Life down here on earth

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life.

Bad:  I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain.

Good:  Now that I'm driving the kids to school, rain doesn't involve me standing at the bus stop with an umbrella.  Also, we can always use the rain.

Bad: My car battery was dead. 

Good:  For some unknown reason Greg was on a conference call at home, so I used his car to drive the kids to school and then he boosted my car battery before he left.

Bad:  To make sure my car battery survived I had to drive around pointlessly for 30 minutes.

Good:  I used the time to drive through Starbucks since that doesn't involve turning off your car.

Bad:  A tall skinny vanilla latte costs $3.30.

Good:  The lady in front of me in the drive-thru lane paid for my coffee! Hooray for random acts of kindness! Feeling warm and fuzzy I offered to pay for the person behind me.

Bad:  The burly construction guy in the pickup truck behind me had ordered a Venti Caramel Macchiato which costs $5.00.

Good:  After stopping for gas, my car started without any help and I'm now sitting at home with a cup of coffee.

It didn't matter that I told him he'd always be special to me.

You know times are changing when what keeps your boys busy at the doctor's office is no longer a copy of Highlights.

It's a copy of Car and Driver.

In related news, Sam's thumbs are fine now.  The orthopaedic surgeon as good as said, "All better! Have a nice life!" and popped back out the door to, I don't know, pop someone's shoulder back into socket or something.

Sam has been a little concerned that without his trick thumbs he's no longer special. "I was the only one in the family who could do that!" Jack has a lot of weird double joints and Sam felt a bit left out now that he'd lost his go-to parlor trick.

After a few weeks of trying everything he could think of, Sam realized that on one finger he can do that thing where you bend your finger at the first knuckle only.  I'm not sure if you call that double jointed, but it makes him happy.

Pinan Godan

I probably never posted this because I didn't want to tease those members of my family with dialup. But here is a video of Jack from the competition held at his karate school last May.  The school has three locations around Nashville and twice a year they come together to compete.  Jack took two trophies in his division- a relatively small one comprised of 10 year olds who were also Green Belt Candidates- first place for kata  (a standard choreographed routine of movements) and second place for sparring.

It's not too bright in the gym and Greg refuses to buy me a real digital video camera so this video kindof stinks, but you get the idea.  It's weird to me that he spends so much time practicing positions and form and then the complete competitive kata only takes 25 seconds to perform.   This kata is called Pinan Godan. It is one of five Pinan katas that you must master before moving on to your brown belt.

 

Jack has taken a short hiatus from karate during football season, but he'll be back to it in October. Or November if his football team makes the playoffs. You know how that goes.  

Edit:  I forgot to mention that in spite of all the noise in the gym and the fact that I'm taking video from my regular camera from the top of the bleachers on the other side of the gym from him, you can still hear Jack's kiai (his karate yell, pronounced key-eye, you get extra points for those).  Jack is really proud of his loud, forceful kiais. So much so that we had to make a rule that he is not allowed to do them in the house because they hurt your ears and scare the heck out of you when you're not expecting them. 

Hot fun in the summertime.

This is the shirt they gave Jack for football evaluations. TACKLE your FLOORing needs! Haha- get it? Boy, those football guys are hilarious.

I never get over the fact that my son's chosen sport is one where the parents encourage their bright young athletes by yelling, "Now get out there and HIT SOMEBODY!" In football's defense, I'm fairly sure that this originated from the fact that everyone should be blocking all the time and no one should be standing around watching the play go by. But I'm also fairly sure it's one of those things that's evolved from it's original intention to be something completely different.  I'm pretty sure that anymore it mainly just means "HIT SOMEBODY!"

And I'm not really one to judge because that's exactly why Jack wanted to play football in the first place. So I guess he's happy then.  The other day at practice Sam and I were sitting on the sideline trying not to melt in the heat and Jack ran off to get a drink of water.  They had been knocking each other around hard and he was totally drenched and covered in dirt and grass.  His face was so red I was worried about the heat and asked him if he was okay. He just smiled at me, leaned over to Sam and proudly said, "You know, Sam, I do all this just for FUN."