Tag: children

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020

I’m a little bit discombobulated because kids woke my husband and me up at 6:30am. They asked what to do about the neighbors’ broken sprinkler jetting water into the sky. F said it was like a fountain, shooting up and into the street.

There was an earthquake last night, too, a small one: 3.7 in Englewood.

My children and I set up the computer on the back patio; we participated in karate class outdoors via Zoom. That was cool: our yard is still wild, even with the bit of laundry hanging about in an attempt at domestication. We practiced karate with trees as our backdrop and the night insects as our audience. Senpai Peter led most of Kihon and did a good job. Sensei offered corrections on the direction of yoko keage: Janice’s was too straight to the side and mine was too much at an angle.

S and I kept F in the center again. Though we were tired after class, we were not overheated, as we had been while doing Kihon in the upstairs bedroom. During class last night, we also did kiaias as quiet, more gutteral “shi-ahs” so we would not disturb the neighbors. Sensei taught the class this new kiai style, saying it was a kiai for advanced karateka: practitioners who know how to avoid conflict with neighbors and family during a pandemic!

It was great to see so many kids and adults on-line, taking part in the class.

Afterwards, I did my exercises on the patio: chest push-ups on the concrete and tricep push-ups in the overgrown clover. During squats, I punched at a tall dandelion; it was practically at my chest. I used the plant for targeting. My goal was to deliver punches fast enough and close enough to move it with air, but not actually hit it. Move it I did! I rushed through sit-ups and yes, did fetch a yoga matte for those.

Six minutes left before I need to login to work!

Tuesday April 21st, 2020

I write this diary in pen in a notebook in the morning and type it it into this site at night.

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats, with ten push-ups on my knees as extras, so sixty on my toes and ten on my knees, and seventy for squats and push-ups.

Aunt Karen’s son brought her home from the emergency room, but she went to her apartment and not back to the nursing home. We were glad to hear it, but still worried about her. One of her sons will look in on her.

Even though she still needs care, going back to the nursing home was not an option. Her doctors have not yet confirmed COVID-19, but it’s still a possibility, so for her sake and for the other nursing home patients, she can’t return. Wow–what a conundrum.

Karen told Richard she’d gotten to know a woman down the hall recently. Suddenly that woman was gone. Karen’s son told Richard that both rooms on either side of hers Karen’s were empty and the nursing staff would not say what happened to Karen’s former neighbors. Hopefully they are also alive and in their own homes with family, like Karen.

Goals today: it’s Tuesday, so we have Kihon as soon as work is done. I plan to change into my gi during lunch. Our class start time has moved thirty minutes up to 7pm. This makes sense for the kids in attendance, including mine.

I still need to email Sensei about this site and join his Facebook group. Ah Facebook.

Every morning, I wipe down the counters, table and other frequently used surfaces, including light switches, door knobs, fan controllers, etc., with a super-diluted bleach solution, then leave these surfaces to air dry.

In the kitchen, I pick one area to clean thoroughly. This morning, I tackled the expresso machine area and, because I wanted coffee, was rather impatient for it to dry. I grabbed a magazine fanned it.

Suddenly I remembered fanning aloe on the bright red skin of a sunburnt child after a trip to the beach. F always loved the ocean and a few times we stayed too long. That first time I brought her home after staying out too long, she was so red. I felt such guilt. Will she end up with skin cancer at my age? It has afflicted more than one person in my family.

My son is more fair, and has gotten sunburned a time or two, but with the second child, you figure out better methods. I bought him rash guards and slathered him opaque with sunscreen. F doesn’t like rash guards or sunscreen but will “humor” me, at least until she thinks I’m not paying attention. Then she pulls off the rash guard and runs back into the ocean, thinking I won’t notice. Sometimes I pretend not to. We miss the sand and surf.

Monday April 20th, 2020

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats this morning. After 60 push-ups, I huffed and puffed, but pushed myself to do ten more on my knees. Seventy squats often tire me out as well. During squats, I alternate sets with punches with regular sets. Ab exercises do not make me quite as tired, but they are starting to.

