Not a Sports Mom?????

(said in my best Llug from Willow, "Not a woman???" voice)

At my children's sporting events, I feel a keen sense of discomfort, not unlike sitting in the dentist office reception area. (Please no root canal...)

I've been married to the very sporty Mr. Cutbait for twenty years next month and had a number of sporty children. Thankfully, some are more like me than like him, or I'd feel completely outnumbered in this land of mud and sweaty uniforms and insane frantic yelling parents. These people must surely come from another planet, or at least bleed a different color.

Normally I am OK with feeling so out of every sports loop. Today I can't shake it, so it's off to the self analysis room for me. What's my problem?

For one thing: Dude, I don't care which team wins. They should all have fun and be polite to each other. This is basketball, not brain surgery.

Two: I love my boy. He is cute and I like watching him play basketball. However, I'd be just as fine watching him do a funny dance, weed the garden, tell me what happened at school today, and pretty much anything else that doesn't require sitting on hard bleachers in a freezing gym with no cell phone service or access to food.

Three: Unless I know them, the other parents run the gamut from weird to odious to bad-smelling. Sometimes all three, and almost always loud and obnoxious. What's more, I'm pretty sure I put off a severe "I hate sports and I'm not that enthralled with you, either" vibe so again, unless we know each other, they keep their distance. It's a little lonely but it's probably for the best, given all the above reasons.

Fourth: The darling Mr. Cutbait, whose knowledge, skill, and interest in all things sporty leave me feeling practically crippled as a spectator. "How do they look as a team?" he just texted, on his way to our daughter's soccer tournament. Um, well... color-coordinated?

I might as well ask him how many generations ago his ancestors came from England - then we could have matching blank stares.

Fifth: I have no clue what's going on, so any sanctions the referees may foist on my child or his team seem completely unfair, bringing out my Mama Bear response. "HOW DARE THEY. Oh, my kid fouled another kid? Oh. Oops."

Sixth: Taking my youngest along. She is normally well-behaved, but today not so much, which probably heightened my "Why do I hate doing this so much?" anxiety.

It hits me today, again, that when you're a parent, you sometimes do things for your children for the sole reason that you love them. It's not enjoyable (I wish I felt differently). It seems like a gigantic waste of time (ditto). You can think of thirteen hundred different situations you'd rather be in than sitting behind some smelly shouting grandmother with your butt in pain (ditto again).

I miss whatever gene I was supposed to inherit that would somehow help me love sports. The Sports Force, sadly, is not with me.

Is a terrible mother AND references George Lucas movies too often,
Fisher Cutbait

Gary Larson, How I Love Thee

One of my favorite comic strips, The Far Side, once featured a drawing captioned "How fishermen blow their minds" (a fisherman in a boat thinking, "Fish or cut bait? FISH OR CUT BAIT??").

I would post the strip in question, but I just read that Mr. Larson, he no likey.

(One wonders how da Vinci would feel at our using the Mona Lisa so freely and extensively without remunerating him for his work, but Father Al had not yet invented the Internet, so I guess 1. Leonardo doesn't care, 2. Leonardo doesn't understand copyright laws, 3. Leonardo does care and does understand copyright laws but is dead and can only do so much about it, therefore 4. Leonardo's stuff is free game.)

So I won't. Just try to think back to the 80s. Remember them? Ah. I was a HUGE Far Side fan then, to the point that people gave me Far Side books as gifts or as an incentive to shut up about the Far Side for a while.

Trying to choose a favorite Far Side strip is like trying to decide which child is my favorite - it depends on the day - but pretty much every time, I will choose the one of the lady looking out her front window at the pianos and piano benches falling from the sky, several having heavily landed and implanted themselves in the ground. "My word! I'd hate to be outside on a day like this!"

(See, they're not funny when they're just explained, Gary.)

THE DAILY FABULOUS: This is a new feature. We'll see how "daily" it turns out to be.

I was awake at 3:30 this morning, thinking that my youngest daughter, currently age 7, really needs to be in our annual Veterans Day parade this coming November, and I was trying to think of a way to make that happen for her. She wants to be one of those horrible warped pageant-y children - well, not so much that as she wants to ride in a convertible in a parade, wearing a tiara and a sash, waving and smiling to crowds of adoring admirers. Really, who doesn't want that?

(Her ten-year-old Cub Scout brother was just in the parade - that's what put us there in the first place. Not that I don't love veterans, parades, or Veteran's Day parades, but come on - November?)

ANYWAY. I was thinking that if we were really serious about this one little day of her life, we could have her join Girl Scouts (no thanks), or we could start up a troop of Frontier Girls. "Ick," I thought. "I don't want to do that. If I did that, I'd have to be in charge."

"Why can't you be in charge?" my inner fabulous voice said.

***groan***

I don't want to start up a troop of Frontier Girls - what I'd really like to see happen is our ward or stake Activity Day girls participate more in community events, but I'm not sure how or if that would work - but I have decided that my inner fabulous voice should be listened to more often. A voice of challenge, a voice of self-improvement, a voice that celebrates good and beauty, a voice that rises above fears and gripes and "what-ifs" and dares me to be - dare I say it again - FABULOUS.

So here's today's Daily Fabulous: I'm too lazy to locate my phone and take a picture, and figure out how to disengage the "where I was when I took this picture so you can find my house and stalk me" feature on my phone. That's not fabulous, but it hopefully excuses the lack of picture.

What IS fabulous is the pair of awesome blue wool snowflake socks I'm wearing. How I love these socks. They are warm and cute and Yuppies-trying-to-be-woodsy-ish. I found them at Fred Meyer (and they weren't even on my list that day).

I'm starting small... but I am starting.

Daring herself to get the laundry done so she can put something else on,
Fisher Cutbait