If THAT Isn't A Scary Thought, I Don't Know What Is

I mentioned a few days ago that Petunia was testing for her green belt in taekwondo, which she did, successfully and with fierceness.  For someone so young and cute, she is quite the little ninja; determined, focused and diligent in her training.

Besides the fact that this promotion makes our after-school schedule simpler, earning a green belt is a big deal in our system.  This is the level at which you are considered advanced enough to require sparring gear, and it also brings with it the right to wear the coveted black uniform pants of the higher-ranked (all ranks below green belt wear the white pants of the beginner.)

All of this goes some way toward explaining why I spent the better part of my Friday evening hemming black gi pants.  There was no way I was buying her a teeny new pair of black pants that would be quickly outgrown: what made far more sense given that all three of my children study taekwondo and grow like weeds was buying a new pair of black pants for my biggest sprout and passing each of the two current pairs down one child.  And this (to finally bring me to the point here!) is how my eldest ended up standing on one of my kitchen chairs just now while I pinned a hem into his new pants.

From his position six or eight inches over my head, he joked that I needed to get used to the height difference since he'd probably be that much taller than me when he's done growing!  It flashed into my mind that I'll probably be looking up at him in exactly the same way during the mother-son dance at his wedding, and as a shot to the gut, that one was tough to take.

Acceptance

The crazy logistics of my afternoon (with which I will not bore you) dictated that I would arrive at Thing One's school soccer practice about 15 minutes before he was due to be picked up.  As I idly watched the drill they were running--something involving keeping track of which small teams made more of their shots on goal than the rest--it became clear that he was doing pretty well on his turns, burying the ball in a corner of the net more often than not.  It happened that he was the last man standing on his team and made his final shot for a team win, after which he was mobbed by the others in his group, every one a seventh or eighth grader to his sixth and two of them captains.  His grin lit up the field and my heart melted.

It's A Miracle

Petunia received her red stripe tonight, meaning that she is now eligible to test for her next taekwondo belt, which is Green.  This month's ceremony happens to be tomorrow evening (along with two soccer practices) so we'll have a bit of a last-minute logistical scramble, but it's well worth it. Why?

Kids who have achieved the rank of Green or higher all take class together.  My boys are both already in this class: Thing Two's belt is Senior Green and Thing One's is Blue.  Once Petunia gets her Green belt, she will move up from her current class to their class, and all three of them will be done with class in 45 minutes instead of 90 (her current class meets right before theirs.)  This transition will mark the first time in the history of our family that the after-school schedule actually got LESS complicated and time-consuming!!  Hallelujah.

NOT A Labor Of Love

Call it a labor of avoiding embarrassment, if anything.

My mother-in-law is coming this afternoon and staying the night so that Himself and I can take Thing One to his first college football game...she'll be watching the younger two.  Spent the morning cleaning my house, since as much as I love my MIL and as easygoing as she is, I refuse to have my house be filthy when she visits!  Or when anyone visits, for that matter. It's a pride thing. 

Problem is that I am the only member of my family who gives the tiniest flying crap if anything is clean or tidy.  I am surrounded by slobs, and it gets OLD.  I am the only one in the house who cares if there are clothes on the floor or gobs of toothpaste in the sink or (my personal favorite) pee all around the toilet.  Why should I waste my time worrying about it if they don't??

Of course, things don't get left that way for too long.  Basic health and hygiene (not to mention the ghosts of my neat-freak Italian foremothers) dictate that things get cleaned, and they do. But talk about a Sisyphean waste of time, since they just get dirty again almost immediately.  It's hard not to be resentful, frankly. 

I used to have cleaning ladies back when I worked, and they came with their own set of frustrations, but I'm wondering if I need to look at that again.  Maybe my kids' bathroom floor will piss me off less if somebody else is cleaning it!!  I love my kids dearly, but love is not what I'm feeling while I clean, '50s tropes be damned. 

I Don't Blame Her One Bit

Ran into a friend at Thing One's school last night.  In the course of conversation (don't remember how this came up) she told me about a recent day in which her daughter had forgotten a field hockey stick at home and called the mom to bring it to school.  Mom duly brings the stick in, happening to catch girl at lunch.  Girl, apparently embarrassed by mom's appearance in the cafeteria (heaven forbid), gives mom quite a bit of attitude.  Mom, not being the sort who takes nonsense, and who thought a thank-you might have been nice, calls daughter on said attitude right in front of her friends.

This mom has four of the smartest, kindest, best-behaved and most polite kids I know.  (Apparently girl was having a bad day that day, since her behavior was highly uncharacteristic--probably the only reason mom didn't take the stick right back home with her!)  People often tell her how lucky she is to have four great kids, which pisses her off mightily.  As she puts it, she's lucky that they are healthy, but the fact that they are all well-behaved, decent human beings is the result of years of hard work in parenting and she and her husband want the credit they've earned!

Total Waste (Of Money, And Perhaps Also Air)

As I've mentioned, Thing One is now a middle schooler, which means that he is eligible to play on his middle school's sports teams.  For what I can only assume are liability reasons, students must be examined by their own physician and cleared to play before they can try out for these teams, which seems sensible enough.  You bring a form to the exam, the doctor fills it out, you return it to the school, and Bob's your uncle.

Except he isn't.  Not quite yet, anyway.

Those forms from the kids' doctors?  Those have to go to the school's doctor (not on site; he's retained on contract for this sort of stuff and comes in periodically), and he has to look them over and rubber-stamp them before the kids can play.  Never mind that he has never laid eyes on any one of these kids in his life and wouldn't know them from Adam, and never mind that their OWN doctors cleared them to play...doesn't matter.  The school doc has to approve them too.  And since he was two days late getting back from a business trip and had no covering doc, a third of the kids who wanted to try out for soccer had to sit on the sideline for the first two days of tryouts.  Charming.  Apparently state law requires this nonsense.  (Is it only my state???)

On the third day of tryouts, I called the assistant principal (who is also in charge of middle school sports) and told him very nicely that if Thing One was going to be sitting on the sideline for the third day straight, I would be collecting him right after school and taking him to his piano lesson instead.  Fortunately, that day the doc had finally gotten his ass to school and signed all the forms, so the kid was able to participate for the rest of the week and it wasn't an issue.

So, you may well be asking yourself, why is she bellyaching about this now, when previous posts have already indicated that the kid did make the team (despite missing two of the five tryout days) and is doing well on it?  Good question.

This morning, Thing One dug into his backpack and handed me a pile of sadly crumpled papers, one of which was a form letter from the school doctor confirming that my son is eligible to participate in middle school sports through the 14/15 school year.   This is the second sentence, bold text and all:

"Please be advised that this letter reflects the recommendation of the examining physician, who completed and signed the blahblahblahblah forms submitted to the school on behalf of your son."  So...what this dude is saying is that, although he HAD to review the form before my kid could play, and got paid for it, he's going to pawn the blame for any problems off on the doc who actually examined my kid, since he knows nothing about my kid.  Can somebody please tell me what value this jackass added to the process?

My tax dollars at work.

 

The Picture Of Determination

The big (big!) round bed came with our dog from the rescue organization.  She loves it dearly and it will be a sad day at our house when it finally needs to be replaced.

Had to vacuum the family room rug yesterday.  As is my habit, I picked her bed up off the floor and balanced it on top of the upholstered tea box that sits next to our entertainment center to get it out of the way of the vacuum cleaner.  However, I forgot to put it back after I was done cleaning, and THIS is what I saw the next time I walked into the family room!

 
Cracked me up.  "Okay, Mom...if that's where you're going to put my bed now, I can roll with it."  Funny dog!