Despite the broken toe, I went to my belt test on Friday. Yeah, possibly that wasn’t the best idea, but I’m annoyed enough by the time I missed due to the ankle surgery; the thought of waiting until September to test because of my stupid pinky toe was just not acceptable. (Not to mention that missing class Monday and Wednesday to let the bone start healing produced a noticable downswing in my mood; I’m book-stressed right now, and need my exercise to counter.)

I was particularly eager for this test because moving to the lowest degree of green belt (green with a white stripe) means I get to start kobudo, which is weapons training. Sai and bo mostly — the little hand-held tridents and the staff — though sometimes they break out the tonfa or the nunchaku. My only weapons experience is with Western rapier-and-dagger fencing, so I’m very keen to see how other things work. Plus it means I’ll be getting more like four hours of exercise each week, rather than two, and that is not a bad thing. In fact, if I can manage to have a pair of functioning feet for any real length of time, I’m hoping to go back to the SCA fencing practice on Sundays, too.

So I’m being careful, but I’m back in class. I’ll try to keep my weight off the outside of my foot until it’s been at least three weeks, and definitely keep the toe buddy-taped that long or longer; then we’ll see how it’s doing. Fortunately, in the immediate future I’m likely to have several new kata to practice (karate and kobudo both), so my attention’s going to be more on learning the sequences than refining my footwork. But any way you slice it, I’m not going to let a bone that tiny prevent me from getting my exercise. I am tired of this gimpy-feet business, yo.