Words for Wednesday: The Recession and the Future

It's been a while since I've done a Words for Wednesday, but this week's words inspired me, and also I can not often resist a rhyming challenge.

'Words for Wednesday' is a writing prompt held by Delores at Under the Porch Light.
Use some or all of the week's words, write a poem or a story or part of a story, and visit Delores' current week's prompt to let her know you've joined in.

This week there were two lists; I chose the rhyming one:

trepidation

stagnation

depreciation

domination

acclimatization

corroboration 

Here is my effort:

The Recession and the Future

The GFC caused wide stagnation

Unemployment, depreciation

The end of the US domination

Of economic occupation

Now things are getting better, slowly

So they say, though here in lowly

Mortal world it doesn’t seem so

Money’s tight and jobs are more so

We read the news with trepidation

Stories lend corroboration

To fears and predeterminations

Nothing seems in moderation

Is it a question of familiarisation?

What’s the secret of acclimatization

To economic deprivation

And social want and dislocation?

We hope for better, kinder days

A future mapped in better ways

We wait and wonder what will follow

When today becomes tomorrow.

Tomorrowland

When I was a kid my favorite ride at Disneyland was It's a Small World, but my favorite of the four lands was Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland entrance 1967
Tom Simpson/Flickr CC

Tom Simpson/Flickr CC

ATIS547/Flickr CC

Loren Javler/Flickr CC

Loren Javler/Flickr CC

Space Mountain was awesome - and the first proper roller coaster I liked.

The Monorail was kind of cool, though I never really understood the grown-ups' enthusiasm for it.

The People Mover was fun, because it took you past (or through) all the other good stuff.

But my favourite ride in Tomorrowland was the Adventure Thru Inner Space.


I loved every minute of it - from sitting enveloped in the blue, egg-shaped chairs, to entering the dark tunnel and being "miniaturised", even the huge creepy eye "looking" at us through the telescope. For a kid steeped in afternoon reruns of The Twilight Zone, and who loved science and daydreaming, it was perfect.

ATIS547/Flickr CC

I loved waiting in line and seeing the riders go into the telescope and then come out tiny at the other end:

ATIS547/FlickrCC

Yes, on our first time there I asked my parents if those were the real people...

ATIS547/Flickr CC

Recently all this came back to me, suddenly, when I read an article about retrofuturism (you know the sort of thing: The Jetsons, houses under glass domes, meals in pill form, flying cars, etc). That shiny, happy, optimistic vision of the future reminded me of Tomorrowland.

My kids and I often talk about the future, as I started a kind of game with them about a year ago, where we imagine what cool things will exist in the future, and what their lives will be like. We talk about driver-less cars, working whatever hours you want, making meals at the touch of a button, flying to work with a jet-pack, things like that.  It's a lot of fun, and I do think kids should always be excited and optimistic about the future.  Kids these days can sometimes seem cynical and somewhat pessimistic, which may be a function of the times they're living through, or perhaps they always were. We do underestimate how canny kids are after all.

"The Future" by A 

I showed the kids the Corning video A Day Made of Glass on YouTube and they (and I) were in awe. We talked about how their houses in future would be like this, or at least partly like this, and I made no mention of the fact they'd probably have to be rich to have it, or that they might not ever be able to buy a house at all, or that even at best this vision of the future, like all others have ever been, is likely completely wrong.  We do also discuss whether some of these things - like flying cars - will ever really happen, or it they are too impractical, and to what degree we can or cannot imagine the future.

But mostly we just let our imaginations go and talk about what cool, awesome, labour saving inventions they will have when they are grown up.

Kids should see the future as a world of awesome and enriching possibility.

12 Resolutions: November (and October recap)

Hello again.

It's that time of year. Things are busy. But I haven't forgotten my November resolution (thanks Pandora for the nudge).


This year I'm playing along with #12Resolutions on Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to set yourself short-term, achievable goals, one each month. 

For October my goal was to get more sleep. 

Tick! I took that to heart. I've been trundling off to bed at a reasonable hour and feeling all the better for it, for the last few weeks. It has curtailed on online activity significantly, unfortunately. 
But there are only so many hours in the day and you can't do everything.

So anyway, on to November.

For November I'm taking a break from self-improvement and focusing on CLEANING, TIDYING and DE-CLUTTERING. The kids' ninth birthday is coming up and we're doing a party at home, and I need this home clutter free and crowd-friendly by mid-December.

