I judged my parents harshly for their failure to attend any of my softball games during the three years I played in an organized league as a child.  I think they slowed down the car and I jumped, rolled into a ditch and then stumbled onto the ball field dragging my mitt behind me.  Or something like that.  But, seriously, they never attended my games.  They were busy.

Tonight, I had the distinct pleasure of driving my 9-year old son twenty-five minutes away to a soggy ball field so he could play baseball.  (My husband had a scheduling conflict.)  I pulled the key out of the ignition and that’s when my son smacked himself on the forehead and said, “I forgot my glove!”  I am pretty sure I rolled my eyes and then said, “You are kidding me.  You didn’t bring your glove to a baseball game?” and then he started to cry.

He and his 4-year old sister trailed behind me as I strode across the newly mown field toward his coach.  I delivered him to the coach, explained that I’d be going back to get the glove and that I’d be back in time for the game.  (I am such an optimist at such random times.)  Then I dragged my daughter back across the field and to the van.  Forty minutes later, we were back, lucky us.  The time was 7:25 p.m. and the other team was up to bat. 

I did a quick count and estimated that about one hundred people were involved in this recreational activity.  We all stood around.  Raindrops kept falling on our heads.  My daughter finished her snack and began to beg to go home, stopping only to inform me that she needed to pee.  Off we went, across the gigantic field, to the restrooms in the community center.  Once inside the building, we followed the trail of grass clumps.  Then, back to the game, which was now being played in semi-darkness and increasing rainfall.

My son never got to bat.  (Fourteen teammates were present, plus on Saturday he opted to skip the “Jamboree” and attend a birthday party instead.  My husband told me in advance that if he were the coach, he’d make our boy sit on the bench for two games as a result of that choice.)  My boy was put in left field for one inning where he missed the one ball hit his direction.  At least he got to touch the ball as he threw it in field.  For this, I drove a combined hour and twenty minutes, maybe a little more.  I stood in the cold rain.  I listened to my daughter whine for at least thirty minutes.  Everyone was late getting to bed.  (The game lasted until 8:30 p.m., which, if you ask me, is late for a school night.  My husband suggested that perhaps I’d like to run for baseball commissioner and I said, no thanks, I’d rather just be Queen of the World and then he wondered aloud if I’d tolerate the dissenters and pointed out that I prefer feedback only if it’s positive.) 

At any rate, I hated the whole baseball in the rain at dusk experience.  I can’t believe we all put ourselves through that in the name of fun.  Now I kind of understand why my parents skipped my games.  (I’m only a little bitter now, instead of a lot.  Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m just kidding.)

Incidentally, my husband wanted a full report.  I told him what I just told you.  Then he said, “Who won?” and I looked at him with incredulity and said, “Who cares?  I have no idea!” because I couldn’t see anyone even keeping score.  Furthermore, they don’t play a particular number of innings, but a certain length of time, I think.  And I was distracted by my whiny daughter.  All I know is that the pitcher on our team seemed to hit about every third player on the opposite team . . . and he had an earring and I just have to wonder what kind of parents let a 9-year old boy pierce his ear.

Tidbits from a dinner party, all uttered by different people:

–He drank so much coffee, he couldn’t sleep.  So, “after I ran fourteen miles at 4:00 a.m., I started to feel better.”

–Someone mentioned having a gun.  “I have a gun!  I have a Derringer and a 22.”  This said by a refined, elegant, silver-haired, woman who retains a Southern accent.  The gun owners outnumbered those of us who are unarmed.  

–After being trained by the military to be a supply clerk, “I thought the curriculum was so boring, so I asked about becoming a SEAL.”  When we all gasp, he says, “I was one of the ones who actually liked the training.”  (He served in Vietnam, among other places.) 

–And what do you do, someone asks another man.  “Oh,” he says, “I train pilots to fly 737s.”

In the company of such humility and wealth of experiences, all I had to contribute to the conversation was my knowledge of Philip Yancey and Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz.  I have never trained to become a Navy SEAL, flown a jet, owned a gun or run more than the required one mile during the Presidential Fitness test in junior high.  I have given birth twice at home in a birthing tub surrounded by women and not a single doctor, but somehow, I’m thinking that’s not fit conversation for a dinner party where not only did we use silverware, but also fancy china with silvered edges.

One word:  Excellent.

Two cell phones rang during the movie.

One toddler ran across the front of the theater, shrieking.  (Note to parents:  GET A BABYSITTER!) 

Other than that, I enjoyed this well-done, beautifully acted mystery.  (Even though I figured out the clue as it happened.)  Ryan Gosling has very talented eyebrows and Anthony Hopkins deserves every compliment he’s ever received.

I think Kelly Ripa is pregnant.  I think she’ll announce it next week.

That is all. 

*  *  *

Updated 4/30/07:  Today, Kelly appeared in a form-fitting wrap dress rather than one of the ghastly tent-dresses and tent-shirts she’s been wearing recently.  I rescind my prediction.

I’m turning into my grandmother with her intolerance for noise.  Macular degeneration stole her sight, so she sits in one chair, mostly, listening to the silence when she isn’t listening to the Bible on tape.  I hardly ever take my kids over there because I know she can barely tolerate the noise.  She’s 101.  What’s my excuse?

I am a quiet type of person, one who wouldn’t turn on the radio or television if I were alone all day (which I never am).  I have no need for conversation or for expending a certain allotment of words per day.  I have had to develop my ability to make small-talk because chatting doesn’t come naturally to me.

