Healthy Buffalo/Crying and Writing

  Action alley in Wal-Mart is made for people like me. I am the biggest sucker for anything, “As seen on TV.” My criteria for the product to be a winner are, does it actually do what it says it will do, or is it worth the entertainment value…. My dad and I once spent fifteen dollars on an automatic potato peeler. You stick six spuds in, smash the lid on and supposedly it will peel the potato’s. We grabbed a bottle of wine and spent an hour giggling in the kitchen over completely bruised and beat up potato’s and potato sludge. Product didn’t work at all, however the fifteen bucks was well spent for entertainment. Skin care products are another story, I am the harshest critic and also one of the biggest consumers. If it doesn’t go above and beyond, I will not buy again. There are too many options out there to stick with something that is mediocre.    Now I will not join your pyramid scheme and to be honest, you wouldn’t want me to. I am literally the worst salesman ever, ju...

  When I was in fifth grade I begged my parents to let me play in the middle school band. I wanted to be a percussionist, more accurately I wanted to play the xylophone. With two parents both in college and four kiddos we didn’t have a lot of extra cash lying around so buying a couple hundred dollar instrument was a big thing to ask. My mom told me they would do it but I had to play in the band all the way through high school. At 12 I would have agreed to anything because time was irrelevant but in 8 th  grade we moved to a much larger school. I was incredibly shy if you can believe that, and the prospect of going to band camp the summer of my freshman year was possibly the most frightening thing of my life up until that point.  I knew nobody and wanted to blend in. I was a wallflower by choice. I begged my parents all summer to let me quit. I straight up made pie charts and formulated amazing and articulate arguments on all the things I could focus on personally if ...

  One of the things that seem to stand out for everybody when doing any of the Shivworks courses like the one I did this weekend in Charlotte, NC is the evolutions. Everyone attending ends up learning unbelievably internal things about themselves where they previous thought very differently. An evolution or “Thunderdome” is where you put on a couple of soft shell helmets with a clear face guard and basically go to town using the skills you have learned up to that point. You might be set up with a specific situation, or you might have a training weapon, but everyone there is going pretty much 70-75%. I am not going to lie, I felt I was going 90-100% out of desperation. You are basically getting the crap beat out of you in the safest way possible for the sake of training. It’s fast, gassing no matter how athletic you are, and eye opening. The thing that is the most interesting is that no matter the experience in the room, and I have been privileged enough to watch several certified a...

  A couple months ago I started researching female led martial arts for the Northwest Arkansas area.  I have heard so many times from women that they would feel more comfortable with a female instructor.  There are not a lot and usually the picture that unfairly comes to mind of the female leading that class is one of the intimidating looks of Miss. Trunchbull. I know this is rarely the case, but that is where my brain strangely goes.   I had the pleasure a couple months ago to attend Elle Jackson’s women’s jiu jitsu as well as her coed Krav Maga class. I then meet her for coffee a month later to pick her brain and get to know her. I also attended again with my teen daughter a couple weeks ago and again was impressed.   Elle has noticed several of the issues with women’s self defense and knows how to say, “well this isn’t working, so lets try a different way.” She doesn’t follow blindly and wants to constantly meet women where they are at. During her w...