So that will keep me busy.


I've already bagged up a lot of gear for donating and hard rubbish, and I have tidied our lounge-room which was a HUGE job. 

Our lounge room was very cluttered.

Put it this way: on Halloween night when the kids went trick or treating, I was able to just bend down and pick up their plastic pumpkin buckets from under my desk, where they had been dumped after last Halloween.



No longer - our lounge room is now spacious and clutter free. (Clutter free for us, that is. It'll never be minimalist).

So what's on your to-do list these days?

#12Resolutions:

January: walk 5 times a week (achieved - I now walk daily)
February: write 2 short stories (failed - wrote none)
March: write 1 short story, and start Project Management course (done)
April: visit GP and complete or schedule the follow-ups (done)
May: complete one module of Project Management course (failed)
June: working day money savers: public transport and packed lunch (done)
July: pay attention to needs, moods and emotions to manage reactions (done, and ongoing)

August: limit time-wasting activities on my phone (done - and still going pretty well)

September: 15 mins floor exercises daily (nope)

October: get more sleep (yes)

November: de-clutter, tidy and clean house for December entertaining

12 Resolutions: October (and September recap)

This year I'm playing along with #12Resolutions on Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to set yourself short-term, achievable goals, one each month. 

For September my goal was to do floor exercises for 15 minutes a day. 

Well. 

Not much to recap.

I forgot my resolution! Literally forgot it. I completely forgot I had any resolution going on at all, so needless to say, floor exercises did not happen. We had a lot going on in September - it was a busy and tumultuous month.  No doubt exercises would have been very helpful, if I had remembered I was supposed to be doing them.

'No I can't remember!' by Neil Moralee, Flickr

Anyway, we shall move on.  

For the rest of October (we're already halfway through!) I am making a simple resolution, to get more sleep.  We're approaching the end of the year and things are getting busier. The past couple of months I've found it quite hard to keep up with things and keep my equilibrium, and sleep can only help.

What's on your to-do list this month?

Drama Mama

Parents who don't do paid work outside the home will sometimes blurt out how it must be nice escaping the chaos of home to go to an office with non-sticky surfaces, cafe coffee and lunch breaks, and they are right of course. When your children are very young, work is lovely (and yes, easy) compared to staying at home.

What's hard is managing it - the juggle, the extra organisation required, the 'double shift' piling laundry, food prep and cleaning on top of a day at work, and managing the emotions of tired and overwrought family members - primarily yourself but also the children.

The other bit that's hard is The Drama.

I can't come in today, my kid's sick. I have to leave early, my kid's sick.
I have to go, my kid's just had a melt-down at school.
I'm going to be late, my kid's sick.
I need to work from home next week, my kid has a specialist appointment.
Sorry I'm late, I just couldn't get my kid ready on time today.
Sorry I'm late, my kids are sick and I had to take them to my mother's so I could come in today.
Oh, can I work from home every Thursday for awhile, so I can attend [insert crucial school/kid-related event here]?
Sorry I'm late, my kid got head lice and I had to shampoo the flammable chemicals out of her hair this morning. Oh and I have to leave right on 5 because it's my turn to do the after-school-care pick-up. And can I leave early on Friday, as I have to take my kids to the school disco which starts at 5pm?

All these are not including the myriad number of times you don't attend school events, get a friend to give your kids a lift, have your mother come by the house at 6.30am so you can leave on time, dose your kid with Panadol and send her to school and hope for the best, or win an hour-long argument with your spouse about whose turn it is to take time off work to tend to a sick child.

To make up for late starts I usually take a shorter lunch break, or I stay back a couple of times a week (and that always has consequences at home).  I'm no martyr and my job and employers and my manager are all fantastic, so I'm not complaining. Not at all.

I'm highlighting how embarrassing it is, sometimes. I don't want to be Drama Woman. I don't want to take advantage of my employer's awesome understanding and flexibility. But sometimes you have dramas.

