soccer mom-ing (it's not so bad)

it's week five of our first soccer season. i'm coaching the herd-aged group with andrew and patrick, bless his heart, is coaching dom's u12 team.

i figured soccer mom-ing was the last hurdle to leap in my effort to lose all my coolness by age 36. i figured next i'd need some high-waisted jeans with pleats, a perm, and a fanny pack to complete my fall from edgy grace.

but the thing is, it's no big deal (this is how we do!) because i'm actually really bad at this soccer mom thing.

see, i don't bring stuff.

i bring a blanket the week after torrential downpours and make us all sit on the frozen ground. i make sure we all stay seated until the moisture has seeped through the fleece blanket into our jeans. and that's about it. no juice boxes. no generator-powered mini heaters, no coolers with three-course snack meals, no game devices, no iPads. nada...

i also don't drive a minivan (yet).

nothing against minivans. seriously, i watch your videos behind you in drive-through lines with envy, dreaming of the day i can spin wreck it ralph on a continuous loop as we drive through harrisonburg.

so when i open our door, things aren't neat and organized.

no, when i open the door to our truck, all hell breaks loose.

soccer balls come flying out, followed by unsecured children, last week's mcnugget fragments, a couple missing library books and one moldy blanket.

and i don't cheer like a maniac for my sons' teams.

well, i'm coaching one son.

and i'm even bad at that because i find myself cheering for the other kindergartners, too.

i think it's so adorable when they score that i make these bewildered five-year olds high five me on their way back to their own coach. i keep the other team guessing, i suppose.

and when my own kids score, i just about burst my titanium-lined aneurysm with sheer joy.

 it's a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch a young soccer player get turf toe a few feet from the goal and stumble their way into the net.

and when it's time for me to cheer on boy wonder, well, i can't.

i suffer from this stress induced ibs awesomeness, so if i actually kept my eyes open everytime the ball got near my goalkeeper, i'd be chained to the outhouse.

 so mostly i cheer him on when the ball is on the other side of the field and i make andrew give me the play-by-play when the other team makes it into goal territory.

they say it only gets better with time, too.

maybe next season i'll be all the more legit with the minivan, the snack cooler and the folding camp chair brigade claiming my spot two hours before the game even starts...(god, i hate those people...)

maybe.

...happy happy happy...