Channeling Pat Benatar

In case you want to know what the last week has been like...I give you the immortal words of Pat Benatar, in the form of her song "Anxiety (Get Nervous)":

Get nervous, get nervous
Get nervous, get nervous
Get nervous, get nervous
Get nervous, get nervous
Get nervous, get nervous
I feel a little shaky, I can't control my nerves
I know you think I'm fakin', but can't you feel the curves?
I swear to you I feel it, it scares me half to death
It gathers in my throat and it gathers up my breath

Anxiety, got me on the run
Anxiety, yeah, I just need someone
Anxiety, can't get nothin' done
Anxiety, spoils all the fun

I'm picking up the telephone, there's no one I can call
I need somebody bad tonight, can't find no sleep at all
I wish I could relax, I just can't stop my mind
I wish I could collapse but my body's not that kind

Anxiety, got me on the run
Anxiety, yeah, I just need someone

I've known this song for 20+ years but it's been stuck in my head for the last week, especially those two bolded lines.  Admittedly, some of the nerves I've had for the past few months chilled out once the flights got booked, but I am still a bundle of nervous energy most of the time.  I start thinking about elements of the trip and I get a nervous stomach flip-flop or my lower digestive tract goes into hyperdrive (yes, TMI, but I admit I am a nervous pooper--it's the first thing my body does when something stressful happens).  

The nerves were made worse when Carter got sick last week.  He came home from school on Tuesday sniffly and sneezy.  At first I was nervous he caught Jacob's COVID, but he tested negative Wednesday morning.  We kept him home anyway, but he felt fine other than the congestion and he stopped being a sneezy mess after that day and wanted to go back to school on Thursday.  The congestion has hung in there a bit, but it was significantly more tolerable after the first could days.  And then Jacob woke up sniffling on Thursday, which made me wonder if he was having a bounce-back case of COVID.  But we didn't really have time to test that morning and it seemed to fade by the afternoon so we let it be.  The bounce-back theory was probably only a thing in my head because I had "COVID headaches" most of the week.  They were the same low-level, full-headed, annoying ones I had when I got the vaccine or was exposed, the ones that only respond so much to pain killers and make me feel like I have a fever.  I tested myself Saturday morning before heading to a family bridal shower, just to be sure.  I don't know why I was still having those headaches a couple weeks after Jacob had recovered, but my theories are that a) Jacob had a bounce-back case and was spewing COVID again for a couple days; b) Carter actually did have COVID but tested negative initially despite heavy symptoms at the time (and I didn't re-test because by the time I made the connection he would have been out of quarantine anyway); or c) that coughing, sniffly woman I sat in front of at church last week actually had COVID.  Could be any of the above, I suppose.  But the headaches have waned a bit over the past couple days so hopefully we're in the clear.  But between all of those illnesses and a minor knee injury Jacob suffered in gym class on Friday, I've been convinced this trip is doomed.

Then on Friday, Craig left for the airport at 4:30am and texted me around 7:30 when I was leaving to drop the kids at school that they still hadn't left.  The plane had a mechanical issue and they ended up having to cancel the flight.  He couldn't get rebooked until 5:30, so he came home, napped, and left again mid-afternoon, not getting to Vegas until 1:30am our time.  That was a long day.  Of course it made me hope the following Friday's travel would be smoother, but yikes, that was a vivid reminder of how crappy travel can be.  I was still a little sad to not be going to Vegas with him.  When the schedule came out I had pinpointed this trip as one I really wanted to go on--for the first time in ages--but between terrible flights and all of the travel coming up, it just wasn't happening this time.  I was doubly bummed when we found out my niece and nephew were there with their mom for little getaway!  I would have loved to see them.  And I would have had more time to catch up with them than Craig did.  He did get them tickets for the game, so it was cool they got to see lacrosse while they were there, but they just couldn't match up their schedules to get together.  He had some time to wander around the strip on Sunday and take some cool pictures, but I really wished I could have been there myself.  It's been almost 20 years since we went there two years in a row and I haven't been back since.  So much has changed, too.  Hopefully someday.

 

Instead, I was back at home shuttling Jacob to and from practice first thing on Saturday, and then leaving the boys for the afternoon to go to Craig's cousin's fiancee's bridal shower in Buffalo.  It was a rainy, windy trip, but the shower was very nice.  After I left there, I stopped at a Kohl's nearby because I was on a hunt for a clearance dress I couldn't find in my size at home.  I didn't have any luck there.  I then stopped at the Broadway Market downtown because it was the first day of their Easter season, and I was jonesing for new Polish eggs.  I found a few I couldn't pass up and wandered around the rest of the place, ultimately leaving without any chocolate or other treats.  But it was still nice to be back.  I headed back home, stopping at Pembroke to get some caffeine via a Slurpee and then stopping again in Batavia when I remembered there was a Kohl's there.  I still didn't find the dress I was looking for, but found a different one for only $10!  I think it will work for the wedding in June.  I also found some PJ pants for Carter for next winter.  While I was in the store, I could hear the pouring rain outside, but by the time I checked out it was sunny with blue skies.  The wind was ramping up, though, and by the time I got home the clouds had moved back in.  We did dinner out since it was already getting late.  But it was a good, full day.  

Sunday was pretty uneventful.  I spent most of the day getting things prepped for the trip.  I pulled out spring clothes since the weather looks like it will be mostly in the 60s, did a bunch of laundry, and got my packing list together.  I still have a few things to figure out, but it's getting there.  Thursday night is going to be very stressful as I'm trying to get it all together and figure out where everything fits.  

My bigger stress is starting to be what I'm leaving back home.  It's hard enough leaving Carter (and Craig--but I'm more used to him not being around from all his travel) for this long, but I worry about how they'll function while I'm gone and what I'll come back to.  I handle the vast majority of domestic tasks around here--I'm usually the one who remembers to bring in the mail or take out the garbage, I wash the dishes and load and run the dishwasher, I am wiping down the kitchen constantly, I handle all the cooking.  I'm trying to think of ways to decrease the number of times they'll need to eat out, and ways to document things that may need to take place while I'm gone.  Luckily there's no school so he won't need to regularly pack lunches or be aware of Carter's orchestra/chorus schedule past this Friday.  They're trying to think of fun things to do while we're gone since Carter doesn't get a lot of solo time with Craig, but I worry that they'll be so busy keeping busy that I will come home to piles of dishes and laundry, an empty fridge, and things like that.  It's not that Craig is irresponsible, but it's just not habit for him and I have a feeling all of the stuff he will need to take on will feel like a lot, which means some things will fall through the cracks.  I want to be helpful because he's at such a disadvantage from not having to do a lot of these things on a regular basis, but I have enough stuff on my end that I'm trying to prepare for that I'm not sure how much time or bandwidth I have to go above and beyond for this.  My nerves went up an extra notch when I saw a graphic from a news station in Buffalo predicting 70+ mph winds for Buffalo on Saturday.  It's still early and that was only one model (both of my weather apps are saying 50mph or so), but it's just one more wrinkle I didn't need.  Carter will be there from Friday night to Monday morning staying with my parents while Craig is in Philadelphia for a game, and it concerns me that there could be damaging winds or power outages while he's there.  It's hard enough to be away from him, let alone in a situation where I'd be extra protective if I was there.  Ugh.  I'm just struggling with finding the right balance of what I can leave to Craig to handle and what would be asking too much.  Maybe typing up some cooking instructions or day-by-day suggestions will be my task on the plane when my brain can finally relax a bit...maybe.  

I'm now starting to work through some of the other logistical stuff--where the gluten-free restaurants are, how we're spending our free time and work time, what other hotels we'll be staying at in between tournament hotels, and the like.  There are still a lot of things to work out.

