Flying Solo

My cultural reference for a hectic day is the long penultimate scene of Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas, in which a coked-up Henry Hill is running multiple errands while freaking out about a helicopter which he is convinced is tracking him.  It's a darkly humorous film sequence with a bit of that trademark Scorcese cultural, by which I mean culinary, flair that I love.

My day wasn't quite so hectic, but the only stimulants running through my system are a couple of cups of coffee.  I started the day working the graveyard shift. then returned home to take a one-hour nap.  Then I was off to my volunteer coaching gig, where I was the only judo coach present.  I ran four classes of children from ages five to fourteen, going over proper movement and unbalancing techniques, then throwing them using the major hip throw, O Goshi, which is particularly suited to gi-less fighting.  Throwing the students, so they can learn proper falling, is an important teaching technique.  As a treat, I let the kids throw me using O Soto Gari, the first throw we teach them.  I sent a couple of sensei-to-sensei photo messages to our head coach so he could see what he was missing.  Then I had the kids practice uchikomi, those form practices so crucial to the sport.  In the youngest students' class, I was able to enlist the services of my self-appointed nemesis, a young girl who wants nothing more every Saturday morning than to fight me- she's a very enthusiastic student who knows what she's doing, and I basically gave her a brevet rank to assistant coach.  She's a serious girl who wants to use her stuff, so she was more than happy to help rally the other kids to the uchikomi practice so she would have an opportunity to kick my butt... which she did.  I also received invaluable help from the teenage counselors who escort the kids from activity to activity- in one case, one of our students who has earned his orange belt led an incoming class in the ritual bowing in that starts a workout while I led the preceding class in bowing out.  If you are going to fly solo, you need support staff to help you navigate.

After coaching, I was able to go home for two hours of sleep before having to go to work,  

I'm also flying solo at work- the one remaining coworker in my department (while my coworker Jim is on medical leave) is attending his daughter's college graduation/  I had to go to one site at 4PM to help lock up at the end of the day, then hightailed it to another site to help the manager lock up after 5PM.  I'll be working until midnight.  I'm going to be dragging my tailfeathers, but a college graduation doesn't occur every weekend.  I can deal with flying solo all the doo-dah day under these circumstances.