Drafted

I am not sure if everyone's days are like mine, I'm sure they are, but yesterday I found myself at a lunch for about 250 people and most of them were women. Everyone was seated and I was up at the front of the room and bent over top pick something up. All of the sudden I felt something pop. It's an odd sensation that is impossible to describe but if you have ever had this happen to you then you will know exactly what it is when it happens. There was the pop and then the gentle breeze. I had been drafted...aka, my pants had exploded. I don't mean I popped a few stitches, my pants exploded. From the back waistband to where my zipper begins, my-pants-exploded.

Oh my word, I could feel my pants legs flapping as I walked, enjoying their new found freedom and range of motion. There was no covering this up. You could see my shirt tail, my tail and possibly even a bit of my legs, sorry ladies. I exited. Thank goodness I made the switch to boxer briefs and even more importantly, black ones, as I was wearing black pants. In a flash (no pun intended) I remembered that my mom and her mom used to always match their purse to their shoes and I vowed right then to go undie -shopping to make sure I had enough boxer briefs in stock that matched all my pants, just for such an occasion.

I dropped my breezy pants off at a little Asian woman's house named “Yot” ( her name not the house's name) and she will have them good as new in a day. In the meantime, I may have to ramp up my “Operation Drop 30” . Each day this week someone has given me some kind of pastry. I didn't want to be rude soI ate every single one of them. This has to end ...or my end is going to have to go out and buy all new pants. I hear those Blue Diamond Gussett's are pretty sturdy. I may have to invest. For right now, I'm off to find more boxer briefs in black, gray, khaki and denim colors. TMI? Probably. Useful information? Yes.

Operation "Drop 30"

Operation “Drop 30 ” is official. It started with my weigh-in at the doctor’s office. After having them “try again” as I was sure the poor girl had done it wrong, I had to resolve myself to the reality check that stupid machine had digitally mocked me with. Fortunately, with my giant tonsils, I wasn’t too worried . I was convinced by the time I got home from my appointment, that I was simply suffering from HTS, aka: Heavy Tonsil Syndrome ( a new and highly  controversial diagnosis).

Unfortunately, my tonsils are now deflated and  my last doctor’s appointment included a quick stomp on those stubborn scales; they refused to budge. So this morning, while eating a piece of cheesecake,  I was mulling over the concept that I need to take the stress of my knees and drop 30. It was confirmed in my head and I needed to plot my course. Today at lunch, after my fourth lap around Old Chicago’s all-you-can-eat pizza buffet I made an important conclusion, this plan of mine wasn’t going to start today.

I thought about it with every slice. It’s definately going to take some planning. This may require veggie soup in the spring and more than 10 minutes of cardio once a week. As for my workout plan, I need to do some research and see if the sauna can substitute for anything. I am pretty good at sauna-ing, waterfountain-ing ,lobby sofa-ing and protein shake-ing. I just hope all this effort isn’t going to require sweating. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and from what I remember, I didn’t like it. Pore fatigue is a real thing, don’t judge. I don’t want to stretch this pizza/cheesecake denial thing out forever though. I am giving it three months...because I am a highly sacrificial, commited kind of guy. I’ll do whatever it takes as long it doesn't take more than I am willing to give. Whatever happens in three months happens. I am sure it will be easy.

#breakfastcheesecake
#saunaing

Cougar Town

 I don't know how I get myself into these situations but ooops, I did it again. I have had several people lately make the comment that I need to get out more often, and it's true so the other  night when some fellow co-workers decided to go hear one of our new employees go sing with a band, I decided to go too. It was reported to be that this restaurant/bar was the hot place in the area and that if you didn't get there early, you wouldn't even be able to get in the door. I had a hard time believing that but rushed over there to make sure I had a seat by 7.  This establishment was really more of a bar/restaurant than a restaurant/bar and it was situated in what I would call a non-upscale part of Nashville. It was packed and people were lined up at the door, 20 deep. My friends were there and had a table so I was good to go. It didn't take long to see that this crowd was not at all what I expected. It was pretty much all the swinging singles, 70 and up, from that area. Let me just say the possitive spin on this night was that  the dance floor was never empty and the band was great.
At our table of 11, were five guys under the age of 55 and none with a wedding ring. I now know how the butcher feels that works behind the meat counter and Kroger. Within a few minnutes we got a visit from a group of out of town gals that live in an upscale 55 and up  resort community. I am going to say they moved in to that resort area about 15-20 years ago. They were all very, very friendly.