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So, I took a break last night as I was finishing this post, and in that period of time, Jacob had a complete freak-out about staying the whole week.  I think he hadn't been shooting well this week and realized that he won't be able to go to practice at home next week, and he is concerned about when he will be able to practice or even put up some shots, and a switch flipped.  His concerns with being able to eat properly for all these days was weighing on him, too, which only made it worse.  He accused me of not telling him enough about the trip--costs, what we're doing--but I did tell him, repeatedly.  I can't help if he didn't think through things or internalize them.  I asked him point blank before I booked if he was sure he was OK with being in a hotel room a lot while I worked in the mornings, and he said yes.  So what more should I have done there?  He's just back to the same crap I dealt with at the Jersey Shore, before we left for Disney, and after the overbooking debacle in Cleveland, where he doesn't trust me and thinks I screw up travel all the time.  I knew his good mood was probably too good to be true, and here we are.  I was up past midnight working through scenarios to change our travel, but it would be quite expensive and there honestly just isn't enough time or brain space to work through all of the logistics again.  We simply have to make it work.  Luckily Craig contacted his trainer today as he knew he was staying in Branson all week with a bunch of the older players, and he said he definitely wanted Jacob to hang out with them as much as possible.  That should help him get some playing time in.  So hopefully I can drop him off, get some work done, and then pick him back up later.  We still need to figure out what might happen when they're together during meal times, but at least he perked up a little at the prospect of being with them even if he's still super negative about the trip as a whole.  I agree it's not going to be easy--there's a lot we have to figure out on the fly and there are a million moving parts.  We will miss home and our beds and Craig and Carter.  But he needs to learn some resilience, how to have patience, and how to have backup plans and make eating on the road work.  He seems to be convinced that he won't need those skills later despite being hopeful about college basketball, but he more than likely will at some point in his life.  

Anyway, I'm down to the last bits of packing.  I have only a handful more things to add to my bag before I'm down to anything I still need to use tomorrow.  I packed Carter's bag tonight.  Jacob's...is a work in progress.  Things are tense around here and at this point I'm dreading this experience for a bunch of different reasons--Jacob's stress, missing Carter, bad weather--it's a lot. Stay tuned for what is sure to be an eventful few days...

Scatterbrain

One of my biggest fears with COVID floating around (especially in my own house most recently) is that if I catch it, I will have a very long period of brain fog.  When I got exposed last year, in the midst of my month-long headache, brain fog was a huge struggle.  That was just an exposure and not a full-blown infection, so I can only imagine what a higher viral load might do to me.  It's hard enough to have the energy and organization to do things around the house, but it's absolutely devastating to my work.  My job is full of small details and thinking through processes that require a lot of focus--generally like a big puzzle.  When my brain isn't working right, that kind of thought process is almost impossible, which makes my work impossible.  There are so many details I need to get right, and one minor thing could throw off an entire mailing list.  It's scary and has always been a concern of mine since last year's month-long struggle.  But even on a good day, keeping my brain on target is hard...hence why the slightest additional challenge scares me.

Lately I've had this trend while working where my mornings are scattered and unproductive, but my afternoons end up more productive and sometimes even deeply focused--hence the zombie fog I mentioned in my last post.  The morning lack of focus has been concerning to me--is my brain starting to degrade?--but I realized recently that it's not just me.  It's the work I need to do in the morning that's screwing them up.  It's hard to stay focused when I'm bored or annoyed with what I'm doing, and every morning involves one tedious and annoying--but very important--task that I hate.  Beyond that I have a number of annoying tasks that constantly interrupt each other.  My mornings are full of emails...and responses, and responses to my responses.  By the time I do those, run a couple reports, and try to start the most pressing project on my to do list, it's already lunch and it feels like I got nothing of significance done.  Then, if I'm lucky, I have a panic-induced afternoon hyperfocus just to catch up and feel like I accomplished something, which is satisfying but mind-numbing.  But some days nothing works, and add in meetings or kids at home and it's a wonder I get anything done.  Ultimately I'm just doing too many little things at any given moment, and I have to keep each project moving, so even the few minutes I might spend on each daily adds up to a lot.  And good luck trying to focus or think through a tougher project with emails popping up and other tasks forcibly moving themselves up the priority list before I have a chance to forget them.  It's been exhausting and it's been like this for over a year, but I'm just now starting to understand why it's been so hard.  The sheer volume is just too much.  And then when my own personal life adds its own set of tasks and thoughts to the mix, it gets even worse.  My brain is full and has ceased to be able to organize it all.

So you can imagine how the past 10 days has been, dealing with work stuff and then alternating my non-work thoughts between COVID-infected Jacob and the trip we're supposed to be on two weeks from now.  COVID Jacob was a bit needy--refusing to make himself food lest he contaminate the kitchen, leaving a full day's assortment of dishes and bottles in the basement, and complaining about homework, wearing a mask, and feeling generally terrible.  He tested negative on Wednesday night but still felt pretty awful on Thursday, at which point I started wondering if Long COVID might be a concern.  He seemed to feel a bit better over the course of the day, so we did let him go to practice that night, in part to be involved and in part to see if he could do physical activity.  He was tired but seemed to do okay, but the hangover the next day was a bit rough after not just being off the court for a week, but barely moving off the couch.  Saturday was equally iffy.  Hopefully he continues to improve, but it might be slower than expected, leaving some worry in the back of my mind.

But I have to put that aside to try to focus on the trip.  And getting my life ready for the trip.  Those are two very different things, for the record.  I can't hold off for another couple weeks waiting to make sure he's okay, and then have to scramble.  There is way too much that needs to happen in the next two weeks for that.  We officially committed to the 11-day Midwest odyssey in part because I think it will be easier to work a bunch of half days than have four days completely offline for travel.  I might be totally wrong, but I'm erring on the side of adventure and at least I won't have a hundred emails in my inbox multiple times.  I held my breath and booked the flights the other night, confident I had found the best options but still terrified of the entire prospect of this trip.  I reserved a rental car Friday night in a slight panic when I realized the prices the Hertz site had showed me were weekly prices, not the full prices, and I need a lot more than a week.  That blew the budget, but I found one closer to what I was expecting via Alamo...so we'll see.  I still have to figure out non-tournament hotels, but I might do those on the fly as we figure out how much we have to do in each city.  I'm relieved we know our flights (and the times are decent--whew) so I can start planning everything else, but there are still so many thoughts floating around in my head that will be endlessly distracting.

I now have a running list on my phone of random stuff I need to do before we leave and odd things I have to remember to pack--things like a laundry bag (we'll likely have to do a load somewhere along the way), my optical mouse, the GPS (easier than killing my phone battery), and some simple tableware so we can microwave food and eat in the hotel room.  And that's probably just the beginning.  At first I thought that packing for this should be easy compared to Disney, but as this list grows I'm not so sure.  I'm already picturing how frantic I might be the day before we leave when I'm working an event until 3:30 (on top of an event the day before) and need to wrap up my in-office existence with enough time to come home, make dinner, finish packing, and go to bed incredibly early.  

In the meantime, I have so much going on at work, half of it being catch-up projects from my last insanely busy stretch and the other half being prep for our upcoming Day of Giving a little over a week after I get back.  The first weekend back is an off weekend (much to my boss' delight) and the weekend after the Day is only a Massachusetts trip, so that will be manageable.  But the lead-up is going to be a lot, and I'll also be trying to get a mailing out while I'm gone.  At home, I have Easter prep to keep in mind.  Before that I need to wrap up our taxes, notify Jacob's school when he'll be out, and prepare what I can to make sure Craig and Carter are functional and aren't eating out for a week straight.  Oh, and did I mention our kitchen faucet started leaking so that's getting fixed tomorrow?  So guess who spent this weekend cleaning the house (again) and bringing out the spring/Easter decorations, in between Carter's final game (a WIN!) and his year-end celebration taking up our afternoons?  Oh, and I booked our flights for our Wichita weekend, gathered most of our tax documents, and did two loads of laundry.  Not too shabby, but merely a start.

