UT Soccer

The UT Woman's Soccer team has had several successful seasons and Mom and I had remarked several times over the past few years that we ought to go to a game. We went to a game many years ago - back when the kids were small and the team was playing at a level just above Intermurals. It was free, played on a PE field and we sat on the grass - until it started raining.

These days, it is an official NCAA sport, and they play at the Mike Myers stadium on the campus - a facility used solely for track and soccer (and bigger than 90% of the University and College stadia in the country). Friday night's opponent was arch-rival A&M, it was a pleasant evening, and Senior Citizens got in for four bucks, so we went.

Now if you know me well, you know that I am not fond of crowds and traffic jams, and we live in a Primo crowd and traffic jam city (as I write this there are 65,000 people at the ACL Music Fest in Zilker Park and 100,000 up the road at the UT-Arkansas game). Stay at home, stay at home! The traffic was manageable because after all these years of attending Woman's Basketball at UT we have worked out a back-road route to get down to the campus. In the evening, there is ample parking, so everything was cool there. We were there with only about 4,000 of our closest friends, but the traffic patterns aren't too hot at Myers, so it got a little confining for my taste.

They are working hard to make UT Soccer family-friendly. There were blow-up bouncing castles and slides and such in one end zone for the kiddos, tricycle races and youth team scrimmages at half-time. It looked a lot like minor-league baseball. Bring the kids and everybody have a good time.

Oh, and the game itself was okay. UT appeared to be the better team - though the game ended nil - nil (notice the clever use of soccer talk) after regulation and two overtimes. No shoot-outs at this level. But frankly you can see a lot better on TV. So perhaps the most interesting aspect of the evening was sitting in the (hard, hard) stands, listening to all the socializing going on around us. Parents in front of us explaining that they were not going to pay $7.50 for hamburgers and $4.00 for cokes (got to make up those Senior discounts somehow); the guy to our right hitting on four young ladies, explaining why they should join him and his three buddies; the women behind us who had no clue about soccer, but it was a good chance to catch up on the latest gossip.

And yes, we did leave at half-time. It was fun, but one half is about my limit of crowd and traffic events for a while. We'll do it again in 2012 or so.

Me - back to school?

Back when I was really retired, I got this idea that I could use some of this surfeit of time to study Spanish. Sounded like a good idea, right? I mean it is the minority in the majority these days, and besides, maybe I could understand what Mom says about me in Spanish, so I signed up for classes at Austin Community College.

Of the choices, the closet venue was the ACC building by Highland Mall - but only on Tuesday nights, 6pm to 9pm. Okay, that's not so bad - no football on TV on Tuesday. I can handle this. So here I go, brand-new student off to 1st day (night) of school. People, I can't even remember as far back as when I was in school; I would need a bigger calculator to figure it out! I've got my textbook, I have sharpened pencils, I have a notebook. I've even read the 1st chapter - "El mosquito es chiquito." "El elefante es grande." I can't believe I'm doing this.

Twenty-two of us, waiting patiently for la maestra and in walks Aunt Bea. You know, from Mayberry? A little old lady, gray hair up in a bun, with the notable Hispanic surname of Walsh. Oh-kay. Turns out Senora Walsh moved to Mexico City when she was ten and lived there most of her life. Teaching English. Now she's here, teaching Spanish, and she's very, very good. I learned a lot.

The most important thing I learned is to sit by someone who speaks English. The person next to me, with whom I was paired (this is conversational Spanish, after all), was fresh off the boat. Literally. She was born and raised in Scotland and has been in the States a very short time. I could not understand a word she said. Okay, we were supposed to be speaking Spanish, but I'm not sure she was. It didn't sound like what Senora Walsh was saying. It didn't sound like what I was saying. I just didn't know. And she was fairly fluent in whatever she was saying. She said a lot of it.

I think there's going to be a lot of blog material from this class.

Conversation in the car

Barbara: "Watch out for the cat."

