He did it…
He lost 12 pounds in 48 hours…
and won the tournament!
But the last 12 hours before the weigh in were not very fun.
When my mother called, I filled her in on the last two days and playfully asked her what she was doing to him. She said, “What do you mean? I had no idea. I lost two pounds!”
I know how she did it…
He ate all of her food!
My son got back from Philadelphia today. He had a great time.
On Tuesday, he went to class with a couple of the wrestlers, answered a question in Calculus class, offered his opinion in an English class. At night, he wrestled with the college wrestlers and held his own.
He spent all yesterday afternoon with my mother and my aunt. They introduced him to a gen-you-wine Philly cheese steak (in New Jersey, of course), took him to a diner and bought him several TastyClairs (by Tastycake). then he went out to the California Pizza Kitchen with some of the wrestlers.
Oh, he had a good time. I’m happy for him.
He must have forgotten that he registered to wrestle in the 160 lb. class in the Kansas State Freestyle tournament on Saturday.
I say he must have forgotten that because he weighs 172!!!
Our new apartment has brand new carpet.
We no sooner got moved in before my wife started saying that she wanted everyone to take off their shoes when they entered the apartment so the carpet would stay nice longer.
We’ll have to see about that.
Perhaps my wife sensed my less than enthusiastic response. Perhaps it is that she has a big heart. Whatever the reason, she gave everyone not one, but two “Get Out of Jail Free” cards (think of the board game Monopoly).
The very first day in the apartment, she brought home a broasted chicken from Costco. This particular one had more juice than normal. Now it has the normal amount…
because she spilled the rest of it on the carpet!
But, her kindness didn’t end there…
On our second night in our new apartment with the new carpet, she was sipping a glass of wine. Because there are boxes everywhere, she was taking great pains to be careful when she set the glass down. Somehow, she still managed to dump the entire glass on the carpet! She still doesn’t know how it happened.
Whatever the cause or the reason, I made sure to thank her kind and understanding response sometime in the future whenever I spill something on the carpet
Our family can’t call it travel unless there are some twists and turns.
My son got on the plane on time. I was really late to work today…45 minutes late.
By the time I finished writing the appeal letter, found the cable to connect the printer to the computer, printed the letter so my wife could proofread it…you get the idea.
He was supposed to catch a connecting flight in Chicago before heading onto Philadelphia. However, a big storm rerouted him to St. Louis for several hours. Instead of arriving in Philadelphia at 7:35 as planned, he arrived in Chicago at 5:25.
If he took the next available flight to Philadelphia, he would have gotten in around midnight. The guy who was going to pick him up can’t do it that late because he has a final tomorrow morning.
So, he arranged to spend the night with friends of our family that moved to the Chicago area quite a few years ago and then fly to Philadelphia in the morning.
At least that is what he told me yesterday…What actually happened is quite different…
Our friends came to pick him up at O’Hare International Airport. There is just one problem with that…
Our son was at Midway. That is 60 miles further away from our friend’s house.
He took the 9:00 flight and some other members of the Drexel wrestling team picked him up at midnight.
I wanted to stop so, so badly.
After my 60th climb up the stairs, I was tired…pooped.
Man, were the excuses flowing…”I worked so hard yesterday…I’m almost 50 years old…”
But the work had to get done…today. What am I going to do, let my wife and kids do it???
So, I pressed on.
My son and daughter did too. They were real troopers.
About 5:00, after we had hauled all of the furniture that won’t fit in the smaller apartment to the storage facility, my son received a phone call…(him and that dang phone!)
It was the guy at Drexel who was going to pick him up from the airport. But he thought that Big A flew in tomorrow.
“What is their problem. I sent them your itinerary. You are flying in on Tuesday!”
When we got back to our old apartment to finish up the last load, my son check his itinerary on his computer.
“Dad, I fly out tomorrow.”
“WHAT???”
“I fly out tomorrow.”
I was stunned. For the next 15 minutes, I walked around slack jawed, shaking my head in disbelief…
“How can that be? We planned it all out!”
Eventually, disbelief faded to a begrudging acceptance.
It was then that I began to grasp the repercussions of my miscue…
I have to finish the appeal letter before I go to work tomorrow morning!!!
I just woke up…
I am unable to describe how tired I am. Words fail me.
And I have another day full of stairs and boxes and furniture ahead of me!
If you read my last post, you know how tired I was at 8:00 last night.
I wrote that post after sending my youngest daughter off to a birthday/pool party. My son wanted to go to youth group so I asked him to drop her off on his way there and pick her up on the way home. I also told him to have a good time, meaning don’t rush home. I wanted Cakes to have a good time.
My phone rang at 10:05. It was my son…
“Dad, after youth group, I texted Sam to see if he wanted to go out for a burger. He said no because he was at his graduation party.”
Sam’s parents are some of our best friends from the wrestling team. They had invited us over two weeks ago and I completely forgot!