Despite the accomplishments, there's still so much left for me to ruminate over.  I feel like I'm borderline obsessive, second-guessing and overthinking everything.  It just adds to the brain clutter and partially diverts my attention from the rest of my life.  Now that the travel is mostly booked, now I get to fixate on worrying about how it all goes.  Part of me wonders when I got to be such a worry-wart and so afraid of going out into the world.  Ten years ago, despite having a newborn and four-year-old at home, I planned a cross-country trip on 24 hours' notice.  I packed up myself and both kids, dropped them off with my parents, flew to Seattle by myself (on standby even, ha), rented a car, drove south to Tacoma to wander around Chihuly stuff, then back north through Seattle and over the border to Canada where I met up with Craig.  And then after 36 hours of fun, I drove two hours before dawn back to the airport by myself on about four hours of sleep, dropped off the car, and flew cross country again.  This time I have weeks to plan, very little time crunch, a short list of fun activities, and a travel buddy, yet I'm freaking out.  I guess in the meantime I've had a couple canceled trips and lots of COVID interruptions, so my brain is all too aware of what could go wrong.  When I did that crazy trip I was still in newborn baby fog and the desire to get out and have some fun (and not miss a championship) probably far outweighed any fears.  It was all just pure adventure, knowing I probably wouldn't have another chance to do something like that for a long time (I didn't).  At the same time, COVID stole a lot of opportunities to travel and I cursed myself for a couple years for not squeezing in more fun while we had a chance.  I know lacrosse travel got in the way a bit, but we should have figured it out anyway.  The kids will only be young for so long and we'll only have a few chances to take amazing trips together.  Hindsight is 20/20, of course--we never imagined a pandemic getting in the way--and Disney was a good start to get back on track.  These trips will be putting a pretty big dent in the budget again, but I hope Jacob and I make some good memories, and I hope we can still do something as a family.  We need more good memories and I want to make sure Carter gets some fun where we can cram it in.  So I guess I'm surprised that my COVID fears and my COVID FOMO haven't canceled one another out a bit better, but I guess we'll see where this goes.  

Anyway, all that to say, I have a busy 12 days ahead.  And I sure hope my brain clears up enough to make it through.

Three Years

Three years ago today was the last normal day.  Ever, apparently.  

Well, I suppose it wasn't entirely normal.  The whole week leading up to that Friday the 13th had been full of hints that our old normal was about to be shot to smithereens, but up until Friday we were all still at work and school and it seemed like maybe we'd go through a period of difficulty and then get back to normal soon enough.  But after Friday (or maybe my hellish Wegmans trip Thursday night), I think we started to realize that maybe this was going to be more complicated than we thought.  And even then, I think a few months seemed like a lot, almost unthinkable.  Ha.  And now here we are three years later living as much of our new normal as we can.  It seems pretty safe to say that old normal is never coming back.

I've said before that I'm thankful we didn't know then what we know now.  I'm not sure I would have mentally made it through that.  The one-day-at-a-time mentality was nearly all we could do to get through the hardest parts.  Looking at over 1,000 days--and likely, the entire rest of our lives in some way--it would have been even more overwhelming and impossible to fathom.  Some days it's still hard to believe all that we've come through.

A co-worker and I were discussing last week how the pandemic is so mind-bending.  In some ways we feel like life paused, despite lots of proof that it continued to move on.  She said still feels like she's still that fresh out of college kid in many ways, despite years and a job change to prove otherwise.  I can't believe that Carter was in first grade and is now in fourth.  Somehow that's weirder to me than that Jacob was in sixth and would be a freshman this year had he not reclassified--but maybe that's only the case because he's not a freshman.  Then again, the other day his old school accidentally sent us a notification of a re-enrollment fee to be charged to our account (Seriously? After a year?), and seeing 10th grade next to Jacob's name made me do a double-take.  But maybe that's because I had to work so hard to be okay with him being in 8th again, and with so much talk about 9th next year (primarily because of how it relates to basketball), 10th still seems so far away--even if that's in line with most of the classes he'll be taking next year.  Before all this started, Jacob was half a head shorter than me, and now he towers over me by about 10 inches.  Carter went from just a tiny little guy to my big kid ride buddy.  Craig was in his first season of the new Knighthawks, and now he's been there almost four years.  I was firmly in my early 40s with nearly five years under my belt at work, and I'm constantly caught off-guard when I realize how both of those things have progressed....all because it felt like parts of life were standing still for so long.  Some things don't possibly feel that long ago, and other things feel like a lifetime ago.  But then again, I guess it almost was another life--one that was carefree in a way we didn't even realize, without dramatic changes and constant looming stress.  Either way, three years of upheaval sounds pretty significant, and I'm struggling to process it.

I guess one could argue that the most impactful time of the pandemic was really those first three months, and we've progressively moved back toward normal since, albeit with random spikes here and there.  But those first three months were awful.  Kids home from school, no family gatherings, no activities, sparse grocery stores, lots of fear and stress.  Then the George Floyd stuff happened and that just added another layer of surrealism, and the following six months were focused on the presidential race and Trump's much-debated handling of the pandemic response.  Summer eased some things up a bit, but going back to a still-abnormal school year and continuing to work from home prolonged the trauma a bit.  That first Christmas was a tough one, especially because of the first positive test to hit our house, and that was followed by another tough period of jammed hospitals and lots of stress.  Once the vaccines hit, things seemed to get better for a while, but then a new variant arrived, cases spiked, and a lot of things were back in question again.  At least Carter went back to school four days a week that spring and we made progress on his ADHD by summer, but we had another summer free-for-all around our house, and I spent most of that time wanting nothing more than to get them away from screens and back to normal school.  I've lost track of all the stops and starts I had with going back to the office by that point.  We had at least a couple target dates come and go, but it took an entire additional year beyond what was expected to get into any sort of groove on the in-office front, and we already know the hybrid schedule is in place for another 15 months.  That's a good thing, per my last post, but I've always wondered in the back of my mind if knowing what started this work-from-home thing will always bring with it a little subconscious distress.

I think by last spring, once Craig and Jacob had both had COVID and earned some immunity (and I didn't catch it and found out via blood testing I had immunity too), that was when a lot of things started feeling more normal.  We started wearing masks less.  We had more normal sports and school events.  We were less hesitant to travel.  But more than two years of illness and fears and masks and vaccine questions and a frustrating news cycle and just enough oddness had taken its toll.  And even with a lot of things feeling more normal for nearly a whole additional year now, there is still a lot of trauma there.  There are still things I think twice about, things I miss or wish could be different, things that we didn't do when we thought we would, and on top of it all, there's still that underlying concern about when COVID might strike next and ruin our plans.

