The Proclaimers

Here they are: the best band in the WORLD!!! I love love LOVE these guys! They are the cutest guys in the world and not to brag, but my husband looks like them. I am soooo lucky! LOL! I just got their last two albums after years fo freaking waiting over here in Podunk Mississippi. I am still trying to get their first album but I have found some sellers on Amazon who have some used copies and so I am ordering it at payday in a couple days. I have had their other albums about a year after each release date (slow to trickle into the U.S.) since I was a young teen and long before the internet was around (yep, I am old at 33 yrs LOL!). I would scour music stores in malls and out of the way places that still sold old record albums and would hit gold once in awhile and find an album. I never would know when one was coming out, just sort of had to keep snooping. Hey, it isn't like they play them on the airwaves over here so I just ever could keep current.

At any rate, I only lack one album, and will get it soon enough. The reason I am so in love with them is because each of their albums has practically documented something profound in my life at the time I came across it. I remember really struggling with my faith when I was in my late teens and early twenties, just trying to find my way, and I would hear their song "I Want to Be a Christian". I thought not much of it at the time but as I played that album while dressing for the day, my grandmother would be sitting in the living room listening to that and would say how she loved these songs even though she could barely understand their words. She was very Southern and a Scottish accent was hard for her to grasp with her dimishing hearing. Now when I hear that song, I think of her in those days. For each person in my life, I have found a song by The Proclaimers that speaks volumes about my feelings for my loved ones. I remember sitting and feeling so miserable after the birth of my first child, my daughter, and it being the wee hours of morn and still no sleep for either of us. I would feel so frustrated and depressed and just be sitting there rocking and crying with my screaming babe. And I would turn on their CD and "Your Childhood" would soothe us both, reminding me of how lucky I was to have her and finally be a mother.

I could blog chapters of how big a fan I am of these brothers but do yourself a favor instead: go find an album and give it a listen. I think I have at least 2 of their songs on my playlist currently. I will try to add more but they are not well-known here in the States so I have to grab what I can, when I can. Since Jerome is a Highland's thrower, I am making plans to see if they will play any Highland's festivals in North America and go to see them. If not, Jerome will be sticker-shocked when I finangle a way to buy 2 plane tickets to go see them in Scottland and maybe get the honeymoon we never had. If I ever get to see them in concert, I am wearing my sexiest bra cuz you know I am flashing it baby!!! I honestly will be embarrassed to be seen at their concerts cuz my behavior will be CRAZAY!!!!! I will have to learn some self-control, I think LOL! Jerome will be seeing the public whore side of me and he may not know how to handle it.....

No Dykes Here!

What I mean by that title is...just because you are a female lifter does not mean you are a lesbian. So guys...look all you want! LOL! You might can get some of the goody-good good stuff if you prove worthy by being able to outlift your woman. So just try to keep up, 'kay?

The above pic is from the crossfitatlanta website.

I love it because the woman looks like a woman. She is also OBVIOUSLY strong and not worried about what people may think of her as she is lifting. When I first started lifting, some of the more intimidating lifts were ones that required me to stick my ass out while guys walked right past or even brazenly stood and stared as I tried squats or deadlifts for the first time. I worried my ass looked fat, or worse, that men were staring and judging me, or a moment in hell thinking "What if I bust through my shorts?" As time has marched on, I have become stronger and I no longer worry about anyone watching me squat or deadlift. Now, when anyone looks, be they man or woman, I feel proud that I do what I do and that I do it with perfect form and am most likely impressing them with the fact that I am the rarely seen female lifter who takes her workout seriously. I love when I see eyes covertly watching me in the gym's mirrors and then see men stop and stare as I pull out my belt and journal. I love it when they walk past as I am deadlifting and slow down and stare at my ass. Go ahead! Get a good hard look cuz this ass might be a little fat right now but as I whittle closer to competition, it only gets leaner and meaner, and soon....it is gonna turn EVERY head EVERYWHERE I go. So I better be able to stand a few looks in the gym cuz it is only going to get worse (better).

So how about it ladies??? Can you handle the stares? The looks of appreciation? The admonitions to not look manly? The sneers from other women who are exceptionally jealous you have the fantastic booty that looks like a steak and makes men just want a grab hold and take a bite? Yeah, that's the ass I want!

Why I Might Quit Competing!

