Kickin' It

The upshot of the soccer saga? Midweek, before he even had a chance to come see her again, we got an email from the coach, inviting Em--and not-Em--to be on the tournament team. For reals, this time.

Said coach is known to be tough. As I write this, Baroy is out there watching her at the team's first practice, and texting me. "He's not too warm and fuzzy," he remarked a few minutes ago, then, "But she looks good."

She does indeed.

(Never) Too Many Cooks

There are days when this special needs thing kicks me in the butt so hard I'm pretty sure I won't be able to sit down for a week. Yesterday was one of those days. And it wasn't even a bad-thing-happened kick. It was just three hours in a room with a special ed advocate and so many emotions that I literally had to pull the car over on the drive back to my office and put my head between my knees.

Don't you all want a special ed advocate right now? (You should. She's awesome. I just need time to digest. And rejigger my entire world view. Little things like that.)

But just as often as it kicks me in the butt, this special needs thing gives me gifts. Insights I would never have had. Kids I might never have known. And men and women--especially (sorry guys) women--without whom my life would never have been as rich as it is today.

A few weeks ago, three of those gifts of the female persuasion and I started talking about how much we love food. We love talking about it, we love eating it, we love preparing it. And then, one by one, we confessed our deep, dark secret: We've always wanted to do a food blog, but we never thought we were up to it--time-wise, expertise-wise, what have you.

The realization hit us at once. Maybe we couldn't do it if we were each on our own, but together? Hey, we're raising a passel of amazing kids, both special needs and not. We can do ANYTHING.

Thus, (Never) Too Many Cooks was born. A place to gather and share the recipes we were already email each other anyway. A place to gather and talk about ingredients and menu-planning and kitchen tools. A place to think about what we feed our kids, and what we feed ourselves.

And a place where we can try to give back to the community we are each now a part of, the community that holds us up through the worst, and celebrates with us during the best. What this means, specifically, is that once we've really gotten going here, we're going to add ads to the blog, with the proceeds going to a series of special-needs groups and organizations that have made an impact on one or another of our lives.

Come join us. Read. COMMENT. Even if you don't have a special needs kid, even if you don't have kids at all...you have a stomach. And you like food. Hell, I bet you love food. Just like I do.

That's why we're friends.

Pride

[This is a shot from an exhibition match Em's team played at a local community college a few weeks ago. The guy to the left in the foreground is Baroy. The player in blue farthest to the right on the field is Em.]

The soccer thing got even more complicated after my last post. Way more complicated. Almost too complicated to explain, but I need to. So I can also explain my pride.

On Monday, Baroy got an email from the scout I wrote about. It was addressed to four or five different parents, and it was an invitation for our girls to play in an 'elite' soccer tournament over Thanksgiving weekend. Whether or not this was a prelude to being invited to play on the sectionals all-star team, we didn't know. But it was exciting. Em was positively beaming.

Baroy made sure to reply quickly, saying Em would be thrilled to be part of the team. A few hours later, he received another note, saying, "Great! Your daughter is the tall, dark-haired one on the team, right? #345?"

Uh, no. Em is short and blonde. And her number is 346. (Actual numbers changed to protect the innocent, of course.)

Em overhead Baroy tell me about this, and oh. I know life is disappointment, and blahblahblahblahblah, but if any one of you could watch your child's face fall and her upper lip quiver, even if she manages to stiffen it within seconds, without your heart shattering...well, you're not me.

"Does that mean he was never there to scout me at all?" she asked.

"I don't know, hon," I replied.

Meanwhile, Baroy is sitting in his chair at his computer, and you can literally see the steam rising off of him. He's easily annoyed by incompetence or sloppiness under normal circumstances. Do something like this? Make a mistake AND disappoint his kid? As my friend A (one of the girlfriends I was IMing with while this went on) said, "You almost have to pity the guy."

(My other girlfriend, S, said, "No way. He should get the full Baroy." The full Baroy. Hee!)

Despite being furious, he managed to calm down enough to send a terse but emotionless email that told the guy what number Em was, then added: "Are you looking for not-Em, #345? I need to know immediately, because I already told Em she was invited to the tournament."

