I am very disappointed in my performance during testing today. I made some pretty silly mistakes. I wasn't really nervious, I guess my concentration was just off at times. I wish I could say the same for my boy.

I felt bad for my little A.K. He had to do two forms all by himself in front of the testing board...with a room full of people looking at him. He was so nervous you could see him shaking. He did one form fairly well. He made one mistake in it, but he realized his error on the next move. I thought it was going to completely throw him, but he got through the rest of it okay. The second form he had to do alone was a complete disaster. I had a mom moment, I wanted to run to him and hold him and tell him he was doing a good job. Then to top everything off, he wasn't able to break his board. I'm not sure if he'll pass. He doesn't seem to think he'll pass. I'm assuming Sa Bum Nim will tell me ahead of time if he isn't going to get promoted. I'd hate to make him go to promotion night and sit through everything and then not get his second stripe put on his belt.

I lead the karate class through warm-up and basics yesterday. I felt bad for the adults in class. I had to ask for help with Korean commands, and take suggestions from them on what we could do next. Sa Bum Nim was not in the building for most of my incredibly painful experience. It's amazing how difficult it is to remember things we you have a group of people hanging on your every word.

Testing is tomorrow. I go back and forth between not being worried at all and being terrified. If all goes well at testing, I'll be a red built sometime in February. It's a bit weird to think about.

We also officially put the house up for sale last night. I pray it won't be months before we have a buyer...I don't think I'll be able to handle the stress.

I'm planning another redesign of the site. I know what your saying to yourself, "another? have there been any others?"

Yes, there have been others. The thing is, no one ever sees them. I'm constantly redesigning the site, I get half-way through a design, get stuck or lose interest, and so they are destined to sit in the "old stuff" directory on the c-drive.

I don't limit my inability to see a project all the way through to my web site. I have dozens of projects started, I'm quite confident most of them will never be completed.

Speaking of redesign. I hate my new hair style. I usually like what my stylist does. This time...blah. It's one of those, "it looked good when she styled it," deals. I distinctly remember leaving the salon thinking, "I'm one sassy hot tamale...my hair rocks." The next morning I'm thinking, "what the hell am I supposed to do with this crap on my head!"

Lefty, who was born with, "roll out of bed and look stunning hair" suggested going back to the salon to have a styling session. Sounds good in theory, but it's so much easier to just complain about the fact that I can't do anything with it than to take the time out of my day to do something constructive like learning how to properly comb my hair.

My nine-year-old who has hated karate since we joined...well "hate" is too strong, he likes getting promoted, he just dislikes doing everything one needs to do in order to get promoted. Anyway, he has whined and/or thrown a temper-tantrum prior to almost every karate class he's attended. That is until the last month or so.

Last night he decides he loves karate, he can't get enough of it. In fact, he loves it so much that he wants to share his love for the martial art with other karate kids throughout the world.

How is he going to share the love? He wants to write two karate books: "Gup Goodies" and "Dan Doings." He's really jazzed about "Gup Goodies." He started jotting down ideas he has for the book when we got home from karate last night. He's a little worried about how he's going to know what to put in "Dan Doings" but he's pretty sure Sa Bum Nim will be so wowed by his book ideas that he'll help fill in the information gaps. He also knows about a web site that will turn his English written books into Korean...yeah, I know, but he's nine, the concept of linguistic complexities is beyond his ability to comprehend.

The most bizarre thing about this is that I think this has all come about over the last few weeks because of the love he has for a certain green belt (soon-to-be red belt) who is, let's see, more than 20 years his senior.

I'm totally blowing the diet. Ever since Thanksgiving I've been putting mostly crap into my body...chocolate, bread, chocolate, pastries, chocolate, french fries, chocolate.

I've had some form of fried or grease ladden-bread product every morning this week. Donuts, honey buns, bread slathered with butter. I usually follow-up my lardo-bread with some chocolate.

I think I'm going to have to do the hard-core Atkins routine again. The guilt induced by cheating when I'm supposed to be following a structured diet is the only thing that will keep me from shoveling tasty little morsels of junk food into my mouth.

The next gup test is rapidly approaching. I'm thinking I'll probably remain a 4th gup once it's all said and done with. Not only can I not properly execute my new form and self defense techniques, but I also can no longer remember or perform any of the old material. My brain has reached capacity or sprung a leak. Whatever the case, my gray matter is not functioning in the karate world. Come February, I fear I won't be "Righty" anymore, I'll be "Held-Backy."