Fun With Everyday Math Games

As part of their studies, Rascal and Zipper learn math based on the Everyday Math curriculum. A major part of the teaching style of this curriculum are the math games. They do them at school, in both paper and computer versions, but they are also available online.

Which means that every single time that I've turned on the computer in the last couple weeks, I've had a small boy standing next to me, asking:

"Mommy, can I play math games?"

I swear. I had to put my foot down just so I could put up a post or two here. It's great that they like the games so much, but it's starting to drive me nuts. After 2 or 3 games, it's really boring for an adult to watch.

But school wants them to do it, and I guess it must be helping them somehow, so I guess it's game time!

A Short Treatise on Tae Kwon Do, Part 2

Ok, so you want to know what happened at last year's tournament then?

I brought the family with, and we arrived about 30 min. before the adults were supposed to kick off. The kids ran long (which I guess shouldn't have been surprising) so the adults started about an hour late.

There was only one other woman in my division in the forms competition. We were both newly minted blue stripes, and after a quick discussion, we came to the agreement that we would both do the new form. Well, I lost, but no big deal, it was a good try.

But then... we go up to the awards tables, and they say that I got first place, not the other woman. Well, neither of us was overly concerned, but they were nice enough to just give us both a gold medal.

So after this I'm feeling pretty cocky, and decide that my board break is going to be a spinning backfist (which I had done already at Health Kick, but not since). This was a big mistake. I had done *no* particular tournament training (they just didn't do it for the adults at least at Amherst), so I was playing things by ear. The other competitors did fair axe kicks, but I just had to be different, didn't I?

I lined up my break badly and came across the upper edge of the board solid on the middle of the back of my hand, splitting it open a bit (not bad), but the hand hurt terribly. I did break the board quite nicely with that badly botched attempt though, so I have that to console me. After the competition I went and got bandaged up and got an ice pack at the head judge's request. I wasn't going to - not showing weakness and crap like that - but it was good that I did, because there was still sparring to go.

At that point I didn't really suspect that the hand was broken - I came to the conclusion on my own several weeks later based on how much it still hurt and the funny give of a bone in my hand when I pressed gently on it. I never had it looked at officially, but considering that it was almost 3 months before it was fully recovered, and I can still feel an indentation in the bone there, and if I strike the back of my hand with even a moderate force the pain is extreme...well, I'm pretty confident in my layman's diagnosis.

But back to sparring. Now, I'm not much of a sparrer. I freely admit it. Come on, compared to most of the competitors, I'm fat, slow, and old. But I had attended some sparring classes for a while (alas no more, when Amherst changed it from Fri. to Thurs. that was it for me), and I thought it was fun, so why not?

Because of all the earlier delays, my court (the same one I had been on all evening btw) kicked off last for the sparring competition. And guess who was slated in the last division of the night on that court? Yeah. So my husband and kids were of course tired and antsy and bored. I wouldn't put them through that again.

So the evening's winding down, and there's two courts still active. The other court has a black belt final with one of my classmates in it. The two instructors from Amherst (Master Chong and Miss Perkins) still here are at that match. And over on my court, I'm facing one of the two Cortland college students in the division. Which means that the whole Cortland team is right there to cheer her on. Well, my family is still there, the good troopers that they are, but no Amherst students to cheer me on, and no coach in my corner.

The match begins, and I don't remember, I think it was two rounds of two minutes (doesn't matter). I was doing ok, not great, down one point at the end of the first round. About halfway through the second round I clobbered my opponent in the jaw with a closing kick and she literally scrambled crawling off the court. I had not put a lot behind the kick, but it was enough.

Now I'm standing in the middle of the court, not knowing what to do, with no coach in my corner to guide me, and I'm terrified that I hurt this girl. She's examined and comforted and cheered on by her 40 or 50 Cortland companions, while the one judge from Amherst finally catches my eye and motions me to my chair to await the result of the blow. I sit down, so very, very alone.

