Gus is sitting on my lap pawing at my legs and I’m watching the Beijing Opening Ceremonies, I haven’t cried yet but it is inevitable that I will. Medal races in the swimming start Sunday, that’ll get me if nothing has before then.

My love of sports and athletes is huge but I still have mixed feelings in regards to the Olympics and their politics but I try and make it a point not to talk about politics on my blog. I see what’s happening in Beijing, I see what is happening in Vancouver to the people, to the city. I know I’m not alone in feeling a certain amount of dread when the cameras are turned onto our city and highlight the government’s despicable testing taking place right now on how best to deal with the homeless. It did not comfort me at all to see the people of Beijing going through similar and heartbreaking experiences just to put on a spectacle for the world.

Sometimes it isn’t just the politics it’s the drugs. I may not be competing now but my therapists insists I am an athlete and should address myself accordingly it is just hard for me having such a nagging injury [another post..]. Sometimes I’m glad that I had a shitty attitude when we moved to Terrace because I never had to deal with the pressures of drugs. I had very limited running competition in Terrace, whereas in Smithers I was always second best and instead of using it as a challenge and running against older, faster more experienced runners and learning from it and growing I became an arrogant asshole and almost stopped running AND skiing all together. The Terrace ski hill is nothing when compared to the Smithers mountain and I got bored. I look back and wonder how my parents even put up with me through my seriously wasting my potential phase [I’m not really sure it was just a phase though]. Before I met Adam I dated some guys who considered themselves hard core, they were jerks to me but at the same time they loved being with a woman who could keep up to them but the difference is that I never took anything beyond protein powder and ibuprofen. I do not think ANY of the guys I dated took steroids but I could be wrong who knows. One dude had completed an iron man and one used to train with Canadian Olympic Gold Medalist Simon Whitfield’s coach. Both of these guys took creatine which is a controversial supplement and it bothered me, if guys taking creatine bothered me I bet you can guess how strongly I feel about professional athletes and performance enhancing drugs. The disappointment, anger and embarrassment I feel when athletes are caught is intense to say the very least. I put so much time and energy into the athletes I admire and love that I feel genuinely let down when I find out they’ve been using.

Even though I find myself yelling obscenities at the tv over most of the stupid commercials and idiotic statements made with voiceovers by Morgan Freeman I try real hard to separate myself from all the bullshit and enjoy the fact that it is the only time that I can see almost all of my favourite athletes in one place for two fucking weeks man! I live for moments like this:

American Triathlete Sarah Groff & Canadian Olympic hopeful Carolyn Murray

I probably won’t post much else on or about the Olympics but if you are interested in following my excitement you can find me on Twitter, a social media platform I have very mixed feelings on but don’t seem to be able to break away from using or feeling upset over when someone un-follows me much like how I feel when people delete me off their Facebook but that is also something for another post.

Last Sunday I spent some of the best hours of my life to date watching the Triathlon World Championships [Airing on CBC at 1pm Pacific Standard time, Saturday June 14^th].

Seeing this event meant a lot to me and although I knew I would be emotional I didn’t know just how emotional.

My dad did triathlons and duathlons when I was a kid, his last triathlon was in the Cook Islands in 1998, he then moved on to half and full marathons. I dedicated the set of photos to him on flickr for Fathers day. Happy early fathers day Dad!

I am extremely glad that the day before the elite/BEST IN THE WORLD were to perform I went out and took some photos because it gave me the confidence to get in there the following day. Those first photos of the empty course and stadium, the uniforms and shots of the different nations flags were the best I thought I’d get and I came back to the apartment with tears of happiness flowing down my cheeks whilst trying not to hyperventilate and tell Adam how absolutely incredible it had been, how many people had been out, how many athletes and bikes and that THE WORLD WAS HERE! And he said “and you voted no for the Olympics” and I said “I stand by that, but but… you are right I was crazy to think I’d be leaving the city.” I uploaded the photos and declared that we should TRY and go out the following day and see if we could get close and get some decent photos. Knowing how much I hate crowds and how hard it is for me not to flip out all over the place I’m sure he figured I wouldn’t go. But I had to, the day before had me so pumped up. I watch triathlons and iron mans, marathons, track and field and the Tour De France on TV whenever they are on and Adam is kind enough to set reminders for me or put one on and lets me tell him my same running stories over and over and over again, and makes fun of me when I cry because I cry EVERY SINGLE TIME. I even wore my ugly old prescription sunglasses to try and hide the water works I knew were coming.

