The authors tea party

I was privileged to get to help out yesterday in Nana’s first/second grade class (she is in a split class).

They were having an event that I found to be incredibly fun, an authors tea party. The premise was that the kids would invite a special person in their lives (could be a parent or grandparent, Nana chose her Aunti Vicki) to come and have a tea party with the kids in the class room. During this tea party the kids would show all of the writing that they have done through the year and highlight one specific item for their guest.

They spent time learning how to perform an introduction, how to pass cookies (because what is a tea party without cookies?) and stressed good manners. Since Leigh and I have both volunteered in the classroom the teacher asked if one of use could be there to

1. help set things up
2. stand in for a missing significant other if needed (this teacher thinks of everything)

My help as a stand in wasn’t needed, but it was a lot of fun to watch the kids show off their work and enjoy basking in the glow radiated by their special guest. Some of the comments were pretty funny as well, things like “see this is what I wrote like at the beginning of the year, isn’t it bad?” and others along the same lines were heard all over the room.

After tea was served and the kids had a chance to show off their handiwork, they put on the entertainment for the event. All in all five nusery rhymes were acted out by various groups of kids, complete with props and costumes (Nana informed me that they have been practising for months on these).

It was a great example of why Leigh and I think so highly of Nana’s teacher and a great chance to be a fly on the wall (albeit a very large obvious one) at an event that I will remember for a long time.

What does Kokikai Aikido mean to me

In Kokiakai we are asked to write an essay on what Kokikai Aikido means to us as a part of our Shodan test.

While I will not need the essay for a while, I have been thinking about the subject and thought it might be interesting to see how my response differs between now and when I actually need it.

My first thought is to answer in terms of the things I associate with Kokikai: friends, family, physical challenges and changes to how I react to stressful situations. Those items don’t go deep enough though as there is more to Kokikai for me than the tangible pieces I see and feel. The connections and changes I get out of Kokikai are certainly a part of what it means to me, but they are not the entire picture. When I truly think about what Kokikai means to me I come up with the fact that it gives me the opportunity to both succeed and not succeed in the same moment. That may sound contradictory, but that is how I view the art and what draws me to it.

Allow me to explain.
By this point in my training when a technique is called out in class I am usually able to perform it adequately. At the same time I realize, with the help of my uke or others, that I can do better (maybe my timing was a little bit off or perhaps I tensed up during the technique). The technique itself was a success (I was able to negate my attackers intent), but at the same time it was less than a success in that there is room for growth. This sounds like it would always be frustrating (and at times it is) but it is also a great mindset to get into. I may not EVER be perfect, but I can always get better than I am today. How to get there will differ for most folks, but it is the journey and the desire to take it that matter most.

While the connections I have gained from Kokikai are important to me, they are not the things that have changed how I look at life (or at least how I try to look at life). It is the mindset of always challenging myself to grow and to be better tomorrow than I am today.

I am reminded of a saying repeated in McDonald’s training (I worked there for many years).
If you are green you are growing, if not you are rotting.

I used to think I understood the concept, but I don’t think I ever really did until I experienced Kokikai.

Relax

As I have mentioned before I train in Kokikai Aikido.

One our basic principles is to relax and the benefit of this principle was driven home yet again yesterday while in the dentist chair. It was time for my 6 month checkup and he was cleaning my teeth.

I need to backup a little here and state that while I like my dentist, there are a lot of childhood issues still floating around that make me REALLY tense in a dentist office. This usually means I come home with an aching jaw even when nothing other than cleaning is done (I have been known to leave finger imprints on the arms of dental chairs).

Back to yesterday and as I am lying there I think about relaxing. I can tell that my shoulders and jaw are tightening up as he works on my teeth, so I make an effort to release that tension. This is an ongoing process as every couple of minutes the tension starts to build again and I need to work on releasing it once more.

At the end of the visit, my jaw doesn’t hurt and my shoulders don’t feel like I have been lifting weights.

This may seem like a small thing, but to me it is great progress.

What things in your life might get better if you were better able to relax through them?

A nice quiet evening

Last night was nothing out of the ordinary.

My wife went to a friends for dinner, so I was home with the girls. They had dinner and then we went downstairs to let Nana practice for her choir concert.

I was a little stiff and sore from the weekend so I told her I was going to do a few yoga stretches while she worked on her music and of course teeny had to do them with me (try to talk a 4 year old through downward facing dog, I dare you). It was a lot of fun to listen to Nana while watching Teeny mimic what she thought I was doing.

Then we went upstairs and all curled up on the bed to watch part of The Neverending Story 2.

A bit later got Teeny in bed, read a couple of stories, sang a few songs and then kissed her goodnight after which I read another chapter of our latest book to Nana.

Got her all ready for bed (homework done) and then crashed downstairs to watch BSG on the Tivo.

May not sound too exciting, but it was a good night as I got to spend some quality time with the girls having fun.

Class at an early age

This last weekend was our families turn to pick up my oldest daughters school (PTA commitment).

When we showed up on saturday to pick things up, the school grounds were covered in toilet paper. We made a few choice comments about both the folks who did it as well as the parents sitting down on the ball field watching little league games ignoring it and then started to pick it up.

