Please Read: Advice Needed!

Well, so much for not posting for a while.

A friend threw me with a difficult question last night and it's been bugging me ever since.  It occurred to me that NOLA might be a good person to ask for info, but instead of emailing her offline, I'm posting it here instead: since I don't know so many of the people who visit here, I thought it might be good to take the chance that one or more of you might have helpful suggestions as well!

Here's the situation.

My friend knows of an Indian woman living in West Virginia who is in an abusive relationship but believes that she cannot leave her husband because she is in the US on a dependent visa.  Does she have any legal recourse, or are her only choices 1) staying with her miserable rat-bastard of a husband (my words, not hers) and 2) going back to India (with her children? without her children??  How does that part of it work??)

If anyone can even begin to point me in the right direction on this, it would be GREATLY appreciated.  I'd love to see abusive husbands get the same treatment in prison as child molesters: after all, both prey on people weaker than themselves.

Blah

The last few days I've been uninspired to write, and mostly too busy with the mundane sorts of activities that would make me tired just listing them all.  Nothing I want to re-think about and certainly nothing I want to bore the rest of you with!  Not bad stuff--beyond this eternal and damnable winter, anyway--just boring.

So, until I am inspired to post again, there may be a bit of silence.  But I'm still reading your blogs, even if I don't quite manage to comment as often as I'd like.

Overheard From The Hallway, Part 1

Wednesday nights my kids have CCD, which stands for Confraternal Christian Doctrine and is otherwise known as Religious Education and further otherwise known as the classes that you have to take before you can make your sacraments up to Confirmation in the Catholic church.  As far as I'm concerned, it is also what makes my Wednesday nights a logistical nightmare and therefore an acronym often taken in vain, but maybe that's just me.  The powers that be have the sense to stash me in the vicinity of the smallest children for my hall-monitoring duties, which is very wise of them.  All I have to do is think about the bishops who are spending millions on their palatial dwellings while shuffling pedophile priests like decks of cards in their spare time and it's just as well that I am not anywhere near kids who might be old enough to register and process my honest opinion on either subject, should they happen to hear it at any point.

Anyway, my seat in the hall (from which I monitor the to-ings and fro-ings of wayward parents and chaperone small fry on bathroom trips) happens to be directly outside the first grade classroom in which Petunia and a number of other small fry are taught by a truly remarkable woman.  She is a pharmacist by training, but missed her calling as a teacher: I admit freely that I have borrowed many of her techniques for handling little ones for use in my basketball coaching and that the kids are much better off for it.  The other benefit to me of my seat location is that I can hear what goes on in said first grade classroom, and some of the conversational exchanges between students and teacher are absolutely--and unintentionally--hilarious.

I have heard one of the Sacraments called (in all seriousness, on two different occasions) both the "annoying of the sick" and "the annoying of the orange."  (If you are not familiar with the TV show to which the latter is referring, I envy you deeply.)  Another child, on a third occasion, asked if the tablets upon which Moses received the Ten Commandments were iPads.  And on the subject of the Ten Commandments, I bring you the highlight from this evening:

Teacher: "Who can name one of the Ten Commandments for me?"
Student: "Don't bring weapons to the airport."

Love it.  Absolutely love it.  

 

    

Thoughts On Santayana

I once used a quotation of George Santayana's against an opponent in a high school debate: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  I was reminded of that today, as apparently my own memory has started to go!

Twice now, I've arrived at the coordinates for a geocache to find an open expanse with no likely hiding spots in sight.  Both of those times, the cache in question was located UNDER the path upon which I was standing: once in a pedestrian tunnel and once in a drainpipe.   As you might expect (or hope!) I was a lot quicker on the uptake the second time than the first.  Latitude and longitude pinpoint a location on the Earth (the proverbial X marking the spot) but tell you nothing about how far above or below the X you should be looking.

I had to go to Costco today, so I took the opportunity to try a second time for a cache that defeated me entirely on my last Costco trip.  The posted coordinates brought me to the corner of a parking garage in a shopping mall, and both times I spent more than an hour fruitlessly poking around the wire-fenced enclosure and handrails near the stairwell at that corner, just hoping that nobody would see me loitering suspiciously and call Paul Blart!  By the end of my explorations today, I'd had it with dodging pedestrians--I gave up in disgust and fired off an email to a geocacher friend who had previously found it asking for a hint, then took off for Costco.

By the time I arrived, he'd responded.  "Did you go up the stairs??"

Sure enough, when I stopped back for the third time on my way home, it took me all of 30 seconds to find the cache, which was suspended from fishing line off the edge of the top deck of the parking garage, directly above the fenced enclosure I'd previously been examining so unsuccessfully.

So now I have officially been thrown by caches located both below and above ground level.  The real test will be whether I remember to look up the next time I'm stymied!

Day Is Done

Saw this sign the other day...love it!  Two of my favorite food groups: coffee and wine.

It's been that kind of weekend...busy and somewhat stressful, too.  You can tell that we are entering the transition zone between the winter and spring sports seasons: we had two rounds of basketball yesterday and three of soccer today.  (And we are getting signup notifications for spring baseball, too--thankfully that ain't happening now that we have three soccer teams to juggle this spring instead of only two!)