I knew that the women went off at 1pm, I watched the helicopters from out our living room window and decided we should head around 2:30 because I knew the men went off at 4:00 and I figured from where the helicopters were circling that the women were likely well into the run.

Walking towards the course I was already getting emotional and there was an open spot RIGHT where the women were coming around the corner and I opened the camera and just started shooting but I was crying so I had no idea what athletes I was getting, my batteries died so I actually watched for a bit and took some of it in while I started to clap mildly for the participants.

I decided it was time to head for the beach; we weren’t going to get close standing around watching the last of the ladies come in. I was in GO mode already in shock over getting that close to the action. We both had our phones in case we got separated and it was decided I was leading the way.

We were almost past the barricades that marked the do not enter area and where I could see finished athletes conversing and being interviewed by the media when I noticed a break in what I guess was security and I walked in and started taking photos and they let me. I thought Carolyn Murray was going to tell me to fuck off until I said “excuse me, I’ve been standing here taking your photo for five minutes and you’ve been so gracious may I please shake your hand and say congratulations” through you got it….. tears! She then shook the crazed fan’s hand. I swooned and looked back at Adam only to catch a fan having his photo taken with Lauren Groves [from Vancouver!!] and thought OMG why did I not ask for my photo with Murray??? HERE I COME GROVES!!! I approached and oh yeah uh huh I got my photo taken with her I got my photo taken with her and youuuuuuuu didn’t!

Thankfully Vancouverites are late to almost everything and we found PERFECT spots RIGHT NEXT to the V.I.P area. By the time the top seventy-seven male tri-athletes in the world had taken center stage right in front of my eyes I had the pleasure of proving myself a triathlon pundit explaining such things as lengths and order of the three legs to people who didn’t know and sharing information such as the divers under some of the buoys and other safety measures taken for the swim. Needless to say I was in my GLORY.

I thought I had my emotions under control and was even getting in some deep breaths, picture taking was going well until Simon Whitfield came out of the water, I swear I heard them announce him come out first but I saw him coming up in second and dropped the camera, Adam quickly stopped it from smashing into the fence and I started screaming and crying and clapping so hard I thought my wrists would break and I was gone so far into the moment the natural high was seriously better than getting a tattoo.

I was shaking and unable to control myself any longer or take clear photos or catch the men on the bikes because they were so fast it was insane. Adam took over the camera taking the cycling and mens running photos and I took over sneaking up to the rails.

I quickly lost myself again cheering for them ALL from every country, the women next to me said, “we are cheering for Mexico” by the end of it I had the entire row of people cheering for the same people and countries I was, it was crazy. I even had the row chanting U.S.A U.S.A when one tired looking American ran by. The only country people wouldn’t join me in cheering for was France which of course pissed me off but then I had to remind myself that not everyone was there for the love of sports in general some where there JUST for their countries. Of course I wanted one of the Canadians to win, but I am happier with how the Canadians did as a whole. All of the ones I saw gave it and gave it hard.

It was exhilarating to be so close to all of those amazing athletes, some of them personal favourites. If we had better cameras we’d have photos of the sweat coming off their shoulders.

Watch for us during the men’s swim, [we are on the athletes left coming up the beach] good chance you’ll see me freaking out.

Have a breakdown of the magnitude of the one I’m still physically recovering from ever again.

I can’t tell if it really was that bad or if the natural progression of my age since my last bad one is making a full physical recovery seem near impossible and has gotten to the point where YAY! I don’t want to leave my house again and that is the last thing I need to be feeling right now.

