This morning my husband and I were laying in bed when our lovely daughter A, starts screaming for help. She is in the shower and needs more cream rinse. I get up and tend to her needs. When I get back to bed my husband starts whining in his best little A voice, “help me”. I said “You want help.” “Sure, I will help you.” “I will help you wake up”, and I start to kind of poke him and tickle him. I have a tactical advantage here because I am not the least bit ticklish anywhere.

This does wake him right up and he grabs my wrist and without thinking I remember exactly how to twist my wrist in and down and wouldn’t you know it, right out my hand comes. I am so excited I start doing the smack talk thing and I grab his wrist. He is a little more determined now and he grabs both my wrists and jumps on top of me, but I am able to free one hand and tickle him. Things kind of fall apart at this point because we are laughing so hard.

A few minutes later I see my pen sitting next to my bed and I decide to test his situational awareness and see if I can stab him in the neck. This is more me being the “bad” guy then a defensive strategy, but I am amped up from my earlier success and I have a desire to play some more.

We are casually chit chatting when I grab him and artfully jab him several times in the neck and try to sweep his legs out from under him, but he has good balance and he wrestles me to the bed. Giggling too much thwarts any further success by me.

The kids are all awake and we do the mommy and daddy thing. A few minutes later my husband reaches over, gentle grabs my wrist and pulls me into him and he hugs me. He is being sweet. I like being there. I will admit to a very brief urge to knee him in the groin, slam his head on my leg and toss him to the ground, but since I’m not really ready for the counter attack to that particular “drill” I decided to suppress that urge. Plus, I am extremely fond of his groin area.

My husband said this morning.s escapades are not exactly how June Cleaver sent Ward off to work. To which I responded, “I am not June Cleaver.”

I am so ready to move a little past the crawl phase.

About 2 years ago I ordered a book from Amazon.com using an echeck payment.  After a few days, I noticed that the money never came out of my account, so after about 2 hours of searching Amazon.com’s extremely un-user-friendly site, I sent them an email that said, “I received this book, but I do not believe it was paid for”.  The fine folks in the customer service department sent me an email telling me, the book had in fact been paid for.  Great!

A week later I get a call from a collection agency.  I get these calls all the time.  There is a man and a woman who have been giving out our phone number for about 7 years and as far as I can tell they have never paid a single bill in that time.  I am in the bath, my answering machine picks up and I hear the typical…”This is an attempt to collect a debt for..” Holy crap, WHAT???  It’s my name.  I jump up and try to answer, but they are already gone. I call the number back.

I know you will be stunned to find out the man on the other end was none to pleasant.  I tell him my name and the case number and he says, nope nothing.  I said, “But there has to be something because you called me at my number and used my name”.  He insist there is nothing.  Ok, fine.

A few days later I receive a letter in the mail from a guess who?? The collection agency.  I call the number again.  This time an equally unfriendly woman takes my call.  She can’t find anything either.  I said, Listen, clearly there is something to this claim and we are not hanging up until we figure it out.  I was probably more pathetic then forceful, but she did agree to look deeper.  To her amazement there was a default notice under my name from Amazon.com. They were looking for their $20 that I told them I owed them that they refused to believe.

I am super annoyed because I knew that and tried to solve the problem and now it’s at collections.   I explain everything to the woman, but she could give a flying flip. Eventually, I just say, “How do I rectify this?” She says, send us a money order for the amount, blah, blah, blah.  I do and I include a copy of all the emails and such.  I also recontact Amazon.com to explain the whole thing and I resend copies of everything.  I am worried about my credit. They kind of say, our bad, but not really.  The emailer tells me I don’t need to be upset because it is just their in-house collections, not one that reports to credit bureaus. He/she said it was because their bookkeeping, collections and customer service departments don’t talk to each other, so that was probably the issue.  Yeah, probably. You would think that would end the matter, but because God likes to keep me humble for the next 6 weeks I still got emails from Amazon.com claiming the book was not paid for.  I sent another email(up to about 30 by now) back with all the emails and the confirmation number from the collection agency, but this time I also included a threat to contact an attorney if they sent one more email.  They stopped. 

