Winner, Birthday Madness and Baseball

The winner of the Writing the Life Poetic giveaway is Lone Star Ma, who I'd also like to give a shout out for being quite possibly my longest-term reader and definitely my most regular commenter.  Thanks Lone Star Ma!  Your book will be on its way this week.

As usual, May is turning out to be a fairly coo-coo-crazy month (I don't recommend having three kids with birthdays within three days of each other, although it could possibly be just as much a pain in the butt to have three birthdays spread evenly over the calendar...at least we get it all over and done with in one go!).

We're having a mass party this Sunday (I had called it a "joint party" at first, but that just led certain of my friends to snigger and reminisce about college parties), to which at least 24 kids are invited (I lost count), which when you think about it is each child's age, plus one, added together.  I'm counting on the usual 50% rate of no-shows.  And I'll be mixin' up margaritas after all the kids whose parents I don't know go home.

I'm not exactly sure when I'll prepare for said party (not to mention actual birthday shopping and getting ready for our camping trip the following weekend).  We're in full-on baseball season now, which means a game or practice at least four (sometimes six) days a week.  (Yeah, yeah, I said I was turning into one of those annoying people who signs their kids up for sports, then complains about it, but I never said I'd stop complaining!).  Today I went to the store and stocked up on things like veggie burgers and frozen pizzas.  I don't think I've ever bought a frozen pizza since I spent Thanksgiving alone in the dorm when I was a freshman in college, and it's been years since I bought veggie burgers.  Somehow, we've managed to keep dinner pretty much from-scratch all these years, but that often means not eating until 6:30 or later.  Now that we have to be out the door by 5:00 or 5:30 every night (when we don't normally get home until 5:30), we just have to lower our standards.

It's kind of unbelievable that I have athletically-inclined children at all, when throwing, catching, hitting, kicking or dodging a spherical projectile while running is my personal version of hell.  Not saying that my kids are all-star athletes, but they really enjoy it (gym is M's favorite subject) and have at least moderate skills.  E and Z were both able to throw the ball from third to first base.  They still need to work on other skills, though, like not rolling around on the ground, not throwing clumps of dried grass, not wrestling/tackling/hugging, not throwing their mitts in the air, remembering to bring their mitts to practice, etc.  Kindergarten sports are actually fairly ridiculous, and I'm a little appalled at myself for succumbing to the peer pressure of it all and signing them up.

So anyway, that's a really long way of saying, if you don't see me around this space much over the next couple of weeks, it's not because I'm spending the month at a spa in Baja or at a writing retreat in Tuscany or anything.