As Dave Matthews sings, “So much to say so much to say so much to say.” I haven’t been at the old MacBook in awhile. All kinds of things rolling around in the circus that is my brain. I should be upstairs sanding the floor of my latest Pinterest project. Pulled the grossest piece of carpet out of the room that used to be Ashley’s and is now the Guest Bedroom/Boy Cave. A joint use room we made to keep the boys out of the man cave in the basement. It also houses Ashley, Emmett, and Nick when they come to stay.
Ash and Nick are coming home to St. Louis for the first time since Emmett was born this weekend. We are so excited. I have got to get their room completely re done before they get here, so that it’s nice and clean. So far walls and ceiling are painted, carpet that was growing new life forms has been removed, now I need to sand the floors down and get to staining. All prepped for that this morning, then Luke got sick last night and is snoozing away with a fever instead of going to school. I just don’t have the heart to crank up the power sander yet. So in the meantime here I am.
I had planned a couple days ago to write about the Molly Tibbetts murder by an illegal alien (not an undocumented immigrant that’s ridiculous), but that’s going to take a lot more time and thought than I have today. Maybe some highlights of the days since my last post?
Todays National Dog Day I guess? Maybe I should have saved my post about Copper for today, but he was on my brain heavy that day. Since then he’s had a couple more bleeding incidents, but then is running around with the Worst Dog Ever the next minute. We will let him be as long as he seems happy and not in pain.
We got the results back from Luke’s tryouts last week and it made Liz and I both a little hockey parent crazy. Tryouts are four nights in a row. There were 160 something kids and the first night they were separated into three groups which resulted in absolute chaos on the ice. How any of the evaluators could determine anything in that is beyond me. Watching 60 kids at once was painful just watching it much less evaluating. The next three nights they were put into four groups which was still a lot, but better.
The kids are given anonymous bib numbers so the evaluators are allegedly unaware of who is who therefore no bias. The groups are divided by skill level Group 1 lowest skill level and 4 the highest. The first night kids are randomly placed in groups in alphabetical order. You wait till late at night or early the next morning to see what skill group your number is in. We thought Luke had a decent night, but he was placed in Group 1 nonetheless. He was pulled out of Group 1 during the next evaluation and told to rest up and skate again with Group 2, so things were looking up. Many of his/our friends were in Group 2. Several kids really stood out in this group in my humble opinion Luke was one of them. We really expected him to be moved up again, but he was not. Long story short Luke was placed on a lower level team than we expected, and none of his friends were on it. In fact all but one of his friends had been moved up to higher skill level teams.
I know what you’re thinking, “Well you’re dad so of course you think your kid is the best.” I do not think that at all. I’m pretty tough on my boys in the criticism department. Not to their faces of course, but to other parents and coaches. I’m well aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Luke was as good as the other kids and even out skated and out played several of the kids that were moved up. Confirming this were several other parents who commented that Luke was placed wrong. We didn’t ask or complain to them, this was during the evaluations, by people who knew Luke and some who didn’t know Luke. This cranked up our frustration even more. Then you have to show your kid the roster he’s on and the first thing they look for is names they know. There were none on the team he was placed. Then he looks for his friends names and sees them on teams together and most of them on high level teams. It’s easy to explain to them when they didn’t play well. You just tell them those kids out worked you buddy keep trucking. In this case though we knew and Luke knew that was not true.
All you can do is whine to the people who run the evaluations and you get the company line of we did it fair your kid was good but not that good etc. We got canned emails that I’m sure they have saved from years of whiny parents after tryouts. Liz handled it much better than I did and diplomatically spoke with the powers that be, as I am convinced they hate me. However, I was at each tryout and gave every pep talk almost promising if he kept it up he’d be on the same team as his buddies regardless of skill level, because he was doing equal to better than many of them. It’s hard to look him in the eyes of his cute sad little face and tell him you have no idea how he was evaluated that way. All I could think of is there were a lot of kids, and maybe each time an evaluator took the seconds or minutes to watch him were all his bad times and they missed the assists, goals, and dekes and dangles.
