Mar3

The universe can suck it!

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Monday was a great day. For starters, guess who joined me for class?

Neighbor and me on our way to Jiu-Jitsu.

Here’s how this went down. As you can see, I really had to twist her arm. (Kimura arm lock or Americana–still not a kind of coffee)

She responded before I could even hit the home button on my phone. It’s like she was staring at her phone, waiting for me to text.

I don’t know if you love it, per se, but hopefully you’re getting a minor kick out of it. (front, side, or round kick, appropriate for the Taekwondo gi)

When we rolled into Jiu-Jitsu class (that was also a pun), Instructor started to pull out a gi, but stopped.

“I see you have a gi. Do you do martial–Oh, is it Betsy’s?”

Heehee. Déjà vu.

Instructor had me sit nearby while he onboarded Neighbor. Thus, her first class experience was not nearly as creepy as mine. She took to it well and had fun but can’t sign up for anything until her home remodel is done in a couple of months. At least she got a taste. Maybe when her house is finished, I’ll invite her again and she’ll respond with an affirmative just as quickly. Here’s hoping!

But! Are you ready for this? Another guy poked his head in ten minutes late, explaining that he had arrived too early for his trial class so he got a haircut while he waited. I chuckled inwardly remembering what I’d written in my second JJ post: “Each time movement outside caught my eye, it was an old woman passing. I haven’t checked out the other businesses in the strip, but I’m guessing a hair salon is one of them.” It is. With a barbershop. Right next door.

Here’s the part I wanted you to ready yourselves for:

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Feb26

Saturday class/Boys club

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This was a large Jiu-Jitsu class, with no familiar faces. And no female faces. Instructor greeted me with a smile, as always, and suggested I jump in to practice with someone. Everyone was paired off. He was busy on-boarding a newbie. While everyone else grappled on the mat, I stretched.

And stretched.

And stretched.

You can only work on your legs for so long before it’s obvious you’re stalling. I got up and wandered over to the card rack where students’ cards show how many classes they’ve had. Probably not supposed to be nosy, but I was desperate to kill time. Savage Teen Girl is close to her fourth stripe (one for every 20 classes). As I suspected, Adrian Brody’s card was gone. He must have quit. :/

Seeing their cards made me wonder, where was Timmy? Surfer Dude 1 and/or 2? Lopez? Enthusiastic Teen? Indifferent/Sweaty Man? Heck, I would’ve been grateful even for STG at that point.

I sat on the bench and checked Twitter… Signal… read about cuttlefish on wiki… And overall felt grateful to have a smart phone so I looked slightly less like an idiot.

Le cuttlefish, compliments of naveen manohar on Pixabay. Why cuttlefish, you ask? Why not, I say.

I considered being assertive, just walking over to a pair of dudes and asking if I could jump in. But no one even glanced my way. Another guy I’d never seen came in late. I smiled; he ignored me. I looked at him again, ready to compliment his eyebrow ring and say something about my cartilage piercings, but he jogged past me onto the mat. Another guy greeted him with, “There are no third wheels here.”

Unless you’re a girl, apparently.

You know those movies where the woman is the lone female in a male-dominated field so she has to be confident and assertive to gain everyone’s respect despite the odds stacked against her?

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Feb24

The world is ending.

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I played chicken with the universe and lost. I’m sure it thought my last post was rather entertaining, and yet it was not amused.

I didn’t attend class Monday, but kicked my cold by skipping the coffee and replacing it with Emergen-C. That stuff works wonders.

So, I felt fine today, health-wise. The bruises and soreness are minimally there, so whatevs.

I skidded into class a few minutes late, saying, “I’m here! I’m here!”

Other than Instructor, no one else was.

Happily on my way to class, feeling like I’ll be coming out on top at last.

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Feb20

What next, you ask? Let me tell ya.

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“So we’ve done the ‘rona, the broken toe, and the falling on a baseball bat. How should we mess with Betsy now?”

“First of all, we don’t know for sure she broke her toe. It still looks all right, and she could always bend it.”

“Sure, but it hurt when she did, and being able to bend it doesn’t mean it didn’t break. At least, according to the internet.”

“Whatever. You know she’d never go to the doctor for her pinky toe anyway.”

“True. But, ‘Falling on a baseball bat’? Dramatic much?”

“We’re THE UNIVERSE! We invented drama!”

“Still, she was flipped over onto a girl’s bony forearm. Not exactly the same thing as a bat.”

“Hurt like it did, though.”

“True dat!” Earth-shaking chuckle. Metaphysical fist bump.

“So back to the problem at hand. We’ve been doing an excellent job of keeping Betsy away from Jiu-Jitsu. But if we’re not careful, she’ll defy us and keep going back anyway.”

