One was for his nunchuk form – he was down, though, to fixing one tiny footwork mistake. The other was for a complicated combination that included a jump he was convinced had to clear the stratosphere. I told him his shihan was looking more for form than for an ability to leap tall buildings, but he wouldn’t believe me until an 11-year-old friend confirmed it.

So as we drove to karate Wednesday, both of us agreed there was a good possibility he would be able to earn the missing stripes that night and test for his brown belt on Friday. That, though, would create a scheduling complication. His post-season basketball party was Friday at 6; his belt test was to begin at 6:30.

“We can stop in at the party before and after the test if you want,” I told him. “I bet you want to go to the belt test. It’s pretty important.”

“Not really,” Big Guy said.

Not important? I thought, stunned. When all I’ve heard since January was how he wanted to earn his brown belt before we moved?

“Not important?” I asked calmly.

“No, not really,” he said again. “I mean, it’s important but it’s not the end of the world. If I don’t get it Friday, I’ll get it sometime. If I don’t get it with shihan, I’ll get it at my next school.”

He’d stunned me again. Where on Earth had this come from? I mean, it’s nothing he hasn’t been hearing for years, as I’ve reassured him time and again that today’s disaster won’t matter much come next week. But I had no idea he’d internalized it enough to be able to repeat it – and mean it.

He wound up getting his stripes that night. He wasn’t wild about leaving the party Friday, but by then the brown belt had become important.

He bobbled a bit on one combination he’d mastered months ago – that’s always his way – but nailed the one that had been deviling him. He sparred better than he has in his life, using combinations of kicks and spins that everyone knew he knew but had never seen  him put to use.  He was tired by the time he’d reached his final round, a bout with two opponents at once, but he fought them off pretty well.

“I used too much energy on that orange belt,” he said of his first-round opponent. “Next time I’ll hold back a little, because I have a lot of rounds left.”

He said this not in a self-critical way, but in a calmly analytical tone. He saw a flaw in his system and thought about how he could correct it.

Once again, a karate lesson is a life lesson, and one that will be important even if  his karate belts wind up stashed and forgotten in a toter in my house after he’s moved out.

Not that that’s going to happen. He earned his brown belt Friday and sees a black belt within reach. He’s vowed to keep going until his has as many stripes on his own black belt as his shihan currently has on hers.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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“Where was Big Guy?” his coach asked shortly after we got to practice Monday.

“His karate class ran late, so we were a little behind,” I said.

“No, I mean, where was he this afternoon. During baseball assessments.”

I’m not sure which hit my toes faster, my heart or my stomach. “Baseball assessments? I thought they were going to be rescheduled.”

“No,” he said. “We were out there this afternoon.”

This was bad. Very Bad in the world of Big Guy, who loves baseball like he loves breathing. Maybe more than he loves breathing, because he often has to be reminded to take his inhaler. No one’s ever needed to nag him to play ball.

He needed to be at the assessments because he misses the age cutoff by two months for a higher division he wants to play in. He’s envisioning traveling to play on fields with grass in the infield. “Maybe we’ll  even get to have a Little League patch on our uniforms,” he smiled dreamily.

Except someone had screwed that up for him. I suspected it was me.

When I’d last talked to the sports director late the previous week, he said he was pretty sure the assessments weren’t going to be Monday. Call early next week and check, he told me.

Monday was a day filled with minor trauma and unnecessary drama, so I neglected to call. Boots and I took off on a bike ride after school, and the hours after that were filled with the rush to finish homework, get them fed and get to karate and basketball practice.

I’d hoped to hide the missed assessment from Big Guy until I could find out more the next morning, but, as usual, the kid who’s stone deaf when I tell him to pick up his socks had overheard my conversation with the coach.

“Why were you guys talking about baseball?” he asked. “Is it about my assessment?”

This is not going to be pretty, I thought as I took a deep breath. “The assessment was today, babes. I’m going to call youth sports tomorrow and see if I can fix this.”

“WHAT?!,” he shouted, and for once I didn’t call him out on his nuclear reaction. There are times when intense emotion is understandable.