Last year when I finally hit what I considered a healthy weight [see below] I was STILL criticized by some for my lack of obvious muscles, and was called fat.

I’ve always been small, until an unfortunate running injury [that I still have, LONG story!!] most people have known me to be extremely athletic with an athletic build, athletic lifestyle and always fit. I remember a day a friend and I got up, went for a run, went skiing, hit a bucket of balls at the driving range on the way down from the hill, and then decided to hit a ten pin bowling alley before calling it a day and heading for a massive meal. I was running between 44:30 and 46 minute ten ks on the pavement and in my sleep. Those days are left as some of my fondest memories and I yearn for them to become a reality again soon. And the worst is I know that I’d be FASTER now.

Adam said the other day “you HAVE to start running again” and he is right, when I am running nothing can stop me, nothing can get me down, I’m clam, collected and in control, probably a bit more arrogant than normal but someone you want around all the time not ONLY in small doses, not someone who is unreliable and not someone that there is ALWAYS something wrong with. When I look back on my life thus far the hardest and worst times have all taken place in periods where for whatever reason I stopped because of them or was already on a short break from running.

This post isn’t about my running history though it is about weight, the point there being that when I’m running which I was basically my whole life up until late 2003 you could call me thin, you could call me skinny - even though I’d be smacking you upside the head for the skinny remark in my mind and stabbing you with invisible lasers - but you could NEVER call me anorexic I was too built and I ate like a mother-fucker one of those skinny bitches [that term makes me want to rip my FACE OFF!] who could eat anything in any amount and did.

For someone who grew up being the smallest of all my friends and still is, except for one, but she has a healthy body, I got so used to the remarks that when they stopped it was as if I had descended upon some odd fantasy land where I was viewed as a WOMAN with curves and BOOBS, I was proudly referring to my weight gain as my honeymoon fifteen and did things like this, but that wasn’t supposed to mean that I’d welcome becoming an anxiety stricken unhealthy too thin depressed self loathing person in the second year of my marriage and drop to a weight that I know is lower than I’ve ever been in my adult life. I refuse to step on a scale, the lack of my clothing and undergarments fitting leave me pretty confident that my estimate of my current pounds is scary enough and I haven’t owned a scale in over a decade.

Aside from my weight, and how unhealthy I am in general, no energy, sleeping loads, hair falling out and just knowing I’m sickly I’ve been pretty happy mentally, steady happy, I’m recovering from set backs faster, when I freak out it is toned down times a trillion million for serious, I’ve had two days that have been real bad but the rest have just been the occasional normal down days there haven’t been any bouts of depression lasting more than a few days, I’ve stepped away from the computer when wanting to be an ass hole, I took a break from posting as you can see by the front page of dates and I’m coming back to posting complaining about my weight for a reason.

If you are over weight, fat, too thin or skinny which ever term you do or don’t prefer here is something I know you don’t like - PEOPLE COMMENTING ON IT TO YOUR FACE! Look, I get it, people talk, I’ve gotten that one for years and it has helped me greatly but this is where you talk behind my back about how much weight I’ve lost. Unless you want to help me in a positive way to get my weight back on then fuck the fuck right the fuck off. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about anyone who talks to me in a genuinely concerned way, I’m not talking about my inner circle I’m talking about people in general, this ISN’T just about me it is about anyone who struggles with depression, unwanted or wanted weight, trust me, just trust, when I say NO ONE wants to hear it. WE KNOW!!!!!

This is something ingrained in society that will never change but infuriates me and I had forgotten how much. At the weight in the above photo NO ONE commented in a negative way unless they themselves were anorexic. If you were in my most inner circle it meant congratulations because I had finally done it, I had finally put on weight, and I finally FELT like a woman. Right now I feel like a fucking pre-pubescent girl, I feel disgusting, unhealthy and sick and no one in their right mind should want to look how I look at present. This past week has been the worst yet. I have been sick in the guts almost every day, nauseous, winded coming up the stairs and not able to get up and stay out of bed for long periods. I’m hoping that writing this is the intervention I need to get physically healthy again and I think I need to face that I’m going to need my doctors assistance my shrink knows I’m struggling and we talk about it but that doesn’t seem to be enough. If only one of them could prescribe me a start off of twenty free pounds, I’d even sign a wavier promising not to add it all to my tits.