Our table was right up front, right beside the dance floor. That was not a good choice. We somehow ended up with almost all the girls from  work on one side of the table and the guys on the other. Us guys were sitting right by the dance floor. That was a mistake. The good thing was though, that we had a front row seat to one of the most entertaining crowds I have seen in a long time. It looked like a scene from a movie, I wasn't sure which movie, but it was definately an interesting cast of characters.
As the band fired up some of the great classic rock and roll tunes, the real show began. There was one woman there, that I later heard in the lobby discussing her vitamin regime. I think she sold them. She was a tiny little thing, 70?, reminded me a bit of Brenda Lee, had Dolly Parton hair and very tight jeans. I am going to call  her "Bunny", short for "Energizer Bunny". Bunny stayed on that dance floor all night. She didn't dance on the beat, she danced on every note. She was moving and shaking and snapping and letting everybody in that room know she had tons of energy with some to spare. She was serious, focused and driven to keep that beat and her feet moving. I don't know how she kept up the pace but I have a feeling she might have given herself a B-12 injection in the parking lot and was sipping Red Bull laced with Five Hour Energy. She couldn't  stop moving and I couldn't stop staring. Her hair stayed in place all night.

Another character, and there were way too many to write about, was a woman wearing a lace/doily dress. It was ivory in color and reached right past her knees. It was very nice, like a church dress but nicer. It was more like  a wedding dress... for the third marriage. She was of advance years, had jet black hair the touched her shoulders and had heavy, straight-across bangs. Her face was deadpan...all night. At first I thought she might be a little sad (maybe #3 didn't work out or something) but by the end of the night I was convinced that she had probably spent the afternoon being  infused with a fresh bucket of botox.  I am sure she was having a great time but just wasn't able to express it in her face. I don't think she realized that even though from the neck down she looked like she was in a rumba contest, everything above from above the neck was at a funeral, total funeral face...all night. Her face  could not express the excitement she was feeling from the neck down. It was bizarre. Well, she entered the dance floor pretty early on, all by herself, sad face, wedding dress and all. I don't  know  that she every left the dance floor. I felt a bit sorry for her as I pictured her forcing herself out of the house after months of loneliness from being left all alone by husband number three and now forcing herself out onto the dance floor wearing her last happy dress, the dress that made her feel beautiful, her wedding dress #3. I was so wrong. No more "Lifetime" chick flicks for me.
I am going to call her Sqwerky, and here's why. She somehow managed to clear out about a six foot runway of sorts, right along the edge of the dance floor . That runway also happened to run the length of our table which was also infront of the row for the men at our table. Well Sqerrky was doing a walking Salsa type of move where she would dance and wiggle her way up and down her runway in front of our table, back and forth, back and forth. Her face was always facing our table and no matter how excited her dancing got, her face remained the same, funeral face. Suddenly I was back at the carnival as a small boy. I was holding a powerfu water pistol as a mechanical ducks faced me and went side to side as I tried to mow down as many as I could with my semi-automatic water pistol. I was lost in memory until the live runway show stopped right in front of me and the music kept playing. Squirky stopped and firmly planted her feet, gave her hips a preparatory wiggle, and slowly starting lowering herself. Down, down, down she went, until she had finally squatted all the way to the ground. I couldn't believe what I was watching. Then, she just hovered there. For a moment I thought that she just could't get back up. But as I watched this train wreck, I noticed that she was still moving...a little. I think she was trying to do some kind of twerk but I am not exacty sure. It was, I guess, a "senior twerk"? I'm not really sure what I saw but it was a combination of a squat/senior twerk...aka: Sqwerk. She was Sqwerking. Well she sqwerked all night at various , unannounced intervals. The only warning we had was when we would notice she was suddenly not working the runway but instead, had stopped to steadily plant her feet, thus signalling the beginnnings of a decent.
Not to be outdone or outshined by Sqwerky was a woman who probably had quite a time in the 60's, not her 60s' but in the 1960'. She was very bohemian with long curly wild hair and a short cheetah print dress. She could also go all the way down to the ground but had to take a much wider stance to accomplish it. We all looked away. I kind of thought that in that crowd, squatting down and getting back up was just showing off. So Sqwerky and Bohemian Rhapsody stayed on opposite sides of the dance floor most of the night each doing their thing. I was so afraid they were going to have some kind of "squat off" or something but it never came to that. Of course, I didn't close the place down so it all could have happened out in the parking lot afterwards, who knows?