Speaking of which...Jacob woke up the day after his last game feeling tired.  It had been a late night with a lot of adrenaline, and he had some nagging homework to finish so he was angling for a day off.  But knowing how much school he'll be missing starting in a few weeks, we were hesitant to allow that.  But when he was still feeling cruddy and sounded pretty congested the next day, we kept him home.  He tried to go to school on Friday but due to a series of events while getting ready, he stayed home again.  Saturday he woke up still feeling off, but he was supposed to have basketball practice so we figured we really should test because he'd feel terrible if he got his teammates sick and it would provide a legit excuse to miss it, which I think he sort of needed because of how he was feeling.  It was a bit of a weird test to read while it was processing, but sure enough, through the little tube it became clearer--two lines.  Well, crap.  Here we go again, round 3 for Jacob.  On the bright side, Jacob was technically already on day 3 of quarantine when we found out, which meant less time squirreled away in the basement.  Good thing, since he's been hating it a lot this time.  I hate COVID weeks too, because it means masking up to deliver meals to the basement and feeling bad that I don't want to hang out with the sick one.  There's a lot of guilt and awkwardness and a missing piece around the house.  Jacob thought his congestion was getting better a couple days in, but then the fever hit Saturday so he's been a bit of a lump.  It doesn't look good to go back to school tomorrow on his first eligible day back, and we'll likely have to figure out if he needs to get checked for heart issues before he goes back to basketball.  One small consolation is that he likely won't have to worry as much about getting COVID again during his upcoming season and all this travel, but it still stinks.  Craig was feeling pretty terrible leading up to his roadtrip this weekend as well, but his tests before and after his trip were negative, so hopefully he's okay.  So far so good for Carter and me, too, interestingly, but I'm working from home for at least a couple days and taking Zicam with every hint of a headache or extra congestion.  At least it happened at a time where we have a little lull, but it's definitely something we didn't need.

Anyway, getting back to the lingering trauma, just the other day I was having a bit of a zombie moment in my car on the way home from work. I felt really tired and in a fog, like I never snapped out of my work focus.  I know I had days like that pre-pandemic because of the depth of the data I work with, but I feel like that's happened more recently where work just sucks the life out of me.  Going into the office wasn't so bad for a while--it was good to see people and get a change of scenery.  But over the past few months, it's gotten harder.  People aren't exactly diligent about their in-person days, so some days it feels pointless to be there.  It's an earlier morning for me and an extra lunch to pack, and I always feel like I'm leaving chores at home that I'd love to knock out when I need a screen break.  The people-ing isn't as exhilarating/exhausting as it once was, but a typical work day still causes me a bit more fatigue than I'd like, and being in the office usually makes that worse.  It's not like I worked less over the pandemic, so all I can figure is that all of the extra stress outside of work has just left my brain's tolerance lower.  Days where I'm immersed in my work for hours, like that day in the car, are more exhausting than they used to be.  Home days are usually easier because I can break the tension with some background TV and get a couple home things done in between tasks, but even some of those days have left me in that post-work fog.  I really think that all of the traumas--big and small--that the pandemic brought are taking longer than expected to heal.  We were warned that being "on guard" for so long wasn't healthy, and I guess this is the result.  I've mentioned before that "extra" things like event planning or birthday gift buying have felt harder, and I'm even struggling more with weekly meal planning, which I'd been doing pretty dutifully since our grocery trips were limited to once a week.  I think the expected healing collided a bit with "hitting the wall" of certain routines, and where it feels like things should be better, they're just sort of stuck.  Functionally I'm fine enough, just more tired--mentally and physically--but it means I'm pushing through more than I'd like.  I think half the battle is finding the balance between self-care and pushing yourself to reasonable levels, giving yourself a little grace while still keeping up productivity and not giving in to the urge to just cocoon like we did so much in those early days.  Having things to do and look forward to helps, but like I said before, all of the "extras" bring along some additional burdens, so it takes a little more work to actually get to the good stuff.

The good news is that the kids don't seem to have the same kind of lingering trauma (that we can tell, anyway), and we still managed to cram in some good stuff.  Jacob actually enjoyed most of the pandemic because he liked remote school and appreciated having extra time at home in the summer.  Carter had a harder time, obviously, but aside from struggles with school and Jacob (which might have happened anyway), I don't think it was a particularly awful time for him, either.  He got a taste of summers at home, had lots of screen time (which he loves, even if it's not good for him), and only had to see his least-favorite teacher ever in-person a couple days a week.  Not to mention that it probably got us an ADHD diagnosis sooner and provided Carter and me the opportunity to do some adventures we might not have done otherwise.  So, not all bad.  I look at all the pictures I've taken over these three years, and while there might have been more without the pandemic, what we crammed in despite all the limitations was actually pretty impressive.  Here are some of the good things, as recalled through my photos:

• My ventures into baking of cookies and bagels, and my flower planting--oh, the zinnias!
• Experiencing a quiet Christmas at home (I liked it better when we didn't have to miss anything)
• Lots of basketball and a variety of short-ish trips (one of which led to the discovery of our beloved FLX Fry Bird!)
• Family adventures to Mt. Hope Cemetery, Warner Castle, Watkins Glen, Niagara Falls, Powers Farm Market, a Blue Jays game in Buffalo, Chimney Bluffs, the Jersey Shore, New York State Fair, Cleveland (minus Craig), and best of all Disney
• Carter's and my many adventures to tons of playgrounds and parks, multiple lakeshore areas, Darien Lake, the Rochester Museum and Science Center, Pittsburgh/Kennywood, and the Buffalo Zoo lanterns 
• My solo escapes to the Corning Museum of Glass, the Van Gogh exhibit, Taughannock and Treman state parks, Animal Adventure Park for Jungle Bells, and visits with my godson 

Some of these cool things probably would never have happened without the pandemic, so I guess I can find positives in getting out of our old habits and doing something different for a bit.  I often wonder what state of burnout we'd be in currently if things had continued as they were.  I mean, as hard as the pandemic was and is, there was a period where I realized how oddly refreshing it was to change things up a bit, and also have the expectation that things would continue to evolve for a while.  Unless things are going perfectly, monotony can sometimes be such a burden over time--getting up early, packing the lunches, making the same commute, slogging through work, coming up with dinner, getting everyone in bed...rinse and repeat.  But suddenly we had a break in it.  It didn't come without its pitfalls, but it was different.  The endless slog you pictured suddenly didn't look the same, and in fact was blurrier than ever.  And for a while, it felt like a little bit of a relief...in the most twisted way possible.

But at the end of the day, despite everything, Jacob still got to play a lot of basketball, Carter got some much-needed help that has served him so well, I get to work from home half the time and have a lot more flexibility, and Craig got a much-needed break from his crazy work life for a bit, which probably prolonged his career (although having 20+ games canceled makes hitting his 400th straight game an even longer, harder task to accomplish, especially with COVID still floating around).  I can't say this is the path I would have chosen for us, but three years later at least I can say we're making some decent lemonade out of the lemons we were handed.  There are still some things I will never forgive this pandemic for--loss of a family member and friends struggling with chronic illness among them--but it could be much worse.  I'm still not sure where three years have gone, but I'm thankful we're here to tell the tale--and it's not half bad!

News & Notes, How is it March Edition

So...they lost.  But it was a far more interesting game than we anticipated.  Not that we didn't think there was a chance they'd make it competitive--they've been surprising people for a few weeks now.  But when you're playing a team that only lost once all year and it was to a team ranked even higher than them, you've got your work cut out for you.  We made the drive out past Canandaigua to Marcus Whitman High School Tuesday evening.  We were surprised the gym wasn't a little bigger since this was a neutral site game, and found ourselves a bit confused that three sets of bleachers were mainly the Lyons' fans and we had one set of bleachers for ours that weren't even entirely open.  It was a tight squeeze, and partway through the game there were a lot of people watching from the doorways.  Lyons looked good early, but slowly but surely, one play at a time, we hung in there.  A couple threes here, a couple stops there...and before we knew it, we were winning.  Even more interesting, the guy who took Jacob's starting spot looked terrible--he just couldn't seem to handle the other team defensively--so he got taken out pretty quickly and Jacob went in.  Jacob missed a couple shots initially but did get one three in the first half.  Things were going shockingly well until Andrew, our best player, came down awkwardly on his bad ankle.  He was in a lot of pain and came right off, unlike a lot of other games.  In the end, they taped him up and he went back out, but it was clear he was uncomfortable.  After he got hurt, we didn't score for a while and Lyons started hitting their shots, so they jumped out to a sizable lead.  They ended the half up by seven, and they got up by about 20 at some point in the third quarter.  Things weren't looking good at that point, but we were playing hard and Jacob got three more threes in the second half to close the gap.  In the end we only lost by 11, which was a heck of a lot less than most teams lose to them by.  We scored quite a bit more than our average and held them right around their average points, so we really would have had to do something special to pull it off, and we just weren't quite there.  Could we have pulled it off had Andrew not gotten injured?  Who knows.  It's possible, I guess, but the law of averages pretty much tells me that they would have started making their shots regardless at some point during the game, and they simply make more than us on a regular basis.  But it was good to see Jacob get 12 points and play more, and hopefully that's just a preview of next year when the post-Andrew era officially gets started and Jacob needs to be utilized more.  The team could have a lot of changes between now and then, so we'll see.  Lyons beat the C2 champ Pembroke by three, but lost to a Buffalo team today, so no States for them either.  Crazy.  Could have been fun to see what might have happened, but the sectional title was cool nonetheless.

