I am sitting here on the deck of the Mahogany Lounge with my best friend Keelin and her pug, Jeep and we are each doing our own thing, not speaking, just drinking water and letting our minds wander to wherever. This evening at 8 PM it is the semi final match. We play Washington Spirit. They have traveled all the way across the country and I must say, I am just beyond ecstatic to be playing here and not away. Poor Portland had to go back to Kansas City for their semi final match, just the same as last year and the conditions were grueling to say the least. I heard that it was something like 150 degrees on the turf. And based upon my experience there last year, I dont doubt that stat one bit. Kansas won, so they have sealed their spot in the final match next week.
This week was a long one. Our national team players were away this week because they had a game against Switzerland. You never realize when you have the full squad here, but when they are away it is so apparent how much we miss them. They are such a huge part of not only numbers on the field but a part of the atmosphere and level of training as well, so it was nice to get them back to say the least. But all that aside it was a great week of training and we are all so excited for the match tonight! Big games bring out the best in players and teams and I am excited to see this team in our element.
I know you are all dying for more inside stories so I have been trying to compile the best from the last week for you all! So here some random stories of the week...
First since Jeep is right here and he reminded me of this... a few weeks ago Kee took Jeep for one of his 50 daily walks and on it she came across a lady who lives down the street from us and her new 10 week old black lab puppy. His name is Stewie and he is justttttttt precious! So Jeep and him have been having play dates over the last few weeks and just become good little friends, even though Stewie is a little rambunctious from time to time. Anyways, Kee and I went over to her house just yesterday to let the doggies play when Leslie (the neighbor) said "Oh, wait, we have a present for Jeep dont we, Stewie." She went inside the house and came back out with a little bag of tiny Jeep-size tennis balls for Jeep. Jeep has been trying his very best to fit a regular size tennis ball in his mouth for two years now, aka all his life, and he has only just even been able to hold it for a brief second before his jaw dislocates and he is forced to give up. When Leslie took the ball out and gave it to Jeep he took it and ran in a circle, then set the ball down and ran back to Leslie and gave a baby little jump onto her leg and made solid eye contact for aout 5 seconds and then ran back to his ball. It was literally as though he ran up to her and said "THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH!" It seriously filled my heart with love. It was so adorable and made me laugh all at once.
On a completely unrelated topic, Laura brought in some new tunes for the locker room. For those of you who dont know Laura is a master at everything she does, but particularly music and dancing. she is our DJ because she has the best tunes... no one else can agree on what is good music, but no one disagrees with Laura (ever) so her music choice is always good. And on this team, new music always brings about new dance moves... mostly from Laura herself, but also from Carm and sometimes Amanda Frisbie (which no one really cares to see, but we encourage it nonetheless). This time though, the dancing was taken out onto the field into a game of rondo (which is just soccer jargin for keep-away or monkey-in-the-middle) we played before one of our sessions. We are only allowed one touch and so you can imagine it gets pretty funny because you can really put people in some difficult situations. The story basically goes that a ball was played to Syd, pretty slow and she had to do a few moves to try to juke the defender and get her pass off... I wish I had a video of it... this is pretty much as close to it as I close to it as I could get... but she ended up doing some sort of "dance" around the ball before attempting her pass which got picked off by the defender anyways and she got put in the middle. Click on the link below and then imagine Syd is the white boy doing a dance around a ball.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=705854879468562&set=vb.547156485338403&type=2&theater
Lastly, just to make fun of myself here... For any of you who follow my other social media accounts, you probably know that I have fallen completely in love with fishing this summer. I needed some sort of meditative practice to center myself. I have tried traditional meditation, yoga, breathing exercises all those things, and they work great but I wanted something that would put my in nature. I love being outdoors and I want to just be surrounded by nature. So I took up fishing and have found this amazing little cove by my house where I can just wade into the water and fish from there. It is beautiful and quiet and absolutely horrible for fishing because its shallow. But what ever... the purpose is not actually for me to catch fish there, I say that I go there to "work on my casting" when really I just want to be in the water with nature doing something meditative. Anyways, this morning happened to be particularly beautiful. And as usual I was up at the crack of dawn at about 6 and decided I wanted to go out there.
So I jumped in the car and drove down there. Today I decided I would try one of my new lures. With my other lures, going with the wind I can usually cast about 40-50 feet. So when I wade into the water I can throw a short amount before getting into any shrubs or things. Well my first cast with this new lure, I chucked it and it just FLEWWWW. Like 100 feet right into this underwater forest of seaweed trees. I pulled and pulled and it was just absolutely stuck. I said... "welp, sh*t." So I took off my shirt and waded into the water in my shorts and sports bra and walked out up about to my neck to untangle my lure. I saved the lure though and was proud to have a new PR in casting distance! Soooo, I got that going for me. The rest of the morning I spent shivering in the water but it was absolutely beautiful and as per the usual... I didnt catch anything! haha. What a way to start off a game day!
Thats all I got for you! Wish us luck tonight! We will do our best if you guys promise to cheer your best! Thanks for all of your support!
Much love!
Dani
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