The WORST soccer Mom

Finally, Red Hawk Park

OK, it happened today. Complete meltdown on the drive (yes, it IS a Sunday) at 7:30 AM to St. Charles and back for a soccer match.  Where is St. Charles, you wonder? Well, it's about TWENTY miles beyond Carol Stream, IL, which is where the match was being played.  Needless to say, we were late.  What's more, since I'm the only woman in God's perfect creation (suburbia) without a GPS, I had to call Peter in DC and admit my total failure and ask for his technical assistance.  This was horribly upsetting to me, because my number one argument with Peter is that he over-uses his i-phone when navigating in the automobile.  So....this was a morning of many many humiliations.  As I was spewing a stream of profanities into Peter's ear he wondered, aloud, if Addie was in the car with me.  Of course she was in the car with me...and so was Ashby! And so it goes....

The WORST Soccer Mom

The BEST Soccer Moms took the best parking spots.

Wait one minute...i've biked down this stretch of St. Charles hundreds of times!

And I got there quicker!!!!

 Finally, ashamed and sitting to the side of On Time parents, I  enjoy soccer!  See, this is fun! It's autumn, kids are running, parents are sitting in portable chairs.  This is the essence of America!!! In fact, this may be the one place where the Red & the Blue come together--to enjoy the life affirming habit of drinking coffee out of paper cups and coaxing small people to force balls through small spaces.
And so, as usual, last to arrive, last to leave.  Most of the other families have some other commitment to race off to. Lucky for us, we're going to drive slowly eastward on North Avenue to discover how tiny the sign for Pleasant Hill Drive is, after all.  Turns out, the sign is quite small and it's not actually on the corner, it's a yellow sign before the split arrives.  What was I doing when I flew by the sign? I wasn't checking my GPS, I wasn't talking on the phone, or even texting.  I might have been sipping coffee out of my fifteen year old travel mug (likely), I might have been listening to the Eagles (likely), and I might have been waxing poetic about how me and the guys ride out here to the DuPage Airport all the time (again, likely).

The fun, for the Steward-Nolans usually arrives after the crowds leave.

Goalie practice.

Safe!

Shoot!

Score!

After we resolve the issue of the signage on North Avenue, I figure we might pass a fabric store somewhere along NINETEEN miles of retail. Well, I guess not, unless Target, Dunkin Donuts, Walmart, McDonald's, Costco, Portillo's, Starbucks, or BP sell fabric. But again, if I was carrying an i-phone, then I would have discovered that there is a joanne's fabric just north of North Avenue on York Road in Elmhurst (this the vortex that sucked Peter and I up a few weeks ago when we were meeting to dine at Zenwich).