So I was just sitting there being entertained and suddenly someone with a powerful grip, grabbed my hand to pull me out to the dance floor. It was one of the women who had come over to the table early to check out "what was on the menu" for the night. She was possibly one of the older ones, it's hard to tell once everything had been overhauled. Speaking for all of her friends, there had been some major construction, resufacing, lifted foundations, re-spacklig, replaced parts, you name it. This particular "old broad" as she constantly called herself (just in case I couldn't tell) wanted to dance. I am going to keep this PG and remember that I am in mixed company. We were dancing (I don't really know how) and were in that hold where one arm is straight out to the side (holding hands) while the other arm is wrapped around the other person . I had my hand in the middle of her back. Got it? She was one of those "yippee ki yay" "Annie Oakley" kind of women from the  old westerns and to accentuate her statements, at the end of a particular statement that she would be proud of, she would give a quick head jerk to the right while lifting her chin just a bit .

We danced to some fast song and somewhere in the middle of the song she said, "I'll bet you thought you were just going to be able to put this old broad out to pasture didn't you?" I have no idea what she meant by that and sort of figured it was a standard one-liner for her. I'm going to try not to overthink that one. Well we danced and that was the longest song of my life . Let's just say she liked to keep a good grip on her men. I am not sure what kind of steel support system she had made into her bra but if that song had lasted any longer I would have dislocated at least two of my frontal ribs. Granted not all of her parts were the same age and I do get putting your valuables behind a display case but man, that was just bizarre. I just knew I was going to be bruised the next day. I was "wedged" let's just leave it at that. I had a quck flashback to that movie where that guy was stuck between two bolders and had to cut his arm off to get free. I looked over at our table and all the silverware had been removed...plan B. Near the end of the song, under my hand that was in the middle of her back, something popped. I panicked  and tried not to react. I didn't know if her bra strap/suspension system had just snapped or if her back had just popped. We kept on moving and nothing hit the ground, so I am assuming it was her back and a common occurence. The song ended; it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Well I drove home from Nashville feeling wierd. I just needed to un-experience that night. I had a nice long drive to detox and think. I had mixed emotions. It was great to see that older crowd acting and feeling like they were in their twenties but it was strange. I felt like I had been dropped down on to the set of the movie "Cocoon"...ah Cocoon, that's the movie. They really did seem to all act and feel like they were young again. I tried to tell myself that it should give me hope. That's when it hit me. That room of people, that is what you get when you mess with nature. That was a room full of hormone replacement therapy patients and men with little blue pills...and alcohol and a live band.  Everyone felt like a million bucks. That's good right? Maybe? I have a feeling that might also have been the perfect example of why you shouldn't mess with science. I think everyone there was on  a hormone high. One thing is for sure, it was entertaining. I am not sure if I can ever go back. If I do, I will sit in the back. On the other hand, I have never felt younger than I did that night.

