Game Day!

Bud loves baseball.  My darling husband loves baseball.  The laborador retriever loves baseball.  I, on the other hand...well, I love the Boston Red Sox when they are doing well (and end up doing well...which, for most of their history, is generally not the case).   I played T-ball for one season and that was about all of my baseball experience.  I switched to more exciting (to me) activities like horse-back riding and tennis.

Last summer, my darling husband staked out a part of one of the horse pastures for the Chobani baseball field (Chobani, the Greek yogurt brand, is headquartered the next town over).  The boys would go out there and play every evening, and they convinced me that it would be fun.  Every so often I would join them.  They stuck me in the "field" which encompassed playing first base, second base, and the outfield concurrently.  I got pretty good at fielding, and my arm isn't half bad either.  The problem was, I didn't have my own glove.  I would use Bud's when he was batting (which was most of the time), and then I would switch to my husband's left handed glove (which means I wear it on my right hand!?) when he was batting (which meant I got pretty good at throwing with my left hand as well).  For my birthday this year, I asked for a baseball mitt from Bud, and he got me one.  I'm actually quite excited about it!

My darling husband loves, loves, LOVES Little League Opening Day (he's coached Bud's team for the past five years).  He loves the pictures, the parade, the mayhem!  Bud is of course a big fan as well.  I, on the other hand, get a little overwhelmed with 400 elementary school kids swarming around in complete chaos!  This is why I taught middle school.  You can reason with middle schoolers.   This is also why I continually bow down and kiss the feet of any elementary school teacher!  I try to avoid all the hoopla and just show up for the actual game to cheer Bud on.

This year, however, my darling husband was called away from his Opening Day Duties rather suddenly.  I had to pinch-hit so to speak.  I was genuinely happy to help out although my mind set was "it's only a few hours...you can do anything for a few hours".  So I jumped right into the fray and the chaos.  Except... there wasn't any fray or chaos.  I had built up Opening Day in my mind to be this overly dramatic, complicated whirlwind.  But, careful planning had paid off and everything ran  smoothly and was very enjoyable.  The field was decked out with the traditional balloons and bunting.  All the teams assembled on the in-field and the Masters of Ceremonies said a few words and thanked the sponsors.  The jazz quartet from the high school played the National Anthem.  Then one of the players threw out the first pitch to open up the season.  I was assisting with concessions, and with the help of four or five teenagers and a Little League Board member we were able to take care of everybody's needs.  It was all very simple.  I took some time to soak up the activity and thought how this is what Bud is going to remember--a family-oriented, fun celebration of America's favorite past time.  When he's a dad or an uncle, he's going to remember marching in the Little League parade every year, chatting with his buddies, swinging the bat, and hearing the crowd cheer him on.  A lot of preparation goes into making Opening Day what it is.  It's not fancy or extravagant, but it's so meaningful.  And when so much hard work goes behind the scenes by dozens of volunteers who all respect one another, it turns out to be a wonderful, time-honored, and cherished tradition for so many of our children. 

So, good luck Phillies.  May you play well during the 2012 Season of Little League Baseball!

Fireside Chats with Bud

I apologize for not posting earlier.  It seems that my 5 year old laptop has sadly fizzled out.  It wants me to attempt to reload Windows, but I have to dig up the CD.  Talk about planned obsolescence.  Computers should last more than five years. 

But onto the subject of this week's post.  One of our favorite activities in the summer is to sit around our fire pit as the sun sets and the stars come out.  Now, as we enter the middle of August, we don't have to wait until 9:30 for the sun to set, which is a good thing.  Usually, after dinner, one of us will go and build up the fire.  I prefer using the environmentally friendly method of building a tent out of some dry tinder, and gradually adding larger pieces of tinder.  I learned this method from the physical education teacher at school when I chaperoned the eighth grade camping trip.  Sadly, due to budget cuts, the adventure program is being downsized, the camping trip will be cut and students won't have the opportunity to learn how to build a fire without using white gas (which is my darling husband's favorite way to fuel the flames).  Sometimes, we'll make s'mores by the campfire (once the gasoline burns off), but other times we'll just sit quietly and listen to the wild sounds of the evening, trying to identify all the chirps, snorts (those usually, but not always, belong to the pigs), whistles and chatters.  The dogs and cats will come join us, the latter jumping up on any spare lounge chairs to curl up.   