Me: "The cat better watch out for himself. He doesn't belong in our driveway."

Barbara: "Stop! You're going to hit the cat!"

Me: "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty..."

Barbara: "I'll tell your daughter."

Me: (screech)

I swear, it was not me!

A confession before getting caught

Time: One morning this week

Location: Fran’s (our favorite breakfast place)

Characters: Mary, the little Hispanic lady who is always at the same table and Me (Barbara/Mom)

Mary: "You came by yourself this morning!"

Me: "Yes. And when my husband and I come this weekend, please don’t mention that I was here by myself."

Cool is cool!

You start anticipating it in the late part of summer - that morning you walk out to get the paper and it's cool. Not just not-as-hot cool, but promise-of-really-nice-days-ahead cool. The promise that we are coming up on one of the two times of the year when you know why you live in Austin. We've experienced that refreshing cool the past few mornings, and it is so welcome!

I'm aware that there are still hot days to come (it was 108 on September 25, 2005), but we have reached the tipping point and the dreadful streak of 42 days of triple digit temperatures may truly be a thing of the past now. Sitting on the patio and drinking coffee is comfortable once again. We can open the drapes in the bedroom now and not worry about the room heating up during the day. The air conditioner can take a much-needed rest. The electric bill will not be as dreaded. I didn't bother putting up the sun screen when I parked the car today. I drove home with the window open, wind whipping my hair.

There's just a lot that's cool about cool.

Too tempting?

Barbara: "Why do you keep your second pillow up covering your face?"

Me: "It's not really covering my face; it's just in front of my face."

Barbara: "Well, from my perspective, it's covering your face."

Me: "I started keeping it up there thinking it might help the noise from my breathing and wheezing when I sleep. You're always talking about how loud my breathing is."

Barbara: "It doesn't work, you know."

Me: (shrug)

Barbara: "You might want to think about that - that's a very tempting position for your pillow. Just a little pressure..."

And we thought Back to School Week was bad

There are, according to news reports, an extra 1.5 million people in Austin this weekend. After having been out and about this morning, I think they missed a few when they counted, and they are all at Wal-Mart.

The store we frequent is the one closest to the DelCo Center and LBJ - the largest of 13 refugee centers now open in Austin. The parking lot was full of RVs, campers and loaded-to-the gills automobiles. Multiple families were camped out on the few grassy medians outside; more were just occupying space inside the store, and many, many more were desperately loading up on diapers, water and non-perishables. Store clerks were parking skids of foodstuff in the aisles as fast as they could and heading back for more.

There was a youngster we dubbed "Hurricane Andrew" running wild in the store. He was not creating as much havoc as his extra-loud extended family was by chasing him, yelling "Andrew! Andrew! Get back here!" Mom said he was actually doing pretty well, after have been yanked up from a familiar context, spending 8 hours in the car and spending last night in a big room with 350 of his closest friends. She also saw a couple looking at a stroller, contemplating spending their bill-paying money for someplace the baby could sleep tonight (most refugee centers do not provide beds).

She remarked how grateful we were that our house was not going to get flooded this weekend, and we did not have to leave our home and have to spend money we did not have just to exist, let alone lose income because we couldn't work.

Anderson High across the street from our church is often a refugee center, and the folks at the high school have become very dependent on us to help in these situations. This is a dependence that we welcome and cultivate. Early this morning there was a call to stand by for cooking duty this evening; they roll the grills onto the covered driveway and cook hamburgers and hot dogs for the masses. Later the word came that Anderson was not going to get pressed into service this time.

Mid-week we were all prepared to hunker down in survival mode as the path was predicted to come right over Austin. Now it looks like we'll be lucky to get any rain at all - certainly we'll get less than dry, dusty Lubbock! Maybe we can send them some extra people to help mop up. We have plenty!

