Softball and High School

Life has been a little, shall we say, full, lately. It's sort of like that feeling when you really need to go to the bathroom, that bloated feeling, and you ought to just go, but, for whatever reason, you can't go do it. So you're uncomfortable, but there's nothing you can do about it. [For me, that feeling is usually in the morning while I'm cooking breakfast. There are eggs on the grill (and you can't just walk away from eggs while they're cooking), more eggs to cook, and I'm trying to get everything done so that people can go where they need to go and, besides, there's someone in the bathroom taking a shower or getting ready or whatever, anyway, and I need to eat, too, but, well, there's that bloated feeling because I need to go to the bathroom, so food is, let's just say, unappealing.]
Yeah, that's life around here, right now.

Softball for my daughter started about a month ago, and she's been having practice three times a week. Two of those nights are weeknights, which is extremely disruptive to the whole cooking dinner thing since, really, it means setting out for softball almost as soon as we get home from school. She already has her accordion lesson on Saturday morning, so Saturdays consist of going to her lesson, getting home, waiting 10 minutes while she changes into her softball gear, and heading back out again. It's a lot of running around.

In the midst of all of this, my younger son has been going through all kinds of high school admissions stuff. That's included special trips to schools to pick up or drop off paperwork, trips to the hospital to pick up immunization records, placement testing, interviews, and auditions. When did getting into high school become such a production? Why do we do this to our kids? I mean, in a general sense. The boy is 13-years-old, and he's being put through the equivalent of trying to get a job. I'm pretty sure it's not the kind of stress a kid should have to go through.

And, through all of this, my older son is never home. They're in the midst of putting on their biennial musical. This time, that's Once Upon a Mattress, a choice that I don't understand. I mean, in comparison to the last two musicals they did (The Producers and Chicago), this one seems rather lightweight. So he's had constant late nights between rehearsals and performances and, well, everything. And, when he gets home, he still has homework to do. Maybe I haven't mentioned how much I hate homework (and all of the latest research shows that homework (other than reading) has a largely negative impact upon students, but I bet we don't do anything about that any time soon). Anyway!

Despite the somewhat frivolous nature of the musical, my son was great! He plays the mute king, so it's a lot of physical comedy, and he has a real gift for that stuff. He was easily one of the best parts of the play. The girl playing Fred was also pretty spectacular. There were moments where I felt like I was watching Carol Burnett (the role of Winnifred was her breakout role back in 1959). In fact, as I'm typing this, he's in the middle of a performance that is supposedly being attended by Tom Smothers who played the part of the mute king in the 2005 Disney version.

Amidst all of this frantic busy-ness, I have still managed to be doing some writing stuff, and I have discovered something. What I have discovered is a discussion for another time. The point, though, is that, sometimes, the chaos causes things to rise to the surface that you might not otherwise see. Not that I want the chaos. I'm quite ready for it to be over. Not that it's going to be over anytime soon. I mean, my daughter's games haven't started, yet, and, when they do, there will be two games per week and two practices, so the schedule isn't going to be getting any easier anytime soon. However, there are still things that can be learned even when things are so busy you can hardly think. And there are still ways you can use your time to be productive even when you hardly have time to breathe. It's all about looking for the openings.