Mizblog

Saturday morning. Saranya had a sewing class so it was just me, driving in last minute, almost out of gas, scrambling for the bathroom, and paying for Saranya’s ongoing KM lessons.

I got paired up with Mike while Adam taught his first class. I didn’t know either guy, but I had seen Larry, Susan, Brian, and Brian before. Warm ups were not so bad, but both Mike and Brian were unable to jump because of their knees. I didn’t feel so bad about being gimpy compared to those guys.

For focus mitts I learned combo 5 – the liver punch finish. I need to work on that one. Also I need to work on holding my hook pad right in front of my face instead of out to the side. Nobody mentioned that I need to get my hands up in front of my face after a combo, so I might be getting better at that.

We also warmed up on all the level 1 chokes. 2 hand pluck from the front and back, 1 hand pluck from the front and the side. Head lock from the side. I was very very rusty.

Then we did basic gun from the front. New one on me. It seemed simple but I messed it up every single time in stress drill at the end. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After that we did overhand knife from the front (again) and then underhand knife from the front. They used to call it “Chinese Stab” but now they call it “what we used to call ‘Chinese Stab'”. That was harder but I did okay for my first time.

Finally, for stress drill, we did “Circle of Death” where one person goes in the middle and everyone else throws attacks on without a break, and the person in the middle has to defend as best they can. I forgot the choke from the side defense and I did the gun defenses wrong every damn time. Blah. But I kept my intensity and never quit. Survived the class and I’m not terribly sore or bruised up, as far as I can tell.

Found out they’re starting some daytime classes now. Tuesday 12:30pm is a Strikefit class, and Thursday 12:30pm is a KM ALL class (taught by AJ Draven himself). I might hit that one up…

My 4th Krav Maga class back went down this Saturday morning. There were lots of people invited to the classes to participate for publicity videos that AJ was having filmed. They were regular people. I liked them fine.

We had interesting rope-ladder warmup drills where we worked on footwork and took turns standing in line (big class!) so I feel the class size contributed to my sense of improving cardio. I wasn’t gassing out by the end of warmup.

Then we partnered up. I got paired last, with a girl. We did straight punches for what seemed forever, with a flurry drill that left me gassed by the end but I didn’t give up. We did round kicks and groin kicks, with the “Cheshire Cat” pad drill (or “Pendulum” drill, more traditionally) where the pad holder holds the pad at various angles and the kicker throws the appropriate kicks continuously. Exhausting!

For the defense technique, we did defense against a gun to the midsection from the side, in front of the arm. I may or may not have done that drill before, but it felt somewhat natural so maybe I did. I’m still kind of intimidated by guns. I view them with reverence and respect for their power and utility, and danger. Finally a defense technique that doesn’t hurt the defender (like the knife defenses we’d been doing the week before) but it sure bruises up the gun hand when you’re playing the attacker and having the gun twisted out of your hands repeatedly. If you do it right, you’re going to have a bruise between thumb and forefinger.

Saranya did her 3rd class (first with equipment and a belt) and I got to watch. The kids’ classes are way less intense than the adult classes, and Saranya’s home practice sometimes made her look like an expert in front of the other slacker goofy kids in the class. She learned 1-4 combos, groin kicks, and front choke pluck.

UPDATE: Four hours after the class, I’ve had a nap. My left knee feels really gimpy. When I try to straighten it, I feel pain on the outside of the joint.

UPDATE 2015-09-13: Knee feels better already, but sometimes goes “out” and has to be “popped” back in. This has been “normal” for years, but the discomfort of it being “out” feels worse now.

I signed up for a month of Krav Maga on Tuesday, and took a beginners’ class. Thursday morning and I’m quite sore. I’m banking on the prediction that the soreness will become more manageable the more I train. Maybe I can one day work my way up to taking 3 classes in a week!

In my Tuesday class we did punches, forward elbows, groin kicks, and 360 defenses. That was my 3rd class back, and my 3rd class in a row doing 360 blocks (first 2 were downward knife stab defenses). My wrists are darkening.

Saranya also started training Krav Maga this week. She should be passing me by in about a year, just because she’s able to recover more quickly and take more classes (3/week for her, half that for me so far.)

Well, it’s finally happened – my wife and daughter returned from Nepal after a 3 month vacation. They’re epically failing to adjust to the local daylight schedule, having slept through most of their first 3 days back. It seems there’s rarely an hour of daylight in which all of us are awake. The trip has turned my whole family into extreme night owls!

