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tylikI'm so tired I'm amazed I can see straight.
Okay, really, as far as tired goes this doesn't hold a candle to chronic insomnia or other sorts of sleep dep over an extended period of time, but it's still kind of impressive. I'm figuring I'm on about two hours of sleep right now. And this is the fifth day in the row of substantial martial arts work outs.
Part of this was general insomnia -- Craig was late coming home last night, and in addition I was worried about getting (us) up in time for the seminar this morning. Part of it seems to be linked to the joy of having normal hormonal cycles again -- at least, this time last month I had insomnia, though not as bad, for no particular reason. I suspect this is just a further extrapolation of getting edgy before my period, and I'll tend to be susceptible for one night around this time.
But... surviving. My neck was grumpy enough Friday that I eventually took a higher than average dose of anti-inflamatories, and then wandered around much of the U-dist with Tshar, bleary and tracking poorly for the first part of things, but something in there had me feeling pretty good by wushu. I was conservative since instead of Saturday off and a light class on Sunday I have seminar both days, but did decently enough. (I'm starting to think about sweeps again.) Shouting lessons were given, and seemed to have immediate effect.
And then I didn't sleep. (Ergh. Even when I was otherwise feeling calm and sleepy, my stomach persisted in acting like panic!)
But we were even early to the seminar. Which so far I'm quite enjoying. It's pretty different than last year's -- it was limited to 15 people (which became something more like twenty) whereas the other was huge. Everyone is either a teacher or a advanced student, whereas the last one had a lot of people with no background in Chen at all. The first section was fun, but largely review of silk reeling exercises and the like (and yet, I was surprised how much happier my body felt doing them in that context which I remember from last year, except that I came in much further along the learning curve this time. Master Chen leads slightly differently than Shifu, and it was very easy and comfortable to do it that way again... I think Shifu continued more on his model after the last seminar, but gradually reverted.) Oh, and we did a bunch of fa jing work, too. (Which was also fun, and at least one of the exercises I think is going to help me a fair bit.)
But then we came back after lunch and started into laojia yilu. Darn but this is great. Most of the moves are fairly familiar to everyone there, so we're ripping through it, and it's wonderfully fun. Even in my sleep depped state it seems to be falling into memory pretty well, and it's fun to work with a pretty serious and focused group of people. (Chi is in the class. I hope he'll rejoin the advanced Chen... Miss practicing with him.)
And Chen ZhenLei is just really amazing. I kind of wish we were doing more applications work.
His wife is travelling with him this time, and she's cool. I ended up talking to her for a bit in Chinese, which has me feeling chipper. (What started as me translating a friend's problem with shoe sizes turned into a much larger discussion of when and where I studied Chinese and the seminar, and so on...) I've let myself go back to being ridiculously reticent about talking to people but I need to just stop it -- really, while I need to recover a fair bit of vocabulary, my grasp of grammar has held up pretty well, and if I'm at all motivated I rarely have trouble getting my point across. I've been talking a little more with Shifu -- but that's about half joking, and the other half for when it's convenient that not everyone in the class can understand what I'm saying. (Like, for instance, if I'm worried about one of the kids, but don't want to share that worry too indiscriminantly. Not, mind you, that it isn't that at least a third of the people at the school can understand me, but sometimes it's useful. And it always cracks me up when the kids who speak Cantonese at home with their parents get kind of huffy when they can't understand Mandarin.)
I was pretty sore today -- I don't recover well if I don't sleep... But I intend to rememdy both the soreness and the lack of sleep soon.
Anyhow, after the seminar, and meeting up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jinasphinx outside the school to reclaim the steam cleaner and exchange EEP stories, we headed over to the game. Where my fatigue manifested, I think, mostly as a pathetically low amusement threshhold and inconsistant focus. But it was fun, and we survived that too. And home for bread and tuna with capers, sun dried tomatoes, and basil (which might be kind of silly, but still tastes good) and tomorrow will be another day.
After tomorrow's seminar, I hope to spend time putting the house in order. And writing. Haven't had a bleeding minute.