Starter GOALS:

Get out of the house EVERY DAY no matter what rain or shine for at least a half an hour or more,

Eat a minimum of three times a day even if I have to force feed myself or drink protein shakes

With two of my favourite sports Golf and Tennis back in full televised swing and taking over the sports networks I’m reminded of how many athletes I absolutely love and admire so I thought I would share some of them with you. I’m going with current and keeping it to Track, Tennis and Golf. Nothing personal but I could go on forever, in fact narrowing down the men ‘of now’ is going to be way harder; this could turn into a 2.5 parter.

Paula Radcliffe, British, Marathoner and Current World Record Holder

Even when Paula runs a ’slow’ 2:17:42, she is still the fastest female marathon runner in the world and has been since 2002. I will never forget the excitement of running my first half marathon in Kelowna on October 13, 2002, at the same time that she was running her second marathon in Chicago and blew the previous WR held by Catherine Ndereba, of Kenya away by a minute and a half. She would later destroy her own WR in 2003 [London] by setting the current standing women’s time of 2:15:25.


Photo © bycolley on Flickr

Charmaine Crooks, Canadian, Five Time Olympian, Runner

Long retired but still a favourite none the less. It was hard not to grow up idolizing this woman having had the pleasure of meeting her when I ran for the Track team in Smithers. She gave our team some tips and hung out with us. It was one of the most memorable times of my life. She is not just a highly regarded Canadian Athlete she is also very respected in the Vancouver area for her fund raising efforts and she currently serves on the International Olympic Committee’s 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics Organizing Committee.

Photo courtesy Bell Champions

Justine Henin, Belgian, Current Rank World No. 1, Tennis

Justine plays some of the best tennis I have ever seen, it has been exciting watching her rise through the ranks over the years. Her praised one handed backhand brings fear to the best players in the game. She is young, cheeky and don’t let her seemingly small size fool you she is a power house who keeps the court full of action. Although having been accused of unsportsmanlike conduct over a call in a match she won against Serena Williams back in 2003, I tend to disagree and think it is a shame that basically because Serena is a Williams sister it sticks with her. Henin is also an Olympic gold medalist.

Photo © ebtg bwtt on Flickr

Maria Sharapova, Russian, Current Rank World No. 5, Tennis

At Wimbledon in 2004 Maria Sharapova made jumping on the bandwagon irrelevant and brought even the mention of Anna Kournikova’s existence as a tennis player to near extinction. She makes Michelle Wie look like a little girl. She is drop dead gorgeous and when she brings her A game she will take her oppenent down in straight sets almost every time. The game face of Sharapova is one of my favourite game faces in all of sports. And yes y’all I know that the key word there is ‘when’ she brings her A game but this is a loving post.


Photo courtesy Sports Illustrated

Morgan Pressel, American, Professional Golfer

I started watching Morgan Pressel on the Golf Channel when she was an amateur. I could tell she was one to watch and so I watched her. She is very mature for her age and is a great role model for young female athletes. She was not able to turn pro without appealing to the LPGA to admit her due to being a year too young at only seventeen in January 2006 when she needed to be eighteen. In 2007 Morgan won her first Major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship making her the youngest LPGA member to win at eighteen years and three hundred and thirteen days. Turns out she wasn’t just one to watch as an amateur.

Photo © esmith132 on Flickr

Lorena Ochoa, Mexican, Current LPGA Rank No. 1

Lorena Ochoa came onto my radar in 2005. That year at the US Women’s Open she was in great position to take the tournament and put it in the water on eighteen and it just became worse and simply unforgettable from there. I remember feeling incredibly bad for her but was one of the assholes who called her O-choke-A, that was of course before with her always calm poise and method of play even when in the crapper she became one of my favourites to watch. Lorena is also the first Mexican of either gender to be ranked number one in the world in the sport of golf and is sponsored by Lacoste (drool), the greatest gator-based clothing line ever. She is like Sammy Sosa is to the Dominican aside from the drugs and the bat corking.