We work in two teams, one of the girls goes down on the ball field with my wife (it was Nana this time) and the other stays up top with me to pick up the parking lot and playground. We had picked up the parking lot and a chunk of the play area and my wife and daughter had made the round of the ball field (still without a single parent down there getting up to do anything). I was working on getting as much of the TP off the playground as I could when I heard something. I looked up and a young lady who had been watching the games on the field below was sitting there. I asked her what she had said and she repeated “do you have another bag?”. I of course handed her the one I had left and she proceeded to help clean up the mess.

Let me make a couple of things very clear.

1) She was too old to have gone to that school.

2) She did not have ANY obligation to pick anything up

3) NONE of the adults who had walked past the mess to get to the little league games on the field below had done anything to clean things up.

I hope my girls end up with that much class and poise. She really made my day.

Perspective

A few weeks back Mr. Murphy had a field day with me.

I woke up to find out that work had lost power.

No problem we purchased a generator to cover this eventuality, BUT for some reason the building circuits didn’t realize it came on.

OK could have been worse at least the power was only out for a couple of hours and when it came back on all the servers came up, BUT the web database server which feeds our latest and greatest product wouldn’t boot.

No problem we bought a duplicate backup server and they are replicated so swapping over is simple, BUT the backup server won’t boot either.

OK now I am done looking at things from the bright side. I get things running where I can and then dig into the server that won’t boot.

No joy so I call the vendor I bought them from and ask for help, he gets someone out to our site and the two of us work on it for an hour or so and he finally asks if he can pull it and take the server back to their office.

2 more hours go by and he has an answer, brings in the server he took and gets both it and the primary up and running.

Oh, did I mention this all happened on a Thursday which is the day my wife volunteers at Nana’s school and I pick Teeny up from preschool?

I got through the day and you know what, it was a day that showed me how lucky I am. (hang with me for a bit, I am not completely insane).

During the entire day, I got the chance to steal moments with my wife, daughters and dog whereas if I didn’t work from home I wouldn’t have seen them at all that day.

I have one of the BEST hardware vendors you could ever ask for (if you EVER need computer hardware, check out genstor computers, I cannot recommend them highly enough)

My wife and girls get that sometimes stuff happens. When it was almost time for me to head out to get Teeny my wife sticks her head in the door and asks if I need her to go get her for me without my needing to say a word (I hadn’t even thought of it).

When I told Teeny that I was sorry I couldn’t come and get her, she looked me in the eye and said “that’s OK daddy, is your work stuff not broken any more?” and gave me a hug.

All in all it ended up being a much better day than it should have been thanks to the great people in my life.

What a difference a year makes

I am an Aikidoka and train in Kokiakai Aikido.

I also have 2 daughters current ages 7 (Nana) and 3 (Teeny).

About a year ago I tried to combine the two and Nana started to train with me as a part of our kids class. I never got the feeling she was having fun and she didn’t really seem engaged when we were at the dojo, thus I wasn’t too surprised when she told me she didn’t want to continue with her training. She had stuck with things for about 5 or 6 weeks (which is a good start for a 6 year old) and she didn’t like being sweaty (her reason for not wanting to train).

I tried to do all the supportive things when she chose to stop and definitely did NOT want her training just because “Daddy does Aikido”, nevertheless I was a little disappointed that she didn’t enjoy her training because Aikido has become a very important part of my life and I wanted to share that with her.

Since then she has spent some time with gymnastics (which she would still be doing if we could find a gym that didn’t think a 7 year old should already be shooting for the summer games) and dance (which she did not enjoy).

When she stopped dance, my wife and I told her she had to pick an activity to stay active with. To my surprise she said she wanted to do Aikido again. I must have asked her at least a dozen times if she was sure (I don’t want to be one of those parents who force their kids to adopt their own tastes) just to gauge if this was something she wanted or all she could think of.

She assured me that she wanted to train, so when February rolled around we signed her up and she and I now train on Saturdays together (after which she stays and plays while I train for a couple more hours).

She is LOVING it. When my wife met us after her first session on the mat Nana’s first words were that she made two new friends. She keeps talking about how much fun she is having and asking me to go through some of the warm up routine with her at home. This is a kid who can’t get out of bed for anything, yet I have not yet had an issue getting her up on a Saturday morning to go and train.

Had I tried to force Aikido on her she would never have gone back to training but now she has and hopefully will find something as meaningful as I have. Even if she decides down the road not to continue I have a great training partner for Saturday mornings for a while and we get a little more together time.

Dance like nobody is watching

Over the weekend my 3 1/2 year old daughter (teeny) had a “Show a Thon” at the local mall for her dance studio’s scholarship program.

This is a fund raising event where the school has classes dance in the midst of the mall for several hours and folks pledge money to help them out (they have raffles etc as well).

She and the rest of her class of 3 and 4 year olds were dressed up either in poodle skirts and bobby socks (girls) or jeans and white T shirts (boys) and dancing to Splish Splash.

Most of them had a BALL and were a big hit with the crowd. What truly caught my attention however was the group that came on a couple of numbers after them.

The Silver Steppers (a group of seniors dressed pretty much the same way as the kids had been) came out and danced to Rock around the Clock and had JUST AS MUCH FUN as the kids did. If anything the seniors hammed it up more than the kids did.

I only hope that when my daughter is that age she still loves to get out on stage in front of everyone and show off how much fun she can have (and for that matter I hope I can do the same).