You can bend but never break me, 'Cause it only serves to make me, More determined to reach my final goal

Only a few days until my fight, panic is definitely settling in. Just a little though. At this point I just want it over. The level of training is exhausting. I'm exhausted. And old.

Everybody talks about it doesn't matter who wins or loses, nobody remembers later who won, yada yada yada, and I know they're right. I've watched three fights at the dojo and I can't tell you who won or lost.

I'm just tired. And I want my life back. One that doesn't involve being at the dojo when I'm not at work. Don't get me wrong I love my muscle tone, but the constant training, always being sore, the u shaped bruise on my ass, it's just too much.

Plus I feel so behind at work. I've been plugging away all day yesterday and today trying hard to catch up. I'm behind in every other area. Poor Beav has had to remind me for the past three days to pick up his prescription and I have yet to remember to do it.

I was hoping to get in a trip home the second weekend of May but then I realized that it's Mother's day and it's probably not recommended that Mother's spend a weekend away from their children, or maybe it is, lol However, I would have a hard time explaining to my siblings why I don't have my children with me.

I do need to get home soon. I've been very homesick. But I'm not sure when I'll have the time. I've planned a weekend away with Beav and Einstein the weekend before Memorial Day (which will mainly involve sun, swimsuits, and water) and then in June I am making another trek to Flagstaff with Einstein and then we leave on our annual week long camping trip.

My summer seems to be getting off to a fun and busy start. I feel a bit energized now that I've been thinking about the fun stuff coming up.

Title taken from Helen Reddy's "I am Woman"

Training to be a better person

I can't believe how relaxed I have been since I've changed my activities to match my priorities. Seems like a simple enough concept. Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

I've restarted my training and so far since last Friday I've been five times, woohoo! I did spar on Saturday and got my ass kicked, and that's putting it mildly. I was supposed to spar on Sunday also, but just couldn't do it. I hurt beyond belief....both physically and mentally. I'm going to try again this Sunday.

God help me.

Speaking of God. I found a prayer journal that belonged to my mom. It's one of those daily journals. Apparently she only got to January 1st :). Like mother like daughter. Perhaps I'll pick up where she left off. Hopefully I'll get farther than one day.

Other than that, not a lot else going on. There is something big happening at work but I can't go into it here. Maybe after it all gets resolved.

See...I can learn

After my epiphany the other night I've spent the past few nights really doing some thinking.

I've been living this crazy active super busy lifestyle since I was sixteen. I've never known anything else. I realized that I don't want to be super busy any longer. But...here's the kicker. If I'm not constantly busy, doing things, I feel worthless. My busy schedule is how I gauge my self-worth. I know, I'm clearly insane. Then I spent some time trying to figure out how to reprioritize my life. Here's where I am -

My relationship with God

My Family

My Training

My Job (yes, it's number four - it pays for the training)

School

Everything else

Here's how my life was being lived:

Work

School

Family

Training

My relationship with God

See a problem?

Here's what I'm doing:

My relationship with God - I do need to go to church more, but more importantly than that I need to take more time to develop a personal relationship. I need to read the Bible more and spend some quiet time in prayer.

My family - Sunday is supposed to be family day (well, except for Super Bowl, because the kids aren't into football) but lately I spend Sunday trying to catch up on everything I didn't have time to do during the week, including homework. So, Sunday is back to family day (except every other Sunday morning I do spar), don't judge.

Training - Even my trainer said today, I was happiest when I was training hard core. I miss it so so I went back at it full strength today. My trainer wants to put me on the list for our fight night in April, not sure I'll be ready though. Either way it feels good to be back. Besides I'm up 15 lbs since my surgery and I can't have that.

Work - Yeah, work is important. It pays for the training and the things I do with my family. And...it gives me self-worth, yeah I know I need to work on that.

School - Yes it's so important I finish. But taking ten units while working full time is just, well, stupid. So, I dropped the statistics class this semester and I'm at a happy six units. So, it might take me a little longer, but I'll get there. I'm still taking off a bit early two days a week so I can come home and do some homework.

When I made these decisions a couple of things happened. First, my stress level went down SIGNIFICANTLY. I've slept more this week than I have since I don't know when. Second, I immediately started to think about what I could get done with this new free time. Then I had to slap myself.

The hard part is trying to figure out where I learned that my self worth is defined by how hard I push myself to accomplish the impossible.

My therapist is going to work with me on this, but she's proud I've discovered all of this by myself.

E=mc who cares

It's not that I don't like school, because I do. I love school. I do hate that I've never finished college. I mean I REALLY hate it. It makes me feel really stupid.
:
When I decided to go back to school a couple of years ago carrying 10-12 units wasn't that big of a deal because I was only working 24 hours a week. But then a year ago everything went down at my office and I went from a 24 hour a week medical biller to a 50- 60 hour a week office manager for a six physician practice.

So this semester I decided to go back. I'm carrying ten units, although one of my classes doesn't start until March. Last week because I got sick as all heck I missed a week of my statistics class and I'm so behind it hurts. A week of statistics is like seven human years, or something like that.

And I'm tired. This is an example of what Tuesdays are like for me. I'm at work by 7:15, work until 3, drive to school. Have class until 6pm. Drive back to Long Beach. Pic up Beav, come home, eat dinner, do homework. Thursday is the same except I drive to Long Beach and go to the dojo and take the 6:30 class.