“You’re kidding me! I didn’t even think of it. Shoot. I am so sorry!”
“They want you and Mom to come over.”
“It’s after 10:00!”
“I told them that and they said that they still want you to come over.”
So, I hopped into the shower, well…actually, stumbled and fell is probably more accurate and arrived at the party at 10:35!
I want my mommy!
Several months ago, I decided to stop lifting weights. I was at a juncture where I had to commit to seriously training or to stop.
The thought of being “muscular” doesn’t hold the appeal it once did when I was younger. I mean, really, who do I have to impress?
But, I do want to be fit. As I have written on several occasions before, I want to be running when the sand runs out.
So, I decided to incorporate calisthenics into my everyday life…5 1-2 minute sets of jumping rope and two sets of dips on my morning walk, a couple of sets of push-ups and pull-ups at work and then resume my running regimen.
I want to be “functionally fit”.
That is really being tested this weekend…
We are moving…
from one upstairs apartment to another upstairs apartment.
I climbed approximately 100 flights of stairs today. Toward the end day, I was really having a hard time.
To avoid crying, I would say to myself, “Functional fitness…I want to be functionally fit…”
Believe it or not, that helped. It’s a whole lot better thought than “How many more boxes do we have?”
Still, I can’t move. Really…
There is no food or drink or anything that is more appealing than just laying down right now!
There are times when you just need to keep trying…
The letter of appeal is getting closer to being a finished product. I still need to write the opening paragraph.
I think that it has been good for my son to witness the process. The finished product might make it look like magic, or that the writer is “gifted”, but my experience is that effective writing is just lots of hard work. There is no magic.
While I am growing increasingly confident that the finished product represents my best effort to persuade the Financial Aid Committee, I still have no guarantee of success. I am very aware of this fact. I feel like I am flying a plane in a storm and am being forced to trust the instruments. The instruments in this case are a few vague guidelines and my own storytelling instincts.
After writing all Monday afternoon, I called the Financial Aid office on Tuesday in an attempt to glean any further useful information.
Unfortunately, my call was answered by a “by the book, just the facts” kind of woman. No help there…
I wrote more last night. I am starting to like it. However, I ran into a difficulty…
My notes from an earlier conversation with a young from the Financial Aid office man left me thinking that he advised AGAINST mentioning anything about an athletic scholarship.
It’s somewhat difficult to tell our story without that little piece of information. The whole reason I have to write the letter is because the wrestling coach cannot offer my son an athletic scholarship until NEXT year!
If he did say that, I clearly didn’t understand the reasoning behind the advice…
I called the Financial Aid office again today. After winding my way through the automated operator, my call was picked up by…the same young man that I spoke to a few weeks ago!!!
I asked him the big question…
“Oh, no. You should include that. In fact, you should ask the coach if he will write a letter endorsing your son and include that in your packet.”
That’s a great idea!!!
I called the coach…
He is going to hand write a personal letter!!!
My youngest daughter started training for her new job…
She will be a hostess at a very nice restaurant near our apartment, The Bonefish Grille. Inside the restaurant, the lighting is subdued, the food is excellent and the prices aren’t cheap. What I am trying to say is that this is a place where adults work!
Down in Texas, my oldest daughter is starting to square dance with a young man to see if their do-ce-do’s might develop into a parentally approved wrestling match…
that’s all I’m gonna say about that right now (think Forrest Gump)
My son is reading books at night…
You might ask, “How does that fit?”
Well, with all of this standardized testing that he has been going through, he now realizes that his parents WERE really trying to help him by encouraging him to read more. So, he heads to Starbucks every night…TO READ!!!
If my children are growing up, that must mean…
that I’m getting older!
How do you ask someone to give you money?
That is what I have to do.
Fortunately, I haven’t had much practice at it. I say fortunately because I have not needed to ask for money very often.
Drexel is offering to give my son $23,900 in grants and scholarships. That is fantastic. No one offered me anything when I was shopping for schools.
The problem lies in the fact that one year of school costs between $44-51,000!!!
Oh, I forgot…
He also qualifies for $5,500 in loans. That means that we only have to come up with $15,000! … for next year!!!
So, I have spent the past 5 hours writing a letter of appeal to the Financial Aid Committee at Drexel.
I have decided against the “Since the adjustable rate mortgage on our 8,000 square foot summer home in the Hamptons has gone up, we can barely keep up with the payments on the two Mercedes and the yacht” approach. That would be lying…
I’ve decided to just tell the truth, but…
I’ve got to be informative yet not self-indulgent, involving yet not give too much detail, state our case as strongly as possible yet remain brief and succinct. I have to throw myself on the mercy of the committee without throwing away my dignity.
Professional writers charge a pretty penny for something like this. I think I am just going to garnish my son’s wages for the rest of his life if this succeeds!
