95 years is a looong time to wait...

so today . . . the ducks played in the rose bowl. and won :) and that is all.

(of course that is not all! you have to know there is a story here...)

i don't watch sports very much anymore. i don't actually watch tv that much... mostly i listen to it and glance at it as i am doing other things. but when you are watching a football game or a basketball game, you kind of have to keep your eyes on the tv, which sort of puts my multi-tasking out of commission. this is not true with baseball. sometimes you can "watch" a whole baseball game without ever looking at the tv, and not miss a thing...

i have found that i enjoy watching sports a whole lot more when i am watching with other people. when we lived in southern oregon, we watched every trailblazer game that was on. mostly we watched with our friends, ron and joanne--sometimes at our house and sometimes at theirs. and pizza was usually involved... but then we moved to southern california, and finding fans who share my love of oregon teams is somewhat difficult. not to mention, finding televised games of oregon teams is not all that easy either, when you don't have cable...

but today, the stars aligned, and this morning rollie asked me, "do you want to watch the ducks game with me?" it stopped me in my tracks. rollie never asks me to watch a game with him--mostly because he chooses to cheer for the evil lakers, and he is smart enough to know that we might not be able to live in the same house any more if we ever lose our minds long enough to try watching a laker game together... but he was talking about the ducks. and unless the ducks are playing usc, we can both cheer for them.

however... even though i don't usually watch sports with rollie, i can hear him watching them. you may wonder how i can hear him watching something?? it's easy. whenever there is a really terrible call or a really spectacular play, he makes noise. let's just say he gets somewhat emotionally involved with his sports teams...

but i really, really wanted to watch the ducks today. it's the rose bowl, for goodness sake! and i really, really didn't want to watch it by myself. but i also really, really didn't want to watch it if the ducks were going to lose, and make rollie feel cranky! (i get cranky when i don't get my carbs, and rollie gets cranky when his teams lose. don't judge.) so when he asked me if i wanted to watch the game, i said yes, but only if he could promise me he wouldn't get too personally involved. he looked at me like he had no clue what i was talking about! "you know," i said, "i want to have fun watching the game, and it won't be fun if you get cranky." "i won't get cranky," he said. "the game is scheduled to start at 2:00, so i will tivo it and then we can start watching about 3:00." he said this with a big smile on his face, like it was the greatest idea ever. "oh," i said, "then no, i don't want to watch with you..."

ok, now before you all start sending rollie letters of sympathy because he is married to me, let me explain. rollie NEVER watches his sports live. he ALWAYS tivos them. and then, when he watches them, he zips through the commercials, half time, and any slow parts of the game--like replays! he watches a lot of sports, and this method allows him to keep up with all his teams and still have a life. but this is not how i like to watch a game. so i said, "i can't watch that way. my brain needs time to process. i need to talk about what is happening. i might need to go get a snack... or two, depending on how long the game is!" he looked at me like he thought i might be from another planet, (i am! men are from mars, women are from venus... duh!) but for some reason, he agreed to my unreasonable demands--and if you need proof that he loves me, there it is!

but i love him too, so while i was on my way to 7-11 to get my personal supply of diet lemon cokesi for the game, i decided i could probably live with zipping through the commercials and half time, if we could just let the rest of the game play. (see? i am not totally unreasonable! i can compromise... unless you want me to watch a laker game--i do have standards, you know.) so at 3:00, we settled in with our leftover orange chicken and sodas to watch the game.

as the game started, the camera panned across the field. "i've been there, you know," i said. i say this every time i get the chance. "yes," he said, "i know. you've been there. you have a picture of the grass." "i don't just have a picture of the grass--i actually STOOD on the grass. right in the middle of that field. and then i took a picture." it is necessary for me to remind him of this, because when we were in college, rollie traveled all over europe with a singing group. and when we are watching movies that are set in italy or spain or portugal (to name a just a few of the countries he has been in,) he always says, "i've been there!" this is interesting information the first 20 times you hear it, but after being married more than 30 years... well, you know, i am sorry to say sometimes my eyes roll--all on their own, of course. until a few years ago, my only opportunity to utter those same words was when watching field of dreams, which is set in iowa, i think. because i've been there. to iowa... and to the rose bowl :) did i mention that i stood in the middle of the field :))

it was a good game! i mean, i can say that now, since it is over and we won. my idea of a good game is when my team gets way ahead early, and then stays ahead. this was not that kind of game. touchdown after touchdown was scored! penalties were called. players were hurt. rose bowl records were shattered! and i talked. and talked. and cheered. and talked.

