No It All

For exactly 41 days, Devon is seven, and Nate is eight.

This weekend was our second to last All Stars tournament here in the slo town. Yesterday it was perfectly sunny and 75.  I should have anticipated that it draws teams from hours away.

Based on the large number of teams, we had our first game Friday night.  7PM at the end of the week is not peak time for the Stars.  The team seemed sluggish and hesitant.  Too much flinching and jumping up with their backs turned.  We lost to Atascadero A 2-0.  Both goals were just the result of dinking around in the box that nobody clears out.  The kind of points that happen after a bunch of nail biting trips and weak kicks and fumbling and hesitation ends with the ball rolling slowly into the net.  The boys moped for a bit, but Nate seemed to forget the loss on the drive home.

Saturday morning we were back up and out the door at 7:15AM for a day at Laguna Middle School.  I had two shifts– registration and field marshaling.  Our first game was against the Paso A team.  We played on a field with a big hump in the middle that sloped down toward both goals.  Whatever plagued the Stars the night before had evaporated.  We got to the ball first.  We booted the big boots.  We attacked and stopped jumping with our backs turned.  Nate got a hat trick.  We ended the first game up 7-0.

Then we had a long, long break.  How we could get such a bad schedule at our very own tournament is not something I care to examine too deeply.  Fortunately, our 4PM game was changed to 3PM and we were up against Nipomo.  All the dads and the boys who love calculating scenarios told me we needed to win 3-0.  It was an exciting game.  Unfortunately, I was on duty as field marshal and had to maintain an air of impartiality in my orange vest.  But when Bradley scored, I couldn’t help but whoop.

During the first half, Nate got fouled hard outside the box on the right.  A little boy with braids swept his feet and Nate went rolling.  Direct kick.

This is the kick that Nate loves to practice on me at Pacheco.  For hours.  It’s pretty far out.  The kind of kick where you have to have a bit of an ego to decide you’re going to take the shot.  So what does he do?  Of course.  He takes the shot.  It goes in on the right side of the goal.

Nate’s second goal was during the second half off a corner kick.  He arcs it in, like he does and, bop– Keeper somehow straight-arms it right into the net.

Nipomo gets one or two goals in and tensions rise.  It’s 3-1.  Then it’s 4-2.  I’m fairly certain we need to win by 3.  Second half Nate gets a breakaway.  There’s a guy on his heels but he’s nearing in on the goalie.  He keeps his cool and places it in the lower back corner on the right.

Nate subs out for the fourth quarter.  We’re all on pins and needles.  Cruz’s mom is convinced he’s too tired and should have come out instead.  Not 60 seconds later, Cruz gets a breakaway and it’s almost a perfect replay of our last goal.  “See?,”  I chide her, “Cruz did have a goal in ’em!”

The game ends and we’ve won 5-2.  Unfortunately, given Friday night, it’s not enough to get us into Sunday’s final rounds.

After the game, Nate’s walking with his coach’s arm around his shoulder and he seems fuzzy on what’s happened.  He’s not sure how many goals he scored, and his coach says, “Nate, you had a two hat trick day!”

Really, there’s almost nothing better than a two hat trick day.

And then on November 3rd, I may have posted the following on Nextdoor…

The Soup Pot

At the risk of inviting unwanted internet animal activism, I’m writing this post in a moment of need. We’re looking for someone possessing the skills to humanely butcher our big, young rooster.  Our peaceful daily chores have become a two-person battle brigade– one (little boy) to threaten the king of the coop with a broom, while the other (little boy) madly throws mealworms and chicken feed in before fleeing.  He did a flying, two-footed dropkick to my scraps bowl last week.

Hopefully next time, he’s in it.

Name your price.

Jake and Nate are keeping lifetime score of any and all verbal transgressions their adult role models may utter in a moment of weakness.  My moment of infamy is the time the boys and I were parked at a gas station in Prunedale.  We were on our way to Santa Cruz when James was going through treatment and a guy tries to squeeze between my car and another car with a couple of inches of space on either side.  Then he has the audacity to blare his horn at me.  My car isn’t even running.  I most definitely called him a jackass, thus searing my mortal self into the brains of my children forever.

James, however, has a much longer list.  Mostly for saying the “cr word” and the “d word” and the “God-d word.”  Apparently he used the “cr word” at a birthday party at the Elk’s Club two years ago, and outside a restaurant bathroom in Ojai.

