Iowa Hawkeyes Loss, Scary Movies & Parenting Chaos

Welcome back to my little life in Iowa blog. This past week had it all — scary movies, football heartbreak, and parenting chaos wrapped up in one orbit. First up, I went to see the movie Weapons. Honestly, it was terrifying — the kind of film that makes you jump at shadows and double-check behind the freeze-dryer. When I got home, my husband decided to add to the horror by hiding and jumping out at me. Let’s just say my heart rate hit record speeds. Note to self: scary movies and parenting definitely don’t mix. Then came the Iowa Hawkeyes loss against Iowa State. The game was tied until the very end, when Iowa State kicked a field goal to win, 16–13. Brutal. Watching that was like seeing an Orbit Cream Crunch crumble in slow motion — painful, crunchy, and gone too soon. And, of course, the kids had a short week at school. If you’re a parent, you know what that means: less classroom time, more “Mom, can I have a snack?” time. Luckily, we’ve got plenty of freeze-dried snacks in Iowa to fuel the madness. So between horror films, Hawkeye heartbreak, and parenting overtime, it’s been a full orbit. But no worries — here at Torus Coffee Company, we’re always stocked with cosmic snacks to help us survive the chaos (and maybe even the next Hawkeye game). Until the next Orbit Report, Sara Jane Shelvock CEO, Torus Coffee Company

I want to be clear about something: I do not do horror well. I am the person who covers her eyes during the trailers. So the fact that I went to see Weapons on purpose, in a theater, with other people, tells you something about my decision-making that week. It was genuinely frightening in the way good horror is frightening, which is to say it got into my head and stayed there for a few days afterward.

The part I keep coming back to is not the film. It is that my husband, knowing full well I had just seen it, chose to hide behind our couch and jump out at me when I got home. I have known this man for years. I should have anticipated it. I did not, and I am fairly sure I made a noise that was not human. There is a lesson in there somewhere about knowing your own household, and I have decided not to learn it.

The Hawkeyes loss to Iowa State was its own kind of horror, and it hurt more because the game was close the entire way. Tied until the very end, and then a field goal decided it, 16-13. Four points. In a rivalry game that means as much as this one does, four points is a knife. Watching your team lose that way is a specific kind of grief, the kind you carry around the house for a day or two and try not to take out on anyone.

I have made peace with the fact that a short school week is not actually short for parents. Fewer classroom hours means more snack hours, more supervision, more of the negotiation that is apparently the core skill of modern parenting. My youngest has developed a pre-request that starts with Mom and ends with the word snack, and she delivers it with a confidence I admire professionally.

The freezer is the reason this week worked. Having freeze-dried snacks on hand means the answer to can I have something is yes, and it means I am not making a second dinner because the first one was not enough. It is a small logistical thing that turns into a real quality-of-life thing when you are running a household and a business in the same set of hours.

Weapons Was Not the Scary Part

The Parenting Version of Overtime

The Hawkeyes loss to Iowa State was its own kind of horror, and it hurt more than the film did. I am going to be honest that I do not handle either one gracefully. I get quiet and I stop talking about it and I pretend it did not matter, which is a lie that nobody in this house believes.

The part I keep coming back to is not the film. It is that my husband, knowing exactly how I am about this, still sat through the whole thing with the lights on and made a running commentary the entire time. That is love in a form that does not look like anything romantic.

The kids picked the movie, which they do, and they picked it because a kid at school said it was good. It was not good. It was loud and confusing and ended in a way that made no sense, and we all sat through it because we had already committed to the commitment.

What actually got us through was the living room floor. Everybody on blankets, a bowl of freeze-dried strawberries in the middle that nobody would admit to eating most of, and the dog deciding that this was the moment to require attention. The movie is forgettable. That part is not.

I have made peace with the fact that a short school week is not actually short. It is the same work compressed into fewer days, with the same number of deadlines and none of the breathing room. The first full week back is always the one that feels impossible, and we are not there yet.

Sixteen to Thirteen

Stay curious. Stay crunchy. Stay cosmic.

The age gap in this house is sixteen to thirteen, which is a very narrow band that behaves like a very wide one. One of them is in high school and one is about to be, and the distance between those two facts is the entire emotional weather system of our house.

One is morning and one is night. One does homework the second it is assigned and one does it at eleven at night in a panic. One has opinions about nutrition and one would eat nothing but the same four things if we let her. We do not let her, mostly.

The funny thing is how much they agree on when we are not involved. They have a shared vocabulary that neither of them uses with us, a set of references that means nothing outside the two of them, and a way of finishing each other's sentences that is genuinely annoying when it is used as a wall.

So the schedule that works is the one that lets them overlap on purpose. Movie night, which is what this was, is the only guaranteed intersection. Everything else is negotiation, and negotiation takes longer than the activity itself.

— Sara Jane Shelvock, CEO, Torus Coffee Company LLC

Stay curious. Stay crunchy. Stay cosmic.

— Sara Jane Shelvock, CEO, Torus Coffee Company LLC