**SIDE NOTE** Have you ever tried to run on gym floor mats in bare feet? If you don't perfectly and completely pick up your feet and place them down again correctly, the mat WILL grab your toes and yank them in a direction God did not intend for them to go. To date I have banged up, bruised and broken six of my ten toes. I have some serious revenge issues with the Evil Mat.
Okay, back to the scheduled programming...
So, I'm back at the MMA dojo, doing my thing when I realize, a little abruptly, that I am getting old. I know... SHOCKER!! It took me eight months to heal up my foot and even now, I am still not at 100%. How is this fair???
Regardless, I show up every evening to get my butt kicked. Yes... you read that correctly. For some odd reason, I appreciate and PAY to get my bottom walloped by a professional for an entire hour. It's messed up. And I enjoy it? I come home, limping, whimpering and searching for a bag of frozen peas to place over various sore appendages and I wonder... Why do I do this to myself?
Why indeed.
First of all, there is nothing incredibly refined and graceful about MMA. Frequently I find myself gripping the wall with my leg up in the air doing air kicks as high as I can go and I wonder... what the flip am I doing? I look like an idiot! Ten minutes before I was shadow boxing an imaginary foe (and doing amazingly well seeing as my invisible attacker was woefully unskilled) and feeling like a complete dork. But that is NOTHING compared to the squishy helmet.
The MMA Helmet is just plain gorgeous. It squeezes in the cheeks, forces the lips to pucker and lifts the nose to an unnatural angle. It's fabulous. Especially when the sheer closeness of the plastic creates an instant sauna of eyeball sweat and B.O. chin trickle. Hot MAMMA!!! Then... when the helmet comes off, my hair is matted to my head and I smell like a mixture of onion burger and corn chips. Yeah, that eyeball sweat is a nasal sensory killer.
And yet, for some reason, I go back night after night. No, I don't LIKE smelling like unwashed gym shorts. I don't LIKE looking like a dork doing imaginary showdowns with invisible villains. And I don't LIKE paying for it.
What I love about it, is this: Every time I go, I feel like I am stronger than the day before. Every day I get faster and can last longer. I feel like I am a part of a family (a really, really deranged family). And, most importantly... it doesn't matter how stupid I feel. My kids think I'm cool.The Ninja Mom is BACK!!!
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