I'm Getting Better!

At circus class yesterday, for the very first time, I felt like I'd actually made some progress. I managed to get upside down on the silks on my very first try (while swinging, no less!) and I can even get upside down on the trapeze without any help now. I also managed to balance on the trapeze with no hands. Woohoo!

They changed the classes around a couple weeks ago and I think my success is partly due to the change. I'm not in the class with all the super talented teens anymore. I'm in the next one down. At first they had arranged classes by age but my friend's son wanted to be with the older kids so I told her I'd switch. I'd been worrying about how I was going to keep up my morale if everyone in the class was so much more advanced than me. So, yes, I'm working with kids who are quite a bit younger than teens, but they're closer to my ability level. And I get to run around with some of the cutest little girls I know. Luckily there are a few kids that moved down from the super talented teens class and we divide up in two groups so those of us from the other class can still work on some of the more advanced stuff--but this time I get to learn the basics of how to do the moves instead of just learning them on the fly.

So that's pretty cool. I'll see if I can get Jerry to take some more video next week. I tried to talk him into it this week but he wasn't interested.

We've started the sixth Harry Potter audio book. We were in Jerry's playroom yesterday from about 2 in the afternoon until 8 listening to it. While we listened Jerry made custom Pokemon sprites on Microsoft Paint (he loves that program) and I cleaned and organized the room. I have big plans for that room. I want to get rid of the big armoire and one book case and put his old single mattress (he recently moved up to a double) in the corner on a platform (with storage space underneath) and use it as a couch, with lots of big pillows against the wall. Then there's this giant map of the world that I want to put up that will cover almost the whole wall, so that when we're laying on the bed/couch we can look up at a giant map of the world and imagine what it must be like in the places we haven't been. We used to have a world map on the wall beside our bed and we loved laying in bed looking at it. Jerry didn't want the map at forst but he said if I could find one that had all the flags on it I could put it up. And I found one! So, that's the plan. And we're going to paint the room too.

His bedroom is changing too. Xiquan had his own bed so we moved the double bed from the guest room into Jerry's room and sold his old bed. His room really represents his personality now. He's got all his manga lined up on the headboard (it has a shelf built in) and then his customized Munnies on top of that. We bought some anime posters for the walls (they're scrolls actually--much more durable than posters) and we moved Johnny the hermit crab onto Jerry's dresser. We also cleaned out Johnny's cage and gave him new coconut fiber and he's been going crazy ever since. He loves his new digs--they both do.

So that's what's going on here. Nothing big. Sorry I haven't been responding to comments as much as I usually do. I haven't been on the computer quite as much lately. Now that Jerry spends less time with his screen stuff (by his own choice!) I don't have nearly as much of my own screen time. And I'd say that's probably a good thing.

Baby Steps & Driving 55

I performed my first routine in circus class yesterday. It was a beginner version of what everyone else was doing. The other students climbed up the silks (those things you saw me holding onto a couple weeks ago in my pathetic attempt to get upside down) and did their routines from high in the air, but I stayed closer to the ground. And the teacher had to stand beside me and tell me what was next because everyone else had learned the routine when we were in New Zealand and I'd only just learned it yesterday. I did it, though. Yeah for me! When Jerry gets back from camp I'll have him come in again and tape me so you can see it for yourself. Hopefully by then it won't be quite as funny as it is now.

So I'm taking baby steps at circus class and slightly bigger steps at living a more sustainable life. I can't remember if I ever wrote about it here but after we got back from New Zealand I made a commitment to myself to use the car less frequently. I figured if I could walk to the grocery store in NZ I could do it at home. So I've been really good about not using the car to go to the store unless I stop by there when I'm on my way home from someplace else. And I've stopped using plastic or paper bags altogether. I've also stopped using the clothes dryer. That's something that seemed really difficult when I thought about doing it but, in practice, is a breeze. I still use it on occasion but only to soften up things that are too crusty after air drying (like towels and blue jeans). Since I can't hang the laundry in the backyard and I don't like hanging it in the front where people might walk off with it, I've been putting it in our living room, which means the living room often looks like this:But I don't mind. My next step is to start driving 55 on the freeway. So far this is the most difficult change for me. I simply cannot bring myself to slow down. It's soooo haaaaarrrd. I thought about getting a "iDrive 55" bumper sticker--hoping that maybe the fear of being such an obvious hypocrite would slow me down--but I don't think I'm ready. Baby steps. I'm going to try 65 for now.

