Juggling fool

I juggle. I really like juggling. Someday I'll write a post all about the path I took learning to juggle and how it opened me up as a person. Today, I'm going to explain that picture over there and the cut on my chin and how I managed to cut my face three days before my wife's company Christmas party. The only day of the year where I get really dressed up and leave my kids at home and work hard to impress my wife's coworkers. With a cut. On. My. Face.
When you get a cut on your elbow or shin or finger you just put a bandaid on it and go about your life. Unless it's a pretty epic cut, nobody even notices. When you get a cut on your face, people notice. Anything bigger than a shaving nick compels people to start a conversation about it. It would really be ok if I could just explain that I was saving my family from a bear. Or perhaps that I was hit by a piece of flying automotive trim as I pried open a car door with my bare hands in order to save a woman and her small child after an auto accident before their car exploded. I'd even settle for being hit by shrapnel from a stray bullet when I was stopping a robbery in progress at the grocery store. All of those would be awesome excuses for the cut on my chin. With what I'm facing, I'd even go with something like falling off a ladder while stringing Christmas lights. Not awesome, but at least a touch, a hint, of manliness.
But no, I have a cut on my chin as a result of a juggling accident. I wanted to learn how to juggle clubs last year but was too cheap to buy them. I decided that I could just cut pieces of PVC pipe to length and juggle those instead, after all, before clubs, jugglers used to juggle plain sticks. It actually works great and I've learned to juggle them quite well. Their only downside is that the ends are a bit sharp and it hurts when they hit you. In the beginning this compelled me to wear shoes when I juggled, but I've gotten good enough that I don't even bother with that any more. I've gotten a bit cocky about juggling safety, really. So the other day when I was trying to match a double flip with one hand with a behind the back/over the shoulder throw with the other, I was quite surprised to find myself all crossed up and hit squarely in the chin with a fast moving piece of PVC pipe. I put my hand on the owie and came away with blood, confirming that yes, that was going to leave a mark.
So tonight, when I'm all dressed in my suit, with my new Santa Claus bow tie, next to my beautiful wife, someone is going to ask me why I have a cut on my face.
"Juggling accident."
It's going to be a fun night.

Books I finished this week:
The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine, MD
The Male Brain, Louann Brizendine, MD
Dr. Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist at UC San Francisco and the founder of the Women's and Teen Girl's Mood and Hormone Clinic. She's got some serious credentials and is the rare academic who can talk about a subject that she's an expert in on a level that normal people can understand. The books are awesome. Male and female brains are different, structurally and chemically different. Boys and girls, men and women, aren't actually the same, mentally, despite what we've all been told. There is a big difference between the sexes being equal, which they are or should be, and being the same. I think those two concepts have gotten very mixed up. These two books go through the development and differences between the female and male brain from conception through old age. It covers the hormones that drive the structural changes that start in the womb and continue into adolescence and all the way to death. It probably won't tell you anything about yourself that you don't already know, or about your spouse for that matter if you've been paying any attention. As a dad though, it will help you understand the mysteries of adolescence that your kids have coming up. Whether it's the mysteries of teen girls that you never did understand, or the confusing times that you lived though. You get a better feel for what's happening to their brains and why. It might not make it easier, but hopefully it will provide a bit of insight when your teen starts sleeping until noon or no longer wants to speak to you. As a husband, it will also confirm that your wife is actually a different human day to day, and there's a logical, biological, reason for that. These books are a quick read, I got them on Friday and was done by Sunday. I don't think I can recommend them enough, put them at the top of your list. Whether you're a man or a woman, you'll come away with a new understanding of the other sex as well as your own.
Edit of the book review: My wife read The Male Brain and now she's running around hugging our sons as much as she can before they're repulsed by her touch. The book has given her quite a complex. Not sure how that's going to work out.