Friday, May 9, 2008
Stressed.
I am having a serious stress problem. I've always been a stress bunny, but lately it's gotten completely out of hand. First, I broke out terribly. I picked my scalp raw. I haven't slept in two days. My GERD/ulcers/etc. are hurting constantly. Ugh. I see things only getting much worse in the near future. I am NOT at all looking forward to this weekend. I am not looking forward to the next several months. There are just too many things going on, and nothing under my control. I lay there wide awake all night last night, knowing that if I don't get some sleep soon, I am going to feel godawful. I tried reading a book, visualization, mediation, counting, breathing. I nursed the baby, hoping that some prolactin would kick in. I've even been taking Advil PM at night. I feel awful. I hate whining. So that's it, I won't whine anymore.

Thursday, May 8, 2008
Summer approaches!
OMG it seems we jumped straight from winter to summer! The kids only have a few more weeks of school. We have less than two months to prepare for our big TKD competitions. Mothers' Day is this weekend, soon to be followed by Josiah's birthday, my dad's birthday, Father's Day. Last weekend, Ben became a member of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, aka the Shriners. He is very excited to continue the philanthropic work he is already involved with as a freemason. It meant that he was away overnight last weekend, and he has an other trip coming up. We are not used to him being away, and Jacy and the boys were quite upset with the last trip. There was a lot of crying and misbehaving, and I found myself yelling a lot more than I ever want to. Ugh.

Last night, we did an awesome workout in the MMA class. OMG, I couldn't sleep I was so sore! We got some heavier grappling dummies over the weekend. Previously had a couple of 50 lb dummies. We now have several 70 lb dummmies and one 130 lb dummy. Anyway, on both Tuesday and Wednesday, we used them to do a number of different exercises --- carrying them on our shoulders and running (with a switch from one shoulder to the other in the middle --- that is so hard to do!), throwing them back and forth to each other, rolling with them, driving them into the ground, practicing "ground and pound" maneuvers (punching, knees to the body and chest), hoisting them on to our shoulders from the ground and then throwing them down. These exercises are much harder than one would think, extremely challenging, engaging the entire body. And, moving up from a 50 lb bag to a 70 lb bag makes a huge difference! I could just barely life the 130 bag off the ground (that weighs more than I do!). In addition, the first class I did on Tuesday involved some intensive kicking, including a 60-kick combination that we worked up to and did numerous times. Last night, by the end of MMA class, I had that totally exhausted euphoric feeling I get from intense exercise. Oh, and then I couldn't sleep all night once the soreness kicked in!

Okay, so my goal this summer is to be able to do an aerial -- that's a cartwheel with no hands. I can't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to achieve this. I also want to get down the au bautido (K or L kick, which is like a handstand on one hand while kicking your legs in two directions) and eventually an axe-to-aerial. Yeah, I may be old, but I still plan on making this happen. I may be crazy, but at least I'm ambitious!