Calling Dr. Love

I’ve been making it my habit to come home from school each day and immediately change clothes and spend 30 or so minutes on the elliptical we have at home. If I’m quick to get home, I can get the workout in before T1 gets off the bus and before the girls are up from their naps (meaning I can exercise in peace!). Then I can grab a shower and still be ready to start supper on time. It works well. Usually.

Plus, I’ve been avoiding my Sonic stops on the way home, because I don’t have time, and can’t want one when I’m working out. It’s been working well for me. Mostly.

Yesterday, well, not so much. I was worn out, feeling lazy, my feet hurt because I wore bad shoes (yeah, yeah, I can feel the sympathy oozing out of you!)…anyway, I decided I didn’t feel like tackling the elliptical that day. And to really blow self-discipline out of the water, I stopped at Sonic and grabbed a Dr. Pepper on the way home. And because we needed to make a grocery run, I didn’t have a meal planned out ready to cook, so when my husband called on the way home and suggested we do half-price wings at Buffalo Wild Wings, I jumped at it.

Ummmm….remember my Monday post? The one about eating healthy, working out, inspiring my husband to do the same? You know, because I was worried about his future health?

Well, would you pretend that you never read it?

Thanks.

If I re-discover my self-discipline, I’ll let you know.

You Get A Line and I'll Get A Pole, Honey

If you’re a lover of music, you’ve probably had it happen to you…a song gets stuck in your head. For hours. And you can’t seem to get another song to replace it.

If you’re a music teacher, it’s not just any old song that gets stuck in there – oh, no. It’s usually the most annoying song you teach that gets embedded in your brain. To be repeated endlessly all.night.long.

Oh, and of course, just as a bonus, it’s probably singing in there in the voice of the worst singer in class – the one who sings louder than anyone else. With bad vowels. Sliding into and around each note before they finally land (mostly) on the right one.

Yep, that was my night last night: “You get a line and I’ll get a pole, and we’ll go fishin’ by the crawdad hole, honey, baby mine.” All night.

And those of you who know this song can now join my misery in having it stuck in your heads, too!

You're welcome!

Sleep well!

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

It probably wasn’t big news in most households in this area. Then again, it was a pretty amazing end to a football game gone into overtime. Assuming that you stayed up late enough to watch the end. Oh wait. It wasn’t late. It was just past my mental bedtime. (You know, that time when your brain has given up and gone to sleep whether or not your body has made it to bed yet. I know I’m not the only one who has one!)

The game was Michigan State vs Notre Dame, and although my brain was a lot closer to sleep than my body was, I was aware enough to know that the fake-field-goal-turned-touchdown to win was a GREAT ending. Especially in this house. But did you hear what happened after? The Michigan State coach had a “mild” heart attack, and wound up in the hospital in surgery. Ummm…. after a WIN?

So the next day, I did some reading. I mean, it may be football instead of basketball, and college instead of high school, but the reality is that stress is stress. My husband isn’t thinking at the end of a close game, “Oh, this is just a high school game. It’s not that big a deal.” Ha. In the stress and challenge and adrenaline of a close game, you might as well call it life-and-death. (Yeah, yeah, it’s not, but do YOU want to convince him of that? And actually, to his heart, it may be.) So I’m feeling a connection to this coach and his situation. And I’m feeling fear for my husband…who came home the next day and told me it was probably good that I wasn’t reading some of the same articles about it that he was. (Maybe so, but I found some others, mister, and I’m not liking it!)

Here’s an interesting quote from Steve Spurrier, University of South Carolina (another favorite in this house): "Sometimes you can be fit and in shape, and it happens to you anyway. There are no guarantees in coaching except if you don't take care of yourself, you're almost guaranteed to have something happen. That's why I work out five days a week all year round. I've done it for as long as I've been coaching." Oh, boy, this does NOT make me feel better.

I want him to do what he loves doing. I can’t imagine asking him to quit coaching…he would be miserable. But I don’t want to lose him because of that job either. And while we’re hopefully still many years away from heart problems, you can’t count on that. So I try to make sure we eat well. And I make sure I get my workouts in, in the hope that he will be inspired also. And I hope that our life and our kids are enough of a stress reliever to him that coming home is a chance to wind down.

By the way, THAT is easier said than done! It is NOT always an easy thing to remember that I need to do what I can to relieve stress, not add to it. The coaching life is pretty tough on marriages, and I think a major contributing factor is this: that it’s awfully hard for a wife to adjust to needing to take a back seat during the season. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that because his mind and time are taken up with basketball, he cares less about us. It’s not true…it’s his attention that is divided, not his love.

So I will keep my focus on keeping our house together…keeping the kids on track…keeping him healthy(?) as much as I can. And praying that the factors I have no control over will stay at a minimum.

And praying that he will always have the ability to discern between what really matters and what is only temporary.

Which is the prayer we should all have anyway, isn’t it…

Much too Young (To Feel This .... Old)

I had quite a disturbing thing happen to me today.

I should have been prepared for it…it’s been headed my way for a while. I’m not sure how it caught me so much by surprise.

A little background first:

I have several students working on music to audition for a local honor choir. Since the auditions are getting close, I decided to hold a “mock audition.” I took small sections of each of the songs they have been working on and had them sing just that part for me. Now I know there’s a way to take the practice CD’s they already have and just burn a CD from my computer with the short clips I wanted to use. But my school computer won’t burn CD’s, and well, it just seemed simpler to stick the CD in a stereo, stick in a tape, and record the parts I wanted to use. Right? Of course, right! (Name that musical!)

I got a few comments from the kids when they sang to the tape. “A tape? You used a tape?” Ummm, yeah, I did…is this really that amazing?

But the real shocker was today, when I handed one of my 8^th graders “The Tape” to put in the boombox (there’s another extinct word for ya!) that she was using to practice. She looked at the tape. She looked at me. And then she said,

“I don’t know how to use that.”

If you need me, I’ll be sitting in my rocking chair. With my lap blanket. And my knitting. Probably napping. Be sure my hearing aids are turned up before you start talking to me.

Just Breathe

We had a preview yesterday of the “life of basketball season.” My husband didn’t get home until almost 6:30, and was only able to be home for about 20 minutes before he had to rush off for a meeting. We were able to eat together quickly before he left, which I’ll admit is better than most game days. Game days I’m lucky if he gets home by midnight. (And I count myself doubly lucky if he tells me that he managed to get in a single meal that entire day!) So this day was just a small reminder of what’s to come.

I really love my husband, and I am incredibly proud of what he does and how he does it. And over the years I’ve learned to really love basketball. I even get pretty excited about the first game (and many games after that).

I do NOT get excited about the beginning of “The Season.” There’s a big long stretch of late practices before the first game ever happens. Days when I don’t know for sure what time he will come home, but I do know that supper will need to be ready as soon as he walks in so we can get the kids fed before they have meltdowns. Days when I have to remember that now the kids need snacks after school, so they don’t meltdown before our late supper! And a few days where we have to just give up and eat without him.

Last year my new-school-year routine broke down completely at the beginning of The Season. It took me a while to figure out how to make things work again. I count it major progress that – for the most part – I no longer get really upset when the time I think my husband should be home isn’t the same as the time he actually finally makes it home!

I’m not complaining (well, not too much). I’m fully aware of how good I have it, and the blessings just keep coming. We have a great life, and a really good relationship as a family, even in the midst of it all. BUT…I will admit that counting down to the beginning of The Season is just a whole lot like counting down the last few (sad) days of summer. J

Take a deep breath….here we go again.