Soccer Diss (two S's in Diss? Apostrophe S on S's?) Also, house money pit angst.
2003-03-29
2:04 p.m.

My husband is waiting for me so we can go play soccer, but I'm writing an entry instead.

I saw Bend it Like Beckham a few weeks ago. Let me channel my Bostonian heritage and proclaim it wicked good. It made me wish to play soccer again.

So I guess I'll recount my extremely humiliating soccer history. Good stuff.

Last year, I decided I wanted to play soccer. I'm 25 years old (I was 24 at the time), and the last time I'd played regularly was when I was in 4th grade. I'd played the odd pickup game in college, and I only moderately sucked compared to everyone else, so I figured why not.

I found the local womens league webpage and sent in an email (I think I may have been drunk, ha? Liquid courage.) proclaiming that I wanted to play but being very, very honest about my lack of experience. To my surprise, I got a call almost immediately the next morning. There was a team in my town and they wanted me. They didn't care that I didn't even know the rules. So, I signed on. I got cleats, shin guards, and mildly terrified. My husband explained the offsides rule to me.

My first game, I sucked. My second game, I sucked. Around the 5th game, I got a job and couldn't make it to every game because of it, thus putting me on the bad side of the team captain to be (taking over the next season). By the end of season 2, I didn't suck half as much. I still sucked, to be sure, but not as much. I headed the ball! I actually kicked it to my own team members! I got in the opposing teams' faces! I was finally getting the hang of it. Our team came in first in our division and was set to move up a division for season 3. I was excited, but nervous about playing in a division that wasn't just for casual players, which is what I'd signed up for. At the wrap party, I talked to the new captain and told her I was excited for the next season and I was planning to workout a lot and do a lot of drills in the interim to prepare for the new level of play.

Then, I never got a call about season 3's schedule. I stopped getting team emails. I wondered if I'd had the start date wrong. Then, a few weeks into when I thought the season started, I got an email from the former captain asking everyone to bring 5$ to the next game (game 5) of the season so they could buy the new captain a gift to thank her for all her hard work. She was obviously using an old email list.

I'd been dumped! It kind of cracked me up and made me feel like an uncoordinated jackass at the same time. I still kind of cringe when I think about it. I honestly wish that the new captain had just been honest and told me that there were too many players, or something. If I'd known, I would have signed up for another team that was staying in the lower division, or something. Or signed up for some other activity to fill the time. Bah.

Of course I didn't confront or email her about it or anything, because I'm a total wuss like that.

Okay then. End story.

The Money Pit

Can someone explain to me why I bought a house? Seriously. I just dropped an assload of cash at the hardware store for about the 90th time in the past few weeks buying crap like drain extenders. Who the crap wants to spend time thinking about drain extenders? Much less spending money on them?

I live in fear that the entire house will crumble into the ground due to some unforseen foundation problem or that they'll discover toxic mold and the Intel guys will have to come in and we'll live in a hotel for 7 months while they knock it down and rebuild, and then we'll have some craptastic new kit house instead of the cute, character filled cottage we shelled the crap out for. Damnable Boston Housing Prices! I shake my fist at the moon.