Shoelaces for Josie

So I was hanging out at work today - well - I was actually working at work today, but it was Halloween.

Let me start that completely over. Today was Halloween, obviously and I was at work.  The football team had a position meeting down the hall from my office and two of the coaches came into the back room.  When they emerged, one of them had on a huge fro-shaped wig and the other had a dred-lock wig on. I wanted to be creepy and follow them to their meeting room to see what type of reaction they would get from their players but instead I just listened. It was totally worth it - especially since the coaches were middle-aged white men, walking with that “I’m totally pimp” strut.  Yeah, guess you just had to be there.

No, there really wasn’t a point to that story - I’ll make a better effort next time.

Yesterday, I was going to write about my grocery shopping experience. Long story short, I had to grocery shop for the 90-year-old lady (here on out known as Really Old Lady). I can do domestic but I don’t prefer it. I don’t really care to shop for food for myself let alone for Really Old Lady. Suffice it to say that I was that girl. Yes, the one who walked all over the grocery store at least eight times and knew all the grocery store employees by name…because of their name tags and because I had to ask where a bunch of stuff was…

Anyway, that may have been the middle version of the story instead of the short one but it’s out of my system and that is what counts, right?

And today. Today I didn’t have football which was nice. And please don’t look at the scores from the Pac-10. You might see a score that says 53-7 and that pains me. Cuts to the core of me, really. So I fled the city and escaped to a place - a place of the present, so reminiscent of my past and, for one of the first times, a flicker of hope for a future.

I know that is vague. But this is my blog and that’s my right as the bloggist…bloggee…blogger…today was exhausting, living in the past, present and future all at once so give me a l’il credit.

Homecoming with the big dogs - that’s what yesterday was. People ask me what I do on game days so here is a brief rundown.

- Go to the stadium three hours before kick-off and set up the photography workroom (lots of unnecessary details entered here)
- Assign the photographers and camera crews vests and babysit them through the game and for several hours afterwards
- Stand on the sidelines for our impossibly long games and when the boys play a bit too rough and get an owie, I report to the big man up in the box - pretty much like the FBI
- After the game, I collect all the vests and wait until the photographers are done submitting their work. *Disclaimer* - this has been known to take up to three hours
- Break-down the photography work room and return everything to its rightful place
- Spend a good 20-30 minutes hob-nobbing with the rest of my co-workers/our-job-owns-us people
- Go home and on day-game days watch a movie and eat a frozen pizza while everyone else is drowning the bitterness of another loss at the bar or on night-game days I collapse in bed at 1 in the morning

Still want to do what I do? Besides, we lost. And we shouldn’t have. I know they all say that but the officials overruled a touchdown and I saw proof in the photography room that my boy was indeed in the endzone with control of the ball. We lost by three points so, yes, when I say we should have won I quite literally mean it.

But there are moments where it is all worth it. As in yesterday, the event management director (the most amazing man at his job ever aka MAMAHJE) came up to me and pointed out two guys who had photog vests on and didn’t have cameras. I banished those two to the stands and then MAMAHJE pointed out a child and told me that anyone under 18 couldn’t be on the sidelines. I wasn’t sure how a child fell under my authority as the photography supervisor but I didn’t argue with MAMAHJE.

I walked up to the father who was standing behind the kid and asked, “Sir, is your child 18 years old?”

He looked at me as though I were daft. The child barely came up to his waist and was obviously no older then seven or eight but one can’t make assumptions. “No,” he responded.

“Well then, sir, I’m afraid he can’t be on the field as no one under the age of 18 is allowed to be down here.”

He was polite and took his non-18-year-old child away but I will forever remember the look he gave me. How classic would it have been if he had been holding an infant and I asked him that same question?