Photo © PGA Mexico on Flickr

1. Gus is still limping but the Hip Action that we give her for the limping/arthritis when she doesn’t barf it up is working really well. She takes it twice a day most days. If she barfs it up it is only once and sometimes she refuses to eat two.
2. Gus loves strawberries. We just discovered that they are like catnip to her. But we have not allowed her to eat any, she goes crazy nutters when we take them out of the fridge.
3. Adam and I got an early Anniversary gift from his Grandmother it was a cook-book which means she stuck with tradition. Awesome. And then a couple days later we both got birthday gifts in the mail and they were shirts and one of them I LOVE I have worn it three times already and it got me thinking about the post I wrote on the ‘Grandma Shirts’ and how Adam wanted to wear his crab shirt from his Grandma, my GMIL. I discovered looking through our honeymoon photos on flickr that he wore it a lot while we were on it and since I wrote it I have been feeling guilty not wanting it to come across as if I don’t appreiate her and what she sends us because of course some of it is total Grandma stuff, she is his Grandma but she pays me the most attention of anyone in Adam’s family other than Adam so I love her a lot and really appreiate everything she sends us, Adam can always use new work shirts anyway.
4. My breasts have almost stopped lactating. Shit, I remember telling Jared at Blogstock that if I got drunk enough that I’d show him. Thankfully I did not get drunk enough. He brought it up man. The switch from Risperidone to Seroquel has gone rather well and I’ve been able to drop my overall dosage of medication by a minimal amount but an amount none the less. It was in fact the Risperidone causing the prolactin increase as all of my blood work and CT Scan came back normal. I still have to go for one more blood test to re-test my prolactin levels, I am sure they will still be higher than normal but not as high as to cause anymore concern.
5. I am not 100% sure how I feel about Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s I have finished easy level and medium level and five stared all the songs. You get five gold stars if you get 100% in this one too which rules but also sucks for me because I totally OCD out HAVING TO HAVE 100% ON EVERY SONG!!!!!! I haven’t attempted hard level yet but plan to today. I think once I venture into hard level I will have a better idea of how I feel about it. I guess in a way I expected to know more of the songs than I do, that is sort of bothering me. But as usual with this kick ass series of games even the songs I don’t know I found already growing on me when I went back to play the game on easy.
6. I finished reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs yesterday and absolutely LOVED IT. I have seen the movie twice and also LOVE the movie, I also own the movie. Now I want to read the rest of his books. Which I’m sure I will do. Now, I am reading Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella because I have some heavy books coming up on my reading list and also just as I enjoy mindless movies on occasion Sophie Kinsella does make for some perfect mindless summer reading.
7. Tonight we are going to watch the Vancouver Canadians play some baseball. I have never been to a baseball game in my life, should be good times. I won the tickets through Rebecca and her participation in the 24 hour Blog-a-thon. When she wrote that she was going to be giving away tickets I knew at that moment I was going to win them and became worried that people would think it was rigged. It was not rigged I do not even like baseball. Adam does and it is his birthday on Monday so it is perfect and technically half of my donation was from Adam SO regardless of how you look at it we won far and square.

This photo was taken last July, says my flickr. There was less than two months to go until our wedding, and I was stressed. I would venture a guess that I weighed around 112ish. I know when I went home for my dress fitting almost a month to the day of this photo I was worried that my dress would be to big but I weighed myself at my parents place and found that I wasn’t as skeletor as I thought I was. I was eating like mad around this time as well because I was afraid of my dress literally falling off at the wedding. When I had been measured for it, it was January 2006 and I was carrying some winter weight and did not see it again until the beginning of August when I was stressed to the absolute max and thin like my early 20’s thin, or in a major depression thin.

