Today was my first day back to work after 2 weeks of vacation! I made a bunch of appointments for the rest of the month, tomorrow I will be on the road again. Tomorrow the driving starts, Antioch High at 9am, so I need to leave around 6:30. It will be hard since I haven't gotten up before 10am for the past 2 weeks. I look forward to Friday when I will work at my daughter's school. I will be working with students that I substituted for 3 years ago, I wonder if they will remember me. Next week is Hollister, 1 hour drive, Tuesday is back north to Hoopa, California, 6 hours north. I work there Wednesday, but I look forward to visiting the Indian Reservation there ... I can't wait till the pictures. I will also be working in Arcata while I'm up there, and maybe go back the following week to McKinleyville and then Eureka. I like driving that far north, and hope the sun is out so the pictures turn out better. After my six hour drive north, the next day I will drive 3 hours south, and then the month continues to be "on the road". I'm listening to some good books these days so I don't even know the time goes by, with the interesting scenery and the intriguing stories. I love my job! Yesterday my middle daughter went back to school in San Diego. I drove her an hour away to rendezvous with the girls that she was going to go the rest of the way with. As we got there we noticed a electronic sign over the freeway that there was snow on the route she planning on going, so she went a different way. It still took her over 12 hours to drive the seven hour drive. As I was driving back I was thinking about Jayne growing up. I thought about the sports teams she was on. When we came back from Korea, Jayne was in third grade. She started playing sports when she was in fourth grade. First soccer, she had never played before and all the other girls on the team had played since Kindergarten. Jayne did ok, she picked it up fast. I went to every game and her team did great. The coach yelled at the girls like a high school football coach. Foul language, yelling at the refs, and telling the girls how bad they were. The team won some close games, the coach got the girls to play their hardest. I wasn't happy with the way the coach brought out the best in the girls. In softball Jayne's teams were pretty good, I was happy with the coaches and the way they encouraged the girls. Jayne played soccer until she got to high school, and softball too. I never forgot that original coach and his way of treating the team. Jayne used to talk to me about him and asked why he yelled like that. She thought he acted like that because he didn't think the team would do very well, but she told me that the girls played worse than they were able to, because they resented him yelling like that. Some parents may be upset when their kids encounter people that can't control their emotions and their language around their kids. I learned that the kids know what is right and wrong, and if they never work with people that are "foul" then they don't know what to expect in the future. All three of my daughters played sports from the time we came back to the States until they started high school. The oldest played softball in high school, the middle was in drama and track and field, and the youngest will be in volleyball and softball in high school. She quit playing soccer when she was in middle school. Her softball coaches were wonderful. She got on a new team in middle school, and they didn't win a game. She learned a lot about softball and sportsmanship from her coaches. I was so happy that there was a woman that was one of the coaches. It is surprising how few women coach girls sports teams. Debbie was wonderful, not only as a coach, but as a person. She truly taught my daughter how to gracefully loose, which they did a lot that first year... and how to gracefully win,which that same team did a lot their last year. Kids get good and bad influences throughout their "kid life" and you just need to just hope that they learn from everyone!
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