Play Ball and Speak Up!

Although they were supportive of us three kids, my parents lived their own lives and did not try to live through ours.  I have tried to emulate that.  However, I find as I am aging, it is more difficult to have an engaging life.  With sickness in the family, I am pushed to keep up even the necessary tasks for survival. I really do not feel comfortable making plans with others since I may have to cancel out at the last minute.    Being involved with outside activities is next to impossible.  So my main social life is conducted on Facebook.  Every thing takes me much longer to do than in the past, and even worse I have to schedule rest for myself during the day.  I have said all this to explain why I may be relishing life through children and grandchildren more than through my own  more boring day-to-day activities. 

Last weekend we found out what it was now like to attempt to know what was going on with two softball teams.  There were ten games in two different tournaments that  we were trying to keep up with on college websites. (It was easier for us when we had three family members together at the University of Georgia for the last two years. Of course, we actually are still very interested  in Georgia’s games since we feel quite attached to Coach Lu Harris-Champer and the young women we loved to watch play for the Dawgs.  And they did good last weekend.)

Opening-season games started on Friday with our son Gerry and the Texas A&M team at the SoCal Collegiate Classic tourney in Los Angeles  and granddaughter Geri Ann playing with the University of Oregon at the Kajikawa tourney at Tempe, AZ.  We loved knowing that Vickie was in Arizona stands watching her daughter play as she has for at least 15 years.  (Before that Vickie was watching her two older daughters play while keeping one eye on little Geri Ann playing in the sand pile beside the ball field.)

The opening Friday games went well for both our teams.  Since University of Oregon was ranked 2^nd in national pre-season polls, we were not surprised that they won over Cal Poly 8-0 in their first game.  For us, the thrill was that this was Geri Ann’s first time to bat for Oregon and her first time to pitch when she went in after four innings by Karissa Hovinga and gave up only one hit in the last three innings.  Nor were we surprised when they next beat the Texas Longhorns with a run rule 9-0 score.

A&M (ranked 24^th in preseason polls) beat Coach Jo Evans’ alma mater Utah  with a 5-1 score in their first game of the season, thanks to a grand slam by Cali Lanphear.. They were not so fortunate, however,  when they had to go up against UCLA, who was ranked seventh in the nation. They lost 13-0.  But since A&M lost eight seniors last year, we were comfortable with a split in the first night of the tournament.

The next day, I was prevented from spending the day in Gerald’s office hovering with him over his computer and eating lunch there. One of Katherine’s aides from another  town, who was scheuleded to be there, had the brakes go out of her car and was stuck at home till her car got out of the shop. So I went in town to do what little I can do to help Katherine.   As it turned out, her evening aide then texted that she was in the emergency room again with her two-year-old so she couldn’t come either. So it was a long day for me and mostly I had to get caught up on softball with Gerald’s accounts of the games.

Oregon continued their winning ways defeating Northwestern Wildcats 8-0 and the North Carolina Tar Heels 8-5. Our excitement was Geri Ann’s first home run for Oregon.  But there was also  good news from Texas A&M. After beating San Diego State 9-5, A&M had their revenge in a re-match with UCLA by winning 6-4.

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But the best news of all that night was from granddaughter Cecelie’s speech team from Freeport High School competing in their regional tournament for individual events.  Everyone of the team members qualified to move on up to compete in the Sectionals this Saturday.  We’d heard from Jeannie and Rick as they drove down to watch the events, so we knew they had a great day. Illinois is too long a state for us to attend speech tournaments, but I am a die-hard Pretzel fan for Freeport’s team.

I was pretty tired from Saturday and I needed to sleep late and take it easy because of some leg and back pain that has been handicapping me.  So we had a lazy Sunday and were back in Gerald’s office together to watch Andy Stanley preach on the  computer.

After lunch Texas A&M lost their last game to Purdue, but Oregon won 10-2 with the run rule over the Wisconsin Badgers with Geri Ann pitching a complete game. Oregon won their sixth and final game against Nevada 12-8.  Not a bad beginning with A&M winning three of five games and Oregon winning six games. 

 Facebook was full of rejoicing Freeport speech fans, and we were seeing pictures of granddaughter Brianna and her new friends in Florida.  I thought she was beautiful n her work uniform at Disney.  So even though my life is more restricted than I’d like with some muscle pain slowing me way down, I can vicariously enjoy grandchildren’s activities spread out from Florida in the east and Oregon in the west and the others in between.