I Need a Monday Do-Over

My youngest was home with a bad cold today, so for the most part the day was uneventful.  It all went to hell quick though.  I went to pick up my oldest from her Jr. High musical rehearsal at 5 pm.  Turns out she doesn’t get out until 5:30 and I need to be at the dojang at 6 pm.  Clearly, that isn’t going to happen, so I call in and let Grandmaster know I’m running just a few minutes late.  I finally get there, take over the last half of class (with some unusually unenthusiastic yellow belts) and get dressed for Hapkido.  I’m not in Hapkido for 5 minutes when I somehow manage to tweak my ankle.

Actually, I don’t know exactly what I did.  I didn’t turn it or twist it, I think I was a victim of not warming up enough.  I bow out and head out to the lobby area.  I make a move to get the ice pack out of the kitchen and the chill of pain runs right up the back of my neck and gives me goose bumps.  Uh oh.  Grandmaster gets the ice pack for me and after a few minutes suggests I head home to rest.  This is an excellent idea.  I do the half-limp/half-hop to collect my belongings and bow out.  My family is a bit stunned to see me at 7:30 as opposed to my usual 10:30.  I have had my foot elevated and  on and off the ice for the past hour.  Ibuprofen has been taken.  It doesn’t look like there is any swelling, but this is the same foot that I had the tendinitis in 2 years ago.  It’s also the same leg as the hip that’s been giving me grief.

Oh, did I not mention that?  One of my hips has been protesting a bit lately.  And by lately I mean for the last 6 months or so.  It’s nothing major, just kind of a nagging ache, tightness and heaviness that is more pronounced if I have to pivot on that leg.  I suspect the family curse of arthritis is trying to introduce itself, so I’m starting to supplement with glucosomine/chondroitin and a few other supplements for joint health.  On particularly twingey days I take ibuprofen or naproxen before class.

While earlier today it was relatively quiet, this evening became a cluster in a hurry.  I suspect this little tweak is just my body’s way of saying “Bitch, take a break!”

Kitchen Creativity

My youngest daughter turned 9 years old today and had the best day.  They had a pizza party in class that happened to coincide with her special day.  Daddy is taking her out for a birthday treat shortly and I baked her a cake.

Becca is my ice skater.  She’s been skating for a year now and it’s amazing what she’s learned in that time.  Just today she learned the toe loop.  Don’t ask me what that is, I know it’s a jump but other than that, I can’t really say.

Tomorrow we are having family over and I need to be at the dojang in the morning, so that meant that today I had to make her cake.  Usually I make the icing from scratch but I just cleaned the kitchen and I really didn’t feel like cleaning up powdered sugar for the next two days.  So I bought a couple tubs of icing from Wilton.  Each tub says it can ice 10 single layer cakes, but I call bullshit.  That stuff could cover 10 cakes if they are maybe 6 inches in diameter each.  This cake is made from 2-8″ squares and 2-8″ circles and I used a tub and a half.  Surprisingly it’s very level.  However it is listing ever so slightly to the left.  Still, to date it’s probably the most evenly leveled and iced cake I’ve ever made.  I’d love to say that I made something in it from scratch, but no, I do not have that kind of time, so cake mix it is.    The skater is made from buttercream and sparkle gel.  I made a quickie buttercream transfer (and it shows), and was dismayed to find that the gel never really froze.  Luckily it didn’t make a huge mess and I was able to go back and fix it once I had the transfer on the cake.

For the sides I thought it would be fun to have a “snowball” border with trees and snowflakes on the side.  I decided the trees would look sort of snowflakey.

I am super pleased with how it came out and Becca absolutely loves it.  I even managed to quell the shakes when piping the lettering.

Longing and Sentimentality

I’ve kind of been missing my old blog.  I used to have a blog called PsychoBabble.  For a while it was somewhat popular and I had a lot of fun with it.  Then I had a real-life friend shit all over me through my blog and I let it languish.  Then I shelved it.  I owned the domain name and paid for hosting and I just couldn’t justify that anymore.

For whatever reason, I looked it up on the Wayback Machine.  A lot of my writing didn’t horrify me, in fact I was pretty damn pleased with myself.  It kind of made me want to resurrect it.

But things change.  People change.  My main reason for shutting it down was I felt that I had entered a new stage in my life and I wanted a fresh start.  I have it archived – hopefully – on an old hard drive.  But that hard drive was damaged after one too many times of falling off my desk and I can’t even remember if I copied my files elsewhere after my husband was able to retrieve them.

Over the relatively short time I’ve had this blog, the topics and focus have slowly expanded to include parts of my world and life other than Tae Kwon D0.  It’s my roundabout way of saying I don’t do well with a blog limited to a single topic.  This year I’m going to try to use it more as a personal journal (within reason) and get back into the blogging groove.

I still miss my old blog.  Or maybe it’s being a little sentimental for the old me.  Things seemed a little simpler then, as they tend to when looking backward through soft-focus lenses.  I think resurrecting it would be a mistake, a way of living in the past instead of the present.

Maybe I’ll buy a domain name for myself.  Not necessarily use it, just buy it and park it.  Keep it a while for the “what if”.

