Lessons From Babysitting

1. Any lack of cuteness in a small child is definitely because they missed a nap.

2. What nobody tells you about pregnancy is that it makes all your ligaments and basically everything else relax so your hips can spread, but a side effect of this is constant sinus problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, and crying. (This is according to the woman I'm sitting for, who is 5 months pregnant with her second child and opened the door in tears and wearing a wrist brace, saying, "Don't worry, I'm just pregnant.")

3. Even the tastiest, least gross-looking food (avocado, couscous) looks really disgusting when it's all over somebody's face.

4. If the kid wants to feed himself the yogurt, just let him do it even if it slides off the spoon, because you're going to have to clean up the mess he made with the couscous anyway.

5. The secret of diaper changing: the reason diaper changing is worth it (and not that bad) is that when they're wearing a clean diaper, they aren't radiating poo smells all the time. Not smelling like poo = much cuter and more lovable child.

6. All these things make having a kid sound awful. And then there are those moments when they have taken a nap, and eaten lunch, and had a diaper change, and they're dancing around to one of those mats that plays really annoying songs when you push the buttons, and they think the animal noises you're making to keep from going crazy are the most entertaining thing since Peter Rabbit - and you kind of see why people do it.

What I Really Did on my Summer Vacation

Rachel, Reid and I have just set up a martial arts training schedule of around three hours a day, at least five days a week - not to mention the possibility of going to Minneapolis to train on Saturdays. (I almost wrote Ann Arbor instead of Minneapolis. I don't even want to think about it, I'll be too tempted.)

While this may sound totally crazy, I am really excited - not just for the massive amounts of aikido training, but also for that feeling of being physically tired all the time. I haven't gotten that since the last of my crazy summers of backpacking, what, 3 years ago? It's a good feeling, and I've missed it.

And basically what this means is that with a weekly total of a 20 hour Taoism job, 8 hours of babysitting, at least 12 hours of aikido and 3 of Soo Bahk Do (I'm getting lessons from Reid), as well as 2 hours of being tutored in Chinese and the requisite time studying up, with all the down time I'm going to have I may as well be a full-time student.

...if by "full-time" you mean "paid, trilingual, incredibly fit, and totally badass."

I love summer.

Aikido, the ER, and a Long Day of Nothing

I'm taking a break from my incredibly difficult evening of "Sex and the City," so I thought I would write a little bloglet about my weekend.

Saturday was very eventful, as Wade and Liz, two aikido alums from Ann Arbor, were in for Alumni Weekend, and a couple of alums also came down from the Kobukan (dojo in Minneapolis) to train for a couple of hours. So we had a very awesome class where some burning questions from the spring were answered in under five minutes, which was one of those satisfying moments of "oh, so that's how it works!" And I finally learned to do a proper fourth control, which means nothing to most of you, but basically it's a tricky (but useful) way to get your partner to do what you want, involving a pressure point in the arm. It was also nice to have a real class, which won't be happening for a while unless we make it up to the Cities.

Then we had an adventure in which Wade was playing frisbee in sunglasses with a lens that popped out and cut his eyebrow open. It was very bloody but not super-serious, but Liz and Rachel Voorhies and I still took a nice long trip with Wade to the ER to make sure he didn't need stitches. And lemme tell you, the Northfield Hospital is a friggin' hotel. There's a sculpture in the lobby and a gift shop and elevator music and nice carpets and things. Not a bad place to be, if you're going to be in a hospital.

So after all that busy-ness, I've been taking it easy today. Got a free brunch at Dacie Moses, and Felix made lots of stew so I haven't even had to cook (if by "cook" you mean "heat up Campbell's soup"). And I've been doing a lot of really boring work on this Taoism book, which will look very nice in the end, but transcribing hours and hours of lecture is not my idea of a roaring good time.

Also I have decided that no matter which way you cut it, this summer is going to be weird. Carleton is very nice in the summer, but it's a different kind of nice that involves a lot of sitting around with fun people you don't really know that well, rather than having adventures with all the people you would have picked to be there. It also seems that everyone I know is waiting around for something - to start a study abroad, to see that one friend they've been missing, to hear about medical results, to get settled in a new job or house or both. So I guess I'm not the only one with a vague sense of not knowing what's going on all the time. That's kind of reassuring, I suppose, and in any case, all those things are just going to have to resolve themselves - in the meantime there's a lot of highly productive sitting around to do.

(Don't you like that neatly resolved ending? I reread this post and realized that I have gotten to know Carrie Bradshaw and co. far too well over the past couple of days...)