The Ringing Of The Bells

Every week, I take Thing Two and The Girl to the library while Thing One has his piano lesson.  They pick out their books for the week's bedtime reading and love on the therapy dogs that are--happily and coincidentally--at the library every week at the same time, and he has his lesson without sibling distraction, so it works out well for everyone.  The last time we were there, somebody's phone rang very loudly in the stacks, and it reminded me of something that I'd entirely forgotten.

I was generally a good kid in high school.  My friends were as well.  The tradition was that seniors would play some kind of prank, and we absolutely weren't going to miss out on that, but we also wanted to do something that was funny rather than mean or messy.  I don't remember who came up with the idea of pranking the school librarians (who were rather unnecessarily draconian and were really asking for it!) but we soon hatched a plan.

One weekend evening, we stopped by one of the night markets (this was in Hong Kong) on the way back from a movie and purchased ten or so inexpensive battery-powered alarm clocks.  We synchronized them, turned up the alarm volume as high as it would go, and then set the alarms to go off at five-minute intervals.  The next school day, each of us casually wandered into the library sometime during the morning with a set clock or two and hid them.  That afternoon, when the library was packed, we casually wandered back in and sat down at a table to "study" and view the effects of our handiwork.  

The reaction was priceless.  The librarians had a flaming hissy fit, and everyone else in the library thought it was hilarious.  No sooner would they find and deactivate one alarm clock than the next would start ringing.  And I have to say that some of my co-conspirators were really inspired in their clock placement...one actually managed to get a clock into the librarians' desk itself, and another (I have no idea how to this day) one into the metal ductwork in the ceiling!!  That particular alarm echoed throughout the whole library...absolutely brilliant work. 

As far as I know, nobody ever connected the group of us to that stunt...this may be the first public admission of guilt.  Fortunately, whatever the statute of limitations might be, I'm sure it is long expired.  But I'll bet Mrs. Newman is still holding a grudge!  

           

      

The Only Thing

--Absolutely the only thing--good about having as much wine as I've had this evening is the fact that we stopped drinking shortly after 8PM because our guest turns into a pumpkin long before midnight!  I have a fighting chance of not being hung over tomorrow morning, but I wouldn't bet on it.

My friend Michelle came over this evening for dinner with our family.  We haven't seen her for a long time, and it was really great to have a chance to catch up.  I'm not much of a drinker, but the combination of Himself's spectacular sangria and the opportunity to have the kind of 'girl talk' guaranteed to embarrass the hell out of my husband (I have to live vicariously through my single girlfriends, right??) is not a good one for this lightweight.

And the best part about it was that I didn't have time today for my usual pre-guest craziness.  I have an unholy pathology (OCD maybe?) about making sure that the house is tidy and clean before people come over, and today it just wasn't possible.  A quick, superficial pass through was all I had time for, and you know what?  It was ok anyway.  We all survived.  We had a good dinner.  And it was fun.

Today was one of those Saturdays.  I went one way with Thing One: a soccer tournament followed by his TKD class.  We left the house at 8AM (ugh).  Himself went another way with Thing Two and The Girl: baseball pictures followed by soccer practice followed by a baseball game.  We met up again at 1:30, traded children and kept going.  I got home about 2:30 and Himself at 3.  And despite the fact that I had to drive almost an hour each way to get Thing One to his soccer tournament, I wouldn't change a thing.

You see, it's hard to talk to the kid--I mean really talk--when his siblings are around.  There is no such thing as a meaningful, serious conversation with him in the presence of the younger two.  But today, the skies opened and he talked.  For the first time, he really wanted a detailed explanation of what Thing Two's issues are.  How exactly he's different, and why.  What purpose our meetings about him at school serve.  Even though he was sitting behind me and I couldn't see his face, I could clearly hear his mental wheels spinning as he processed my answers.  The older he gets, the more I can see that I am going to value the one-on-one time we have in the car...the one good thing about far-flung soccer tournaments, I suppose.      

Another good thing--this one about good friends--is that you can serve them 'experimental' (i.e., new-recipe) dinners without fear.  I first met Michelle when I was pregnant with Thing Two, lo these many years ago--we've been through a lot together, including her divorce a few years ago.  With that as a frame of reference, if dinner had crashed and burned, we would have cheerfully ordered a pizza and life would have gone on!  But because there was no pressure, it came out great: roasted pork tenderloin with apples and onions, garlic mashed potatoes, salad and rolls.  And she brought over a lemon angel-food cake that was completely out of this world.

So, overall...a good day.  A happy day.  And even a sunny one.  Measuring success today in things done, friends caught up with and sangria consumed!      

Coordination Fail

Courtesy of these, I now have a big honking bruise on one elbow and blood on my gi!  (Got the side of my hand pinched in the chain at class tonight while working on wrist rolls.)   I still need more practice, but I'm getting a lot better with my nunchaku.

And when I finally get this down, I will definitely be keeping my chuks upstairs at my house.  Can't you just imagine the reaction an intruder might have to seeing me at the top of the stairs swinging these at him??

Um...

Himself is firmly of the opinion that, if I am going to insist on spending 5+ hours a week in taekwondo class, I need to take yoga as well to improve my strength and flexibility so I have less chance of getting hurt while doing TKD.

And he does have a point (says the woman with the dicey knee and shoulder.)  Since we do a fair amount of stretching in TKD class itself, in the last year and a half I have progressed from being approximately as flexible as a brick (really) to a slightly more bendy state, but I have a long way to go yet.  So I've been trying to get to a beginners' yoga class once a week.

Yesterday, the instructor actually had us do the "om..." chant at the beginning of class, which was new for me.  The idea is that you clear your mind of everything other than your breathing while doing so, to get yourself into the correct frame of mind to start the class.

