Happy 13th Birthday, Roger!
It’s been one of those days with a bit of just about
everything mixed in from the tweeird to the mundane.
While it didn’t rate high on the tweeird scale, it did seem
strange to not have Michael exercising with us this morning. He was already at the Inn
with his parents by the time we went out to the river for Tai Chi. Mom and Dad did their own thing while I
worked with Ethan and Ehlana, and we still had fun; but it’s amazing how
quickly Michael’s become such an important part of my morning routine. I really missed having him there with us.
Breakfast was quick and easy, and then it was time for Dad
and I to get going on the yard work. That
next few hours was the tedious and mundane part of my day. Dad and I both just wanted to get the work
done so we could get on with the rest of our day. I had the lawn mowed, the gardens weeded, and
the rest of my usual chores finished with enough time left over before my game
to hop in the river for a quick swim before getting ready for the game and
heading over to the park. I even managed
to have my bike out and eat a sandwich for lunch before Rowen came by to
collect me on her way to the pre-game warm-up.
Depending on your perspective, the game was a blast, and
there were more than a few tweeird moments to deal with too. As I’ve mentioned, Rowen and I had some extra
motivation to play our best today; and Vanessa and Nora didn’t exactly help
themselves – or their team – with that even before the game started. They weren’t openly taunting us or anything
like that, but I was paying attention to them; and could hear the comments they
were making to each other and to some of their teammates and friends. Maybe I shouldn’t have passed those comments
on to Rowen, but I did; and we were both fired up and ready to play right from
our first at-bat.
I’m not going to even try to defend myself for the way I
played today; because I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was playing
harder than usual – and better than I should have. Picking on Vanessa and Nora while batting
wasn’t fair either, but we’ve already established that I’m far from perfect;
and being verbally provoked isn’t an excuse.
That isn’t an apology either because I’m not sorry that we
won the game or that Rowen and I both had best games of the season so far to
help our team to the twelve-to-six victory that could have been a blowout if
Mom hadn’t given me ‘the look’ that advised me to tone it down by the top of
the fifth inning.
Now, with that admission out of the way, let’s talk about
the cool parts of the game that I shouldn’t have done! Mom isn’t the only person who can do advanced
math in her head, so Vanessa didn’t have a chance when I belted my first inning
first pitch in a line drive that was just out of her reach – and with the
perfect rotation and velocity to roll all the way to the back fence; where it
bounced off of the post I’d aimed for and gave Vanessa another five yards to
run before she could grab it and through it toward the infield. I did stop at third so she didn’t give up an
in-the-park home run; though Vanessa didn’t appreciate that if the comments she
was muttering to herself about me were any indication.
Carolyn was having a good game today too, but I wouldn’t say
the same for everyone on our team. That
could have been because it really didn’t matter much when Carolyn, Rowen, and I
were making it easy for our teammates to relax and just have fun. We ended our half of the first with a three
run lead; didn’t give up anything in the bottom of the inning; and three-down
was the closest the Cheetahs got to us.
We were up nine-to-three when Mom gave me the tone-it-down look. That’s the main reason why we only scored one
run in the fifth, and the two runs in the sixth weren’t in my control; since I
didn’t get up to bat. Rowen did, though,
and I’m glad that she had a hit in all of her at-bats today. Out of our twelve runs, one of us was
involved in ten of them.
I’d love to report that our game play was able to get
Vanessa and Nora to stop talking trash about us; but they were just more angry
with us by the end of the game – and that annoyance just kept festering with
them all day – especially when we were with Michael and Tim almost all of the
time we were at the party. My hopes for
an improvement in the tweeird by the time we go back to school are still alive;
but it isn’t looking very good right now.
Rowen and I did the post-game celebration with our team, and
then headed home to hit the showers and get ready for Roger’s party. I packed an overnight bag; did the goodbye
hugs and kisses with Mom, Dad, Ethan, and Ehlana; and went over to Rowen’s
house early enough so we could do a little bonus work on our hair and
accessories before going to meet up with Michael and Tim. Staying with Rowen tonight was my
contribution to Mom and Dad’s kid-free night; and the twins are staying with
Uncle Adam and Aunt Leanne tonight.