When I was twenty-six I worked for awhile at a cafe run by two sisters. They were fairly wealthy and people grumbled that their husbands had bought the cafe for them so they would have something to do. But they learned the job quickly and they worked really hard, and they were there every day. One day one of them had her two little kids with her during closing time, and while she tried to pitch in and do all her usual work, she just couldn't in the end, so she asked me to do some extra stuff she would normally do herself. I was tired and grumpy and I did not cut her much (any) slack. I was really annoyed she had the kids there. I made it pretty obvious I was annoyed. I had to stay back later because she had kids with her, who did not belong in the workplace. I was not happy that the rest of us had to make up for her (obvious!) lack of organisation and work ethic!

Did I ever give any thought to the fact she turned up every day and worked hard, and never mentioned her kids or how she juggled her life? Did I even consider the fact that this was the only time we ever saw her kids, and that she might have been truly stuck this one day?  Did I have any compassion for what she was dealing with that day? No, I am sorry to say, I did not.  All I saw was... drama!

You can buy this shirt at Sugarbunny Shop

Things I Think While Using Public Transport

• Jeez, people are funny looking

• Where do I go for my train? Why can I never remember which platform?

• Man it's crowded.

• Still so many people hanging out "under the clocks", are they still meeting friends there? That's what we did before mobile phones.

• Why does this concourse still always smell of urine? It's open 24 hours, it's floodlit, there are shops and people and police everywhere. When are people pissing?

• Why are there so many cops here, what's going on? Maybe this is one of those terror threat things, should I be worried? Be alert, not alarmed. God, what a joke. Hoodies, backpacks, burqas. If I were a radicalised young Australian where would I take a bomb, here or Chadstone? Surely Chadstone makes more sense and would be easier. God, please let it be Chadstone and not here. Oh my god I can't believe I just thought that, I didn't mean it. What's happening to us, this terror alert crap is corrupting us all. Or maybe just me, I'm a bad person. No, I'm a good person for recognising I might be a bad person. Oh god, not this stupid feedback loop again. The loop - I need to make sure I'm on a Loop train. Does this train go through the Loop? Shit, I didn't pay attention and now I don't know. What station is this?

• OK, do I need to be at the front of the train or the back of the train? I can never remember, I never pay attention. Oh my god, like it matters! What, I have to walk an extra 50 metres when I get out? No, it's about time and efficiency, it feels good to manage this properly and get out just where you need to be. I rarely do that though. 

• Oh right, back of the train. I'll remember that next time.

• Seats, seats, are there any seats? There's one but it's in the middle. There's got to be an edge seat somewhere. Shit, I missed it. Should have taken the middle one. But so uncomfortable. Standing is better. Long time to stand though. I can't find a comfortable way to hold my bag. I should have brought a cross-body bag instead of this handbag with tiny straps I have to hold. It's hurting my back, the drag on my arm downwards. I'm not game to put it on the floor though. Damn, commuting is so much easier for men without handbags.

• Who the hell keeps their bag on a seat next to them when the train is full?

• Ugh, this person, hogging the edge seat. Just move over, would you? So annoying.

• I'm just going to stay on this edge seat, people can step over to get to the middle. It's too squishy in there, my legs don't fit and I get cramps. 

• Man, walking three blocks uphill from the station to my work has killed me! I'm so unfit. What's happened to me, I used to walk everywhere.

• It's nice to sit and read while commuting to work. Much better than driving. Though I do miss listening to Red and then AM on the radio. I could stream it on the phone. But how much data does that use? Funny how radio is no longer going to be free once it's all digital. Analogue radio is free but digital radio isn't, that's quite a change really. Like everything these days, every element unbundled and costed out, let pricing dictate behaviour. Bloody economists. 

• I want to play Candy Crush but it's too embarrassing on the train. Maybe another game. Is Subway Surf embarrassing? I'll just read the news instead. Twitter is ok, I can scroll Twitter. Not Facebook, obviously. Facebook is embarrassing. Why the hell do I care what people think about what I'm doing on my phone? Well that's just how society works, it's human psychology, quite normal.  

• What station is this? Should I call Y for my lift now or is it too early? They don't have enough of those train maps up on the walls, why is that? They used to be everywhere. Oh, I see, the trains now have bigger windows, there's not as much wall space. Hey, remember back when they had poetry on the train walls, was that here or in London? That was nice.

• Oh this poor woman with a pram and crying baby. How awful. Ugh, hope that kid stops crying soon though. Maybe I should try and cheer it up. But what if I fail, that would just be awkward. 

• What stop is this? Oh my god, have I gone past my station? It's so dark out there, I can't see a thing. Where are we? 

