More Craziness, More Accomplishments
So, at the moment, it looks like I’m able to manage only one post a week … sort of. That will have to do for the time being, as there is just a lot going on. Though I may come back and fill in some posts about things that have happened in the past week or so … when things calm down. IF they calm down.
Some big accomplishments in our family:
I earned my purple belt last Friday night. This is a really serious achievement for me. When I started karate, I didn’t figure I’d ever get this far. I was thirty-nine years old, 125 pounds overweight, unccordinated, non-sporty, diabetic, had recently had foot surgery, have bad knees and a bad back, have memory problems from a TBI sustained in a car wreck in 2005, was scared of my own shadow, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t seem to have stopped me as much as I feared it would. I am now forty-one, 70 pounds overweight, and a lot more “sporty” than ever before in my life. I can now actually envision myself earning my black belt … although, Sensei, if you are reading this, the idea of a four- to five-hour test is still pretty unnerving.
My older son earned his First Class rank in Boy Scouts. This is a big deal, because he could not go to the 100-Year Jamboree at the end of this month without achieving that rank. And it was quite a herculean effort, but he did it.
In helping my son reach that goal, I had to stand up to some people. Standing up to people is not my forte. Seriously. I don’t confront. I seethe. Especially if the person needing to be confronted is an authority figure. It’s safer to quietly seethe than to stand up to injustice or incompetence in authority figures. Only this involved my son, and somehow, I’m braver about standing up for my kids than I am for myself. So I did it. Twice. A very big accomplishment for me.
Some major changes in our lives in the last few weeks, too. Not least of which is that we are now pet-owners. My older son has wanted a pet since he could walk, and the opportunity presented itself in conjunction with a Boy Scout merit badge requirement. So my older son is now the VERY VERY proud owner of a Leopard Gecko. My younger son was feeling kind of left out, so I bought him a Betta splendens (a Siamese fighting fish) with a promise that while his brother is at Jamboree, we will reorganize his room to accomodate a slightly larger aquarium. (That gives me some time to save up some money.)
And my church’s biennial fundraiser is in preparation again. Weekly rehearsals from now until August, then twice-weekly rehearsals while we “block” the music, and then a week of nightly rehearsals before our three performances. (Four if you count dress rehearsal, because there’s almost always an audience at dress rehearsal. LOL.)
We’re focusing now on getting Scout Boy off to Jamboree. We have to have his stuff packed and ready for shipping to DC on July 17, so it’s getting close. He will be gone for two full weeks. Wow. When did my baby get to be so grown up?