He then sat and simmered in anger and resentment for quite a while, while I put a very-subdued Em to bed.

This morning, however, the coachscoutguy replied to Baroy's email, saying, "I'll take her to the tournament, and I'll go see her team again this weekend." (We presume he meant in order to look at the other girl, who really is a great player.)

Baroy and I discussed our options, but decided to ask Em what she wanted to do at this juncture. Her answer? "I don't want to be on the team if I'm not who he wanted. He doesn't need to do that just to make me feel better."

I don't need to actually say, do I, how proud that made me? How mature that was? Seriously, I'm kvelling here.

The upshot of the story, by the way, is that Baroy responded and told the coachscoutguy what Em said, adding, "She's a good player, and one of the team's best, but doesn't want to be in a tournament because of a mistake. So here's what might be fair: Come to the game on Saturday, and watch her and not-Em play again. If you like what you see, take her. If not, she'll understand." He then offered to introduce coachscoutguy to not-Em's parents if coachscoutguy wanted.

Coachscoutguy's immediate reply was that that sounded good to him, and that he'd let Baroy know after the game Saturday. And there it stands for now.

You know what? On second thought, I'm proud of both of them. Because I know this wasn't any easier on Baroy than it was on Em. But they did me proud. Both of them.

God Has an Opinion on Soccer

This is Em's seventh year playing AYSO soccer. She's always been enthusiastic, and she never been a detriment to any team. But over the last couple of years she's really started to come into her own. Last year, for instance, she was asked--though as one of the last picked--to be on one of her division's All Star teams. This year, she's considered a shoe-in.

The problem is, this summer is her Bat Mitzvah, and that involves a whole lot of time and effort, especially starting after the new year. So when we signed her up for AYSO, I made a point of telling both her and Baroy (who's been the assistant coach on her last four teams and may enjoy the games and practices even more than she does) that there was going to be no All Stars this year. She needs to attend Saturday morning services at least twice a month, I pointed out. And there are often Sunday games as well, which interfere with Sunday-morning religious school. That wasn't such a big deal last year, but this year...She really needs to be serious about Hebrew School for just one more year, is all.

Everyone agreed. To my face.

But this season has been incredible for her. She's one of the top three players on her team; the one everyone counts on not so much to score (she scored for the first time this season today, as a matter of fact) but to get plays started, to execute good sharp passes, to play a smart and aggressive game. And so, as the season has worn on, there's been the more-frequent sighing about how soon it's all going to end, with beseeching looks cast in my direction. I was impervious to them. Note the tense there.

Last week, I was talking to our synagogue's rabbi, and I mentioned the post-season soccer moratorium. "Oh, that's sort of a shame," he said, and went on to talk about how he and his son (whose Bar Mitzvah was just two years ago) worked out some compromises that allowed him to play through most of his Bar Mitzvah training.

I mentioned this conversation to Baroy and Em during dinner the other night. "I still don't think All Stars is a good idea," I warned, "but IF we can talk to someone in advance, and IF they understand that Hebrew School comes first and she might have to miss some games along the way...MAYBE we can consider it."

Em looked much too excited, so I tried to talk her down. "I doubt that any coach will want to take on a player who can't fully commit," I warned her. "And like I said, I'm still not sure it's that good of an idea."

"Oh, but Rabbi wants me to play," she countered, a smile playing around her lips. "And that's practically the same thing as God wanting me to play."

I may have rolled my eyes at that. OK, I definitely rolled my eyes at that.

And then came today's soccer game.

I arrived a few minutes late, only to find Baroy grinning at me as I approached our side of the field. He came over to me and whispered, "There's a scout here, looking at Em. A scout from Sectionals."

Sectionals is the group above the 'regular' All Star division. While five girls from Em's team last year went to All Stars (a lot for one team, but still...), only one went to sectionals. And she was the kind of kid who made your mouth drop open when you watched her play.

"Really? A scout? Looking at Em?"

Turned out, he was there for her, and for one other girl on the team. I felt badly for her at first, since she was a little off her game (dealing with, um, ahem, some woman stuff). But then came the third quarter, which is when she scored. And in the fourth she executed a perfect throw-in (you don't often hear people on the sidelines commenting on how good a throw-in is, but this one got cheers), that turned into another goal. Her team won, 2-0.