“Yes, the assessment was today. I didn’t know, and I am so sorry. I will do my best to figure this out and see if there’s still a chance.”

Later that night, I saw the words “voice mail” flashing across the phone. Youth sports had called while Boots and I were biking to tell me that the assessment would go on that day. As I often do, I’d neglected to check for messages when we got home for the ride.

“Babes, this is totally my fault,” I told Big Guy the next morning. “I screwed up, and I  screwed up on something very important to you. I hate that more than anything, and I can’t apologize enough.  I will do what I can to try to fix it.”

As it turned out, it was easy to fix. When I talked to youth sports Tuesday morning, the director said Big Guy could practice with the older kids for a few weeks and he would decide from there. I couldn’t wait until Big Guy got home that day to tell him he’d still have his chance.

“The sports director is a good and kind man,” I told Big Guy. “He could have easily said, ‘no, assessments are over, too bad.’ But he’s going to let you try even though I goofed up.”

“Great!” Big Guy cheered.

Now, in the grand scheme of the universe it’s not going to matter 50 years from now whether Big Guy starts playing Little League in 2012 or 2013 or never. But in the scheme of what matters right now, this is huge for him.

I think it’s also pretty significant that he’s seen me goof, seen me regret it and seen someone else let go of slavish adherence to the rules and let him try out anyway.

He’s still not definitely on the team, but he has his chance. And that’s a very good outcome to something that started out Very Bad.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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The end-of-the-season cupcake cake was beautiful, and it looked delicious. I’m sure 90 percent of the team appreciated your efforts to make the last game special.

We are the 10 percent.

The one player who stood to the side and whispered in a wistful little moan, “I can’t eat it, Mommy, can I?”  Big Guy, whose many food allergies include egg, said it several times. The rapid transition from rough, tough, take no prisoners athlete to a little boy ready to cry over cake was stunning.

Though he’s lived in a world of “can’t have this” since he was 10 months old, not having cupcakes really bothers him. Especially since he knows I’ve always been so careful to have his back on this issue. Every birthday party we go to, every post-season celebration, I either bake the cake or take cupcakes for him.

He can deal with school birthday parties – his teachers have always kept a stash of safe cookies. He could have handled a regular sport snacks he couldn’t have. I’ve even stopped carrying backups because it just doesn’t bother him any more, as long as there’s “Gator Egg” – oh, the irony of his mispronunciation of that one.

But the cupcake cake was special – and he knew he was probably going to be excluded.

“I don’t know,” I told Big Guy. “Let me check and see if you can eat them.”

It was more hope than I usually give him, because this time I thought there was a chance. Another parent had talked to me about end-of-the-season cupcakes. She’d heard about the diet soda trick and asked if it really worked. Would it be OK for her to bring those cupcakes to the last game, she asked. I said yes, but told her how to prevent peanut and tree nut cross-contamination.

Somewhere along the line, a different parent wound up bringing a cupcake cake – a colorful, icing-thick confection with basketball players on top. I knew when I saw the bakery sticker this was a no-go for Big Guy.

“I’m sorry, babes. The plan changed, and I didn’t know it.” I hope everyone standing there saw his stricken face when I said that. I hope they remember it the next time they’re thinking of special snacks.

I was so very proud of him at that moment. He didn’t throw a fit. He didn’t jump up and down, demanding what he couldn’t have. He was just quietly – and heartbreakingly – sad.

Yes, the parents brought an alternate snack for Big Guy, which he accepted with a polite “thank you.” I wonder how many kids would be thrilled with Corn Nuts when the rest of the team’s celebrating with cupcakes. Big Guy wasn’t. I bet her child wouldn’t have been either.

I would never dream of asking parents to provide egg-free cake – it’s just too dang expensive if you’re not a baker. If you are a baker, it’s still tricky to pull off.

But it would be nice if other parents could do the allergic child a favor and coordinate with his or her parents. By the end of the season, I bet you know who they are and if you don’t, it’s not too hard to ask around. I bet the parents would be more than happy to take responsibility for making sure their food-allergic child was accounted for.

