Looking at recent entries, I realized I'd said I was "psychically" active the past couple weeks and then went on to talk about kung fu. *sigh*

That should have read "physically". Rarrr

Speaking of which, I only observed class today, as the hip is still recovering from last Saturday, and the knees aren't exactly thrilled with me either. Good decision on my part, as the instructor today was doing a whole bunch of hopping in various ways as part of warm ups :P

Some rolls and various escapes, most of which I knew but it was nice to see them again. Couple new escapes today though. Although the lapel escape turns into a reversal, so kind of two things there.

I was watching one of the rolls closely, as we'd gotten do the part of person flipping the other person into the roll once a few months ago and I'd been wanting to see it again.

I did get to practice some of the escapes with another student -- she was just watching the first class and was going to be in the more advance class afterward, and offered to pair up with me just for that part, so we went outside to go through them a few times :)

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Fitzw was active in the class :) He's been pretty amazing this week, in fact, since he's also been helping with haying, and unloading and stacking hundreds of bales this week. Around 200+ each day, the past three days at least, and earlier in the week too I think. I helped a little bit yesterday, just kind of knocking them down and pushing them over from one end of the wagon to the other mostly. They're heavier than the ones at the beginning of summer were...

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Blue heron sitings all over town. Either we have more than one, or the one is covering a lot of territory...

For some detail, see fitzw's post HERE.

Overall I handled the PT part of it better than last time (which is both to be expected and hoped for). Mildly injured at the front of the point of the right hip, but not as badly as last time. Could fake walking normally most of the time at places we went to after the exam, which is a definite improvement over last ti!

We'll see how I'm doing tomorrow... despite overall physical improvements, I won't continue with kung fu if I think it's very likely to injure me in a way that will affect my daily life when I'm older. Hopefully I can continue though, as I seem to need some sort of structure to exercise. Also, it's often fun ;)

Hm, well I guess it's a good thing it's just the two of us in the car this year... although I would have enjoyed traveling with harpnfiddle again :) Still, it made being able to change our departure date that much easier, and hopefully L will be more rested and less frayed around the edges! We were going to work the farmers market Saturday and then pack up during the afternoon/evening and leave Sunday a.m. But he's been flat out for some months now, so having all of Sunday to get things together and then leaving Monday a.m. will be better. Probably better for me too, as I've added to my to-do list by getting re-authorized for rattan combat! My fighter pants have gone missing and my knee pads were attached to them. I haven't fought in a couple of years so they've probably been MIA since we moved from Holyoke. Eh, the pads were pretty old anyway...

So, now I'm making new pants -- in linen of course -- and am almost done with them (I hope!). I've put pockets on the knees to slide padding into, so tonight I need to try that part out and see what adjustments need to be made for correct fit. I sort of modeled them on a pair of martial arts pants I have, although the gusset is only single piece instead of the three pieces that my pants have. Only folks in camp will ever see them since I still use fugly plastic leg armor, so I wear a pair of poofy pants over the armor to hide everything. But linen rocks, both for durability and dealing with damp conditions, so hot and humid or cold and rainy, they shouldn't give me grief.

We've also decided to bring a bedframe after all. Just a futon frame, but with the strong possibility of rain, L wanted us off the ground, and I agree. In fact I want to bring a few bricks to set our trunks on as well. The tent and groundcloth _should_ suffice, but better safe than sorry.

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Class last night went pretty well overall, but we were doing floor sweeps -- new for me and L. I did all right considering I can't get down low enough to do it properly. Would have been better if I'd thought to take my shoes off -- darn carpeting was catching at the soles and so I twisted my left knee some. New shoes still haven't come in, so I'm wearing my walking shoes :P But it was interesting to learn; I'll have to work on that one... We did it always on the left leg for the pivot point, but circled in both directions. There is also a higher up version of the sweep but we didn't do that yesterday.

Farmers Market went pretty well. We got hung up getting there, but happily a bunch of folks helped us bring thing over to our spot and get the EZ-up set up quickly and everything. Very windy, so everyone made sure their tents were staked/weighted down. Uncertain-looking weather, but we only got a brief sprinkle at one point -- blowing sideways, mind, but brief. Got a little spinning done but not much, because the wind was messing with the spindle. Took a short walk down to one of the tag sale spots that usually has some interesting stuff and bought an old steamer trunk and a basket/writing desk. Whoot! The trunk will need some fixing up; we'll need to make a tray among other things. But it's basically in good condition and was only $20. The writing desk/basket is in excellent condition and was only $4!

