Tech Council Meeting Day With A Twist

It's Wednesday and Tech Council Meeting Day. And Communications Meeting Day first thing at 8:30 AM. Which meant that we couldn't lallygag through breakfast at 8 AM like we did yesterday Johnnie and I. I did let him sleep until well past 7 AM and then woke him up and we ended up making it back from McDonald's by 8 AM anyway. Plenty of time for me to make my breakfast juice, AND avocado toast right before joining the meeting at 8:30 AM. By then I had Johnnie locked in to watching some education.com videos and games until I was done by 9:30. And THEN Johnnie had the idea that he wanted to play basketball today. And so right after the meeting, we put his socks and shoes on and off we went to Mar Vista Park to shoot some hoops. I was hoping there would be a under-regulation basket for him to practice on. Alas, there wasn't. And so Johnnie had to play on the regular hoop. I didn't think he was strong enough to even heave it to touch the rim. Well guess what, he touched the rim with the ball. He didn't make it in, he was still just a touch too small to do that but he handled the ball just fine. And this is a regulation ball mind you. And after 10 minutes of trying to heave it towards the regulation basket, I made do just like I used to when I was a kid. I made my own 'hoop'. In Johnnie's case, it was a tree branch that was about 8 foot tall. I made him shoot it through the branches like a hoop. And guess what... he did just fine doing that. Until I can find him a hoop, I was satisfied that he had actually developed some basketball skills doing STAR! Whaddya know? The best part about the morning was that he had fun and now I know why he would come home sweaty and dirty most days. He simply plays and what kid doesn't do that? At least he was in fun mode until we got home and I made him do some Math to round up the morning. And I got into my grumpy teacher mode <sigh>. I made him do some basic multiplication and 2-digit addition and subtraction. And as is becoming typical, Johnnie got frustrated when he didn't get it quickly. OR maybe I didn't break down the concepts to their basic form like maybe I should have. And MAYBE just maybe, the impatient EGO-ME struck again because I sure wasn't the loving, patient coach just minutes before at the basketball court. I became taskmaster-general and it didn't take long before Johnnie was crying in frustration. I had to flip myself again and soothe and calm him down and show him with patience this time that the steps were something he had already gotten before and simply tends to forget. Are you kidding me? This kid is brighter than most and I KNOW he has no problems with the concepts.  Anyway I made it up to him by making him udon and heating up last night's leftover teriyaki chicken. AT LEAST I know he's eating lunch on my watch.

By the time Tech Council Meeting rolled around it was almost anti-climactic. I had already done some of the material this morning at the Communications Meeting and I did like that I won't have to go next month based on the new Meeting Schedule for Shared Services. I won't go again until August. The meeting went by pretty quickly and smoothly I thought and I was done before 3 PM actually. Done in 56 minutes LOL. And after the meeting back I went to Johnnie's schedule. He had it in his mind that we needed to do 2 sports activities per day and I was perfectly fine with that. Yesterday it was karate for a half hour in the morning and swimming for a half hour in the afternoon. This morning it was 45 minutes of basketball and then in the afternoon, another 30 minutes of karate. I will say that after 2 lessons, his sidekick is looking much better and actually it does now feel like a kick. Like he could actually hurt other kids if he's not careful. I better make sure he understands to use it for self-defense only. By 3:30PM he was done with HIS schedule. I know I know, it almost feels like a year ago when he was still in kindergarten and doing school from home. At least he's learning. At least he's active. And other than the math thing, he had fun I think. I gotta think of some art stuff for him to do as well. He did that on Monday with Lisa when he was at Nikki's. One last learning activity for him today though... and that would be the regular Spanish class of course with Hail. Today though we did NOT go to Lisa's office to do it. We stayed at home. The last 2 weeks we did go and then waited more than an hour for Lisa each time. And cause emotional havoc for me the rest of the week. Not doing that today. He did his lesson, all was good and we both ate dinner right after. Chicken noodle soup for him and cassava pasta and turkey bolognese for me. And we were done eating by 6 PM. The last 2 weeks we would still be waiting for Lisa. As it was she called and asked if we had done the lesson. I simply told her I thought we were going to be doing the dinner thing tomorrow instead. Turned out Courtney was there at her office. Courtney did call me last Monday and left a message asking if she could hang out with Johnnie today. I never returned the call. My bad. And for her part, Lisa was satisfied when I told her I thought we weren't going to see her until tomorrow. I think she was ok simply finishing up her work. And we were ok simply staying home and for Johnnie to go back to watching Pokemon episodes. And for me to watch Episode 5 of Kenobi. We had a good day overall Johnnie and I, even with the Math stuff. The basketball made up for that. Hard work part of the week is over. I can cruise the rest of the week...