(no subject)

I've discovered that baseball can suddenly take on life and death importance when one's son is able to actually hit the ball.

Like I've said many times, sometimes I'm not too hot at the 'show interest in child's interest' thing, and baseball is simply one of the hardest to get around. I love my son, but a natural athlete he is not, and I'll be honest, I did sports in high school, but that was from a lack of anything else to *do*. He gets bored at lightning speed when there's nothing to do, and lets' face it, baseball is a lot of upright tanning with an occasional ball making an appearance. At least with kids. Child usually entertains himself cloud watching, making dust-castles, and tossing his hat in the air to see how far it will go. I don't blame him. Right field is *boring*. Left field is where the money is. Or the balls go, anyway, on the off-chance that one actually gets *hit*.

Anyway, one of the more interesting side-effects of me having no clue what on earth his teacher was doing to him in K has ended Child with a preference for writing with his right hand, a willingness to color or draw with either hand, and a complete inability to hit or throw from the right, only left. When I say inability, the first time I saw him try, I thought he was having some kind of muscle spasms. Pretty creepy stuff. My son's coach was the first to reallly *realize* what the problem was, switched his side, and got down to the business of giving him a left model for hitting and throwing.

It's not as easy as you think--or at least, as I would have thought, though I assume that lefties know this already. Kids model on their peers or those around them for everything. No one else on the team is a leftie. No one in the family is a leftie, either. And Brother in Law tried to help, but it's like Child trying to hit from the right. It looks not a little worrying. But bless him, he worked at it, and so did Child, and he's making progress, though it comes in weird forms.

Anyway, I'm a relatively calm sort of stadium parent. I bought nachos for my niece and stepniece, sat all of us down with my mother, and proceeded to look really encouraging and yell pithy phrases when appropriate. I have always had a sort of general feeling of superiority to those parents who engage in traumatizing fits and screams of approbation for their children and hate for the referees who call the little darlings down.

Color me surpised at my reaction to seeing my son, who, let me repeat, has never, as far as I know, been able to hit a ball with any accuracy, knock one out. Well, I exaggerate. It got about ten feet, and even he looked bemused by the situation, like he had no idea how it was that the bat managed such a feat.

Enter Jenn.

"RUN! [CHILD]! MOVE IT! FIRST BASE! GO DO IT GO GO GO GO!" And so on. He's not exactly the Flash when it comes to speed, prefering to take life at a more sedentary pace, so I had a lot of improv time.

This was when I realized was standing, dripping nacho cheese, and my family looking at me with shock. Hey, I was a cheerleader, people. I was drama girl in high school and a little of college. I can project my voice any damn place it needs to go, and at great volume, too. They're just lucky I didn't start yelling cheers out, because trust me, it's not like my mind wasn't running through them all.

So. My throat hurts. But there's more.

Farther up, Child manages to get to third base. By this time, I'm just yelling in general, for no reason I can remember except it felt good. And well, Child. Finally, a hit came, and Child runs for the plate, and God may know what I was screaming, but i do not. He comes to a mostly-stop--think a rolling yield--about two feet away, drops down on one leg, and modifies his way into a pretty credible slide around the base, C shaped, without ever actually touching it. Eventually, one flailing foot hit dead on. Safe. Another child slides soon after, and they both regard each other with satisfaction.

I didn't once think about the nightmare of spray and wash, to my credit.

Anyway, that was my day, after interviewing and certifying two clients for foodstamps. Life is sweet. And baseball rocks.

Recs

bigboobedcanuck, my biggest LJ crush in the universe, posted Acquiesce, a beautiful post-4.9 right-after-the-end scene, a really *good* look at Justin and his head in the moments after the show ended. This girl could keep my rec page growing all by herself at this rate.

*loves her*

update on slumberparty04

Okay, svmadelyn, in conjunction with the brilliantly helpful and wonderful lyra_sena and yours truly, have narrowed down our options on hotels to the Pan American. It has running water, electricity, and possibly, just *possibly*, indoor bathrooms.

*g* It also has shuttles to/from LaGuardia and JFK, which is of the coolness, since that will make life easier. lyra_sena and svmadelyn are currently in touch with the hotel to see if any group rates can be gained adn so forth.

Anyway, svmadelyn posts about it here for thoughts and comments, including estimates per person charge per night on the hotel. We'd like everyone who is planning to go to drop a comment so we can get a feel for everyone's opinions. Considering how the rates seem to be rising--I've done the numbers on this one several times, and I can almost be certain it's gone up at least ten dollars since the last time--if this is acceptable to all, we're going to book here and get one thing crossed off our list and enable everyone to budget properly. Right now we're showing fifteen definites and two probably nots. It's not too late to sign up, so if you want to go, just drop in and put your name down. Then Madelyn and I can indulge ourselves in Activity Planning Anal Retentiveness.

Or you know, start breathing again regularly and not panic every time we see a rate jump. *grins*

Anyway, go at it. If you can read this message, you are definitely invited to come and play with us.