Dirt Under My Fingernails: Steaks and Games

This morning my throat hurt and I popped two ibuprofen with my chocolate milk. There was coffeecake: it makes the alarm more bearable on Saturday when you remember there's coffeecake. The first gulp of coffee burned all the way down; in this house, we call it "cutting the crap", and though a temporary fix for congestion, it's a homeopathic remedy that's always on hand.

Cake, coffee and I'm out the door and on en route for some a.m. basketball. Abbie and Lizzie and Gabe have an early start in Mound City. I'm behind a semi when Grandma Millie and Grandpa Charlie blow by me running 80 mph. They are hosting bridge club tonight and won't be able to stay, so I imagine a conversation about being late. Or, then again, maybe they are paying no attention to the speedometer...they certainly don't see me as they fly by...

Sitting in a small town gymnasium is not a half bad way to spend a winter Saturday. Kids in bright colored jerseys pound up and down the floor, or the bleacher stairs, or flop down on coats and duffles to stare at each other's phones. Moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas are, for the most part, pretty relaxed; their kids may be emotional after a game because they won, or lost, or didn't get to play enough, but by Sunday, they're on to the next thing. A few folks get revved up at the refs, but these games are for exercise and maybe a medal, so how upset can you be? Our kids win some and lose some and we are home for lunch, a better outcome than the day long wrestling tournaments Ben competed in. Win or lose, he still had to make weight next time so even the joy of big meal was tempered.

I had a plan this Saturday, and it involved steak. The wind was strong from the south; the thermometer crept up past 40. Four thick steaks and the makings for salad came home from the HyVee. More years than not, there's a Saturday evening or two in the dead of winter with a magic moment for standing outdoors with a glass of wine in one hand and grilling tools in the other. With Blake sharing the gathering twilight, this Saturday is a foreshadowing of all those summer evenings we spend out on the porch while the sun sinks and the smoke rises lazily from the Weber. A steak dinner is most likely to happen on a Saturday.

Cleaning house on Saturday may not be my favorite thing to do, but it feels like I'm getting away with something when I do. All of a sudden, Sunday afternoon is relaxing even if I've been at work. Instead of coming home to sheets in the dryer and dust bunnies in the hallway, it's like a good fairy has waved a magic wand; instead of entropy, and chaos, there's the couch with no guilt.

Last Saturday night the kids were here. We ate take and bake pizza and played ping pong which gradually morphed into a rough and ready form of handball...with slippers of various conformations..and finally into a pillow fight..with ping pong balls.

Sometimes it's wonderful to dress up on Saturday night and spend the evening transported by wonderful music and song; but other times staying home and sharing a chair with your grandkid, or practicing Spanish, or putting together a puzzle, or making cookies, or playing games by lantern light, or just watching the Cardinals is like a group hug. I love those Saturday nights...with kids quiet in their beds but for an occasional snore echoing that of the Grandpa in our room.

I even like Saturdays in the spring. Gabe and Abbie come out to work. Annie brings the makings for lunch as well as the Schlueter helping hands. Family at work somehow becomes family at play, even at the end of some very long weeks.