Last night was my first and last D&D night in a very long time. Rob, Greg, and I headed out to Kagel Cyn. to hang out at John’s place and do some gaming. Traffic was awful, so Rob and I had plenty of time to talk on the way out.

At John’s place we got to see all the progress he’s made toward getting the place fixed up. He’s been living there for years, and his family has done a ton of work to take the building from a dilapidated piece of crap to a skeleton with furniture. It’s shaping up to be a really nice place, once they finish installing the fixtures like kitchen countertop and sink. Oh, and stair railings. It made me worry about Saranya falling down stairs, and she’s on the other side of the freakin’ planet.

D&D was fun but I wasn’t very into it. Rob wasn’t either, and he was DM. That lent a “yeah whatever” feel to the happenings. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit. That’s an unhappy thought.

We got home by midnight. I crashed and got up this morning with the usual sinus congestion, but also with an ugly rotten feeling that I just can’t explain. I think it’s called “depression” and it seems a stretch to tie it to anything that’s going on in my life right now. Sure, my wife and daughter are going to be gone for at least 2 more weeks. Sure I’ve got a project deadline that falls just after they come back. Sure I’ve got an apartment that is not yet halfway cleaned even after 2 solid weeks of daily effort.

Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe all this stuff is just adding up to be overwhelming. Yesterday I felt fine, though. Today I feel like shit. Maybe it’s just one of those things.

I woke up at 6:30am to the sound of the phone ringing. Actually my first memory was when I actually saw the phone in the next room, but I was expecting the call. I needed the call. Sleep had been elusive yet I jettisoned it in seconds.

Then the phone stopped ringing. Oh. No!

Whew! It rang again! “Hello?”

It was Sangeeta! They made it safely to her father’s house in Kathmandu, and Saranya was finally sleeping. Apparently Sangeeta’s fears of bad behavior proved unfounded, as several other passengers complimented Saranya on her exemplary behavior during the long trip. She only fussed a couple times because of the difficulty of sleeping on the plane.

What a huge relief! I had been worried in the general sense of having no information and no control. I was up at 1:30am and checking the time in Nepal, thinking surely they’d landed by now. Anything to keep the darkness and solitude at bay, and to keep my mind from enumerating the possible disasters which could have befallen my loved ones.

Now I can rest easy. Well, maybe…

The girls left last night from LAX. They called me as soon as they boarded (first ones, thanks to the small child). Saranya was extremely excited about being on an airplane. She had her own video monitor on her own window seat too. Sangeeta’s greatest fear was that Saranya would misbehave on the plane. I can’t wait to find out how it all went. They should be landing tonight.

I’m taking the opportunity to clean the apartment. I’ve already made huge improvements in every room. Originally I thought I’d divide the task into areas, then sub-areas, but instead I’ve been skimming off the obvious tasks, or whatever strikes my fancy. I put old shoes in a box, put old sippy cups in another box, etc. It’s also liberating to not have to ask if I can throw things away! So while I’m walking around the house, whenever I see something that says “I don’t go here”, I either put it where it does go, or in the trash, or on Sangeeta’s desk for her to decide. I’m sure you’re already envisioning a heap of things with a desk underneath, but let me assure you that I have also allotted her two full closets for questionable items. :)

I managed to punch a hole through Saranya’s toy collection that’s big enough to see the carpet underneath. The sheer magnitude of the toy problem is almost unfathomable. I’m going to have to shift them into some living space while I clean one room, then shift them back to do the other room. Some of them might get lost in the process, and all of them will get temporarily organized and packed into as small a physical space as I can manage. And I only have a month to do all this!

The breeze was warm tonight. Saranya and I went out for a walk. She’s been getting sick the last couple days and has stayed home from school, but the coughing hasn’t dropped her energy level noticeably. I felt like T2 walking after her as she ran around the block away from me. I tried to stay close so I could grab her quickly if she started to do anything dangerous (like run into the street or into rose bushes) but her most perilous acts were to run down a sloped driveway and stumble into my knee, or to pick up rocks and try to get me to eat some of them.

We have a chalk board on an easel in our living room. Sangeeta uses it to write words for things that Saranya is familiar with, like yogurt, egg, happy, etc.

The other day, Saranya was rubbing the chalkboard and getting her hand all covered with chalk dust. Then she went to show her hand to mommy. “What’s that on your hand, Saranya?” asked mommy.

“Egg!” explained Saranya.

(She had erased the word “egg” with her fingers!)

Saranya woke me up by licking my face. When I spluttered and looked her in the face, she proudly shouted “I’m dog!” and started panting.