When I was a kid, I watched wrestling on Saturday with my dad.  I’d wrestle with Rusty, the boy next door,  pretending we had a ring and audience.  Sometimes, we played Batman and Robin (tho’ I was forbidden to watch the TV show).  Sometimes, we played war, shooting at each other with plastic toy guns or even using sticks for rifles.

One day, Rusty brought over a book about karate.  The black and white pictures showed all the punches and moves, and we tried to practice them on each other.

This was the early 1970s, remember.  In rural Arkansas.  I was about 10 years old or thereabouts.

I asked my mother if I could take karate lessons.  No, she said.  We shouldn’t be fighting at all.  We should be kind and loving to each other, not always studying on how to hurt each other.

So all my adult life, I longed to take some version of martial arts training, but I had 3 small kids to raise, and I got fat, and we moved every few years (being in the Air Force), so I just never got to do that… I always put it off as a reward for when I lost the weight.  I assumed (wrongly) that I had to be fit first – that I would be turned away (or laughed at) showing up for karate class at 100 lbs overweight.

Anyway, cut to fall 2005 when I’m 42 years old.  I hire a personal trainer at the gym I just joined.  He happens to be a kickboxer.  So for part of our training together, he teaches me to punch the focus mitts, move around the room, and I love it.

“I just want to beat people up,” I tell him.  He laughs.  He enjoys my enthusiasm.

Cut to January 2008.  After attending BodyPump classes to get myself back into the exercise routine, I decide to hire my old trainer again, but this time doing only kickboxing. 

“I just want to beat people up,” I tell him again.  He’s still amused.

So for 12 1-hour sessions, he trains me in punching, footwork, defense, and I love it.  It gets my heartrate going as strong as the treadmill, but it’s way more fun.  I can pummel the dummy, get out all my aggression, then sit in the steam room or sauna afterwards, feeling wonderful.

My new trainer at a new gym is a karate black belt.  She’s a tiny little thing and she loves how strong I am, how much heavy iron I can lift, how hard I can punch.  I love it too.

I’m probably too old to ever be a contender for a title belt or go pro.  But who really knows what the future holds?  Right now, I’m just tickled to be beating up a rubber person until the sweat is pouring off me like rain.  It’s glorious.

I keep saying I’m going to blog more often, then I don’t.  Wazzup widdat?

Anyway, we all have issues.  We all have some degrees of hang-ups, dysfunction, eccentricities.  Even when we’ve spent a lifetime working on them, they never quite go away completely, just only hide below the surface ready to pop up like that mangy little critter in the Whack-a-Mole game – and you have to thump him a good one to get him back in line.

Only sometimes, it’s like we’re wearing special glasses that prevent us from seeing the mole that pops up in front of us, although it’s quite easy to see the moles popping up on other people’s games.

It’s that fish in the fishbowl thing.  Does the fish know he’s living in water?  No, the water is part of his normal environment.  It’s all he knows, and he doesn’t recognize that the water stops only inches in front of his gills.  That is, until he runs into the glass and gets a fat lip.

Lately, my mole is the old co-dependency issue.  Co-dependency covers a wide range of misery-making behaviors, from being an overachieving people-pleaser to being a know-it-all xenophobe.  Both sides of co-dependency coin like to focus on fixing others.  I tend toward the latter syndrome.  And it’s easy to try to fix someone else’s problem without even knowing that’s what I’m doing.  It’s easy to fall into the pattern of making life easier for that other person, offering endless suggestions and answers, without ever realizing that by doing so, I’m making myself miserable and resentful rather than taking care of my own needs in the first place.

I know where my moles come from.  I know what triggers them to pop up.  I know how to whack ‘em back down again.  And I’m much happier after giving them all a good thumping and getting on with the business of me.

Here’s what I’ve been talking about.  I caught them kissing and grooming in front of the mirror.

I’ve been reading up on how to coax them not to be so afraid of me.  The trick, as always, is to lure them into my hand using food and be patient.  Food, I can do.  It’s the patience I’m not so good at.

