it's over - finally

Kate's baseball season is over. Finally. Truly. It's over.

Thursday's game was set to be played in Orange City, which is about forty minutes away. Greg came home after work and we all left and were about as cranky as you can expect after getting little sleep. Anthony was especially lovely. He begged not to go to Thursday's game. He ranted on about hoping that Kate's team would lose. He told Kate that softball was the most boring sport ever and he didn't even watch her play while he was at the games, so why should he even bother going. He seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in telling her all of this. It's time like these that my heart melts and I know I'm doing a fabulous job of raising my kids. The one thing he had going for him was that I was too exhausted to make empty threats about all the ways I was going to punish him.

We got to Orange City and it was thundering and lightening. By the time it stopped, the field was soaked, so we sat there and waited and waited and around 7:30 it was determined that since it hadn't rained in Mount Dora we should move the game there. So we got in the car and drove forty minutes back to where we started. I was so tired that none of this seemed insane. The game got under way around 8:30. Kate's team won by a landslide. I wanted to cry great big tears of sorrow over the fact that we had another day of this, but twenty years from now, when I'm gathered around my kitchen table having Thanksgiving dinner with my kids and their kids, I didn't want to have to listen to Kate tell the story of me being hysterically angry over her winning her playoff game, so I decided to go right along pretending that this was all extremely exciting.

Friday night we drove to DeBary and shockingly enough, it rained. And the field was soak and we sat there and waited and waited and I tried not to have a meltdown. Greg looked at me at one point and said, "we're going to feel like idiots in six months when Kate decides she hates softball and never wants to play again." And I said to him, "really, is it really going to take you six months to feel like an idiot over this, because I kind of felt that way on Tuesday when I was driving home at mid-night."

The game finally started at 8:30. And we didn't even have to drive all the way back home to play. The umpire, or as Anthony calls him, the empire, made some atrocious calls which brought a certain amount of excitement to the game.There was absolutely no telling what he was going to call a strike. This fact made Kate actually swing at a ball after it had already landed in the catcher's mitt. If you aren't familiar with the rules of softball, I'll just say that you should swing while the ball is still in the air. Once it's in the mitt, there is pretty much no way you're going to hit it. Greg and I looked at each other in disbelief and then I realized I just needed to be thankful that we were one out closer to a full night's sleep. The girls tried their best but ended up losing 11 to 6, which wasn't bad considering that they were running on fumes and the officiating was the worst I've ever seen. I admit it, for all the insanity of this week, and for all my near breakdowns, I was sad they lost. Kate loves playing and loves being on a team and since I love her, I enjoy watching her do something she takes such pleasure in.

She was ready for it to be over though. On Saturday morning when she woke up, Greg was watching a college softball series and she said "ugh, get it off, I don't want to see another softball game until the fall." And Anthony, who was in the bathroom, but never misses an opportunity to be obnoxious yelled out, "I don't want to see another softball game, ever! And I'm not kidding!" Like any of us thought he was kidding.