rollie was oddly silent. i finally said, "you are never going to ask me to watch a game with you again, are you?" he just looked at me and smiled. "i am being calm," he said, "i'm not getting too involved." "ok," i said, "that's good, but i need to talk about the game and what is happening and how i feel about it. i need some communication and interaction here!" and so the game went on. and we got a little emotionally involved...

but thankfully we were cheering for the same team to win. and thankfully the team we were cheering for did win--for the first time since 1917! it was pretty awesome. (and i'm pretty sure it only happened because i finally found my duck tshirt and put it on!)
so now i am thinking we should watch more sports together. i can cheer for the angels :) if we ever get a professional football team in la, i can cheer for them. i can probably even cheer for usc, unless they are playing the ducks. or the beavers. (rollie is probably reading this and thinking OH NNOOOOO! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?) i see lots of afternoons and evenings in our future, eating snacks and sodas, watching sports together, talking, and cheering our team on...

... as long as it isn't basketball...

an opportunity for growth? ok, fine...

*disclaimer--i did not actually watch the bcs national championship game last night. it was on espn, and i do not have cable. if i had cable, i would have been glued to the tv--all by myself, because the rest of my family had other commitments last night. so my blog today is my reaction to the reactions of the outcome, not the actual game itself. which i didn't get to see. because i don't have cable. stupid espn...

so today . . . oregon mourns.

the ducks lost the bcs championship game.

(to be completely honest, i'm sure that not all of oregon mourns. i know that my three nieces are probably ecstatically happy, but that is because two of them attended oregon state university.)

the ducks lost. it happens. everybody can't be the champions. somebody has to lose.

of course, i much prefer it when my team wins, but the nature of a game is that there will be a winner and a loser. and nobody wins every single time. that is kind of the point of a competition--to determine who is the best (at least on that day!) sometimes the best team doesn't win. sometimes the luckiest team wins. or the sneakiest team. or the team who got all the breaks from the referees. but that's the way it goes.

i am much happier when my team wins. and i don't care if they won because they were lucky or sneaky or good. i don't. i just want them to win. and when my team loses, i am disappointed. i admit that i have been known to trash talk the other team for a couple of days (or years) after a big loss to deal with my disappointment. i hold grudges for a looooong time against teams who have the audacity to beat my team (ahem, lakers...) but i also have unending loyalty for the teams i love (which is why i voted for clyde drexler on dancing with the stars EVERY SINGLE WEEK, even though he clearly couldn't dance.)

we have to learn how to lose, because losing is just as much a part of life as winning. in real life the best person doesn't always get the job. sometimes it is the person who is the fastest talker, or the one who knows the boss's nephew, or the one with the most seniority. in real life some of us will always be the last one picked for the softball team. always. in real life sometimes people will trash talk us. that's just the way it goes...

but if we can remember that losing doesn't have to define us, then we can go on to compete another day. we can look at the game tapes, and see where we could have made better choices and then make better choices the next time. we can realize that just because we lost doesn't mean we have to be losers--it just means we need to do something different the next time.

which all sounds really nice. but i still hate it when my team loses.

go blazers!!

a day of triumph . . . and failure . . .

so today . . . i watched the super bowl--like most of america. we watched it at our church on the huge projector screen. there was a chili cook-off in which i participated . . . no, i did not enter a pot of chili--they said no cans. but i did taste each entry and voted for my favorite. it is kind of amazing to me what people can to do chili . . .

since i'm not familiar with either team that was playing today, i randomly picked the saints as my team. i needed to root for somebody! i am kind of a peyton manning fan, but i just thought the team from new orleans should win, after the hurricane and all . . . so i sat in my lawn chair in the gym with my bowl of what turned out to be the winning chili, and watched my team go down by ten points in the first quarter.

the commentators then proceeded to announce to all of america that the most points a team was ever behind and still able to come back and win, was ten--way to kill the game for all the saints fans! sheesh! it was like they were saying it was all over in the first quarter. why even watch the rest of the game?!?!

but we did, because it was a church activity, and it probably wouldn't look too good if the pastor left before half time.

ah yes, and then there was half time . . .

we always try to do something during half time that gets people up out of their chairs and moving around a bit. this year it was a football throwing contest. the object was to throw three small nerf footballs from different distances into a round target about the size of a hoola hoop. actually, it probably was a hoola hoop.

