Goof Ball-isms

On Monday, Pro Boxer and I went out for sushi (yes, you can be jealous if you want).  Before we left the kids with the babysitter, Goof Ball had something important to say to me.

"Mom, my bike is in the back of the car."
Me: "In... the back of the car?"
GB: "Yeah, so don't break it."
Me (just wanting to satisfy him, because there was no way his bike could be in the car): "Okay, we won't break it."

Just out of curiosity or something else, as I went outside and explained to Pro Boxer the weird conversation, I went to check in the back of the car, and out of the corner of my eye, something bright red was behind the car.  Yes, it was his bike, and we wouldn't have seen it, and it would have gotten smashed, and yes, it was not in the back of the car, but behind it.

This is just one example of how Goof Ball is more like me than Pro Boxer (at least in the way his mind works).  I had suspicions before because Goof Ball can find things a lot better than Bug ever can.  Even if what he's looking for is right in front of him, Bug can't see it.  He's a lot like Pro Boxer that way...  In any case, Pro Boxer wouldn't even once think to mention that something was behind the car before someone left, and Bug certainly wouldn't.  But the baby of the family could forewarn, just like I would have forewarned.

It's super fun to get to know these kids by seeing how they are similar to me or to Pro Boxer.

Another fun conversation with Goof Ball:

Me: *groan... yawn... 
GB: "Are you tired?"
Me: "Yes." (mainly from exercising that morning)
GB: "Then you should sleep."
Me: "Mmmm...."
GB: "Mom, can you sleep?"
Me: "Um, I don't know, I have a lot of things to do."
GB: "You can sleep, lemme show you how to sleep." He gets on the couch and lays down "See? Like that."
Me: "Oh, like that?"
GB: "Yes. Try it."
Me: "Okay." I just leaned my upper half on the blankets next to me and close my eyes. "Like that?"
GB: "Um.... kinda."
Me: "Oh, that's not right? Can you show me again?"
GB: "Like this." He curls his legs up under him on the couch and rests his head on the blankets.
Me: "Oh, I need to curl up?"
GB: "Yeah."
I take off my shoes and kneel on the couch and fold over to lay on the blanket. "Like that?"
GB: "Yeah! Now you can sleep!"

Thanks Goof Ball... but sleeping like that isn't nearly as comfortable for an adult as it is for a child. :)  And for anyone who's asked me if Goof Ball is talking more now..... yes.  Very much so. :)

Magic

I have been thinking lately that I am in possession of some kind of magic.  It isn't world changing, I can't fly through the air, or lift cars over my head kind of thing.  But maybe, depending on the situation, it can be life changing.

I might be blowing this out of proportion.  I don't want to make this sound like I am lifting myself above others.  Truthfully, I'm not even sure how powerful this magic is.  Because this magic only works inside other people.  Often I don't even realize I'm using the magic, which baffles me the most.  I'll just be going along, being myself, and somehow, something I do or say changes a person's outlook for good.  The only times I realize this magic even exists is when they mention it to me.  It makes me wonder how many times it happened and I'll never even know the impact I had on someone.  Sometimes it makes people want to hang out with me and I'll never know what it was that first made them want to spend time with me.  Some people search me out when they are having a bad day.

My kids and husband cling to me - which makes sense.  But when that same level of clingyness comes from outside my family, it makes me start to wonder, especially when I didn't specifically try to help them.

Of course when I can, I try to use this magic on command.  If ever a good friend is struggling or something, I'll go to them and try to lift them up and help them if I can.  Most times I never know if I've done what I could, or if I even did any good at all.  But when I do this, I've noticed recently that something happens that I never really expected.

Often, it seems, that my good friends struggle with the same problems I have - self-worth.  It seems to be a much more common disease than I thought.  I won't let myself be stronger for myself.  But when I find myself in a position where I need to help a friend, I grow stronger.  Whether I grow stronger because I'm helping someone else, or I grow stronger so that I have the capacity to help them, I don't know.  It could also be that I had already grown before I tried to help them, but I didn't notice the growth until I tried to help.  I've just noticed that I'll grow during those times.

