The Sisterhood of Soccer

Pippi and the Jewels–first Soccer game ever. Pippi scored the team’s first goal and her first goal! She was so thrilled with the whole soccer experience 🙂

Pippi loves soccer–always has a smile on her face as she intently  focuses on the game.

Pippi in action.

My niece, Artemis. As luck would have it, Artemis’ team The Diamonds had their first game against Pip’s team The Jewels.

Artemisia in action–so happy to be playing soccer!

Tabs in action. Tabs has a smile on her face as she plays too.

Tabs receives a greeting from Pip during the game.

Sisterhood love.

Pippi as butterfly, cheering Tabs and the Cyclones during their soccer game.

I have been baching it this past week. Peter is in Saskatchewan visiting family. It has been a very busy time for me as all of my darling girls have had activities galore. I have been juggling soccer games, birthday parties, jazz festivals, dance lessons, choir lessons, piano lessons and teaching Zumba.

The city I live in is a new city. It has grown rapidly only recently. Twenty years ago it was a sleepy town. Suddenly it a large city spread throughout the Okanagan Valley,  creeping up all surrounding mountains. Beautiful? yes. Easy to navigate? NO!

Kelowna has a pathetic public transport system. The city bus doesn’t even come up my mountain and we have no sidewalk down the mountain. And yet, it is a very large city geographically, so one must be in the car constantly. I long to have a great pubic transport system like Portland, Oregon. That city has hills, they manage fine.

I have a 1/2h drive each way to the places I teach Zumba. Add that to chauffeuring my 3 children to various activities and you have the makings of a life out of balance. Too much travel time. How to remedy this? Many options. To move to a more central location within  the city that is serviced by the city bus is really the only practical one. Or move cities. Will I move? Not right away. Too many other issues to sort in my life. The house issue would overflow my teapot.

My teapot is filled with work-force angst:

Women who choose to stay home and raise their babies and toddlers miss out on crucial work-force career building years. So, when their babies are of school age and they wish to make an income–things are difficult. It is one thing to be in one’s 20’s starting out but to be in one’s 40’s is another thing. And yes, the person in their 40’s has more education, more experience, more knowledge, more talent etc. But the reality is that, employers look to the twenty somethings regardless. Because dedicating one’s life to raising one’s children is not valued in Western society. It is valued only as long as you don’t dare try and do anything within the “other” work force after your babes are school age.
Raise your babies yourself, without daycare or a nanny and then see which  employers value the time you spent doing that job. None.
So, the solution is to be self employed or keep going to school for a PhD.

 I will get my novels out and published (two to start) (phase II)–and then move onto phase III.  Oprah says the money will come if you do what you love. I never watched Oprah, except perhaps for the odd show over ten years ago. And I don’t read her magazine so that shows you how much faith I have in her words. Yet, I hear them repeated, over and over–and not surprisingly, most often by people making an income at something other than their passion.