You Asked For It

Yes, after moaning about the humiliation of being in circus class with a room full of people watching my sorry attempts at um, circus arts (?), I am sharing my talents-- "talents" hardly seems appropriate, though; let's go with perseverance--I am sharing my perseverance with the world. Or the very small portion of the world that stumbles upon my blog. Don't laugh too hard.

The Humility Bank

Ever feel like you've really got it going on? You just got your hair cut and damn you look good. You may be old enough to be someone's mother but you're comfortable in your skin and your kids like to hang out with you. Maybe you're not good at everything but you know darn well you are really good at some things. You've got this unschooling thing down. You're at ease. Life is good. Really good.

Aren't those the moments when life throws you a curve ball and you're suddenly wondering what exactly you thought you had going on in the first place? Or, worse, you find out you most definitely do not have anything going on except perhaps a few pounds. Maybe it's just me.

But yesterday, I got to thinking, what if you participated in an activity that would serve as a regular humility dispenser? Wouldn't that take care of the requisite attitude adjustment? You'd be in the driver's seat, though, so there wouldn't be any surprises. Like you wouldn't be in a yoga class thinking you were all cool and flexible, and when you had to go into a headstand, in the utterly silent room, you wouldn't fart. And then you wouldn't have to stay in the headstand for much, much longer than anyone else for fear it might happen again on the way down. And you wouldn't have to never ever go back to that yoga studio again as long as you lived even though it's only a few blocks from your house and you really liked going there. You know?

Anyway, I've found the perfect humility dispenser. It's called circus class. When Jerry and I joined the homeschool circus class before we left for New Zealand, it was a fairly even mix of younger kids, teens and a few adults. Most everyone had been taking the class for a while so Jerry and I were definitely behind, but it wasn't bad. Thankfully for me, most young kids aren't really all that coordinated anyway. And, even though I have the upper body strength of a fly, I do have coordination on my side. Sure, I felt a little silly sometimes, but I defy anyone to do a "crab walk" and not feel silly. Then things changed.

While Jerry and I were in New Zealand routines were learned. Teenagers started to outnumber the younger kids. All of a sudden it was a class full of strong and coordinated people who had no qualms about hanging upside down by their feet or doing a million chin-ups, or swinging through the air fifty feet off the ground on a swath of fabric while doing the splits.

Jerry wasn't having anything to do with it. He did one class and bailed. But I wanted to keep going. I wanted to improve. Yes, I wanted to fly through the air with the greatest of ease like--well, you know the guy. The daring one.

So, once a week. I submit to the humiliation of being the lone beginner in a class of, not experts, but, well...people that are way better than me. The way I figure it this should give me a surplus of humiliation in my humility bank, so when I'm need of an attitude adjustment I can pull from there. No need for surprises. I should be safe, right?

There is one problem with this plan. The physical pain. It's not pleasant. Today, for example, I can hardly move my neck because yesterday we had to do summersaults, and backwards rolls, and cartwheels, and handstands (which I craftily avoided by switching to another group) and other things that my body hasn't experienced in many, many years.

The good news is that I almost managed to get onto the trapeze the right way--the graceful way. And I climbed the fabric properly--all the way to the ceiling! (That's right. You can oooh and ahhh.) Naturally I was feeling pretty good about myself so, naturally, the next task was to put both arms through the fabric, take a running leap, flip upside down and let go. Yeah. I had a problem with that one. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the wheel barrow race. How could I forget the wheel barrow race? It wasn't just a regular race on a flat surface. We actually had to climb over two obstacles. Okay, they were just mats but they were blocking the path and we had to go over them--on our hands. With our feet in the air. As I was climbing onto the first one my back dipped dangerously close to the floor, my arms started to buckle, the super strong, flexible, cute young girl who was holding my ankles shouted, "You can do it!" The teacher yelled from the sidelines, "Come on you've almost got it!" I could see the other moms--the sane ones that just watch the class--cheering me on (they were probably just talking amongst themselves but I imagined they were cheering me on), so I straightened my back out, gave my arms a big push and climbed over the obstacle! I made it! I did not end up being the only person in the class who couldn't complete the wheelbarrow race! Woohoo!

See what I mean, though? Humility bank. Mine's filling up.