Tonight I took Maxwell to his soccer practice and game. I was That [Second] Mom Who Listens to Her iPod Any Time Her Ward Is on the Field, although I did take the headphones off every time Max took a break so I could talk to him. For instance, I had to talk to him about how it’s inappropriate to stomp about the field shouting “The madder I am, the better I am” during games.

So I was paying enough attention to know that was going on. Even I can watch a game and listen to a podcast at the same time.

I let the part where Max would occasionally start hopping around like a frog while he was supposed to be playing the game go, because I don’t care one bit whether his team wins or not. I figure that’s the coach’s problem. I clapped quite a bit for the opposing team tonight, in fact, as there was a kid named Adrian on it, and we variations on Adrienne have to stick together. It seems that Adrian is not a much better soccer player than I am, because he frequently has to be reminded about things, which was jarring to me, as I’d hear someone shout “Adrian, watch the ball!” and then frantically start looking for the ball before realizing that the person meant Adrian and not Adrienne.

One time tonight, a kid who was throwing in the ball went awry and almost hit me, which taught me a valuable lesson about why you should wait to text cute pictures of your godson in his soccer uniform to your friends until after the game and not during the game.

I spent the rest of the evening tackling the first real challenge of my new job: filling out the paperwork that gets me on payroll and into the retirement system and everything. I know I haven’t written about the new job here yet, but I will. I have a bunch of posts about a lot of things half started in my notebooks. I’ve had things to do, like go to soccer games and make strawberry shortcake (the strawberries are amazing this year, but the season will soon be over).

I may be a terrible soccer mom, but things have been going well. I’ll take more days like this, as many as I can get.