Soccer, Driving, Gifts, and a thought…

Kay finished her soccer season Tuesday night with another loss. In six games, my team scored 2 goals. Partly because they never grasped the concept of soccer – work together to move the ball down the field and put the ball in the back of the goal. All 14 of the young ladies on my team thought that soccer was an individual sport, that if they didn’t go get the ball that someone else would, that if they just stood still this horrible experience would be over soon. No of them was particularly excited about running, or being aggressive, or even trying – all of which are important to soccer, especially the running part. Coaching youth soccer has taught me patience. Tuesday, that patience ran out. Early in the fourth quarter I had two defenders and a goalie watch, literally watch, as the other team dribbled between them and shot the ball on goal. My reaction? “GIRLS! GO GET THE BALL!” Followed by a sincere, “PLEASE!” I pleaded, I begged, I prodded, but I just had unaggressive girls who tried, but only a little. I spent the rest of the game, leaning against the goal post watching them try in there own little way.

Yesterday I had a good meeting with a company the makes fuel pump nozzles and gasoline vapor recovery systems. I delivered a dozen Cozy’s to the marketing manager and in return he gave me an annual project to quote. The difficult thing was the drive. 836 miles roundtrip. Coming home I was on a two lane road in Missouri, topped a hill doing 60 mph and was greeted by a truck pulling a double-wide. No chase vehicle to warn me, no shoulder to pull over onto, no where to go. So I did what any of you would do… hit the brakes and made for the ditch. He passed and I continued on none the worse than I was before. The real joy in Missouri is the number of semi-trucks on I-70. They are everywhere. Then there are the drivers that pass other cars at a snail’s pace. Never worrying that they have 14 cars behind them in the fast lane, they just go on in their own world. Don’t they know that I still had 286 miles to drive and they were drastically reducing my average speed by double digits? When you get to Kansas City, most of the traffic heads for I-80 so the roads in Kansas are much less congested!

Saturday is graduation. Sunday is Mother’s Day. I’m struggling. I don’t know what to get for graduation. I don’t know what to get for Mother’s Day. Cards. Check. Now what. Jewelry seems like a no brainer, but I just bought her two nice pieces of jewelry. Flowers? That’s what I got her the last time she graduated. Lingerie? Doesn’t really seem like an appropriate gift for the occasion – and she would say there is never an appropriate occasion. Chocolate? No. Booze? No. I pride myself on my gift giving but this one really has me stumped. Harley™ Apparel? ARRGGGHHHH! I spent an entire lunch hour trying to figure it out. Can we postpone both events? Until say October?

My last thought for the day: I was doing some searching the other day on Google for a romantic quote about love and/or marriage for our upcoming anniversary. One quote, or not so much a quote, but advise from some degree-waving psychologist type was “Foreplay begins in the kitchen.” The author’s intent was to explain that wives are in a more loving mood if the husband helps around the house and doesn’t just sit around drinking beer and expecting to be waited on. Someone who takes out the trash; does the dishes; helps with laundry; cleans the house; etc is far more attractive and more likely to be on the receiving end of great amounts of affection from his spouse. But he explains, you can’t clean the toilet once and expect results. It’s an ongoing thing, a way of life. My first thought – “Ha. This guy has never been in a relationship with anyone but himself. The amount of work one does in the home does not have a corollary effect on the amount of affection shown. Women have their own criteria for determining such things and I have not figured it out yet, even after fifteen years of marriage.” From my perspective there are dozens and dozens of other factors that go into how loving a relationship is. But then I got to thinking…what if he’s totally on? What if that is the only criteria wives consider? Have I done enough? I would love to stay here and blog some more, but I’ve got to go fold clothes and clean house… ;-)

D