Saturday, January 10: Sports Day

A day of sports for my sports-loving family. Andrew left the house at 4:00 a.m. to get a flight to Florida to see a football game (and to see his sister, since he didn't get to see her at Christmas). He was excited about this "playoff" football game so I'm glad he got to go. I'm not sure if it's related, but the other day he forced me and the girls to "choose" a football team for some kind of pool. After Andrew read off the team names, most of which we'd never heard of, Greta, deadpan, announced that she'd take the Seahorses, and she's referred to them this way ever since. (I think the actual team name is "Seahawks," which makes even less sense than Seahorses, because at least seahorses are real animals. Is a seahawk just a blustery, masculine, watch-out-or-I'll-tackle-you way of saying "seagull"? Or maybe it's a real creature? I could Google it, but I prefer the uncertainty and the ongoing irritation we can bring to Andrew.) 

The girls had a sporty day too. I took Lucia to school at 6:45 a.m. so she could catch the bus to Edinboro for an all-day track meet. I drove Greta out to Verona at 9:00 a.m. so she could do a Saturday morning crew practice. And me? I took two books to the Oakmont Bakery and spent a couple of hours reading, sipping a latte, and eating a blueberry paczki in front of a fireplace before I had to return to the boathouse to pick up Greta. My relaxation was briefly interrupted by a tiny girl who came over and stood in front of my chair, lip quivering, announcing that she couldn't find her daddy. When it was clear I was a nice person who would stay with her until he came back, she cheered up and talked all about her newly-lost tooth. Aw. 

Greta wanted to go to Panera for lunch after her practice, so we did that then browsed around Anthropologie, which, of course, is full of covetable spring items (a tray with swans! a mug with a swan for a handle! a mug with a tiny frog inside! coasters shaped like lilypads!). Then Greta spent the afternoon doing homework and I sat in the Long Room to work on Middlemarch, one of my goal-reads for the year along with Les Miserables. Late in the afternoon, Greta and I watched Stranger Things (I have to say I enjoyed the first episode of season 3), and when Lucia finally got home, we watched This Is Us.

I also completed my two most important archival projects over the past couple of days--I created and ordered my Family Photos 2025 book from Snapfish, and I converted all of my 2025 blog posts into a PDF, used Lulu to turn the PDF into a hardcover book, and ordered it (it's Skipping Town, Volume IX). Those are both very time-consuming efforts, and I'm happy to check them off the list. I don't feel comfortable entrusting all this family history to fickle billionaires and "the cloud." (And yes, the next words out of my mouth are definitely get off my lawn!, etc.)