Personal Growth

Goodbye belt hole #4. It's been great! Thanks for helping me keep it all together. Thanks for always being willing to "meet me in the middle". I know times have been tough lately and maybe even, at times, a bit painful. I am sure you have felt the tension. Sorry if I ever put too much pressure on you.

I'm moving forward now to belt hole #3. Nothing against you, it's just a better fit. I am not sure how long I will be in this new position but with the holidays being right here, it's possible I might even advance to the number two spot.  I can't say that I will never be back; we worked well together and made a good team.

For now, while I am experiencing a period of growth, I have to find a place with a little more space so that I can have room to expand and feel comfortable doing it. Just wanted to leave a quick note to let you know how much I have appreciated all your support over the years, through thick and thin. Really, I'll just be right around the bend but until we meet again, so long belt hole #4.

Answering the Call

Really? CSS (Climbing Sheet Syndrome) at 4 a.m.? I thought I
was going to lose my mind this morning. I am not sure why it is always so annoying but there is
something about feeling the cotton blanket next to my feet instead of the cool,
smooth sheet that drives me crazy. That cotton blanket might as well have been
sandpaper. I flipped and I flopped but I just refused to get up and fix the
situation by re-making my bed. I kept trying to push the sheet back down to the
bottom of the bed, sort of like running in place, only while on my side …and in
bed.

The longer I flip flopped, the madder I got and the more I “treaded
sheet” the more awake I became. Two hours later I was wide awake, irritated and
suffering second degree blanket burns on my feet. Let me just say that if you
ever suffer from CSS, just get up and and re-make the bed; it’s the only way. As
my temper and heart rate climbed it hit me that I had just treaded sheet for
two hours and that was going to count for my cardiovascular work for the day.

As comforting as knowing that cardio was behind me, I still
couldn’t relax. There was just so much noise , so much noise coming from the
kitchen. I could hear my name over and over again.  I knew where it was coming from but I was
trying to ignore it. Before long, I had to get up and answer .

You see,  yesterday my dad’s church had a dinner-on-the-
ground. Last night, my  dad dropped of
the “go-box” he had created, filled with deserts from the church ladies. All
were holy-made (homemade by church ladies) and my selection was a fat oatmeal raisin
cookie, a piece of toasted coconut pie and a couple of slices of Orange Supreme
cake. It doesn’t really matter if it is Lemon Supreme, Apricot Supreme, Orange
Supreme, etc. but it is not a proper southern church dinner-on-the-ground-
unless one of the members of the Supreme family is there. Those blessed items
from the church were calling my name from out of the dark. I could hear them,
calling.  I tried to ignore the calling
but when you have blessed items from the church, prepared by holy hands calling
you out in the dark of the night, you had better answer the call. I answered
the call. It was like a bucket of flavored sugar and butter, divine.  I’m no expert but I think there is some
sainthood that needs to be handed out to some of the women at my dad’s church.  All of this
made for one long sugar-coma day but all in all, I feel blessed. Plus, I
think I kind of liked getting my cardio in early.

