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Ros' soccer team just had their fifth game, and this is the first chance I've had to post about the footie season. I got paired up to coach with another dad this year, so the Sweetie briefly thought he was getting off helping out. But it turns out the two of us were really bad at running lineups, so the Sweetie is back on the roster. And another dad, who was a goalie, volunteered to help out coaching the goalies so there are four of us running the team.

There was some period of adjustment, but we're now all playing to our strengths. I do the overall organizing and running drills at practices, the goalie dad drills the goalies and helps with strategy during games and the other dad helps run drills and keeping the kids enthusiastic. Non-sporty Sweetie does his bit making sure everyone gets an equal amount of playing time on the field.

We've been having practices every week, and it's really starting to pay off. Last night the girls were actually passing and running plays with each other, and we pulled off a 0 – 4 win against a team that has some of the best players in the league and two coaches who usually have one of the better teams. So, yay!

Ros was in goal the first half, and she's really doing fab. I think working with a coach who is NOT me is good for her. Our goalie dad is really pushing her, and she's made some fabulous saves.

On the downside, our goalie in the second half sprained her finger, and since we're on a full-sized field and she was in the other end and didn't say anything, we didn't know she needed to be pulled off until one of the other girls rotated off and told us she was crying. I felt horrible! But her dad (the non-goalie coach) tells me she's okay.

It's a nice bunch of girls, and they're playing well together so it's looking to be a fun rest of the season. And they actually come to practices! (Last year, I was lucky some weeks to have three girls at practice. This year, most of them show up.)

We played one of the very best teams again this week. The last time we played them, we traded the lead back and forth but lost 3 - 4. This time we only managed one goal on them, but we did hold them to only two goals, due to stellar work from our keepers. Ros, in particular, did an amazing job in goal in the second half, stopping a bunch of goals that looked almost impossible to get in front of. Of course, she beat herself up for the one goal she did let in, but it was one that would have been difficult to stop. We've assured her she did an awesome job and stopped the game from being a big blow out.

I had to cancel our practice this week. An hour before it was due to start, we got an absolute torrential downpour. I reckoned (correctly, as it turned out) that even if the rain stopped in time for the practice, the field would be a mess.

Ros and I went to the field anyway, to head off anyone who hadn't got the cancellation email, and we got the pleasure of watching the U9 girls play their 7:30 game on the other field. (Our league only cancels games for lightning, so they had to play.) It was HI-LARIOUS. The field was a big squishy swamp in the middle, which stopped the ball cold anytime it got kicked there. And when a player kicked the to get it going again, there'd be a huge spray of water drenching everyone close by. The parents watching alternated between telling their kids not to worry about their shoes and laughing hysterically. Ros wanted to stay and watch the whole game, but we finally bailed after ten minutes.

Ros is at sleepaway camp this week, so we coached the game without her. (Hardly seems fair, but that's the joy of volunteering. *g*) It was a scorching hot night, and we were missing more girls than expected, so it was a tough slog. Fortunately, one girl who was supposed to be missing managed to make it to the game.

On the plus side, we've discovered two more goalkeepers who were really good. Both the Sweetie and I made a point of telling them that they'd done really well, since they'd both told us before the game that they weren't good in goal. (They totally were!) On the minus side, the other side managed to get in one goal on each girl (one blooper that went right over our first keeper's head, and one when our second keeper had the sun right in her eyes), and we only scored once. But the one goal we did get was courtesy of a girl who's never scored before, so she was very excited. All told, for a 1 - 2 loss, I consider it a successful game.

Tomorrow, we're picking up Ros and whisking her and a friend off to a cottage for a week. Our hope is that the girls will mostly amuse themselves, and we can chill on the deck, read some books and write some stuff. (I'm writing Pros again. Whee!)

We got an email from the woman from whom we're renting the cottage with instructions for the property, including this gem:

Do not leave any food or put any garbage outside of the cottage. There are bears in the woods and they will come.

The Sweetie thinks it sounds like the start of a horror movie. Wish us luck!

Two games. Two very different results.

Last week, our girls seemed to forget everything they knew about passing and were back to clumping on the ball and fighting each other for possession. Since we were up against a team that was a) fast and b) really good at passing and working the ball up the field, this was not good. We also had two less than experienced goalkeepers. The result was us getting killed, 4 - 0.

This week, I spent the half hour before the game doing a lot of passing drills and working with our next new keeper. (Ros was in goal the second half so I knew she was solid.) There was some clumping, but they did much better working together. And the new keeper ended up being great, as was Ros. Though afterward, Ros beat herself up for letting in one goal. (Not entirely her fault. One of their players got a breakaway and our defense fell apart on her.)

