Many Disjointed Thoughts

Day baseball means time for me to knit today! I'll change over to my baseball sock and see if I can make some progress on it. If I make progress I'll post a new photo next time. It is not worth it yet. After school the kiddos can play outside and I can bring out a chair, a radio, and a lemonade and knit away. Hopefully the Tribe will be more energized than they were yesterday when we gave up an embarrassing loss. I'll be listening for the injury update too. Yesterday it was beautiful but chilly, so they enjoyed a lunch on the porch in the play house.Knitting on the green/brown socks is going well. I got to take in a two-hour sparring class at Tae Kwon Do last night because German school is having an Easter break. This is the first time I have been able to see a class with so many black belt sparring matches. I'm very impressed! I also got to work enough rows on the second sock that it overtook the first. My own student in the sparring class usually only gets to spar in the summer so I was very pleased with how much her sparring had improved. I arrived in time to see three of her four matches. She made her opponents work much harder than I'd seen before because she remembered she has arms, and arms can be used for blocking. She also used more kinds of kicks to score points than I'd seen before. She won two of her matches.

A few weeks ago steady progress at the piano took a turn for the worse. Dd seemed to forget every basic she once knew. So Dh, the music instructor, took her back to the very first theory book and had her read aloud. Then he quizzed her on the information. The other lessons are on hold until she reviews all the theory books she has covered thus far. Now piano practice is an even larger chore for her because she "isn't learning anything new." Hearing that she is cementing the basics into her head doesn't help. This music program does help. It has the feel of a game and times how quickly notes are recognized. It also has logs where Dh can check dd's progress. And it was reasonably priced.

Thank you, Polly, for recommending this book. I'm enjoying the mirthful look at how the political continuum is simply circular. I think we discussed that on another venue in the past, no? I can see my family when I was growing up in this book. And my love of reading and family dinners, gardening, etc. I think of my school-teacher grandmother in the Bronx who hated cooking and my mom who made her career in nutrition. Mom worked when her children were in school and loved cooking for the family and growing her own veggies. Another favorite memory from my home growing up...hearing music. Mom humming or singing the words to whatever Dad was playing. It seems someone was always playing piano. I still love to hear piano music in the house. Here Dad's playing a piece from The Chocolate Soldier. He still plays for me when I visit for Latin class on Wednesdays.