Either way, shame on me for handling it the way I did. There were two guys evaluating him I’ve known for a long time and have actually coached Logan. I sent them a long whiny “what the hell happened email.” They never responded until I did send an apology email. It was totally wrong for me to try and sneak info out of them or make them feel bad about their evaluating. It’s a thankless volunteer job that provokes craziness from crazy parents like me. As I’ve stated before, my PTSD issues run deep with things that happened to children and my therapist has spent years now trying to get me to calm down my over protective nature a little. I’m the first to say my kid sucks at this or that or is a jerk, but if I think they’ve been wronged I will try and right that wrong. Silliness for ten year olds playing a game. In my defense hockey season is something like seven months long. That’s a long time to see the teams you didn’t make 4-5 days a week at the rink. It’s a tough reminder of evaluations over and over again. Great character lesson I suppose. Life is not fair and sometimes crap happens to you no matter what you do. Hopefully we all make some new friends on this team and have a lot of fun.
Don’t tell anyone I sent those emails. Our little secret ok?
My mom God bless her took both boys for the weekend. I dropped them off on Friday night. I had really had my fill of the both of them. The bickering and whining and disrespect had pushed me towards “Scary Dad” mode and I don’t like being there. I asked my mom if I could just drop them in the woods near her house (she lives in a rural area) and tell them “Find your way to Granny’s house, you’re on a survival skill adventure.” For some reason she seemed to think I was kidding. I thought about just slowing the car down enough as I passed her driveway and push them out of the car. They were in full attitude mode all the way to her house as I was sure they would be, because why would Friday be different than any other day the past couple weeks? I was afraid she’d get one look at their act and decide maybe I should just take them back home. Fortunately they were able to turn in Oscar worthy performances acting as decent children, and I was able to escape without them.
The ride home was glorious. It was in the seventies outside with the sun going down. Unfortunately I didn’t take the Jeep due to standard St. Louis weather reporting not knowing if there would be a monsoon or a dust storm. I took Liz’s fancy Explorer. It’s actually really fun to drive with dual super chargers a big moon roof and a really awesome stereo. I came home to a fantastically quiet, serene house.
We had a “Celebration of Life” event to attend for a very dear friend’s dad who had passed a month ago or so. It was hotter than the gates of Hell outside and the event was at a park, but swamp-ass aside it was a great time seeing friends we hadn’t seen for years come together in support of probably the nicest person I’ve ever met and maybe even in the entire world.
After that we hit the nearest bar with 109 taps and air conditioning. We had a blast with high school friends. It was back to reality Sunday when Luke came home sick and Logan went straight to the Playstation. I went back to work on painting and wood puttying. It wasn’t long before Logan done with his acting performance slipped back into his role as total pain in the ass, refusing to put down the controller and go to bed. This morning the same jerk refused to get out of bed till the very last minute. Gosh I missed him.
For some reason last night I decided to shave my beard. Liz complains about it every time we kiss which isn’t often again because of the beard. That was partly the reason. Also it was itching like crazy the past couple days and it was so freaking hot. Oh well it will grow right back if I want. Suddenly she said she was used to the beard and her and the boys seemed mad I shaved it off. You just can’t win sometimes. Now I have to figure out what to do with this long hair. It’s not really behaving like I imagined it would and is kind of a pain in the butt after 20+ years of not really having to “do” my hair. I dreamed for so long of beards and long hair though when I retired. First world problems are good ones to have.
During our time at the bar on Saturday we had a couple political discussions. We briefly spoke about Sen John McCain passing away. We had some differing opinions on that front. Though I am sad for his family and I respect his service, I did not care for the man very much. I read a biography on him when he ran for President against Obama. I was very wary of him as a Republican candidate, because he often voted against Republican agendas and his own campaign promises. I did not understand him at all. In the book the author gives a factual history of McCain’s early years as a student and Naval officer.
You see his dad was an Admiral in the Navy. McCain was a terrible student yet magically made it into the US Naval Academy which is one the most difficult schools on earth to get into. He got in trouble multiple times for stupid pranks and low grades. He barely passed flight school and graduated at the bottom of his class. Yes he flew in Vietnam which was very brave on its own, but doubly brave considering he knew he was not a very good pilot. Yes he was tortured and is an honorable man and POW.
I say all this not to start a political liberal versus conservative or Trump/Obama bashing. Just illustrating why I didn’t care much for the man’s record, though I honor his service as rough as it may’ve started out.
I am getting hassled now that the sicky and Liz have moved their camp to the basement to get to work upstairs. So off to the sander with me and my ugly bald face.
Jacked Up Dad 