We started breakdown half an hour early, went home, changed and went down to Amherst. Met up with kungfu folks, did a run-through of some of the demo stuff, stretching, etc. Shifu was there with his son. I got to do some of the performance stuff, for about half the parade I guess, then took the bag of flyers from Shifu so he could do some fancy stuff along with Jess and Phil and Mark. Handing out flyers is probably one of my least favorite types of activities -- having to go up to strangers and see if they want to take some marketing material, yay (bleh). But it went pretty well, and while it may only be my personal perception, it seemed like the Asian and Indian folk were more willing to make eye contact with me than with some of the other folks. Be that as it may, many flyers were handed out, so maybe the school with get new students. They were pushing the kid adventure camp, and the parade's a good place to do that. I ended up doing a lot of running to catch up with our guys -- happily the knees didn't object once! So I seem to be regaining my sprint ability :) J's dad was there to take pics, so I suppose we may end up on the web site or something. Oh, and the weather down there was slightly overcast but not as windy as up the hill, so good parade weather. And as L and I were walking back to where the car was parked (L got in a lot of walking yesterday!), we got thanked by some of the VFW folks for being in the parade -- I think they were probably part of the organizing committee, but that was still very cool. And a lady who's organizing Amherst's 250th anniv. parade asked us about the school and being in their parade -- happily she had one of the flyers so we just made sure she knew that J would be the one to talk to about getting that process started.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig after that, to change into everyday clothing. I still had a bit of a headache from the lack of sleep and all, so I undid my braid -- and was promptly amused. Most of my hair was dry, except where the braid started at the nape, which was quite thoroughly damp still.

An easy evening with a few light chores. No fireworks for us after a long day. Nevertheless, we did have a delightful light show last night :) The moon was up (she'll be full in a few more days) and the clouds were scudding by. There was a small but intense rainbow around the moon, coloring the clouds in pinks and electric to medium blues. And then finally she had the sky to herself and we went to sleep.

This morning, a beautiful sunny clear day! We made a list while we were at the market of things we need to do this summer, and some of it is getting done today!

The weather was perfect today! Sunny but not too hot, and a bit of a breeze. I took pictures of some of the laundry, and some flowers and plants too. It was a perfect laundry day; I was able to put up two loads on the lines, one after the other. I'll see about putting up some pictures tomorrow.

One of the problems with exercising more and doing all that lovely gardening and farm work is the increase in laundry time this time of year....

Dug and pulled up a bunch of weeds in the herb garden today. I have hopes of maybe moving some things around tomorrow earlier in the day (forecast of rain in the afternoon). If I'm lucky, I'll make enough space to plant a few seeds. Seems I went a little crazy ordering things this year.... sigh. It won't all fit. In fact the reason I have to move some things is because the soil's better up here and everything has gotten huge! I should have moved some things last year I suspect, but I definitely wasn't up to doing that much work with my shoulder at the time.

Speaking of exercising, we made it to staff class today. Phil (instructor) had us do more stretching stuff than usual today, but that was good because my shoulders and upper back have been kind of unhappy -- no doubt all the digging and stuff. We got to finish learning Southern Staff -- whoot! Made Ras (another instructor) laugh when I got realized we'd reached the end and go excited about that :D And now, more practice, of course!

Strawberries are increasing in number! Must make something with them!!

Helped move 170+ bales today. Most went into a mow for now, and 50 into a truck to go to a customer. Then went to pick a few strawberries -- not a whole lot yet, but we only want to share so many with our outdoor neighbors ;)

The grass we didn't get out of the bed before it became unsafe to continue (without risking damage/disruption to the strawberries) had gotten lodged what with all the rain and wind, so I got out a pair of hand clippers and shortened the grass around them. Now they should get more sunlight and I may try to dry out the cuttings for a saunders mat.

A saunders mat is a high quality archery target mat, made by wrapping up straw/hay into a long tube and then coiling it around like one of those braided rugs you may have seen. They're very expensive. Building construction foam can also be used, but people with more powerful bows have problems with them because the friction heat from the arrow head sticking into the foam sometimes causes them to fuse together.

I got a blister on the side of my left thumb from doing too much clipping, sigh. Darn 'lady hands'.... they're useful for lots of things, but they don't form calluses worth a damn. Someday I'll train myself to always use gloves when I should.... oh well. At least I have strawberries :)

Exam was today. L and I both passed :) Overall it was pretty good and interesting. I did something to my left hip in the forward breakfall though, which is annoying. Currently icing that and the right knee (left knee will follow, but I only have two packs). Had I not been so much digging in the garden this week, I might not have done quite so much damage to myself :D

L is doing better than me, happily. This is good, since he's just gone out to load 50 bales onto the truck. His dad wanted him to do it this morning, and L wisely deferred that to after the exam. I'm debating going out to the garden, but will probably wait until tomorrow morning.

It was very interesting watching the upper classmen go through their forms -- nice to see what we have to look forward to!

L and I have been working on recovering the strawberry beds -- not easy because they got taken over by weeds last summer, what with the rain and all. The strawberries have multiplied in spite of that, but usually I end up digging everything out of a spot, sorting the strawberries out by hand, and then re-planting them.

L recovered a good bit of the west end of the garden yesterday, and so we managed to plant some corn. We also planted some wax beans at the east end yesterday.

