Charlie is ready to test for his next belt. This one would add a black stripe to his brown belt, signifying that he is now a first-grade brown, the highest level prior to black.
He was originally going to attempt it back in March, but his instructor felt that he should wait one more session so that he could fine-tune things and turn in a more perfect performance. Charlie wisely and graciously accepted this wisdom and waited and honed his routines and skills. He is now as ready as he could possibly be.
But he has this mohawk. And it's grown longer since the prom. I warned him the judges wouldn't take him seriously if they were distracted by this wild hairdo--they wouldn't be able to concentrate on how precise his moves were if all they could see was an overgrown mohawk flopping in the wind.
So Charlie promised he was going to shave it off prior to the test.
He came home the weekend prior to the test with his newest "do," which his roommate at the dorm had ever-so-kindly helped him out with.
I told him that was even worse than the mohawk...it looked like he had a bottle brush on his head. He went back to school on Monday saying he would get his friend to cut the rest off before coming home on Wednesday (the night of the test).
He came home Wednesday and still had the bottle brush on his head.
"What happened? Why do you still have that mess on top of your head?"
"Roommate didn't bring scissors back."
"C'mere boy..."
I'm no hairdresser, as my former husband would testify. (He once came to me in desperation with a pair of scissors in hand, asked me to get the hair off his collar and his ears because he had an inspection the next morning. By the time I finished, he passed inspection, but hid the scissors where I would never, ever find them again.)
But desperate times called for desperate measures--the test starts in an hour. I grabbed the scissors my mother uses to cut my hair, and I started hacking. Can't be too hard, right?
Twenty minutes later, I had the top reasonably level all over.
He absolutely refused to let me cut off the orange rat-tail in the back. He said the judges would get over it.
Sure enough, they did. He turned in a practically perfect performance and got his first-grade brown. Now he can actually start studying for black.
He also won the performance achievement trophy for having such a flawless test performance. I was told later that when the judges were voting between him and the other candidate of choice for the trophy, every single vote went to Charlie--even the other person's instructor.
Guess what? A post that isn't about the boys!
I FINALLY finished practicum and managed to CLEP the one remaining course I needed for my degree. This was a special day for me, considering that almost a year ago I was in the ICU recovering from a heart attack and an appendectomy. I didn't really expect this to hit me, since I wasn't emotional at my high-school graduation and I've interpreted several other graduations since, and I was fine through the whole graduation ceremony (even when the friend sitting with my parents blew an air horn when they had the summa cum laude graduates stand to be recognized), but when we processed back out and there were all of our faculty lining the pathway we had to walk back to the disrobing location, and they were applauding for us, I started crying. Really, that's why my nose is so red in the photo and I look like I'd had a little too much wine too early in the day.
These pix show the people who made it all possible.
Top: Oldest Son (Rick) and ChinaBoi (Charlie). They have both supported me and made it possible for me to go to classes in all the little ways that add up to so much--taking care of my dogs after work on nights when I've had to go straight from work to class, cooking me dinner when it looked like I would come home from a late-night class and go straight to bed without eating at all, and forgiving me when I didn't have enough energy to keep up with both work and school and still be supermom.
Bottom: My parents, who financed my education even though I'm a little long in the tooth and should be able to stand on my own two feet financially by now. Finances have been so tight since the adoption that I would NEVER be standing here in this stupid hat if they had not provided the funds (and the encouragement) to get this done.
I think it's finally time to rest and spend some quality time with the boys.