i stayed in my chair. games of physical skill are not my forte. the only "c" i ever got on a report card (well until i dozed my way through western civilization when i was in college) was in sixth grade p.e. and i was horrified! i mean really, who gets a "c" in p.e.?!?! i thought all i had to do was dress down, show up, and try in order to get a decent grade. and i did that. the problem was, even when i tried i had no skills--except when we played hockey in the gym with those plastic sticks. i rocked at that! i don't know why, but i could smack that plastic puck clear across the room with that stick!

but that was the exception when it came to my sports prowess. when i was in elementary school, i pretended to be sick more than once in order to avoid a p.e. class, especially if i had heard that we were playing any sort of game where teams had to be picked--because i was always last to be chosen. or if we had to climb that crazy rope. and why on earth did we have to do that anyway?? is that a life-skill?? i don't think so. i've never once been asked to climb a rope since i stopped taking p.e. classes, which was when i was a sophomore in high school. the minute that p.e. became an elective instead of a requirement, i was done! give me a class that takes some intellectual ability--i have that. but please don't ask me to pole vault or catch a fly ball or serve a volleyball overhand. or throw a football.

which is why i stayed in my seat when the half-time competition began.

but then i heard the word "prize" thrown out there, and you know how i feel about rewards . . . so diandra and i got up and went over and stood in line.

i'm sure it was totally random, but we ended up in line right behind the one little boy and two little girls who wanted to play. awwww, how cute! i thought so too, until the little boy rifled that ball through the hoop. twice.

ok, well he is a boy--they have natural ball throwing abilities. the first little girl took her three tries and missed them all. i could feel her pain. but everyone clapped for her anyway, and she went off to play. the second girl was her little sister. she made one. you should have seen the look on her face. i would say it was sheer joy, but it wasn't. it was joy mixed with little sisterly evil. she took off at lightning speed to find her big sister and brag that she had made one in! now i could really feel the big sister's pain . . .

by some random aligning of the planets, diandra and i were next in line. she said, "i want to go first." ok, no problem. go right ahead . . . and then guess what happened? yep, she made one in.

now diandra does have some physical skills. clearly. she played lots of sports growing up, and never got a "c" in p.e. she even thought about becoming a p.e. teacher for a while. (it's a good thing she didn't though--i have issues with p.e. teachers.) so i wasn't totally surprised that she was able to throw one of those stupid little balls through that dumb hoop! but now it was my turn, and i thought, "please, let me get one in. just one. i don't need to win the whole competition (insert hysterical laughter here, because even with divine intervention that was not going to happen,) but if i could just get one in . . . "

they handed me the first ball. i didn't know which hand to throw it with--another of my issues. my dad is left-handed and i seem to be left handed for some sports. i bowl left handed. i shoot a gun left handed. but i "play" baseball right handed. usually when i pick up a piece of sports equipment--once every two or three years--i just know which hand to use. one hand feels right and the other one feels wrong. but as i stood there holding that little nerf football, neither hand felt right. so i went with the left hand and threw. the ball fell short and hit the floor. which wouldn't have been so bad, except i realized i was standing on one foot with the other leg extended out behind me and my left arm still hanging there in mid air. i looked like i was doing ballet, not throwing a football!

they handed me the second ball. i threw it quickly. i just wanted it out of my hands and for this whole miserable ordeal to be over. i can't even tell you where it landed, because i knew with certainty and without looking that it had not gone through the hoop. i was already looking at the third ball and wishing there was a way out that did not require me to throw that last ball. but there wasn't. there was a whole line of people behind me, watching and waiting for their turn.

i threw the ball. it did not go near the hoop.

suddenly i was in elementary school again--the one nobody wanted on their team.

it was not my favorite moment of the afternoon . . .

i pretended it was funny. i made a joke. everyone laughed along with me, and the competition continued.

i went back to my chair. i couldn't watch anymore. i totally missed diandra's next attempts, but i did finally glance over occasionally when i realized rollie was still in it. and as it turns out, he can throw a football. he came in second place and won a prize!

we watched the rest of the ball game. and the saints did accomplish the nearly impossible--they came back from ten points down to not just win the game, but to win it by a lot. it was like after half time, they calmed down, got the adrenaline under control, and played football. oh yeah, and that interception that they ran back for a touchdown helped too . . .

next year there will probably be another super bowl party at our church, and we will go. we will watch the game with our friends and eat good food and probably cheer for a team that i know nothing about. i will choose a team based on their location or who else likes them, or the color of their uniforms. i will eat cookies and chips that are bad for me and try again to choose the winning chili.

but next year, during half time, i will keep my body in my chair. even if there is a prize.