I swore I would never buy another thing from Amazon.com and I haven’t…until today. 

Today I bought An Ordinary American’s Book

Several months ago Miller arranged a blogger get together up at the NRA range, but I was heading to Tennessee to take the Cornered Cat class, so I missed it.  Then Sean planned a get together at the Appleseed event in North Carolina and I was going to get to meet him, Keads, and several other really neat and generous folks, but E was really struggling and I just couldn’t leave her.

A few weeks ago Weer’d announced he was coming to Virginia and asked if any of us in The Commonwealth would want to meet up and, of course, I said, yes, yes, yes!  Most of you know that I am in love with Weer’d(in a completely appropriate internet stalking kind of way) because he went through the incredibly painful process of teaching me the difference between single action/double action and because he was so darn nice to me when I thoroughly embarrassed myself with the whole tongue punch debacle.  I truly thought I had a pervy mind, but mine pales in comparison to his…love that about him. Unfortunately, since my mind doesn’t go there, I made comments on his post based on what I thought a tongue punch was. If, unlike me, you actually do know what a tongue punch is and then you read my comments you would think my mind was way beyond pervy and more like twisted criminal.  I had mentioned what I wrote to my 20 year old son, who said, “Mom, that is not what tongue punch means.”  “This is what it means”

I think I turned white. Terror. Sick to my stomach, Oh my goodness! What have I done??  This is not good.  In what turned out to be a junior highish exchange, I emailed North in a panic who then emailed Weer’d who then emailed me and only moderately laughed at my naivety and then promptly removed my comments. A man like that I want to meet, but that is when we lost Newbius so it wasn’t to be.

While on vacation in the Outer Banks last month, I thought I might get an impromptu meeting with Brock, but that to did not come to fruition either.

This past weekend I was scheduled to attend the Appleseed event here in Virginia and was to meet a man who I have been emailing with and who has been very nice to me, but that is when my new job started…foiled again.

After all of those let downs, you would think I would learn not to get my hopes up, but I am stubborn and hard headed(proof…as we speak my legs are crossed.  I know they are not supposed to be, but in an act of rebellion, I am keeping them crossed) so I am bouncing off the walls excited that this Saturday, fingers crossed, I will get to not only meet, but also shoot with MSgt B from My Muse shanked me(also a perv), Nancy, CTone, and Broken Andy.  No Old NFO which breaks my heart, but he has an open invitation to come have dinner at my house, so hopefully soon.

Praying this puts an end to my blogger get together drought!!

I had planned to take a Rape Prevention seminar, but it would have meant being gone all day and now that I am working weekends, I decided to stick closer to home.  This will be a nice compromise.

Yesterday I got a text from Arete and it said something like…”uncross your legs”. Actually, it said that exactly. I found this annoying and told him I was going to hit him.

Again, in hindsight probably not the best thing to say since one, he wants me to hit him and two, he would probably hit me back, but it was a text, so I felt safe talking a little smack. He just laughed and mocked me. He said, “Why, you know you are standing there with your feet crossed or standing like a flamingo.” That was followed by “Being annoyed is good.” “Hitting is better.”

Both he and John are in my head. I can hear their voices. I am a little like Cybil right now. Good news is that I didn’t cross my legs much today. Bad news I am beginning to look like I have some kind of seizure issue because I will start to cross my legs, realize it and then stop my leg midair and put it back down, sometime throwing myself off balance. If I do this while having a conversation with someone who doesn’t read my blog, I try to play cool and just keep talking. After the third time tho, the people start to look at me funny and one person actually took a step back.

I am not sure my training is working for me the way I had hoped.

Recently I have had several companies contact me and ask me to review products for them. I have struggled a little with whether or not I want to do this.

On the one hand I still have so much to learn and I don’t have a lot of experience, but on the other hand it gives me a great opportunity to try things I might not normally get a chance to try and therefore increase my experience and learning.  I like that idea.

I received a backpack last week and I feel fine reviewing that because, well, the only real qualification I need for that is a back, but ammo, that was a different story.

Here is the email exchange I recently had with a company…

We have found that a lot of our customers appreciate product reviews and feel more confident in their purchases if they can read a review and relate with someone who has already tested the product.