Don't You Hate It When: Stalling Out

Don’t you hate it when you are out of town and you stop at a
local home improvement store just to check and see if possibly they carry
anything different from your local home improvement store so you run inside for
a quick inventory scan/time kill, and as you go up and down some aisles you
think you notice a few different things (as if you have the entire inventory
back home memorized) and before you know it you are walking down the shower
stall aisle and you remember that once upon a time you had thought about
putting in a walk-in shower but it had been a year or two since you had checked
them out so you start looking carefully and trying to picture how it would all
look in your bathroom and all the sudden you come upon a snazzy looking corner
shower with a rounded wall and a rounded sliding glass door and you start
thinking about how much space that would save you and you start picturing the
shelves you could build to hold towels, like a spa, and you start to get
visions from every HGTV show you have ever seen on bathroom makeovers and you
just know you have found the missing link to making your ugly bathroom  a place where guest will want to come over
and just hang out so you check the price and it is on sale and suddenly the endorphins
start flowing and your check card is starting to quiver and every thought of
your current shower reminds you how hideously ugly it is and you wonder why you
hadn’t thought about it more so the more you look at this new shower the more
you have to have it but the only thing you worry about is whether or not you
will fit into it so you try to mentally teleport yourself into it but you know
that there is nothing like the real thing so you check it out and the handle
for the door is all the way to the back of the display and beside the display
is a large crate, so your squeeze your arm between the crate and the rounded
wall/door and all the way to the back you are able to grasp the handle and
slide the door forward and open it and without much hesitation you climb inside
and feel really tall and wide so you pull the rounded door back around so that
you are enclosed in rounded glass and fiberglass and you move around a bit and
cautiously go through some shower motions to make sure your elbows won’t hit
anything and even though you are doing ok you somehow have a feeling that this
space saving shower might just be lacking in space and that if you were to go straight
out “full shower” you might break something so you try to start convincing
yourself that maybe it is not such a good idea and if you did build that shelf
for your towels that you would need to buy some new fancy ones as yours have an
occasional hole in them or a stain from cleaning up a kitchen disaster or last
minute car scrub and towels aren’t cheap, at least not the fancy kind, and if
you did all this the vanity was going to look dated and the whole room was
probably going to need a new coat of paint and before you know it that shower
stall is not so appealing so you try to regain focus and when you do you see
people are walking nearby so you decide to get out of the shower before someone
notices you and for some reason that curved door will not open so you slide it
back and start over but it snags again and you feel the panic start to set in
mixed with a huge desire to go to the bathroom so you push and pull on that
stupid curved door wondering who in their right minds would ever want a tiny space
saving shower with a curved door and before you know it, you feel eyes on you
and you look up and there is a little Asian lady, about 150 years old, just
standing there staring at you with her purse dangling from her arm so you ask
her to get some help but she just stares at you as if you were a rare species
at the local zoo being featured that month and before long you have to accept
the fact that she doesn’t speak English but before you write her off and yell
over her head she holds up one finger, the international sign for “hold on just
a second”, gets her phone out of her purse,  snaps a picture of you, checks said picture, and
then walks off shaking her head and utters what sounds a bit like “Thomas” you
are pretty sure she said something insulting so you give the door a couple of
potentially harmful tugs and bam, the door pops of its track and wedges between
the curved shower wall and the giant crate beside it and the reality that you
are completely stuck settles in so you start softly calling for help and slowly
turn up the volume as the pressure from claustrophobia and pressure from your
bladder start to compete for your attention and finally a kid straight from
high school algebra class, but in uniform, walks up, looks at you, says “sorry
but this isn’t my department soo….uh, I think the guy that works in this
department may be on break soo…” so you let him know that absolutely anybody
will do and he leaves and comes back with the oldest living female to currently
be working in a home improvement store in the Continental US weighing in at
just under 100 pounds and she looks at you and tells you the story about how
she too once got stuck in the shower at home and had the door taken down and
put up a shower curtain (from The Wal-Marts) instead, and to this day refuses
to have anything but a shower curtain, and then she pulls out a phone, not to
take a picture but to beep a fellow employee to come help, who is apparently
The Flash when he was not at work because it takes him all of about two seconds
to appear and he quickly organizes himself and Jr. to push the crate a few
inches over so that he could then remove the door and get you out of there
while still maintaining his best training by asking you what you thought about
the corner shower and all you can think about is finding the nearest restroom
and the only thing you are sure of at that moment is that once you get inside
that restroom, no matter what, you are not about to go into a stall and as you
make your way to the restroom doing your best quick step you decide that your
bathroom at home is really not all that hideous after all? Yeah, I hate it when
that happens too.

