![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Monday: jump ropes and epidemic weather
Apr. 12th, 2021 01:44 pmToday, A.’s PE class involved jump ropes. There was some sort of Black Panther related warmup (she doesn’t watch any Marvel, so she was bored), then an 8 minutes and a few seconds instructor jump rope video, then a Go Noodle meditation cool down. She liked the Go Noodle.
That jump rope video, tho. My daughter actually has no recent and no really successful history with jump ropes. My bad, sure, but whatever. The supplied jump rope they had been told not to play with in previous weeks / months so it wouldn’t be broken or lost by the time PE rolled around. So it was was all kinked up and hard to use. Also, the aforementioned lack of recent / any successful history with jump ropes. The instructor told the viewers to find a safe spot. I wound up putting her in the garage, however, not my best choice, really, as there is a tennis ball that hangs down from the garage door opener to indicate where to stop the car. It got in the way.
Then the instructor leaps into fancy jump roping almost immediately, and A. kept stopping the video to try to figure out what she was supposed to do next. When she cannot successfully get the rope going in the correct direction consistently, nor can she jump over it. None of this is making me happy. So I mute the instructor and tell A. to let it run but ignore it, because we are going to be _active_ for the duration of the video, and then stop. If we required A. to do what the instructor said on any level, we’d be there until our hearts gave out, metaphorically or literally.
I started by having her get the rope going on the side, in the correct direction. Then I swished it back and forth and had her jump over it. We did some other things as well, and then eventually, at the end, I had her retry jumping and turning the rope at the same time _once_. And it worked. Which was awesome, and we stopped on a win.
After that, tho, I went in search of the jump ropes of yore. I decluttered some of the garage. I decluttered a bin of toys and found a bag of several nylon jump ropes, all of them too small (nice, otherwise, but still). Eventually, I found the jump ropes I was looking for in the basement. All but one too small, and the last one like the crappy one the school provided (very marginally better but also, not still kinked by having been folded up and rubber banded for months). So we now have a couple of functional jump ropes, but are likely going to order something better to learn on.
I also test ran some of the ropes — I like the nylon ones, even tho they are way too short. This was probably a mistake, as I was using them barefoot on the garage floor, which is made of exactly what you think it’s made of, and my knees date from 1969, and I weigh over 200 pounds. Ahhh, concerts. I miss stupidly jumping up and down and regretting it.
I walked with M. I might go for a long walk, if my knees are willing to let their grudge go.
ETA: Also, did I mention my daughter has very long braids? And while I kept tucking them into her shirt to make sure they didn’t catch when there were rope mistakes, she kept pulling them back out. *sigh*
ETAYA:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/12/there-is-no-over-there-is-only-pause-ill-be-emerging-it/
This is the first article I’ve seen explicitly imagining a future in which we treat disease as a form of “weather” that we plan our lives around, rather than assuming we can fully control, or act without taking it into consideration in our plans.
That jump rope video, tho. My daughter actually has no recent and no really successful history with jump ropes. My bad, sure, but whatever. The supplied jump rope they had been told not to play with in previous weeks / months so it wouldn’t be broken or lost by the time PE rolled around. So it was was all kinked up and hard to use. Also, the aforementioned lack of recent / any successful history with jump ropes. The instructor told the viewers to find a safe spot. I wound up putting her in the garage, however, not my best choice, really, as there is a tennis ball that hangs down from the garage door opener to indicate where to stop the car. It got in the way.
Then the instructor leaps into fancy jump roping almost immediately, and A. kept stopping the video to try to figure out what she was supposed to do next. When she cannot successfully get the rope going in the correct direction consistently, nor can she jump over it. None of this is making me happy. So I mute the instructor and tell A. to let it run but ignore it, because we are going to be _active_ for the duration of the video, and then stop. If we required A. to do what the instructor said on any level, we’d be there until our hearts gave out, metaphorically or literally.
I started by having her get the rope going on the side, in the correct direction. Then I swished it back and forth and had her jump over it. We did some other things as well, and then eventually, at the end, I had her retry jumping and turning the rope at the same time _once_. And it worked. Which was awesome, and we stopped on a win.
After that, tho, I went in search of the jump ropes of yore. I decluttered some of the garage. I decluttered a bin of toys and found a bag of several nylon jump ropes, all of them too small (nice, otherwise, but still). Eventually, I found the jump ropes I was looking for in the basement. All but one too small, and the last one like the crappy one the school provided (very marginally better but also, not still kinked by having been folded up and rubber banded for months). So we now have a couple of functional jump ropes, but are likely going to order something better to learn on.
I also test ran some of the ropes — I like the nylon ones, even tho they are way too short. This was probably a mistake, as I was using them barefoot on the garage floor, which is made of exactly what you think it’s made of, and my knees date from 1969, and I weigh over 200 pounds. Ahhh, concerts. I miss stupidly jumping up and down and regretting it.
I walked with M. I might go for a long walk, if my knees are willing to let their grudge go.
ETA: Also, did I mention my daughter has very long braids? And while I kept tucking them into her shirt to make sure they didn’t catch when there were rope mistakes, she kept pulling them back out. *sigh*
ETAYA:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/12/there-is-no-over-there-is-only-pause-ill-be-emerging-it/
This is the first article I’ve seen explicitly imagining a future in which we treat disease as a form of “weather” that we plan our lives around, rather than assuming we can fully control, or act without taking it into consideration in our plans.