Given your strong following of firearm and ammo enthusiasts, would you be willing to review some product for me and for our customers? I can ship you ammo for free if you will shoot it, enjoy it, and tell the world about it.

This was my response…

Good morning! Thank you for the email…I want to let you know I am new to shooting. I have only been shooting about a year…I am not sure how much credibility I have in the community in terms of product reviews of ammo. I want to be sure you understand that I am not a seasoned shooter like the other bloggers you listed.

And their response…

This is great… I’m excited for the chance to work together. I appreciate that you wanted to make sure and identify yourself as a new shooter…a new shooter is less likely to carry preconceived notions into a review, so a new and refreshing point of view is always a great thing to read!

So, here is the deal. I am going to try this from the perspective of how I have approached my entire blog. I am going to simply tell you my experience with whatever product I get.  It won’t be a typical review or even a recommendation in the normal blogger fashion.  I probably will not be able to give technical specs and whatnot of certain things because in most cases I won’t know, but hopefully I will be able to give a newbies perspective of things and then if I am lucky(and I am) you all will chime in with extremely helpful ideas, suggestions and/or points of view to help me and other new shooters who read my blog.

It will be an experiment and we shall see how it works out.  If it turns out not to be such a great idea then I’ll just stop.  I think it will be fine though. Plus I know right after I post this those of you who love me are gonna leave a comment or send me an email cautioning me against this or that which I always appreciate.  Keeps me from getting myself into too much trouble.

I am not going to review every single thing I am asked because for one I don’t have the time and for two I am still learning about some of these companies.   I am a capitalist and I have no problem with a company using me to try to push their product and I have no problem benefiting from that relationship, but my goal is and always will be to help people learn from my experience and to hopefully encourage them to find ways to be more safe.  I won’t sacrifice that for a free holster or ammo.  Although I might for a 1911 or a M1 Garand, but what are the odds of that?

I have recently been getting a few anonymous comments about my hand to hand/knife training.  I am not sure if it’s the same anonymous that is posting all the not so encouraging comments or not, but this is the latest one…

I was involved in martial arts for 30 years, boxed and placed twice in the police Olympics. Taught at a large police academy. The problem is disparity of force. No matter what you do unless you can get a advantage ( gun and a bit of distance vs knife or open hand) you will lose. My late wife was 5’4″ and 105. Do you really think she could fight a 200 lb in shape main with the element of surprise? I told my wife one think survive. She did this by her natural advantage. She was a runner, and I told her to run like Hell. Learn to fight and live another day. Too many instructors in Dojo’s etc have not spent any time “really doing it” in the Military or Police. Play the game with your rules not attackers.

I can not disagree more with this mindset.  I am not saying that there isn’t a time when running away might not be your best option.  Absolutely, run if you can.  That was my very first mistake. Had I hightailed it out of dodge then there wouldn’t be a blog for you all to be reading because the story would have ended there.  Run, run, run, but DO NOT EVER and I mean NEVER think you are out of the fight for any reason.


Here was my response to him…


I will not argue the merits of Arete’s skills and training, mostly because I don’t think he would want me to. It is not my place to say what he did or did not do, so out of respect for a relationship I value I will leave it at that. However, I will say two things about it. One, I have great respect for anyone who served honorably in defense of this country whether it be at home or abroad. Secondly, I will grant you that simply being an MP or a service member does not automatically qualify one to teach self defense or knife training, but it also does not automatically exclude one either. And one more because I can’t help myself…he was not an MP.

As for me, I train for a lot of reasons. The most important is for self defense. I have no idea what kind of situations I will find myself in and I most certainly will not leave it to odds to decide my fate for me. I have read story after story where the little “guy” who shouldn’t have won, won. I am not giving in and I train to gain any kind of advantage that I can, however remote.

I also train for mindset. The more I train the more confidence I gain, and the more confidence I gain the better equipped I will be to handle any of those bad guy situations I might find myself in. If I go down and I might, I am going down with a fight and a bloody bruised attacker left behind.