People have said that when you serve someone, you gain more blessings than they do.  If this weird growth is that, I never expected it that way, but I suppose it could be possible.

All this comes down to this:

Not only do I not hate myself anymore, but I also think that I'm starting to accept myself.  I'm starting to like myself and understand, maybe a little bit, why people would like me.  I'm starting to wonder - maybe I do think that I have worth as a person.  I don't know how much.  And it also has surprised me that I'm not basing my worth on anything other than myself.  I'm not basing it on what I can or can't do, or my accomplishments.  I'm basing it on me - my personality - my desire to do good and help others - or maybe just the fact that I'm a living, breathing person.

I was talking the other day to someone about how he feels like his life is so boring and uninteresting that even if he did want to write about something, it wouldn't be interesting.  That's something that I could have said (or may have said) even months ago.  In fact, I did.  I had a huge writers block - I couldn't get myself to write anything because whenever I started trying to write something, I started to think, "This doesn't matter, who would read this?  This is so not interesting at all."  It likely lasted a month or more.  I could write in my fictional novel - but I couldn't write anything about my life, even though I really wanted to, because I would start worrying about what others would think of it.

Funnily enough, I got myself out of that pit by torturing myself.  Not literally - but the next writer's group meeting was coming up, and I didn't want to go and say, once again, "I don't have anything to read..." so what did I do?  I started writing something.  I went to the library and just wrote.  The meeting started at 6:30 - I got to the library at 5.  And I wrote.  And I was determined to read it, no matter how crappy or uninteresting I thought it would be.  I didn't finish it before 6:30.  Mr. President asked me at the beginning of the meeting if I had anything to read.  I responded by hesitating.  I fumbled on saying, "Yes - well, kinda... I'm still working on it."  And he said, "Well then I'll put you down for now and you can let us know later."

Well, I did it.  I read that brand new piece to a group of excellent writers.  I was terrified.  But once it was over, once the torture of trying to get a short piece written in an hour and a half and reading that freshly new first draft to them, my writer's block was gone.  I felt free.  Especially after they critiqued it the next meeting and didn't say that it was crap and I should give up on it.  In fact, some of them said that they wanted to see it again once I had a chance to revise it.  It made me feel that my silly stupid little anecdotes that I have in my life, that feel boring and uninteresting to me, might just be interesting to other people.  And once I realized that, the writer's block lifted, and my worth grew.

I feel I should also mention, now that we are talking about worth, that none of this budding worth is coming from anything gospel related.  It is coming from kempo, and coming from my writer's group.  I won't deny that maybe God put me in these places, in this position to be able to find my worth, because I have no clue if that is or isn't true.  But when it comes down to it - as a child, I was told I had worth because I was a child of God.  Or if I wasn't told specifically that, it is how I connected it all together.  Problem with that is this: I never fully believed or felt like I was a child of God, hence, I had no worth.  I still don't feel that I am a child of God.  But these past months or maybe year, I realized that I need to not base my worth on anything, other than myself.  Just simply being who I am gives me worth.

Whether I'm a child or God or not, whether I am just another Joe-shmo living on the planet Earth, whether or not I have been abused, stepped on, have lost a child, no matter the trials and things I've had to go through, no matter what color my skin is.  None of that matters.  I am a person.  So I have worth.  Simple as that.  I don't know how kempo has been able to help me with this.  I just know it has.  For the first time in 28 years, I feel like I do have worth (no matter how small), that I am someone who deserves love, for the simple reason that I'm a person of worth.

Corner Band - once again.

Dr. Pocket has invited me to join his Corner Band again.  And this time it is longer than just a simple one concert deal.  This is at least until March.  At least two concerts.  And I couldn't be more overjoyed, even though the rehearsal takes place during one of my revered kempo practices during the week.  I would not sacrifice that time of day unless the thing replacing kempo would help me emotionally as much as kempo does.  And being surrounded by the sweet sound of jazz music is one of those things.