This is September 2006, I remember knowing I was underweight but being pretty happy with my body for 29, the wedding was over my dress did not fall off, it had fit perfectly. I ended up getting really sick when we returned from Mexico and also fell into a seriously bad black hole of depression. Winter came and I packed away the bathing suits and settled into marriage. Even though I was depressed which means I would normally be losing weight due to anxiety, I didn’t have a lot of anxiety I was just horribly depressed and doing absolutely nothing that didn’t involve the couch. I was basically leaving the house once a week for my shrink sessions and that was about it. And before I knew it I weighed 130 pounds.

This was taken yesterday. To be honest my second time in a bikini this year as I had gone to tan the day before with a girlfriend for a bit, but got better photos yesterday. In June I wrote this post on some of my feelings on my weight and the great weight debate in general and was in a space were I did not feel attractive AT ALL. I started to run and work out on the ball in my apartment, I expressed in the post that I was dreading putting on a bikini this year. Last month I did an interview for Eating Disorder Talk and mentioned I felt I needed to lose another five to ten pounds. Seeing this photo I realize that Adam was right, I was seeing a deluded image in the mirror. I do not in fact need to lose any weight. Yes, I need some toning but I look a lot better than I thought I did. For 30 I’m pretty happy actually. I did manage to sneak in a weighing of myself last week at a friends place and I’m around 125lbs so technically I’m still underweight for my height and age. I’m going to stop complaining about my body now because I’ve likely been driving Adam insane. But your eyes play tricks on you; the camera pressed up into a mirror doesn’t lie. Unless I’m in a state where I am not mentally healthy I don’t really want to look like I did in my early to middle twenties anymore. I would still like to get rid of my millions of chins and have bigger boobs but those are just dreams.

For my birthday this year Spockette gave me a bag with Johnny Cash on it, I carry it a lot. It is the perfect size and fits all of my crap. Coming down the elevator at my shrinks office one Friday a man standing next to me started to chuckle and then said who is that on your bag. Johnny Cash I replied in a curt voice.

Really, that is Johnny Cash, are you a fan, do you listen to him? [No, I just carry a bag with his image on it] He asked me this as he gave me the full up and down pervert look, so as I answered yes I lifted my left hand displaying my wedding band while I pretended to scratch my head hoping he would see it and realize how obvious I was being and stop talking to me. Nope.

The elevator stopped at the bottom and I went to step off when I heard him still talking to me as I walked off, that Johnny Cash he said, I love him, great songs, he has great lyrics, that Walk the Line song. I never looked at him in the face I just nodded and gave a little unhuh.

Really? So you LOVE Johnny Cash but you don’t recognize one of his most infamous photos, [distorted in the picture I took of my bag] and you obviously are not that familiar with his music when you say something like ‘that Walk the Line song’. Sounds to me like he just saw the movie.

‘YOU CAN’T WALK NO LINE!’

I have not fixed all of my archives or categories yet since I moved over to Word Press so I have no idea where my awesome elevator story where some dude was all ARE THOSE MANOLOS to me when I had one of my many pairs of awesome shoes on- they weren’t cheap but they weren’t Manolos. Because I don’t work down town anymore I am not in many elevators which means I normally get to avoid this huge pet peeve of random men/people talking to me but it still happens.

Keira-Anne did a post called ‘The Ten Commandments’ last week mentioning random strangers talking to her as well, I know it is common but seriously does any man really believe he can pick up a women in an elevator? And do you honestly think I want your opinion on anything be it the weather, my shoes, you may just be a friendly person but I, unless I know you or want to know you am generally not. That isn’t 100% true though because I get asked for directions a lot, confuses me greatly because I don’t see myself as approachable but there must be something about me, I don’t know, but I am always nice to people who ask me for directions. And when I am on the sea wall running I do the head nod, half smile at the runners so maybe I am not all bad. I guess when it comes right down to it, it is just certain situations and ’scenes’ in the city that make me go instant ice queen.