Is it Opposite Day?

My birthday is tomorrow, so you know what that means?  It means I had to renew my drivers license today.  I was dreading it, because it’s usually really busy and the front door is manned by the crankiest old man on earth.  However, I went there today and it was a pleasurable AND efficient experience.  Everybody actually seemed to be happy to be there doing their jobs.  Better yet, the entire visit took no longer than 15 minutes and the picture on my license is so good that I was tempted to get a moving violation just so I could whip it out, point at my picture and exclaim, “Can you believe that I actually have a good picture on my license?”.

Gone are the days when my picture was so bad I had a friend threaten to lose it for me, just so I could get it replaced with a better one.

Late Due to Fashion Emergency

It’s amazing what about a week can do.  That previous post was probably 90% hormonally induced, I can’t believe I was so blind to the timing.

This morning we had a meltdown of another sort (sort of).  My 11 year old officially has “nothing to wear”.  I was loathe to believe her, but upon inspecting her closet, dresser, and clean clothes in the laundry room, I kind of had to agree with her.  She has 3 pair of jeans, a few leggings and skirts, and about 3 shirts that fit her.  Damn.

The fit she threw this morning caused her to be late enough to miss the bus so I had to drive her (can a fashion emergency be considered a valid excuse for arriving to school late?).  Then I came home, picked up my 8 y.o. and drove her to school.  I then proceeded to come back home, pick up my husband and drive him to the train station.  All before 8:15.  And coffee.

After my chauffeuring job was complete, I headed over to the mall to spend money we really don’t have in order to make sure that my daughter doesn’t have to wear her pajamas to school for the rest of the week.  This girl will be better dressed than I am most days.

Although in my defense, most days I spend a good portion of the time in my dobok.

Post-Holiday (and Post-Test) Let Down

Wow it’s been a crazy couple of months.  In December I finally received my black belt.  The ceremony had been pushed back twice because of personal issues with Grandmaster and his family.  I swore I wasn’t going to cry while thanking everybody, but of course, when I was addressing Grandmaster’s daughter, I burst into tears.  She exemplifies everything I strive to be, a strong yet feminine woman who takes shit from no one.  I expected to feel different when I got my black belt, and I do, but not in the way I expected.

First there was the anti-climactic nature of it.  I really thought I would be thrilled and excited to receive it, but in fact it was almost the opposite.  I think now it’s because I realize that the past three years were NOTHING compared to what is now expected of me.  There was also hope that I would take a break, and I sort of got one over the holidays, but not really because I was busy cooking, baking, buying, decorating, wrapping, etc.

So the new year has started and I’m feeling as ambivalent as ever about Tae Kwon Do.  Compounding this is my instructor training.  I’m worried that I have convinced myself that I suck and don’t want to do it anymore.  There are so many mixed feelings I’m having they are really hard to sort out.  I still love being a student, for the most part (sparring still sucks), but I am expected to test every 4 months (or 6 I can’t remember right now).  Not for full rank until the full 18 months has passed, but for Application Yi Dan and Provisional Yi Dan.

As far as instructing goes, it seems to have turned out to be so much more than I expected.  Grandmaster is constantly (and I mean constantly) tweaking the school’s system and programs, and we (the staff) have side projects that we need to do on top of teaching and being students ourselves.  It’s this that seems to be exhausting me mentally.  It has also taken something I love and turned it into work, which for some people is a wonderful thing, but for me seems to be a drag.  Between teaching and class I seem to be spending so much time at the dojang and I’m tired.  It also seems that mentally, I’m always at the dojang, working out something I need to do for instructorship.

Perhaps I need a vacation, but I’m still not sure that will help.  Seasonally, this is a very rough time of year for me and I will not make any major decisions for the next month or so because of that.  I see now why we have such a hard time holding onto students after they reach Cho Dan.  I don’t think I would ever quit Tae Kwon Do, but I do think I might need to dial it down a bit.  How bad is it already that I almost hope for an injury so I have an excuse to back off for a while?

Compounding issues is that I’m finally starting to feel as though I need to get a job.  Being a stay-at-home mom, I’m in a unique position where I have time to do so, and I would like to try to figure out how to turn something I love (like my spinning and knitting) into something with which I could supplement our income.  I know, I know, it sounds suspiciously like turning something I love into work.  Except I would be the one in charge.  The only crazy, neurotic person I would be working for would be me.

I wish I had my old blog at my disposal to see if I was like this every January.  I suspect I was.  With the new year, I seem to always be looking for ways to get my house in order, both in reality and psychically.  My head is currently cluttered with a lot of negativity that I need to clean out.  The urge to insulate myself from everything for a short while so I can make those lists and plans, and execute them so I feel more in control.

A conversation with my husband is forthcoming.  He always helps me see the forest through the trees.

Test Day Recap

My infrequency of posts (and of reading other blogs) is directly due to putting time into working at the dojang.  Not instructing mind you, but actual paid office work.  But that’s a story in and of itself, one that I will probably not go into great detail here.  Part of that is due to my being careful not to divulge proprietary information (Grandmaster also has developed a program he takes out of the dojang to speaking engagements), but also because a lot of it is fairly menial;  typing up lists, sending emails, composing letters, etc.

