Things I Do Not Get

The gym to which I belong recently installed lockers in the hallways.  Each one has a built-in combination lock which can easily be set by each individual user for each use.  Very handy for purses, coats, etc that you don't feel like either leaving in the hallway or taking into an exercise classroom with you.  The lockers get a lot of use.

Except.

Nobody actually LOCKS them.

They open the door, put their belongings inside, close the door, and leave.  How many times have I opened an unlocked locker only to find it full of stuff?   Many, many times.  This in itself is not a big deal and I can usually find an empty one eventually.  The part I don't understand is why any rational human being would choose to put her (and it is generally her) purse into an unlocked locker (which she could easily CHOOSE to lock, but doesn't) and then walk away from it for an hour plus!

Entitlement?  Obliviousness?  General idiocy?  Hell itself would freeze over before I would leave my purse unattended and unsecured for any length of time (the thought of having to go through all the bureaucratic aggravation involved in replacing the driver's license, credit cards, etc alone gives me palpitations.)  A thief would have a field day at this gym and I frankly can't believe that it hasn't happened already.  Maybe it's just a reflection of the fact that I live in a generally safe, relatively wealthy area, so people just aren't thinking about the potential for crime all around them, but wow.  Just wow.  Call me a cynic, but maybe common sense really isn't that common?

        

Well, So Much For THAT Pedicure

What you're looking at below is two large pieces of heavy-duty cardboard (probably two feet in length) held together with packing tape.  This contraption is used as a target for a particular kind of kick called a round kick--one person holds it perpendicular to the ground by one of the shorter ends and the other person kicks it.  It makes a very satisfying *thwack* when struck correctly.  

This is a round kick (image from Wikipedia.)  This dude is getting a round kick to the side of the head, which can actually be lethal if done correctly.  Good thing he's covering up!  Bottom line, this is a very powerful kick, particularly for those (like me) with long legs.

 

Now, go back to that top picture. See the red streaks on that cardboard target?  Those are nail polish!  You can see exactly where the top of my foot hit the target each time.  Nice little cluster, dontcha think??  I had to repaint both big toenails after class but I don't even mind because this is photographic proof that I am becoming a badass ninja.  :)

Rising Like A Phoenix from The Ashes of Despair

Ok, perhaps despair might be a strong word, but I had tournament detail with the boys yesterday and it was a really tough day for them.  We drove 90 minutes each way so that each of them could play two hourlong games in 90+ degree heat; Thing One's games at 10 and 3:30 and Thing Two's at 3 and 5.  Long day of shuttling around from field to field lugging camp chairs and coolers and tents and collapsible team benches and all the other folderol that goes along with spending a full summer day outside watching soccer.  And that was just me: they actually had to run around in that brutal heat!

Thing One's team never had a prayer of competing going in; at least they knew that.  A couple of their opponents should have been flighted higher and their team is a mix of 12 and 13 year-olds playing all 13 year-olds.  It does raise the very legitimate question of why the hell they PLAY in this tournament, but I'm being logical again.  Anyway, they lost their two games by a combined total of 0-15 and the games were painful for everyone involved.  Nobody has fun when things are that lopsided.

Thing Two's team lost their first game 1-6.  Because there was overlap in our second and third game times, I had to choose one, so I caught that game and then ran over to watch the second half of Thing One's second game.  That ended about ten minutes before Thing Two's second game started, so I ran *back* to Thing Two's field and arrived just in time to see him absolutely DRILL a ball into the net!  Two minutes later, he did it again.  I was jumping up and down like a crazy woman.  (He almost had a hat trick, but the third shot went wide.)  He was in the goal the second half and made a couple of beautiful diving saves, too.  Final score was 8-4 for the only win of the tournament!!  At least it ended on a high note...I'd been darkly muttering to myself about exercises in self-flagellation all day.  :)

 

Pretty Damn Fine Day

So, I went to my third aikido class in three days this morning--4.5 hours total!--and lived to tell the tale.  (I go when I can, and there are a lot of "can't" class days coming up.  Call it preloading.)  The funny thing is that I ended up staying at the dojo until almost 11PM after last night's class eating takeout Thai food and hanging out with the other four people who were at class, and three of them were also there at 8:30 this morning!  That's dedication for you.  I'm still lousy at this style, but I'm becoming slightly *less* lousy...there is hope.  It's hard for me (after nearly four years of taekwondo) to wrap my head around a discipline in which muscling anything is by definition doing it wrong, but I'm persevering. Water grinding down rock and all that.

Then, at 11, little Miss Petunia had her first ever Saturday (i.e. high) taekwondo belt test, and passed with flying colors.  I was just sitting quietly off to the side watching at first, but then was invited to help (holding targets and attacking for self-defenses and such) which I've done before and is cool enough.  To my huge surprise, however, the head of the program ceded an entire chunk of the testing to me: I had to choose techniques for the students to perform and give them (and the other instructors) all necessary directions for that segment of the test material.  It's all part of the instructor training thing but MAN it was a rush to be given that honor (!!!!!!) and I managed to acquit myself respectably.

