After Xmas

It has been a great holdiay ... the girls are home and we have been visiting or visited by friends and relatives alot.  Brandi has gone thru the Tae Hau form with me and I now have the better understanding of the moves that I am making in this form.   When I learned the beginning of it in China the teacher did not speak great English (none) so I was learning moves and not really understanding what I was doing ... it feels much better to know that a particular move is a strike or block  etc.   Makes it easier to remember and get the flow going so I expect it will feel and look alot better shortly.    Did 500 situps and 250 kicks on New Years, pants are still too tight (appears it will take alot more than 500 to burn that off).  Hope everyone had as great a holiday as we did and best in the new year.

Week before Xmas

So this will be short

The girls are home Yeah! They are going to go over the tai he form with me because I am planning on doing it at the Tiger Challenge this year and it needs some perfecting.

Really enjoying participating in the Dragon Dance group its alot of fun and is starting to look impressive. The area we are doing it in is pretty small so everybody being in the right place at the right time is going to be critical.

Christmas is busy here at the office and at home. Really getting everyone a gift certificate is so much easier! Not as much fun though

MIA

So I have not blogged for the last 7 weeks ... and I am supposed to explain this!  Not sure how to do this without sounding like a whinny baby offering endless excuses.   Its not that anything disastorous has happended it more like ALOT of things have been going on. 

Since June of this year its been very busy at work ... the number of workers doubled and the projects got bigger and more complicated.   So as a result I have been getting farther and farther behind on my other responsibilities at work (ask the last time I went out on a site inspection ... its been months).  Its not just Kung Fu journalling that has taken a hit, its happening all over my life.   Haven't been helping as much with my Mom.  Its a litany of small things that I have not been keeping up with.

I like to be organzied and plan and schedule things unfortuantely lately everything has been getting done last minute, just under the wire so to speak.  I do not like living like that ... its hugely stressfull and my theory is that with good planning you prevent that from happening.  Its just that I have been juggling too many balls ... so many in fact that I don't notice that I dropped one until it comes to bite me at a later date when the status of the situation is now urgent.  I.E. in November and December ... the safety audit;  the bonding paperwork, healthy eating,  my daily eating journal,  blogging. 

My life being so chaotic I guess conciously or unconciously I made choices about things that were going to get done and things that were going to be sacrificed.  Kung Fu is something that is for me and that I do just because I like doing it.  Alot of the other things in my life people are relying on me and it appears that I give those priority over something that I do just for me.  

Did I make the right decision (conciously or unconciously) ... still don't know, but I was aware that I was not performing as well as I would like.   Did I let the I Ho Chuan team down by my lack or participation? Absolutely!

Had a discussion with my husband a month ago and we agreed that we need to make some changes in the management of our lives.   My husband Dean comes first before anything else, and Dean loves the ballroom dancing and I love dancing with Dean so its something that will remain in our lives.   We both enjoy running our business, even if sometimes it makes you crazy, its never boring.   I feel something missing without  Kung Fu in my life so that remains.  (You will notice Kung Fu came in third, I believe that is the correct order for me)  The responsibility of caring for my Mom and my aunt is not something you get to slough off so it stays. 

However altnerate arrangements can be made for renovations, healthy eating, working out, housekeeping, yardwork etc. which take up all kinds of time.  

We have already started with this;

• A Bowflex at the office.
• We had a fellow come out a give us a price for some renovations that will happen in the spring. 
• Found a service in St. Albert that provides organic, partially prepared meals.  

Still need a housekeeper and someone interested in some partime yard work.  Still need to convince my Mom to move from Sylvan Lake to an assisted living facility in Edmonton or area (that will be the tough one, I have been trying for the last two years).   In additiion I asked my husband/business partner to not make any drastic changes at work for the year of the Snake so that Jackie (my right hand girl) and I can have a breather on the business management side of things.    Hopefully life will smooth out as we put these things in place.    

24 of 52

So the financial quarter is done and all the bonuses for the Supervisors and Workers are paid out.   The end of a quarter is brutal busy and its a struggle to get anything else done during the workday.  Usually I manage to sneak in forms repetition,  or some extra numbers for pushups and situps during the day at work ... not for the last two weeks.  In addition the elbow injury/strain is getting worse and not better.  Friday after the I Ho Chuan and BlackBelt class my right elbow hurt so much I couldn't pick up a cup of coffee never mind spin a spear (which I did very badly at class, I apologize to anyone standing next to me while I was trying to do the single or double articulation ... you were at risk of being struck).  Going to see my physio this week!

