "I hate tampons they are for killing babies." So my son thinks that tampons are for killing babies, we told him they are not, but he does not believe us. I explain that they are used only when mommies are not making babies, he does not buy it. I have to take a cup and use it as model of an upside down womb, fill it with a little water and describe a period as the water pouring out of the cup and the tampon is a sponge to keep mommies clean. Not fully buying it, I explain there is blood involved and the womb makes a bed for the new baby to grow in and if it is not needed the body throws the bedding out.

So we left it with him finally starting to turn the corner but not full convinced that tampons are not for killing babies.

Seems like yesterday

My just turned six year-old, "February is not so fun,"

me, "Why? We have a bunch of fun things, the Super Bowl, Coach Charlie's birthday dinner at Red Robin, your kid birthday party,"

Him, "Mehhheh,"

me, "What that party is costing us around $500, I can call up right now and cancel it!" I pick up the phone,

him, "NO!"

Me, "Alright then, you have to appreciate what we do for you, I am sorry but I can't make everyday all fun all the time, I have a number of things I have to do."

Him, "Dad do you remember when I was the most important thing in your life? Seems like yesterday."

Me, "WHAT? What did you say?"

He repeats what he said

Me, "Where did you get that from?"

Him, "In Toy Story they say 'Do you remember when we were the most important things in Andy's life. Seems like yesterday.'"

Me, "Oh man that was pretty funny."

So my six year-old has figured out how to quote film dialog to bust my balls, great.

Welcome to the Spring 2011 Semester

Sometimes it feels like the only thing I hate more than work is change.

And by work I mean on a project I do not believe in and by change I mean unwanted or unplanned change.

Two things

Over winter break I finally had time to build the second of three cheap book shelves I bought months and months ago. It was tall and white and I put it in our boys' room, the last one was black and didn't match the room's color scheme. The boys have been happy to have their books, comics and trading cards back in their room rather than in the attic where they aren't really allowed to go into.
My kindergartner said he wanted to paint the book shelf. Knowing full well that I was not going to let him do this I asked what color he wanted to paint it, he said, "Clear!"
I let him know that you can't make non-clear items clear with paint.

-------

We got back late from a family birthday party last night and missed the first few minutes of the Jets game. My boys wanted to watch the game but I sent them to bed during half-time and told them that if the Jets come back you can watch the DVR of the game, if not they save themselves the grief of watching their team lose.

During the third quarter I got up a few times to go to the kitchen to make food and get drinks. I was pretty much sedentary for the fourth quarter. After they lost I felt a bit bummed and thought, "I am not going to watch the Steelers celebrate," and turned the channel, then to my surprise my 8 year-old popped up from under a TV tray standing the far side of the couch that I was sitting on and yells, "I hate the Steelers!" I asked how long have you been there? "Uh," okay how many Jets touchdowns did you see? "Two." So he snuck down the stairs when I went to the kitchen and hid for at least a half an hour about six feet away from me.


......... kitchen
-
--

---

---- ......... TV

^ stairs

couch-> [_me_______] him

If we were not both so bummed about the outcome of the game he would have gotten in trouble for sneaking out of bed and staying up late.

Jan. 24th, excerpt from "Laughter," by Deng Ming-Dao

"... We are too often in a rush for our children to grow up. It is far better for them to fully live each year of their lives. Let them learn what is appropriate to their time, let them play. And when their childhood is spent at adolescence, help them in a gentle transition. Then their laughter will continue to resonate with cheer and hope for us all."

Holiday Issues

Our hamster died at one year and 11 months, just shy of the normal hamster life span, which was good considering she had cancer since being one month old. She had been slowing down for a month and two weeks ago it did not look like she was going to make it through Xmas. She bounced back the past week to the point we thought that she had gotten better, but it was just that last burst of energy that we often get right before giving birth or dying.

With the giant snow storms that hit our area I had lots of snow to shovel, then the next day I built my kids an igloo with entailed a bunch more shoveling, then since I did not want to go snowboarding I agreed to my wife's B plan of tubing, the next day we spent the whole day shopping so tons of walking and carrying big boxes, this all lead to my back going out at a restaurant. We got home to see our hamster dead which lead to the kids climbing all over us because they were upset, which lead to them sleeping in our bed, neither or which was good for my back.