And yet, I’m living with a bunch of people who just can’t stop talking to me.  My daughter is the worst of the bunch.  If I sit down, she appears like a pesky genie, begging me to get a snack from the “covered” (aka the “cupboard”) and asking me if I “bemember” when she was three and cut her hand on a barnacle.  She uninterested in snuggling or playing with Play-doh or lying down to rest, even if she tells me how tired she is.  No, she just wants to talk, talk, talk.

If I happen to be alone, thinking actual thoughts while washing the dishes, my sons will traipse through the kitchen on their never-ending quest to drink all the milk without my knowledge and they will ask me crazy questions, questions that spring from the murky space in their brains where they are piecing together the mysteries of life and plotting to get their hands on some Chinese egg rolls soon.  Just because I’m standing still, working, does not mean that I’m not occupied in my head, pondering something or another.  To them, I look like a fount of knowledge, the person who can answer any question which might flit through their heads.

I can’t have two coherent thoughts in a row which positively frustrates me and honestly makes me feel a little crazy as if I’m being tortured by the systematic drip-drip-drip of words. 

I want to spend my days stringing words together like so many fancy beads, but I can’t.  I can’t because I’m living in a madhouse with chatty kids.  And I’m complaining about it which definitely disqualifies me for the Mother of the Year. 

My daughter will turn five on September 2.  She misses the local kindergarten cut-off date by a day.  I never thought I’d do this, but I am likely to send her to preschool because she has turned into Miss Extrovert who asks every visitor who appears at our door, “Can I come to your house?”  She wants to go, do, talk, visit, play, and then go some more.  She’s wearing me out which makes me feel guilty and old.  Also, uninteresting and uncreative. 

Silence is all I want which is ironic because I spent so much of my twenties crying because all I wanted then was a baby.  I just can’t be pleased.  Now I just want to be alone.

*  *  *

Don’t forget to check out my other blog, The Amazing Shrinking Mom.  Every click counts!

I’m feeling all neglected and wishing someone would email me . . . because no one has emailed me in the last ten minutes since I last checked.  And then I realize that I have 82 emails sitting in my box at this very moment and perhaps it would behoove me to answer one or twenty-seven of them.

Or not.

And why don’t they flush?

Why do boys love to dig holes?

Before guns were invented, did boys turn everything into swords or arrows?

Why do boys smell?

Why don’t boys notice that they smell?

Why don’t boys care if their hands are sticky?

Why do boys hate haircuts?

Why do boys put the empty milk carton back into the fridge?

Why don’t boys notice that they have gunk stuck to their teeth?

Why are boys so gassy?

This morning I was awake at 5 a.m. because I was worried about waking up at 6:15 a.m.  I managed to get the 14-year olds up and out the door right on time.  I delivered them and their 13-year old friend to the appropriate classrooms for the dreaded state-mandated testing and then I was home again by 7:30 a.m.

You’d think that with the extra hours of consciousness today I would have something to show for my day besides a kitchen full of dirty dishes.  At one point I noticed how annoyed I was with myself, how I silently berated myself for not doing anything today, for not producing anything.  My day was a haphazard maze of moments tangled together . . . I have the same allotment of time as everyone else, so why do I fall into bed at night without having much to show for my day? 

My brain was dull today, glossed over so nothing could stick to it.  Not a single thought would line up at the door.  I hate that.  The noises of children playing thudded in my head and made me wonder why I thought being a mother would be such a barrel of fun.  I guess I thought I’d sweep them into a pile and put them away when I was tired of playing with them.

And so it goes.  Tomorrow will be another early day.  My only goal for tomorrow is to write that long overdue letter to my imprisoned friend and to buy laundry detergent.  I fix my hopes on these small goals, which is pathetic, if you ask me.

What a weekend . . . my husband was away, hanging out with ten of his college buddies.  They went to Pike Place Market, attended a Mariner’s game, golfed, and dug razor clams at the ocean.  Isn’t it remarkable that this group of guys still gets together after graduating more than twenty years ago? 

What’s strange is seeing someone you haven’t seen for ten years.  That person looks aged, gray-haired, wrinkled a bit, which leads me to believe that perhaps I have aged, too, though how can that be possible when I’m still 22 on the inside? 

So, while my husband was gallivanting, I took the kids to the Spring Fair on Friday, then took two of my kids and my mother to the Daffodil Parade on Saturday.  On Saturday afternoon, I met with someone to plan Vacation Bible School for this upcoming summer.  Sunday was church and then my husband returned home with one of his friends in tow.  We sat and chatted while a bunch of boys played in the backyard.  Since the weather has warmed a bit, swarms of boys prowl in the backyard.  The hole they are digging is now big enough to bury a horse or at least a large goat.  (This cow does not live in my backyard.)

The other day, my 9-year old son came into the house proclaiming, “Man, I wish I could get paid to dig holes!”  His 9-year old buddy chimed in, “Me, too!” 

While brushing my 4 and a half-year old’s hair from her eyes today, I noticed a strangely short curl on her forehead.  Sure enough, she admitted that she cut her hair a few days ago.  I had feared that she would turn her mad-scissor skills upon her own slow-growing hair, but as it turns out, you’d never know that she sheared a bit of hair off.  (This picture shows all the hair she’s managed to grow in over four years of life!) 

Tomorrow, my twin boys have to be awake, showered, dressed, in their right minds and present at the local middle school where they have to take the WASL (our state test) . . . the fly in this ointment is that they have to arrive at 7:15 a.m. which is agony because they normally wake up at 9:00 a.m.  We’ll all be bleary-eyed and crabby tomorrow as a result of that horrifyingly early hour.  I hate this particular standardized test for an assortment of reasons, but I might hate it less if it started at 10:30 a.m. instead.

If you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know I have died from lack of sleep.

First, we went here:

And I stood in line for an hour so I could take this picture:

And now, I am utterly exhausted.