The Blog About Nothing Returns

It's been said people with real lives are too busy to blog.  I don't completely agree with that thinking, but it's certainly been proven true in the last eight days of this busy life.  From last Monday to today's Monday I've....

.....been to seven volleyball games in five different towns.

.....worked in The Grandstand one final time for the season.  In a sixth different town.

.....driven north to do some deer farming for a day.  In a seventh town.

.....survived the first full week of the school year, showing up on time almost most of the days.

In the next three days I will be at four more games and, apparently, have to work every one of those days as well.  To avoid letting my strong run of posts wither any further I come to you now with one of my desperate blogs about nothing.  Don't say I didn't warn you....

**I shake my head almost daily at the turn my life has taken in the last year with regard to volleyball.  One year ago tomorrow I wrote this post detailing my journey to becoming a volleyball junkie.  Now, a year later, I can enthusiastically admit I pretty much live and breathe the sport.  I coach our seventh grade team, Daughter One is on our varsity, and Daughter Two plays on our Junior Varsity.  On the rare nights none of us have games I'm watching the Gophers volleyball team play.  I follow a half-dozen volleyball sources on Twitter.  I know the top ten collegiate volleyball teams in the country but have no clue who the top ten college football teams are right now.  Again, I shake my head.

**Minnesota's climate - what can a feller say?  Two weeks ago my house was freezing but I refused to start the furnace in the same week school started.  Last week was so sweltering I begrudgingly turned the AC back on....but only because the bananas on my kitchen counter were melting.  Saturday morning I left the house in shorts and t-shirt and felt quite comfy; Sunday morning I nearly froze riding a four-wheeler across the field while wearing three top layers and wishing I'd have packed my long undies.  I really am thankful to live where seasons are drastically different....but having spring, summer, and fall in less than two weeks is a bit much.

**I desperately want to get cautiously enthused for a certain pro sports team from my state that plays a sport with bats, balls, and gloves and is creeping towards a playoff spot....but I'm scared my powers of jinxation will cause a typhoid outbreak on the team.  So I stay nonchalant and avoid talking about them.  Even with this short paragraph I'm terrified I've said too much.  I'm sorry everyone.

**In a moment of weakness I let some excitement creep into my being yesterday.  I checked my trail cameras first thing in the morning and found this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And.....well, this:

The chances of seeing those bucks while hunting are slim; the chances of seeing them and getting a shot are even skinnier.  Trail cameras are a double-edged sword - it's exciting to know what we could see while hunting, but frustrating to hunt and not see what we know is there...somewhere.  So I looked at my pictures, allowed myself 45 seconds of excitement, and then forced myself back into cautiously enthused stoicism.

That's all the nothing I have for tonight.  The alarm clock will ring too soon.  Tomorrow will be another busy day.  My writing has deteriorated into simple sentences.  The end is now.

Genesis Synthesis

What a difference a week makes.

After displaying ineptitude at levels rarely seen on a volleyball court in game one, Daughter 1 and her varsity squad did the nearly unthinkable tonight in their second game - they beat the despised wealthy school to the southwest on their own floor.  Heading into the game we hoped for improvement, hoped to compete, but win?  Even the most optimistic Mustanger had few thoughts of heading home with a victory after last week's debacle.

Set one was brutal early.....again.....but our girls showed a few signs of life before the 25th point was scored by the opposition.  Set two found our crew in unfamiliar territory near the 20th point - leading!  The lead and the set slipped away, however, and when the scoreboard read 23-24 in the third set it appeared an 0-2 start to the season was inevitable.  But before the Fat Lady could belt out her first notes.....

.....a group of young women surrendered their individual identities and allowed a greater, more powerful force to emerge - the team.  The early stages of this young volleyball season have been marred with squabbles over everything from picture poses to team captain choices to warm-up songs.  Facing a second consecutive three-set loss this group of individuals looked defeat square in the eye and as a team told it to step aside.  For the first time in two seasons there was a unified desire to help each other succeed - high fives and pats on the back became crisper and quicker, a few "my fault"s replaced the accusatory looks that followed mistakes, and a genuine excitement for a teammate's quality play was shown by every player wearing a blue jersey.

The concept of "team" has great value to me; watching the birth of a team sent chills down my spine.  Well, most of my spine...the bottom third was numb from sitting on bleachers for several hours.  We see teams all over TV and highlights of victories are never hard to find.  We celebrate our athletes far too often and far too loudly and have championships for every kind of team imaginable.  But it's in high school athletics where we most often get to witness the metamorphosis from individuals to team.  It can't be shown in a highlight or on a poster and many times it happens behind the doors of the practice facility.  Tonight it happened in the last three points of a third set right before my eyes.

The beauty of high school sports shone brightly tonight in that foreign gymnasium with the goofy dog and horrendous warm-up music.  A team walked off the court where hours earlier a group of individuals had first set foot.  That team carried with it a hard fought and well earned five-set victory, and a feeling of accomplishment that, I hope, none of them will ever forget.  I'm so happy for Daughter 1 and every one of her teammates, happy that they seized an opportunity to grow together into something that will be special to them for the rest of their lives.  I'm proud of the resiliency they showed by bouncing back from that awful game last week and crawling out of the deficit they faced tonight.  And I'm thankful they got to experience the unbridled joy that comes from accomplishing something they had only ever dreamed about.  A most excellent showing, ladies!

Now get back to work.