Shoulder Balls

Ok, I did a really stupid thing two days ago for exercise
and since I only hurt yesterday and didn’t feel abnormally sore, I didn’t
stretch. This morning when I woke up, I couldn’t reach my feet to put my socks
on, no joke. It took me all morning to get my clothes on. I’ve been walking around
like I have a book on my head all day. Mostly, it is in my hamstrings (back of
my legs). I don’t want to be melodramatic or anything but I think the best way
to describe the leg pain is that it feels like I have a handful of ninja stars
embedded into the backs of my legs…yeah, ninja stars.



So what did I do? It’s actually to stupid to repeat….so here
I go. I noticed that a buddy of mine has really increased the size of his
shoulder muscles. He had those huge lumps on his back that I’ve always wanted
(I call it the “back rack). He had also increased the size of those big round
muscles that are on the outside edge of the shoulders. It looked like he had grapefruits
at the top of his arms. I call those “shoulder balls” and I've always wanted some. I noticed that he was
talking about a new fitness program that was really kicking him and it was some
kind of boxing thing at a new gym in town.



Well, I started thinking about it and I have never ever
considered anything like that at all but going into the holiday season already
15 lbs over my limit, I thought this might just be what the doctor ordered. I
went online to look it up and right there they offered a free pass for the day.
It was meant to be. I called and asked about classes and they had a lunch time
class so I signed up. I figured since a lot of people work out on their lunch
hour, I could go there and get lost in the crowd and see if this was something
I might be interested in. Now sometimes I surprise my things a the things I
figure out on my own and sometimes I surprise myself at the things I don’t
figure out on my own. For some reason, the fact that this new gym was named “UFC”
was totally lost on me. What did I think that stood for, “Ultimate Fun Club”? The
person on the phone there told me I would be attending a class called “kickboxing”
and that it was for all levels.



Well, I walked in the door and right up front  was an MMA cage…wait, what? Surrounding the
room were posters of MMA fighters. The exercise area was a big maze of hanging
punching bags. Oh my word…UFC…MMA…what was I thinking? I am so anti all of that
and here I was getting ready to “take a class”…whatever that meant.



A girl behind the counter asked me to come over to her and
hold my hands out in front of her. I did and she started wrapping my hands and
wrists. Hmmm…surely somebody would turn on some zumba music soon and a girl in
bright lycra would appear from somewhere…right? My hands were wrapped and she
said, “Here you go” and handed me some bright yellow boxing gloves, what? I
looked at them, back at her ,back at them and then my instructor walked up and
introduced himself.  He was a young guy that
informed me he was a top boxer and that his hands are legally registered as
weapons. I had nothing. I had a driver’s license, my car was  registered and could be used as a weapon and
I had an alarm button on my key fob but I was grasping. I felt like a girl…and
not in the pretty, curvy, fairer sex kind of way. Plus, what was I supposed to
do with those gloves? Why had the counter girl given them to me? Did she want
me to hand them to the instructor? Were they his?



I quickly informed the instructor that I was new and had
some old injuries,etc. Actually, I rambled for quite a while watching someone
else who was about to join the class putting on his gloves and I was trying to
mask the fact that I had no idea how on earth a person was supposed to put on
those Mickey Mouse gloves. I started to ask if he had any red boxing gloves as
my shoes had red on them but that little voice in the back of my head (the one
that tells you to shut up before you get killed) told me to hush. He comforted
me by letting me know he has quite a few old people like me in his class and
that I could move at my own pace. Wait, “old people like me”?….maybe I would
take a swing and blame it on being new; I had my car keys in my pocket.

Unfortunately, there were only two other people in my class.
Both were younger athletic guys who had been in the class for a couple of
months. Wow, no way I was going to blend in with the crowd or get lost in it.
Since it was my first class, I got one on one attention, the very thing I didn’t
want. Yep, the instructor stayed by my side the entire hour…hour.



