Lover Not A Fighter

Woke up this morning feeling like I'd been run over by a train, all bruised and banged up and creaky.  I do understand that the whole point of martial arts is being able to competently fight when you need to, but MAN I hate sparring.  Left to my own devices (assuming the bad guys and gals of the world leave me alone), all I'd want out of taekwondo is more upper body strength, some definition in my core, maybe improved endurance too.  The ability to efficiently beat the hell out of somebody has never been on my lifetime wish list.  Unfortunately, every time I earn a new belt I need a new green stripe for it signifying that I can spar at that belt level, and every future belt test will include a sparring element as well, so it's an issue that will never really go away unless I quit.

The problem boils down to control: both mine and that of my opponent.  I'm three and a half years into this now.  I'm tall and strong and I know a lot of techniques.  The goal in sparring (in class at least) is to land a strike or kick with less than your full power, indicating to the opponent where it would have hit them but not actually, you know, HURTING them with it.  Novel concept.  Given that most of my usual opponents are other women and therefore significantly smaller than me, population height averages being what they are and me being 5'10", I am genuinely concerned that one errant kick or punch from me will actually injure someone, even with everyone involved wearing protective gear, so I tend to err on the side of 'pulling' my strikes (aka checking their strength) more than most people.  This makes it *really* piss me off when people come at me full force in return.  Especially people higher-ranked than me, who should theoretically a) have more control, and b) know better.  Which explains why I blew my stack at the black belt who started off my Chain of Pain yesterday morning.

As a test of endurance, not much beats an extended period in which you are sparring nonstop against a series of opponents, each of whom comes in fresh at defined intervals as you become increasingly tired.  To earn my stripe yesterday, I had to complete an eight-minute Chain of Pain (two minutes each against four sequential opponents), at the end of a full class of sparring exercises.  I was pretty much wiped out already when it began, which is about par for the course...they are looking for you to be able to dig deep and gut it out.  And I can, believe me...didn't appreciate the black belt who started off the Chain coming at me with her full strength, though.  Just kind of looked at her when the first punch landed.  Yeah, she's a black belt, but she's maybe five inches shorter, five years older and somewhat out of shape.  Not normally somebody I'd try to beat up.  She landed another one solidly and I quietly told her that if she didn't start pulling her strikes I'd stop pulling mine.  She didn't and I did, as promised: game on, bitch.  She landed a few more in her remaining time (she outranks me by four belts, after all), but she paid dearly for them.  I saw to that.  Ignore fair warning and you get what you get...no regrets.  Except that I lost my temper, that is.  Not proud of that.  Goal for next time this happens, because she won't be the first or last person to push this particular button: deliver the same lesson while remaining calm.

Got the damned stripe.  EARNED that damned stripe.  But I still hate sparring.

Life With Mr. North Philly

Sometimes a blog post just writes itself!

Philadelphians are renowned for being straight-talking, pull-no-punches, no-sugarcoating kind of people.  You get a couple of glasses of wine into one on a Friday night and you can pretty much guarantee that whatever social veneer might have been constructed over the Philly isn't going to last long.  Anyway, Himself and I were sitting on the sofa watching junk TV and relaxing after a long day when somehow, the subject of people renewing their wedding vows came up.  (There was a long conversational train involved.)  Curious, I asked him what he thought about it.

"Why the FUCK would anyone want to do that?"  (Said with no hostility whatsoever, just genuine confusion.)  "Renewing would mean something expired, like some kind of library book.  Wedding vows don't expire.  I meant what I said the first time and every morning I wake up next to you is a renewal of my damn vows."  

At which point I absolutely burst out laughing.  If that isn't the most romantic thing ever barked out Philly-style, I don't know what is!

 

On The Randomness Of Facebook's Algorithms

So, I happened to click on the Friends icon on FB this evening, and the first person on the "people you may know" list that the FB wizards serve up is indeed an acquaintance, but I can't for the life of me figure out how the *hell* FB knows that I know her.  We have absolutely zero direct contact (no phone, no email) and the one solitary person through whom I know her is not on FB.  Just bizarre.

On the bright side, when I clicked on the icon again for giggles, the randomness that is FB produced the page of my fifth grade math teacher, who at least knows other people in my network.  That makes a little more sense.  And since, as it happens, this is a guy to whom I've owed a major debt of gratitude for oh, about THIRTY years now, I took the opportunity handed to me by the universe to send him a message saying 'thanks.'  It's not an exaggeration to say that he changed the entire trajectory of my life, academically speaking at least, so I should have found a way to make it happen long ago.

Is It Spring Yet??

Because I am going to lose my ever-loving MIND here if my kids and husband don't go back to their usual weekday pursuits soon.  Mama needs a little time during the day when she is not either cooking for or cleaning up after somebody, just sayin'.

