The Dichotomy of the Day

The hum of life is indeed magnificent and today hummed oh so well. My wife and I may have found a television program we both agree to watch and last night marked the second week in a row I actually sat down and watched the program with my wife. The program “Raising the Bar” on TNT is a well crafted legal show produced by the venerable Stephen Bochco of “Hill Street Blues” fame and many other excellent series. I have been intrigued by this show but it does have a great deal of “LA Law” and “Law & Order” similarities. I guess at this point creating something new and fresh with this theme is difficult but as I mentioned the show is intriguing. I think if I do like the second season of “Heroes” and if “Raising Bar” continues to be intriguing these will be the two programs my wife and I will watch together. Ironically both shows air on the same evening (Monday) but with the advent of the DVR we can watch either show at anytime.

This morning I made it a point to walk the children to school. My daughter had asked me yesterday when I would take them to school and I responded with “tomorrow” so this morning I was walking while they rode their bicycles to school. Actually my daughter rode her bicycle while my son took his scooter. My son’s bicycle had a flat tire and I need to fix the tire so he is relegated to the scooter. Often times I believe my son prefer the scooter over the bicycle and he has gotten quite good doing “tricks” on his scooter. The “tricks” consist of jumping over curbs and really just riding on the “edge”.

As we went to school my son was attempting one of these “tricks” on the sidewalk and the next thing I know he fell off the scooter and was sprawled on the ground. I did watch the entire episode transpire but it was something out of a science fiction movie as time seemed to stop for an instance as he fell to the ground. There was nothing I could do because I was a good 20 feet behind him so I was indeed powerless. Thankfully he didn’t even suffer a scrape on his entire body.

He did go down hard and there were some tears but after a brief pep talk he was back on the scooter riding to school. My goodness children are so resilient and I have found as long as I don’t make a big deal of the incident everything seems to progress nicely. This was the case this morning and my daughter was funny because she didn’t see any of the incident and kept asking “what happened?” I explained and to her credit she showed some empathy to her brother but that lasted a few seconds as she just shrugged it off knowing he was okay.

The children were safely off to school and I headed back home. It was interesting this morning because my son’s teacher introduced herself to me even though we had met earlier in the school year which was only a few weeks ago. I guess I have that effect on people!!! I’m sure she was just being polite and wanted to make sure she did introduce herself and I treated it as if we did meet for the first time. I didn’t have any interaction with our children’s teachers while they resided in New Jersey and my perspective is only on the teachers out here in California. These teachers are so nice and yes, I remember my teachers back in New Jersey and for the most part they too were very nice but the teachers out here are a different type of nice. They seem to genuinely care and when my son stated this morning that he prefers the school out here in California over the school in New Jersey I felt really good.

I had to ask my son why he preferred the school out here over in New Jersey and no, it wasn’t because the teachers are nicer it was due to the fact that they get to go outside for lunch and recess. In New Jersey the children were relegated to staying indoors for the duration of the school year and I think this illustrates a very large difference. My son needs to be outside and thankfully we live in an area we he can be outside all year long. This all adds to the overall atmosphere of the school out here because the school campus is designed as just that a campus with entries from the outside. There aren’t any hallways or corridors and each classroom open up to the outside world. In New Jersey the schools were buildings and had hallways along with corridors and all the classrooms were inside that building. It was good to hear that my son was happy being out here because he started his scholastic career in New Jersey whereas my daughter started her scholastic career out here in California. My daughter was looking forward to going back to the school where she started and now my son is reaping those benefits.

The work day went well as I went into the office for most of the day. A colleague was starting and I wanted to be there as we needed to work on a few issues. I have a multitude of things to tend to but I will apply the Gamblers Anonymous Program principles as I will tackle one thing at a time. I know things are going to work out for the very best and there are little hurdles in the way such as being given the incorrect 800 number on my cell phone. I was given the telephone number for our Spanish speaking clients and I was wondering why I was getting all these “strange” telephone calls and now I know why. This slight problem was corrected and now I have a new 800 telephone number presumably for English speaking clients.

With the work day behind me I headed home because my daughter had game number 2 of her softball season. My daughter needed this game because she had a hard day at school. It started with her getting a C- on her math homework because the math homework wasn’t checked properly last night. This does go back to me but in my defense I have an agreement with my daughter that she needs to give me the math homework to check when she finishes. My daughter didn’t finish until it much later than usual and thus the math homework went unchecked. The bad school day didn’t end there as my daughter received a 68% on her science test because she forgot to study. I observed my daughter yesterday as she was doing her homework and I realized she needs a place where she can concentrate on the homework. I noticed my daughter getting distracted very easily and thus losing her place. Yes, she has more homework than ever before but I think if she focuses a little better she won’t be doing 3 hours worth of homework.

Anyhow my daughter had a bad day at school but this all changed at the softball game. My daughter was very down when she came home from school but her attitude changed dramatically when she got on the softball field. I saw a smile and I saw her joking around with her teammates. She seemed to seemingly put the bad day behind her and was being a kid on the softball field. She had a very good game walking her first time at bat where she scored a run and in her second at bat smacked a double to right field driving in a run and she also did score another run. The game was hard fought by both teams and unfortunately my daughter’s team came up one run shy as they lost 11-10. The final score didn’t matter to my daughter because the bad at score had been replaced by a great day on the softball field, my goodness how things can change in only a few hours!!!!