****Adding a comment here. This paragraph was not in my original response. If I am attacked and running isn’t an option, I do not care what his or their size is, I don’t care what kind of weapon they have, their crazy jacked up evilness will pale in comparison to mine and if need be I will fight to the fricken bloody end.  What is there to lose at that point?  Nothing and who knows, I just might win.  Story added from the Cornered Cat’s FB.  Look what we have here…surprise, disparity of force, no gun…no dead victim, well all be damned. Thank God she didn’t know she didn’t have a chance.

Oh my gosh where to start…The range that I train at and now work at is about an hour from my house, so Saturday morning I got up at 4:30am to leave by 5:30 to be at the range by 7:00.  I know I said an hours drive, but I did not want to be late.  I actually had a moment of panic because in all the times I have been to this place, I have never driven and I have never paid attention on how to get there.  It’s a bit remote and I didn’t want to rely on my GPS, so I  asked my husband to give me a brief directional refresher, but the Marine in him came out…a full recon exercise ensued.  He mapped it on the computer and showed me, he got out the actual map and traced the route with a pen, and he wrote me directions to include a map he drew, so there was pretty much no way I was getting lost. He takes good care of me.

My purpose for the weekend was mostly to attend the training, but also to do some work.  I got to put up targets, lots of targets.  For some reason I put up 8 targets with the plain white side facing out and the bad guy skeleton flat against the cardboard.  Not a very impressive first run out of the gate, but it is what it is.  I also got to hook-up a student with a loaner gun and gear for the weekend as he did not have his own.  I took pictures, I picked up lots of brass(so did everyone else), I picked up wet soggy, muddy trash left by the side of the road.  Pretty much anything John needed.  The class was small and as with every single training I have ever attended the people who I shot with were phenomenal.  They knew I was new and in training and they were extremely gracious as to let me work the line a little.  I did not do any actual instructing, of course, but John was there and he let me call a few cease fires and little things like that.

Being in an environment with all men for 2 days is interesting.  Sunday morning we are all standing around chit chatting waiting for 9:00am when we could start shooting and the guys are telling colorful, dirty jokes and cussing like sailors when I hear John yell “Hey, Bob(not his real name), say good morning to AGirl.”  I turn around and he is peeing.  He waves to me and I wave back.  I tell him it was good to see him again..all of him.  I then ask John when the sexual harassment brief will be starting and he said “You just had it.”  I turned around with a big ‘ol smile on my face, started loading my magazines and said, “My life is so different.”  It was fun being one of the “guys”.  I have never been one before.  Being men, gentleman really, some of them had a hard time not being gentlemen.  John asked me to grab a table from the classroom and bring it to him.  As I stood up, so did several of the guys and as I walked back with the table, one very nice man asked if he could help me.  I said “No, thank you. I have it”  I think it was wonderful that he asked(I teach my sons to do the same thing and my husband would have asked too) and if I was not working I probably would have said, Yes, thank you, but I wanted John to know he could count on me to actually work and plus, it was kind of cool to have a bunch of men sitting around doing nothing while I did some heavy(it wasn’t really heavy) lifting. It’s neat being a chic in a man’s world. Of course, these are cool men.  It would have sucked if they were assholes.

As for training this is what we did…we shot a lot from 25 yards.  This I hate.  I stink so bad.  There are no words to describe how bad I stink.  When I first starting shooting from 25 yards a few months ago I could not even hit a paper plate sized target.  Before this weekend I was able to do that, but that was it.  Could not hit where I was aiming to save my life, literally.  Saturday was the same way.  I hit the target, but there was no group to be found.

You can see I mostly hit the dude, but it was ugly. A bullet here and one way over there and perhaps a few straight into the berm.  Good stuff.  However, by Sunday I was able to hit kind of a group to the head area and I was thrilled.

I was at 25 yards, aiming for the head and as you can see 5 of the 5 shots were kind of close to said aiming point.

I also hit the steel plates from 50 yards.  3 shots standing, 3 shots kneeling and 3 shots in the prone.  There were 2 other shooters shooting at the same time as me, so I couldn’t tell if I hit anything, but assumed I hadn’t, until the guys told me I most certainly did, at least 3 times.  That was a win in my book as I have never even attempted to shoot anything from 50 yards.  I was shooting my Smith & Wesson M&P full size 9mm gun the whole weekend.

