Thursday, August 23, 2007

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the bat house idea. That's just good biology.

Our little guy is a mosquito magnet still. Took him up to see my parents a few weeks ago--they live sorta middle Ontario, near Algonquin Park, a river running past their place; it's mosquito central. He came back looking like he had Chicken Pox or somethin'.

Holly said...

I haven't been bit like this in years. And my husband hardly got any! he says I'm not sluicing on the slime heavily enough. I guess it could be worse, tho; I never attracted chiggers or ticks the way some do.

>bat house idea=good biology

Yeah! and I hope it will keep them out of the house. We seem to have a superb location for it, under the west-facing gable at the back of the house.

My husband heard something scritching in the walls of my unfinished office last week, but it either found its way back to the attic or it died in there....

Anonymous said...

Citronella to keep the varmints off- Lanacane to stop the itch. The few skeeters that have essayed to bite me lately have all died- blunt object trauma!!!

The Harley Quinn costume: go for it!!! I'm in favor of those things which tip shekels into your coffers.
SG