thursday clarity

I like Thursdays. We have taiji class on Wednesday nights, of course, so I lose sleep but I gain clarity and mellowness.

My head was in a good place, last night. Watching that YouTube video of the ethnic festival performance, I realized that I am consistently leaning forward in my horse stance. This is not good, because it means that I am tensing at the hip and that creates a disconnect in the body line and robs you of power.

The good news is, once I've realized I'm doing it, I can pay attention and stop doing it. So I felt as if I had better ground connection last night, and that makes a lot of things go smoother.

I've also been pretty good all week about going home and doing a bit of practice, right off, instead of sitting down or fiddling around. I often feel at loose ends when I first get home, because I'm tense from the commute and fidgety from sitting down all day, and I can't decide whether to cook or clean or read or sew or what, and I feel resentful about all of it, so it helps to just pick up a sword and wave it around. Tuesday night I did just that: we went into the backyard and went through the broadsword form several times, just in the nick of time, since we were on the verge of forgetting it. Then we did a little longsword form, just for thoroughness.

I also got eaten alive by mosquitoes. Today I count sixteen bites just on my right leg. And yes, I put on repellent before I went out there; apparently they like me seasoned. We've been talking about building a bat house and maybe putting in a water garden with fish to eat the skeeters. In a couple weeks the weather will cool some and we'll probably do more yard work.

Yeah, my brain's rambling a bit. But I feel good, and motivated. I want to brush up my Chen-style form and I'll have to pester Sit about teaching me more sword form, because our schedule's been disrupted the last few weeks. Although I have kept up with it, so there.

Oh, and I've had two more queries about the Harley Quinn costume in the past fortnight. It's that time of year. I have decided, with an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the SP, to make another complete costume and put it on ebay. I calculate I can make on in a weekend or so, and if it sells like the last one did, I can make a clear profit. Keeping my fingers crossed.