Daygrinder and Bluetoe

It sounds like the title to a new buddy action comedy set in a dystopic waste land in the future, but in reality it's just two facets of my life from the last week.  

The Bluetoe refers to the color of my toenails last night while we did a run through of the test in Sensei's garage.  Alas, his wife had forgotten to turn the space heater on earlier.  Although we couldn't see our breath, the room felt like it was in the mid 50s (f) the whole time we were there.  We were extra vigorous just to keep warm.  No dilly-dally for us.  I believe we finished in about 45 minutes.  Record time.

About two weeks ago I bit down extra hard and knocked a chunk of tooth off a molar.  The pain was exquisite.  After the dentist had removed the shard and repaired the spot she said that I needed to get a night guard as I showed signs of grinding my teeth.  After making an appointment I realized that I forgotten to mention that I wear retainers and my teeth can't actually touch one another at night.  I was then told that I'm a daygrinder.  Now I'm painfully aware that I do it all the time.  Trying to stop it is a poorly drawn battle line.

Last night after the test run through we did something I can't recall doing in ages - kicking drills!  We ran through front, shove, side, step through and wheel kicks.  I thought I was going to be crippled this morning, plus all the lumps I took from my co-kickers, but I'm delighted to tell you only my pinky toe seems to be giving me any trouble.  I'm going to keep moving around today as much as possible in fear of stiffening up.

The highlight to all that was I was experiencing a lot of anxiety because I wanted to protect my already messed up toes and was concerned that I was unable do the kicks anymore.  To my delight I was still able to do a roundhouse to Kyle's six foot head.  Lucky me.  

We did a lot of self-defense kinds of things and that's when I noticed those of us who were at the garage session had blue toenails.  It was like the march of the living dead karateka.