changes

screw blogger. i want to load a cool picture, and it won't let me. so i know i'm just not meant to have that picture, this minute, in this post. still aggravating. a little. :-)

a lot is going on right now in my life. i started iaido classes last week, and am really loving it. i wanted to take it for years, but didn't think chicks did it. well, half my class and one of my instructors are women. being in a room half full of women with swords is an empowering experience. i feel like i've come home.

over the last few months, i've been trying to build my upper body strength. chopping wood helps, and carrying it, and stacking it. i used to lift weights for awhile, and could bench my weight, which i guess is a good thing. but i'm not too big on "organized" exercise now. hiking and hoeing and working with wood seemed like good enough for me.

heh. was i wrong. in class on saturday, we had a different teacher named mike (i seem to have an overabundance of mike's in my life). we were doing cuts with the swords and he says "stop swinging like your chopping wood.....you're swordsmen, not axe muderers." well, so much for me, miss-heft-it-high-and-slam-it-down-kate. i've got a lot to relearn.

then there is the part where we kneel on the floor long enough for both legs to go to sleep, then leap nimbly to our feet and perform smooth movements with the sword. yeah. karen taught me a couple exercises to do over the next few weeks. don't worry, she says, your thighs will be like iron in no time. heh. they haven't stopped quivering since saturday.

tomorrow i start guitar lessons. i found an instructor who doesn't teach out of a book. i am self-taught, so i have an odd assortment of things i want to learn. like, tara asked me what key i was playing "angel" in. i had no idea. i know chords, but not much musical stuff. so greg is gonna teach me keys, and some other basics. me and tara, we're gonna jam :-)

i also hope, once and for all, to learn how to tune my B string.

so that's what's new in my life. mutt and i are out alot more, hiking hills and tromping through snow. i am knitting tara's socks as fast as i can. there are books to read and songs to sing and wool to spin. doctors to disagee with, and procedures to decide on. and always a rondyvan in constant need of tweaking. it is good to be out of my recent slump.

which brings me to my love/hate relationship with the internet. i get pulled to it in fits and starts. i'm feeling pulled away right now, and feeling a need to focus down more. but i am really loving my blog, and some of the friendships i've made. like, i am hooked on my daily dose of johnny's quotes :-)

so i am backing off a bit, taking a little time to regroup. i won't be doing much emailing for awhile. i will be blogging, i just don't know how often. so if i don't respond to emails right off, be patient. check in here every couple days, i have alot more stories to tell.