So, now it's on to travel season.  Once I figure out how we're booking all this travel, anyway.  I am still sort of frozen with panic and need to work through it.  Some families are actually staying the entire week between the Springfield, MO and Oklahoma City trips because they're not that far from one another and the travel is less-than-ideal.  Initially that seemed overwhelming, but now I'm seriously considering it for the following reasons:

• Two less indirect flights with the potential to be screwed up (x2 cost-wise)
• If we do two trips we really only have about three days between them once you consider travel, and who wants to repack that quickly?
• Even if the money for hotels, a rental car, and meals works out to be about the same overall cost, at least we'll spend that money doing fun things and making some memories
• The vacation days could be easier to manage - With two trips I'd have four guaranteed travel days that are completely shot.  With one long trip, I'd have two full travel days and then I could scatter the other vacation days as needed - likely work every morning in the hotel, and then sightsee in the afternoon/evening, and check email again at night, or work a full day when we need a quiet day.  Jacob will have homework to do and hopefully there's a gym and/or a nearby Y for the rest of the time.
  

Admittedly, food might be a challenge for a week since we're usually limited to Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Firehouse, and Jersey Mike's, but we can get food to eat in the room for lunch from a grocery store and hopefully utilize hotel breakfasts.  We could spend time in Branson, which is tourist heaven, stop in Tulsa (home of one of Jacob's favorite basketball schools), and wrap up in Oklahoma City.  There are lots of colleges we can peruse while we're passing through, and of course the big Chihuly exhibit in OKC, as well as the bombing memorial.  I think we could fill our time reasonably well, but I could be wrong.  Jacob seems up for it, but I don't think he understands the reality of all those days in a hotel room.  He isn't exactly into tourist stuff, and despite his Disney preference to hang at the resort, these hotels won't exactly be that.  Carter would be all over the zoos, aquariums, museums, and tourist traps, but how much will I actually be able to convince a teenager to do?  So will the boredom and changed routines be a bigger problem than we expect?

I've really been struggling with this travel for weeks, to the point of lost sleep, instant reflux and even chest tightness when I think about it.  There are so many moving parts, so many things to consider, endless (but all less-than-ideal) travel options, and lots of decisions to still be made once we get there.  I've said that I'd rather make the most of these trips than simply travel all these hours and pay all this money to sit in a gym the entire time.  The games are the reason to go, of course, but I always feel so much better when we get to experience the area and what makes it special.  Gyms 30 minutes away don't look much different than the ones 15 hours away, even if the competition is worth the trip, so what fun is it to go to some random, "domestically-exotic" city (exotic because no one you know ever goes there) and come back with zero stories or photos from the experience?  We might as well get some culture out of these trips, and when I let myself consider the single week-long trip, it was the first time I saw a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel, the first time I thought, maybe we could make this trip fun.  With the two trips it was like, "That's a lot of opportunities to have travel delays and tight timelines.  Will I miss out on doing the fun things I wanted to do on these trips if that happens, or if we have games filling the entire time?"  But with a week, we lose at least one of those inbound travel delay fears and have plenty of time to explore.  It might be worth it for that reason alone, to reduce part of the stress.  But a week felt long for Disney and this is more than that.  I will miss Carter more than life itself because I've never been away from him that long before.  On the bright side, the weather might be reasonably decent in these areas, especially once we get deeper into April, so that could be a nice bonus and make outside activities possible.  But for the most part, all of this still feels exhausting and overwhelming, even if there's also a lot of potential for fun.  

Beyond this trip I will be responsible for one in Massachusetts as well as one in Wichita.  After that it all depends on how far the Knighthawks make it into the playoffs.  I sort of want to do the St. Louis one in May regardless but would rather make that a family affair if we could, since there are a few things to do there (more Chihuly, the Arch, and their FREE zoo) and two drivers would be preferable.  Anyway, I need to start making decisions on these first two weekends because three weeks from right now, we'll be on leg #1.  Yikes.

I'm convinced that basketball season completely skewed my perception of time because all of a sudden it's March!  January usually drags, February is notable for Carter's birthday, but otherwise, it usually seems to take forever to get to this point.  But this year basketball kept us moving through each week, waiting for the next game a few days at a time, and suddenly we went from November to here in a flash.  We're now more than two months into this not-so-new year.  The time change is tonight, and suddenly we'll be back to 7pm sunsets.  The rest of March will likely speed along because of work and all those travel plans I need to make.  Easter will be here (and gone without much acknowledgement because of our travels) after that, warmer weather will follow, and then it'll be the end of school and on to summer.  Geez.  But right now it's March and my brain can't quite wrap itself around that.  Of course, the weather is doing its best to mess with us.  After four inches of snow last week, we got another six yesterday afternoon through overnight.  Of course winter couldn't be bothered to show up until the weather was supposed to be easing off.  I know that easing doesn't usually happen here for a bit even in a good year, but we have had oddly warm weeks in March before.  I'm not advocating for that, but the biggest snow dump of the year probably isn't supposed to happen in March.  It's not supposed to be the snowiest month either, but that's probably happening as well.  At least we haven't been worn down like Buffalo with giant snowstorms earlier in the year, but this timing is pretty darn obnoxious.  

This morning took a bit of a turn, which I'll get into in my next post, but otherwise, Craig left for a roadtrip around midday and Carter had his second-to-last game--another loss--and the rest of the weekend should be pretty quiet for a change.  Next weekend was supposed to be Jacob's only local tournament, as well as Carter's last game and his year-end celebration, plus a home Knighthawks game, but the tournament got postponed so at least we don't have a triple overlap.  Oh, and the weekend after that Craig is in Vegas and I'll have to leave the boys home for a few hours for another family shower.  I really wanted to go on that trip, but with the rest of the travel coming up (and horrible flights), it didn't really make sense this time around.  Sigh.  And after that, onward to the Midwest.  Yup, this month is going to fly.  Yay for killing time until spring, but I am not sure I'm ready for this...

The Big One

This past weekend ended up feeling like a very unorthodox weekend.  It was a full couple days but it was far from a normal one, so the usual weekend routines never happened.  I got to Monday and sort of felt like I missed something! 

We were set to get hit with a storm Friday night into Saturday.  That looked to complicate a number of things, including Jacob's sectional final game, Craig's travel to Canada for a Knighthawks game, my travel to Buffalo for a baby shower, and my parents' travel to Rochester for Jacob's game and coverage for my baby shower absence, since Carter had a game on Saturday.  Well, due to the forecasted storm, Section V rescheduled all of the Friday games to Sunday as of Wednesday, so we knew that took Friday's mess off the table.  I felt a little better about that, but the rest of the weekend felt very precarious and wouldn't really be settled until about an hour after I woke up on Saturday and could determine if both my parents and I could shovel out and safely drive on the Thruway in both directions...and even then there were still a couple things to work through!

