Far Post

This is my 100th and final blog post on Kick Soccer Mom (at least for now). Thank you to those kind and faithful souls who read, reposted, commented on and liked my blog these last two years – I truly appreciate and value the time you took out of your busy lives to read my silly stories. Who knew that something I started on a whim one day after reading a newspaper article about how there are no funny women out there would become 100 blogs long? Here’s some stuff I learned along the way:

Not all blogs get famous and turned into books. Julie and Julia was the model for me – the story of the woman named Julie who blogged about cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes and then got her blog profiled in the New York Times, got a book deal, and had her bestselling book made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. I figured I’d probably follow the same path....I mean, sure, Meryl is a little old to be playing soccer, but so am I-- and I know she likes to tackle challenging, different acting roles. Alas, it was not meant to be. But it doesn’t mean I can’t turn my blog into a book. Forcing myself to write something every week for almost two years means I’ve got loads of material written already...and then when my book gets famous and Meryl comes crying to me, wishing she had found me earlier-- I can give the movie role to some younger actress. Suck it Meryl, with your phony baloney foreign accents. I don’t need you after all.

The internets like pictures, not words. According to my stats, my blog has been looked at 16,640 times since I created it, and if I had to break that down, I’d say that roughly 40 of those times someone was reading it, 600 times someone was looking at a pictures of Jesus playing soccer that I illegally used last year, and 16,000 times was me looking at my blog to see if anyone else had looked at it.

Playing drop-in soccer with men is more fun than playing soccer in a women’s league. Of course I may be biased on this point, because both times after university that I played in women’s leagues, I almost immediately tore my ACLs. But regardless of that, the most joy I’ve felt playing soccer was when playing drop-in games with mostly men. I suppose it is because I would much rather play with people who are better and faster than me-- their passing is so good that it makes me look like a much better player. I’ve found most of them to be unfailingly generous teammates, and they tolerate me by treating me like that untrained pet that it’s hard to stay angry at. We have a lot of laughs. It feels like high school gym class – or maybe cutting class-- we’re all shirking our responsibilities with our jobs and kids and running around getting a little fresh air, often in the middle of the day on a weekday. Indeed, it is so much like gym, that if we ever chastise each other for being late, the response is usually “It’s okay--I brought a note from my mom.”

Physiotherapists have a lot of power. Turns out telling your physiotherapist about your blog after writing about how mean and demanding your physiotherapist is can be very, very punishing indeed. Even other patients were like “Wow, you have to do 3 sets of 50 squats? Whoa. Why?”

Time can go by really fast. When I started my blog I used to worry my dad would see it and be angry at some of the personal stuff I was making public, but now his dementia is so profound he can’t read the word ‘Vancouver’ on a Canucks poster and doesn’t know who my sister is. We were never close, and he never told me that he loved me or was proud of me, but he is still my dad- - the only dad who repeatedly showed up with a truck to help me and my friends move all those times while we were in university, and who took me to Holland after I endlessly pestered him about it when I was ten years old, the way some dads will break down and take their kids for ice cream. (Why Holland? Who knows? I think clogs were popular and windmills seemed cool at the time.) Instead of writing silly soccer blogs, I need to sit with him when I can and listen to him tell the story, once again, of how he hit two home runs in one baseball game. Each time this story is more fantastical than the last time he told it and it is hard to hear. Is this me, in 35 years, telling tall tales of soccer goals I scored? I hope my daughters will sit with me and listen patiently.

My husband is a very tolerant person. I know it’s not normal, this constant running off to play soccer at my age when and I could be advancing my career and earning more money, or I dunno, at least cleaning out our closets or something. But sometimes when we have tons to do and the kids are being psycho and the house is a mess, but the sun is shining, I will slip guiltily downstairs in my soccer gear, and look worriedly at Steve, and he always, always just smiles at me and says, “It’s okay. Go play. Have fun.” I know, ladies, that I’m playing with an unfair advantage. He is my biggest score.

Soccer is everywhere. Not only is soccer the most popular sport in the universe, it may, in fact, be the universe. Several years ago, a mathematician published an article in the prestigious journal Nature, which claims that ”the universe is small and spherical, consisting of curved dodecahedrons that together create a shape akin to a soccer ball.” That’s right people, in my very last blog post I decided to casually drop in the word ‘dodecahedrons’. I’m that good. Enough said.