And so the last vestiges of parental responsibility are now gone. After 20+ years, both my children have grown up into responsible adults, or something that.  Like many families this time of year, ours is going through some interesting times.

Jesse has become an accomplished (and somewhat organized!) human being having acquired two degrees while working two jobs and playing rugby.  The impish tot who did whatever she wanted (consequences be damned!) can now outplan her list making mother.  She has spent four years in t

he slightly crunchy environs of Vermont and the theater community in California and has traded that in for the most corporate job one can imagine for a theater/engineering major: Walt Disney! No more tattoos and piercings (or flannel but that’s a practical issue rather than a dress code requirement!) and she’ll be in a notoriously conservative state but I know she has developed the backbone and thick skin she’ll need to be successful.

Duncan is also ready to make changes.  I think the comfort of being paid to do the work he did for credit as an undergrad has worn off as has some of the charm of Charlottesville – or what charm there is for someone with meager resources.  It is painful for me to not be able to help make things easier for him since I don’t understand anything about biochemistry or the job market for people who do something that involves proteins… some things Mom just can’t fix.

Even Frank and I are facing changes to our recently changed life.  First, we now have Buddy the Beagle mix, our rescue dog that pretty much runs our lives.

We’d like to think he’s the reason that we don’t just pick up and run away for the weekend but we have to admit that we didn’t do that before we rescued him so it’s not really his fault.  He has changed some things, including our approach to winery picnics.  We want to take him with us but he’s basically a jerk to other dogs so those opportunities are limited.  We actually drove 90+ miles to visit a winery yesterday because a) we like their wine; but mostly b) they have a great picnic table on a hillside where we know that there won’t be any other dogs.

Add to that the pain of renovations.  We have been rebuilding our garage since March, a process so unpleasant and involved that it will get its own post if it is ever completed.  In addition, there is unrest in the workplace and for the first time, there is a non-zero probability that San will not retire from her current position.  Nothing drastic (yet) but enough uncertainty to increase the discomfort that comes with feeling unsettled.  We still don’t know what we are waiting for and our time is running wild…. (apologies to the late great David Bowie).

<waxing philosophical>

Like many other people I am saddened by the Packers loss to the Seahawks yesterday. Not because they lost but because they let me tobelieve that they could win and then didn’t. They mismanaged my expectations.

Don’t get me wrong I am a Packer fan. I will always be a Packer fan even though I’ve been to Arrowhead Stadium more times (2) than Lambeau Field (0). The Packers are the only football team I have truly followed. I even own a share! I grew up in New England was sort of a Patriots fan to the extent that I actually understood that football existed. I really discovered football when in college in Southern California, surrounded by people who supported the Los Angeles Raiders. So I did too for a time.  That was the year they beat the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl – who knew they’d turn out to be the hometown team I didn’t support for 17 years!

But when I moved Wisconsin just before the dawn of the Mike Holmgren/Brett Favre era, I really understood what being a fan was. Like moving to Kansas City and discovering the love the city has for the Royals, being in Wisconsin and seeing how the fans reacted to the Packers something that was hard to ignore. That said, they could put something in the water Wisconsin to make everyone a Packer fan but that’s never been proven. 🙂 I know that for the 5 years I lived there I enjoyed being part of the family. My kids were both born in Wisconsin and even if they don’t both love cheese, they were raised with the Packers.

And so for nearly 20 years I’ve been the distant Packer fan. Cheering from northern Virginia when they won (and lost) Superbowls. Only getting to see them play in person when a generous friend with Redskins season tickets “couldn’t make” a game against the Packers at FedEx Field. (I will be forever grateful Bill). What really hurts about this loss is not the fact that they lost: they were supposed to lose. We knew it would be a tough game in Seattle, against a tough run team with a QB that was not 100%. We were 7 1/2 point under dogs so losing by “only” 6 points should feel better than it does. And it would if we had fought hard for those points and come from behind but couldn’t quite get there. But that was my expectation that wasn’t met or managed. What hurts is it is that they played the first 30 minutes ignoring what was supposed to happen and gave us all hope that they were actually going to win. Third-quarter was a bit dicey but still it was theirs to pull out. They made us believe they were gonna beat the odds. They were going to bankrupt the bookies. They were going to be the amazing underdogs. So my expectations changed from hoping that we wouldn’t be too badly embarrassed to thinking that I would could host a Packer Super Bowl party.

And somehow everything went wrong. It was like they gave up. The amazing comeback win belong to the Seahawks. They deserve it; they played harder in the last 15 minutes than the Packers played the whole rest of the game. If we have been the come-from-behind team even if the final score was the same  my attitude would be different but we had the game and we gave it away. Expectations were mismanaged and now I feel the cruelest of all emotions: disappointment.

We used to joke that was the worst thing you could say to a Catholic kid was not that you were angry at them but that you were “disappointed”. It implies that something wrong was substituted for something right. (Add a little Catholic guilt and you get well behaved children 😉 )

That’s how I feel about the loss. I thought it would be like when the Royals lost the World Series but that was different. The Royals weren’t supposed to even *be* there. They weren’t supposed to win any games.  They were ahead and behind and took it all the way to game seven. There’s no shame in losing when you’re not supposed to win. That’s how yesterday should have gone but there was no up and down, no back and forth. It was all Packers for most of the game to the point where I felt sorry for the Seattle fans. Then the pain was ours because they gave us hope and then didn’t deliver. I wonder if the Colts fans feel a different pain. They were also the underdogs and battled like them. But they most likely met expectations so maybe the sting is less.

So now the Donald  Driver jersey is hung up for another year. Aaron Rodgers is all over the news quipping “This one is going to hurt for a while”.  Yup, it’s the pain of mismanaged expectations.

</waxing>