I saw the following image on Facebook yesterday, and laughed out loud because it is the absolute truth.

        
I find it very difficult to ever completely shut my brain off (probably another good reason to practice yoga.)  So, while the instructor was omm-ing, I went off on a mental tangent about the om sound itself instead of blanking out my extraneous thoughts like I was supposed to.

Some of the people in the class seemed to be a little off the instructor's hum in pitch, which made the sound of the group meditating as a whole almost unpleasant for me.  Pathetic, but true.  I played in bands of one sort or another for about fifteen consecutive years growing up, so noticing whether a group is in tune or not is well and truly automatic at this point, for good or bad.  

The odd thing, and the next thing that registered in my pea brain, was the fact that the instructor was omm-ing a concert B-flat note!  While I don't have perfect pitch like Thing One, my relative pitch is pretty decent, and that particular note would be seared into my brain regardless because it is the one to which a band collectively tunes itself before a performance.  One instrument (usually a clarinet) or a mechanical tuner will play that note, and everyone else will play whatever note on their particular instrument makes the same sound and then make any necessary adjustments so that their note no longer sounds flat or sharp (low or high) relative to the reference note.  If everyone is in tune, the whole group sounds a lot better.

Now, I have no idea whether yoga instructors all consciously choose that particular pitch to om or whether this was a total coincidence, but it struck me as funny that she was effectively tuning the group before our yoga performance.

And I really need to work on my mental focus, too!

Flashback

Because I saw one of these

yesterday, on something like this

my thoughts immediately went here.

Blessed

This morning, Himself and I attended the first of the two end-of year IEP meetings at school required for Thing Two.  (IEP stands for Individualized Education Program: these are put in place for children who have been determined to have some kind of disability per specific federal regulations.)  The point of this particular meeting was to formally update us on his progress and to jointly determine whether or not any further testing should be done before the end of the year.

First, Thing Two is doing very well.  He has challenges and deficits, no doubt, but both his homeroom teacher and school speech therapist were very positive about the progress he has made this year.  And second, they are not recommending any further testing for him at this point, which is HUGE.

Now, this whole paragraph is a guess on my part: I admit it freely.  But here's what I think is happening.  They want to continue providing services to him.  They see that he is responding to the help he's currently receiving, and understand that he really needs that help.  And they are concerned that if they test, he may not do badly enough (because he is very bright under all the crossed wires in his brain--and also because the performance level that justifies receipt of services in this state is unbelievably, scandalously low!) to qualify for the language help that every professional who has ever worked with him says that he needs to keep him moving in the right direction.

But, regardless of whether my guess is right or wrong, the net result of today is that they are leaving his status as is, and next month, we will meet again to decide exactly what will be in his IEP for next year.

I've heard a lot of Child Study Team and IEP horror stories, and am beyond grateful that Thing Two's case manager has gone to bat for him repeatedly ever since he was classified.  It is a blessing beyond compare to have our meetings be cordial and cooperative, as they are, and not confrontational, ugly and lawyer-filled!

Ain't That Just A Kick In The Pants?

Himself and I were talking again last night--I don't remember why--about the fact that The Girl is his little clone.  Looks, facial expressions, personality, idiosyncratic quirks, you name it.  I commented that it must be a little odd to see a mini-you walking around, to which he replied that I needed to take a good look in the mirror and then at Thing One sometime.

Thing One looks the most like me of the three, no doubt.  It's more from my dad's side of the family than me specifically: he's a dead ringer for my father, brother and grandfather.  He has their big eyes, long lashes, rangy build, athletic gait: even the shape of his head and fingernails is the same.  Total strangers who know my brother have asked me if we're related, so there is a resemblance, but Thing One really looks more like them than me.  He does share my tendency to go off into deep thought at inopportune moments, unfortunately--which oblivious state Himself refers to as "Ph.D.-land"--but in personality he is otherwise somewhat of a hybrid between me and Himself.

This train of thought led me to Thing Two, in many ways the odd man out here, as is so often the case.  He is not clearly like either me or Himself in appearance or personality, and he is totally unlike his siblings in personality as well.  They are both generally easygoing and agreeable, and he is Mr.-My-Way-Or-The-Highway if there ever was one.  Good God, that child has a hard head!  Unfortunately, whomever he may end up resembling physically, the issues that bedevil him and label him for the outside world (ADHD and whatever expressive and receptive language issue he has) clearly come from my side, which is a source of endless guilt.

It positively boggles my mind that I never figured out that I had a problem processing verbal information until he was diagnosed and I started doing speech therapy with him at home.  I was the high school valedictorian, got through college cum laude and a doctoral program in Molecular Biology with very respectable grades--you'd think that somewhere in there, the amount of verbal information being thrown at me would have tripped me up, given that to this day I can't remember a damned thing I hear.  If directions require more than two steps--no joke--I have to write them down.

Which is how I survived school, actually.  Somewhere along the line, I figured out--and not consciously--that I needed to write down everything that the teacher said immediately as I heard it and then study from those notes.   I was one of those people who would come out of a 45-minute class with twelve pages of notes written in four colors--a survival mechanism because my auditory memory is total crap.  (Visual memory is a different story and my salvation, though: I can picture where words are on a page and in some cases, 'read' them from the mental image.)

At any rate, this poor kid clearly got his two biggest whammies from my side in the genetic lottery (I am not hyperactive myself, but close relatives are.)  So, no matter what he looks like on the outside, he may be the child fundamentally most like me after all, and that's a hell of a thought.  Not that I don't love him dearly just the way he is, because I do, but of all the things I brought to the genetic table, those are very high on the list of the ones I would least have wished on my child!