This week's rehearsal I learned that not only am I playing in this awesome band, but Dr. Pocket seemed to have specifically called me out to play the solo part for a ballad.  The song is "Willow Weep for Me."  Here is a copy of the song, but it clearly isn't the version we'll be playing, because I won't be singing, but playing my trumpet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjt6JrT77xM

When I realized that I had the solo, I started to freeze up even from just the thought of practicing it.  He wants me to be ready to play it next rehearsal, and I'm terrified.  Not only would any of the other trumpet players do a much better job, but this is my very first chance to play a ballad solo.  I'm surrounded by people ions better than me, and he asked the newbie who can't improv to take this solo.  Granted, most of it is written out, but it is only the melody.  And if you listen to the link above, the melody is really quite plain and simple.  Any version you find of this song, the soloist will be dancing around that melody.  And I need to learn how to do it in less than 20 days.

Yeah, I'm dead nervous.  Now that I've finally been invited to the band for an extended period of time, he lays this on me, and I worry that I'll totally screw up and he'll toss me out.

After thinking through it, I realized that it is the same nervousness that I feel when I'm paired up with Sensei during kempo.  Especially when we are sparing and have boxing gloves on.  I just get the impression that he's gonna take me out and I'll be down for the count.  He never would.  But just the fact that I know he could terrifies me.  When I realized this, it made me start wondering if I could use kempo to help me get over my fear of this solo.  Or maybe not get rid of it, but help me face it down like I would face down Sensei in a sparing match.

One good thing with sparing with Sensei is the simple knowledge that I'll learn something new.  If I spar with Sandpaper, I might learn something new.  If I spar with Star, it is never going to happen.  Our version of sparing quickly turns into a cat fight with us just kind of clawing (as if anyone can claw with boxing gloves on) at each other.  But if I spar with Sensei, he is bound to tell me something new.  Whether that is that I keep leading with the same hand, or a way to make a combo attack, or whatever.  I'll always learn something new.  It can be very frustrating.  He sees so much that it irritates me.  Again, it's like he can see through me.  That bugs me... a lot more than I thought it would.

Despite the fact that it terrifies me, I know I'll learn something.  Maybe that's how I should approach the Corner Band with my likely not very good solo.  I'll be terrified, surely.  But surely they won't eat me or kick me out.  Dr. Pocket invited me because he saw my potential.  Maybe they will teach me something about how to do it better.  If I could take it that way, I know I have the ability (if not the courage) to stare down Sensei and get beaten by him - but I come away from it stronger.  Hopefully that's how it will go with the Corner Band.  I'll let you know when it happens.

Even more hopefully I'll be able to have this mind set when I face down my fear.

Metanoia

(n.) the journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life.

I feel as if that describes what I'm going through a lot lately.

It certainly is a journey.  And I'm not entirely certain how far I have gone, or how much longer I have to go, or if it will ever end.  I was asked today by someone I just met officially for the first time, "So how are you?"

I responded like any other polite person who knows how it is socially acceptable to respond to such a question by the simple word, "Good."

"Just good?" was his reaction to my possible half lie.

"What else am I supposed to be?"

Truthfully, I was quite good at that time.  But naturally that's just the on the surface.  Deeper down there are some troubling questions that I'm dealing with and trying to find the answers for.  But no one wants to discuss those over a delicious meal of sushi, so I didn't bring it up.  Plus, I just met the guy.  I wasn't about to go into all the secrets of my "wonderful" life with him, because it would have been a life story kind of thing if I would have allowed myself to think deeper than surface level.

But here I can be honest.  (sorta)  Right now, I'm not sure how I feel about things.  Honest.  Before, there was a lot of anger, hatred, and all other sorts of emotions directed at a lot of people that I once said I loved.  It's been a rough year, I'm not gonna lie.  I wasn't even sure if I could trust myself or my own emotions at one point.   I've been hurt intentionally and unintentionally by people who I should have been able to rely on.  I haven't even known who in my family I was "allowed" to talk about it, so I had no outlet except anonymous blogs.  My life has not been a nice walk through the park, smelling the roses, people.  And like I said, this past year has been especially hard, because everything that I had once known or believed in switched completely, turning everything upside-down.

