There are several indicators that your daughter’s soccer team may not be ready for professional level play. For instance:

Coach: Zoe, you go to midfield.
Zoe: Ok!… where is midfield?

**

Player: Coach, how will everyone know that I’m goalie if we don’t have a goalie shirt?
Coach: Just turn your shirt around backwards.

**

Player: What kinds of things are fouls? Kicking?

**

The first game of the year is always a refresher game. These girls have been out of practice for several months, but frankly they did great. This is the first year that Zoe’s team plays on the “big fields” rather than the mini-fields. She was most excited when she got to play goalie… of course with her shirt turned around backwards.

She had several impressive goal kicks. No, seriously.

There were a number of noticeable improvements over last season. For one, all of the girls ran in the right direction. Zoe only cried once during the game (wind knocked out of her), and she only “took a break” (lying down on the ground in the goal during play) once.

Deacon was very forlorn that little guys were not allowed to play, as evidenced in this picture.

*Oh ball, how you vex me so.*

But then he realized that you can steal a random kid’s soccer ball and use it as a seat! And after that everything was fine.

I love my kids.

A friend of mine sent me to a Facebook page called The Ambien Hotline. It’s basically a group of people who share their stories of Ambien-related hijinks. (One chick said that, post-Ambien, she walked to her mom’s house at 2am and asked to borrow the remote control.)

I believe you all remember my list of Ambien-related weirdness, right? If not, go ahead and refresh your memory.

Anyhoo, this particular Facebook page also had pics and cartoons, and the one cartoon — I swear to you — was drawn with me in mind.

It even looks like me! Quilted grandma robe and all… plus, many times when I’m out strolling around outside the city, carrying my laptop and wearing my quilted bathrobe, I run into three-foot-tall talking rats and their three-eyed frog alien friends. And they often laugh at me.

Come to think of it, maybe sleep blogging isn’t really my biggest problem…

There was a time (about two whole months ago), when I was naive enough to think that once I had a rough draft finished, the rest would be a breeze.

Stop laughing. It’s not nice to laugh at people who are idiots by accident.

So it turns out that revision? Is a JERKY PAIN IN MY BACKSIDE! Going back over the words I’d slaved over for months and months, I read them now and say to myself, “Pshaw, self, you are such an amateur! Who wrote this? A second-grader? On allergy medication?”

Then I get it in my mind that everything I’ve written is crap, and that I should just shred my manuscript and recycle it as hen-house bedding. (y’know… so it can get pooped on? by lots of fat birds?)

But *sigh* instead I try to push my way through it (partially because we don’t actually own any hens). I write different scenes from different character perspectives just to get it all nice and fleshed out, hoping that one day this dumb manuscript will be able to pass for something readable.

Also, I doodle a lot, y’know, when I can’t think of words to write.

Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to draw anything but the swirly-things. So my notebook is full of them. And when revision becomes too much and I desperately need a break, I go outside… where I promptly draw swirly-things on my driveway with sidewalk chalk.

No, seriously.

On a totally unrelated note, I caught someone in our garage trying to steal my car. And though he had the keys, was in the front seat, and knew how to honk the horn… well, he couldn’t seem to figure out how to actually steal the thing.

I went out to get a closer look at the punk.

He was so cute that I couldn’t press charges. I agreed to let him off with a warning if he’d come live with me forever and let me smooch his little cheeks whenever I darn well pleased.

It was an agreeable agreement.

And now, back to drawing swirlies… err, I mean, revising.