My opponent returns to the court perhaps 3 minutes later. Thankfully she seems unhurt. But now she's angry and motivated and has a whole crowd of supporters behind her, and I'm just mentally shattered. I honestly can't tell you how the rest of the match played out, except that I was very tentative. Hell, I don't even know if I scored a point or lost a penalty point from the head kick. Anyway, she wonthe match, and lost the final to the other Cortland student - gee, match up two mid-30's SAHMs of no particular athletic talent against two college kids and figure out who's going to come out better in the end.

I was unreasonably upset. Not at losing the match, which I had expected anyway, but because I had failed myself psychologically, and because I felt abandoned. Now, to the credit of the Cortland kids, a couple of them had some positive words for me. Master P (who was the head judge at the court) even consoled me, which was both appreciated and a cause for embarassment to me (since I shouldn't need bucking up like a 10-year-old kid). He said that the match was close. He might have just been saying that, but I really don't know.

Thankfully I did manage to mostly protect the injured hand during the match - I think I took one blow on it that made it smart, but no big deal, and she didn't go out of her way to attack the hand.

But I was so angry. I marched out of there with barely a glance at my instructors as I passed by, and I was not entirely able to control my vitriol in front of my children (who were of course very tired and cranky by now, since it's past their bedtime). It reflects badly on me as a person, I know, but if nothing else I am brutally honest with myself. If that means admitting to a lapse of maturity, then so be it.

I'm glad to have told the story, because I kept most of it under wraps. Nobody seemed to want to hear about it at school, and I was certainly reluctant to expound upon my own failings there. And I had put my husband through enough hell with my ranting over a 24-hour period that I didn't want to burden anyone else with it.

A Short Treatise on Those Damned Messes

I should just give up on the cleaning, I really should. Every time I walk into another room it's a disaster zone. Nothing I do actually matters. Uh, housework-wise, that is. Blasted kids.

A Short Treatise on Tae Kwon Do

I'm not in the tournament this Saturday. Two and a half reasons:

1) I just don't have the money. Plain and simple. And $60 for 3 minutes of competition (although the medals are really, really nice and everyone gets one) is an awful lot.

2) There was that bad, bad experience at the tourney last year. Maybe I should expand on it - let me know if you want to hear the tale. I might have blogged about it before; I don't know. But that experience alone wasn't the deciding factor in not participating - it's the combination of factors here.

2.5) I tripped the other day and smashed my oft-injured right hand into a doorknob, taking the brunt of the damage over where the hand was broken last year (*ahem* see reason 2). The back of my hand is still a little swollen, and I expect it will hurt for at least another week. But no worries, mate.

But I still plan on going to the tournament to watch for a couple hours if my schedule allows. I missed the demo team competition last year, so I really want to see if Amherst can retain the title. Go Amherst!

A Short Treatise on Business Travel

Why is Ironwolf so damned lucky? He got to go to Vegas without me a few weeks ago (something I've already blogged about) and this week he is in beautiful (although apparently not sunny) Orlando, FL to visit Disney. The Disney folks even gave Ironwolf and his coworkers Magic Kingdom tickets for yesterday. Lucky bastard.

But then again, he does have to actually work on these trips - there's really not much time for fun and games. But I could never understand why Ironwolf dislikes the business travel so much. I mean, look at it - free nights away from home, nice restaurant meals, get to see different places, in the winter get away from the crappy Buffalo weather. The only drawback is not getting to see the family (and oh yeah friends too) for a couple days or weeks, which IMHO is not exactly a drawback - I would kill (ok, just maim) for a couple days away all alone *sigh*. And maybe the actual travel part itself *shrug*.

A Short Treatise on Ironing

'Cause that's what I'm doing right now. Ok, not right right now, when I'm blogging. That would be dangerous.

I hate ironing! If you wanted to torture me, all you would have to do is put me in a room with a couple thousand shirts and tell me that I couldn't leave until I had ironed all of them.

I don't just hate ironing, I'm really bad at it too. I'm far better at pressing wrinkles into shirt sleeves than removing them. Let's just say it's one of my special talents.

