Filed under: tae kwon do
in tae kwon do class, a slow 41 year old woman is paired with an energetic 13 year old boy to spar? I’ll tell you what, the teenager shows off with a beautiful spinning hook kick while the older woman does her best to get in a punch. The result is the spinning hook kick lands on the woman’s nose causing her to fall to the ground holding her hands over her nose expecting blood to be gushing out. Think of that Brady Bunch episode where Marcia gets hit in the nose with the football. That was me today, but it wasn’t a football, it was a boys heel. Fortunately when I pulled my hands away, there was no blood but boy did it hurt! I sat bending over into a fetal position trying really hard not to cry. One of the moms came over to check on me – between half-sobs, I told her it hurt a lot. They got an ice pack for me, and I sat there holding it over my nose/eyes/forehead. I had a terrible headache from the impact. Then, I look up and see the teenage boy crying because he hurt me. The poor kid felt horrible about it and continued to cry for half of the class. I felt even worse about that than the pain of kick. I pulled myself together so I could go talk to him. Despite the headache and painful nose, I put on a smile and cheered him up, even taking some of the blame for it since I was too slow too move out of the way. Then I told him how much fun he could have telling people he kicked a woman in the nose. He finally stopped crying, but he refused the hug that I tried to give him when he was leaving after class.
The swelling is rather minimal and there doesn’t seem to be any bruising yet. We’ll see how it looks in the morning. If it looks nasty, I’ll post a picture. LOL
Filed under: Uncategorized
Back in June I decided to start running. It had nothing to do with an actual desire to run, I just wanted to get a good cardio workout to help with my tae kwon do performance. I used the Couch to 5k program
to get started. I didn’t like the running, but I found that in just a couple of weeks I noticed a difference in my tkd classes. It motivated me to keep going even when I thought there was no way I could run for 20 minutes straight by the end of week 5. But I did it. And I kept going even when it seemed to get harder and harder. By my birthday on August 13, I was finally able to run for 3 miles straight – it was my present to myself. I also started to notice some pain in my lower back and hip. On August 31, I ran the Nike+ Human Race and placed 32,862nd in the world for Nike+ racers, or 10,122nd among women, 15,844th in the US, and 6,572nd for women in the US! My time was just under 1 hour 16 minutes, and sure I walked for 2.5 of the 10k, but that means that I did run 7.5k. I was really proud of myself. I haven’t gone that far since, but I have kept up with runs of 2.5-3 miles for 3 days/week. The runs kept getting harder and my back and hip were hurting more. I went to the doctor and she has recommended that I stop running for now and see a physical therapist who can hopefully take care of my pain and help me get back into running pain free. While I was at the doctor, she talked me into getting routine blood work done, mostly to check my cholesterol. I willingly let them take my blood knowing that my cholesterol had to have gone down after 3 months of running. And it had, by 30 points! For the first time, the doctor did not try to push Lipitor on me. She did discover another problem which required further blood tests. You know how I kept saying how hard it all was for me? Turns out there was a reason – I have iron deficiency anemia. Thank goodness there was a reason for it all being so gosh darn hard. And I’m even more thankful that there is an easy fix. After taking iron pills for just a few weeks, I’ve seen a huge increase in my energy level and a big decrease in my brain fog. I didn’t realize just how fatigued I was until I started feeling better. I’m hopeful that the pt will help my back/hip as quickly as the iron helped my energy level and I’ll be back to hitting the pavement soon. But for anyone out there who thinks they can’t run, yes you can. You don’t have to like it to be able to do it.
Filed under: homeschool
First, let me say that I’m writing this on the iPhone which is very handy, but a bit harder to type on. I’m just happy that I can be somewhat productive while Doodles is student teaching at dance.
Back to what I was going to post about… Doodles is on her 3rd week of Classical Conversations. She came home the first week and said it was the best day of school EVER. I tried not to take it personally. I knew she would like being around the other teens. She also is exerting her independence with regards to her work. She wants no help from me for most of her CC work. I have to keep reminding her that I am still her teacher and I need to review her work. I really like what they have been working on and the interactions among the students and tutor. I am still holding out a little hope that she will love it enough that she will want to stick with it next year instead of going to high school. But if she should decide to go to school next year, I’m a bit more comfortable with the idea after seeing her take on more responsibility so far this year.
Filed under: Louisiana
I’ve been singing that song all day. Today is the first day since Sunday that we have actually had some blue skies. Gustav came to town on Monday and stayed for a few days. I don’t think it rained much yesterday, but it was still a gloomy day. The sky is a lovely shade of blue today, mixed in with a few lingering clouds. It’s that beautiful blue that you can only fully appreciate after several days of rain and clouds.
And with Gustav, we also had the arrival of 6 evacuees from southern LA. They are friends that I met over 10 years ago when I went to my first La Leche League meeting after Buster was born. They’ve moved twice since then but we still see each other a couple of times a year. So, the population of our house went from 4 to 10 for 3 days. I don’t think our house is made for that many people. Buster gave up his room with the bunkbeds for them. He slept on one of the couches. The hearthroom had wall to wall kids and they all loved it. The kids played in the sprinkler one day and the rains of Gustav the next. They watched Star Wars movies, played Wii and Playstation, played board games, had Playmobil spread throughout the living room, and generally wreaked havoc on my house. Our cats were in shock. School was not something that was going to happen for those few days. The public schools were all closed anyway, so why shouldn’t we close? When they left Wednesday, we were so exhausted. I split up the basic cleaning the needed to be done and the kids and I had the house looking halfway presentable in an hour or so. Then we lounged around contemplating taking a nap. Two days later, and I’m still contemplating that.
Bye, bye Gustav.
And while I’m on that topic, I would love for someone to explain to me why some evacuees are so ungrateful. Our public schools were out for 3 days so that school buses could be used to evacuate people from southern LA. Churches and colleges cancelled their schedules to be able to give shelter to those who couldn’t find or afford hotel rooms. Local firefighters are being sent to help. Even though we weren’t directly affected by the hurricane except for a little wind and a few days of rain, our lives have been put on hold and many volunteers have been out helping and many more have made donations. Apparently that isn’t enough. All we keep hearing is complaints that there was no food on the busses, the shelters were dirty, there aren’t enough diapers/formula/new clothes/toys/etc, the food isn’t good enough, and on and on and on the complaints go. I’m all for helping people in need. I can’t tell you how much I donated to specific families and even helped get more items for people in need after other hurricanes. I sent gift cards to a family in Iowa after the floods there (a disaster that I’m sure most people in LA didn’t even consider donating to). I have compassion. However when all you hear is them complaining that they aren’t in a 5 star hotel, it makes you want to stop helping. They knew a hurricane was coming. They could have been a bit more prepared and taken necessities with them when they evacuated. And as for those filthy shelters – I’m sure they were clean when they arrived, so how did they get so filthy? Okay, that’s the end of my rant.
