In case anyone is of a mind to put out the search party to try to find me because they’ve not seen me online, I can assure you that I am still alive and well and I do plan on savouring each and every one of the good wishes that were blowing up the phone all day long! Please rest assured that I appreciate them more than you’ll know and I promise I will get to them as quickly as I can but a huge photo cull and another spinning of tunes as well as the usual mad dashing hither and fro are going to make that a bit of a challenge in the short term… 🙂
But yes…I’m ending this day dead dog exhausted and that’s saying something when there are two visiting Labradoodles in this house who are completely sacked out in the living room..but thankfully still alive.
I survived yet another birthday…mostly intact! 🙂
And yes, in most of the ways that count…I do feel the same as I did the day before.
This one was always destined to be a very different day than usual because by some strange coincidence, one of Alex’s favourite field trips of the year just happened to fall on my birthday…the “Field of Dreams” softball games held at the baseball fields near Wake Forest’s “The Factory” (yes, the same place I’d left mere hours earlier after spinning some tunes for the beer league!).
Truth be told, it’s one of my favourite outings as well and not just because my ego gets a huge boost when Coach Buzek has a chance to look over the pictures from the camera (of which I’m starting at 1,190 and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s over a thousand survivors once the culling is complete in Lightroom!).
If you’ve never been to one of these, it’s a treat that will absolutely restore your soul and faith in the goodness that humanity is capable of.
Kids of various degrees of special needs and abilities get to “compete” for their school against another high school team from Wake County taking turns in the field and batting.
The fact that these kids get to experience this at all is a huge win…it’s not about the score, it’s about being there in the moment and just embracing the joy that these kids get playing a game in their own special way.
That alone is worth making the trip to Wake Forest.
But then there’s the students from the regular softball and baseball teams as well as the PEPI students (a class that was a particular cause célèbre for Katie that she was fiercely protective of to ensure it’s continuation in spite of constant budget pressure) are there to help their students play the game and in so doing learn more than a little about themselves and how character matters.
Then there are the sub-plots during the game:
- One of the young ladies from the Millbrook team recognised one of Enloe’s players from a special camp they’d apparently attended together. She was *ALL* over the moon that she had found a familiar face (and one who has a very similar reputation as a ladies man as a certain Alex does!) and the happy bonus was when the Wake Forest High cougar mascot came to cheer her on as well.
- There were more than a few celebration dances during the game that were more than a little impressive. I’m sure the keepers from those performances are probably going to up the surviving photo count!
- The player’s performances ranged from the “I’m going to hit this ball well out of the outfield” to the glorious sublime and chill and just about everything in between.
It’s not major league or AAA-level baseball.
It’s something much better and if you can somehow manage to witness the courage of the players and the joy of their companions on the field and somehow remain unmoved if not fundamentally changed forever in your heart, then you’re truly much more of a hard-ass of a human being than I’ve ever imagined I could ever be.
Katie had managed to catch the tail end of the game and I know Coach Buzek was very happy to see her PEPI programme’s staunchest defender through the years.
But as you can imagine, she did have another nefarious plan in mind having made that long trek to Wake Forest (but in true college student who had just finished her toughest semester yet (with flying colours!) fashion…she wasn’t all that keen on the early morning wake-up call Alex and I would have to make sure he was there on time!).
At least I didn’t hear the phrase “sucks to suck”! 🙂
She absolutely insisted that I was going to have lunch and that I was going to pick the venue.
I was thinking the Olive Garden on Capital Blvd seemed a nice idea.
Now, in a manner of confession, I was rather surprised to get a text message from her saying she’d arrived at Olive Garden when I’m still heading south on Capital and I’ve not even arrived…especially considering that she left The Factory after me and didn’t make the stoplight for the left turn onto US-1 from Main Street.
And I’m pretty darned sure that her Prius’ hybrid components don’t include a *WARP DRIVE* or *JUMP ENGINES*!
That was when I found out something that I didn’t know…there are actually two Olive Gardens on Capital Blvd. The one that we’d always gone to across from Capital Ford in Raleigh and apparently one in Wake Forest that I didn’t know existed!
Oooops.
Once she caught up to us, we had a lovely lunch with DeeDee absolutely making the meal special with her service and especially her sense of humour.
OK…this is where I’m going to utterly betray my age. Who else but those of the more ancient amongst us would remember singing this variation to the tune of “On Top Of Old Smoky” during lunch in the school cafeteria until the teachers started threatening detention (and then sometimes even after that!):
On top of spaghetti
“On Top Of Spaghetti” (1963) — Tom Glazer
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.
