I haven’t seen Homer, my sister, very much this summer and when I do she is hot, tired and looks like she could bitchslap a camel. She’s become a softball mom.
Traveling team baseball. You gotta love it. The oldest niece is a pretty decent softball player (this is of the good. As she acts like my silly ass all the time this was unexpected. I am about the most non-athletic person of all time. I can swim, mind you. It’s the only think I do gracefully. The kid has some mad skillz.)
I digress. The kid is playing softball and she’s pretty decent. Homer, and her husband Squeegee Monkey, have gone all out, getting her lessons and have gone to roughly 50 games over the course of the last two months. Yesterday, they played five games and on Friday, The “Traveling Ladybirds” played two. And the heat index was about 100. And I’m not exaggerating. 50 games!!
Team sports are good, don’t get me wrong. But I must say that the expense is outrageous. At a tourney not to long ago that last three days, the family ended up paying $6 a day just to get into the ballpark. So you have roughly $50 bucks just to get in, money for food and drink and then your are looking at a mighty expensive weekend. Of course, I would have had a weekend pass designed to help out families, but that’s just me. Nobody listens to me anyway, so there you go.
It’s almost over as the oldest heads to sixth grade on Wednesday and the little one slides her way into third. They are headed to Memphis today to buy a new computer and clothes for the upcoming school year, there are fees to go back to school (public school is not free, campers) and Homer said she just needs a day away.
I don’t blame her.
With that said, the school year will bring on new things for the kids to do. They are good students but the extra curricular stuff can weigh them down.
But, as Homer says, she feels its her responsibility to teach the kids how to be part of not only the academic community but to learn the skills to be part of a social community.
And I haven’t had to watch Bratz or Hannah Montana for the past two months, so that makes me smile.
Aaron was asked to be in a traveling basketball team, we agreed that he could be in it. I went to the planning meeting and I realized how much time and money it was going to take up. I was horrified, but I had told him he could.
The very next Wednesday he and a friend of his decided to walk home from school. On dangerous roads, without permission. His punishment? Banned from the travel team. Whew! Dodged a bullet there!