Saturday Diversions

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t mind. I enjoyed those long-ago times when our family spent Saturday nights over a family dinner and then gathered around the television for a movie. In those days, it was often a Disney made-for-television movie with wholesome stories and fun the children were certain to enjoy. To this day, Double Switch and Not Quite Human are movies my grown children delightfully recall.DisneyMovies

Nowadays, unless we go out for a movie (rare because we have Netflix, Hulu and multiple other options), Saturday nights are no longer movie nights. The children (for all practical purposes, anyway) are mostly gone and movies have lost a good bit of their luster (at least for me).

But Saturdays, when I am mentally ready to sit back, relax and enjoy a fun flick (whether drama or comedy), I’m the only one in the household with this mindset.

Not that the others don’t have their noses glued to a screen. Saturdays do mean something to them … but the day doesn’t translate to anything close to movie-time. Thanks to the wonders of ESPN and College Football Saturday, there’s no doubt sports will be airing on screens (televisions, computers, smartphones, iPads, etc.) throughout the house! In fact, with the addition of Thursday night and Friday night, Saturday – all day, in fact – we’ve transitioned into a weekly college football triple play! Continue reading “Saturday Diversions”

Sons And Daughters

More sports today … and after yesterday’s fumble (mine, not the one OSU‘s Clint Chelf endured in the final minute of the Cotton Bowl), I decided I’d take another run at football!Chelf

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, College Football is taking its final hits of the season. After yesterday’s Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl, there’s today’s Compass Bowl and tomorrow’s GoDaddy Bowl leading up to the grand finalé, Monday night’s BCS Championship Game.

I think it’s fun to watch these games and engage in a friendly competition with friends whose team loyalties may differ from ours.

In our part of the country, we’re sorry the Arkansas Razorbacks had a disappointing season. Of course, we’re also excited for Arkansas State‘s prospects in tomorrow’s game against Ball State … even though Ball State (with the better overall record) is favored.

With his previous ties to northwest Arkansas, Gus Malzahn is also a sentimental favorite for us, and we’re excited about him succeeding with the Auburn Tigers!

In the first year of my marriage, I learned the importance of sharing sports with my sports-loving husband. (Fortunately, this wasn’t totally anathema to me because I already enjoyed sports in general.)

The sonnet below is one I wrote when my children were young. Before we had sons in the house, we had daughters. Since my Beloved comes from a family of boys, he knew lots about boys and the male perspective, but not much about girls … at least he didn’t until our daughters came along. But as they got older, there were occasions when their feminine perspective was incomprehensible to him.

With this poem, I explore what I observed as he learned to balance being the father of both sons and daughters, and I celebrate the unique affect a daughter has on her daddy.

Mixed-Loyalties, fathers, daughters, sons, sports, football, sonnet, poetry, poem
Sonnet: Mixed Loyalties