We walked to Roger’s party with Michael, and had Tim catch
up with us along the way; so we were together when we got to the Jennings’ house. Roger’s parents are cousins of Alicia’s
mother and father; though her family didn’t come over for his party. That’s not unusual, since inviting all of
your cousins to a celebration for some of the families in Witch Falls
would require having nearly everyone in town attend! Roger had only invited his friends; and the
family guests only included his grandparents, uncles, aunts, and two
first-cousins. His younger brother and
sister each had one friend over too; but they mostly stayed out of the way
except for during dinner – possibly on big brother orders.
There had been time to get ready for the party because some
of the guys had a baseball game at three o’clock; and that was the main reason
why there were more girls than guys at Roger’s house during the first half of
the ‘social hour’ we had before dinner.
That inequality helped to fuel the tweeird; and there was already enough
of that going on because this was the first party for all of us since Nora
broke up with Tim – at the last birthday party.
Before I get to that, one other thing that was noticeably different
today was that Tim and Nora weren’t the only new ‘single’ members of our
class. That’s especially strange for me
after spending so much of the past year or more with Rowen and I being the only
singles in our class – along with Michael when he wasn’t either dating Lisa or
being chased by Vanessa. Having three
couples break up over the summer would barely be noticed most places, but in our
little town; that’s nearly one-in-three of the couples from our Grade Seven
class not making it to the start of Grade Eight – and exactly a third of our
classmates are single right now too.
That certainly changes the group dynamics; and not always in a good way.
Roger is one of the members of our singles club, but his
split with Karla wasn’t really contentious at all. Karla’s one of the ‘farm kids’; and they just
didn’t get to see each other much once we were out of school for the summer. Brock and Marcie was the third couple to
break up; and their split seemed to be the opposite problem – spending too much
time together. It’s not as if I thought
that all tween pairings were final by Grade Seven in a small town; but I’m also
having a tough time imagining being romantically involved with several of the
guys in our class the way some of the girls will be over the next few
years. If you include Vanessa, Michael’s
been involved with three out of eleven girls; and half of our friends think he
was involved with Rowen too for a while.
I have no idea why that doesn’t feel weird to me; but it doesn’t.
That’s enough procrastination – it’s time to get back to the
tweeird zone.
Nora and Vanessa came to the party together, and were about
ten minutes behind us. They weren’t
happy to see Rowen and me there at all; and definitely not together with
Michael and Tim. I don’t know if
Vanessa’s been back-sliding on how she feels about Michael and me because of
what happened with Nora and Tim, or if she’s just blaming me for everything
that’s happened to mess up their plans.
Whatever the reasons, they were not looking to play nice
right from the start, and when one of the first questions they were asked was
about how their baseball game went from one of the girls who hadn’t been there;
things went downhill from there. Maybe I
should hire Aunt Leanne’s matchmaking service for Vanessa and Nora and give
them something better to do than whisper insults at Rowen and me with their
friends; try to outcast us; and worst of all – talk smack about the two boys
we’re in love with.
That ongoing tweeirdness put a damper on things for me
tonight; but Michael, Tim, and Rowen were not getting the full-sensory input
that I was; and I tried my best not to let what I was seeing, hearing, and
feeling get in the way of their fun – and we did have fun too. Whether we were playing Frisbee, tossing a
baseball or football around, or sitting around the campfire after dark; I loved
getting to share everything with Michael and our two best friends.
The changing social demographics in our little group changed
how much Vanessa and Nora could affect how their friends interacted with us
too. They weren’t currently part of the
couples club, so friends like Sally and Joshua were able to hang out with us;
and though Tim and Rowen aren’t a couple (yet); the four of us played all of
the games that the other couples got involved with tonight.
We were a bit out of the loop during dinner, but that was
okay too because we sat with Roger’s brother, sister, and their two friends;
and that gave me a chance to get to know them better than I had been able to do
so far since moving to Witch Falls.
