Lightening Online

For those of you who are not familiar with netball, F Grade is the beginning grade.  Our F Graders generally start at around year 3, although we also have some year 2 girls who are doing a “training year”.

Most weeks I go to junior training with Singstar Princess and watch and occasionally help out as needed.  Last year it was quite a big team so extra hands were welcome.  It’s a bit smaller squad this year so it’s probably not quite as needed although I do actually find it quite helpful to watch what they do (given I’m basically an oversized F grader really).

Last year it was a bit of a joke that I wanted to play F Grade and they wouldn’t let me.

So tonight I finally got my wish when they were short on the court to play a practise match.  It was a lot of fun although actually quite challenging to work out how much to hang back and how much to get stuck in there.

I even got to play goal keeper for a while.  F grade is the only grade where I think I’d be considered tall enough to play goal keeper.  LOL.

It was fun!  I wonder if they’ll let me play again?

Senior Training was pretty full on tonight.  I think I might pull up a little sore.

I’m trying really hard to relax and not take myself so seriously.  So I had a lot of laughs (mostly at my own expense) and for the most part it was fun.

I do wonder though if I’ll always feel like the “dumb one” when it comes to understanding the game.  I can’t exactly get back all those years in my youth where I didn’t get to play.  And I’ve never really been all that good at sport to begin with.  A bit of extra speed would be good too - I kept ending behind my opponent instead of in front of them.  Bit hard to defend from behind.  Oh well…

Update: Okay, I swear I unpublished this post because I changed my mind about writing it. I knew too many of my readers would be compassionate and not cynical and think “hang on a minute, April 1st” (sorry for those of you in the US or elsewhere that haven’t even gotten to April 1st yet).

PLEASE don’t hate me! This was my idea of an April Fools Day joke but like I said above, I’d changed my mind on publishing it. Perhaps Wordpress is having an April Fools Day joke on me!

Thankfully I’ve been reading through my google reader or I would have had no idea that it had actually published.  I was actually part way through writing a post ABOUT April Fool’s day with the intention of including this post to show you what I was thinking of doing.

I will tell you though that none of the post was a lie (I was careful about that).  Scroll down for my explanation comments between each section.

I’m not sure if I’m even ready to talk about this yet.

*sigh*

So much has been stacking up against us of late. Conflicts with stuff the kids don’t want to miss out on. Issues with the farm. Trying to organise pets. Financial struggles.

All of this is happpening.  It is hard!  But we’re slowly working our way through each hurdle.

There are so many hurdles to overcome in making a trip like this happen.

Guess it just goes to show that you can’t count your chickens until they hatch…or whatever the saying is.

So true.  I am trying to work toward the trip while still having in the back of mind that we’re not DEFINITELY going until we actually leave.

The lastest?

A phone call from the school Principal saying our request for exemption has been denied. What? He’d been so sure that there wouldn’t be a problem.

This really DID happen!  Thankfully the Principal found out that the reason we were denied is that the school gave us OLD paperwork to fill in.  The new forms have now been done and there had BETTER NOT be a problem!

Oh, and don’t worry, even if it is denied, we will go.

I don’t know. Perhaps we’re just being wimps.

But at what stage do you just decide that it’s “too hard” after all?

This is actually a genuine struggle.  We REALLY REALLY want to do this trip.  If not, it would have fallen in the “too hard”  basket a long time ago.

Alright, now that that is all out there - I’d really love to hear about your own April Fools Jokes.  Have you ever pulled one?  Have you ever fallen for one?

The best one I can remember is my Grade 5 teacher giving us this HUGE sum to calculate and he told us we’d only have 10 minutes.  Of course, we were off, doing our calculations madly while he was still writing it on the board (I swear it took up the entire board!).  10 minutes was up about 30 seconds after he’d finished writing it up there.  No-one got it finished.  He then pointed out that he had writing “times zero” at the very end of the sum.  Effectively make the whole result “zero”.  It WAS an April Fools Day joke he was playing on us but it had a very important message attached about reading something entirely before you jump in and start.

So, tell me your stories.