i'm leaving on a jet plane

it's been so long since i've complained about my general maladies. hasn't it? i know you all are dying to hear about some maladies. well here goes ...

first off, with the rigorous summer reading schedule i really wore myself out. all those programs, and then us being down a manager ... it was tough. and for the past two months i've been getting sick fortnightly (i love the word "fortnight") ... so at first i tried to rest in my down time and take it easy. this of course was very boring and i missed out on lots of fun summer activities. and wouldn't you know it? it didn't even work anyway. and it was so boring.

so last weekend i decided i would ride in the nyc 20th century bike tour, even though i was recovering from illness. of course, i decided that since i was not in tip top shape the best thing for me to do would be to sleep late. so my friends began the ride at 7 am up in central park at 110th street, while i slept all cozy cuddly with the bolshevik. then at around 9:30 i got a phone call from miss fifi who had made it to prospect park already, and was politely asking me where the hell i was. oh miss fifi! so i finally emerged from bed, bid the bolshevik adieu, and got on my bike. by the time i got to propect park the riders were long gone, but then i booked it to coney island in record time and was able to reunite with miss fifi at marine park! i am SO good. and then we had a lovely time riding off into the sunset together. all in all, i rode 40 miles of the 55 mile ride (fifi rode even longer since she had riden about 10 miles just to get to the start line!)

but then dear blog readers, as i was tasting the sweet taste of success, i began to feel this strange pain in my knee. oh the pain! i've never been injured before due to sporty sporty-ness. ouch. even my free finish-line massage didn't help. so i've kinda been hobbling around ever since, applying the tiger balm and keeping it elevated and all that.

so then this week, my stupid sore throat came back AND i was hobbling around and it was all very sad. but the show must go on!

so yesterday we did something quite fab, despite my maladies ... at boy's club i decided to have a paper plane competition. i printed up a bunch of different paper plane templates from the internets, and set them up at various parts of the room. i gave the boys about 30 minutes to make as many planes as they wanted, telling them they would be judged on flight distance as well as plane style. so they had a fine time making the planes and coloring them with markers yada yada yada. i noticed a lot of them had some trouble following the basic directions, the trouble being that they refused to read them. so i think we will do more things where they have to read and follow directions. then we had the flight competitions where they threw their planes onto the "runway" and i placed little masking tape pieces where each plane landed. it was very exctiting and our top winners all received prizes. afterwards one of the boys came up to me and said he had so much fun and he didn't even mind that he didn't win a prize. ah, super sweet.

oh, and on the subject of planes i will be going on a TWO WEEK vacation very soon to argentina, accompanied by my beloved bolshevik. ay ay ay!