All but one of the potatoes came up, so not bad out of 22 plantings. Peas are starting to come up too. The seed package for that recommended planting the same area every two weeks until it gets too warm to do that... I don't have a lot of seeds, but I'll be doing a second planting this week as I have enough for that. The first lot are coming up, yay!

And I'll go through the seeds and see what else I want to plant today....


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Kungfu class went pretty well yesterday. We learned a new section of the southern staff form, doing blossoms and then going into pubu and slapping the staff down. My 'hurricane knees' still isn't very good, but about the best these knees are going to do, at least for now. Happily my stomach muscles seem to be mostly recovered from being sick, for which I'm very grateful.

I still take ibuprofen before each class -- I've only forgotten a couple of times, and boy is that not a good idea. But I've been needing to take more after class less and less often, and icing isn't so critical now either, so overall I'd say I've made some improvement health-wise. Yesterday I did some extra ibuprofen, but then I'd been digging in the garden two days in a row, plus planting and sowing and such, and that's a pretty intense workout too.

Hm.... a nice soak in the tub might be in order later today... especially since I need be more diligent about daily practice. L and I will be testing for white sash on May 30 and I'm still not feeling completely confident about a number of things.

Meanwhile, need to empty some stuff out of the car and start getting ready for the weekend, as we'll be going to War of the Roses. *sigh* I enjoy going there and being with folks, but between that, the exam, and then our own local Sommer Draw event, L and I will be missing the first three weekends of the farmers market. So no events after that until Pennsic.

Went out and planted peas because I can't wait for sunny weather. Went for a short jog/walk down past the east side of the barn and into the field and then back up again, even though it had started lightly raining by then. Did not melt ;)

L was moving hay bales again, this time to do an inventory of what's left vs. customer needs. Ended up helping a bit with that. So, some exercise acquired. Still need to do some form work of course, but I can do some of that indoors (even a bit of staff, sort of -- I use a yard stick instead so I don't break things).

First part of Saturday was our local town meeting. Pretty interesting stuff actually, as we all struggle with what things to spend on or make cuts on, in an increasingly limited budget. The meeting broke for a late lunch; we went home for that. Ended up not going back for the second half, having other things that needed doing. Like L helping W retrieve a couple of the new heifers. Yes, we have 6 new young ladies here at the farm :)

L also tilled the small stretch of land we'll be planting flax and oats on again. We'll have to go out and weed the flax half as well as possible, as fiber flax isn't as aggressive as grass. He's also planning on sowing it in rows this year, hoping to keep it more manageable -- last year's experiment was not a success. I expect if we keep improving the quality of the land though, that we'll get better results over time.

I worked on the winter/summer clothing exchange, set some clothing aside for giveaway and rags, and found a new home for some of the gift bags, ribbons, and bows. While we still use them at holidays and such (and many people I know re-use bags too), there's only so much space in the house. I'm working on eliminating a whole box from clothing storage -- have a feeling I'm only going to succeed in downsizing to a smaller box, but I'll take what I can get.

Besides, I'm not unpacking all the percale sheets this year, so some of storage is being taken up by that -- we really don't need to have a bunch of sheets out, and they'll be there when the sheets we're using wear out (or we can exchange sets in storage for variety next year). When I was a kid, we only had 2 or 3 sets of sheets each, and you only really need 2 sets. One on the bed and one to replace them when the first set goes into the wash.

Some shopping, cleaning, and printing happened in the evening.

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Sunday morning was Beltain at the Sunwheel. We had two guests, which was great :) Things went well overall -- I'd accidentally grabbed a stack of napkins instead of a tablecloth, but fortunately it wasn't windy :D The thing I'd tried to do at Samhuinn worked this time -- tweaked a couple of things. I wrote out the part where we're purifying the grove with the elements so that the druids from all four quarters came in to the center to pick up their element symbols and then went out to scribe the circle all at the same time and then went back to return the symbols at the same time. Four overlapping swirls :) Sort of a ritual dance, if you will. And of course we had a May pole dance, which was lots of fun again -- someday we may manage to wrap our Chief Druid up in the ribbons ;)

A good feast, although we all missed having harpnfiddle with us for the ritual and the feast in person... but she'd been driving all night so really needed her rest. I was "restrained" and had only one of the donuts. We had strawberry rhubarb pie, so two donuts would really have been too much.

Got in an excellent walk after everyone left, and then I worked on basic form and iluchuan, before we went off to choir practice. That went pretty well, although we were missing ellid, who is madly working on papers. Potluck convo was good, got home late, called mom, etc.

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Monday: L had to help load 200 bales early this morning, then count out second-cut bales to set aside for a contract customer, and then another 20 for someone else (I helped with the second and third bits).

Two loads of laundry this morning, and also picked dandelion greens!

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Dandelions are blooming a little early this year, so not as much picking as last year. Nettles are coming up though, and this year I aim to harvest most of my own.

L has a dental cleaning today, so I get to go shopping at Goldthread Apothecary for empty capsules, glass bottles, etc.