The snow started around dinner time on Friday.  Craig left around 7pm to meet his colleagues at the park-and-ride for the trip up to Hamilton, which ended up being longer than usual.  I stayed up until 11pm watching the snow and then headed out to shovel.  I wanted to wait as long as possible to do one full shoveling session to give myself a little bit of a break in the morning.  The forecast had been all over the map, looking as high as 15 inches and as low as three.  There was a lot of question on rain vs. sleet vs. snow, but it seemed like the northern counties (which included us and my parents) would get the worst of it.  I was worried about my ability to shovel given my tennis elbow issues--which are better overall but finicky--and to some degree how much my heart rate seems to elevate with activity and stress these days.  I'm watching it closely, trust me, but a bunch of snow I had to shovel myself (because of the timing and not wanting to somehow injure Jacob right before his big game) did not seem ideal.  When I got outside, there were a couple inches, but it became apparent very quickly that the bottom layer was a heavy slush.  It was so hard to shovel.  It cleaned up nicely, mind you, but you couldn't push it much, so it meant a lot of individual full, heavy shovel-fulls.  It was also really windy and I was keeping an eye out because we had quite the moment of thundersnow earlier in the evening--a quick flash and a loud, long crack of thunder.  I was out about an hour, but only about five minutes in, I noticed it got darker.  At first I thought it was just our temperamental street light, which did go out, but then I realized the entire house was dark, and I definitely left lights on inside and out!  Ugh, power outage.  Just what we didn't need.  Oddly, across the street was still on and fine, but I could tell our side (which we know is on a separate line) was darker.  I cleared the driveway, came back in, retrieved the flashlight, and checked the internet to see if our outage had an estimate or if there was a new snow prediction through the morning.  Thank goodness for cellular data since the WiFi was down.  And thank goodness the outage was when we all just needed to be sleeping, warm in our beds, not needing the refrigerator or anything for another seven hours.  The initial prediction was 2:15am, but it came back on around 4am--I remembered to turn off every light switch in the house except for the one in my room, so it woke me up immediately.  

My alarm went off at 7am, and it was back out to shovel again.  It was clear we had gotten more snow, but it didn't look too crazy.  Sure enough, two more heavy, wet inches, but this time with the extra wet slush mess the plow left behind.  Another hour of shoveling and the driveway was clear.  I confirmed the Thruway looked okay--still a bit snowy but only wet roads, from all I could tell on the cameras--so I got myself ready, left the kids with instructions leading up to my parents' early afternoon arrival, and left for the 11am shower in Buffalo.  The drive was uneventful--a couple slick spots en route to the highway, but fine after that despite a constant light snow.  Just as I got to the shower, my parents were leaving for my house!  The shower was lovely--great to see a bunch of Craig's family and exciting to celebrate his cousin's impending first baby!  One sad moment was seeing Craig's cousin Matt, who's a Buffalo firefighter, because they lost a young firefighter in a big fire this week and it turned out he knew him.  So tragic.  I headed home while getting text updates from Jacob on Carter's basketball game--another loss, boo.  Two games left, so I hope they can pull one out.

My parents decided to stay overnight again in Rochester for Jacob's game.  That was the plan originally when we found out he was playing Friday and they were already coming Saturday, but we weren't sure once the game got moved and the weather was funky.  Originally my dad wanted to sing in church on Sunday, but in the end they decided to stay over, and at our house this time despite less-than-ideal guest sleeping arrangements.  They were probably more optimistic about it than I was, and I tried to give them options, but it was their choice!  We grabbed Jersey Mike's for dinner, Carter and I played some Mario Kart, and we started heading off to bed because Jacob had a game and Craig would be getting home at around 2am.

Despite the late arrival, Craig and Jacob were out the door by 8:45 for training, my parents watched their church online, and I got ready so I could run to Wegmans.  I started to cook pulled pork in the instant pot when I got home, then baked some banana-oat-peanut butter-M&M cookies while I waited.  Just as the pork got done, Craig and Jacob left for the game.  They never eat before anyway, so it was fine.  We very much enjoyed our pork and some last leftovers from last weekend's birthday party, then headed out.

It took a while to find parking and get into the arena, but we got there just in time to see the postgame festivities from the game before us.  It was a very nervewracking half hour or so, just waiting for our game and hoping it was us on the winning side of the next ceremony.  As I sat there I pondered my history in that arena--meeting Craig, starting my career, watching big games and a couple championship games--and now adding watching my son's big game to the mix.  It's pretty amazing when you think about it.  Even funnier was that our wedding DJ, a former Amerks PA announcer who has done work for Section V for nearly 40 years, was sitting at the scorer's table across the way. 

They did the anthem and a ceremonial handshake...

And then it was time to play!  We ended up getting out to a nice little lead.  It was a close game but we were making nice progress.  Jacob missed a couple threes in the first half, unfortunately, but I thought the rest of his play was solid.  I took about the worst action shot ever once Jacob got into the game.  I promise he didn't drop the ball, I just managed to get it at the exact second it bounced on the floor.

Since my skills are clearly lacking, here are a couple more cool pics that his school posted from the game:

We took a nine-point lead into halftime.  It seemed doable but we had lost bigger leads, so it was still scary.  Andrew, our senior captain, took control of the second half, and at one point we had an 18-point lead!  But Avon slowly but surely crawled back.  We've seen that before, and were hoping the coach reacted more quickly.  Jacob did make it back into the game but missed a foul shot late, which was a bummer, but in the end, we won by eight!  Section V C-1 Champs!

Jacob ended up with an assist and a rebound.  Not what he wanted for sure, but seeing them win was a great moment.

Getting the trophy

Jacob getting his goodie bag 

There were a number of awards and plaques presented, and imagine our surprise when Jacob was named the winner of the sportsmanship award!  It's essentially used as a sixth man award, and it was a nice gesture that he received that considering the season he'd had.  He's still frustrated that he lost his spot as a starter, but Jacob definitely contributed to this team and he should be proud.

The presentation from behind

How it looked from the front, as posted by the school

It was a big honor for an 8th grader to get that, and we were so thrilled for him and very proud.  If that wasn't cool enough, Andrew got the MVP award, which was a great way to end his sectional career.  It felt so appropriate and I know it made his parents happy as well.  He's not moving on to college--he can work for his dad--so this really was his big moment.  Still not his last game, as we had to move on to a state regional game now, but probably his last great moment as the next one is going to be...challenging at best.

Andrew with a net on his neck (they gave each team one rather than have them cut down) and getting his MVP award

Postgame was a little awkward as families couldn't get on the floor for any team pictures (although Craig did since he had an arena pass) but the one social media group that heavily covers Rochester high school sports sort of took over that experience.  In the end we got shooed out of the arena and had to meet them out on the street where the professional players usually exit.  