Many of those fierce emotions have died down considerably.  Things still may have to be talked about when I'm finally able to talk about them.  I was talking to a friend about this earlier today, and he said something to the effect of: "You have to be able to rely on yourself.  No one has your interests as the number one priority other than yourself.  Like yourself, and accept yourself."  Now my devoutly religious friends will claim that God or Jesus or whatever deity they choose will be as devoted to my interests and needs as I am, or more so, but right now, I'm not sure how much I believe that.  So what my friend told me really resonated with me.  I've never liked myself.  Often, I downright hate myself.

But what he said really made sense.  Even my loving husband, no matter how self-giving and how much he cares for me, there may be times when he forgets something, or he may not be around when I need him.  I need to learn how to care for myself, and have an interest in caring for myself, because no one else around me will tend to my needs as well as me.  It's kind of depressing, but also kind of liberating.  And it is what I have been working on anyway.  Mainly with kempo, but also in other ways.  I can kind of see my frame of mind changing as the days and months press on.  I honestly can't think of the last time that I truly hated myself.  I look down on myself, and I still struggle with accepting compliments without laughing it off, rolling my eyes, or denying it, but I can't think of the last time that I've honestly hated myself.

Things still need to happen.  I still need to discuss things with people directly involved with these issues.  But in general, I think I can finally, truthfully say, "I'm good." when people ask me how I am.  I may not be fantastic, or wonderful, or any thing other than good.  But really, when it comes to me, "good" is pretty darn good.  Good means that I'm finding a way to live my life despite all the shit that I've had to deal with.  And that, friends, is a mini miracle in its own right.

It's that time of year...

Yes, I admit, making a resolution to only eat one serving of high sugar food a day is a silly thing to do around this time of year.  Truthfully, I think I would be just fine eating only one piece of pie in one day around Thanksgiving time, and Christmas really doesn't fill our house with sugar.  Halloween was the worst - but I think I'm over that craving - though I still have candy corn hiding in my purse...

But what will likely test my sugar craving more than any other thing are these:

I went to the store the other day for important things - cold medicine and pain killers for Bug - he has been sick since Friday.  But these... these little devils... I'm not sure I will be able to resist them... and yes, I bought this box yesterday - and I ate them.  Only two.  They are so rich, I can only have about two at a time.  Which is a good thing.  And you know what?  Apparently one serving of these is only one cookie.  I thought that was pretty crazy.  I don't know how I manage to forget about these every year just to be surprised the next year when I see them on the shelf again.  They will be floating around stores from now until the snow starts to melt.  Winter, I love you so... but you bring to me these temptations, and I may find myself faltering... a lot.  Only two a day... if that... only two a day... *mutter mutter...

"You can smile in the picture, Bug."

That was said by Sandpaper after I took this picture:

Yup.  Now my sweet little Bug is a yellow belt.  Despite his expression, he was really very happy.  The adult class meets right after the child's class, so Bug does his homework while we practice, and then he plays on the iPad.  Anyway, usually he changes right out of his kempo clothes to do his homework in his normal clothes - but he didn't this time.  He stayed in his white dogi and new yellow belt. ^_^

I don't know if you can see close enough, but the colors are different.  The one that Sensei first gave him was a size 1 (the same size as his white belt), and as I put it on him, it was too long, so then he got the other one - a size 0, and the colors were a bit different.  And you guessed it, that's Sandpaper in the background.

When I showed Bug the picture of him posing in his yellow belt, he tried not to smile.  I thought it was great how happy he was.

After all this excitement, I had a different kind of excitement.  ...... well maybe excitement isn't the right word.  I think I may have mentioned before, that I did 100 push-ups during kempo one time, but the first time I actually accomplished that, near the end I bent my elbows... not really enough to call it much of a push-up.  This time, however, I actually tried to move my torso at least midway the whole time.  I admit... I missed one in the last batch of 10, but I did an extra one after Sensei stopped counting.  And I did all 100 twists, though I hate them so.  Saying that I did all the 100 squats doesn't say a whole lot because I've done that from the beginning.

