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.
When we went to get Charlie's tux for this year's prom, Men's Wearhouse was having BOGO sale. After looking at the price of the tuxes, I started doing some mental arithmetic. Charlie has 3 more proms to get through (including this one). Renting a tux every year would come up to more than just buying one, and if we bought one, he would still have a tux left at the end of 3 years that he could sell if he wasn't ever going to use it again...AND he would have a nice business suit, too! Didn't take much to sell me, huh?
So we bought a tux and a suit. Next year, all he will have to buy is a different colored tie and pocket square, and he'll be set.
Tux: $450
Shoes: $70
Prom ticket: $45
Flowers: $30
Picture of him wearing a tuxedo with a mohawk for future blackmail purposes: PRICELESS!!!!
Oh, dear, I knew it would happen again. If you noticed in the picture in the last blog post, Charlie's hair went orange again--all over this time.
Sure enough, he decided the weather is warm enough, he wants his mohawk back. Once the black started growing in, he had the hairdresser shave it. The stripe runs a different way now...
So proud of ChinaBoi. Some kid at the dorm tried to sucker punch him, and Charlie caught the punch, put him in a wrist lock, and sat him down.
What I'm proud of isn't that he defended himself--I expect that, since we are a martial arts family--but that he controlled the situation and didn't snap the kid's wrist (which he is more than capable of doing).
Funny, but his brother had a similar episode way back when he was blue belt. Rick had been bullied a lot in school, and he never let anyone know that he took martial arts because he was afraid they'd come after him even worse. But one day at the bus stop, some kid put him in a head lock, and instinct and training took over--Rick used his jujitsu moves to escape and gain control of the other kid and very gently forced him down to the ground. By the time he realized what he had done, the other kids had just backed up in a circle and fallen silent. He never had another problem with being bullied again.
I'm very grateful that our karate association teaches not only how, but how far.
Lord help us all. Oldest Son just bought a bike.
No, not a bicycle. A motorcycle.
I knew he would. He's been fascinated by them forever, and he was very, very jealous when I got one a few years ago.
I knew, at some point, he would find a way to learn, and I was deathly afraid that he would just go and learn the basics from a friend and then take the test at MVA and not have any REAL knowledge of how to ride safely. And even in a car, his driving leaves a lot to be desired, IMHO.
So for his birthday, I sent him to the Motorcyle Safety Foundation 3-day training course. I figure if he's going to get a license, I can at least make sure he gets it as safely as possible and gets all the knowledge I can wish for him so that he has a fighting chance of staying alive out there.
He passed and got his license, and withdrew every cent he could afford to sink into it from the bank and started looking for a deal.
Prior to taking the MSF course, he wanted a crotch rocket. But afterwards, he decided he wanted a cruiser, after all. In a mature moment (rare when it comes to thinking about motorcycles!) he realized that riding in the forward posture on a crotch rocket gives the rider a more aggressive mentality, and that the straight-up posture of a cruiser gave a more laid-back attitude about the ride. (THANK YOU, MSF!!!!)
But he was so desperate that he was considering bikes that I wouldn't have ridden for even a test drive if you'd paid me--one that had been laid down (motorcycle-ese for a bike that hits the ground while still in motion), one that had 88K miles. I finally managed to talk him out of them and put his money back in the bank and just sit back, because a good deal would come to him when the time was right, just as it had when I got my Rebel.
Sure enough, a couple weeks later, he goes to look at a Suzuki Volusia Intruder he found on CraigsList. He gets the guy to ride it out to the house for him, since he doesn't want his first ride to be on someone else's tags (just in case!), and a couple of days later he has it tagged and on the road.
It's nick-named "The Skunk" for obvious reasons once you see it. Here's a link to the YouTube vid the seller posted. Rick's bike
He got a good deal. I think he's got a keeper.
And most important, since it is bigger and badder than mine, he has managed to reclaim the "macho" title of the household.
Charlie competed in the Eastern Regional Karate Championships today. He took a 2nd place trophy in kata and got wiped out in the first round on fighting. He was disappointed in the fighting, not because he didn't win, but because it meant he was done after the first two minutes and couldn't fight any more.
When we got out to the car, I said something about him needing a piece of furniture to keep all these trophies he has racked up in karate, and just how many do you have now, anyway? (He keeps them squirreled away up in his room, so I never see them.) I figured there must be 9 or so by now.
He thinks for a minute....18.
Really? 18????
Wow!!! He really DOES need a piece of furniture just for the trophies!