I’ve downloaded two mp3s from online that I can play while I’m out of the room that trains them to say “Hello, Baby”  and “Wanna eat?”  I’ve also ordered a CD of similar phrases that I can play for them.  Maybe they’ll learn to say something someday and I can show you some video of them talking.

In other news… wait, there isn’t really any other news.  I eat, I lift weights, I eat, I feed dogs and birds, I write and take pictures, I sleep.  Pretty dull, actually.  Good thing I like it that way.

Moments before I took this picture, Mrs Lovett was fixing Sweeney’s ‘hair.’

I think Sweeney and Mrs Lovett are both male.  According to the bird book, if their nares (noses/nostrils) are blue, they’re male.  Both these guys have bluish purple nares.

I also think they’re gay, because they’ve been spending a LOT of time grooming each other in the last few days.

I also think they’re retarded, because they don’t chirp much, despite me playing music for them all the stinking time, plus they don’t play on their ladders or toys as much as I think they should.

PLUS, after living here with me for a week, with me giving them food and water and toys, they still want nothing to do with me.  I stick my hand in there and they act like I’m going to make parakeet fricassee out of ‘em.  I don’t care that they like each other more than me, but I’m offended they’re still afraid of me.  I wouldn’t hurt a fly.

I told them if I wanted to eat birds, I’d get KFC.  They weren’t amused.

I have gay retarded birds.

Mrs. Lovett is curious, while Sweeney feigns disinterest.

Actually, it’s Sweeney who had been the most active since coming into their new home.  He’s been up to the seed dish and had breakfast.  He even did some chirping this morning. 

Mrs. Lovett, on the other hand… I haven’t seen her do anything but sit – either on the floor of the cage or on that perch.  She hasn’t eaten (as far as I know) or sipped water or anything.  Of course, she may only move around when I leave the room. 

I’ve become so fascinated by birds, that I got a couple of my very own.

Here’s the cage

And here are the birds.

The blue one is Sweeney.  The white one is Mrs. Lovett.

Yes, I’ve seen the play, both with the original cast from the early 80s (on VHS and DVD) and on stage (in person) a few years ago.  I’ve also seen the Johnny Depp movie.  Twice.  I love everything about it.

And yes, I’m going to try to blog more often.  But you know us introverted creative types, off in our own little worlds all the time, ever observant of, but feeling no need to participate in or even comment on, the world at large.

Got some new photos for you…

Vulture sitting high in a dead tree about 2 backyards away.

Snapped this right before Lucky and Baby noticed the deer and began howling and barking and scared it away.

Please comment on the below blog and give me your feedback about what you need in a datebook.  Or if you don’t even use a datebook…you’ve gone completely electronic with your calendar… let me know that, too.

I’m designing a date book for artists and writers.  What do you look for in a date book, appointment book, planner, calendar, or whatever you want to call it?  I’m especially interested in features you’d like in such a book that you have trouble finding in the books currently on the market.

Think about such features such as…
- one day per page
- one week per page spread
- one month per page spread

- lines for making notes not attached to dates
- lines attached to dates but not marked by times
- lines marked by time of day

- inspirational quotes
- funny quotes
- holidays pre-marked (if so, which ones?)
- oddball occasions marked, like National Dog Day (seems every day has an oddball occasion)
- occasions particular to artists and writers, like Blooms Day or Picasso’s birthday

Let me know how much you use or need any of the above or anything else you can think of.

I got my word count for NaNoWriMo (as well as some other creative work) done yesterday.  I just want to remind everyone that if you want an excel spreadsheet to track your NaNo progress, let me know.  Also, if you want a daily email of encouragement, contact Terri. 

My best advice for getting the job done is what I told someone yesterday:

1) set a period of time everyday that you will work on the book and only the book.  For example, I work on my NaNo book from 1-3 in the afternoon, every afternoon.  When I do have to change the time for outside forces, I still make sure I have a specific time to start and stop and I do my darndest to keep my schedule.

2) when you’re at a loss on how to move the story forward, instead just start rambling or free-associating about the setting or what the characters are wearing…in other words, describe stuff ad nauseum until the story starts moving again.  It piles on the words and gives you more material for revision later on.

Good Luck and Just Keep Typing!!!