On a related note, I firmly believe that only children old enough to dress and undress themselves and keep track of their own mittens/boots/hats/coats/snow pants etc should be allowed outside to play in the snow.   The sentence, "But MOOOOM, I can't find my _______" sends chills down my spine that are entirely unrelated to outdoor temperatures.

What...you thought I was only Grinchy at Christmas?  Nah.  :)

Love this poem...wish I knew who wrote it!

In My Next Life I Want To Be A Bear If you're a bear, you get to hibernate.  You do nothing but sleep for six months.

I could deal with that.

Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid.

I could deal with that, too.

If you're a bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you're sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute cuddly cubs.

I could definitely deal with that.

If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business. You swat anyone who bothers your cubs. If your cubs get out of line, you swat them too.

I could deal with that.

If you're a bear, your mate EXPECTS you to wake up growling.
He EXPECTS that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.
He KNOWS not to get between you and the food.

Yup..... Gonna be a bear.  

Not A Paid Ad (I Wish), I Just Like It

Quiet weekend so far.  Basketball Friday night (Thing Two made another free throw!), a cache or two, a nice fire in the fireplace and working on a few puzzles to keep my brain moving.  Funny how my weekends are so much less active than my weekdays...you'd think it would be the opposite with three young kids home, but no.  Not even close.  On weekdays, I'm out and going all day with very little downtime and that's the way I like it.

Got one of these (below) for Christmas.  It's a Fitbit, and it's a pretty cool little contraption.  I've been wearing it pretty much straight since about noon on Christmas Day except for showers and when it needs to charge, which doesn't take long.  It can track all sorts of things, most of which I don't care at all about, or at least not enough to bother logging all the info--how many calories you take in, how much water you drink, how much you weigh every day, etc.  What I *do* care about is how much I move...how many steps and what approximate distance.  The sensor embedded in this wristband keeps track of how many steps you take and somehow calculates distance from that.

I haven't seen a way to calibrate my step length, and regardless, it's going to vary based on whether I am booking it around a flat walking track with my headphones on or hiking up a steep hill, but I figure it will all average out over time for my activities anyway.  I know that I was more active on a 15,000-step day than on a 10,000-step day, for example, no matter how long the steps were.  (The default goal is set by the manufacturer at 10,000 steps per day, which I reach easily on a normally-active day.)  One common complaint about these things is that they are not completely accurate and usually overestimate activity, but a friend of mine has a different brand and if we hike together they usually have similar readouts at the end for distance, so it's good enough for me.  Just wish the thing tracked altitude gained and lost as well as distance for some of those hiking days!  As a side note, you can also put it in sleep mode when you go to bed and it will keep track of how long you sleep and how active (i.e., restless) you are while sleeping, which is interesting info too.

As you can see, this model has no digital readout...if you want to see more info than what the five lights give you, you have to sync it to your computer (easy, but a pain if you're out of the house) or your smartphone (a piece of cake and super convenient.)  Free app; open it and hold the Fitbit within range and the display on the phone shows you whatever metrics you want to see.  

Funny thing is that I almost invariably walk a good mile or so by 8AM, just around my house while getting the kids ready for school.  Who says you can't get some good exercise while still in your pajamas??

Between The Eyes

Oh good GOD more appropriate words have never been spoken.  

Thought about this all the way through tonight's basketball games.  The dads, the dads (it's almost always the dads...) for the love of Pete just shut UP and let the kids play and the coaches coach.  And the dads who are coaches...don't start yelling at your kid about the game in the parking lot before you even get to your car.  We saw the kid's body language as he walked, and you suck.

Oh, And Two Other Hacks While I'm Thinking About It...

Both of these relate to freezers and power outages/loss of freezing for whatever reason.

1) I learned this one the hard way: don't make my mistake!  If you have an upright freezer, purchase plastic bins that fit on the shelves and put your frozen foods inside the bins, not on the shelves.  That way, if your power goes out (or if it doesn't go out, but somebody whose name will be nameless accidentally leaves the door open a crack and all the cold leaks out) and everything inside melts, it will melt inside the bins, greatly facilitating cleanup.  The alternative being, of course, cleaning disgusting smelly thawed raw meat juice out of the bottom of the freezer and off the basement floor--just ask me how I know about this.  There isn't enough bleach in the world to eradicate that odor!
 

2) Wash out large plastic drink bottles (soda and juice bottles are ideal) refill them with fresh water, and freeze them.  Fill any empty spaces in your freezer with these bottles.  Should the power go out (or someone leave the door open, ahem) these very large solid non-messy 'ice cubes' will help keep the contents of the freezer cold for an extended period.  And, of course, once they thaw, they are another supply of water for those poor benighted souls such as ourselves whose household water pump does not run without electricity.

 
This has been a public service announcement. :)  Anyone have any other tips to add??