And that's another thing. It really cuts into my training time and I miss training.

It sounds like I'm whining, doesn't it? Well I'm just trying to talk myself out of feeling like a loser if I drop the statistics class. The truth is though I have to have this class so I still have to take it. I'm just frustrated knowing that it's taking forever to get this done.

But is the important thing...isn't that I'm trying to get it done?

Truth is, I'm 41 and I work really hard. I don't want to spend my entire weekends doing homework. Not when I have a family here that I want to spend time with.

Yep, I'm totally rationalizing.

And I still feel like a loser.

Drunk on Turkey

Sometimes time away from home helps me to recharge. I'm not sure that his trip did that. Spending four days with my sister and nine children pretty much has worn me out, lol. Seriously, I'm not sure how on earth she does it. The noise level alone is nuts.

But I did miss my husband. A lot. But mostly I just missed my routine. I love the routine of my life. Is that horrible? Does that make me a cliche? Not to mention all I can think about is how much work is sitting at my desk waiting for me to return. (I'm totally trying not to let it get to me because I know I do deserve a life.)

I miss working out every day and feel like a total sloth since I've been eating crap since I got here. So...starting tomorrow it's back to the grind. The grind of work and the grind of training...although picking up kids all week has caused my shoulder to protest painfully today.

Apparently my dad was also up here this weekend. Apparently he's told my siblings that he's very angry with me for not being at his wedding. Apparently he can't pick up the phone and have this conversation with me. Yes, I could call him, but I've decided not to. I know it takes two and all that but the last conversation I had with him, in fact almost every conversation I have with him, he yells at me and has no regard for my feelings whatsoever. Frankly it pisses me off. I'm not sure where he got this idea that I need to go along with what he wants because he's my dad. Oh yeah, he gets that from my brothers. My brothers do it. And they pay the price for it. Both of them went to the wedding. Neither went to the reception and neither one of them has a positive thing to say about it. But I refuse to swallow the horrible feelings and go to the wedding because my father feels I should. That's just bullshit.

And trust me, I've thought about it endlessly. And I've prayed about it. I want to try to do the right thing as often as possible. And God has let me know there are things in my life that need to be addressed. However, I'm not feeling he's pushing me on this one.

I don't want to go on and on about this. What's done is done. I feel like I don't have any parents, which is weird and very painful (totally avoiding the pain right now). I never in a million years thought any of this would happen. At some point I'm going to have to process it I know. I hope there's a ton of tissue around when that happens.

I think what I need to do is get drunk. Not silly drunk, just happy drunk. Maybe on Thanksgiving?

Why I sleep on the bathroom floor

I'm alive...barely.

Can't believe I haven't updated in over two weeks. So much has happened.

My fight has been cancelled. In the beginning of April I took a kick in the ribs during sparring. It hurt and my doctor thought it was most likely bruised. I continued to train, the pain got worse. I started having trouble sleeping, lying down was difficult, I couldn't pull myself up to a sitting position. Sneezing, laughing, taking deep breaths all became difficult. My trainer suggested I think about pulling out of my fight. All I could think about was all the hard work I've done over the past several months. The hours I've spent training, the injuries, the sore muscles. Last Wednesday during my morning class my trainer was watching me struggle through routine moves. After the class he pulled me aside and told me that he just couldn't let me fight. I reacted by crying, which really isn't fighter behavior. His rationale was that it appears my injury has worsened. He worries that if I take another good kick or punch before I'm healed I risk a complete break and the puncture of a lung.

It still broke my heart. The next day, at the recommendation of my boss, I called a pain management doctor we refer a lot of our patients to. He thinks I've cracked my rib but couldn't confirm which one so he did a nerve block on T3 - T7. If you've never had a nerve block I would describe it as uncomfortable. Not especially painful, considering the pain I was already in, but lying on your stomach while someone sticks a needle in your back is not my idea of a good time. The block is designed to wrap around the rib and you can feel it, very weird, and not pleasant. It helps block a lot of the pain. The issue with that is that it helps you forget your injured until you start doing a lot of activity and are quickly reminded by the shooting pain.

The people I fight with have been awesome! Very supportive and have been quick to remind me that I'm still part of this great group of people and I will be that more ready when our next fight comes up in six months.

Today though when the email went out removing my name from the fight list and showing my replacement, I'm not going to lie and say it didn't sting. Because it does.

The doctor asked me to take three months off of training. I agreed to five days, lol. I also agreed that I would take it down a notch in training to give myself time to heal. That's not too hard to do because the fight is in a week and the month after we tend to take it easy at the dojo.

I took a few days off to go up north and visit my family, which I will blog about later. I came home Monday evening and planned to get back to the dojo to Tuesday, however, fate had other plans. Tuesday evening I developed a horrible case of the stomach flu and until today haven't been able to drink or eat without severe and violent repercussions. As of today I haven't worked out in a week and a half and it's killing me.

I will still be attending fight night. My trainer has asked me to help corner and I'll do that. It's still going to be hard though. Everyone still wants me to go to the carb loading session the night before. I'm not really sure I"ll be carb loading since I won't have the opportunity to work it all off the next day. As much as I'd like to stay home and feel sorry for myself, I won't. It's unsportsmanlike and doesn't set a good example for my kids.

In the meantime I'm working on getting my energy back and finding ways to make up to my husband for everything he's had to do this week while I've been living on the bathroom floor.