Just Call Me Grace (or Taylor)!

People, the last few days have been a bit rough. After spending a day trying to get back in the school groove after Spring Break, I was ready to jump right in to my day-to-day routine, when blam!!! sore throat. Now, most of the time sore throats go away on their own, but this one did not. I went to bed Tuesday night with a tiny little tickle in my throat, and woke up with a monster sore throat, headache, congestion and no voice. This threw a huge monkey wrench into my day, as I was slated to help in the classroom that morning. But when you have no voice, working with 3rd graders becomes rather impossible. And, I didn't want to share my germs with all those kiddos, so I stayed home. On the couch. All day. Watching The Office. I would like to take a moment to say that Netflix is quite possibly one of the single best entities in existence. And now, I have the streaming disc for the Wii, so I can watch the Instant Play selections on my t.v., rather than my computer. How great is that?! And, in their infinite wisdom, the folks in charge of Instant View included all episodes of The Office in that list. So I watched The Office. All day. In between naps. And that made things better. The Office is simply my favorite show. J doesn't appreciate the beauty of The Office, which breaks my heart a little, and if I'd known this before we married, I would have written a clause into our marriage contract, guaranteeing I could watch as much of The Office as I wanted, and he would have to keep his heavy sighing to himself. He just doesn't 'get' Michael Scott. I question J's sense of humor. But I love him regardless.

As luck would have it, I got sick on a day J was working in town, so he picked up WyoBaby from school for me. So, I didn't have to get off the couch and leave Pam and Jim and Dwight and Kevin and Meredith and Stanley and Michael and all my Office friends. Thank goodness for J. But my bliss was short-lived. Here's how sick days work when you're a Wimmy: (That's my new word. Wife + Mommy = Wimmy.) You get one, maybe two, sick days a year. That's it. If you dare to take more than one at any given point in time, your house will become a disaster area. Dirty dishes and laundry will pile up everywhere. Dinner will not get cooked. WyoBaby will not get help with her homework and reading. J will give you a look which says, "You're still sick?! I think you've been sick long enough, don't you?" And besides, this Wimmy is the coach of WyoBaby's soccer team, so I couldn't take another sick day. But, my friend, who has her angelic moments, offered to grab WyoBaby from school and slow down her Suburban long enough for her to leap out at our house. This gave me a bit more time to nap before practice. I was not 100%, but I was committed to giving those girls the best coaching possible. And things were going pretty well, as well as they can when you have 13 girls ambling all over the field, doing cartwheels, playing with each others' hair, talking baby talk, and only giving you half of their attention, at best.

I was doing my level best to explain Playing Your Position, and was helping the girls run a drill, which involved running down the field, passing the ball back and forth. After trying to yell my instructions, which were falling on deaf ears because I basically had no voice, I decided to join in the drill to demonstrate. For thirty seconds, it went well; I made two passes on the run, and was lining up for another one, when my world suddenly turned upside down. Do you recall my past issues with gravity? Yeah, they haven't gone away. Instead of kicking the ball, I stepped on it, which promptly took me from upright to sideways. In my mind, I could hear my slow-mo voice, saying "Nooooo" as I fell fell fell. You know that voice right? When something bad is about to happen in a movie, the character's voice slows waaaay down and gets deeper. That's what was happening in my mind. That's right, I hit the decks. Again. This time didn't hurt as much as the ice rink fall. In my mind, the track scene from Valentine's Day was playing. Did you see that movie? Oh, loved it! Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner are a high school couple, and she's being interviewed by a local reporter while he's running hurdles. He's looking pretty cool, and then blam!! he hits one of the hurdles and takes a tremendous dive. She yells, "That's okay, Baby! Just brush it off!! You're still hot!!!" It was like that, only no one was telling me I was still hot. One of the mothers came close to wetting herself, she was laughing so hard. WyoBaby was at the other end of the field, hollering at the top of her lungs, "Mom!! MOM!!! ARE YOU OKAY?!?!?!" As I brushed the dirt off my knees and scooped my bruised ego off the grass, I mumbled, "Yeah, I'm okay." She didn't hear me, so she kept yelling, "MOM! MOM!! ARE YOU OKAY!!!" "YES BABY!!! I'M FIIIINE!! GET BACK TO THE DRILL!!!" The mother in the stands called out, "I'm sorry, but you had to see it from the outside, it was HILARIOUS!" Oh I just bet it was. So, not only was I trying to recover from my cold, I was now nursing a bruised knee and trying to get 13 girls to take me seriously. Good luck with that. They tend to tune you out after you've taken a fantastic dive. But I taught them how to do a throw-in properly, how to do a chest trap, and how to pass. Mission accomplished. After going home, popping some Advil, and crawling back onto my beloved couch, things got better. Until my friend, the angelic one, texted me, "Are you still awake? I will say several Baptist versions of Hail Mary for my blog." When I asked her if she'd written something naughty, which would explain the need for a Baptist Hail Mary, she sweetly replied, "No, I don't write naughty things. I just write about people I KNOW." And just like that, her little halo slipped. I fired up the ol' laptop, pulled up her blog, and read about her day. She'd had a rough day. But you know how she made it better? By ending it with, "At least I didn't trip over a soccer ball!!" People, that is what's known as adding insult to injury. Yes, I love her. But her halo is perched a bit precariously. The only way she redeemed herself was by adding, "Just brush it off, Baby. You're still hot!!" And that's why I love her. She's my own Taylor Swift.