Okay, really, as far as tired goes this doesn't hold a candle to chronic insomnia or other sorts of sleep dep over an extended period of time, but it's still kind of impressive. I'm figuring I'm on about two hours of sleep right now. And this is the fifth day in the row of substantial martial arts work outs.
Part of this was general insomnia -- Craig was late coming home last night, and in addition I was worried about getting (us) up in time for the seminar this morning. Part of it seems to be linked to the joy of having normal hormonal cycles again -- at least, this time last month I had insomnia, though not as bad, for no particular reason. I suspect this is just a further extrapolation of getting edgy before my period, and I'll tend to be susceptible for one night around this time.
But... surviving. My neck was grumpy enough Friday that I eventually took a higher than average dose of anti-inflamatories, and then wandered around much of the U-dist with Tshar, bleary and tracking poorly for the first part of things, but something in there had me feeling pretty good by wushu. I was conservative since instead of Saturday off and a light class on Sunday I have seminar both days, but did decently enough. (I'm starting to think about sweeps again.) Shouting lessons were given, and seemed to have immediate effect.
And then I didn't sleep. (Ergh. Even when I was otherwise feeling calm and sleepy, my stomach persisted in acting like panic!)
But we were even early to the seminar. Which so far I'm quite enjoying. It's pretty different than last year's -- it was limited to 15 people (which became something more like twenty) whereas the other was huge. Everyone is either a teacher or a advanced student, whereas the last one had a lot of people with no background in Chen at all. The first section was fun, but largely review of silk reeling exercises and the like (and yet, I was surprised how much happier my body felt doing them in that context which I remember from last year, except that I came in much further along the learning curve this time. Master Chen leads slightly differently than Shifu, and it was very easy and comfortable to do it that way again... I think Shifu continued more on his model after the last seminar, but gradually reverted.) Oh, and we did a bunch of fa jing work, too. (Which was also fun, and at least one of the exercises I think is going to help me a fair bit.)
But then we came back after lunch and started into laojia yilu. Darn but this is great. Most of the moves are fairly familiar to everyone there, so we're ripping through it, and it's wonderfully fun. Even in my sleep depped state it seems to be falling into memory pretty well, and it's fun to work with a pretty serious and focused group of people. (Chi is in the class. I hope he'll rejoin the advanced Chen... Miss practicing with him.)
And Chen ZhenLei is just really amazing. I kind of wish we were doing more applications work.
His wife is travelling with him this time, and she's cool. I ended up talking to her for a bit in Chinese, which has me feeling chipper. (What started as me translating a friend's problem with shoe sizes turned into a much larger discussion of when and where I studied Chinese and the seminar, and so on...) I've let myself go back to being ridiculously reticent about talking to people but I need to just stop it -- really, while I need to recover a fair bit of vocabulary, my grasp of grammar has held up pretty well, and if I'm at all motivated I rarely have trouble getting my point across. I've been talking a little more with Shifu -- but that's about half joking, and the other half for when it's convenient that not everyone in the class can understand what I'm saying. (Like, for instance, if I'm worried about one of the kids, but don't want to share that worry too indiscriminantly. Not, mind you, that it isn't that at least a third of the people at the school can understand me, but sometimes it's useful. And it always cracks me up when the kids who speak Cantonese at home with their parents get kind of huffy when they can't understand Mandarin.)
I was pretty sore today -- I don't recover well if I don't sleep... But I intend to rememdy both the soreness and the lack of sleep soon.
Anyhow, after the seminar, and meeting up with
jinasphinx outside the school to reclaim the steam cleaner and exchange EEP stories, we headed over to the game. Where my fatigue manifested, I think, mostly as a pathetically low amusement threshhold and inconsistant focus. But it was fun, and we survived that too. And home for bread and tuna with capers, sun dried tomatoes, and basil (which might be kind of silly, but still tastes good) and tomorrow will be another day. After tomorrow's seminar, I hope to spend time putting the house in order. And writing. Haven't had a bleeding minute.