Tonight, we took the kids to our annual Christmas dinner at Sakura's Japanese restaurant/Sushi bar. Some very generous man came in and ordered every table a Jaguar roll for Christmas. I was the only one to try it at our table and I fell in love. I could not believe how good that stuff tasted! it might be my downfall to competing LOL! I may not be able to sustain this strict diet if I can't stop thinking about that sushi roll. What will become of me?

Other than that, I have been sleeping most of the day because I had today off workouts and diet. I nibbled a little through the day, no binge eating thankfully, but I did enjoy a large dinner with 3 glasses of iced Diet Coke. I bet I look like a water-bloated corpse tomorrow morning! At least I can get under the squat bar and do something useful for myself, something redeeming for the junk I have been eating lately. I begin serious cutting in January as I mentioned before and so I am enjoying every meal as if it was the last time I might get to taste it. When I cut, I don't hunger to fill my belly to bursting like a lot of folks who diet do. Instead, I hunger for satisfying my taste buds. I want to hold food in my mouth and just savor its deliciousness. I begin to get cravings for things I am denying myself and only because I am denying them. Once I eat a little bit of it (a few bites really!) I no longer want ti and can walk away from it. I am lucky like that I guess. I have friends who will eat to the point of wanting to puke. I guess I understand this because I could do this with cookies, my favorite comfort food, though usually after eating 3-4 I feel quesy so that helps me to stop.

Less than a week left before I begin cutting. I am actually looking forward to it! Time to slowly unveil what I have worked so hard towards!

My Trainer

Did another workout of Jerome's last night and OMG, I am sore in places I did not know had muscles. I can't believe how strong I am either! I never knew my own strength and Jerome is just not putting up with my crap. He says go lift this and do this in weight. And I think, he is a freaking lunatic if he thinks I can lift THAT! but then I know I have to put in real effort or there will be no muscle so I go and I just DO IT. And then step back and feel freaking powerful! I can not believe I can lift as much as I am lately. And I thought I was really pushing myself before! And not to knock trainers but I have had two trainers give me workouts, and looked at workouts on all these figure sites, and NONE of them were what I was looking for (bosu balls, stability balls, pylometrics, donkey kicks...PLEASE....time wasters). I wanted to LIFT heavy stuff. And now I am and the workouts are FINALLY fun. I am really enjoying them. AND...I am FINALLY seeing muscle develope! What good does donkey kicks do when you can deadlift over 200 lbs??? How useless and stupid it is to waste time doing those shitty "girl" workouts. I guess women are scared to be seen lifting like a man and so the trainers cater to that. Even strippers do better workouts than most figure competitors! Shame.....

Being married to my trainer has so many perks, LOL! Payment is easy and fun, all sorts of special attention to my diet and workouts, and he has even learned my usual numbers on my weights. I feel really bad that he is sitting out on so much gym time because of his leg injury from over a year ago. For those who don't know, he is a competitive powerlifter and Highlands athlete (caber toss, sheaf toss, etc....Scottish Games) and last November, he won everything in his class at our huge local Scottish Festival in the Highlands Games. He saw a demo of Celtic/Scottish Backhold Wrestling and wanted to try it with our oldest son. He was paired up against a big bear of a man and when they went down, Jerome's leg turned funny and snapped in over 150 places in his tibia, requiring major surgery for a long steel plate and about 15 screws. He developed a major infection under the plate that could not be cleared up at any time this year and had to endure loads of pain and pus in his leg. He finally just this week was able to have the surgery to remove that evil plate and the amount of infection was staggering to the surgeon. Well, no shit, Sherlock! The military surgeon who put the plate in probably dropped the damn thing on the floor and then picked it up, licked it off, and hammered it in. Fuck nuts!!! Anyway, he has been a real trooper just dealing with all that pain and still going to work and even lifting for upper body in the gym so as not to lose too much strength at least there. He is planning on doing his first powerlifting meet back from injury this spring but he will only be able to do the bench portion, not deadlift or squat. Poor guy! Squats are his favorite! At least he now has time to train me LOL!

