Saturday my husband managed to hurt his foot painting the bathroom, and after icing, elevating, and wrapping it overnight we went to the emergency room. It's broken in two places. He's having difficulty getting around on the crutches--he's fallen twice. We live in a three-story row house, so he's been getting up and down the stairs on his butt.

Having managed to forget I had scheduled an orthodontist appointment and a trainer's appointment for the same time today, and after having to give up a trainer's appointment last week due to a work obligation, today I called and rescheduled the orthodontist. The trainer seems to have fixed on five o'clock as our appointment time even if he does say four-thirty on the phone, so I got there half an hour early and what with all the demands on my schedule I worked myself up to planning to tell him I wasn't doing it any more. Once he got there, though, and we started working out, I felt better. He's a reasonable guy, he knows what he's doing, and he doesn't waste a lot of time on chit-chat.

I got into fencing around 7:30 and played a bit with Jessi1, Donna, and Jake. Donna and Jake are adult-class graduates, I think. Jake beat me 5-2 the first time we fenced because I was barely warmed up and didn't allow for his distance or some nice small parries; he apologized afterwards for some slimy touches and I said I didn't object to slimy touches. I fenced him a second time and, using only slimy touches, beat him 5-0. Jessi1 and I had a nice bout. Her footwork is smoothing out and so is her focus; though I think I beat her, what, 5-2, and she was clearly fencing with good intensity, she didn't get mad or shut down the way she used to.

Mark's lesson began with stationary parry work. It was a sequence we haven't used for years--first, he would cut to my guard and I'd make parry and riposte. Then he'd do it again and make a parry, and I'd cut through his parry to the outside--basically a cut-over while maintaining contact with the blade, as if I were cutting through the blade. Next, same action, but he'd parry my final cut to the outside, so I'd just make straight parry riposte the next time through.

Then on to the thing from last week--he'd extend, I'd take the blade and finish; then he'd extend, I'd take the blade, he'd take back, I'd parry and riposte, or he'd attempt to take back, I'd deceive. It progressed into point thrust. Then with movement. It ended up with me making advance, presenting blade at the landing of the front foot, and concentrating on my breathing so that if he pulled the distance and attempted to parry I could deceive, and if he beat my blade I was relaxed enough to beat back.

Josef has left to work in the Penn fencing club, which may thin the ranks of epee fencers for a little while as he is apparently running his own little club on the side. It doesn't particularly affect me as I haven't seen most of the epee fencers for months, but it's a little hard on the club.

I'm feeling a little weak but it was a good workout.