We rotated between drills that were close and fast and drills that were long and slow.  Lots and lots of scenario based shooting.  I love this abut John’s classes.  The have context.  Shooting to shoot is awesome and I love that, but for me adding the real life thinking process to it is really why I train.  So, we shot single moving targets and double moving targets.  Shooting a target while they are moving and you are moving, in the rain and mud is not as easy as one might think.  My first time through was not so great.  I had a lovely tight group, but unfortunately my group completely missed the bad guy.  Solid white.  I was not leading the shot.  I missed partly because its just hard to do and partly because John was yelling at me to NOT. CROSS. MY. LEGS as I moved.  The second time through I got several good hits on bad guy one and even more on bad guy 2.  Seriously, who does not think that sounds like crazy fun??!!

We shot scenarios where there were multiply assailants.  First time through we moved from left to right and I have to say I rocked that drill.  I was fast and accurate as all get it out.  Second time through, awesome! The third time we reversed the order and went from right to left.  This time I drew and had a dead on hit, but I backed up into the bad guy that was flanking me.  Not good. Would have been toast.

We shot drills from high cover, medium cover and low cover.  We shot simulating shooting a guy in the leg from under a car.  We actually shot a can of paint.  So fun.  I loved it because I shot twice then needed to change my magazine, so I rolled back behind the cover, reloaded and rolled back, right on target and shot a few more times.  Did I mention I had fun?

When it is time to top off magazines one thing we do is an admin reload.  I know most people probably know what this is, but for the newbies, I will explain. An admin reload is where you leave your gun holstered, but pop out the magazine and insert a new fully loaded mag.  That way you start the next drill completely ready to go.  I have been doing these since the first class I took with John a year ago.  Remember that complacency 45er was talking about.  Yep, I did an admin reload and forgot to insert a magazine, so first time up, I get off one well placed shot and then click.  No problem tap…nothing to tap.  Fine, I grab a mag from my right hip load, rack and shoot.  Dang that sucks, but I moved and handled the problem so good for me.  What was not so good was about an hour later, I did it again.  I shot one great shot, click. I realize this time right away I did it again. I am PISSED, so I reload and then pretty much unleashed my magazine on the guy.  When I get done John asks if I felt better and I did.  A little brag, every singe shot was dead on.  I was pissed, but I was controlled. No issues getting back on target between shots.

I had some equipment trouble.  I have a very high grip on the gun, but on my M&P the left sided slide release messes with my grip.  I tried adjusting to compensate, but I have been griping that way so long and am accurate with it that changing just isn’t an option. I am going to have that release removed.  My belt/ holster combo was not good either and it really effected my time.  I could not get under 2 seconds on the clock, but it was easy to see that my belt was too loose and there for it took more effort to get my gun out of the holster.  I am too tiny to get that belt tight enough.  I can fix that problem with minor adjustments and that should improve my time.  Oh, if you are new that means I stand there, John says something like, “He don’t look right.” I say “Stop, get back” or something to that effect, when I hear a beep, I draw and take 3 shots.  The beep is from a timer. He is timing the first shot to see how fast I or we can draw and get my/our first hit, with accuracy hopefully.  Everyone else made it under the 2 second mark.  It was pretty cool to see their times improve.

I could go on for another 100 paragraphs, but I won’t do that to you.  We did several other drills, watched some videos, did some classroom discussing and spent time getting to know each other.  My first goal was to learn.  I want to shoot better, faster, straighter and I want to change the way I think.  I don’t want to stop crossing my legs, but apparently that is not an option.  Secondly, I wanted to represent FPF Training well and thirdly I wanted to represent female shooters well.  I was by no means the best shooter there, but I think I held my own against the men. I pray that at least some of the men there left with a positive view of women shooters(not that they had a negative one to begin with)and hopefully I did not embarrass our gender(talking to the girls here:) in anyway.  Also, in case I forgot to mention it…I HAD A BLAST!

Oh my, oh my, I love my life. I just got home from my first day working/training for John at FPF Training and what a day.