“You’re right. We need to do something that will make it so she can’t go back, no matter what.”

“Okay, okay. I like where you’re going with this.” Rubs hands together. Several stars explode.

“I got it! Are you ready for this?”

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Feb18

What do I need to throw into a volcano?

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Message to my Jiu-Jitsu instructor:

So here’s what happened NOW.

On Wednesday afternoons, a buddy and I co-teach a self defense class at our kids’ school. He works with the guys; I work with the girls. I was teaching the Elevator Sweep (originally mentioned here, though I had the name wrong), when the girl stuck her arm out last second and rolled me over onto it. I got up, paused, breathed, and this should tell you how much it hurt: I used a CLICHE!!

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” I said.

I’m so ashamed.

Her arm was fine, but by side hurt worse than my gnarly ugly foot.

One week after “The Incident.”

So far I have been to class twice this month. Twice!

Every 20 classes, you get a white stripe on your belt. (Anyone else hearing Seven Nation Army in your head all of a sudden? M?) In my last class, Sweaty/Indifferent Man earned his fourth stripe, and we all clapped. Instructor then pointed at me with a broad smile and said, “You’re next.”

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Feb15

Birthday Revenge

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Not really.

My neighbor did an exceedingly excellent job of making me feel special on my birthday. (Darn her!) I was quite nervous as to how I could possibly return the favor. Then I realized the solution was simple.

Kidnapping.

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Feb12

Blog Name Vote Results

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Of the 20 blog name offerings, 15 got votes. I will not say what they are, so those who submitted the other five won’t be sad. (I, the only one who truly matters 😉 enjoyed ALL your submissions.)

The ones that received three votes were as follows:

Chick Kick; Life is Funny; Chex Mix, Chickens, and Other Tales; All Things Betsy; and I Have Nothing Better to Offer.

Next, there were two that received four votes:

Laugh Lines and The Accidental Rooster.

And the winner, with a whopping eight votes, due to his overwhelming cleverness as evidenced in his own blog post titles, never mind that this contest was his idea, no doubt because he knew he would rock it, is….

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Feb6

I took down Andre the Giant

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Remember “Timmy,” the guy I compared to Andre the Giant because he’s big, and when he demos Jiu-Jitsu with Instructor, I can barely see Instructor?

We had another one of those classes where Instructor disappeared behind Timmy’s limbs. For the first half of this class, Instructor partnered with me. We started with a standing move where you get the “bad guy” “in the clinch.” In the previous class, we learned that from here you can do a “body fold takedown” and get the person on the ground. I told Instructor that in that class, I had a really hard time doing the takedown on Savage Teen Girl’s Dad. (At that class, Mom was there, too, so, thankfully, those two ladies partnered together, sparing me from teen girl’s savagery. And, yes, super cool that they’re a JJ family.)

Instructor said, “If you have a hard time working with someone again, let me know, and I’ll partner with you. I can be a good bad guy. I’m the best bad guy, and soon you’ll be a good bad guy too.”

#ThingsThatSoundReallyWeirdOutOfContext

Another example of #ThingsSafelyOnlySaidInJiuJitsu, was when, later in that class, still working with Savage Teen Girl’s Dad, he said, “You need to take your knees off the ground.”

“My knees ARE off the ground.”

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Jan25

Wordle was messing with me

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Now, relax. This was the wordle from days ago, while I was isolated thanks to my visit from the ‘rona fairy. Here’s my text complaint to my mother.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for: everyone’s ideas for a new blog name!

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Jan16

And now for something a little different

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A post about Taekwondo.

On December 20th, my three daughters and I tested for our third belt, yellow. We started as white belts, did a super-stressful-because-it-was-the-first-one-ever test for orange, then came the yellow belt test–only slightly less stressful.

When it was my turn, I was eager to get it over with, and grateful that we start with our current form–the part I was most nervous about. After that comes our “back form,” the one we learned prior. When I performed this in an earlier class, “Sensei,” (not actually what we call him) nodded and said, “It’s like breathing, isn’t it?” So I knew I had that one down pat. The third part of the test was demonstrating our mastery of three self defense and three street defense moves. No problems there.

The weird thing was, as I did the more difficult current form, my hands were tingling. “This is odd,” I thought. “My hands sort of feel numb, but not quite. It doesn’t hurt, thankfully, but it’s strange. I wonder why that’s happening. Nerves, probably.” And the next thing I knew, I was done. I did the form without thinking, which means I couldn’t second guess or freak myself out. I smiled inwardly. “Thanks, hands! Well done.”

They were no help at the end of the test, however: the Bowing Out Ceremony.

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