We stared by doing things while traveling across the floor
that required some kind of hop. Well, I can’t hop, so I just looked like
someone with no rhythm. We did some warm ups and odd looking moves and then went
into throwing a few jabs and kicks. I can’t remember when the last time it was
that I kicked something, elementary school? When he told me it was time for me
to make some jabs, I was trying to think of something to criticize. He walked
us over to a mirror and we practiced jabbing which is the same thing a
punching, I think. I tried to channel my inner Rocky but all I could focus on
was my 15 lbs I was sporting like a front facing fanny pack in this overly
bright gym. I was shocked but had to look passed the jiggle and focus in my
Sylvester transformation, and in vision my future shoulder balls.



When I was about to call it quits, we started. OMG. I am not
sure what I was doing but I think I was copying the guy in front of me. We
punched the bag over and over and the trainer let me know that I didn’t have to
be so nice to the punching bag which I found to be a very polite way to say, “You
hit like a girl”. I used that insult to fuel the fire and keep on going. We
threw in some kicks which, I am sorry, I just was no good at. I have no skill
at standing on one leg at a time or raising my knee higher than my waist. There
were punches and kicks and my hip flexors were screaming but I just kept going
and chanting to myself, “Shoulder balls, shoulder balls”, I wasn’t about to
stop. We had to do this thing towards the end where we kicked the (body bag?)
with each leg once, then twice, and all the way up to five times and then work
our way back down again. I thought I was going to die. Oh to have been a
marionette. I was soaking wet! Then the instructor, who was still at my side,
announced we were going to do the same thing all over again but that we were
going to work our way all the way up to ten kicks and then back down again. Ug.
Remember, I was wobbly, and sweating and stumbling around like a drunk person
and I am pretty sure that those other two guys lost count. They were finished
when I was just getting ready to work my way down from ten. I guess I was
working at my own pace,right? I wasn’t worried about it until the instructor
told the other two guys to do jumping jacks and squats until I got finished.
Nothing like peer pressure, right? I could feel the heat from their glaring
eyes.



Finally we were finished (and by we I mean me) and we all
sat down…and the sit ups started. I have always heard that you aren’t supposed
to go all the way down and all the way back up again; it’s bad for the back.
Well, that’s what we were told to do and I wasn’t going to complain even though
I was sitting on indoor/outdoor carpet stretched over concrete and was pretty
sure I was about to experience something that would make a chiropractor cry. I
have no idea what these things were called but I am going to call them “tailbone
grinders”. Never, ever will I do those again. My tailbone still feels like it’s
broken.



During the entire event, the instructor was very supportive
telling me I was getting it and even that I was   improving. When it was over, he was explaining
how that everyone that is new is just like me and doesn’t know how to do
anything and looks like they don’t know what they are doing. I think I know
what he meant to say. I was just glad it was over. I had no idea how to get the
gloves or the tape off but I’ll just tell you that if you tug hard enough,
those gloves will eventually come off, especially if you have small hands and
skinny wrists. I think I should have left the hand wrapping on for the rest of
the day just so I could tell people, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I just took
off  my boxing gloves. I had them on in
my kickboxing class. Yeah…taped up…yeah. My car is registered. I can use it as
a dangerous weapon”.



I used muscles that I thought had died off. My legs are still
killing me and I almost couldn’t get in and out of my car all day. I have a
feeling that tomorrow won’t be much better as new aches and pains are starting
to set in tonight. I loved the class in a way because I was completely shot by
the end of it but it is just too far out of my comfort zone and too darn hard.
I don’t think I would get my money’s worth as it will take a week to recoup
from each class. So, if you see me walking funny this week, no I am not working
on my posture; I’m just sore. I do recommend the class for others though. It
will definitely hit you in areas you are not used to, unless you get into a lot
of street fights; then you can go to the head of the class.  I looked at quite a few pain killers tonight
with their list of all the things they helped. Not a single one of them listed
that they helped kill ninja star pain.