Thank you for showing up.

Absence is the most efficient survival strategy. –Rory Miller



Thursday lunchtime BJJ in Bellevue.

Taking nearly a month off class does not appear to have had any effect on my injured elbow. It was a bit worse after the tournament. I'm frustrated with it, but I guess it's time to just suck it up and keep going, working around it as best as possible.

Drilled with a new woman- Christy. She's already got some really good basics. She informed me that she had "HEARD of me". Geez. Cindy was present today, and immediately proceeded to tell Christy all about how I like to neck-crank little kids.

Butterfly guard. You grab opponent's ankles. Place left foot in hir rt hip. Turn on your right hip and pull hir left leg crossways across your lap. Your right knee should be under this leg. Curl up and scoot in terribly close, low, as if you are trying to crawl right up hir butt. Do not let go of the ankle. Once you are tucked right up in there, you can let go of the ankle and grab the back of hir belt. Technical lift to get your leg in position to take the back.

You standing, opponent on hir back with feet up. You swipe hir left foot to the side and step your right foot to hir left hip. Hike up on one leg and paste your bent left leg against hir left leg, right under the knee. Fall onto your right hip. Pinch knees together, opponent's leg between them. Grab the pantleg. Tripod up, in a sort of KOB position, only you are KOT (knee on thigh). Keep the shin, and pressure down on the thigh to keep them there. Grab the near lapel. When s/he pushes back, pull the leg, turn your hip and go to side control.

I was at first grabbing the far lapel, as I generally like to do, and Prof. Carlos came over to correct me.

Kitsune: "Why don't I want to hold the far lapel?"
Carlos: "You want to try eet on me?"
Kitsune: "NO."

Christy was kind enough to rescue me at that point by setting up an armbar to demo why you don't want to hold that lapel, and I'm sure she did it much gentler than Carlos would have. I thanked her humbly.

Christy had a brace on her ankle, so I was being extra careful, but Carlos still came over to warn me to fall on my HIP and not my back, so as not to injure her. He even started to suggest that I switch to the other side, but she demurred. Now, I'm very happy that he is diligent about looking out for everyone's safety, especially the women. But it irritates me and hurts my feelings when he acts like he thinks I'm going to injure people by being careless. I know Cindy's just giving me crap when she does this- she knows that I'm very careful and I am extremely safe for anyone to work with. I can't help thinking that that *ONE* time that I accidentally extended Kelly's elbow a bit too much and she yelped during drills has burned into his mind that I'm unsafe. That was a very, very, VERY isolated incident in a long history of safe martial arts partnering, and she was *FINE*.  I wish we could put that in the past. I don't like feeling that Carlos regards me as an unsafe partner.

Several rounds of positional sparring from butterfly guard. Then one round with Christy and one with Nelson. Nice to see him again. He has cracked his floating ribs. He actually went to the doctor, so you know it hurts pretty damn bad.

When we lined up to bow out, Carlos thanked a number of people for a number of different things, and then added, "Thank you Keetsune, for showing up."  Blush.