Has Anyone Got the Time?

Over the course of three days:

Movie + Visit w/Friend + Sleepover + Errand + Craft Fair + Another Errand + Lunch + Baseball Scrimmage + Helping Randy w/Project + Unexpected (but Welcome) Road Trip + Saturday Night Rituals + Worship + Lunch + Visit w/Another Friend + Long-Overdue Grocery Shopping Run + Growth Group + Dinner + Preparing Kids for Achievement Tests Next Week =

NO TIME TO BLOG! I can't think of a single funny story to share . . . not one.

Oh, okay . . . this morning when the collection plate came to Sawyer I had neglected to make sure he had his money out, so I elected to let it pass him by and I told him he could put his coins in on his way to Bible Hour. He started digging in his pocket and came up with three coins, which is all I thought he had, but he was just SURE he'd had five. A friend sitting behind us saw him rummaging in his pockets and took pity on him and scrounged up a dime from the bottom of her purse, which he accepted joyfully. He left for Bible Hour and that was that. But after church I was collecting my Bible and purse and, what do you know, there were two coins sitting right there on the pew.

I told you. Not funny.

Okay, this isn't funny but some of you Ohioans might find this interesting. Darcy had her first softball practice last Thursday night. Wow. What a difference a year makes! And what I mean by that is that I can remember hedging when Darcy asked last year if she could play softball. Because of Darcy's perfectionism and competitive streak, I worried that she'd strike out just once and be ready to quit the whole season. I also reasoned that it was just a passing fancy, so I declined to sign her up. After all, we had enough on our plate with Tyler playing baseball. As far as I was concerned, one child in one sport was enough for me.

Apparently, that will only fly for so long. Darcy is nine, after all, and Randy determined that my argument had "lost its legs," so to speak. (Okay, I think I may have just made that up--is that a figure of speech? I know the whole "you don't have a leg to stand on" phrase, but that didn't seem appropriate here. Oh well. Moving on.) The eventuality that we would one day have two or more kids playing sports simultaneously had finally arrived.

"Divide and conquer" is our new motto, so Randy took the boys to one playing field while I took the girls to another. I was struck by the immediate camaraderie shared by most of the girls as they took to the field, even if they had only just met. Isn't that just the way of girls?! (Although I was pleasantly surprised to see that at Tyler's scrimmage on Saturday, the boys seemed much more comfortable and at ease with each other than they had at the practices I'd been to previously.)

Darcy's coach (Coach Germany) is totally on the ball, too. He had two other dads already lined up as assistants and of course there are always parents (dads, usually) who are willing to help out where needed, and he (the coach) didn't let any grass grow under their feet. For an hour and 15 minutes they practiced pitching, fielding, batting, running the bases . . . there was no idling. Even in that 75 minutes, though, there was not enough time for all the girls to pitch and Darcy was in that group that never made it over. She will get her turn this Thursday and we'll see if she has either the desire or the talent to pitch. According to a friend at church, she has the arm for fastball pitching so we'll see.

But I am here to tell you, she can BELT it! Or at least she did Thursday night. See how I always temper my bragging? It's the whole "pride goeth before a fall" thing. I could get all puffed up and say she's a future Hall of Famer, and then it would be guaranteed that she would go on to strike out every time she came to the plate. But could you just humor me for this one moment? The coach held out one of those stick-thingies (I'm very knowledgeable about softball terminology, as you can see) and Darcy whiffed it one, two, three, four, five times. Whoa. So the coach walks over, examines the way she's gripping the bat, her stance, you know, all that stuff, tells her to make a couple of modifications, and suddenly we're off to the races! She knocked the snot out of every ball he pitched to her! And I should know because I'm the one who took pity on the coach and retrieved all the balls Darcy smashed! An older gentleman who was watching laughed when practice was over and said, "You got a pretty good workout too, didn't you?" You have no idea, Grandpa.

Interestingly, after Darcy's turn was over and one of the assistant coaches called her back to practice fielding, Coach Germany hollered, "No, send her back! I'm not through with her!" I found that interesting because he hadn't done that with the other girls. So Darcy got back in the batter's box and Coach said, "Okay, now I want you to try to hit it as hard as you can."

Oh.
My.
Word.

The coach said, "You've never played baseball before?" Then he said to me, "I can see she's going to be one of my hitters!"

I admit it. I am proud!

Oh, and as long as I'm bragging, I might as well go whole hog: When she stepped on the field for the very first time, the assistant coach just assigned the girls randomly to the various positions and Darcy was at shortstop. I am no baseball expert but I've been told that shortstop and second base are the two infield positions that are the furthest distance from home plate. (This is so sad--can you tell I always had my nose in a book and didn't ever pay attention when my brothers were in Little League?!) Anyhoo, so the assistant coach would pop the ball to each girl and have her field it and throw it back to him. When he hit it to Darcy I promise you the first word out of his mouth was, "Whoa!" Which when translated, meant, "I cannot believe that I, a 40+ year-old man, just caught this rocket thrown to me by a little girl!"

Next time, at second base, same thing. "Man, Darcy, GREAT THROW!" It was exciting to see her excel at something that she has wanted to do for so long. Now let's play ball!