This setting apparently is an ideal place and time for a nine year old to muse over the great wonders of our world and our society.  The quiet, and probably the darkness, aid in allowing a child to really talk about subjects that may not be "cool" to discuss during the busy-ness of the day.  Topics have ranged from the mundane to the profound.  We have had discussions about stars and planets, tourism, old houses, farms and the sources of food, baseball, the ocean, God and gods, football, music, professions, art, World War II, friendships, honesty, and most recently, Star Wars.  This last I found quite amusing, since Bud made the comparison that the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry can be compared to the entire Star Wars saga.  He had picked out which player would be which character.  I can't remember them all, and I'm sure I'll be corrected, but here's a bit of the list:

Ortiz:  Luke Skywalker
A. Gonzalez:  Hans Solo
Youkalis:  Chewbacca
D. Pedroia:  Would have been Princess Leia except for the fact that he would never ever say "Would someone get this walking carpet out of my way?" to Youkalis.
Ellsbury:  Lando

A. Rod:  The Emperor
Jeter:  Darth Vader (because in the end, he's really not all that bad)

We'll take any suggestions you may have to round out the roster.

By 10pm, Bud is all talked out or thought out, and we return to the house to retire for the evening, allowing our bodies and minds to renew themselves for another day of adventure.  



 

First frost and functioning furnaces

We finally woke up to a frost covered ground Sunday morning.   The NOAA is really good about warning folks if there is going to be a hard freeze so we picked the remainder of the tomatoes Saturday.

I should have taken a picture of our backyard, because it was a gorgeous, sunny morning.  However, there will be far too many of these days to come, and I know I will be sick of cold mornings very shortly.

Our wood burning furnace from Yukon-Eagle has been put to work several times now.  I'm withholding judgement on its efficiency until when it's really cold, but currently, with night time temperatures dipping into the mid-30's and daytime temperatures around 55, inside temperatures have been reaching 75 degrees (the oil furnace is set to come on when the inside temperature dips below 62 degrees).

In any previous year, we kept the house at 60 degrees  (except when my dearest mother came to visit, when we cranked it to 68 degrees) in order to conserve oil, and thus we spent the majority of our time in the kitchen where we have a wood stove that can warm that room up quite well. We never spent much time in the living room (really a family room; certainly not a parlor), which didn't seem to get much heat, although the 1/4 inch gap between the outside door and the frame may have played a role in keeping the room from warming up (I can imagine my brother, who works for a green building company, cringing at that statement).  So, basically, we survived the winters by wearing lots of layers...indoors. 

The change this year is dramatic.  We come home and change into shorts and t-shirts.  I can spend the entire evening comfortably reading on the coach in the living room or playing a lively game of Yahtzee with the family.  It's a veritable heatwave in our farmhouse.

It is hard to predict how much wood we will need for the winter.  Right now, it is obviously much warmer inside than it needs to be and while I know that it is possible to reduce the amount of heat output from the furnace, I haven't invested any time in figuring this out (obviously the novelty of a warm house hasn't worn off yet).  If we can get through the coldest part of the winter burning 10 logs a day, then the 5 cords of wood we have stacked should suffice. 

Odd as it may sound, I have been so used to a cold home in the winter, that my whole worldview on winter and warmth is required to shift.  Whenever someone asked how I was in the winter, my default answer would be "cold".  It's not unlike the feeling I had when the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004.  As a Red Sox fan, we were so used to the Sox coming in second, and we would curse the Curse and then mutter to ourselves that there was always next year.  Except in 2004 it was next year, and the Curse was reversed and the Sox were no longer in an 87-year drought.  Red Sox fans had to remake themselves, and I will simply have to do the same now that we have our new furnace.