wait for it

My many jobs: erratically chosen, it would appear, far-reaching on the scale of demands and skill requirements. But no! Let me connect them, if not for you, for me. Gym fitness. I see a guy doing tricep push-downs and know he's putting too much stress in his back. I'm not mentally comparing him to a chart of proper form; rather, for that moment, I am him, I inhabit his body and know how it works. As a newcomer I struggle to quickly pinpoint the solution for him, i.e., "pin your elbows in." But as for the knowing, I know. Writing. Entering a topic, stepping into someone's shoes, hearing and staying true to a voice. Allowing yourself to walk into another world or the perspective of a reader makes writing come alive. Stay there. Inhabit that place. Don't wander off for a brief journey to a joke if the mood is somber, no matter how good the joke is. Don't show off a large vocabulary where a simple line will do. Stay in the world. This is more difficult than d...

'Twas the night before Christmas, with yesterday spent boiling a mouthpad--twice, to sink those molars--and being hit, and hitting. Not your normal holiday preparations, but then again today is hardly usual for us. A sick kid is in the next room. Your average winter cold is ominous for the diabetic, and we had communicated with the on call endocrinologist twice before lunch. Next stop is the ER for IVs, he said. Merry Christmas. The line up was such at boxing class that I'd be sparring the teacher. "Oh man," Chad exclaimed, knowing what Emily could be like. "You're in for it." I had figured I'd be up against either a smaller, older man in the class or Emily, and it's saying something that I preferred the man. The preparation for being alone with your opponent and your wits requires people: the boxer is helpless to put on the gloves or the headgear. I stood as a fellow classmate pulled the headgear down over my face, was able to do nothing about t...

When it was determined that the family schedule had shifted, that my husband would now be able to attend my first sparring session, the first response was one of relief. "Oh, good," Greg said. But almost immediately, he corrected himself. "I mean, uh, no. Why don't I let you go handle this first one yourself," he says. "What does that mean?" I ask. "I'm just not sure about this whole you getting hit in the head thing." (He had forgotten I survived this .) "I'm not going to get hit," I said. " I'm so fast that last night I turned the light switch off in my bedroom, and I was in bed before the room was dark." (I've mistaken myself for Muhammed Ali.) Greg continues. "I have this vision of you getting punched for the first time, and just sort of stopping and saying, Hey, wait a second! That hurt!" Apparently, this interest in boxing will be thrown in the corner once I realize it's actually about t...

As I was making lunch today, a snow day, Theo said to me, "It's amazing that you have to cook the food AND count the food." It is, yes. I'm glad for the recognition, especially by the guy it's all for, and especially after a week when diabetes tested my will and soul. Last weekend I found myself pretending, if that's even possible, that diabetes wasn't the elephant in the room. Casually I'd cook meals and not allow time for carb counting, though of course I had to, and of course the shot was waiting. Somehow, yes, I tried to play cool while doing my job. Maybe this was a good thing, but it felt like denial. Sunday night, we're watching AFV, which is followed by Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The kids always beg to watch the first part before heading off to bed, the part that gets Mom crying and Dad angry that he's been manipulated into crying. "Sure, we can watch til the first commercial," I say. The bus, blah blah, meet such-and-suc...

On March 14, 2008, Thomas Towers Sr., 56, lost his son. A young man had driven a Honda Civic off the road and smashed into the car of Thomas Jr., who completed two tours in Iraq and had returned home just six months earlier. The driver, 19 at the time, spent four months in a coma. A blood test showed drugs in his system but no alcohol. Towers didn't want the kid to get eight years in prison, according to an article by Lane DeGregory . That would mean he'd sit "in the air-conditioning, watching TV on the tax payers' dollars." Instead, Towers wanted an apology. Every week. Andrew Gaudioso, now 22, will spend 15 years on drug offender probation sending weekly postcards to Towers, 780 in all. If a postcard doesn't arrive--God bless the postal worker--Towers will call the probation officer, and Gaudioso will be hauled off to prison. "I want him to remember, for the rest of his life, that he killed my son," Towers said. You can understand Towers's pai...

I'm today's featured D-Mom (mom of a child with type 1 diabetes) on d-mom.com . Woohoo! Read the interview by clicking the above badge. A special welcome to all of you who ventured over here from there. My son Theo was diagnosed this past August just before his seventh birthday, and life since then has cycled through many stages. You can read about them in my posts labeled " diabetes/type 1 ," which intermingle with writings on weightlifting, parenting and even boxing, because as you know, life keeps going post-diagnosis. In fact, here's a great example of how diabetes hasn't slowed us down one bit. Theo, at least--I get tired just watching him. Thanks for stopping by!

First, you've got the bag burn on the right (my computer camera reverses images): Then you've got the cut and swollen knuckles on the left. Injury one happened on the bags, injury two...in my bathroom. Let's just say I missed the air while doing my shadowboxing homework. Think I look bad? You should see the sink...