• Going in to work on the bus and train is OK, quite nice actually. But man, coming home sucks. Too crowded, and the trip takes too long. I'm exhausted. It saves money though. But shit I'm so tired. Bugger it, tomorrow's Friday, I'm driving.

"Commuting II" by Rebecca Wilson via Flickr Creative Commons

Young, Female, Talented, Hated

People don't like show-offs, or arrogance. I get that. I agree with them. Justin Bieber is understandably lambasted for his antics. Kanye West attracts (gentle) mockery for his attitude and lifestyle.

But other than Justin Bieber, I don't really see young famous guys attracting the level of hatred and mockery landed on young women. Young female stars are not lauded much for their talent, even when they are very talented.

Miley Cyrus is almost universally reviled now. For some bad taste dancing and probably a touch of arrogance. But listen to her songs: she has some great arrangements, and her voice is incredible. She may be young, and she may be annoying - but better get used to her, she's going to be around for a long, long time. I fact, I think she will be a HUGE star, and will last. She reminds me a bit of Madonna in her early years, but with the difference that unlike Madonna back then, Miley Cyrus can really sing.

Taylor Swift is someone everyone loves to make fun of, for her supposedly too-many boyfriends, her bad dancing, and her heart-on-her-sleeve lyrics. But how brave, to write and put your teenage poetry out there, and to develop and mature along the way. Apart from the early 'Love Story' which is pretty 'young' in its outlook, I have liked almost all Taylor Swift's songs. Shake It Off, her latest, tells how she intends to deal with "haters". It's probably all bravado but kudos to her. She's young and she's dealing with a lot for someone so young. It's not nothing to create stuff and put it out there and have every aspect of your persona so publicly mocked.

Lana Del Rey has been mocked for her "fake" image, and her past as a wannabe vanilla pop star. But she's a performer, and performers mostly want to be famous. Why wouldn't they try different ways to get there? Most of them have changed their image and their style at some point along the way. (Granted, perhaps not as much as Lana Del Rey). And whatever - it seems she has managed to find the style that really, really suits her. Rock on, Lana.

Katy Perry is mocked for, as far as I can make out, being a sex symbol but not a good enough one. I like some of her songs and don't like others, but I'm pretty fond of Katy Perry for embracing her pre-teen girl audience and treating them with respect and responsibility.

Lady Gaga, with her avante garde persona, gets a bit more respect, or at least is gently mocked rather than vilified. Maybe people are scared of looking as if they don't "get it", or maybe people think they can't figure her out enough to truly dislike her, whereas they think they have the others figured out.

In contrast to all the above, Lorde is universally admired. She is also very talented. But I guess it's much easier to love an "indie" star than the pop stars whose efforts to reach fame are probably much more visible and easier to mock.

Disclosure:
I don't have any Miley Cyrus songs, but my iPod contains a few Taylor Swifts, Katy Perrys and Lana Del Reys, and a whole Lorde album. I have Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster on CD as the kids used to love it. Oh, and I've got one Justin Bieber song too (it was requested by my daughter but I don't hate it).

Sunday Selections: Phillip Island

I think it's about time I did another Sunday Selections post. 

Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented

    

You may recall my car was written off in an accident about a month ago. Well, two weeks ago, we bought our replacement: a 2010 Honda CR-V. We were on the hunt for a RAV4, but fell in love with this one instead and bought it the day we saw it. We got it at a fair price, which is to say market value.  We're not good at price negotiation, but we bought it from a dealer and I do believe they always sell you at the price they intended anyway. At least these days with online markets and so much information about used car values and shopping out there, the prices are fair.

It comes with a hefty loan of course, but I do love my new car.

So last weekend, Y had a rare full day and night off work and we decided to take the car for a spin to Phillip Island.

We hadn't been there in years, though once upon a time Y and I used to drive down there quite often.

We had lunch at a pizza cafe in Cowes, then drove round to the Nobbies to see the seal centre, and to the penguin area to watch the parade.

You can't take photos of the penguin parade, so I don't have any pictures of that, unfortunately. But there is an app you can download with lots of pictures and information in it, which is very good. There are also some great pictures at the Phillip Island site here. 

So these photos are all of The Nobbies, looking out over the sea or to Seal Rocks. 

All a bit samey, but lovely anyway.

