MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

While I do not shy away from stating my opinion on this blog, I usually try to do so in the least offensive way possible. I am an atheist, a Democrat, a martial artist and a dog person, but you do not have to be any of these things to be my friend. You just have to not be an asshole. That's all. Pretty simple really. Just don't be an asshole and we can hang together. Not gonna do it today. Today I am going to break my own rule and just come out and say it: ya'll have to stop with the national anthem. It is a fucking song, people. It means the damn game is about to start. It means someone is about to win a bet for how long Beyonce can hold a high note. That's it. And the game will start whether the players sit or stand or lay down in the grass and get themselves a suntan. It does not matter what the fuck you do when this song plays. Really. What matters is that people are dying. Period. But wait, there's more. If you are one of those people who actually feels...

When you are climbing up a rock wall, you spend a lot of time assessing things. Is that grip a good one? Do my feet feel secure? Are my arms too tired? Often there is a mental struggle between unrestrained terror (OMG I am so high up, I am going to die!!) and reasonable concern. (Is my knot tied correctly? Is the caribiner locked? Is my belayer paying attention? Ok then, climb on!) I have one of those brains that likes to get carried away sometimes, particularly when it comes to my health. (Something hurts today, it must be jiu-jitsu related. It still hurts a few days later? Maybe I am sick. A week later? CANCER!! ) People with health anxiety learn to distinguish between normal concern and paranoia. We learn to give our body a chance to fix things first. We stay away from Web MD and under no circumstances do we Google any symptoms, ever! We get our annual blood tests and scans and then we avoid the doctor the rest of the year, unless that cough gets worse, and then we just g...

I wrote a blog post this morning. To be honest, it wasn't very good. It has been awhile since I have written anything and I am out of practice. But I worked on it for an hour and then, right before hitting publish I reread it and said, nope, not posting this.  If you are my Facebook friend you know that we have been doing a lot of rock climbing lately, not just at the gym like always, but also on real rocks. So I wrote this post about climbing. It went something like this: "I would not say I am an adventurer. That being said, I love love love this climbing thing. Like really love it. And yes, it is pretty damn scary. But that is not why I love it. We are actually not really the risk taking type, Matthew and I. So while yes, rock climbing is inherently dangerous, we do everything we can to minimize the risk. We climb with helmets. We strap ourselves to everything, all the time. We climb slowly and carefully. We double check all knots and caribiners. Could an accident ha...