I was up at 4:30am and it’s now 7:30pm, so this will be short. I promise to tell you all everything on Monday, but I did want to let you know how it went today.

First, I was the only female on the range today. This was an advanced class for conceal carry and John said in his 8 year of running this business he has maybe had 3-4 women take the advance class. I am making it my mission to change that. Not only is it crazy fun, the class builds very important skills that women need to know. I am gonna to pimp here a little. Of the 8 students who took this class, 6 were returning students. Each of them had taken at least 2 other courses from John and most had taken 4 or 5. That is a pretty impressive return rate.

One of the men in today’s class was in the very first class I had ever taken with John back in March 2011. His name is Bill. He asked me if I was the same woman from that class and I said “Yes, I’ve improved a little, right?”. He said, “Well I don’t remember you being a poor shot(he didn’t really shoot next to me then), but you sure were scared.” I said, “Yes, I am over that.”. “Uh, yeah, I’d say” was his reply. I just smiled.

I was, big surprise, nervous. I was not nervous for the class. I am never nervous to train with my gun. I don’t care what anyone thinks and I know I am going to improve, but I did not want to embarrass John. I really didn’t want the first time I massively screwed up to be today. I did, of course, screw up, but not massively.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT tell Arete this part of my day. At one point John is instructing and he says, “Gentleman, look at AGirl”(he used my real name, but you know). “A strong wind could blow her over.”

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why? Yep, yep that’s it.  My legs were crossed. I knew it the second he said it, but I was good and I did not uncross them, so he could make his point. For the rest of the day, I would periodically see John cross his legs, which meant for me to uncross mine.

I spent the day shooting and learning so much about everything. I left there sunburned, bruised, covered in dirt and grass stains and soaking wet from a storm that blew in…again I say heaven.

Before I met with Arete, I was very nervous.  Not so much yesterday, but the weeks leading up to it.  There are a lot of reasons why, but mostly it was that I had no frame of reference for what we were going to do and even though I know him, I don’t know him.  We are still getting to know each other and since I have done nothing like this, I was uneasy.

I was fairly certain he wasn’t going to just walk up and punch me, but I had tried to make it clear that I was not looking for some girly class where he taught me how to blow a whistle and knee someone in the groin.  Perhaps effective.  Perhaps a useful tool and skill, but I am looking for something different. 

I was as worried about being coddled and I was about being hurt.

When I got to the park he showed me some knives.  Just to show me and we chit chatted a bit.  Then we walked over to an area less populated.  The place was packed.  Yesterday was mostly him showing me some basic moves, talking to me and I think him getting an idea of where I am at, which is about zero.

He talked to me about stance and much like shooting it focuses on balance and not being easily pushed back or pulled forward.  He showed me what happens if I stand with my legs crossed which is how I always stand.

One of the first things he said was punch me.

I said, “punch you?” 

“Yeah, punch me.”  I stood there.  He said “do you know how to punch?”  I really didn’t.  I have taken some “Fight Like A Girl” classes, but they were focused on fitness not fighting.  I can punch a bag ok, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to punch a person.  That was his first glimpse at my level…not very high.  So we did a little punching on a pad.  Fine.  Then he showed me some other things and we chatted some more.  He asks a lot of questions…if I do this then what happens?  What’s the first thing that happens in a fight?  Have you ever eaten a sandwich? I didn’t know many of the answers. Most of our conversations went like this.

A- If I grab your arm like this what happens?

Me- Blank stare. I don’t know.

A- Yes, you do.

Me. Umm, uh, I fall.

A-Yeah. Uncross your legs.  You don’t have good balance with your legs crossed. Ok, hit me.

Me- Hit you?

A- Yes.

I just stand there.  He has no pads of any kind.  He wants me to hit him in the chest.

A- Hit me

Me- I throw a punch…hit

A- That’s not a hit.  Your going to have to hit me. You can’t hurt me. Hit me. Uncross your legs.

Me- hit, hit

A- Next time if you don’t hit me, I am going to hit you.

Me- HIT, HIT

A- Uncross your legs.

Yeah, I don’t think coddling is going to be a problem.

