Post of the day...no way

I've been feeling trampled upon by life lately. Everywhere I turn there's strife and hardship. Nothing new. I'm usually the first person to tell someone, "Welcome to life bub. Now it's time to stop whining and put on your big girl panties." But dang, every segment of my life is throwing flack at me right now.

Then yesterday I decided that I'd had enough glum and it was time to find the glory. I want to start writing down the single thing that makes every day unique or special, whatever that thing might be. I'm calling it "my daily neato." And then I thought, wow, what a great way to give me something to blog about! Besides all the other things I want to blog about but usually ending up ranting about in emails to friends (hi Curtis).

And then I realized who I was talking about...me. While I am going to keep a journal about these bits of subjective singularity, I don't know if I'll be able to catalog them all here. That's really asking a lot of myself, but I'll do my best to make a quick post as often as I can.

But really, in only two days of paying attention, I've experienced several things to post about. The world and Life are out there, I just have to pay attention when it happens. When I had this thought, I of course said, well hey, that's my first post! And I bore witness to some really cool stuff in just the 45 minutes of my sons' karate class.

First, during class they practiced their version of a kata, and I got to see my son perform it flawlessly. It was very cool to see him demonstrate that much focus and precision.

At the beginning of class, while I was trying to read a short story by Jim Butcher, a mother walked through trailing three young kids in tow. One was a newborn, 2-months tops. The other two were roughly 4 and 10. Plus, she had a child in the class, probably filling that gap between the other two. Wow. Four kids, three sitting with her. That meant that either there's no husband or that he works evenings or nights. Yet she cares enough to get one of her kids to karate. Then I saw that she was studying a psychology text book, looked like an Intro text.

And that was my Daily Neato for yesterday: A harried mom who had a good parental-grip (at that time, at least) on the three of her four children and was taking notes on her college class in those few moments of peace that I'm sure are so infrequent in her day. It gave me a warm fuzzy and would make a great observed scene in a story, much like I've used it here.

My Neato for today is a page on Edutopia (a website for teachers) that showcases several videos about how to use technology in the classroom. Not just the usual stuff like SmartBoards and music, but how teachers can use Twitter, YouTube, and even the Nintendo Wii in the classroom. Very cool and future-thinking. I mean, how quickly would you bond with your students if they knew that YOU know what YouTube is and even show videos from it in the class or as homework?



Reading: Invincible, Vol. 9 by Robert Kirkman