Reviewed my requirements and realized I have made a lot of progress on some of my personal requirements like the reducing plastics ... I have learned alot, discovered alternatives, and made alot of changes in my buying decisions.  You can't always be driven by the price tag on item ... you need to calculate the 'real costs' .... the economic, environmental and social impact that those cheap plastic lawn chairs have on not just you but the world.  Canada provides a lot of the raw materials, with some basic refining to the point of a plastic resin which we then send to many places in Canada and around the world and they pump out all kinds of plastic products, which in turn get shipped all over the world and back to Canada.  Note:  that there is a new type of plastic which is BHP free for food storage ... seriously look into this as I have discovered 90% of the plastic left in my life is in the kitchen.

I am grateful for the space to grow my own garden
I am gateful for the 4 beautiful pumkins that grew and will soon be pie filling
I am grateful for skype ... the girls and I talk every week on wednesday
I am grateful for the wonderful people that I love and make my life worth living
I am grateful for 4 seasons ... so I can have beautiful autum days

23 of 52 Enjoying the weekly challenges

So the elbow is still a problem, and what's weird is that straightening it is where it gets really painfull.  Back to knee push ups ... Sigh!

The challenge for last week involved meditation which is something I struggle with, however, while waiting at a job site I was reading the book called 'Savour' and there is mindful meditation on page 85 called the 'Love Meditation' which outlines a focused 'mindful' meditation.  So this is what I did!  It is/was really cool and I felt very much at peace afterwards.   Even my multitasking brain could handle it and found it beneficial.  Yeah!

This weeks challenge of practicing forms & sparring in such a small space is something I can actually pull off at work.  The floor space in my office is about that size ... close the door and away I go and no gawkers!   Good idea ... be aware of sharp corners on desks its gotten painful once or twice so far.

22 of 52

So due to my efforts to catch up on my pushups and situps I have actually done something to my right elbow ... it really hurts to straighten it out completely, and it kind of looks swollen. So for the last few days I have been iceing, appling stinky chinese medicine and modifying my pushups to more on my left side and not actually straightening it to the point of locking the joint. Not sure how it will go ... will keep you posted. Thats why I picked the challenge of hidden leg technique ... no arms required.

Thanks to whoever picked mu long koon as a challenge, one of my faves!

While in China I started learning a form called Tei Hua (not 100% sure of the spelling). I learned the basic movements up to the part called ba gua walking and have been practicing it to that point.

The girls have been answering my questions like "what is the hand position here? and where should my weight be? and what kind of stance is here?" during our skype calls for the last 4 months. Now thanks to our discovery of an internet feature called 'Dropbox' the girls and I can share photos and videos much more easily. (Their access is pretty limited and slow) My daughter Melanie who is one of the two sweetest children ever ... video recorded this form for me. She does it very slowly and emphasizes the hand positions and videoed it front and back so I can see everything no matter what direction she is facing. The quality is excellent and I am sure that is due to the group of foreign students that she trains with. Thanks everyone! This will help me huge in getting Tei Hua looking like what I know it should look and feel like. Thanks Mel for caring and taking the time to do this for me.

Give me a week to tweek this form and I hope to have it mastered to the point that I am willing to show it off.

Sifu Beckett.

21 of 52

This week I plan on catching up on my reading the I Ho Chuan member blogs, I really missed this part ... it helps keep me in touch with everyone and appreciate the struggles everyone is going thru.  I learn a lot from all you guys. 
 
Just wanted to say that I am really impressed with the efforts that the team has put into the demos, the ipad raffle, snow shoveling, finding more demo opportunities and the way the group is coming together ... the cheerleaders are the glue that keep everyone engaged and forging onwards, Kudos to you!  

 
Sifu Brinker uses the analogy of baby birds sometimes so I am going to add to that and say when a baby bird first tries to fly sometimes the first few attempts involve some painful landings, its part of the learning curve.  Eventually you will be launching from the nest and swooping across the finish line in a truly spectacular demonstration of aerodynamics, I can see it!  You just need to decide when, and until then the I Ho Chuan team will pick you up, dust you off and encourage you to try again.  How do I know this ... personal experience.

My shoulders are really sore from all the additional push-ups I needed to do to catch up what I missed doing on holidays (for some reason the sit-ups don’t hurt as much). Dancing with the hubby, he had to keep telling me to hold my own arms up and not rest on him. Pretty sad!