Jump!
If there’s one thing Erik can do well, it’s count to three and then JUMP! He jumps on the bed, jumps on the couch, jumps on the floor, jumps on the table. . . if he is somewhere, he’s jumping.
Today, his little mind was blown. I don’t know if he has jumping fantasies, but if he does they all came true this afternoon.
One of the moms in my group knew about a gymnastics place that has a daily free play hour for a minimal fee. It was rainy and gross out, so our group headed over to the gym and let the kids run wild.
Erik was scared at first, but as soon as I put him on the running trampoline (don’t really know what it is called, but it’s a super long, narrow trampoline that the kids can run/bounce down) his eyes lit up, he started clapping his hands and he was OFF!
It was a little scary because there were some bigger kids swinging off of ropes and landing in the foam pit with no regard for the toddlers, but over all it was a fantastic use of five bucks. My only complaint is that the homeschoolers need to tell their giant children to watch out for the little ones. It’s great that they are finding creative outlets for their kids’ energy, but if they are going to be in an environment with a ton of little people they need to learn to use some caution. There was only one big boy there and he just about stepped in the middle of Erik’s stomach. His mother gave me a dirty look when I reprimanded him, but if you are going to almost kill my kid I’m going to yell at you. That’s just the way it is.
Also, one of the employees thinks I’m a thief. I paid with a ten dollar bill. The guy took my money and sat my change down in front of me. I didn’t grab it because he gave me a form to fill out. Suddenly he was gone and there was another lady in front of me. I handed her the form and asked for my change. She got into an argument with me, telling me there was just a five dollar bill laying there. Yes, I explained, the five dollar bill was my change! I could totally tell she didn’t believe me, but she sighed and told me it wasn’t worth getting into an argument about and gave me the money. I hate shit like that, but I’m not just going to lose five bucks over a silly misunderstanding.
It’s just too bad that the hour of jumping didn’t wear Erik out enough to take a nap. Why can Mike put him down in less than five minutes on the weekends, but no matter what I do I can’t get him to go to sleep? The best I can do is get him to snuggle up with a book and he’ll zone out for an hour, but it’s not an hour that I can use to do other things. Stubborn little Swede!
On a completely different note, I went out on a limb and ordered a pair of shoes from Shoebuy.com. I am in dire need–DIRE–of a pair of casual non-Birkenstock, non-tennis shoe shoes, but it is almost impossible to find something that fits my Fred Flintstone foot. I like shoebuy.com because you can search by specific size and then you can read the ratings and see if people thought they really fit. I found a brown sorta-dress shoe that wasn’t horrendous and that said it felt wider than indicated. Let’s hope it works because I don’t want to be disappointed. At least there is free return shipping if it doesn’t fit.
Now, I just need to get a brown pair of pants. I bought a couple of brown sweaters to go with my most comfortable pants ever, brown cords, and guess what? The half-assed house managed to put a giant hole in the ass so I no longer have brown pants.
Of course, at this point I’d be better off buying brown shorts, but someday a sweater will be required, won’t it? Someday fall will be in the air? I would enjoy the warm weather, except I worry about what it means on a global scale and I have no A/C in the car. Guess which bothers me more?
Speaking of global warming, during my trip to Oregon there was a bee flying around my grandma and she was totally freaking out. I told her she should be happy to see a bee because the world was going to be in a lot of trouble if the bee colony collapse disorder killed off a large portion of bees. After I explained why bees are important, she told me that all the pastors on her TV programs say all these natural disasters and other weird things are caused by the wrath of God and that the end is near. Unfortunately I fear the end very well may be near, but it has nothing to do with the wrath of God. It’s called science! This is so irritating to me because I know so many Christians who think environmentalists are anti-Christian and recycling is a bad thing (obviously not all of them, or hopefully even a majority of them, especially since it has been over 10 years so I was immersed in a Christian community). Ministers should be standing up on the pulpit telling their congregation to make full use of their recycling bins!
And on a totally different note, someone pointed me to some fat acceptance blogs the other day and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. I very much like the “some people are just going to be fat” rhetoric because I know I am healthy and fit and do more than my fair share of exercise, yet I am still plus-sized. Yet? Ummmm. . . some of the people are so big that they can’t even walk. Now, I know there are medical reasons and such, but I also think it is very dangerous to say that there is nothing they can do about it but accept it. I was well on the road to extreme obesity my first two years of teaching because I was totally depressed and felt I didn’t have anything to live for. Thankfully something kicked in and I realized I had to take control of my life before I was laying in the morgue being made fun of by snotty technicians who couldn’t even lift my body off the table. I went on a fairly extreme diet and started exercising and lost 80 pounds in about 6 months. Once I hit the weight I’m at currently it all kind of just stopped, even though I am a pretty healthy eater and a manic exerciser. This is just the weight my body wants to be. That other weight? That extreme obesity? That was not what my body wanted, but hours and hours at the computer with zero exercise and whole pies for dinner was a pretty simple recipe for oodles of ooze.
I just don’t know what to think about it all. I know that this whole issue is a huge mess of jumbled emotions. It really is not just about diet and exercise. If it was there would not be nearly as many fat people in the world. Bah. What a depressing topic. I think I need to avoid those blogs because they make me angry when they should be making me feel empowered. I guess if they want to run out of breath just walking to their car, that is their business. I kind of like the whole “I can run around and play with my kid” aspect of my current level of fitness.
October 27th, 2007 at 5:56 am
I agree about the running around thing. I have several friends who are ‘overweight’ and one friend I would call obese. Weird thing is, the overweight ones are the ones who obsess about their weight, whereas the obese one, who really NEEDS to do something about her weight, gets all insulted if I even say the word ‘fat’ in her presence. (And no, I’ve never said it ABOUT her in her presence.)
The overweight friends are not people who I think need to worry about their weight - none of them have cars, and so they all walk everywhere and are really fit. The obese one also walks, but very, very slowly, and she gets out of breath after a few meters. This worries me enormously, but what can I say about it that will not insult her horribly? It doesn’t help that I tend to be under- rather than overweight. (This is not due to wonderful self-control or anything like that. Under stress my stomach plays up, and I tend to eat less rather than more, and I am sure I would be as incapable of controlling a tendency to overeat as I am a tendency to undereat.)
But as far as I’m concerned, the ability to run around and enjoy being in your body is the best gift you can give yourself, and it has nothing to do with size.