I'm probably so bad at it because no one ever taught me the right way to do it. Good grief, I'm 34 years old and I can't properly press a shirt! (Or put on eyeliner either, but that's for another day). Maybe if I look on the Internet I can find an Ironing for Stupid Idiots site.

A Short Treatise on Stupidity

Someone will read this one, anyway!

Several days ago I'm driving up Eggert Rd. near home in the TOT. It's a smaller sort of major road, and the speed limit is 30 mph there. I'm in the left lane doing my usual 33-34 mph, and a guy in the right lane nearby who is probably topping 40. A town cop comes up behind me, and goes around me on the right. All three of us end up stopped at a traffic light - me in the left lane, the other guy in the right lane, and the police car behind him.

The light goes green and that guy in the right hand lane takes off like a shot. About 3 seconds later, police lights flashing. Ha ha you dunderhead, didn't you see him right behind you? The cop even gave you a second chance to redeem yourself because he could have pulled you over a minute before!

Oh, that just made my day!

An Array of Short Subjects

I really, really need to get back into the swing of things. So today I have decided to leave the computer on and put up posts throughout the day (in between loads of laundry and the like), each focusing on a particular topic so y'all won't get too bored and so you can skip the ones you don't want to read.

It's like one of those blogathon things, except there's no charity involved, just my own overinflated ego that makes me think that you want to read this stuff.

Where's ShadowAngel?

I am here to assure you, dear readers, that I was not struck down by a falling tree limb (which sadly did happen to an area gentleman post-storm), nor was I huddling in a dark, cold house for 3 weeks. In fact, the power came back on at hour 170, that is, 7 days 2 hours after the lights went out.

So (once again) I feel I owe an apology for my reticence, lack of communication, whatever. About half my readers are local friends, so they haven't needed to worry, but I fear that some of the rest of you may have been worrying about me and my family. (Or maybe you didn't worry, that's ok too.)

I figure you could use an explanation of why I haven't been blogging (for that matter, I haven't even turned on the computer - you should see the number of backed-up emails ugh!). So, without further ado...(drum roll) Jen's Excuses!

1. You know, once the power came back on, I didn't feel the desperate need to communicate with someone anymore. In fact, all I wanted to do was to be cuddled up under a (preferably electric) blanket and bask in the warm glow of artificial light. Even so, I owed you at least a quick message letting you know that things were ok.

2. Much of last week was consumed preparing for my annual Halloween party. I put way too much time and effort into it. Also you should hear about the parties, etc. that I took my kids to in the last week. More in an upcoming Halloween post.

3. It's been terribly difficult to get back into the swing of things. I suppose it probably wasn't so bad for all those folks that had to trudge off to work every day, because their routines reached a semblance of normality pretty quickly, but I was home with the kids for seven school days, and Ironwolf was out of town for several of those. I still don't quite have the sense of reality back, and it's been three weeks since the storm.

4. I'm just plain ol' depressed again. Oh, it's not that bad, really, I'm a lot better at coping than I used to be. It also helps, btw, that I can't really isolate myself like I used to do back in the day - after all, the dh and kiddos still need me! So brush that aside, but if you see a lot of "Everything in the World Sucks" posts in the next couple weeks, that's just my diseased mind talking.

5. My husband is horrified by this - I've started several craft projects at once. Why the horror? Because all too often I leave projects unfinished, and I definitely leave my crafting crap all over the place when I'm working on these projects. Yes, I have a place for all my stuff, but it's in the basement, where it's cold and dank and not much fun. Most of the projects are XMas gift-related because I'm trying to keep costs down a bit this year. Somehow I suspect that I'm going to fail in that.

6. I've been too drunk every night to see straight. No, no, no just kidding! :-) But I will admit that the three bottles of creme liquors now sitting open in my fridge (from the Halloween party) do pose quite a temptation in the evenings.

I'll try to pull a few posts together (in nice digestible bites) over the next couple days about what's been going on here. Thanks for your concern for me.