Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid

On a Monday karate training is from 7 - 8 the same as Thursday, but then at 8 all the kids go home and there's an extra hour just for adults. I have sat and watched it a lot, but tonight was my first time actually joining in properly as anything other than target practise. It was hard (well, duh!), and there were a lot of move combinations that were far more advanced than I would normally be attempting as a mere red belt, but I gave it my best shot... I think I got the basics of them, anyway.

But then at the end we all did free sparring with Sensei Puddin'. As the most junior student, I was last, which was pretty good, because having seen a lot of people far more advanced than me make amusing cock-ups, I felt less worried about the ones I was bound to make. The problem was that when I stood up to go fight, Sensei Puddin' said to me Oh yeah, take your glasses off. Now, I understand the health and safety reasons for this: a punch in the glasses could break them, blind me totally and embed glass in the puncher's hand. Not entirely safe. The problem with me taking my glasses off is that I am as blind as a bat without them. So my first proper (not formalised three or five step sparring) fight with my Sensei was conducted with me feeling like Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury. I couldn't judge distance, I couldn't see what his hands were doing, I couldn't react properly, and basically I was utter rubbish. I landed a couple of punches, but only because I wasn't stepping back when I should have been, and was too close in. If he'd wanted to, he could have handed me my arse on a plate before I even saw him coming.

I don't know what I can do about this. I don't want contact lenses, they hurt me and I feel weird without my specs on. But if I'm going to fight properly, competitively, there's nothing else I can do. Trying to fight a white blob that keeps laughing at you is not the way forward in competition... :(

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Holly is doing excellently in all subjects, but she's not working to her full potential was the basic report at school. She's in the top set for everything except Maths (in which she would be in the top set if she worked faster), and is one of the best readers in the school, apparently. And she has an amazing imagination and is very creative. It's just that sometimes she drifts off into a little world of her own and won't work. But she's such a little individual, and has such forthright views...

It's eerie, really. They could just photocopy my school reports. Or my dad's.

Karate, though... Karate was AWESOME. I know it was only my third lesson, but we got paired up for punch and block practise, and Sensei Puddin' DID tell us to go as hard and fast as we could... I got paired up with a brown belt guy, similar height and reach to me and... well, put it this way, I got an impressed eyebrow raise out of him a couple of times for being bang on target and fast enough to get past his block. And I have a couple of bruises on my forearms because he was a bit more diligent with the blocking after that LOL.

Why have I not done martial arts before now? It was FUN!

But now I must go for a bath before Question Time because I am as sweaty as a vicar in a brothel...

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