Surviving Super Bowl Sunday

It's Super Bowl Sunday.  You're not going to a party and you're not hosting one.  You know your husband will be checked out today and you're wondering what you will do with yourself (and maybe the kids).  Here's a few last minute (desperate) thoughts:

1.  Watch the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet (my personal favorite).  If you don't know what this is, you are really missing something fun on Super Bowl Sunday.  Here's what the Washington Post and L.A. Times say about it.  Your kids will LOVE this.

2.  Use your family as guinea pigs.  This is actually a reference to cooking, but not just any cooking.  Super Bowl is a great time to try out the recipes you've been afraid to try.  Your family (and maybe your football friends) will eat anything during the game so it's a win-win.

3.  Watch the Super Bowl commercials and halftime show.  Even if you don't like football, everyone loves the commercials.  They're usually the best/funniest commercials out this year.  I'm not sure I can say the same thing for the halftime show, but it's a spectacle, good or bad.

4.  Watch a chick flick.  I guarantee you will be able to get into the movie theater today.  Or, rent one and watch it on your other TV.

5.  Have a pajama party with the kids.  Play board games (yes, they make some even for little kids), watch videos together, eat junk food in sleeping bags on their bedroom floor.  You don't usually get a chance to do something like this, so have fun.

6.  Craft, sew, crochet, knit, scrapbook, BLOG - let your creative juices flow while the kids are in bed and your husband is otherwise occupied.  Most of us would give a kidney to have this kind of creative time.

If your husband insists that you watch the game with him or you otherwise must watch the game, pick a team and get excited.  Set up a series of gambling propositions (score at halftime, number of sacks for each quarterback, number of penalties) and see if that keeps you engaged.  Important to know - the San Francisco 49ers (gold and maroon) are playing the Baltimore Ravens (black and blue).

If you don't understand football, now is not the time to ask your husband to teach you - unless he really doesn't care about the outcome of the game and will look upon your request to learn as a bonding moment.  When I was a kid, I realized if I was going to get any attention from my dad or brothers on Sundays, I needed to understand football.  That doesn't mean I had to understand ALL of the nuances of football, but basically the idea of downs, punts, field goals and a few more.  Men love a woman who understands football, so it can be a valuable life skill.  (O.K., please don't send me nasty-grams about how sexist that sounded or co-dependent.  Just sayin'.)

Make sure you do something you enjoy today.  It's one of those few days when people stay put (wherever they are) for 3 hours.

cindy

Back in the (School) Day

At the risk of looking really old, I've been thinking back on my high school days in the '80s.  It's September now, and I'm reminded of all those Friday nights when we went to the football games.  I went to a Catholic high school in southern Illinois and we didn't have our own football field, so we used the stadium of the big public school about 5 miles away.  (For those of you still in Belleville, that's my best guess.)  I specifically remember those games as a freshman, because we didn't have cars or rides from anyone but our parents.  God forbid our parents would drop us off at the stadium - NOOOOO.  We would have them drop us off about a mile or two away and then we would walk down West Main Street.  Now that I think about that, we were kind of stupid because that was a long walk and sometimes it was cold.

Back in the day, we wore big hair and clogs.  I was never too much into the big hair thing, but I did have clogs.  You know, backless shoes with wedge heels.  Our heels were never that high, but they were wooden and made a lot of noise when you walked.  I can also remember how much my feet hurt at the end of the day - my heels from walking on a wooden block and my toes from scrunching them to keep the clogs on.  But as my mother would say "Beauty knows no pain."  (Although I definitely don't remember her saying that about those clogs.)

Yeah, we went through some weird clothing trends during my high school years.  I started high school at the very beginning of the 80s and went off to college toward the end.  We started with the "preppy look."  For most of you who were born after my high school years, that consisted of plaid skirts (preferably pleated), long knee socks and loafers.  You could wear a button down blouse with a ribbon tie at the collar, with a muted sweater over the blouse.  You could always wear clogs instead of loafers.  By the end of high school, we were teasing our hair and getting "punked out" with the big shirts/sweaters, bright colors, leg warmers and leggings.  Yep, we wore some crazy stuff.

I remember my freshman year at Homecoming.  We had a parade down West Main Street and every class (freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors) also had their own floats on flatbed.  Everyone used wood forms, chicken wire and tissue paper flowers to make figures for the float.  I made so many of those tissue paper flowers, my fingers were cut up by the floral wire we used to keep them together.  (See, even then I was crafty!)  The freshman float always looked pretty sad.  I remember that year the seniors made a giant Pac Man eating a player from the other team - impressive.  That year at football games, we saw the appearance of a new mascot - the Crusader.  Here was a guy dressed in armor (yep, the real thing), riding a big white horse and carrying a banner.  It was very cool.  We never knew who the Crusader was until the last pep rally of the football season when it was revealed to be one of our school priests.  Oh man, was he awesome!

Yep, the 80s were a very strange decade.  We saw the birth of MTV and music videos, very crude video games (remember Pong?), crazy fashions and awesome music.  I was there and I wouldn't change that for all the world.

Go Althoff Crusaders!

cindy


I'm participating in the SITS Girls "Fall Back into Blogging" this week.