This is not the first time this has happened. We were on a team last year where one mom was an aspiring pastry chef and kept bringing her practice cupcakes to the field. I bet 90 percent of the players appreciated it.

We are the 10 percent.

By the time we got to the car last night, Big Guy had recovered. He’d found fruit rolls in the bag, and he was happy that he at least got candy out of it. I’m still not happy. I don’t like it when my boy’s sad over something that’s completely avoidable.

I’m also changing my sports SOP in the future as a result. In the past, I’ve always relied on notes from coaches and reminders on snack sheets that there’s an allergic kid. Obviously, that method doesn’t communicate everything I need to say.

From now on, I’m going to talk to all the parents at the first practice and ask them to tell me if they plan something “special.” Maybe a speech before game one will prevent problems come game 12.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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No, I’m not talking about the one shortly after I returned to work following the Boots maternity leave, when every night for a week  brake failure sent my car careening backwards downhill as I drove to drop the guys off at day care. Think there was a message there?

I’m talking about the one that dates back more than two years, to shortly after I  worked up the nerve to get on the bike I’d inherited from a neighbor.  I’ve envisioned ever since the guys and me pedaling around Fort Irwin like all those happy families I see on sunny weekends.

The first hurdle between us and biking bliss was my abysmal physical conditioning. The second, which took much longer to overcome, was Boots’ belief that he would never be able to keep up.

Suddenly, over the past weekend, he figured out that he could.

It happened when we went over to a friend’s to play and a buddy wanted to show off his new bike. The buddy is a year younger than Boots, but the bike was bigger. Big enough that, had the bike been presented to Boots, he would have freaked out in a fit of “I can’t do this!”

But because the friend was riding, Boots decided he could too. He zipped around the neighborhood, up inclines and around circles. By Sunday, he’d decided he could do it again.

“Mommy, can we take a bike ride after dinner, to Auntie L’s?”

Oh dear.

Auntie L’s is a three-mile round trip along my old evening route -  a gentle uphill, a slight downhill and then another easy climb before you coast back home. It’s not terribly demanding, but I feared it would do in a boy who’d just found his super powers.

I need not have worried. He pulled the hill like Lance Armstrong, bouncing off his bike to ring Auntie L’s doorbell. “I rode my bike! I rode my bike! All the way here!”

It was starting to get dark by the time we headed back. Dark enough that I wished we’d swiped Dad’s reflective PT belts. Dark enough that if Big Guy had kept quiet I could have convinced Boots that the coyote across the street was a dog. It turns out that Boots wasn’t worried.

“It’s OK. I’d be freaked out on my scooter, but I’m much faster on my bike. I can get away,” he assured me.

I sighed. “Guys, this is a dream come true for me,” I said with a grin that glowed through the gloaming.

“You have weird dreams, Mom,” Big Guy said.

Maybe so, but I’m dreaming even bigger now. I’m looking for lights in case we get caught out after dusk again. I’m Googling bike paths so we’re ready to ride when we move. I’m checking Amazon for backpack picnic baskets so we can make an afternoon of it. I’m …

I’m getting totally carried away. Yes, I know that. But in a week when Boots not only starts to believe he can keep up with Big Guy but pedals three miles to prove it, anything is possible.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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Oh, well. At least most of the stuff is lower in sugar than their favorite of breakfast cereal, and I can always manage to sneak in a bit of fruit or vegetable, too.

Hence one of my newer creation, pumpkin scones. It’s always pumpkin season here, so these were a hit.

I’m also going to add them to my “traveling recipe” collection – foods I can make without toting egg replacer with me. The buttermilk and tablespoon of baking powder work just fine to give  the needed boost.

Pumpkin scones

• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 c. white whole wheat flour
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tbl. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. soda
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 stick of butter or margarine
• 3/4 c pumpkin
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/4 c. buttermilk

Preheat over the 425 degrees and coat a scone pan with baking spray. If you don’t have a scone pan, you can pat out the dough lightly and cut into triangles. Or you can drop them onto a greased baking sheet, as you would a drop biscuit.