Granddad is also known for saying bad words.  The “cr word,” the “sh word” and the “d word.”  Nate tells me, “He says the ‘d word’ a lot.”  And he further explains, “It makes sense because, you know, Granddad chops wood.  And beavers chop wood, so…you know.”  These mental connections are my favorite.

But Grandma.  Grandma is somehow queen of the profanity tattle tally.  I’m told, without hesitation, she swears the most.  She says the “sh word.”  She’s known for saying “fartin'” a lot, in the same way one might use a different word beginning with f.  After a visit last year, Silver became, “that fartin’ rooster.”  And Nate must have repeated “that fartin’ rooster” hundreds of times.  For months the fartin’ rooster was waking me up at 3:30 in the morning, and 5.  And 3:30 in the afternoon.  And 5:30PM.  And 5:34PM.  And 5:37PM.  And 5:41PM.  All I could think was “that fartin’ rooster.”

Nate has never gotten in trouble for swearing (unlike his brother and the *cough* Gayle’s bakery parking lot incident *cough*)… but if anyone is going to dethrone grandma?

We know.  It’s Nate.

This weekend we had our first “sleep away” tournament.  On Friday night we made it down to the Sideways Inn in Santa Ynez.  The boys hitched a ride with their friends and when I finally arrived after work, they were all hopped-up on the excitement of roaming the halls of a motel and running in and out of various rooms.

Saturday morning we hit the pitch bright and early.  One of the best things was driving past a field of ostriches in the early morning frost, fog hanging in the air.  When we got to the field, Robbie recounted Kai’s fortune cookie from the night before: Visualize the win.

Our first game was against Paso B.  The grass was frozen.  But we turned up the heat and won the game 7-0.

Our second game was against Santa Ynez who knocked us into fourth last weekend.  Nate scores a hat trick.  He soars back to the kick-off line after every goal, running like the wind.  The opposing team changes jerseys at half and mentally rallies, scoring three before Nate puts in the fourth.  Fortunately, the Stars held them for our second win.

Unfortunately, by late afternoon we didn’t seem to have much left in the tank.  We lost our third game to 5 Cities.  We probably would have been a good match against them had it been earlier in the day.  The boys seemed more excited about swimming and the hot tub back at the hotel.

Last night we had a big team pasta dinner at the Flying Flags resort next door.  It was the perfect location with a soccer field, outdoor heaters, and fairy lights.  The boys turned the bocce courts into a futsal court, resulting in a muddy match.  Everyone ended the night looking like they’d rolled in powdered sugar donuts in their black warm-ups.

This morning we headed back to the fields after a perfect late breakfast in Solvang.  Unfortunately we had to play our own SLO A team, seated in first place.  They scored a bunch against us, but it seemed to be less than against any other team they’d played so far.  Nate took a finger to the eye, but carried on.

Our final game was against Lompoc.  Before the game started, I could hear the coach talking to his team.  “Number 8.  Do you see number 8?  He’s their best scorer.  He’s fast and he’s got a big kick.  We’re going to play two guys on him.”  Uh oh.  They’ve got Nate’s number.

We play hard.  There’re many up’s and down’s.  We’re up 2-1.  Nate and Bradley both score.  Then Lompoc comes back and puts another one in.  In the final quarter, Cayden shoots, it bounces around and Nate crashes the net– blasting it in and leaping over the goalie.  The crowd goes wild!  He sails back to the halfway line.

On the drive home Nate passes out face forward in his booster seat, his third place medal cradled safely in his lap.

So Mohawk, Pipsqueak and Silver spent their chickhood in the artist’s studio.  It was secure.  It was warm.  And it soon smelled, unfortunately, like a real coop.  Over the spring, they graduated from a red, rinky-dink cardboard corral to a big metal horse trough.  Silver was the most tame, followed by Mohawk.  Pipsqueak was the littlest chicken and a skittish spaz– constantly freaking out that the sky was falling.  Though the spastic was vanquished the night a box toppled into the enclosure, causing a real panic that some sneaky predator had broken into the hen studio.

Meanwhile, the boys are fortunately growing-up in an age where we all continue to learn about, appreciate, and celebrate our differences.  We’re lucky the boys have a friend at school who is transgender.  Sometimes they’re a girl, and sometimes they’re a boy.  They’ve always felt that way.  It’s no big deal.  This past year, we also had an awareness presentation at work that taught us about pronouns.  I learned a lot.  There was a whole slide of vocab I wasn’t familiar with.  I learned about cisgenders, and that some people prefer the pronouns them and theirs.

