Date Night. Almost.

I must brag.

On myself.

Yesterday was cold. And windy. And we had a tournament game in the armpit of Missouri...a good 1.5 hour drive from where we live (in the middle of nowhere) to the host school (in the middle of nowhere). Seriously. It's a bad precursor to the day ahead when you have to stop at a gas station before you leave town just to stock up on sodas and snacks since the town you're headed to has nothing. No gas station. No Wal-Mart.

And the worst thing of all: no cell phone signal.

And even with all these factors thrown in, I decided to get out of my nice, warm pajamas and leave the comfort of my warm house and sit outside all day at a baseball game. I bundled up in long socks, a hoodie and my puffy Christmas blanket and prepared to freeze.

And it was so worth it.

We played so, so well. Our boys were hitting and fielding great - despite the fact that most of the boys are starting to come down with the flu.

I'm thinking that antibiotics might be the new baseball-superpower.

We had a massive 9-run inning in the bottom of the third, which put us ahead 12-1. We stayed ahead for the rest of the game, making the final score 16-5 in five innings.

I love five-inning games, especially when it's a bitterly windy 50 degrees outside.

Matt had driven up separately from the bus so that he could stay and scout the game after ours since we'd be playing the winner this Tuesday. I had ridden up with some friends (their son is on the team) and us women just figured we'd leave after the game...hence the excitement over the run-rule. Our husbands, however, had a different idea. How about we ALL stay in the cold and ALL enjoy the next game?

I think the only reason we agreed was because we were under the influence of multiple bags of Twizzlers.

That, and my husband knows how to work a proposition. He promised me food, real food after the second game if I wanted to ride home with him. Not food from the concession stand, not food in a wrapper passed through a window. Real, sit-down, "ma'am, here's your menu" food.

If I squint my eyes and tilt my head, it almost looks like a date.

Little did I know the second game would go all seven innings and we wouldn't make it back to civilization until after 8pm (for reference purposes, our game started at 2pm). By then I was a frozen popsicle and so tired that I could barely order my dinner (I really wanted chocolate cake) at the restaurant.

But it was a night out with my husband, and I had almost forgotten what that looked like. We had fun laughing (about baseball), talking (about baseball) and spending time with good friends.

We drove home, pulled into the driveway, Matt unlocked the back door, walked me inside and gave me a kiss.

And then promptly jumped back into his truck to go up to the school to do stats.

Irony and the Art of Losing

All good things must come to an end.

But did they really have to end so absurdly nasty??

We didn't just lose. We lost badly. After run-ruling teams all season long, we find ourselves down 10-2 in the first three innings.

I had some little chats with God about how irony was NOT appreciated at that moment.

I mean, come on. It was our last regular season game, and a conference game at that. I felt sick to my stomach all day and couldn’t eat a thing. I wanted this win so, so badly. But if I felt that nervous about the game, I couldn’t help but wonder how the team felt. That’s a lot of pressure to have a perfect season.

I don’t know if it was the pressure that got to us or if the team we played was just a better opponent. (One thing I do know is that the boys we played must be either corn-fed or they have HGH in the water. Those were some big ol’ boys!)

Our defense was awful and we couldn’t hit for anything. We finally got two runs in off a home run in the third but didn’t score again until the last two innings. I think I paced a path out behind the bleachers along with some other parents. We just couldn’t sit and watch the desecration.

Final score was 10-5 (which is way better than the 10-2 we had for most of the game) and my heart broke for the last kid up to bat. Our poor guy had the ultimate stress situation – bases loaded, end of the game, two outs. You can guess what happened.

I would have peed my pants.

Now we just have three Frisco League Tourney games (Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday) left. I hope we win the tourney, but I think Tuesday’s loss was the heartbreaker of the season. Matt actually isn’t too upset. He was just proud of the boys for doing as well as they did this whole fall – our record improved from last fall. It’s a good group of kids.

In the midst of this week’s game, Jr. High basketball started. Which, yes, Matt also coaches - he's in charge of the 8th graders (which I personally think should add up to extra crowns in heaven). Thank goodness for other coaches who are willing to step in, or else Matt would have before-school basketball during after-school baseball. After this tourney he’ll be up at 6am for 6:30 practices until December.

Crazy. That husband of mine is c-r-a-z-y.

Our first basketball game is October 30, and we have 2-3 games a week until December - not including tournament weeks.

Just another reason why I wish Thanksgiving and Christmas were in January or February, our only two months out of the year we don't have anything going on.

Actually, that's not true. Matt gets restless and bored in the off-season, so he volunteers to run the clock at varsity basketball games or help the varsity coach with practices.

Did I mention the word "crazy??"