My father-in-law’s sister Karen is staying in a nursing home in New Jersey after she fell and broke her knee-cap. Recently, she’s had a fever of 100 and some shortness of breath. Karen’s son called last night to say they were taking her to the emergency room. They worry she has COVID-19. She is older than Richard, my father-in-law, and he’s 81. We hope she will be okay.

That reminds me to call Shannon tonight and see how she’s doing. Shannon is my age and in good health. Her husband is sharp, so if he is not sick, he’ll take her to a hospital if she takes a turn for the worse. Calling or texting to check in with her will put my mind more at ease.

Today I plan to run on the treadmill for twenty minutes and do my second set of exercises. Those are my goals, besides working and updating this website with this entry, and one further back in time. Sometime this week, I want to figure out how to get the posts to show up in the order I want them–by the date in the title and not the timestamp in which they get entered as posts.

How much of this journal will actually be interesting to people?

While writing outside, I hear birds, an occasional wind chime and the trash truck: picking up cans, brightening the lives of many a toddler. I remember taking first Rebecca then Joey out to watch the trash truck. I remember running down the sidewalk with both kids so they could watch it pick up one more can.

In ten minutes, I will clock into work on-line, but first I want to get dressed.

Wednesday April 15th, 2020

The Back Log

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats last night and this morning. We also had a Kihon class via Zoom with Sensei yesterday evening. That was nice. So 15 of my push-ups, sit-ups and squats for the evening happened during class, then I did 45 afterwards (that’s 30 on the floor plus 15 on the thick exercise matte.)

Sensei had us do Kihon exercises in sets of 3 moves with a more quiet “shi-shi-shi” as our kiai. Those were challenging. Daughter F, my son B and I were pooped when Kihon was done. We kept F in the middle because she has such perfect form, or at least beautiful form. I may not be the judge of perfect, but I definitely know beautiful.

Sensei ended the class with a couple simple Tai Chi exercises. He practices these in the morning to center himself. I like the symbolism: pulling down energy from the sky, stars and universe, then lifting up good energy from the Earth to your heart, so you will be grounded. Finally, bringing that Earth-heart energy to your own Chi, where you combine it with that sky energy you previously brought into your Chi. Through you, by way of your heart, Earth and sky mix.

He had us feel the heat between our hands, which is particularly strong after exercising. Sensei demonstrated stretching that heat–our Chis–first left and right, on the diagonals, up and down, expanding oneself. He also instructed us to reach behind to gather up all our intentions and things things left undone, and bring those forward to combine with our Chis. “Resolve that what needs to be done will be done,” he said.

That’s my timer. Richard, my father-in-law, came down and we had a nice talk about radio waves.

I skipped my usual leg stretch on the bookcase. What’s one stretch?

Tuesday April 14th, 2020

The Back Log

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats last night and this morning. Last night, I managed to stay up on my toes for sixty (“tricep” thirty, “chest” thirty) and did a few extras. This morning, I did ten more “tricep” push-ups on my knees. I botched the Japanese count, however, because I listened too intently to the kids’ chatter.

They joked about a picture in F’s Spanish textbook: a cartoon of an older man named Jorge, riding a bicycle.

“He’s happy about everything!” chuckled F.

“Well, you need to be, when you’re seventy. You don’t have much time left!” I said, after they showed me the illustration. It was a silly picture.

Granted, what I said wasn’t exactly true: we may have a lot to worry about at seventy. Ideally we’ve learned what’s worth worrying about and what’s not. Wisdom has got to creep in sometime. Seventy seems like a good time for it.

(So weird: while I typed this entry into the site, we had a small earth quake. I kept typing. It didn’t feel like a large one but the sound was eerie.)