Back at the farm, Silver started jumping up to the edge of the horse trough.  Presumably to get a better view.  And we had to take the wire enclosure we had and fashion a chick lid for the chicklettes.  At some point we decided the little girls were ready to move in with the big girls, and our two flocks… became two.

The big girls were entirely freaked out.  We’d look out in the evening and it was like a gang of orphans had taken over their house.  The little chicks called dibs on the coop and the big girls would stay outside till dark.  We could see the little chick silhouettes flapping and hopping from bunkbed to bunkbed.  At some point, the big girls would reluctantly walk the plank into the crazy slumber party that was their previous childfree poultry mansion.

And the little girls got bigger and bigger.  And we started to suspect that Silver was a he, not a she.  She grew tail feathers.  And a comb.  And she started cock-a-doodle-doing at 4:30 in the morning.  And all our pronoun training was tested.

She was a he.  Or a they.

So it always goes something like this: Jacob, James, Nate.  Maybe me.  This is the predictable course of every common school-age fever, sneeze, rash, or barf bug as it makes its way through our household.  Jacob is our entry point.  Every.  Single.  Time.

This year we seemed to get through the flu season somewhat early.  It took James down over Halloween, which means it hit Jacob mid to late October.  He thought he was better till he barfed-up water from an all-fours position on the soccer sideline.  A few weeks later, Nate also claimed to be healed, till he literally couldn’t speak at halftime.  When he finally did say something, it made no sense, explained by a super high fever when we got home.  You know it’s bad when Nate wants to sub out.

Meanwhile, the boys have noticed their oldest cousin’s deeper voice and his shadow of a mustache.  Though Nate’s criteria for a mustache is that you can twirl it.  Fortunately, there is no twirling happening in the seventh grade.

So it’s November and Nate’s sick and his voice is hoarse.  We’re walking along and he looks up at me with his wide eight-year-old eyes and says breathlessly, “You don’t think it’s pu-buwr-dy, do you?”

I reassure him… “No, I don’t think it’s pu-buwr-dy.”

This afternoon, we made it back from Ojai in time for Nate’s All Stars soccer practice.  It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and I offered to help put the goal together with one of the dads.  We found ourselves staring at approximately 15 metal tubes with various colors of tape our coach had used to try and make it easier to put together.  Blue, red, yellow, brown, black.  There were numbers on stickers, sometimes.  There was more blue tape than any other color.  The other dad jumps in and starts building.

I say, “So… are you an engineer?”

“Yep.”

“Hmmm, then this is right up your alley.  What kind?”

“Mechanical.”

“Terrific.  And you said you work at the nuclear power plant?  Then this should easy, right?  You tell me what to do.”

Some time passes and we’re having moderate success figuring it out.  And then I say, “I come from a long line of people that put black tape over blinking electrical clocks, rather than attempting to program them.”

And my joke does not land with the mechanical engineer…

December.  Elves working nights and weekends.  Planning for 2020.  And of course, workplace performance reviews.  Earlier this week, I warned the boys on our drive up the mountain, “Now listen.  I have to get my year-end review done tonight, so I have to work on it after dinner.”

Nate, “What?  Your urine review?”

Me, “No!  My year-END review.”

Nate, “Urine review?  Why?”

Me, “It’s like a report-card.  I have to write a report about the results my team has delivered this year.”

Around 8:15PM or so I audibly shut my Mac with a big sigh of relief.  Feels great to have that monkey off my back.

Nate, “Your urinal presentation is done?”

Me, “Yep.  Urinal presentation submitted.”

Feels so good.

All my life, Granddad has talked fondly of his mom picking him up from school.  His favorite days were when she’d show-up with the bird dogs and the shotguns in her car, ready to take him hunting.  Just the right mom for Granddad.

Meanwhile, Nate and I have a similar routine.  Except instead of dogs and guns, he checks my feet for running shoes, and the trunk for a soccer ball.  During Jacob’s soccer practices, Nate and I work on our throw-ins, our chest traps, and “juking” as it’s referred to in the third grade.

I’m sure someday he’ll wistfully tell his grandkids about my coral New Balances and matching soccer ball.  Hopefully, just the right mom for Nate.