Combine all dry ingredients and cut in butter with a pastry blender or two knives. Add buttermilk to mixture and stir until all is just moistened and holds together. This is the only tricky part, because if you overmix, the scone will turn out tough. 

Scoop a generous 1/3 cup into each wedge of the scone pan. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until lightly browned. Let sit five minutes after you remove them from the oven, then remove them from the pan. If you’re using a scone pan, I recommend removing them as you would a cake — put a cooling rack on top of the pan, then flip over onto another cooling rack.

Cool, then glaze or squiggle with icing and sprinkles if necessary to complete the sneak attack.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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Yet, despite all that,  $90 in fraudulent purchases were charged to my credit card this week. My theories – and, yes, they’re just that, theories – about how that happened scare me because it appears that the bad guys could be taking advantage of behaviors many of us have adopted to prevent them from stealing our money.

It started Thursday morning, when I received an email alerting me to a $281 “purchase”of two pairs of size 30 pants – I usually spread in the winter, but not that much – from a retailer I’ve never heard of.  The email was sent to my work address, which is not in any way connected to any credit card. Neither is that email discoverable by scraping public data. It appears that someone’s database was breached. I know it was not retailer whose domain was on the reply address on the email because I’ve never shopped there.  I have my suspicions as to whose data were stolen, and I have unsubscribed from that service.

When I received the email, I DID NOT click on any links. I DID NOT download any executables – numerous posters on the retailer’s Facebook page were quick to assume that. It’s an unfortunate human inclination when others are in trouble. Instead of thinking, “there but for the grace of God go I,” there’s a smug, “thank God I’m not an idiot” reaction.

What I did do is what I always do: Googled the retailer. I then clicked on the retailer’s site.  I’m still wondering if there was a clickjack on the site that was able to log keystrokes when I surfed later in the day, but the retailer hasn’t answered that question.  I don’t think the person running their Facebook account knows enough to even know how to ask their IT department. Since he or she at one point attributed my problem to my email having been hacked, I doubt it.

Later in the day, I clicked on my Amazon account. Mid-afternoon, Amazon notified me that my credit card number had been used to open another account, which had made three purchases. I called my bank and cancelled the card. The bank’s fraud department said that yes, it is possible for the bad guys to phish by placing a clickjack on a legitimate site.

Now, this is where this situation should concern everyone: It appears that there’s a possibility that this scheme took advantage of behavior people have learned to PREVENT fraud, scams and phishing: Googling the retailer.  I’m going to have to change that behavior, but I’m not sure yet what I should do instead.

No, of course I’m not certain that the fraudulent purchases were connected to the original email. But I’m not a big believer in coincidence, and when I do only one thing in a given day that I don’t ordinarily do – visit a particular retailer’s site -  and wind up with credit card fraud, I think any reasonable person would be suspicious.

Copyright Debra Legg 2012. All rights reserved.

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There the same ones who were wringing their hands once upon a time when a bunch of us kept a Nerf arsenal at our desks. Guns could encourage workplace violence, they tsk tsked.

Not really, any more than Keselowski was encouraging driving and texting.

Red-flagged. That means the race was stopped – for two hours in this case. Engines were off.  While crews worked to clear the track, drivers were out of their cars, milling around like it was a cocktail party . Except Keselowski turned in into a tweetup.

He took pictures. He answered question – where do you keep your phone, how much battery do you have left. He gained 100,000 followers in an hour.

He also made that clear later this week that he has no plans to tweet at 200 mph.  “When the gloves r on, the car is running and my phone is off.”

When his phone was on he did what any other tech-savvy 20something (and isn’t that most of them) would do.

And for his efforts, NASCAR gave at least lip service to considering fining him. I know where the people opposed to office Nerfs work now.

Like the Nerf police, the Twitter luddites had a million reasons to be appalled that this was happening during a race.

