I was reading Mark Seitz's blog and how he was talking about waking up so early last Sunday morning. I think Allison and I had him beat as we never went to bed last Saturday night! Instead, we spent the night participating in the annual Columbia Mall Sleep In for girl scouts where nobody actually sleeps(or sadly, gets to shop). Instead, the older girls put on activities for the younger girl scouts-badges, arts and crafts, games, karaoke and dancing. I signed my girls up for a Sports badge-I figured each one had tried some sport in their life, and it would keep them active and awake. Allison taught Field Hockey, and another girl had a swimming game and explained the swim strokes. We had volunteer parents helping out with the First Aid station, and another Troop that ran our cheerleading section(funny, none of the girls wanted to run that station, but the buddy troop did a fabulous job all night long). We then had a station to learn warm up and cool down exercises, along with a table where we set up a Women in Sports quiz(the younger girls did pretty well with this-I did not recognize some of the names or photos myself, but the young girls studied them in school, or so they told me). But my biggest pet peeve was the requirement for girls to look through the Sports sections of newspapers and compare the number of men's sports articles with women's sports articles. To make things move more smoothly, I had my troop highlight the men's articles in blue and the women's in pink. I am not sure how many of you study the sports pages, but I don't think I will read many more of them. I discovered that many articles are written about men and women, and that most of the time, I cannot tell if the article or sport is for men or women mainly because I can't tell from the names of the players whether they are male or female! Certainly we found more articles focusing on men in sports. But I also found that some of the articles really had nothing to do with sports at all. Like the whole article on Tiger Woods apology! Was that an article about a man, many women, both? And it didn't even discuss sports! I found sometimes the sports page was more like a gossip column. I had an argument(imagine that!) with the GS council in charge of this event as I did not wish to include this requirement. I thought it was a bit outdated and sexist. I did not see how it taught the girls anything, although part of the requirement was to write a letter to the newspaper either thanking them for the women's articles or complaining that we wanted to see more. Frankly I thought the papers did a great job covering the womens sports if it existed. But more often I see articles mixed about women and men in sports. Unless of course they are talking about a Men's Hockey League or a Women's Basketball team, etc. I wanted to replace the newspaper coverage with my quiz, but I was not allowed to mess with the powers that be. Instead we added our quiz on with a question concerning the type of sport most women play. Oh well. It is not easy to fight city hall or grumpy old girl scout leaders. They thought the best part would be the cheerleading! Noone wanted that station! But my girls did a great job, and I covered for Allison while she went off to eat chinese food at 3am in the food court. I also helped out with a Careers badge table-conflict resolution. I think they put me at the wrong table!
I also spent the morning with the scouts-the boys. We went off to pick up food left by mailboxes throughout the neighborhood for Harvest for Hungry. Our boys picked up 830lbs of food! The food will be donated to our local food bank. Great service project and lots of exercise for the boys.
They spent last Sunday morning passing out the bags for the food collection. (Right after Allison altar served the 9am mass.) I spent that afternoon pooped out in the recliner chair. I guess I had a little bug or something. Tom wanted to invite Matt and Di over for Sunday night dinner, but I told him I wasn't cooking or cleaning. He was on his own. He had just returned from LA on Friday. So he made dinner and cleaned the house, but we never heard from Matt and Di. So instead he invited our neighbors over since we hadn't chatted in a while. I fell asleep watching the US/Canada Olympic men's hockey game. It was a bit sad to see the US lose, but at least the guys took home Silver. And overall the US did much better in this year's Winter games. No more staying up late though to watch the games live.
I was back on my own again this past week, but just half a week this time. Tom stayed long enough to go on our belated Valentine's Day date. I had purchased two tickets for a Wine tasting class at our favorite MSU owned wine store in olde Ellicott City. We finally met the owner that night. We had already met his sister and parents that help run the store. The class was called Weird Science -Wine Pairings and we got to try some new wines with different snacks-cheeses, crackers, veggies, chocolate. Everything from champagne to port. Afterwards Tom and I went out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant across the street. It is so nice to be able to leave the kids home alone and not have to hire a babysitter when Allison is around.
So again I was on my own helping with the kids homework, chaperoning to field hockey and piano. But this week Scott decided to get sick. He started feeling poorly on Weds, and he tried to make it to school Thursday since I had a very busy work day, but he only got to lunch and they called me to pick him up. He looked pretty miserable. We have a stomach bug going around Maryland. At work we have had to quarantine our nursing home and rehab unit-no residents in or out due to stomach flu. I also had one girl scout cancel Saturday night due to flu bug. Tom wasn't feeling that great either last week, but he survived his trip to New Orleans. He did think the place was a bit sleazy and dirty. Funny, that is how I remember it when my parents took us kids there once in passing.
So Scott stayed home with me the rest of the week recuperating. I did not mind though since I kept him busy memorizing all the US states and their capitals. He had his big test on Friday, but did not have much time to study since all the kids tests were squeezed in to make the cut off for the marking semester. They had to learn about 25 states and capitals in less than two weeks time. Even though I wasn't happy Scott was feeling sick, I was glad he had extra time to memorize the states. We even studied during Allison's field hockey games. She ended up playing goalie for an hour straight since most of the girls did not show up last week. They already started Spring Sports tryouts and several of the girls on the team were at Lacrosse tryouts that night. More game time for Allison!
And our snow is slowly melting. You can just barely walk down the sidewalks, although there are still large piles of snow along the roadside. Scott and I took Cookie up to our local park last Sunday afternoon and the two of them had fun running in the field and getting all muddy and wet. Both of them needed quite the bath when we got home. Cookie pretty much needs a bath every time we go out for a walk now since she steps in all the mud and puddles.
I am also slowly assessing all the damage to our lawn and shrubs. My poor shrubs have all been squashed with broken branches. We will probably have to cut down one very large shrub next to the house as the weight of the snow completely tipped it over on its side, pulling its root system right out of the ground! And my small , metal flag banner stand was completely bent in half by the weight of all the snow. At least it looks like all the plants will live. We'll definitely have to reseed some parts of the lawn where they scraped up the dirt with the front loaders. At least our mailbox survived! Everyone else has been busy picking up broken tree limbs and cutting up large branches that broke off during the storm. I am glad we never planted any White Pines-what a mess they make. There were even a few trees that fell over at work-one directly over a parked car!
Happy Early Spring-we also have daffodils and crocuses popping up. Kathleen