I guess He helped

Stop sharply - restrain passenger

Tonight on the way home from Chuy's (yes, it's still Hatch Green Chile Festival!!!) traffic caused me to step on the brakes sharply - and my right arm immediately shot out to help restrain the passenger in the front seat. Now that reflex action came from a relatively short period in my life, when we were driving a big Buick Electra with bench seats and our children would be with us in the front seat. They were fastened - somewhat - to a belt looped around the seat back, but we got in the habit of reaching an arm out to prevent a child from tumbling.

Now most of you know how old those children are now, and I can guarantee you that they don't have that reflex action because the law hasn't allowed unrestrained (or relatively so) children in the front seat for many years now. So I guess that's only a reflex of Mom and my generation and earlier. The years we spent with young children not buckled securely into seat belts were only a handful - but tonight, a full 35 years later, I put my hand out. And I guess I will until you take my car keys away from me.

When is chicken not chicken?

A local reporter has begun a new column in the Statesman called "Momma's Kitchen." He's going to write about favorite family recipes and the traditions that surrounded them and he began by writing about his momma's Chicken and Spaghetti - the penultimate church dinner dish.

His story was that growing up as one of six children in the household of a small-town preacher and his wife, the Chicken and Spaghetti dish was one way his mother could feed a family of eight with only one chicken - often a necessity in those challenging days. And that got me to thinking about my mother's Chicken and Spaghetti.

I don't think money was as tight when I was growing up as it was for the reporter - at least, if it was, it was transparent to me. I think the reason my mother cooked Chicken and Spaghetti so often - especially for church gatherings - was because she needed a way to disguise the rabbit. Yes, it's true. Mother's Chicken and Spaghetti was often really Rabbit and Spaghetti.

At one time we raised rabbits in a big way. The front of the garage had been replaced with two tiers of rabbit cages, and with rabbits reproducing like, well, rabbits, there was always an abundance of white meat that "tasted like chicken" at our house. It didn't pay to get attached to those cute little bunnies. There was just something wrong about hearing, "We're having Floppsy for lunch today."

Fried rabbit was better than fried chicken - it was all white meat - but one couldn't pass the dish off as chicken because the parts were just not the right parts. But in a casserole, who knew? I don't think anyone in Breckenridge was opposed to eating rabbit, but to my knowledge, Mother never gave away her secret to the church folk, and if they suspected, they were too polite to face her with the fact.

The reporter finished his column discussing the recipe he found as his mother's dish, and the fact that the recipe called for black olives. He claims his mother never put black olives in the dish; his sister says she did. Which got me to wondering - did my mother use black olives? I want to say yes, but that may be because of all the dishes at church luncheons for all these years that have included black olives. I simply can't remember. But I do remember that "chicken."

Just curious

Can you remember the last time the Library Lady stamped the return date in your book? Me neither.

So why - in this brand new book (note the acquisition date) - did they go to all the trouble to paste in a date slip?

IMWTK

Celebrating the 50th

No, not ours. Not just yet. But over the past two weekends we have attended anniversary celebrations for friends of ours. And they could not have been more different.

The first was a return to the 50's - complete with "waitresses" in pink poodle skirts serving soft drinks in vintage Coke glasses and an Elvis impersonator. "Elvis" is our Worship Minister, and he did a good job considering the fact that he's not old enough to have actually seen Elvis. Unlike someone I could mention. We've accused him of some Elvis-like moves on Sunday morning, so now we know. The place was decorated like a Malt Shop and we listened to a lot of 50's-era music and dined on hamburgers. I knew all the songs. I played all the songs when I was a disk jockey.

The second was a catered formal dinner. Silverware, appetizers, nice Italian cuisine, wedding-type cake for desert. The grandchildren provided the entertainment and the retrospective. Definitely a much lower-keyed affair. Definitely a much higher-priced affair.

So, considering that our own 50th anniversary is coming up in just a few years, which style did we prefer? When you get that age one always has the right to change ones mind, but I think neither. Some cake, some punch, some good coffee and a few friends dropping by seems about right to us. Oh, and some of those little mints. That ought to do it.