Testing time again. Trying to get from 3rd gup to 2nd gup. Despite my better judgement, I'm going ahead and ponying up the fifty bucks so I can test on schedule. Today I am preparing myself emotionally for the battering I'm sure will take place tomorrow. My form stinks. I can remember only half of my self-defense techniques. Terminology--what's that. My only hope is that I'm not individually singled out for shaming. I think I can handle a little red-belt group shame, I just don't want to be the only one put on the short bus.

I have a migraine. It started around 9:30 a.m. It's now 8:45 p.m. I've taken three different pain remedies...I threw-up one...so I guess I've only taken two. Why blog if I'm feeling so crappy? I'm at the second job until 11 p.m. I need to do something to take my mind off myself. The probablity of actual work surfacing is slim to none. Perhaps if I'm lucky one thing will come in that will take all of five minutes to complete. I have a lot of time to sit and feel sorry for myself. I thought I'd feel better if I shared my misery with the keyboard. So far, I don't.

If I were at home, right about now I would be snuggled-up with my two-year-old reading books. Our current selections are Alpha Bugs, Ladybug on the Move, Elmer (stuffed Elmer must sit on lap for this one), Wide Mouthed Frog, and Tails. The order changes, but the titles have been the same for more than a month. Skipping a story is taboo. In fact, don't even think about sneaking past a few pages. Some times she "reads" to me. I think tonight I would have asked her to read to me.

9:10 p.m. Still have a migraine but it seems to be letting up. Vomiting isn't always a bad thing. I think the latest purge may have done the trick. I'm beginning to suspect the steak and cheese Cruncheros I had for dinner last night and lunch today. They've surfaced in every purge.

I'm eating a tub of cottage cheese for lunch today. That's right, I said tub not bowl. I love the creamy, chewy, squeaky goodness of cottage cheese. My brand of choice is Kleinpeter. When I eat it, I feel like I'm doing my part to help the local economy while endulging in a culinary delight. Plus it's so easy, remove lid, peel protective plastic, pour in salt, pour in pepper, stir, enjoy.

Now that you know what's on the menu today, I can proceed with the actual post.

I "sparred" children in karate Saturday. I broke down. Some of the children weren't so small. And they were agressively waving their little hands and feet in my general direction. The break down came on slowly. It started with thoughts like, "uh-oh if that kick was 18 inches closer it could hit me in the nose" and then it progressed to "holy crap this little girl is trying to deface me, no matter how far I try to turn away from her, she keeps aiming for my nose."

When I started shaking uncontrollably, I decided to dismiss myself from class. I proceeded directly to the women's restroom and locked myself in before I let the water works commence. The tears erupted and then subsided just as quicly as they came on. It was the shaking that wouldn't go away. I swear I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. It took me several minutes before I could stand without fear of my knees giving out on me.

I could hear Lefty outside the door, she and Sa Bu Nim were concerned that I'd been hit in the face. No, it's just me being a weeny. I don't think I'll ever be able to spar again. SBN thinks he'll be able to ease me into it. Unless he can teach me how to spar from the fetal position, I'm thinking it won't happen in this life time.

WTK, if you read this, you can' t be upset with me...they were only children.

Is that even a word...who knows...it's what I'm doing at the moment...avoiding work.

Been playing with the style sheets on my site. I still have some tweeking to do, but it's getting there. In addition to screwing around with the css, I've made some other changes that I'm hoping will make it less of a pain in the ass to update the site.

See my changes have already paid off, after years of intending to post pics of the kiddos, I've finally made a step in the right direction. Note the right-hand column.

Completely off subject, I have a Franz Ferdinand song stuck in my head, only it's not the whole song its a guitar rift and part of a line. It's driving me crazy.

[guitar] Goodbye girl la la la la la
[guitar] Goodbye girl la la la la la
[guitar] Goodbye girl la la la la la
[guitar] Goodbye girl la la la la la

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH leave my head!

It's been months since I've actually remembered a dream. Now, two nights in a row, I remember.

Last night, my subconscious tried to make-up to me for the terrible dream I had Monday night. Oh, it was still a bad dream, but at least this time it had some star power in it.


In the dream, I'm at some huge, high-class party. If you know me well, you know this in itself is totally preposterous and nightmarish. I shun social gatherings.

Anyway, it occurs to me that I'm not here because I'm a socialite, I'm here because I'm Jamesetta Bond. I'm supposed to be protecting some one. I have no idea who this person is.
I'm talking to some lady whose telling me she absolutely loves the dress I'm wearing because it's so '80s. Only it isn't, because in the waking world it's some dress I saw in a catalog a couple weeks ago. Anyway, I finally realize who I am supposed to be protecting. It's some tall, blonde guy standing near me. He's wearing a white suit...a la John Travolta...with a black cord tied around his waist...think Jethro Bodine.

I'm still talking to the lady when John Cusack walks up to me. Only he's not an actor in my dream. He's an old friend I haven't seen for years. He and some other guy are also protecting Mr. White Suit. Oh yeah, Cusack hits on me. But I'm playin it cool.


