Softball and Big Girl Bikes

Since I last appeared in the blogosphere, that's pretty much the sum total of what has captured my attention. Whether I liked it or not.

We'll start with softball. I might be in love with softball. Well, love's a bit strong a term...but compared to listening to the same floor routine music seventy-two consecutive times, when it is applicable to your own child's efforts exactly once, softball is pretty much orgasmic. Don't get me wrong: a competition is a competition, and watching gymnastics meets definitely has its moments of intensity. But those moments typically consist of hoping you are not about to watch your daughter fall on her head and become paralyzed and then have to live with the guilt of allowing her to perform completely unnatural maneuvers off of a six inch wide beam set off the ground at the height of her tiny shoulders. In gymnastics, you cheer while you fear. And you pretty much don't really give a crap about watching anybody else's kid as this would merely take up energy you might need to help lift your daughter's stretcher into the ambulance. (Oh, I'm just kidding. I watch those other kids. AND I care.) (That is, unless your kid is up before mine, in which case I'm too busy internally hyperventilating to pay attention.)

Softball, on the other hand, is just a blast all the way around. Every batter, every pitcher, every play, every call by the umpire, it's all cause for rowdiness. (Although we, the parents, have been warned about rowdiness toward the umpire. Apparently, we're supposed to set an example.) It helps that Third Grader is on a successful team this year, with a coach who lives and breathes the game and a bunch of girls who really want to win AND have fun. And it's outdoors. And there's french fries. That's not really a good thing, but I'm enjoying them all the same. And I never, never fear that Third Grader is about to become paralyzed.

Which brings me to the next major attention sucker of the past week: the girls got new bikes. It was so, so overdue. It's embarrassing how overdue it was. Somehow I have allowed my daughters to continue riding their same Toys R Us-issue bicycles - Third Grader on the one that they both learned to ride on, Fifth Grader's barely a notch bigger than that - with the seats hoisted as high as they would go and the pedals practically falling off. I am truly ashamed. The worst part of it is that neither of them has ever said a word to me about it. It didn't really register with me as to how absurd the bike situation had become until I saw them coasting down the driveway earlier this spring and thought to myself, "Where did they get those little clown bikes?" It REALLY registered with me as I watched them tool around the parking lot at the bike shop, trying out appropriately-sized bicycles with multiple speeds and gears. "Holy crap, I suck" was about all I could think. So, many hundreds of dollars later, we brought home their beautiful new bicycles. And every night since we've gotten them, they both get giddy when we pull into the garage. They immediately have to take their bikes outside, even if it's for five minutes in drizzling rain, and then they are at peace.

It's now possible that there's a bicycle in my own future. I haven't been on one since junior high. People say picking anything back up is "like riding a bike"...does that apply to actually riding a bike, you think?