So, we remember

Faron told me pointedly that it has been a long time since I updated this.

Today, on my 4th day off, I am making time.

The girls are playing downstairs, something that SOUNDS wildly fun. I'm swallowing coffee and moaning to myself that there is more laundry to do, that I have to think of something for supper, that I need a shower and to finish the girls room (in the middle of setting up bunk beds and rearranging.)

Days off are nice, would be nicer if I could just turn off the household responsibility portion of my brain....oh believe me, I'm already fairly successful at it, however it moreso falls on actual work days, not so much on off days.

My job continues to be a joy, a source of great frustration and of intense work, but a joy with the small moments of victory. Someone made eye contact and responded to my smile....that is HUGE!

Someone asked me if they could talk to me about what was bugging them. TREMENDOUS!

Building repoire with these young teens is really one step forward and 10 steps back. A moment of connection, followed by their personal pull back and the violent shove back applied to me. I get it. I know that. I've done that! Being on the recieving end, not so easy folks.

That brings me to the thanks I need to pour out on the "grown ups" who stuck with me through all my shove offs.

While I have investments in my students, I don't have identity investments in them, so when the epithets are flying and the hand grenades are being lobbed, when the desk slams into the wall and the chair follows soon after.. I'm not phased personally by the "shove off". I understand how scary it is having to give up the tight control over the vulnerable emotions to someone. How it feels like if all of them aren't scratched and clawed and yanked back under wraps, the world will see you exposed and that is frightening.

My Bright sides

Jaala and Leisha started Karate last week, oh are they ever cute! Master Gil is their sensei and the dojo is very near our house. It's bitterly expensive but the girls have asked for more than a year to start, and finally we came up with the start up fees! (of course shit stick is supposed to help out, but he can't even see fit to pay for their essentials, so guess how much he's helping out with this...if you said "zero" you'd be right!)

Leisha is super flexible and has no problem doing the leg exercises! Jaala has powerful long legs and a crazy hard roundhouse kick!

Here are some pictures of them looking oh so sweet in their gi's!

All decked out!

Practicing

Bowing

with their zen master, Faron.

It's remembrance day, do you remember? The world is at war, Sudan, Darfur, Congo, Kinshasa, Chad, CAR, Iraq, Afghanistan, Isreal, Palestine, Lebanon, the list is longer. Heartbreakingly long.

Someone said "never again" to the holocaust, the genocide.....how many times have genocides been carried out since 1945? So, we remember that this is wrong, we remember that this is not the way we want our world to be.....so we remember, but what do we do about it?