Baroy didn't tell her about the scout until they came off the field, and you could see her eyes get big and excited. Then she started to laugh.

"Wow, Mom," she said, coming over to me. "There's a scout here from Sectionals and I scored for the first time this season? God must REALLY want me to play in the postseason."

I've gotta say, with all the evidence stacked up right now? It's hard to argue with that particular theology.

Speaking My Language

You know how sometimes you read something that really, completely changes the way you think or do things? And then, if you're me, you know how you immediately forget who the brilliant person was who presented you with this particular ephiphany?

Well, some years back, I read something somewhere by someone..and it changed my life. In a small way, but very much for the better. Said someone somewhere was talking about decluttering and cleaning, and basically suggested that you were better off working within your habits than trying to change them, especially if they were ingrained. So, for instance, if everyone in your family drops their coat on the floor right inside the front door, put a coat rack there. Maybe you don't want a coat rack there...but wouldn't that be better than constantly fighting the battle to get people to not drop their coats there in the first place?

It is for that reason that I put a wicker basket by the front door, which leads out to the garage, where the laundry room is. When someone pulls their socks off in the living room, they just toss 'em toward the basket by the front door. When I notice that a dishtowel has gotten dirty, I put it in that basket. Then when I walk out the front door, I see those bits and pieces sitting there, and I will either add them to the laundry basket I'm carrying out, or toss them into the garage as I go past. I no longer have to yell about clothes laying all over the house; there's a quick, easy and obvious place for them now.

Similarly, that's why I bought a coffee table with a shelf under it. Baroy and the kids always take their shoes off while sitting on the couch. The coffee table is right there. So they just place their shoes on the shelf, and voila. They're not scattered all over the living room.

I, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of taking off my shoes in the kitchen and piling them all up right at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to my and Baroy's bedroom. When I come down the stairs in the morning, I just step into the shoes of my choice, and I'm good to go.

But having a pile of shoes in the kitchen--even in a relatively out-0f-the-way part of the kitchen--can be unsightly, and I've been fighting my own tendencies for years now. (Why I never think to solve my own problems the way I solve my family's is an entirely different psychoanalytic session.) Invariably, this means that, the day after I've dragged all the shoes back upstairs, I'll come down and realize I was expecting them to be in their regular kitchen spot. Going up and down stairs seventeen times each morning? Makes me pretty cranky.

All of which is prelude to this, which I found sitting in the usual pile-place by the stairs when I came home from work last night:

Baroy made it for me out of scrap wood in the garage, and leftover paint from the wall behind where I stood to take that picture.

I almost literally swooned. If I have a "love language," this is it. Something cheap and simple that solves a problem for me. Just like that. And at a time when my stress levels are so high that any release of the pressure feels like a new lease on life.

He's a keeper. And so is that shoe rack.

No Matter How Angry

No matter how angry I am, I shouldn't cut and paste the nasty letter I got from N's teacher today. Instead, I should remind myself (again) that these sorts of things really play into my hand, that having emails laying out all the ways in which N is showing the strain of this year--emails on which the principal is copied by the teacher--only make it easier to argue that he needs more help. Now.

No matter how angry I am, I shouldn't actually say what I'm thinking to N's teacher in a return email. Because that kind of language isn't going to help, even if it would make me feel better.

No matter how angry I am, I need to keep remembering what the goal here is. Actually, I need to figure out what the goal here is, and THEN keep remembering it. Which is why I have a call in to a special ed advocate. Whether or not I already am sigh-worthy, I now need to go way past that point. And to do that, I need to bring in the big guns. I need to know what his rights are, what I can request, what I can DEMAND.

No matter how angry I am, I need to stay calm and make good decisions. But damn. I am really, really angry.

Why I Had Children

My 12-year-old daughter just walked into my office, carrying a cup of coffee. That she made for me. Herself. Without me needing to lift a single finger.

Nuff said.

[Edited to add: It was decaf, and she also made one for herself. Which makes this even more awesome...because I can count on it happening again, and often, since I don't have to wait for her to want to 'do something nice' for me. Her already-burgeoning love of coffee is going to make my life so so so much better.]