Deer Therapy

Twenty four hours ago I weaved my way through traffic into the heart of Minneapolis to attend a University of MN Golden Gophers Volleyball game with my daughters.  Sat amongst 5,000 people.  Watched four hours of volleyball.  Drove over an hour to and over an hour back again from the site.  Had a great time.

Less than 12 hours after returning from the game I was back in my car again, this time driving three-plus hours north to my Fortress of Solitude.  Upon arrival I spent four hours walking the edges of food plots looking for deer entry/exit paths.  Every one of the 5,000 people from last night were absent, replaced by roughly 37,000 mosquitoes and deer flies.  Had a great time.

It's funny how our experiences can take such drastic swings in such short amounts of time.  Many times I feel like I'm two completely different people (kinda like "Independent George" and "Relationship George" for you Seinfeld fans) living two completely different lives based solely on location.  Is this common?  Do we all have these different versions of ourselves that are revealed at various times and locales?  Deep thoughts brought forth by an hour-long session of deer therapy....

Scouting for deer sign (trails, tracks, droppings, rubs, scrapes, trail cam pictures) is fine and effective, but nothing beats gathering deer data by watching them on the hoof live and in person....not to mention it's really fun!  After supper tonight I grabbed the binoculars and headed west on foot, intent on getting a first-hand look at what kinds of deer were starting to devour our food plots.  Though it's not (legal) hunting season yet a deer walk like this one is a good way to practice walking and moving like a hunter, so all-in-all there's probably not a more valuable way to spend an hour of life.

Six deer on the eastern half of the north hayfield, all does and fawns.  One of the six was very grey...not quite a winter coat but close.  Didn't take them long to spot me; I wore my royal Mustang blue pullover....a deer's eyes see blue better than any color.  It's good to know my critical hunting errors occur in all seasons, not just November.  Four deer on the Hilltop food plot, again does and fawns and again one grey coat in the bunch....and again they scattered like snot in a sneeze the instant I stepped into the open.  Six more deer on the Sand Flat food plot - one buck whose coat was grey, the other five were does and fawns.  This group of deer was quite a distance away from me so I was able to watch them for several minutes before they got spooked by my mosquito-swat dance.

So yeah, the description on the screen doesn't exactly scream "good times!".  A deer walk, deer therapy, has to be experienced to be savored.  No noise.  An orange sunset under purple clouds.  No time constraints.  Immersed in nature and one with nature (except for the blue).  Watching my favorite animal.  After a stressful evening of traffic and hassles - which were well worth it, by the way,  to attend an activity that's a family favorite - it's such a relief to be able to switch personas and slide into the quiet side of life for a couple of days.  I like it here.

The Walls Of Our NEW School

On the first day of this past June I wrote a fond farewell to the school building I had called home for 19 years.  The first day of June was the final day of school for the year as well as the final day Fairview Elementary would ever host students.  Strong emotions had been building in our staff during the months leading up to this end - anxiety about an impending move, melancholy for leaving such a familiar and loved place, and, most powerfully for many, disappointment with what our new structure ended up being....namely, a double-stacked hallway to nowhere.  These were dark days for my teaching family.

Not quite three months later we are mostly settled into our new elementary school.  Boxes are unpacked, furniture arranged.  Open House has come and gone, as has teacher workshop week.  We now enter a holiday weekend and gather ourselves for the long march through another school year, and as we do I sense a major shift in the outlook towards the future in our new home.  The darkness has been pushed aside and replaced with.....with.....hope, maybe?  Possibility?  Pretty sure there's some relief in the air.  I daresay I've noticed some excitement, too....though this hombre only revs up to cautious enthusiasm.  Many of us will always have that dejected voice in the depths of our being reminding us how far reality fell from the dreams we had for what a new school could be.  I won't speak for everyone, but the disappointment I have carried for a long, long time over the way our new home was designed has diminished rapidly over the last five days.  I'm not going to shout from the rooftops....though I could by means of a nearby exit onto the school roof....but I am feeling far more optimistic about my new educational home than I ever thought I would.

For starters, our new school sits on the outskirts of town; our former school sat smack dab in the middle.  Our new school is surrounded by trees, trails, ponds, and tranquility.  I used to look out the window and see a parking lot next to a major highway - now my second-story view includes a copse of deciduous trees, a pine plantation, a nature trail, and an open yard just waiting to be gardened. 

  

Our new school sits at the end of two different bike paths, one of which meanders a good golf shot from my house giving me a terrific commute by bike anytime I want (except maybe January).  Our new school has bright lights that don't hum, air that is free from the smell of age, and water that runs through new pipes.  The family of educators that has always surrounded me still does, and together we join a whole new teaching family who waited for our arrival while the new structure was added to their school.  The list could go on 'cause these new digs ain't so bad after all.

I went back to Fairview yesterday on a reconnaissance mission, looking for items that didn't get moved.  I think it was clear in my June ode to the old school that I loved the place, so I was taken aback when I walked into my beloved former home and realized.....it was a dump.  It looked old, it smelled old, it felt old.  It felt tired.  It felt foreign.  I made my way from room to room and and with every step knew more clearly - moving out was the right thing, moving on had to be the next thing.  Thankful for one more look, and thankful for 19 great years, I left behind the only teaching home I have ever known.  And for the first time, I didn't feel sad to do so.

The walls of our new school will soon fill with students and noise and tears and laughter...and memories.  I'm ready to start my 20th year in education in a brand new setting, excited - that's right, excited - about the opportunities it presents and for the memories yet to be made.  And yes, I'm a little bit stunned to be writing such things.