Now, I use caps to show that I hit harder the last time, but it was by no means a hard punch, however, apparently it was hard enough to keep me from getting hit.

It was extremely difficult on my mind to hit him.  I have never hit anyone in my life.  I don’t even spank my kids. I know I can’t hurt him.  That isn’t the issue.  It is the mental block of hitting.  This is why I need to train.  I literally forced myself not to freeze.  It was a conscious effort and it was a tough one.

When I first went to the shooting course with John and he would say shoot, many times I  just stood there.  Fortunately, John didn’t say if you don’t shoot next time, I am going to shoot you, but sometimes he would yell. My husband said that weekend one could visible see me fighting my mind. I struggled to get over my fear of shooting my gun.  John has a very good ability to know when to push and when not to.  There were times he would yell shoot and there were times he would get close in and talk me through it and there were times he and the whole class would stand back and let me work through it.  It is no exaggeration to say I would stand there with my gun pointed at the target for several minutes and not shoot.  Then take a shot and stand there again for 30 seconds or more.

My mind is all kinds of, I want say weak, but it’s not weak, it is, what is it..maybe, conditioned badly.

The difference between yesterday and my first Conceal Carry class was back then I was on the edge of quitting and crying the whole time.  Yesterday, I was not.  I never felt like crying and I never felt like quitting.

Arete explains everything he is doing and why.  He explains what vein is in that part of the leg, arm, hand.  He knows how many layers of skin or muscle lay on top of it.  He explains exactly what happens when said vein is punched, kicked, sliced.

We did a little walk through of my day in the parking lot.  He was the bad guy.  It was basic and it never got to the I am on the ground stage.  He asked me for my money and ironically, I wanted to say no, but the point was not what I would do now, but what I didn’t do then.  We had been doing a lot of grabbing of the wrist and how to get out of that and I wanted to know how I could have gotten out of it when the bad guy grabbed my wrist.

There are so many layers to that attack and so many ways I could have done things differently to have stopped it, from running back into the store(my car was far from the door, more isolated, but I saw him coming and I knew he was bad), to yelling(no one was there, but still), to saying NO, etc.  I know all that, but I want to deal with each part as it happened and know how to get out of that stage.  My goal would be to avoid it all together, but if someone gets their hand on my wrist again, I want to know how to get out.  If someone gets me to the ground, I want to have some idea of how to survive.  A more effective way than just squirming around.

I guess we were there a little over an hour and when we were done he gave me homework.  He told me the world is full of minors.  Meaning items in everyday life that show reflections.  Things I can use to see behind me like a car window or shadows. He talked about situational awareness and that when I go to, say the range I need to count the people in a room and find the exits.  I am suppose to be doing some knee striking exercise with a pillow.

Even though he threatened me with violence to get me to do what he wanted, he is very nice.  He asked me several times if I was ok, if I needed a break.  One time he made me take a break and drink water. He has a crawl, walk, run philosophy  We are currently at the crawl stage. I am not sure how quickly we move from crawl to run, but I am in no hurry.  There was a lot of information packed in that 65-70 minutes. A lot.  Even though I am still a little nervous I can’t wait to do it again.

I have been watching a lot of shows on The Military History channel and I have been watching a lot of action movies. You know the kind with guns and knives and half naked chicks and everybody kicking the crap out of everybody else. The kind where everyone is all muscley and say things like “I ain’t got time to bleed” and “Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans.”

I have been loving pretty much everything I have seen. Unfortunately I think I somehow mistakenly began to think, not sure how, perhaps through osmosis that I am now a badass.

I can come up with no other reason why, when asked, “Do you want to knife fight/train with an former Marine sniper, current MAA fighter whose philosophy is: I only know how to train hard?” Did I respond with, “Sounds fun.”

What part of that sounded fun to me?? In retrospect, I probably should have thought that one through a little more, but hindsight being what it is and me meeting Arete in just a bit I guess it is too late to back out now.

Delusional grandeur aside, I am patently aware that I am not a mean motherf(you know the rest), but a girl can dream. What is it that they say, “Fake it til you make it”? Well, that is my plan. I am going to keep acting like I am tough until I either become tough or die trying.

Wish me luck!