Keselowski’s phone might fly loose during a crash and injure him – assuming the phone could jump out of his fire suit and pierce his helmet. A phone in the car might give a driver a technical advantage -  assuming the phone, again, managed to work itself out of Keselowski’s pocket.

It all sounds so familiar. There are always reasons to not try something new, especially where technology is concerned. In the case of Twitter and NASCAR, though, there are 224,025 reasons for drivers to keep doing this.

That’s how many followers Keselowski has now. That’s 50,000 more than five-time champion Jimmie Johnson. It’s still 270,000 less than driver Juan Pablo Montoya, but he was a little too busy surviving Monday’s crash to tweet.

Every major sports league should look at the Keselowski case study and encourage players to get on board. A lot already do, but they’re operating under extreme restrictions the likes of which would have prevented them from posting during a delay like Monday’s.

That’s too bad. Leagues and luddites should Stop Wasting America’s Time with phony reasons to not use modern technology and modern media. They’re missing out on wonderful opportunities to draw fans closer in ways many had never imagined until Keselowski pulled out his phone Monday night.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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Despite sitting through almost three  years of the guys’ karate lessons, I still  barely know an inner forearm block from the Internet. I’ll go through fits and spurts of trying to figure it out, and I do try to pay attention when the guys are “teaching” me, but for the most part I’m pretty ignorant.

Somehow during those three years, Big Guy has gone from a kindergartener who could barely keep his balance to a third-grader who displays impressive flexibility, power and, usually, balance. I finally figured that out last weekend.

The lighting bolt hit me after a demonstration Saturday during a festival on post. I watched though my camera lens, the same way I watch many of the guys’ sports events. When I began to edit the photos the next morning, I was stunned.

One shot captures a kid with a leg in the air, parallel to the ground at chest level – he used to bend his knee toward his tummy and call it a kick. Another shows him balanced on one foot, his other leg in a perfect right angle.

Wow. Just wow. When did that happen? I would have noticed it in baseball, and I clued in just last week to a dramatic improvement in basketball that came once he decided to listen to two season’s worth of coaches and use the backboard and both legs when shooting.

Maybe it’s because karate still is a jumble of confusion for me, a dizzying combination of kicks, punches and forms where “right” depends to a large extent on tiny differences in positioning that still escape my understanding.

Maybe it’s because karate never ends. Classes overlap sports seasons, so there’s no discrete starting point you can rewind to and say, “look how far he’s come since practice started last month.”

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I’m guilty of the very thing I’m always on the guys about:  Of not noticing a change for the better because my brain hadn’t turned loose of a stereotype formed long ago.

It makes me wonder what else I’m not noticing because I see it every day.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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Sort of. Over the past two years it’s morphed to a strict “be physically in the bed by 8 but stay awake and read for a while if you want.”

Last night it morphed to a strict, “the heck with 8 p.m. because, after all, it’s not often the Daytona 500 ends on Tuesday morning.”

I’ve obliterated school-night rules before, most recently in January when they stayed up for the Orange Bowl. Big Guy missed the Mountaineers’ last big bowl win and I didn’t expect him to make it until the end this time. Clemson will start thumping on WVU, Big Guy will lose interest, and he’ll fall asleep close to his usual bedtime. I was wrong on all counts.

If the 500 had started as scheduled – noon Eastern, Sunday – we wouldn’t have seen the race at all, because someone in the household missed the “we’re NASCAR fans” memo and scheduled a trip.

By the time we got home, though, the race had been delayed again until noon Eastern Monday, causing Big Guy to develop a sudden sore throat and barking cough. Nice try, but, no, you can’t stay home from school.

Then the start was delayed again, to 7 Eastern. Big Guy was miraculously cured, and he’d have enough time to finish homework before the race began.

We had to leave for karate two hours later, and I thought that would be the end of it. When I peeked at my phone midway through class and saw that the race still was going on and the top four  were drivers no one but hard-core fans have heard of, I knew I needed an excuse to peek at the TV.

