I'm ready! Promotion! I'm ready, edy, edy, edy....

(I think I watch WAY too much Spongebob Squarepants. I've seen the movie and almost every episode since time began. So that subject heading is supposed to be a la Spongebob, like in the Spongebob Movie. It also helps that Spongebob is a martial artist, you know, in kah-rah-taaaaay. ;-) Check out the end of this post for a little Karate Spongebob entertainment.)

Not much going on with TKD right now. I only took one class yesterday, as I was under the impression I had to go to this important Cub Scout meeting for the den leaders (like myself). The other Tiger den leader was under the same impression. It turns out that it was not a den leaders' meeting, but rather a meeting of the Pack people, and neither the other Tiger Leader or I needed to be there! Oy. So my usual triple threat of TKD classes could have still been possible. Oh well. I know for next time.

The Wednesday morning class is actually increasing! We usually have about 4 or 5 people there at most, and yesterday, we had about twice that! We have 4 W/O/Y moms now, and then there's Sandy, ES and myself as the 1st degrees (well, I'm close enough to that to consider myself that), and yesterday, 3- 2nd degree black belts, of which it was one guy! (He's a dentist that sometimes has the time to come in on Wednesday mornings. He's a hoot!) So that makes 10! I think we usually have another "player" or two in the group, but it was a big turnout! I think SW liked that, and everyone there is nice. It's nice, especially with the newbies, to have some new blood in the group, even though they are established moms at the school (their kids are all higher ranked than them). In doing drills across the floor, we concentrated in rechambers. While I think I'm usually good about doing them, it didn't hurt to be more conscientious about them. We then had to do some stretches on our side while laying on the floor, where we had to practice sidekicks from there. I had the right idea, however, after 20+ years of dance, I have way too much turnout, so as a result, when correcting my foot position, it felt like she was twisting my foot off counterclockwise. OUCH! It seems that I have to relearn to do everything turned in more for better foot position. I understand why, but for me, that's like the equivalent of me walking with my toes pointing at each other. It hurts! It took me years to stop walking like a duck and walk with my feet going straighter. Oh well. Between chambers and foot positioning, I have things to think about.

I did practice my form, and SW observed. She saw how I corrected some of my hand and foot timing from last week. She said if I could add these new tweaks with the chambering and foot positioning, I'd be dead on, both for testing and competition soon afterwards. But I've got what I need, and the tweaks I'm doing are just to perfect the form more. It's fine right now, so that's good. Weapons are the same, or at least she didn't correct anything with that. I was the only one there that really had to practice for board breaks. Everyone had a turn, but I went last because of having to do a double break. One thing that was cool was PT, the guy in class, practiced doing his axe kick. However, as a guy, he has to go through *2* boards as a 2nd degree instead of just one. Well, because I was the tallest female, guess who had to hold the boards with SW? Yup. Then my turn came. People thought it odd, but I chose two boards with nasty knotholes in them. Why? Trying to save the good wood for testing. ;-) I didn't break them on the first try, but did on the second try. And in the process, it turned out that the knothole defect on one board, the one I did my reverse sidekick on, had a really ugly defect on the interior of the board where it had been rotting. Ugh! As a result, it broke very crookedly, and I scrape the outside of my achilles heel on it. I thought it was just a little surface scrape until it started bleeding. Good thing there's band-aids at the school. It got under control with that, but the little spot still smarts today. Oh well. At least it's not the actual bottom of my heel!

Drew is still doing alright. I mean, I know he'll pass with help. Yesterday, he said he was tired and that's why he'd goof off. He was doing so badly compared to the others, and they were all older that I thought he'd been mistakenly been put in the wrong group. I was told (after asking) that they had actually split the group into two sections, and the back section of the group that I couldn't see were the kids that had no clue about the form, vs. those who did. So, Drew had a least a clue, even if it was incorrect, and it was with all the older kids who were much higher belts! So, in that respect, it was good. When JC picked him up last night, he said Drew was in good, or at least decent, spirits, so that's good. I think getting him back into TKD is a good thing, especially now that he's in a higher level class than before. It was too boring for so long for him. At least now he's being challenged again.

So that's the summary of the week. I'm ready for my promotion, for sure. I'm ready, I'm ready, promotion, promotion, I'm ready....