Dear Friends,
I haven’t done a random dump of life in general on you lately, so here goes…
We had a nice little celebration for Liam on Friday night. It was low key, like he wanted, and we just had some pizza and wings. He didn’t want a cake, but Ashton made some rice krispy treats and he got some delicious looking cookies from Grandpa Tom and Gramma Lori. The kids had some fancy soda and the adults sipped on some O.K. Beer from Poland, which is really delicious.
I’m glad he had a nice birthday.
*****
Liam and I also started going back to the gym after almost a little over two months away. It felt both good and bad to be sore. I need to get back in the habit of going because when I do, I feel so much better. Liam and I played some racquetball, too, and had a good time doing so although he got kind of pissy with me for beating him. He struggles with things that don’t come easy to him, which is kind of rare, because the kid learns so quickly.
We have a little routine at the gym that I quite like. We start by walking the track, which is inside and above the roller-skating rink. I should have probably mentioned that we got to the gym at the big Baptist Mega-Church on Central and Bethany. It’s cheap and has good equipment and we like it. But anyway, we walk the track and talk.
Usually, Liam tells me about what is going on at his school. During the mile or so we walk, I hear about all kinds of things going on there that I would have no clue about otherwise. On Thursday, I learned about how the boy’s bathrooms are a place of peace and the girl’s bathrooms are chaos. I tend to believe it. There are also less boys at their school, so it makes sense on that level, too.
This went on for multiple laps.
After that topic was flushed out (couldn’t help myself), he switched over to the ongoing saga of playing music with a friend of his at school. He’s got a lot of frustrations with this particular kid and, as a musician who has had a few frustrating moments, I can both empathize and sympathize. He’s got to figure a lot of this stuff out on his own and he will, but it is hard to see him so excited about music in general but dealing with this kind of issue so early.
The truth of that matter is that you can be great friends with someone but struggle to make music with them. Conversely, you can struggle to get along with someone personally and still make great music. It’s one of those things you just have to figure out. Certain people, no matter how badly you want it to work, you should just not be in a band with (or probably any type of activity where partnership is key).
So, we walk and talk for about 15 minutes before heading into the room with the machines. I prefer doing the machines than doing free weights. I got conditioned to this, I think, back in the Phoenix College days when you could get credit for going to the gym. They had a nice circuit of machines and that was exercise I could wrap my head around pretty easily.
I don’t really like going to the gym for the sake of going to the gym, but as I get older, I do like the results of it. I like feeling good and feeling stronger. It could also be that when I am sore, I know why I am sore. The weird pains of such from being in my fifties that just pop up from time to time are not fun.
I spend a bit more time on the machines than Liam does, and we also split up and do our own thing most of the time. I have my routine that I try to stick to so I work all the key body parts. I found, for example, that doing the leg machines has been very beneficial to easing my knee pain and building trust in it, as well. For several years after getting my ACL repaired, I just didn’t trust it, but now, I can play racquetball or even basketball without worrying too much.
After we do the machines, we hit the courts and lately, it’s been with the racquets, but maybe we’ll get some basketball in soon. We shot around in Maine (once, I need to be clear) and I’d like to help Liam get better on the court. It’s such a great game. Of the many things a person could miss about the old days, I miss playing pick up basketball. That’s a blog in and of itself…or maybe another story could be weaved around pick up ball.
*****
Too many ideas!!!!
*****
I keep doing that to myself. I have too many ideas for stories. Won’t someone just give me a few million so I can just write full-time? That’s not a huge ask, is it? Just a couple million…but no, that won’t work. I really love my job and would hate to leave the students.
*****
The rhythm class was fun last week. Hindsight being what it is, I probably should have combined beat and rhythm into one class, but then I wouldn’t have been able to spend as much time on each one and now that I see it in words on this computer, I realize this is another one of the painstakingly long sentences that I seem to get lost in from time to time. After a while, I just feel challenged to keep the darn sentences going to be as annoying as possible but that is really counterproductive to what I want to accomplish here, at least in terms of keeping people interested and coming back to read more.
109 words for two sentences. That’s awful and I apologize. Ten percent of the damn blog.
Random thoughts on a Sunday morning.
More of The Trees coming soon and possibly the story of a little band that could: Pinky Tuscadero’s White Knuckle Assfuck.
I think it is time.
See you tomorrow.
I talked to much about Liam the last few days that I needed to balance it out. This is my Bean. I love her. She's amazing. This picture is from a few years ago, probably 2017 or 2018. Pre-hair dyeing. The funniest person in the family by far. She will write amazing books one day.
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