Contented Saturday Posting

**Stood out in the rain this morning to watch the eight year old's soccer team extend their record to 3-0. (For whatever reason of luck and circumstances, the gel's wound up on an extremely talented team this year which has outscored its opponents 18-1 in its first three games.)

This is the first year the gel is playing "real" soccer, with assigned positions, goalies, scores kept, umpires, throw-ins, goal-kicks and the like, and it's fascinating to watch the girls wrap their brains around all this.

The Llama-ette still has a largely defensive mentality even when assigned to play forward and we've been working on getting her to shift gears. Today I could tell that she was at least conscious of the need to step up when playing offense, which I consider a huge moral victory. With the Llama-ette, getting her to admit the need to do something is always much harder than getting her to actually make the effort to do so.

***Because it was a dank, chilly morning and I got rayther sodden, I lit the year's first fire after lunch. And promptly dozed off in front of it for the first time this year, Churchill's description of the defense of Tobruk blurring away in mid-sentence. I love lazy afternoons like this of alternately reading and dozing, dozing and reading. The only trouble is that often times I don't really wake up completely until, say, about 2 AM.

****Nonetheless, today I roused myself later on to notice that the sun had come out and therefore that I could go deal with the lawn. We've reached that point in the year where it really only needs mowing every two weeks, which makes life that much easier. As I type, I can hear the neighbor cutting his yard. He's one of those uber-lawn guys who can't stand being beaten to the cut and nothing will bring him out at any time and in any weather faster than seeing that I've been at work on my own lawn. Heh.

***** The Llama-ettes are having a sleep-over party tonight with two of their friends (sisters) from school. That means yours truly will be out-numbered six to one instead of the usual four to one, which is why I plan a) to start in on the adult beverages as soon as five o'clock rolls around and b) to spend the evening watching John Wayne movies once the gels have been filled with pizza and Disney and banished upstairs.

Oops. I see my tea mug is empty. Now where'd I put that sherry bottle?