One of the things we’ve always loved about Olive Garden is those handy portable cheese graters…and if we’re totally honest, giving the person unfortunate enough to get our table the workout of their life. Often multiple times during a sitting…
DeeDee was totally down with that idea when she let fly with the cheese grater upon the huge salad bowl and a bowl of soup. Whilst her targets did get the vast majority of the cheese…there was enough sprinkled on the table to make you wonder if it truly had snowed parmesan right in front of us!
You had to be there to truly appreciate it.
It was also at this point that I got the gift that truly means the most to me on this day.
Yes, I do appreciate what gifts come my way very much even though I’m well past the point of needing any more stuff.
But hearing the kids tell me their stories of what they’ve done and just being there to enjoy the ever-increasingly brief moments of their presence is honestly the best gift they can give me and it’s often the cheapest one of all.
Katie had some stories to tell of her cruise and surviving her semester and the internship this summer where she’ll be shadowing a defence attorney with a name Canadians would absolutely adore and a love of dogs (and especially his puppy even if he is a bit of a biter going through teething!).
She’s naturally a prosecutor at heart and by temperament but it’ll be interesting seeing how she finds being on the other side of the table.
One of the reasons why I never entered the legal profession despite having read the law and relevant administrative code and case law cover to cover was that Florida at the time had a policy of having potential prosecutors serve as public defenders so that they’d be exposed to all of the dirty tricks and theoretically be less prone to employing them once they’d become a DA.
I can’t tell you how successful that policy was in practice…it sounds like a wonderful idea but I’m of the mind that a better one would be punishing prosecutorial misconduct much more swiftly and thoroughly than tends to happen in practice and to give the public defender’s office a comparable budget and staff to the one the prosecutors enjoy so that they have a much better chance of actually achieving equal justice under the law.
Anywho, it was a lovely lunch and we’d almost made it to the point where we were going to split up for a bit so I could make a grocery run and offload the pictures so that Lightroom could upload them to the cloud before coming back together in Clayton so I could retrieve a couple of Labradoodles who were going to do the “refugees from our homeland” bit and stay here for a few days.
There was a danger of picking Olive Garden that I realised after the fact and it looked like I’d successfully managed to stealthily make it through lunch without the odometer ticking over on this day having been detected.
You might have noticed through the years that I’m not exactly the luckiest person on the planet despite having some significant amount of Irish in me which was made patently clear when the wait staff gathered at the table behind me and started singing a particular song and that was when I knew my fate was absolutely sealed.
Darn it. Darn it to heck! 😉
Yep, not a minute or so after that rendition, both Katie and Alex ratted me out to DeeDee who made it exceptionally clear who she was going to side with no matter how much I wished to save them the hassle and effort of singing yet again.
Second verse, same as the first!
DeeDee was such a sweetheart though to offer up a free dessert but sadly the cheese blizzard had pretty much brought me right up against the limits of my lactose intolerance.
Not that it stopped Katie from making it darned clear that she didn’t really care what the consequences of going that one step over the line would be for me (though she did express sympathies for the poor receptacle that would bear the brunt of such offences against lactose intolerance!) and even though the chocolate monstrosity they’d originally picked to share wasn’t available, the cheesecake most certainly was and yes, that bite was delicious.
As was the second one that I’d never admit to her after she’d left the table for a few minutes… 😉
Fast forward a couple of hours and two four-legged troublemakers are now aboard the Traverse and are mercilessly abusing both Alex and I with claws and tongues before they finally settle down enough for us to safely make our way back to the house for a bit of rest.
Oh, I’m sorry…the Labradoodles of Terror had other ideas including zoomies and insisting on a lack of understanding of how personal space works.
That was when the third rendition but certainly the most unique variation of a particular song I’ve heard in years came over the speaker of my phone from people so dear to my heart that calling them “friends” would be insulting…they are familia to me as much as those born to it.
The doodles and their spazz session continued during the phone call and well after we rang up and lasted until I finally got up so I could do up some andouille sausage and onions along with some rice for both of the boys as Nick had finally made it home from his day of turning wrenches.
My culinary efforts (that went over very well!) had two furry supervisors who had to wait no matter what they smelled and then it was a matter of showering and then sending Alex to bed for school the next morning and a bit more time just trying to recover from a mad day that had started way earlier than one truly wished to admit to or experience.
But it was a very good day, even if it feels like the day before but with a very special twist. 🙂