krav maga, parenthood Leave a comment

Belt Promotion

We made it! Red-black belts for both of us.

Mr. Turner seems to think I’ll be testing for my black belt come June… we’ll see.

Connor is surprisingly motivated to prepare for his own black belt test. I suggested that we could practice together to ramp up to the 100 non-stop push-ups we’ll need to crank out, and he was totally on board. He even coaxed me to run a mile with him on Saturday afternoon, since that’s also part of the belt test.

I’m curious to see how long his motivation lasts. (Or my own.)

weight loss Leave a comment

What Wagon?

My weight has gone up and up

Back in June, I started a blog post that I never finished:

It’s not the number on the scale that’s getting me down; it’s the reappearance of my double chin and my spare tire. It’s the added jiggle in places I’d once made unjiggly. It’s the tightness of the waistbands in my work slacks. It’s the fatigue.

At that point, I weighed ten pounds less than I do now.

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photos, roadtrips Leave a comment

Concert in the Park

Even though I played with the Litchfield Town Band briefly during the mid-90’s, I was still surprised to witness the pride of this little town in their concert band. All summer, on Friday evenings, the town band assembles in the gazebo to play marches and polkas and other traditional crowd favorites.

When my son and I went to visit my Mom at the end of July, a good number of her friends were looking forward to pulling out some chairs and listening to the music. Having been a music major in a former life, I could tell that it wasn’t exactly professional-sounding, but it wasn’t totally cringey, either. It was enjoyable in that live-music-outside sort of way.

Except to one nine-year-old boy who’d already had a long day. To him, it was “boring,” and he just wanted to go back to Grammy’s house and relax.