Vanessa and Nora were happy about who we were sitting with for dinner,
though that also put us at one of the tables next to Roger, his best friends,
and the parents and grandparents tables.
Summer birthdays inevitably seem to require barbeque meals, and we
didn’t have an exception to that general rule today. While the burgers and jumbo hotdogs were
grocery store staples, I do like getting to try different family recipes for
things like cold salads; and I never get tired of corn on the cob.
It took nearly two hours to have dinner, do the usual
birthday routine with Roger, and get the clean-up done. That spit of work was refreshingly taken care
of by all of the party guests – something that I think we should do more
often. We still had about an hour to
play after that before the campfire was lit and we gathered around it for the
rest of the evening. That play time
included some video gaming for a group of guys to try out one of Roger’s new
games, but Michael and Tim stayed with Rowen and me; and we split our time
between tossing a Frisbee around and taking turns playing pairs badminton.
I’m sure that you can guess my favorite part of the night
was getting to cuddle with Michael during the campfire. Rowen and Tim sat with us; though they didn’t
do anything tonight that would have even remotely hinted that they’d recently
shared that fireworks-worthy kiss last Monday night. That observation seemed to baffle Nora, while
my cuddling with Michael definitely earned some glares and muttered nasties
from Vanessa. Again, I was the only
member of our foursome to catch all of that extra-curricular action; so we had
a very entertaining evening singing songs, telling scary stories, and doing
some roasting of the birthday boy.
That’s one thing that I can’t really be in on as much as the
rest of my friends, but it’s still cool to hear about stories from when they
were four or five through until more recent times. Maybe I’ll feel like I have that kind of
history here too – in another ten or fifteen years.
Our campfire curfew for tonight was midnight, and we stayed
until the end this time; including helping out with the final clean-up before
heading home. There was some entertainment
for us with that too; beginning with walking Tim home first while having tween
witnesses around when Rowen and I had goodnight hugs for him before we
continued on to Rowen’s house with Michael.
Rowen would have liked to kiss him too, but she was in full shy-mode by
then; and didn’t. That wasn’t a problem
for me when it came time to say goodnight to Michael; though Rowen took a slow
walk up to her front porch while waiting for us to share a tender, sweet, and
stomach-flipping kiss or two. We sat on
the front porch railing and watched Michael until he got to his front porch;
and the warm fuzzies from that last set of waves and smiles have been hanging
around since then.
This may be a shocker, but Patrick and Scott were already
asleep when Rowen and I got inside. Her
parents had been in bed by then already too, but Patricia came into Rowen’s
room to have a little girl chat with us while we were getting ready for
bed. That was fun, but the real
heart-to-heart talk didn’t start until Rowen and I were alone; in bed; and
playing on our computers.
Tim had a starring role for that, and while Rowen quietly
berated herself for not doing anything tonight to encourage Tim to do anything
romantic with her; I was able to divert her from that and talk about gift ideas
for his birthday next Wednesday. She
surfed the web for some ideas; and we’re going to run them by Michael sometime
tomorrow so we’ll be ready when we’re on the shopping trip on Monday.
It’s heading toward two o’clock now, and while we don’t have
any major plans for tomorrow other than a family buffet dinner at the Inn for
Violet and Dillon, we do need to get some sleep; and I want to spend as much
time with Violet as I can tomorrow too, so we need to wind down and get some
sleep.
That reminds me – I forgot to mention earlier that Violet’s
doing a sleepover at Dillon’s tonight – just in case you were wondering where
she was staying for Mom and Dad’s kid-free night. I’ll take a wild guess that she’s not using
Isabelle’s room; but we don’t need the details for that any more than we need
to write about what Mom and Dad are doing tonight.
I continue to be quite happy with the precedents my cousin
is setting for her younger siblings and relatives, though – whether I ever take
advantage of that trail-blazing in the future or not.
For now, though, the only thing I need to be doing is
getting some rest, so...
...until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor;
logging out!
