Happy Birthday to me...

So, it's my birthday, its 9:13 AM, and its already been quite a day. I woke up at 5:00 am when the Monkey came into our room, flounced onto the bed and said, over and over again, "downstairs, downstairs," except that when he says it, it sounds like "downchairs, downchairs." Between me rubbing his back and then the QB finally picking him up and rocking him for a minute, he fell back to sleep. And when Mr. Baseball woke up at Six the QB got up with him and let me sleep in until 6:30 (which is a full half-hour longer than we've been getting up the past week, so I appreciated the extra sleep).

I had a few papers to grade this morning, so I did that while the QB did the morning stuff and at 7:15 we had breakfast--a Franklin birthday breakfast, which is a hold over from the QB's family tradition--a box of sugar cereal. Since we usually eat Cheerios, raisin bran, or occasionally Frosted Mini Wheats, sugar cereal is like eating desert for breakfast.

We had Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Mr. Baseball and I had two bowls each. At the table I said to the QB, "Can you imagine if we ate this stuff every morning?" And now, I'm thinking that, as a kid, we did. Not that I ate sugar cereal ever at home (I only got it once or twice a year, usually in my Easter basket) but that I use to put so much sugar in my cheerios that it layered the bottom of the bowl and it filled half my spoon with every bite.

So then I road my bike to school and the weather was pleasant, for November 10th. The sun was coming up behind me, the wind blew gently, the river caught the light of the rising sun, giving off a brilliant, if illusionary sense of nature, and NPR was running a story on Barack Obama's transition to the White House. What could be better?

In class, my students and I workshopped two essays--one about addiction, and one about mixed martial arts fighting like UFC. I've never been a fan of MMA, but the student author was convincing enough that I pulled up a short video of something called a "flying arm bar," which I'd never heard of, and now, after having seen the video, am convinced that it's the most amazing martial arts move I've ever seen.





So, however you feel about mixed martial arts, maybe you can appreciate, as I did the "shock and awe" affect of this move. I think I'll stick to thumb wrestling with Mr.Baseball.

After class, I walked into the office and saw this image on the computer. I laughed for five minutes and then sat down to write this post.




Who knows what the rest of this birthday will have in store for me. If the past three hours are any indication, it should be fun.