The second we ran into Jacob, he said something about wanting to go work out.  At first I thought maybe he was just bummed about missing shots, but it became clear there was a lot more going on, and his experience was nothing like the jubilant teammates he left behind.  Being a parent in a situation like this felt really, really hard.  You're expecting a happy kid and yet you have one that isn't enjoying the experience at all.  On one hand we get it, on the other we were pleading with him to try to put his issues aside for a few minutes and appreciate the moment.  He may never get to this point again.  The team is losing its best player and there's a chance another player or two might leave, but there aren't really a lot of talented players waiting to take their spots.  To be a sectional champion as an 8th grader, let alone to win an award in the process, is something special.  But he doesn't like how the win sort of validates his coach--who, to be clear, is not very good and has mishandled a lot this season--and leaves him out of the mix a bit.  It's not so much that he wants the glory (although he would probably enjoy it) but more that it frustrates him to see other people who may be less deserving--be it due to skill, effort, or the coach's misconceptions--succeed.  He knows he works harder than anyone else on the team, and he feels slighted that the coach can't see that.  He does everything that is asked of him and demonstrates stronger play than other people, but the coach continues to believe he can't play defense or takes him out after a single mistake, even though his teammates can make countless ones and stay in the game.  It seems everyone else except the coach sees his potential (and his current skill), so it's hard to understand why he continues to not play much.  I think sometimes the coach writes him off as an 8th grader, that he has time to develop and doesn't need to push it, but Jacob wants more.  He wants to be challenged, he wants the chance to succeed, and he actually understands the game better than maybe anyone else.  He just wants some respect and this coach doesn't seem willing to give it to him.  So to see the success, to see the bad habits and decisions still allow for a sectional title, I think he finds it all a little disappointing.  He knows he has bigger fish to fry this spring, so he's mostly just ready to move on, but that's not happening just yet.  They play again tonight in the state regional play down.  The odds of them winning are slim to none because the team they're playing averages about 20 more points per game and only lost once this year, to one of the few teams ranked ahead of them in the state.  Jacob is hoping that it's enough of a blowout that he will get to play, and maybe his three-pointers will be called upon to make it a closer game.  I think he's also hoping his coach's shortcomings will be exposed, because he thinks it's one of the only ways they'll actually get better.  I honestly hope that things do work out to give Jacob a chance to show what he can do, because more than likely they will need to use him next year if they want to have much offense.  Might as well start laying that groundwork now to get the coach thinking about it in the offseason.  

 

Either way, it's hard to believe this first season is almost over, but what a ride it was.  Lots of ups and downs, and sure, we wish things would have gone a bit more smoothly along the way.  But I hope someday Jacob realizes how special this was, and I hope he gets another chance to experience it, but gets to be a bigger part of it.  But first things first, one more game tonight.  It should be a tough game, but we'll see. At least we know that win or lose, Jacob has something good waiting for him on the other side.

The Good (and Great) Stuff

This past long (for me) weekend was a good one.  I didn't really get to take time off with the kids for break week because I have so much going on at work and need to conserve my vacation for the spring basketball travels, but it had been quite a week and I didn't have any pressing projects.  Add in Carter's upcoming birthday party, and I decided it was wise to take Friday off while I could. But before that...

Thursday we had a bit of an ice storm.  It started later Thursday--from snow to sleet to freezing rain, and while we probably only had an inch or so of snow, we ended up with a coating of ice on top of it.  It was just enough to make the snow hold for half a second before it collapsed under the weight of your foot, and it left a glaze on everything.  At first when I woke up I didn't see the ice on anything, but then I noticed some on the evergreens by our kitchen window, and at lunch I wandered outside to check the yard.  The thin glaze was hard to see, but everything in the yard was frozen stiff, yet you could barely tell until you touched it.

Those tiny icicles were about the biggest I saw hanging off of anything

Barely there, but frozen stiff!

My hydrangeas were really cool and make it clear just how imperceptible the ice could be.

I spent most of the day trying to clean the house and mentally working through party stuff.  But it was a good day to get in a little mental break after a busy work week where working from home was lacking a bit of extra focus because the kids were always in the background.  Friday morning Jacob had training, and since I had to pick him up, I figured I'd stop at a Kohl's on the way--not my usual one--because they had 30% off clearance.  I had gone to our store last weekend and found one top for me and a couple shirts for Carter in the next size up that he can use for church next year, so I was curious to see what the other store had.  I only had about 45 minutes to shop and only managed to find one thing--a $4 t-shirt in Jacob's school colors!  It was a red shirt with black flecks, which was exactly what I needed to put under the school logo jacket the boys got me for Christmas, in case we end up in a hot gym.  I ended up wearing it that night!  

Jacob was training at a Catholic school here in town, and while I waited for him I noticed that the ice storm-ravaged trees on an island in the middle of the driveway looked beautiful in the sun.  That part of Rochester got hit quite a bit worse than us.  The ice was clearly visible on everything and someone I know who lives a couple minutes away had a ton of tree damage in her neighborhood.  That is definitely the dark side of ice storms, but how pretty is this?

As I said, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to clean and organize before the party on Sunday.  I dusted the main floor and parts of the basement, and tried to clean up parts of the kitchen, the dining room table, and any other piles around the house.  It's an endless task, I think, but it's always nice when things are neat.  I know I feel so much more relaxed when it's like that, but keeping up with it is SO hard sometimes.

 

Friday night was Jacob's next sectional game.  They were playing a team ranked one spot higher, but they were confident they could beat them.  I figured it was much like a lot of other games this year--work as a team and you're good, turn it into hero ball and it's over.  Jacob's godmother (and my cousin) Lori, as well as my parents, had come to the previous first-round game at home, which was an easy win.  Jacob had five points and everyone scored, which was a lot of fun.  Lori was particularly amused how crazy the crowd went when the exchange student from Hong Kong, who's always a very good sport despite being a benchwarmer 99% of the time, came on the floor, and even more so when he scored!  Lori and her husband came to the game on Friday as well.  My parents wanted to come, but with the party on Sunday, they thought it would be a bit much.  The game itself was one of the most frustrating, awful games I have seen them play.  It was sloppy--lots of travels, lots of bobbled passes, lots of foul trouble--but luckily the other team was doing a lot of the same.  The game was basically deadlocked the whole way through--one team would go up a few points, the other would come back and tie it.  That team might take a small lead only to lose it a couple minutes later.  Jacob only played a few minutes of the first half, and had apparently been slotted behind a 9th grader who just got called up to Varsity about 2/3 of the way through the season when we had an injury.  He was a good player on JV and is really tall, and he can definitely make a couple threes, but his shooting percentage is nowhere near Jacob's, and he isn't super strong on defense either.  Oddly, that's always been the reason Jacob's coach won't play him--that his D isn't strong enough--but now he was throwing this kid out there ahead of Jacob.  O-kay.

 

One cool thing about the game was that the one senior, the best player on the team, finally hit 1,000 career points early in the third quarter.  It had been a marathon to get him there, with the team feeding him the ball more than usual against lesser competition at the end of the season, just to pad his point totals.  He was close, and he got what he needed!  It was pretty cool to see, and we're happy that Jacob's current favorite NBA 2K Xbox buddy (haha) got that honor before graduating.

 

Anyway, by about halfway through the second half we were wondering what the plan was.  We couldn't hold a lead and there was just no spark.  We were so perplexed how he wasn't coming in, especially because most of our players had sat the bench over parts of the game due to foul trouble.  Yet he still hadn't been in in the second half.  I knew that if he went in, he could provide just the spark they needed to grab the momentum, but nope.  Finally, about halfway through the fourth quarter, he got subbed in.  We were down a handful of points and apparently the two assistant coaches were losing their crap a little with the head coach, telling him he needed to put Jacob in.  One teammate got a three to get us within one.  The next time down the floor, Jacob got a three to put us up by two.  And shortly after, he hit another one!  That put us up by four, and honestly, we never looked back after that.  I was freaking out by that point, nearly in tears, thrilled that he had scored, annoyed that the coach didn't do it sooner, and just so darn proud of him.  We won by seven!  I can't even express how amazing it was to see him come in and do that.  He says he's a clutch shooter, and after at least three of those this season (even if we ultimately didn't win a couple), I guess he's right.  

After the game we went about 10 minutes further down the road to another game so Jacob could see a couple buddies of his play.  Craig and Jacob went in first (it's expensive to get in to these games so we figured if they were still taking money Carter and I would just stay in the van), but in the end they only saw the last few minutes.  Tough loss for Jacob's friends, unfortunately.  We did a quick dinner out amidst a lake effect snowglobe-like snowstorm (luckily roads were OK since we were all the way across town), and then headed home to bask in the joy of the night.  But the fun wasn't over!

