I remember when the World Cup was in the US.  That was 1994, and I played soccer, my sister played soccer, and my brother played soccer.  I don’t remember for sure, but my Dad was probably coaching.   It was pretty much the family sport, before we really just all got full-time into running.  My Dad being Irish, soccer was the first sport all of us played, starting at age 5 or 6.  I thought the winds of change were blowing.  Everyone I knew played soccer.  There are 300 million people in the US.  I figured we couldn’t help but become “great.” Ha.  As B pointed out, we just aren’t that good.  Did the US play well?  Sure.  But Belgium has a population of 11 million.  We have literally 30 times as many people.  They took three times as many shots on goal, and it seems clear they were the better team.   If memory serves, the US has been knocked out in the second round every time except when we were hosts.  We’ve made basically no progress in the last twenty years.  I need to start cheering exclusively for women’s soccer. In pretty much any international sporting event, I cheer for the US, Ireland, and the Netherlands, in that order.   This go-round, the Netherlands seems to have an excellent chance to do quite well.  I think I was one of a very few people who wanted to see them beat Mexico.

Yesterday, I hit 31 weeks.  It was a very rough day.  93 degrees here – house was hot, office (despite A/C) was hot.  B was grumpy because of being hot.  L threw a screaming temper tantrum and threw herself out of her stroller, landing head first, so she was obviously grumpy.  Lots of stress at work.  Hopefully today is better.  It will at least be much cooler.