After buying her small ninja-ness a big ice cream cone and feeding her lunch, we met up with some friends of mine to pick up a couple of caches. They've been married almost 50 years: he turned 70 this past spring; she's a few years younger.  Wonderful people.  I met him at a caching event about 18 months ago and have subsequently spent a lot of time with her as well.  He's not much into puzzles and I solved a nasty one from his neck of the woods yesterday, so we met up to look for it and then he tagged along to help me find some others in the area that he'd already found. Very much the old-school gentleman; he's externally gruff but completely marshmallow-hearted (a former Marine) and his wife is one of the single nicest women I've ever met. She and Petunia had a mutual admiration society going within five seconds of meeting and they had every bit as much fun looking at flowers and birds as we did hunting caches!  They invited us back to their house for tea and cookies afterward and it was really a lovely afternoon.

When we got home, the two of us played in the pool for a while, cleaned up, and then went to the neighborhood family-run pizza place for dinner.  The boys and Himself were out of town at a soccer tourney all day and got home shortly after we did.

Just a day in the life.  Not a huge life or an important one, but a happy one, and a happy day. I'm a lucky woman.

Twelve

I shudder even to write the word.  At least I have a year before the dreaded teenageness starts!

Twelve years ago I was in labor with Thing One, feeling my belly contracting painfully around him, walking lap after lap of our apartment complex with Himself trying to get that baby to move down toward the damned exit already.  Finally went to the hospital around 1AM and he came squalling into the world after three good pushes at 9:17AM, all pink and beautiful and healthy at 7 pounds, 3 ounces.

Sitting here in the quiet looking at his old photo albums and getting soggy-eyed.  How could this little man

have become THIS not-nearly-so-little man

in only a dozen short years???

He's twelve today.  A rising seventh grader, probably 5'3" or so with size 10.5 feet and weighing in at about 110 lbs; a veritable bouncing puppy of a boy.  The baby who used to be the undisputed king of the evening witching hour (I don't think Himself and I were able to sit down to dinner together once in the first four months of his life!) has turned into my sweet, easygoing boy who can roll with pretty much anything.  Same big brown eyes, same goofy smile, same impish sense of humor, just now of a size where I no longer have to bend much in order to kiss the top of his head anymore.

Happy birthday to my first baby, even if he isn't much of a baby anymore.  Mama loves you more than you will ever be able to comprehend before you have kids of your own.  And happy Mom-birthday to me!

  

Looks Like This Teaching Thing May Actually Happen

Went to taekwondo this morning and had a discussion with the teacher afterward that resulted in me doing two classes' worth of instructor training this afternoon.  (That is to say, I was not doing the teaching myself, but rather serving as a 'helper' to the instructor, the idea being that I learn the teaching ropes while doing so.)   As far as I can tell, their plan is to have me work with established instructors (black belts with a lot of experience) as often as possible over the summer, and then they will see what happens with the schedule in the fall.

Frankly, I'm much happier with this concept than I was with the initial idea that I be dropped into teaching the Friday class alone in the short term.  It's one thing to know how to do a technique, and another entirely to be able to break it down for somebody else, especially somebody else who learns things a different way than you do.  We joke in the morning class that there are some people who need to see something first a couple of times to get it right, others who learn by doing, and a third group who has to formally process and think through all the steps before being willing to try something.  I'm in category three, by the way.  And this is just adults...both classes I worked with tonight were entirely children, which adds yet another curveball to the mix.  You can't really tell a seven year-old to pivot on the ball of their front foot and make sure their center of gravity goes forward, after all, at least not if you want any response other than a blank look...for the kids there are all sorts of simplified explanations that involve turning ice cream cones upside down and answering telephones and such.  The motions end up being the same, but the way you explain things to kids versus adults is so entirely different that I need to watch and listen for a while before being let loose on a class on my own!  

That said, tonight went fine for a first effort with kids, especially since all three of my own kids were in the second class.  I reminded them on the way to the dojo that today was my first day and that they were NOT to embarrass me by acting up while I was in the room with them!  For the most part, they managed it, and the kids I ended up working with looked better afterward than beforehand, so I'll take it.  Small steps!

    

Proud (Pride?)

It will doubtless surprise nobody (given all my posts here about my family and soccer) that we all sat down together last night after dinner to watch the American women play Japan for the World Cup.  Amazing, spectacular game and all props to Carli Lloyd for her record-smashing hat-trick performance.  All props to every other woman on the team, too--it's a group sport, after all.  We yelled ourselves absolutely hoarse cheering.

But one of the best parts of the night for me?  Watching Abby Wambach kiss her wife in joy after the game.  I'm about as straight as they come, and in general, I don't want to watch anyone's PDA, gay or straight (guess you could call me an equal opportunity "get-a-room"er) but at that moment I was suddenly proud to live in a country where it's OK to kiss your same-sex spouse on national television.  By contrast to, say, Nigeria, whose head coach Eucharia Uche has been accused of driving homosexual players off her nation's team.  Or either Russia or Qatar, the controversial host nation-awardees of the 2018 and 2022 men's World Cups, both of which are blatantly discriminatory and anti-gay.  Not like we don't still have a lot of work to do as a nation on this, either, but it's good that the times are changing.

As a biologist, I've seen more than enough evidence to convince me that homosexuality is a genetic thing, not a "choice" in the traditional sense of the word.  Hopefully, one day, the gender of somebody's partner will be a total nonissue.  And in the meantime, on this Independence Day weekend, I'm glad to be American.

(Oh, and you idiots who are tweeting about the win over Japan being some sort of retribution for Pearl Harbor??  Get back under your rocks where you belong.  NOW.)