We had one line in particular that really clicked and managed to score twice in quick succession, to give us a final score of 2 - 1 for us. Our first win of the season, hooray!

The win was a bit bittersweet, though. Our opponents were the team of one of Ros' best friends. Ros and her friend have been on the same team for four seasons, but this year the club was desperate for coaches so her friend's dad took on his own team.

Tonight, I'm off to see one of the James Plays from the National Theatre of Scotland, and the Sweetie is going to be running a soccer practice on his own. Given that the Sweetie is not a big soccer guy, I expect to hear interesting stories from the practice. Ros has promised to help him out.

Black Belt season isn't yet over (we've got two weeks of rehearsals left before the Black Belt Spectacular performance) but footie season is now underway. Because I'm not busy enough.

We had our first game last night. The girls seem nice. The parents are mostly okay. (Well, there was the one grandmother who walked across the field IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME!) So far, there's only one girl who's really super aggressive on the field, so I think we're going to have to work on that.

The girls kept it competitive, they had the ball in the other team's end a lot, but they couldn't quite seem to get it in the goal. In the interest of fairness, we're trying something new this year and making every girl do at least one rotation in goal, so our keepers were a bit on the inexperienced side. The final score was 1 - 3 for the other side, but I felt like it was a good start for the team.

The club has gotten hardcore about not allowing requests to play with their friends (it was an administrative nightmare for them, so I totally get it) so none of Ros' friends are on the team. But we do have three girls back from previous teams of ours, which is nice. I mostly have them sorted out, except for Jamie and Julia, who are both thin-framed girls with curly blonde hair, and Christina and Vanessa, who are both stocky blondes. Fortunately, Mia and Tia look nothing alike. (Last year we had Kira, Kari and Katherine with similar builds and hair colour. That was fun for a few weeks.)

We had our final game of the regular season tonight, and the girls did brilliantly! They were hustling and passing and working together. And it all paid off. We were playing the third rated team and we managed to beat them 0 - 3. Yay! It was a really nice end to the season.

Now there's just the cup weekend playoffs. We play three games on Sept. 10th and 12th, and then the top four teams go on to the semis and final on the 13th. I'm not going to get my hopes up for making the semis, but it would be fun if we did.

I brought my good camera to the game tonight hoping to get a few shots, but it was such a tense game that I never even took it out of its case.

There's at least one game every year that you play in the pouring rain, and this week was that game. It started out as a steady drizzle, but midway through the game it was just chucking it down. Fortunately it was an entirely reasonable temperature, so we weren't wet and cold, just wet.

This game had one awesome milestone: Ros scored her first goal ever! She's been much more aggressive this year than she has in past years when she's been a more defensive player, and she managed a lovely shot right into the net. (All that playing with soccer with the boys has paid off.)

Alas, that was our only goal. And since we were playing one of the better teams and our defence fell apart a few times, the final result was 1 - 3 for them.

I'm wishing now I'd started practices much sooner. In spite of me emphasizing passing and not clumping up, the team still aren't passing and in fact keep trying to strip the ball from their teammates so they can score. There's three games left. I'm hoping for one good passing play before the end of the season.

Apart from soccer, there's been a few outings. The weekend before last we were up in Sault Ste. Marie visiting the Sweetie's family. It was a low key visit, which was nice. The Sweetie had got his mom an iPad for her birthday and in the course of showing her how to take pictures with it he took my new favourite picture of me and Ros.

( Me and Ros reading The Order of the Phoenix )

This past weekend, the Sweetie and Ros were in Halifax visiting his dad, leaving me solo. There was housework and writing done (though not nearly enough of either), a joint 50th birthday/20th wedding anniversary party for a pair of friends, and a trip to Stratford with other friends for a fun performance of Jonson's The Alchemist.

And tomorrow we're off for five days of camping.

Yesterday, we dropped Ros off for her first ever week of sleepaway camp. She was very excited, and eager for it all to get started, which meant that the meltdown we feared might hit never came. (I, however, was a leetle bit teary, but managed to successfully hide it.) As we were leaving, the counsellors were taking the girls in Ros' cabin for a welcome swim, and Ros barely looked back. Hopefully she's having a grand time. (The main counsellor will be calling on Wednesday to let us know how Ros is doing, so we've got our fingers crossed.)

Even with Ros gone, we still had to coach the soccer team tonight. We had a practice last week and I ran a bunch of passing practices that seems to have paid off. The girls are doing a bit better at passing to each other, though they started bunching up more towards the end of the game. We still can't score, though, but since our goalies and defence did their usual bang up job, score was a nil - nil tie. I'll take that as a success.

At the next practice, I'm going to have them work on passing and running plays off corner kicks. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'm going to try and introduce the wall pass. Back when I was younger and quicker I used to love doing those.

