April 12, 2006

Weirdness

I have become accustomed to about 60 visitors a day to my site. So, you can understand why I seriously almost sent my iced tea flying out my nose when I checked my visitor stats and saw 535 visitors this afternoon since midnight. What the? Amalah.com Amalah.com Amalah.com-referring website? Huh? I mean, I know I tagged Amalah last night, but I never expected that Amalah would be such a good sport. Even if she decided to complete the tagging task, I NEVER in a million years thought that I would get not one, but TWO links from her post back to my site. As it stands this evening, I have had 1050 visitors today. OH. MY. GOD.

I remember when I first discovered Dooce, and I read on her bio page about how "dooced" had become a word with multiple meanings. One of the definitions was to be "dooced," as in she mentions you or includes a link to your site and you experience a HUGE, mind-blowing influx of traffic. Well, I am here to say that I have officially been "amalahed." All you blog traffic sites ain’t got nothin’ over being amalahed. I hope that some of the Amalah traffic will like what they read enough to come back again sometime. And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. . .

Tonight at karate I found out something weird about myself. If you have any experience in the martial arts, you know how to make a knife hand and can skip to the next paragraph. If you don’t, a knife hand is a strike in karate, like a punch. Instead though, your hand remains straight, not balled up in a fist. All fingers stay smack against each other. It slices through the air like a knife, thus the name "knife hand." When you make this knife hand, your thumb is supposed to be slightly bent in, towards your open palm.

Since I became a 5th kyu green belt a few weeks ago, my instructor has been watching me like a hawk it seems. Now seems to be the time to go back and reexamine everything, even the simple stuff. Is my punch aimed at the right spot? Are the knuckles facing the right direction? Are the blocks ending at the right place? etc. etc. etc. Tonight, my instructor came over while we were reviewing the 10 step blocking drill and started staring intently at my knife hands. Something was obviously very wrong.

"Bend your thumb in when you do knife hands," my instructor said. And then a strange thing happened. I bent my thumb the way I was supposed to. . .and my pointer finger came along for the ride. Not all of it, but the portion from the top knuckle to the end of my finger. I tried again. The same thing happened. My instructor stared more intently. "Can you keep your other finger straight?" Apparently, I can not. Everyone else can do it: my classmates, my husband, my daughter, even my Mom because I called her to trick her into showing that she has a pulley thumb too so I could blame genetics once again. . . the woman, her hands work properly. What is up with that?

I can see myself now, having to explain to the panel of black belts at testing a few years from now, why my knife hands just don’t look like everyone else’s and how they should just pass me anyway. I’m unique; who cares that my thumb and forefinger are apparently very in touch with each other? That one can’t move without the other. It’s weird. I wish I had known this last night for the whole weird post.

Speaking of explaining things, would someone please tell me how to explain daylight savings to a 5-year old? Whenever we go anywhere in the evening, we have this conversation:

Big I: Mommy, is it morning (pronounced "more nang") or night?

Me: It’s night.

Big I: Well (said with ‘tude), it looks like morning.

Me: Well, it’s not. It’s evening or night, whatever you want to call it.

Big I: But it looks like morning.

Me: Listen, Big I, there are three parts to the day: morning, afternoon, and evening. Right now is what we call ‘early evening.’ It’s closer to bedtime than it is to breakfast.

Big I: But it’s light outside.

Me: I know, but that’s because of the time change. We change the clocks and then it looks like it’s still day time but it’s really night.

Big I: I don’t get it.

Several minutes pass. . .

Big I: Is it morning or is it night?

Me (defeated): Night.

Big I: Do I have to get in jammies when we get home?

Me: Yes, please.

Big I: But it looks like morning.

And it continues. . . sort of like shampoo instructions, "lather, rinse, repeat" except in this scenario, it’s just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, until the last strand of sanity is completely washed down the figurative drain. I seriously start to get annoyed and then just start cracking up laughing, (which annoys and confuses her worse).

Occasionally, she gives me this line after this endless loop of a conversation:

Big I: Never mind, I will just ask my daddy when I get home. . . he’s really smart.

This is what she pulled on me the other night when she asked how dinosaurs had babies. When I told her they hatched out of eggs, she cracked up laughing, said, "no, no, no" and then the whole "I’ll ask daddy thing," which really burns me up. I mean, I know I married a valedictorian and all, but it’s not like I’m the missing link or anything. . . but come to think of it. . . has anyone seen a monkey’s hands?