So this morning, the lovely Chrissy of "Life with Grayson and Parker" , wrote this: " So many New Year's Resolutions are under the assumption that we are broken. We are doing life all wrong. So much of life already promotes those loathsome feelings- It's exhausting. Life is hard enough..." I've always liked the idea of getting to start over every January. But, that Chrissy has a point. Who came up with this resolution idea anyway? I know, to celebrate this joyous holiday I will sit down and think long and hard about all of the things I hate about myself. But that's not good enough. I will then proceed to write them all down on a piece of paper that anyone in the world could see. And now that I have really cemented them into my mind, and I am feeling good and horrible about myself, I will change the title of the list to "things I want to change this year". Nothing about how I am going to accomplish those changes. Just here is why I suck,
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I am not into celebrities. If you want to know what Snooki named her baby, or who in Tinseltown got married and divorced this weekend, don't ask me. I do not consider the people prancing around on my television role models for my daughter, representatives for women-kind, or at all relevant to real life in any way. So twerk away Miley, I do not care. But I am a martial artist. I learn arm bars and rear naked chokes. I throw punches and knee kicks. I work on traditional katas and do pushups and try to pass the guard and sweet Jesus, I even occasionally throw low kicks which other people check with their shins. ( http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-ufc-20131229,0,7356884.story#axzz2os6WWXVl ) I am not a professional fighter. But I am a woman who loves to fight. And as such, I was thrilled when Dana White finally allowed female fighters into the Octagon. Seeing you armbar Liz Carmouche was incredible. And I could watch you Judo toss people onto the mat all day long. You are a tr
I read a lot of blogs. Most of them are written by parents, or fellow martial artists. But one of them is written by a conservative radio host named Matt Walsh. Here is his blog: http://themattwalshblog.com/ . Today I decided to send him an email. I disagree with almost everything he says. I disagree with almost every comment his readers make. Yet I read this blog every day, and I love it. And not because it makes me angry. Because it makes me think. Dear Matt, I imagine I am not your typical reader. I am a democrat and an atheist. I am for gay marriage, pro-choice and for reasonable gun control. The only posts of yours that I ever agree with are the parenting ones. (I am a mother to a wonderful 6 year old girl.) Even with all those strikes against me I want you to know that I love your blog. First of all, because you are a talented and extremely entertaining writer. And second, I love to read the comments. I am not being sarcastic. You may think that this is going t
Last year, there was no Thanksgivikkah. Hannukah occured during its normal time of year, somewhere around Christmas. And on one cold December day, as I was walking home from the L train, a nice Hasidic man stopped me. "Excuse me, are you Jewish?" Now it just so happens that as far as the Jews are concerned I am Jewish. But since I am of the belief that you should not claim ownership of a religion that you do not actually practice, I do not agree. However, this nice Jewish man was handing out free menorahs to all Jews who happened to be walking down Bedford Avenue. And Maya had been learning about Hanukkah at school. She has Jewish cousins. She even went to their house one year for a wonderful party with dreidels and latkas and all. Don't believe me? Here they are, gambling for gelt: See how Jewish I am? I think Maya would like to light some candles. So I told this to the guy. "No, I am not Jewish. But my daughter is learning all about Hanukkah this year. I th
See that schedule over there? Don't worry if you can't read it, the words aren't important. Just notice how many classes there are. That is all the classes, both adults and children, that we had in our first official month of running a dojo. Ten. Ten classes. Isn't is cute? And lest you think we were being lazy, let me point out that we had no idea what we were doing. And were both still working in other jobs. Oh, and our teacher had just passed away. So those few classes a week were kind of a big deal back then. This is our current schedule. We don't even teach all of them. Some of them are taught by our assistant instructors. Some of them say funny words like "strength and conditioning" or "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu". Some of them actually say that we accept 3 year olds! (Clearly a typo.) In February of 2005 we were renting a small room inside a yoga studio. And now, in December of 2013. we are renting a storefront space on Columbus Ave. We ha
Those of you who know me might be surprised to learn that I leaped out of bed at 6:45am this morning in a panic. And no, I had not been awoken from a nightmare, nor had I finally figured out why my triangle choke doesn't work and couldn't wait to try it out. (Despite living in a house with two obsessed jiu-jitsu practitioners, this does not happen often.) No, the reason for my hurry was that I had forgotten to hide the damn elf! Again. On Wednesday, when I last forgot about the little red gal (my daughter says our elf is female), my husband distracted Maya while I quickly stashed her inside a photo album on my dresser. This morning, thankfully, she was still in her room so I had time to stick the elf inside one of the kitchen cabinets with only her creepy little head pointing out. We are not a religious family. There is no mention of Jesus around the holidays, nor do we tell magical stories about oil that burns for a week. We never did the whole Santa thing, so at a very y
A few days ago Matthew and I got a huge compliment from a fellow martial artist whom we like and respect very much. He commented on our commitment to our training and our teaching. He talked about our strong drive to make the dojo succeed. Finally he gave us credit for being open minded towards our training. (Oh and he said we were doing a good job as parents. But that's for another blog post.) I was incredibly flattered by this person's words. We do work really hard to make the dojo succeed. But that is because it is our livelihood and our passion. Neither one of us have any interest in doing something else with our lives right now. So we need the dojo to work. Also, we have built a wonderful community of students, a family if you will, and are now responsible for keeping them together. Do I enjoy teaching all the time? Of course not; any more than I enjoy training all the time, or being a mommy all the time. There are frustrating days. Disappointing days. Days when th
This won't take long. I know ya'll are busy brining turkey and creating a seating chart that somehow keeps Aunt Mildred as far away from your dad as possible. I just wanted to take this moment to express my sincere gratitude. For everything. Here is how Thanksgiving goes for us. We go to my parents house. They live in Manhattan so we do not have to go anywhere near an airport or a train station. Matthew's dad often comes too. He thinks Obama is a martian sent to Earth to ruin our health care so we do not talk politics at dinner. We eat a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts and pumpkin pie. We all drink wine. My dad drinks enough wine to tell us the story about Tony Terici who lived down the street from him and whose mom made the best tomato sauce. He always prefaces the story by saying "Have I told you about Tony Terici?" Then he falls asleep on the couch. So does my husband, who does not even drink wine. Maya,
To all the mommies (and daddies) in the room, I apologize. There have been a lot of posts about training lately. And all you, sleep deprived, wine craving folks who are down in the trenches with Lego pieces embedded between your toes like shrapnel, deserve a blog post too. (You ever step on the two piece, at 5am, on route to the toilet? Yeah, that.) And ya'll might be wondering, as you desperately chug your Mocchachino, how can I relate to these silly jiu-jitsu posts? I don't roll around on a mat in my pajamas. I don't get a thrill out of punching dudes in the ribcage. Here's how. This ones for you. Last night Maya was wearing her cranky pants. In other words, she had the sour face and snappy voice of a 14 year old girl on her period. (Don't worry, this is not insensitive. It's ok for me to say this because I once was a 14 year old girl on her period. Isn't that how it works? Like saying the n word?) What this meant is that every interaction we had we