Suddenly, Mr. White Suit screams out. He's been shot in the arm. Cusack starts clearing an exit way for us. I grab Mr. White Suit under his left arm and The Other Guy takes him by his right arm. Mr. White Suit is a total weeny. He's only been shot in the arm, but for some reason his legs no longer work. We have to drag him to safety.

We make it to some private room thinking we can escape to the alley through it. But the room is full of bad guys and we're trapped. The Other Guy stops holding Mr. White Suit and starts laying down some cover fire for us. The bad guys are poorly prepared, only one of them has a gun, but it's a machine gun. The Other Guy is shot down by the machine gun. It's now my job to take out the bad guys. Cusack takes Mr. White Suit to try to find and exit. I take a run at the bad guy with the machine gun and try to take him out with a flying side kick. The kick misses him. However, since this is a dream I get a do-over. It takes me two more tries before I eliminate him.

At this point, Cusack and Mr. White Suit are no longer in the room. Neither the bad guys nor I know how they were able to get out. The bad guys are no longer interested in me, they're trying to figure out how to find Mr. White Suit.

A big goon is guarding the back door, at first he doesn't want to let me leave, but I'm able to smooth-talk my way past him. So, I'm in the alley way. I decide I need to walk the perimeter of the building to find Cusack and Mr. White Suit. I think they may be up on the roof, so as I'm walking I'm calling out for them.

Two bums holding whiskey bottles approach me. They tell me I need to come with them. I ignore them and keep walking. One of the bums follows me and demands that I come with him. He pulls out a knife. So, I have to perform another flying side kick to get rid of this nuisance. This time the kick works on the first try.


I make it to the far side of the building, only to discover a garbage man convention is taking place. Unbeknownst to me, the garbage men know who I'm looking for. One of the garbage men tells me to hang around and then he walks over to an orange AMC Gremlin to talk to whomever is sitting in the car. I don't think this has anything to do with me, so I start walking again. At this point, I'm very worried, I have the feeling that if I don't find Cusack and Mr. White Suit soon then they will die.

I hear someone running up behind me. So I turn quickly, I'm thinking I'm going to have to unleash another deadly sidekick on one more poor bastard. But wait! It can't be, yes, it's Cusack. He reaches me and for some reason he spins me around until I fall on the ground. Then he asks me to run away with him and Mr. White Suit in his orange Gremlin.

I wake up.

So, in my dream last night, I'm apparently trying to find a place to live with a bunch of people. I don't remember who these people are exactly...friends, co-workers, b-grade actors. We're on the run from some evil force, I'm not really sure what, but we need to find a stronghold.

We find a huge fortress to live in, and we get all moved in and suddenly we realize the place is over run with spiders. Not just any spiders...brown recluse.

So now we have to get out of this place, I guess we'd much rather face the big evil outside the fortress than call an exterminator. Suddenly it's me and one other adult trying to get a bunch of little kids evacuated from this building. At some point, we must have traveled into the bowels of the building because I'm trying to run all these little kids up flights of stairs. All the while we're being chased by brown recluse that are becoming larger and larger. To top matters off, the spiders are now being supported by herds of evil cats.

We finally get to the top of the last flight of stairs, and, whoever the other adult is, is helping the little kids get outside and into a space ship that is waiting outside to whisk us away. Considering we're under attack, the kids are behaving quite calmly. They stand behind me, waiting patiently in a well-formed line while the other adult takes them one at a time to our escape vehicle.

The spider and the cats finally catch up to us. A huge brown recluse is hanging back a little in striking position. It occurs to me that he's waiting for the cats to overwhelm me before he moves in for the kill. So I have to stand at the top of the stairs and kick cats in the head on exactly the right spot so that they are blasted off into some abyss near the stairs.

Then I wake up. I'm not sure who won.

Apparently, Whitey has the gift of insight into other people's dreams and has been able to recreate the final scene with terrifying accuracy...except the spider in my dream was a brown recluse...and I wasn't wearing a do bok...and, quite frankly, some of the cats in this picture don't look all that evil...

So, my nose is broken afterall, according to the ENT. She said neither the break nor the deviated septum are bad enough to warrant surgery at this point. In a couple months, if I'm still having a lot of pain or sinus problems, then she can re-evaluate.

I now have an excruitiating "exercise" I'm supposed to perform several times throughout the day. It consists of applying firm pressure to the break point for 30-40 seconds at a time. The sound and the pain associated with this procedure make my stomach queasy. But, Dr. B says that this will help reduce the crook in my nose as it heals.

I'm still feeling a lot of hate for Green Belt Norman Bates. There was a chance that he was going to show up at our school last night. He never did, at least while I was there. I'd really enjoy seeing one of the black belts get a hold of him at sparring. But I'm thinking it's unlikely that this will ever happen now. If GBNB didn't show up at the school this week to train, it probably means he has a conscience afterall and has decided this isn't a school he should train at.