“I’ll drop you at basketball practice and then run home and finish the dishes. I’ll be back in a bit,” I told Big Guy, who’s still naive enough to not catch that one. Since when have I been eager to run home to finish the dishes?

Boots gaped as he saw the replay on TV. Juan Pablo Montoya, his favorite driver, had crashed into a track dryer carrying 200 gallons of jet fuel. “Was his wife watching? I bet she was scared. Were his kids worried?” Boots asked.

I went back to basketball practice and gave Big Guy the update. The race was  red-flagged with 40 laps left. The next words out of his mouth were far more predictable than the events in Daytona that had led us to this point: “Can we watch the rest of the race?” he asked, flashing me his most-winning smile.

Sure, I said.

I said “sure” because I wanted to watch the rest of the race rather than playing  Whac A Mole for an hour, trying to get them to stay in bed. And because NASCAR is what we do most weekends between February and November. And because it’s fun to do something slightly crazy once in a while, if for no other reason than to remind yourself that you can’t live like that all the time.

Besides, there are only 40 laps left. How long can that take?

Bwaaaa ha ha ha ha.

Big Guy didn’t make it to the end this time. He crashed shortly after his favorite driver did with four laps left. The first words out of his mouth when he got up this morning, half an hour later than normal, were “who won?”

Matt Kenseth did at 10 p.m. our time. That’s 1 a.m. where Mawmaw lives and, no, she wasn’t awake for finish either.

Years from now, the guys won’t recall who won the 2012 Daytona 500, though they will remember the crash because Big Guy has a knack for finding those on You Tube. But they will remember the time Mom threw out the quasi-strict rules and stayed up with them to watch a race.

On a school night.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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He’s a planner whose Valentines were ready Feb. 8.

He’s an organizer who gets that if you put away your backpack and shoes when you get home, you’ll be able to find them the next morning.

And those are the advantages of Boots’ Type A personality. Yes, a 6-year-old can be Type A. So can a 4-year-old – he’s been this way for two years.

There’s also a downside that’s driving me bat-crap crazy. And getting him in trouble at school. Again.

The most recent incident was Wednesday, when the teacher told Boots to read aloud with a classmate who apparently wasn’t feeling it. Boots read his two pages, but when the classmate’s turn came she balked. Boots told the teacher, who in turn told the girl to read.

She wouldn’t. Boots told the teacher again. The girl still wouldn’t read, so Boots start jabbing his finger at her and loudly insisting that she read. Boots lost 10 minutes’ recess as a result. He was still incensed when he came home two hours later.

“It’s no FAIR! She was supposed to read, and she didn’t. I told the teacher, and she just didn’t care.” Steam was pouring out of his ears and his eyes looked ready to fly out of his skull.

Knowing Boots, I bet it wasn’t that the teacher “just didn’t care.” I’m sure it was a case of him working himself into a lather because someone wasn’t moving immediately to right what he perceived as an extreme injustice, but what in reality, in a class with 20 other students, wasn’t the biggest priority on Earth at the moment. He’s made similar accusations about me before. “He’s beating me half to death, and you just don’t care,” he fumed after Big Guy bumped him slightly (and accidentally for once) in the hall.

For Boots, though, the rules are the rules are the rules. Except when he wants to clown in karate, which he did so often the same night of the reading riot that he probably set a record for most pushups in a single class. Any infraction of the rules – except for the ones he wants to break – should bring swift consequences. If he’d been the teacher, the classmate would have been sent to the guillotine for refusing to read.

I understand his academic frustration. He started the year well ahead, and in a class where half the kids never do homework the gap has widened. The book he read last night was at fourth-grade level and I know he comprehended it, too, because he spent the next half hour telling me about it.

I just hate the idea of him turning from a child who comes unhinged at a detour from the “rules” to an adult discombobulated by any little babble.

It’s not that Type A’s are all bad. They might not make the world go ’round, but they’d be the first to notice if it stopped spinning and do something to set things right. Of course, they’d first have to throw a tantrum and scold the person responsible.

It’s that last part where Boots needs help, and I’m trying. Maybe I should start by having him write a checklist.

Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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