Shoulders and Strength

No, this is NOT me! She is a figure competitor, Autumn Edwards, and she has the arms and shoulders I plan to keep building towards. The way I see it, if I can build defined shoulders, then I will also have built up quite a bit of strength. I notice when I squat, my shoulders hurt more than anything else. I have rheumatoid arthritis and so almost any exercise involving compound movements, my shoulders feel like they have been pulled out of their sockets and they burn like hellfire. But as I have built up my shoulder strength, the pain has slowly diminished and my overall body strength has increased. As my body strength increases, my symptoms of RA have decreased. So I plan to keep lifting till the day I die! I hope that even as I grow old and gray-haired, I can switch from figure comps to female natural bodybuilding. Plenty of "grannies" are doing it and they look BEAUTIFUL and amazingly young. And most of them did not start lifting till they were over 50 years old! Lifting weights increases the female body's natural amount of testosterone. And testosterone is one of those amazing hormones that help women look younger and feel horny. Ever wonder why men age better than women? It is because of testosterone! As women age, our hormones practically fall away and our estrogen either shoots through the roof or we lose it. And estrogen, although helpful for childbearing and other "female" functions, it is our testosterone that helps us feel horny and keep our bodyfat levels low. Now after saying all that, please don't assume I am advocating using steroids. I am not. I am just saying, let's be smart about our bodies and try to get the natural advantage of boosting our own testosterone by lifting weights. Besides, lifting weights helps improve bone density and we all know we don't want to be the old woman with the humped back and the easily broken hips. Jerome was off painkillers enough yesterday that he was able to write me a great workout for my shoulders and legs. I ended up doing Push Presses for the first time and I loved them! I was able to push press 65 lbs. Normally I can only shoulder press on a machine 60 lbs and I can dumbbell press 25's. I felt so powerful and awesome standing in the squat rack and pressing 65 lbs over my head and seeing my muscles just bulge and veins pop out. I loved it! I am actually a small woman, though tall, and pretty much have no muscle definition as I just walk around doing daily living tasks but when I lift, my muscles do come out of hiding and I feel amazed at seeing the results of all my hardwork come to fruition. I am so much stronger than when I first started lifting, too! I used to be able to shoulder press with dumbbells only 5's, now I do 25's. I could barely squat the bare bar (45 lbs!) and now I squat 155! I used to only be able to run a quarter mile and feel as if I was dying of asthma. Now I easily lope a full mile in about 10 minutes, with little to no effort. I now run about 3 miles in order ot feel as if I am breathing even a little hard. And that is really not bad. I actually just have learned to pace my breathing to my strides and can actually go for forever. Fitness rocks!!!!

Recovery or Being lazy?

Awww......isn't she cute??? She is my baby girl Emma. I have two chocolate labs, one geriatric male and this young female. Doesn't she just look peaceful resting here? Every time I look at her laying on some carpeted floor and snoozing her snores, I wish I could be her.

Lately, with Jerome's umpteenth surgery, I have missed several workouts. My diet has also gotten way off-track! am looking forward to January because Jerome said he was going to go on my diet with me and we would do it together. He wants to cut back down and he figures if we did it together, it would be easier on budget and food prep and COMMITMENT! I keep telling myself, I am not being lazy lately, but am just in recovery instead. I have read on T-Nation that sometimes it is good to take a week offand then when you go back to the gym, you find you have more strength and can begin new lifting PR's (Personal Records).

I think the stress of sitting next to Jerome all day and all night and listening to him scream, literally SCREAM, in agony and pain from having some long ass plate and 14 screws removed from the entire length of his tibia has really gotten to me emotionally. I was looking at my NPC magazine for the hundredth time, and instead of thinking how I want this girls' arms and that girl's shoulders and another girl's quads, I was thinking how pointless it all is and how they don't even look good to me lately. I guess I am losing my fire and not to be a heartless bitch, I am beginning to really resent Jerome's accident. I feel I have put in over a year of working around this injury and that the whole time it has felt like I was trying to save a panic stricken drowning person who kept trying to hold my head under the water as they kept theirs above it. I just want it to be over with already so I can get back to training without all this added stress and worry. I prepared for my last comp with his accident looking overmy head and also while being in school full-time and rearing 3 kids. I am just tired, I guess.

Meaty Arms

I can now EZ curl 60 lbs! I can only do it once though. I can easily do 50x6x3.

Jerome keeps grabbing my arms and saying, "Your arms are getting meaty!" Hearing that just gets me so giddy! I tried to pull on a blouse the other day that has puffed sleeves with a fitted cuff over the biceps. Well, I could not get my upper arms through the sleeves. So I cut slits into the cuffs and now the shirt looks trashy but heck...I worked hard for those biceps! I am going shopping for Christmas and buying loads of sleeveless shirts to show off my new upper body.

Not sure if I am doing the comp in May or not. We are still waiting on orders out of here to Scott AFB. I hope to compete one last time here and then move and compete up there all in one season. Here is to being really disciplined....