We also went out to lunch with my parents who we have not seen in more than six months due to a some major family issues, though everything went fine the lead up did add stress to the week.

So like many breaks this one ends with me accomplishing less than half of things I thought I would at its onset.

Me, Petty, No?

I had two conversations over new year's eve where separate friends debated little factoids I brought up as being incorrect. Now neither one is of any ground shaking importance, one is about the history of the town we all live in, the other about a soccer tactic used in a recent match. As a residue of growing up rather shy I usually don't make statements that I am not sure of outside of speaking with my immediate family, therefore I am usually sure of my statements.

So I politely let my doubters know that I stood by my statements and that I could back them up with documentation, which still didn't convince them. So big deal right, well my issue is not with them it is with my desire to send them web links to prove that I was not speaking out of my ass. As I write this I realize my problem is that I hate when people go on about shit they know nothing about, or stand strong on points where they can easily be proved wrong, so for someone to think that about me places me in a zone of discomfort. This has to do with me not allowing myself the freedom to be wrong. I understand that I am frequently wrong across many subjects, but I apparently can not deal with others thinking I am wrong when I am not.

So my desire to email friends links proving that I was not talking out of my ass is petty, no?

Reborn as an ant

My eight year-old had a dream where he lived to one hundred years old and then died and came back two days later as an ant who only lived for 30 days because some kid from his class stepped on him, a kid who he has seen step on ants before.

I asked if he had been taught about Eastern religion, "Have they taught you about Chinese or Indian religion?" and he said no, so this is rather interesting on a many levels.

Thank God ...

... my massage therapist asked me about my kids having a half day or they would have been left out in the cold and freaking out, because I was totally unaware of it, I knew tomorrow was a half day, but not about today.

Maybe I Should Let My Five Year-old Professionally Train for Soccer

A few weeks ago my kindergartner was offered a tryout for a local elite soccer training program, mainly off of his older brother's reputation. The practice is in another town and ends at 8pm, he gets cranky at 730 and is suppose to be in bed by eight so I passed on the opportunity.

I take the little guy to soccer training during the week after school and my wife takes him to a recreation program on the weekend. They didn't play any scrimmages during the Fall at the practice I take him to, so I saw him scrimmage for the first time in about six months this evening. Holy frickin' cow, he was a total beast, he had five goals and his side won six to three. The impressive thing was that it was a three on three game, but he was taking the ball from his teammates and they would try to get it back, so it was really like a one on five game. He of course needs to learn to better with others but I couldn't believe that he already had moves and technique and how fluidly he moved about the pitch with the ball. Soccer is his older brother's life, almost to a fault, so it is going to be interesting to see what the future holds if the little one winds up being better than his big brother at the big guys favorite thing in the world.

There's No Crying in Therapy!

I am currently in my third stint of going to therapy, since I was about 25 I have done about four years of therapy, which is a pretty lame percentage of time for someone who has a psych degree and is working to become a therapist, but anyway I cried for only the second time during a session in all those years of sessions, the strange thing is that it was after remembering that I had to quit my high school Freshman basketball team because my parents couldn't pick me up after practice and they did not bother and try to set up any alternate means for me to get home. My therapist thought that since it made me cry and I usually don't cry that it was a breakthrough, but I wonder if realizing that your parents did even a poorer job than you already thought they did really a breakthrough? Maybe I guess?

Which leads one to wonder, "How much fodder for the therapist's couch am I giving my boys on a daily basis?"

Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?_r=2&hp

Digging Up Dead Friends

As we drove past a cemetery my Kindergartner said, "There are a lot of dead people." Then he asked about if they can come back, I can't remember what we answered, if we said something about heaven or not, but then he said, "I want to dig up my friend 'Jack' because I want to talk to him because he was nice."
We told him he could talk to him in his head. When he did not seem convinced we then said he could pray and have God let Jack hear his message to him.