Last night the Sweetie and I used our child-free status to fall asleep in front of the 1969 version of The Italian Job. (That is one sloppy, sloppy film. It seems entirely built around the question "what cool buildings can we drive Minis on in Torino?" and plot coherence and character development be damned.) Tonight, I've managed another 2,000 words on the spy story. (Win!)

I've been struggling to find any time at all to get on the computer since we've been back from London. Either I'm constantly on the run, or I pass out as soon as Ros does. But I've finally got a few minutes, and I realized I'm behind on footie updates.

There was a game while we were in London, and my former co-coach took that one over for us. She got a dad to help run the line-ups, a few more dads to put up the nets. (They're full-sized nets, now, and she's my height, so reaching the crossbar isn't even an option for either of us.) She said the girls played really well, and they held the other team to a draw, 1 - 1.

Our first game back we played a team with three of our best players from our team two years ago. Both teams played really well and dug in. They scored first, then we tied them up, but they managed to score a final goal to win 2 - 1.

And our game this week was against a team that was fast and, according to my girls, really pushy. But our girls held firm and managed to win 3 - 1. (It was nearly 3 - 2. They scored right at the end, but it turns out that time was already up and the ref's whistle just wasn't working.)

There have been Taekwando developments as well.

On Saturday, I attended the meeting to kick off the new black belt cycle. Looks like I'll be testing for my black belt next year. That means a serious commitment: four classes a week, including a 6:45 a.m. two hour class on Saturdays, extra training at home, running a certain mileage a week, and getting all the forms so I can do them in my sleep. I'm looking forward to it--I'll be training with a few of my friends at the club who are at the same point--but it's going to take a lot of indulgence from the Sweetie, since I'll be doing at least one evening class a week. And it's going to mean I have to really prioritize what I have time to do.

I've been struggling, and failing to find time to write of late, and I've only managed to grab the occasional hour to watch any TV. Since I've got to be up early three days anyway for early classes, I've got a possible scheme which will allow for writing. I'm thinking of going to bed early, like right after Ros early, and then getting up around 5 every day. On the days I don't have Taekwando, that'll give me an hour of writing time before everyone else is awake.

Of course, the problem with this scheme is that I'm a total night owl, and going to bed early is something I've never quite been able to manage. It also means that I'll mostly be swearing off TV for the coming year, which is annoying.

Oh, and the fly in the ointment in all of this is my continued problems with anaphylaxis as a result of exercise. I'm going to try to gradually build up my running and see if I can train my body not to swell up when I do cardio.

We shall see how it all goes...

In further Taekwando news, Ros tested for her brown belt last night! She's now edging closer to black, and she's now considered a Masters student. Which means her classes are now an hour, and she gets to train with the cool weapons, like sais and kamas.

It also means she'll likely be going for her black belt the year after I do, which means I'll probably end up doing two years for the Saturday black belt training sessions, because if I'm going to take Ros, I might as well do the training.

( Here's me with Ros after the belt ceremony )

I got back from MediaWest last night in just enough time to inhale the dinner the Sweetie had prepared and dash off to the pitch for our first soccer game of the year. The games are now 7x7, on a bigger field, and using nearly a full-sized net. I thought the bigger goal might result in higher scores, but the need to run a bigger field seems to have evened that out. And I'm trying to really enforce positions this year--three up, three back at the moment, though I may move two to midfield--because otherwise they're going to kill themselves running up and down the field.

We seem to have a solid team, with a few really good players, a bunch of really solid players, and one who's never played before and is a combination of really enthusiastic and a wee bit clueless. (One of my clueless first time kids last year turned into a killer defense player, so I have hope. *g*) They all seem to be nice kids, and so far the parents seem lovely too. Fingers crossed that all continues.

Ros volunteered for goal in the second half, and then complained that she only got to touch the ball three times. The Sweetie and I pointed out that this meant the defense were doing their jobs.

Oh, and we won! 0 - 2.

As for MediaWest, it was a lovely, though rather more low key time than ever before. The registration is very much down, there were function rooms that barely got used for panels, and the dealer room is a ghost of its former self. Though I did get a fun t-shirt, "Sarcasm is My Super Power", because it totally is, and a Captain America watch, because Cap!

But the main reason for going to the con has always been the people, and many of my favourite people were there. We had Pros panels and a Pros party. I attended a Big Bang Theory panel, that may have convinced me to give the show another shot. Maybe. (Hi, Krisser!) There was a visit to our favourite Mexican restaurant, Los Tres Amigos, followed by a viewing of Mad Max: Fury Road. Which is just as amazing as everyone has been saying.

I've been saying this is my last MW, and barring a miracle I think that's going to hold, but at least I feel like I've gone out on, if not a high note, and really satisfying one.