Another good class today. Saturdays tend to be crowded, and that's certainly true for today. However, at least there were about an equal amount of adults as there were teenagers, so I'm glad to see the adults too. Right off the bat, Ma'am had us doing these combinations that had to do with sparring, where we ultimately built up to a shuffle forward, punch, jab, roundkick, switch side/feet, roundkick, and shuffle back. Thank God I had Ben Phillips, who's a third degree black belt in front of me, to help me not goof up the rhythm too much. That helped a lot. Then we had to put on most of out sparring gear to practice a front kick-spin kick combination. Not something that I can do that quickly or easily, but I held my own. I worked with Winnie on that. Then we put on the rest of our gear, and then I sparred with Winnie, another teenager, then Winnie's son, Alex, who is working towards his third degree belt. Now, the thing is, Alex is one of those kids who easily gets caught up in getting a little too rough, and I told him to go easy on me, but he wasn't. So, sure enough, he comes in close to try to box me up that way, and so I get right in there, and before you know it, I have him up against the wall, blocking a kick, and he falls! Yay me! He was fine, and I helped him up, but he knew not to mess with me anymore. It kinda got my adrenaline going. I'm still not that good with sparring, but I'm getting a little more confident in what I'm doing. From what I've been told, and what I've experienced with some women, I think I'd actually be okay (not great, but at least okay) in sparring in a tournament situation. We were all then separated into color belt and black belts, and Dr. Albani worked with us on the form some more. It's coming, but I still need to practice some more. I tell you, he's actually been rather helpful, and I'm actually starting to like him now. Like I said, look at my very first posting on this blog, and I had thought him the devil incarnate. Now, he's got some really great exercises to help, and I like his suggestions. So then we worked on weapons. That's been kinda lame lately, so I just work on it. I actually was seeing if I could do the creative combination backwards, just to kill the boredom. Then it was board breaking time. The shin pad went on my elbow, and I actually practice on a "wave master" thingy (I had to look up what it was called, but it has target pads attached to it so you can practice). So I worked on my waist rotation, which seemed to be a problem, and I think I just need some warming up first. My first attempt to break Ma'am said that I don't need to wind-up (unlike what Mr. Anderson told me), and to stop thinking, so she had me try immediately again, and BAM! :-) Board break on the 2nd try! I was really excited. Maybe next time I'll try without the pad on my arm...or maybe I won't. I need to feel confident about it, even though I don't have to break for graduation just yet. (Heck, even then, it'll be for wood, and I can break wood!). But maybe if I feel I've finally mastered the elbow break, and next week I might be able to get my side kick break back, maybe I'll finally try something else. We'll see. After board breaking, Ma'am wanted us to work on advanced kicking again, and it's mostly because it might be part of the regional tournament that we are hosting, and she wants us to look good, so she's getting us to practice this now just in case. Instead of going through the steps like Mr. Anderson did, you had to just go for the gusto. Fortunately, at least I knew what I had to do since I did it the other night. So we were expected to do step 4 (see prior post about it), and my problem was a) I couldn't spin fast enough, and in conjunction with that, b) even if I spun correctly, I wasn't getting my kick high enough on the crescent kick. By the last time I tried, I actually got it. It wasn't pretty, but I got it. So, that was pretty much it for class today, so I was feeling good and energized.

I did speak with Ma'am briefly to see if it was okay that I got Drew's graduation form already without him, and she said as long as I thought he wouldn't freak out, and I said, nah, I don't think so. Then I told her about the talk I had with JC, that we are keeping Drew in Basic for the rest of the school year, then taking the summer off, and then he'll pick up in Master's when school starts again, and that was the best compromise that I could negotiate, and she said that was fine. I also informed her that I'm really feeling like I would like to do Leadership, but it's the financial part that's really hard to talk to JC about it, and she understood, as it is a lot, but she reminded me that you get many more benefits from doing leadership, and that she doesn't have that many adults in leadership, and she could sure use the help both there and at the Pennington school she's in the process of opening. I did say something briefly to JC, that I think I DO want to do this, but it is a little bit of a financial burden. I have to figure out how to make more money with TBSAH so that I can afford to do this and not be as much of a burden on JC. :-S Gotta find a way.