Thing One's team won their basketball game even though the poor kid couldn't hit a bull in the behind with a basketball that day--thankfully, at least he did manage his usual stellar defense.  Thing Two's team was once again scrimmaging Petunia's, which is always a disaster waiting to happen from an emotional standpoint, but with a little careful management (i.e., not putting the two of them anywhere near each other on the court!) we had no tears or trauma when all was said and done.  Then, after the scrimmage was over, one of my kindergarteners came up and gave me a thank-you card on behalf of the team.  There was a gift card in it, which was beyond thoughtful, but the sentiment was what got me...this is the first time I've been a head coach, and I've felt like I was bumbling and faking my way through more than a few times.  Hearing that the kids have been telling their parents how much fun basketball is and how much they are learning completely made my season (and left me choked up like a bullfrog.)

Thing One had a tryout for a summer league soccer team this morning, which apparently did not go terribly well (I was home with the other two and didn't see it.)  Luckily the coaches handling the tryout know him well and presumably know that he had an off tryout, but I felt bad for the kid.  With his anxiety issues more under control now than they have been for a while, we struggle with signing him up for anything that would put more pressure than necessary on the kid.  He said he wanted to try out, though (direct quote: "I'll be BORED this summer if I don't have soccer!") so we'll see what happens.  Fortunately, his usual Sunday evening clinic went very well, which I only care about as far as his confidence is concerned--he was in a much better mood when he came home after that one.

Thing Two had his third travel team practice tonight, and this time I was the parent who accompanied him.  I was very glad to find that one of my taekwondo classmates also has a child on the team (Himself didn't recognize her out of context) and the icing on the cake was that Thing Two's close friend from school made the team as well.  I know much less about soccer than I should considering that I've been watching one of my kids or another play the game pretty continuously for a good seven years now, but to my untutored eye he looked like he was right in there with his teammates skill- and behavior-wise.  It seems like he has been 'different' for his whole life, and my prayer for years has been that he manage to acquire the language and social skills necessary for him to blend in better.  And not because I care for me--because I care for him, and I don't want him to be that odd kid who nobody wants to play with.  Even letting him try out was a leap of faith, and there is still a thornspiked ball of the old fear in my gut about this risk (should I be dreading taking my son to a practice when he is perfectly happy about it??), but we are going with it and giving him the benefit of the doubt.  May we not regret it.  

Oh, well.  The sun has set on the weekend, and for all the promise of potential drama, little of it came to pass.  I guess I should just be grateful for that and move on.

Gone the sun,

From the lake, from the hill,

From the sky.

All is well, safely rest.

Reality Check Times Two

I guess three, if you include my former classmate from the last post.

I mentioned a while back that my next taekwondo belt test will be in a different format; effectively a watered-down version of the black belt test, since my next belt is considered a high belt.  The instructor for this morning's class decided to run a simulated black belt test in class just so we could see how we stack up against the physical requirements at this point.

Let me just say: HOLY COW.

Three minutes each of jumping jacks and sit-ups: no problem, but I'm sure my abs will hate me tomorrow and Saturday.  Three minutes of pushups, however: no freaking way.  I've been working on planks and pushups but clearly have a long way to go.  Bagwork: three minutes hand techniques only, four minutes foot techniques only, then 7 minutes hands and feet together.  Combinations.  Laps of the room.  All the forms and self-defenses in rapid succession, no rest in between.  All told, about an hour, and I was exhausted and dripping sweat at the end, although I did manage to do everything except the pushups without any major difficulty.  The actual test will be closer to three hours long and include a great deal of sparring and some board-breaking as well, so I have my work cut out for me!  The instructor is going to do these simulations about once a month, which will be a fantastic yardstick of progress at least.

After class I ran a few errands and then walked in the door at home to a ringing phone: Thing Two's occupational therapist.  Apparently he's having spatial awareness issues again (i.e., not being entirely sure where his body is in space, which manifests in things like bumping into people and walls.)  As a preschooler, he routinely attempted to walk through people, so he's made a lot of progress, but has apparently regressed in the last few weeks.  I'm wondering if it's because he's growing, which the sudden flood-iness of his pants would indicate.  At any rate, she made some suggestions regarding clothing and shoes and hopefully those will help...there is never a dull moment with this kid.  I knew there was an issue as soon as I saw who was calling: strangely enough, none of the therapists ever call me just to tell me that my son is doing well!  In the grand scheme of things, though, this is small potatoes and perspective is always a good thing.

Rain outside today (thankfully not snow) but gray and gloomy.  I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon hibernating with all the lights on and a good book!        

Thrown For A Loop

Just learned via Facebook that a middle school classmate I remember well is dead.  He was an attorney; I gather that he had some disappointments trying to make partner at one of the big firms, developed a drinking problem, got fired, got divorced, and died.  I can't tell if his death was deliberate or accidental, but what a freaking waste.  Especially since he left behind two tween-aged kids.

He's not the first of our classmates to pass away (one died of cancer when we were just out of college) but he's the first to go this way, the victim of midlife crisis, addiction, depression and ambition.  I don't feel middle-aged, but the mirror tells me otherwise, and a little more of the illusion of youth disappeared today.  RIP, my friend...may you finally be free of your demons.