Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Stick your Spirit

You know. I have a job. One that pays me to show up. One that keeps me from my children and my home for approximately 50 hours a week.  It pays very well and I kept it because I knew in  the long run it would benefit the whole family. So when I am not at that job I like to be with my family and /or do the things that I can't do while I'm working. Like clean the house. Run the kids to their activities and generally just run run run. There is literally no rest for the weary these days. Three kids can really run you ragged.

So when I posed a simple question about how to obtain some new spirit sticks for my daughters (to maybe give them for Christmas) I was really excited to get back a nice response telling me to volunteer at school in order to get a heads up on all the new ones coming out. Yeah that's sarcasm. 
 Yeah Sure. Let me use yet another non-existant vacation day to come into school to work the school store to get a heads up on the spirit stick inventory. Jesus H. Christ.  I do my best to volunteer my time & money to the school when both allow. And it usually calls for me taking time away from my job. That's fine because the kids enjoy me being there. I would do it more if I did not work outside the home.  I don't need someone telling me to volunteer. Isn't that the opposite of the definition of the word ?

I received an email a few weeks ago from H&SL with a sign up genie for lunches and a dinner during conferences for the teachers. Parents were expected to sign up to send in lunch and dinner supplies for the teacher. Pounds of cold cuts, different kinds of breads, salads, desserts, drinks, ice. For a few days and each meal was different. Drop off was only during school hours so us working shlubs had to make other arrangements IF we wanted to donate. WHICH I did. I was dropping off bags of ice on a Sunday night to someone's house. Simply so the teacher's could have a cold drink.  I suppose they couldn't concentrate on the conferences AND pack meals from home during those 3 days of conferences.  Either that or H & SL isn't selling enough Spirit Sticks to pay for the meals themselves.

Maybe they should send out the order sheet like I asked... then they'd have more $$$ coming in.  They'd have gotten at least $10 from me.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

For the Love of the Game

When Basketball season was upon us the man and I heard that our Coach from last season had pulled a fast one and ranked Aedan low at the end of last season.  We were a bit surprised because Coach had already told us he was going to try to get Aedan back on his team again.  We (and others) came to the conclusion that he did this ranking simply so Aedan would not look good to other coaches therefore going later in the draft and making it easier for Coach to pick him up.  Other coaches knew it happened as did the commissioner. He was called on it and he denied any wrongdoing.  Nothing was done.  Some of the kids that he got back weren't the highest scorers but in an effort to get some of the kids that played together last season he took them in addition to a few new (to our team) players.

We didn't do anything about it. Our opinion was that he knew we knew what happened and the higher ups also knew.  We also did not tell Aedan what went on. He was simply happy to be back on a team with a few friends.  The man and I both kept the incident in the back of our minds.  Once practices and games started it took a little while for the kids to gel as a team.  Having extra voluntary practice /shoot around each week helped build skills and also helped all the boys to learn the numerous plays. Ten plays in all are utilized and  that's a lot of work for 4th graders. But they worked their butts off, learned their plays and quickly became a team.

Our boys went undefeated in the regular season. Some games were close and they really had to work hard to get the win and other games seemed to be won easily.  Even when the other team was gunning for them and when it seemed the refs were against them they managed to pull out a win. We are now in the Playoffs and still undefeated.  The coach gets as much information on the opposing team as possible so he knows how to line up our boys. He also continued some voluntary practices when time permitted.  Our boys are playing hard and it shows in the win column.  But now all the competition is calling "cheating and shady business " and trying to take away these kids' glory. Even going so far as to report "extra practices". Well I won't have it. The boys earned their spot. No one but those boys has earned the wins as a team. Not one single boy was responsible for the wins. They were the ones on the court playing their hearts out and they deserve to have that recognized.

They are in the Finals and I hope they show all the doubters exactly what can be done when you work hard as a team and put all you have out on the court. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's game, it should be a tight one with loads of action against a worthy opponent.