The kids loved the whole place but especially, of course, the penguins. It is truly fantastic, and quite moving too, to see the little penguins tumble out of the waves, huddle hesitantly at the beach under the soft lights, and then make their (surprisingly fast) waddling trek up the dunes to their burrows.

The best part is walking back up the boardwalks and passing the little penguins on the way. Some of them zoom straight to their burrows, some take their time and seem to enjoy the commune with other penguins on the way. Some sit and stare up at the people staring down at them. A pair we saw obviously had gone the wrong way, or too far, and were waddling back towards the beach, looking around them and making little sounds and conferring with each other as they went, looking just like a couple who has forgotten where they parked their car. 

They were still wandering around, not seemingly distressed and still stopping occasionally to trade low squawks with others heading up from the beach, when we finally left. It's such a treat of a thing to see - you just want to stay there all night.

But evenutally we made our way back to the carpark, and made the trip home, the kids happily snoozing in the back, Y relaxing in the passenger seat, and me enjoying the quiet drive home in the dark, in my awesome new car! (Last time I go on about it, I promise - but I had owned my last car for 9 years).


This Sunday, a less relaxing fate awaits. When Y gets home from work this afternoon, we are stupidly, regretfully, unbelievably... taking the kids to the Royal Melbourne Show. Ugh!

Farewell Tia

This week we lost our Tia.

She was 11 years old and had been in good health, though she had slowed down a bit in recent weeks. Last week she started having difficulty eating, and she deteriorated from there.  At first I thought it was tooth problems, especially as she developed an awful smell around her head, with no outside infections or problems in sight. We kept her quiet and she seemed OK, and I planned a vet appointment for this week.

Then on Sunday, as she walked outside to enjoy the sun, she suddenly keeled over and was unable to stand or walk. As I rushed to her she stretched out her paws and meowed in obvious confusion and distress. Her back legs were twisted under her and were almost useless.

She managed to get up and walk, and was able to walk normally later as well, but only for a short time. Within minutes she would lose her balance and her back legs would collapse.

I had to help her to the litter box or outside, and hand-feed her tiny, pitiful amounts of soft food or egg and milk. She could barely eat.

She remained very affectionate to the end. On her last morning with us the kids sat on the lounge room floor and she walked slowly between them, pushing her head under first one hand and then the other. The night before she had slept on my lap, purring almost as if she was still well.

But she wasn't, and I knew it was cruel to keep her going, as she was in distress and pain and was wasting away by the day.

On Monday, the kids and I took her to the vet for what we knew would be the last time.

The vet was kindly and wonderful. She agreed there was no hope. Tia had likely suffered either a blood clot or some kind of neurological damage, for which the prognosis is bad even for young cats. In three days Tia had lost half her body weight and critical muscle mass.

The kids kissed her good bye then waited in the waiting room while I held Tia for her last moments. The vet and her assistant were gentle and respectful, patting Tia and soothing her while she was prepared for the catheter. Then they put her on my lap and straight away she snuggled down and rested her head on my hand, purring sleepily.

Within seconds, she was gone.

I cried like a kid, there alone in the room with my dead cat. I couldn't believe she was gone. I still can't.  I know she was "just" a cat, and yes, it's been a few days now, but as I write this I feel the tears coming back, and I quickly blink them away because the kids are here in the lounge with me and they have already cried buckets. M in particular was very attached to Tia and has been distraught. She's coping well and is much better now, but we've had a few days of long talks and various "cheering up" activities to take their minds off it in between the upset times.

It's been a sad few days for us all. Even Y cried, and he supposedly wasn't fond of her (but he was).

So farewell, sweet Tia. Thank you for being a lovely, lovely cat. We miss you x

The strange world of competitive calisthenics

If you are a female who grew up in Australia, chances are at some stage you tried your hand at Calisthenics.

I have dim memories of doing calisthenics for a very short time, and very clear memories of my mother's annoyance at being told off by a team official for having sewn sequins in the wrong way on a pink headpiece.  In those days when "all" mothers were home (and the rest were assumed to be), mothers were given patterns and had to sew all the costumes themselves.

These days, thankfully, this is not expected at most clubs, though the costumes are still made by someone. In our case, it's the mother of the calisthenics coach, who has made all the approximately one million costumes used by the team.