I'm so very torn, part of me never wants to see that rat-bastard ever again...part of me wants to give him "nutters" repeatedly. The dark side can't be that bad, can it?

After months of non-blogging, it has taken an injury to get me back in the blogging spirit.

We had visitors at the karate school this past Saturday. Some guy and his little girl showed up to test drive our school. It seems he wants a place where he can get in more sparring. After doing about an hour and 15 minutes worth of warm-up and basics, new guy gets his wish.

First round went okay. I sparred a little red belt, who I think was probably a less aggressive sparrer than myself--strange but true.

Second round, I get to spar the visiting, psychotic green belt. He's a good three-, four-inches taller than me. Definitely out weighs me by...well...a lot. He wasn't fat, but he was big. So we're sparring. Or at least, I'm sparring, he's fighting. He's coming at me pretty hard. I try to do my normal stay out of the way, watch for an opening and then strike. This isn't working real well, I realize I actually need to initiate some of the rough stuff with this guy.

In hind sight, I wish I'd just kept running from Norman Bates. He was throwing a lot of kicks, mostly to the mid-section. Some of them were connecting, I was able to block away a good deal of them. Occasionally, Norman would throw a kick toward my head, usually way off the mark. Unfortunately, the last kick he threw was on target. I think it was a round kick, I'm really not sure though. I'd like to think I threw a block and that it had something to do with the fact that the kick didn't take the front of my face completely off, but I can't be sure of that either. What I do know is that some part of his foot made contact with the left side of my nose.

At this point a strange, adrenaline fueled reality took over. I hear the cracking sounds from inside my head. I remember turning my back to the psychopath and standing facing Sa Bum Nim and Kyo Sa Nim. I'm thinking, "I should probably not be standing." So, I went down to my knees. I remember thinking, "I'm going to be horribly disfigured for the rest of my life." By this time SBN and KSN are around me. Of of them asks if I'm okay. I think I said, "no, I'm hurt...I think he broke my nose...I heard it crack." It flashes through my head, "hey, I'm not crying." Then I realize that I, in fact, do have tears streaming down my face. I'm not sobbing though, so I wonder if this is some sort of primal response triggered by an attack on the nose. Anyway, I hear someone else say they heard something "pop." Yeah, that was the sound of the cartilage in my nose being torn away from the bone. SBN or KYN asks if I can walk with help. So I stand up. KYN takes my arm and helps me walk off the mat. Of course, I'm hearing the obligatory, "hold your head back." I don't know who is telling me this,the only thing going through my head is, "please let me get to a chair before I pass out."

So, I'm sitting down, head tilted back, holding a wad of paper towels to my nose. SBN asks if he can look at my nose. So I move the paper towels. When I do so, the look on SBN and KSN's faces were not at all reassuring. SBN says he'd like to try to move my nose back into position. So I let him. Remarkably, this does not cause me to pass out. Then I take a trip to the bathroom, to rinse some of the blood off myself. I'm brave and I take a look in the bathroom mirror. My nose is now crescent shaped...not from the side, but from the front. I go back to SBN, he says he'd like to try to move my nose some more...please by all means.

We move to SBN's office. I call my mom, who calls my husband. It is decided that I shall journey to the nearest after hours clinic.

Lefty is my heroine. She drives me to clinic, helps me communicate with "the staff," and hands me my insurance card, repeatedly. Not only that, but she holds my spent, bloody ice packs. Never once does she say, "gross" or "I can't stand to look at your face." Eventually my man shows up. We see the doctor, x-rays are taken...woo hoo...the nose is not broken, the cartilage is merely no longer where it used to be. Doc gives me a prescription for some Lortab and tells me to see an ENT.

Now, all that's left for me to do is reflect. How does this make me stronger? What can I learn from this experience, as a person, and as a martial artist? But most importantly, how can I get even? When will my opportunity for retribution arrive? How can I inflict the most pain without suffering from a guilty conscience?

When the injury first happened. I was thinking it must suck to be visitor guy. He came to our do jang to find a new school, and he winds up injuring a member of the school. But no, now it's beginning to seem more and more like Norman Bates didn't have any remorse at all. I don't recall hearing a single "I'm sorry" from him while SBN and KSN were tending to me. Lefty tells me that she heard BBS tell Norman several times, "stop it, we don't spar that hard." This is after I've been injured. SBN says this guy visited our school because he's trying to find a school where he can do more sparring. I'd like to suggest something to him, it's called boxing, he can spar all he wants.

Part of me hopes this guy has the decency not to show up at our school ever again. On the other hand, he is Norman Bates, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he felt invigorated by his experience and is looking forward to coming back and disfiguring more women at our school. In that case, I can't decide what I would enjoy more, kneeing him repeatedly in his fucking groin or watching him spar one of our Kyo Sa Nims--sans head gear and pads.

Having said all that, I'm not bitter, my face hurts.