So, yesterday was my official Black Belt test.  My husband came in the nick of time to tape it with the camcorder.  The fact that he wasn’t there when I walked onto the dojang floor unnerved me a bit, but I did my best to push that to the back of my mind.  I started the test with my highest and favorite poomsae.  I was a little pissed that I messed up the beginning of my favorite, considering it was one of the easiest ones (Tae Guk Sahm Jang – Green Belt), and had to start over, but I executed it flawlessly after that.  The rest went pretty uneventfully.

I was shakier than I would have liked on a few things, seems I was having some balance issues yesterday.  My left hip has been stiff and achy and I think that played a part.  I was paired up with a 13 year old girl for sparring.  She was also testing for Cho Dan and on the video I look slow and heavy compared to her.  But I got a good whack or two in, and she did as well.

I didn’t get much feedback after the test.  The lower belt testers received their new belts, and we can’t even be told that we’ve passed until next month’s Black Belt ceremony, however Grandmaster did give all of us testing for full rank individual “Good Jobs!”.  This next month is looked at as a probationary period.  It’s a period of observation to make sure that you continue to conduct yourself in a manner becoming of a Black Belt.  So even though I did well on the test, and I’m certain I passed, it still does not yet feel complete.  Once I receive that black belt, I’m sure I’ll feel as though my Cho Dan test is finished.

I’m also kind of looking forward to what is to come with the new requirements I will have to learn.

The Day Has Come….

for my Black Belt test!  It’s amazing that this day is here finally.  I’m looking forward to performing my best and having fun.  It’s going to be a LONG day though.  I need to be at the dojang at 8 am and I don’t anticipate leaving until about 6 pm, and that will be to go to dinner with all those that are Black Belts or have tested for Black Belts.

Given that I’m pressed for time, I’ll give an update tomorrow when I’m rested.

New Look!

I was getting tired of the stock WordPress theme I had been using, so I picked one with a little customization…namely the header.  In all my tinkering I’ve discovered that there is a definite lack of photos accompanying my posts.  I will have to remedy that in the future.

P90X = Ooof

Well, well, well, what have we here?  Amy decided to take the plunge, step up her game, and jump into P90X.  I’ve been at the same state of fitness for several months now, and while I’m happy here, for the most part, I really would like a smokin’ bod at least once in my life.  Plus I was informed that the core exercises our one masochistic instructor has us do are from Ab Ripper X.  Sweet.

Anyhoo, I completed my second day (1st day chest & back, 2nd day plyometrics) and I’m already floored.  I knew going in that this system is very difficult, so I figured the first week I’ll give it about 75% to get familiar with it.  Even backing off the intensity I’m still groaning like an arthritic octogenarian getting in and out of my seat, or going up or down stairs.  I am SORE people!!  I’m keeping up with the Zone diet through this and will up the protein if I feel I need to.

After my workout, in that quiet 5 minute walk to pick up my daughter from school, I had an AH-HA moment about what motivates me.  (HINT P90X does not, really – but my body is the type where I have to work damn hard if I’m to get my ass off this comfy plateau I’m on).  I think that I love martial arts so much because it’s a form of exercise that has a purpose.  I don’t really look at it as exercise actually, it’s something I do for fun.  Now going to the gym or doing a home system like P90X is much harder for me to get into.  First, there’s that whole self-motivation thing.  I’m not accountable to anybody but myself, and I tend to be a pretty slackadaisical boss.    But also the purpose of doing exercise for fitness’ sake seems a little abstract and nebulous to me.  Sure I want a slammin’ body and would really like to avoid the heart disease that runs rampant on both sides of my family, but other than that, it’s difficult for me to frame it in a way where I see the practical application of it.  Sure I won’t be huffing and puffing like someone with emphesyma while sparring, and my kicks and punches will have more power, but that isn’t what motivates me.   Fun motivates me.  Tae Kwon Do is FUN!  Doing pull ups and push ups until my muscles burn?   Not so fun.

Maybe it’s my childlike need for immediate gratification.  Maybe I should hook up with the few black belts that follow this program and use them as sort of a buddy system.  Make myself more accountable.  But I already feel my brain trying to give me grief and resisting the desire to exercise.  Perhaps I’m just TOO comfortable in this comfort zone and I need to suffer a bit before I finally find it fun.

Interestingly, I’m finding it easier to watch what I eat than work up the motivation to work out.  I also have doubts about the program working.  I’m suffering from what if-itis.  What if I can’t ever get through every exercise for every second in every workout?  What if I gain muscle weight, but somehow still manage to hang on to every ounce of fat I currently have residing on my belly and ass?  What if I go through all this and 90 days later I don’t look any different?  (I admit, it’s mostly vanity that’s driving me right now).  I am planning on taking before pictures tomorrow so I have at least something to compare to later.  I plan on taking pictures at 1 month, 2 months and 3 months.

Any advice for this 38 year old former couch potato?  Other than take some ibuprofen?