Calisthenics, for non-Australian readers, is a competitive team sport that combines elements of floor exercises, ballet, rhythmic gymnastics and marching. It requires concentration, balance, control, flexibility, strength and rhythm. It's practiced in the competitive sense only in Australia, and is currently 100% female (so I learned from Wikipedia).

My daughter M has been doing calisthenics for about six months. She does it because her friends do it, and I'm happy with it because it is very cheap for a kids' sport, it fits in perfectly with A's weekly karate lessons (which are NOT cheap), and because M is a little accident prone and the balance and co-ordination can only help her.

M is in a 7-10 year-old Sub Juniors team (known as "Subbies").  This weekend marked the end of the 2014 competitions with the Victorian State Titles. 8 Sub Junior teams competed in 10 events, and I will not shy from admitting it was a LOOOONG day.

It was also my day for helping out in the dressing rooms as a rostered mum, along with two others. Though I initially thought I had drawn the short straw being rostered to the biggest competition that went from 9am to 3.30pm, in fact it was the best, because (a) better than sitting in the audience watching every team perform every event for all those hours and (b) with so many teams there was plenty of time between each event so it was easy to get the girls get ready in time. Plus, being the last comp, the girls all knew the drill and mostly dressed themselves anyway. My chief duty was hanging up costumes in the girls' dress bags after each change.

I will insert a short plea here, if you are the parent of a calisthenics competitor, please do use an easy-access dress bag, and you know what? Don't bind all the coat hangers together with a rubber band. That is seriously annoying, and no one is going to steal your coat hangers.

Anyway, it was kind of fun, or at least a different way to spend 6 hours. As with every comp, we got up at 6 in the morning to do M's leg tan and then her hair. The hair takes the longest, needing to be gelled and scraped into a high bun, attach a "wiglet" and secure it all with a thousand hair pins. Makeup is minimal in our club, just foundation, then at the comp the coaches add eye liner and pink lipstick.

As we don't have a car right now, my friend MN (mother of M's friend V in the same team) drove us all there and back. She had done two girls' hair because N the mother of the other friend G, can't do it, so N made us all large cafe-quality coffees to drink in the car. Quite a good way to start the day when it has to be started that early.

The comp venue was a lovely theatre attached to a college, and it was a beautiful sunny day, so the constant walking back and forth between dressing room and theatre (via the outside), was no strain.

I spent my free time either watching some of the events, sitting outside in the sun or chatting with others in the foyer.


The events were Marching, Clubs, Rods, Free Exercises, Aesthetics and Song and Dance.
My favourite event is Marching, followed by Free Exercises. My least favourite is Song and Dance, which is like cabaret for kids.

I like the Marching because M's team does an AWESOME routine with quite complicated choreography to a rousing Irish tune, and it's great to watch.

Free Exercises is where you see the backbends, leg lifts, splits, headstands and cartwheels. Some of the girls who have been doing calisthenics for years are amazing in this event. It's quite incredible what they can do. It's like a mixture of pilates and cheerleading.

Club swinging is difficult but frankly a little boring to watch. I shouldn't say that, because our team placed first in the Clubs event yesterday. But, it's not my favourite thing.

Rods: think, baton twirling. It's also difficult, and looks good when done well.

The Aesthetics is very pretty. All the girls wear long floaty dresses and do graceful slow dances to beautiful music.  Unfortunately our team's song was 'When She Loved Me' from Toy Story 2, which has always, and I mean ALWAYS made me cry. It's so freaking sad!!!

Fortunately, watching this song performed over 4 rehearsals and 4 competitions, finally got me to the point (about a week ago I guess) where I could safely sit through it without my nose turning red and my eyes blinking furiously, so by the day of the last competition I was fine.

My daughter was SO beautiful up on stage, standing apart from the team in her very own spotlight, in her long blue dress, her hair piled up on her head over her beautiful long neck, and making the kind of graceful, controlled movements of which I could hardly believe she was capable.

Taking photos at competitions is strictly verboten, but here is a snippet of M at her first rehearsal:

I still find Calisthenics a somewhat weird activity. I'm not really sure how much M actually likes it, or whether she will continue. She doesn't hate it, and she has improved her flexibility and balance since she started, and she gets to spend more time with her friends. Plus it's a cheap activity and other than having to help out backstage for one competition every year, it's no hassle for the parents. So for all that I'm happy with it.

What is/was your favourite/least favourite kids' activity?