I spent thirty minutes on the treadmill: five minute walk to warm-up, twenty minutes jogging and five minutes walking to cool down. I listened to “Two Dope Queens.” They interviewed Michelle Obama. She’s down to earth. She talked about empowering girls around the globe and hair care. It gives you a glimpse into the lives of others: what’s different and what’s similar. Hair talk is fun.

A power plant had an explosion in Burbank over the weekend. Our IT folks had to go into our building and reboot all the workstations. They work hard.

While working from home, we finish shots, but it takes longer and the supervisors’ expectations are a moving target. At times it’s frustrating. I have been trying to let go of whatever expectations I have had regarding what my job should be, including the expectations laid out when I started, and just do the best that I can with what it actually is.

This company pays me by the hour. I do –or will–decide –whether or not I want to keep doing this job long term. For now, I remind myself that I have control over my own fate. My coworkers and I are lucky: we have jobs and we are able to work from home. Many of our friends, family members and neighbors are not working, or their jobs put them in danger of contracting the virus. This is not the case for my coworkers and me.

Somehow my timer didn’t start. I am outside and the birds are singing. And I have eight minutes to get dressed and clock in.

Monday April 13th, 2020

The Back Log

I did thirty “tricep” push-ups on my knuckles and toes on the floor, thirty “chest” push-ups on my knuckles on the matte, also on my toes, and added ten more on my knees. Those last ten were slow so I could go lower. I try to do the sixty fast because that is what will be expected during the test.

Today I will try to get in some cardio during lunch. If I can, I will do thirty minutes on the treadmill: twenty minutes running and ten walking. I’ll finish listening to the podcast about the family from Cuba, the one that the Two Dope Queens gave their slot to.

Kids are up already doing homework.

I need to call the DMV about a ticket I received for not securing the registration stickers to the car’s license plate. Hopefully they will let me text or email a photo of the tags in place.

I have also not made much progress on the website. After staring at a computer screen during work, I usually want a break. If I want to keep this thing going post-pandemic, then I need to start: carve out time for it now. Perhaps I should pay for a web design and not spend too much time thinking about it: just get one that works and looks nice. When and if I have time to put into the technical side, I can do it at that time.

Once upon a time, back in 1996-1998, I worked on websites as part of my job. I didn’t use WYSIWYG editors then to write HTML because there weren’t too many. I’m sure HTML has changed a lot since then!

Ding ding ding goes my timer!

Saturday April 11, 2020

The Back Log

I am taking the day off from exercises but I did run on the treadmill for twenty minutes, plus five as a warm-up and five minutes for a cool-down.

Last night, I got on the scale and I was 110 pounds. That’s up from my usual range of 93 to 97 pounds. I’ve noticed other changes: I can’t put my wedding ring back on, and a pair of pants that once required a belt to stay up actually fit in the waist now. Needless to say, the extra weight worries me.

For folks who don’t know me or do not know me well, I’m just over 5 feet tall. Some of that extra weight is muscle from karate exercises, but that would accounts for, say, two to five pounds, realistically. The rest is due to to the fact that I no longer work out at the dojo for three to five hours a week. On Saturdays, I would sometimes take two classes and I regularly attended an hour and a half class on Tuesday and Friday evenings.

My morning and evening push-ups, sit-ups and squats, while better than nothing, is no substitute for a ninety minute class. I do not walk four flights of stairs before and after work, because I work from home. Though I take walks during the day, those are not exactly strenuous. Additionally, F and B bake a lot of bread, pies and cookies, and D and I drink wine or make mixed drinks just about every day.

So, given I am:

  • 1. eating more sweets,
  • 2. drinking more alcohol, and
  • 3. exercising less

I guarantee some of that weight is just, well, excess weight! I don’t look particularly fat, granted, but that’s how it starts: a little more here and a little more there. Over time, it adds up.

The black belt test requires cardio fitness, and mine is in August, if we are able to do it. Might as well start now, before I get too out of shape.

The treadmill is in F’s room, but we all use it. Richard walked daily when F was in school. I put on a podcast and got on the treadmill with bare feet. Jogging on the treadmill is not something I enjoy.