Craig noticed a TV station at the game getting footage.  I guess the same guy moved on to the other game after our game, too. We actually weren't sure which station it was, so we kept an eye on all of the 11pm broadcasts.  I happened to see Jacob's game in a teaser for the one station, so we immediately turned over to that one.  We watched all of the Class AA and A games, and then they switched to girls, so we weren't sure if they just used the footage for the teaser, or what.  But sure enough, after the girls (who were, admittedly, in higher classes) they went back to lower class boys games.  And this is what we saw:

Are you kidding me?!  Holy cow.  How awesome is that?  Jacob, of course, was pretty unphased, but it was amazing to see him get some recognition.  Of course, his coach is insisting we were already up when he got his first three (which the news report refutes), and we don't think anything will really change despite his heroics, but I hope with each little moment, his coach eventually starts putting the pieces together and realizes what he can bring to the team.  

As a side note, I realized in the course of this whole thing that our rewarding parenting moments have felt a bit few and far between.  Obviously it's amazing to see your kid learn and succeed, but I feel like so many of our moments were tinged with difficulty and battles and exceptions.  The kids do well in school, but have behavior challenges.  Jacob does well in basketball but the coach doesn't recognize it.  Carter has amazing moments discovering roller coasters, but then we have a bad moment that ruins the fun.  It just feels hard to have a pure, rewarding moment of seeing your kid at their best, with no strings attached or things to bring it down.  Maybe everyone's moments are like that and we just don't talk about it, but for us parenting has often felt like an uphill battle, and instead of just enjoying the ride, when we finally hit a great moment, sometimes it's like, "Well, geez, thank goodness we got that moment--I think we all needed it after the struggle it was to get here!"  And while basketball has hardly been easy this season, watching that pure moment of our child doing what he does best at a really important time was just above and beyond amazing, to the point that none of the other stuff really mattered.  I just had no words to describe the pride and joy I had watching him succeed and then getting this extra recognition on top of it.  It was so cool.

 

Saturday ended up being a bit of a slow day, the kind where meals were a couple hours late and no one was dressed until after noon.  When I got up in the morning I made it my mission to clean the bathtub, as it was long overdue and I'd been putting it off.  I was finally ready (and figured my sore tennis elbow arms were okay to withstand it), so I dove in.  It took a half hour of scrubbing, and for whatever reason, that exhausted me for a few hours.  I spent a lot of time for the rest of the day trying to work up the energy to do other things--I had cakes to bake, grocery shopping to do, and a house to vacuum.  I baked two boxes of cake mix, figured out my Wegmans list and shopped, made the boys and me dinner while we listened to Craig's game--which they won late in overtime, in the second-longest regular season game ever--and then finished up cleaning just before getting Carter to bed.  Craig got home around midnight but the three of us were up late watching a movie as he wound down from an exciting night of his own.  

On Sunday I tried to get up relatively early to get started on party prep.  We moved the party back a little bit due to Jacob's training and Craig's parents' schedule, so I had until 2pm to get everything ready.  The timing meant that eating a late lunch right away wasn't going to work, so I sent Craig on a Wegmans run while Jacob was at training to get some additional snacks, including the fixings for taco dip.  Yum!  I was also doing my favorite broccoli casserole and salad, then we were ordering pizza and boneless wings.  So, at least the food was easy.  The cake--not so much.

I poked around on Pinterest and found some roller coaster cakes, so I decided that had to be our theme.  I saw a few cool ones that used halves of round cakes to make hills, and I thought that would be neat and different.  But I was confused on how to structure it.  Did I need a base, or should I just slap them down on some foil-covered cardboard?  I ended up baking the two 9-inch round yellow cakes and baking a cookie sheet and a 7-inch round of chocolate.  I figured the cookie sheet could be my base and the rounds would give me a variety of hill options.  

When I started building it Sunday morning, I realized my plan to do a full U-shaped track wasn't going to work.  I wouldn't have enough frosting, and all of the lattice work on the coaster supports would be exhausting and very hard to do on the inside once all the sides were up.  I got three hills up, and the more I looked at it, the more I liked the idea of just angling the cake and keeping only the corner track I had just done.  Slowly it came into focus and I liked what I was seeing.  Where I had to cut the edges of the circles to seamlessly butt them up against one another, I used the cuttings for perfectly shaped roller coaster cars.  Decorating those took a little finessing because they were tiny and I didn't want to ruin the track under it.  The cake as a whole took some skewers and toothpicks for support, but in the end I was happy with the outcome--right down to the gumball heads on the coaster riders.

In a perfect world I would have put the coaster on the first hill, but that one seemed to be tipping a bit and I didn't want to make it top heavy.  I also would have decorated the cars better, but I was really afraid of messing up by that point so I left them simple and white.  The brown around the edges got a little messy and soft by the time I was done piping it (necessitating some emergency fixes), and the white icing was a little stubborn.  But in the end, I liked the result, and so did Carter.  It was a feat of engineering, but it was different and fun.  My cakes are very much homemade quality, which can feel inferior when you have friends who do amazing cakes or use amazing bakeries, but I love that the cakes are unique to my kids and are perfectly imperfect in their own way.  They're made with love and that's what matters most, and if they inspire someone by providing an attainable example for them to do something similar for their kids, even better.

I had an entire cake left over that I didn't use for the hills, so I frosted it and used the sprinkles that came with the blue frosting to decorate it in case we needed more yellow cake.  

I finished before anyone got here, which almost never happens, and then started working on the snack foods.  Once the grandparents arrived, all at the same time, Carter entertained them for a bit with his viola.  He is still definitely a work in progress, but he did a good job showing them his skills.  

I grabbed a quick picture of him in the kitchen during the party because I was afraid the cake would tip when I moved it out to the dining room!

It was a pretty low-key party--good food and pleasant conversation.  Carter just had cards to open, but he was thrilled nonetheless.  After food, it was on to the cake!  One more picture...but oh, that forced smile!

Pretty sure this was after Grandpa tried to make him laugh.  A little better!

With the candles lit all along the track...looked cool but a lot of real estate to cover with one blow!

We wrapped up the party with a weird old movie that Craig found that featured a bunch of 70s actors, including Peter Falk of Columbo fame (which is a thing in Craig's family), and Carter was totally into it trying to solve the mystery!  My parents took off shortly before the end to go check into a hotel.  They decided they wanted to stay over for Jacob's game on Monday, but felt more comfortable with a good bed and their own space.  Craig's parents left right around the same time as Craig and Jacob left for a later high school practice.  I finished up cleanup and that was about it for the day--I was beat!

Jacob's game Monday was against the #1 seed in their class.  This was the team they barely lost to early in the season when Jacob got five threes, then ended up beating a month ago in their own new gym--their first regular season loss since 2021!  That was a crazy game--we were up big, lost the lead, and came back to win it late--and I was sure they would be looking to avenge that loss.  The other team came out strong and definitely did not miss the shots they did in the last game that enabled us to get a big lead in the first half.  We still managed to keep it close, though, and Jacob was the first sub for the first time in a while and got two threes in the first quarter to keep us in the game.  It was a tough battle throughout, once again with lead changes back and forth.  As the game drew to a close, we took a late three-point lead.  But with only a few seconds left, the other team got a three to tie it.  Ugh.  Jacob only played a little bit in those last few seconds in case we had a three opportunity, but unfortunately it didn't pan out.  But, overtime was clutch and we put up some really good defensive play and won by 10!  It was really amazing to see them come back and win to knock off the top seed.  So now we're on to play at the Blue Cross Arena!  It was supposed to be on Friday, but weather was looking iffy so it got postponed to Sunday.  But that was a goal of Jacob's to play there, and against all odds, it's happening!  Now we just need to hope his coach plays him!

So, anyway, it was a pretty good few days around these parts.  Always nice to see your kids happy--and this was a good weekend for that!