I can't remember if I mentioned how we do our warm up... first we do some preliminary stretches, and just shaking out the joints.  Then we move onto the push-ups.  40 of them, all in a row.  Then 40 twists (or bicycle crunches).  Then 40 squats.  Back to push-ups - 30 of them... repeat until we have done the last 10 of them all.  And then we stretch again.  Stretching is my favorite.  It comes from being in dance for 13 years, I'm sure. ^_^

So yes.  I did all 100 of all those things, and now I'm sore... pretty much everywhere.  But push-ups I have never been all that good at.  I've never really had the upper body or core muscle strength to be able to do it (keep in mind, though, that my knees stay safe and secure on the ground throughout the process), so being able to do 100 in one day - is quite an accomplishment for me.  The baby fat is still stubbornly clinging to me, but I can see and feel muscle growing underneath.  Hopefully some day the fat will just drip off and leave me be, but maybe in a less disgusting manner.

Confidence - or lack thereof

I don't have much confidence in ... pretty much anything.  I am confident that I can knit or cross-stitch amazing things.  I have (or at least had) confidence in my trumpet playing.  That confidence is disappearing slowly the more days pass and I haven't picked it up.

And well, that's about it.

Ironically, knitting and cross-stitching are things that really hurt my hands/wrists.  Heh.  Go figure.

Recently I've found that my confidence seems to dwindle in kempo.  Let's be clear - kempo is one thing that is so far out of my comfort zone, that it is almost amazing that I even started it, so it is clear that I would struggle with confidence in that.  However, despite my new shiny (okay, it doesn't really shine) green belt, my confidence has the ability to disappear quickly during a kempo session, and I just realized what might be the case.

Confidence is connected to strength - I think everyone can agree on that.  I am pretty certain I am not strong - in many ways.  People tell me otherwise, but I can never accept it and make excuses as to why that is the case (but this isn't the post for that).  So - confidence is pretty equal to strength in my mind.  When I struggle with a technique in kempo for whatever reason, even if the reason is I just learned it, I get frustrated and feel weaker in kempo in general.  On top of that, confidence is not letting your weakness show.  Sensei and even Star and Sandpaper seem to be able to see that weakness on my face almost instantly.  Whether it looks like fear, or whatever, I never know... but they see it - and then the little amount of confidence I might have had disappears, and then the spiral continues, and more weakness shows, and .... etc...  There is no degrading in kempo at all - except what I do to myself.  Though they see my weakness, they don't treat me like I'm horrible... that's all me.

Okay, so now that I figured that out, one time when Sensei drove me home from a restaurant that we ate at after kempo, I told him all of this.  There have been many times during class when he would say "have confidence!" and that would naturally make my confidence disappear again - because he could clearly see that I wasn't being confident.  So after I told him what I figured out about how I saw confidence and why it dwindles in kempo, he said that he would have to work to help me gain my confidence.  I kind of laughed to myself inside feeling like I've entered a relationship similar to the one I had with The King (look through other posts if you forgot who he was), and again, not seeing a way for him to help.

Yesterday at kempo, Sensei did something that he hadn't done before.  After the warm up, we do basic training, sometimes paired, sometimes not.  We happened to do it paired and I paired with Star (which frequently happens, probably partly because we stand near each other all the time - the girls gotta stick together!).  The technique was this: one of us aims a punch at the gut of the other - then they block it and kick back.  I let Star attack me first.  Sensei came up as we started and stood behind Star.  He said to Star, "Get her ... get her!"  My internal reaction was, "Like I'll let you!"  I'm not sure how my facial expression changed, but I'm sure it did.  That feeling ... was interesting.  And I can only connect it to confidence.  With Star, I do have confidence that I can block faster than she can punch.  Of course, that confidence made way to fear when I paired up with Sandpaper or Sensei later.

As I think back on it now, it almost makes me irritated at Sensei.  Or maybe more irritated at myself.  I played right into his hands and let myself feel confident that I could block.  Which... is a silly thing to think, I suppose, unless of course I plan on never having confidence.  On that note, I'm not really sure, to be honest.  If I hadn't already decided that I would never have confidence why do I so adamantly deny any power or strength?

Well, that can be a subject for another post.