Bike ride, anyone?

I had hoped to post a book review today, but I didn't have a large enough window of time.

So here, instead, is a great little organized, supported (as in, with rest/food stops) local bike ride to do with kids: The Challenge Bike Ride on May 2. It's an easy 25 mile ride through Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos, and Los Altos Hills, and you can drop in or out at any point along the route (which it seems they haven't finished planning). It's sponsored by the El Camino YMCA, from the looks of it, and there's also a festival/party from 12:00-3:00 at the YMCA itself.

Oh, come on. II

A couple of items from the NYTimes.

First, about families who are hiring occupational therapists to teach their children how to hold pencils and crayons:

"One father on the Upper East Side said anxiety about his son’s grip — his 3-year-old holds crayons in his fist — propelled him to seek therapy.

“The nursery admission people tell you they want your child to be ready to learn how to write,” said the father, who spoke anonymously so his son wouldn’t run afoul of nursery school administrators. “And I knew they would take one look at the way my son held a crayon and he’d be out of the running.”"

I mean, really. How pathetic have we become? I say "we," but I really mean those fancy-schmancy private school families in New York and, well, Los Altos, maybe. TZ doesn't hold his pencil properly, but his handwriting is fairly neat, for a 6-year-old boy. Although to be perfectly honest, it would solve a problem if I could just hire someone to teach him (his teacher is clearly not doing it) because he won't listen to me about it and I'm sick of nagging.

Speaking of sick, then there's the House Republicans' and conservative Dems' refusal to pass the health care bill. It's not fair of me to say just pass the damn thing because I don't even really know what's in it exactly. I'm just going on blind faith in Obama and the Democrats in Congress that it's sort of what I want--a tentative, half-assed but better than nothing move toward universal coverage (as if I understood the complexities involved in making that a success and a reality), and deletion of the anti-abortion language that was in House Version 1.0. Just effing cooperate, just do what's right and not what's politically expedient. Hah.

I said that RT ordered satellite service for the Olympics, but as it turns out, I've watched about half of it on my laptop anyway. Watching it on TV, even with Tivo, turns out to be an enormous time sink. I love Shaun White--how does a person get to be that much better than everyone else in the world? And he's only, what, 23? He's just a baby. Really.

ski injuries

Up at Badger Pass in Yosemite, T spent a day snowboarding and almost a day skiing; last run of the day, of course, and we're going to try an intermediate run. It's a little too close for comfort as we move forward to get onto the lift, but T decides to go for it, and I decide to let him. The chair comes swinging around way too fast and knocks T off his feet, but he manages to cling onto the side of the chair, half on, half off. "Jump!" someone says, and he drops off, and moments later so do I. I cross over, and he's floundering in the snow, in tears, speechless. We manage to get back on the lift (I don't know why the lift operator didn't stop the lift, or why I didn't ask him to), and halfway up, T says his head still hurts, and he can't ski down the mountain. He falls off the lift at the top, blames me (of course) and complains about his head again.

Skip to the end of the story, five hours later at a children's hospital in Fresno. T has been on a backboard since the top of the mountain, completely immobilized and miserable and weeping. But it turns out after the x-rays have been examined that he's fine. And yesterday (the next day) it's as if nothing happened to him at all.

And then we watch all these horrific wipeouts on the women's and men's downhill, and I think, "What was I worried about?" Although probably they all were x-rayed just in case, as well.

In other news, Apolo Ohno is just such a hottie. And his teammate, J.R. Celski, is half, too. I couldn't be prouder.

Speed Skating and Scarlet Fever

RT signed us up for satellite so we could watch the Olympics on TV. Tonight, we watched speed skating--the mens' 5000m. 23-yr.-old Dutchman Sven Kramer won by several seconds.

Sez TZ: Mom, do you think I could be faster than that guy when I grow up?
M: Well, maybe. If you work really hard.
TZ: I think I can go faster than him.

Afterwards, the boys did laps up and down the hall, playing Olympic speed skater. Drove me a little nuts so close to bedtime, but it was better than Clone Wars.

Poor TZ has scarlet fever. I know, who gets that anymore? Mary Ingalls actually went blind from it in one of the Little House books (By the Shores of Silver Lake, to be specific). Turns out that scarlet fever is just a variety of strep. The good doctor, who needs to work on his manner with patients, prescribed some liquid medicine, which TZ rejected. After whining and weeping about how awful it was going to be, and lots of dramatic sniffing and gagging, he spat it out three times. So I called and got a prescription for pills, which hopefully he'll swallow. Ha. Is it cruel to tell him he'll go blind if he doesn't take his medicine? So far, he seems to be getting over the strep anyway, as evidenced by the speed skating.