I’d tried to talk D into going with me to look for a place to run outdoors. We do not live far from Griffith Park. It rained all this week and now it’s beautiful outside! On a Saturday! My idea was to drive to the zoo area and see if we could walk or jog along one of the horse trails. D thought everyone else in Los Angeles would have the same idea.

He’d previously emailed me an article about how people exercising outdoors could potentially spread the virus faster. Apparently it is also critical to be more reclusive for the next two weeks. Folks are being advised to limit our already limited contact. So I borrowed a pair of loose, old shorts from D, put on a podcast and got on the treadmill.

I admit, during that first five minutes of walking in bare feet, I considered getting off the treadmill to put on shoes. “But no,” I thought, “I’ve finally started and it’s important to push through.” My mind wants to get out of exercising, I told myself, rationalizing procrastination. I’ve started–I need to stick with this. So I did. At the end of my jog, the balls of my feet burned.

My daughter came into the room to tease me about running in front of the window. “I want the neighborhood to see my newly-muscled back. Why not?” I told her. “There might not be a lot of muscle back there by some people’s standards but it’s much more than I had!”

That’s the great thing about being fifty, I told her: you become shameless. “You know what?” I said. “I wish I’d lost my shame earlier!” She laughed.

She’d talked to me about the weight thing earlier. “A few extra pounds will not hurt you!” she said. “You do not need to diet.” I agree.

For context, one of F’s friends was hospitalized for an eating disorder shortly before the pandemic started. This poor girl–a beautiful kid and an overachiever–top kid in her middle school last year, was downright skeletal when she came to our home in January for F’s birthday party. She was quite ill by the time she was hospitalized in late February.

So I told F, “No diet. Just exercise more and eat less sweets. That’s all–just don’t let the weight gain get out of hand. And maybe I should drink less.”

So I was proud of myself for getting on the treadmill and jogging and walking a full thirty minutes, but boy, I blistered the balls of my feet. I showed F. We laughed. “You wear shoes if you go the treadmill, okay?” I told F.

Full disclosure: we both like running around in bare feet. I already had calluses on my heels from wearing Keenes as my normal shoes, even to jury duty. (Once, in the elevator in the court house, a dude in a suit, probably a lawyer, said to me, “Those sure look comfortable.” I responded, “Yeah, they help me get to court on time when I’m parked a good thirty minute walk away.”)

I popped the blisters on my feet with a safety pin dipped in rubbing alcohol, squeezed out the puss, then took a shower. Afterwards, I put salve and bandages on my feet. I wear two pairs of socks for extra padding, and sandals if I need to walk.

Goal for tomorrow: get on the treadmill with sneakers!

Wednesday April 8th, 2020

The Back Log

I did do push-ups, sit-ups and squats this morning and last night. I have a cat here trying to help me write. Cafe, a black and white tuxedo cat, sits on the recently sanitized table before me. He chases my pen if I am not petting him. He’s very sweet, it goes without saying, since he’s a cat.

We did not have karate last night. Sensei doesn’t have the best reception at his place. Given the puckets of water falling from the sky, which we are grateful for, it is also not a great time to get out and drive, nor is it a good time to expose yourself to getting sick during a pandemic.

But F ran the Pinans with me, after I did my exercises, and S ran Gekisai Dai, Gekisai Sho and Yantsu with me. We tried to remember the one with all the stances, Tzuki no, but we should probably look it up. It was difficult to remember.

Also, to complicate matters, we each imagined different orientations for where we were, that is, which direction was “facing forward.” Basically, we needed to mentally map the space of the dojo onto my bedroom, the space where we practiced karate. We discussed where the dojo “mirror” would be. We decided to align the dojo’s “front door” to the bedroom closet. The back door, then must be the balcony door . This left the dojo’s wall facing the mirror to align with the bedroom’s back wall. Nevertheless, it was good to practice karate.

Sensei texted and both F and I checked in with him. F is also interested in doing an on-line diary for her Shodan preparation.