Winning

I watched the sunrise this morning, the rose pink sky glowing through the black, naked arms of The Neighbor's apple trees. I heard birdsong. Crocuses shine like a pool of lavender near the roses and the lawns are brandishing spears of tulip leaves. It's still 5 weeks away, but spring, she is a'comin'.

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The coming of spring signals many things, not the least among them CYO volleyball. We greeted this season with the best of all possible news, that Bad Coach was gone and Extremely Good Coach...the woman who first coached the team back in 5th grade, was returning. Whoo to the hoo and praisalluia! To make things even more exciting, our gym, famously called the Miracle Gym, was finished on time and the girls played their first game on their own home court this weekend.

This is a marvelous thing. The gym is marvelous because it is a sign that when you are determined and believe, things happen. Our school is entirely too small and too unendowed to be able to build a gym, even though the price tag was a "mere" $2 million. Initial fundraising among the parents netted commitments for $1k over the next 5 years, but hardly enough to break ground. And then an benefactor swooped in, giving us something like $1.5 for the project. And so it was done and the angels sang.

It's a sweet little gym, too. Dig the score board. Two other schools/parishes chipped in to bring the project to fruition, thus giving them a home court as well. But we get dibs 'cause it's on our land and we contributed the most.

And the girls, riven with joy and excitement, won their first match. Of course. I predict that based on sheer excitement and determination, they will bring home the first banner to hang in the Miracle gym. How cool would that be?

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The philosophical question has oft been proposed: If a man is alone in the woods, with no woman around to correct him, is he still wrong?

I freely admit that I don't know everything. I regularly defer to The Spouse on matters that are his acknowledged area of expertise: cars, World War II, computers, roasting meat, movie making (but not actors...I know all about that. We'll watch a movie and he'll say "Where have I seen him before?" and I'll be all, "Hello? 'Singin' in the Rain', 'Xanadu', 'An American in Paris'..." and he'll be, "Oh, right, Gene Kelly". He doesn't look things up on IMDb, he just goes to FMDb- Fluffy's Movie Database). Point is, he knows things and I know he knows things.

But when he's wrong, he's wrong. Last week I publically bet $5 that Heath Ledger's picture

would be the last one during the "In Memorium" bit at the Oscars. He took that "sucker bet", because it was the 2007 Oscars and Ledger died in 2008. So who's picture ended the somber montage? That's right.

Pay up, big boy.

He kinda hates to lose.