Sam is still taking karate. Since the three initial private lessons he took to earn his white belt, he's now in his dojo's "Little Dragons" class, for very young children and beginners. The dojo has a very interesting set-up for this; it works like a gym membership, where you pay a monthly fee and then can go during the week to any of the classes at your level, as well as to any "open dojo" times. Ordinarily, one of us will take him on Thursday evenings (Gabe is "persona non grata" there at the moment, since one of us has to physically restrain him to keep him from running wildly onto the mats, and the screaming from that is distracting to everybody there), but last night we finished dinner early enough and he had enough extra energy that I decided to take him in for an extra class.

The Tuesday class - which, like the other class, is only a handful of children - is apparently a little more advanced than the Thursday class. Although they were all still white belts, the other four kids were all preparing to compete at an upcoming tournament. Sam had only done once before the kata that they were practicing, so he was really out of his element. I really like his sensei, though; he managed to keep Sam involved as best he could be, even though Sam kept getting completely lost and mixing up his right and left legs as often as he got them right. I was amazed at how quickly Sam caught on the the parts that I knew were new to him, such as how to enter a ring during a tournament. He followed the other kids' lead, marched into the ring at attention, and grinned his most cheerful grin as he said, with little prompting, "Judges, my name is Samuel R., my style is Shorei-Ryu, and my kata is First Tai Ki Yoko." Of course, he had no idea what any of that meant, but that didn't faze him a bit. (By the way, I'm taking my spellings from his dojo's handbook; when I Google, I get lots of different spellings, but the video I link looks like what they were doing last night, anyway.)

I am, by the way, really grooving on the level of discipline his sensei demands. Last week, when I took Sam, he was playing around when it was time to go, and when I called to him, he didn't immediately respond. His sensei, who was talking to somebody else, spun around and said, "Samuel, your mother called you! You need to obey!" Sam got wide-eyed, said, "Yes, sir," and hurried after me. That's something with which I can get on board.

There was also another little guy there last night, several years older than Sam, who was visibly radiating waves of machismo; he was obviously "too cool for rules," and he was putting himself up against the teacher in a way that looked like...well, it looked like something you might see on a nature channel on TV, where a young buck decides to test himself against the older stag with his brand new antlers. The results were similar to that scenario, too; the sensei, after brusquely sending him to restart the kata several times when the boy sloppily stomped into the ring and muttered his greeting, finally told him he wouldn't be participating in the class like that and sent him to sit in the corner of the ring and watch. When the boy rejoined the class, he was better behaved. There's no tolerance for rudeness; I appreciate that.

It's a lot of fun to watch Sam try to fit in with the big kids and learn a skill like this. God knows I love him the way he is, in all his goofy glory, but the poor kid did inherit his parents' lack of athletic skill. I hope he keeps an interest in karate for a very long time, because in the brief period he's been practicing it, I can already see so much improvement in his ability and his balance.

Newsflash: my kitchen is a nightmare. I just sent Eric this email:

"To reface or replace the absolutely grody cabinets and shelves...
To paint: ceiling, walls, trim...
To put down a new floor cover (and I don't really care about getting fancy shmancy, since tis not our forever house; new nice-looking peel 'n stick in a lighter color would suit me fine)...

Leaving alone everything else (appliances, etc.), is this something too expensive to look into doing? We can do the painting and the floor ourselves."

I know he's going to respond with "Not right now," since the current debate is whether to spend our tax return money on carpeting the old hardwood floors (they're starting to splinter in places, so they either need to be refinished or covered some other way) or on blowing away a chunk of debt. I know we most likely can't do one of those and the kitchen at the same time, but I'd really like to at least have an estimate on all options, so we know how long we would have to wait or whether we could do part now and part at a later date.

About the hardwood floors: I really don't get how many people feel that it's easier to take care of hardwood than it is to care for carpet. It is way more simple for me to take out the vacuum ever other day or so than it is to get out a broom and dustpan every time I see a piece of dust or dirt, and it's harder to ignore those tiny reminders on wood than it is on carpet. I'm not looking for a license to slack, but my nerves don't go as nuts with carpet. Plus, our stairs have cracks between the boards, and Gabe has a new habit of trying to slip things down into the cracks; covering them up with at least a runner is looking pretty important.

I hate our kitchen cabinets. They're very, very old; the shelves are held in on ancient wooden slots, and the doors won't stay closed well. The drawers under the counter are hard to open and close, and they're heavy and like to come off their tracks if you pull them out too far. The shelves over the stove are nasty; there's no room for a vent over our range, so the smoke and grease get all over them and I have tried and tried to get them clean, but it doesn't work. I really have disgust for it all.

What I'd like to do is put in a lighter colored floor (it's dark green now, and there are permanent spots on it that predate us), at least reface if not replace the cabinets in a lighter wood or paint color, and change the light pink walls to something cooler - blue, maybe. The trim definitely needs to be painted as well, though the white there doesn't bother me.

But if it has to wait, it has to wait. It's just something that bugs me, is all. (Bugs me greatly.)

Yesterday Gabe took me on an hour-long walk through the neighborhood, babbling and hopping and jogging and generally burning fifty zillion calories per block the whole time. When I had Sam out at karate, Gabe convinced Eric to take him on another long walk. The kid likes being outside in the sun; he's making up for a Wisconsin winter as quickly as he can.