Cowgirls Don't Cry

The cartoon above makes me laugh because my husband is so muscular that he has trouble buckling his own seatbelt. I love watching him twist as far as his body will go and practically diving at the seatbelt, frantically trying to grab it like some liferope or something. Crazy! Well, one thing is certain...I will NEVER have this problem LOL!

When I was little, I used to ride rodeo and horseshows. I did rodeo pageants on my cute little pony and also barrelraced my ponies. I was little! Only four and got my first horse at five. My very first pony was a mean little cuss who would try ot throw me at every chance, rub my legs against barbed fence, try to squirm away from any saddle or bridle wearing. Just a real pain in my ass! I did not like him. but then my daddy bought me a pretty little white pony who was not treated so kind by another littleboy. he was my pride and joy! I would race him out of the barn and pull sharp on the reigns to get him to rear up and my daddy would run out and scream at me and then take away my pony for playing so rough and dangerous. I had no fear! I would get thrown or fall off a horse when barrel racing or breaking in the new ones and would often get the wind knocked out of me. I wanted to cry the first time I can recall it but my daddy said don't cry, just get back on right NOW or you will be too afraid to do it later. And he would pick me up and put me right back in the saddle and say get back to work. And I would. I know this advice has served me well all the days of my life.

Right now my RA is trying to claim my life in every way. But I am refusing to let it! I am back in the saddle every day, not crying about it and limping around like everyone should pity poor little me. I have a new lifting program that will hopefully allow me to keep my strength but use less reps so less damage on my joints. I also have recommitted to my diet. Not that I was far from it ever but you know how it goes, a little slap from life and you start to slip on the diet. I got to keep that shit under control! Otherwise, cookies day and night for me LOL!

Last night, had a fight with hubby (still fighting) and got so mad at him, I drove to DQ for one of those Pecan Mudslides. I got one but I only ate very little of it. I decided to just do the right thing at that moment and just get that one moment right. I have no idea what will happen next and can not change what I already have done in the past but I can control RIGHT NOW. So I left the ice cream to melt in the car and went to a late night show and watched Coraline. It was good to get away from it all and not think about treats or problems. The movie was really good, too!

Tonight I will be doing my first workout on my new program. I will let y'all know how the first week goes with my RA. I have 3 workouts per week now and with a day's rest between them. I do this for 4 weeks then I have another plan for the following 4 weeks. Let's see where I am at in 8 weeks. Hopefully, further than where I have been while I was in remission. That would be so cool!!!!

RA

Sorry, no cool pics LOL!

Just dropping a note to let everyone know I havenot fallen off the bandwagon and quit blogging because of it. I am still doing regular workouts and eating about 80-90% on plan. I am hanging steady on the scale. Not too worried about it, though. Right now I have a bigger problem!

I have rheumatoid arthritis and have had it since I was a walking, talking toddler. Docs missed it until I was age 9. Went into remission in my teens, though, so bad thing really. But have always had to treat with aspirin therapy and some minor physical therapy in order to be able to lift weights like most normal people do. I spend almost a half hour to an hr getting ready to lift with all the weird stretching and warm ups I have to do in order not to damage my joints further. I have to be very very careful as well with my fat intake and what kind I am eating. Missing one day of CLA or EFA's will leave me locked up in certain joints and in a lot of pain.

So here I am, out of remission, back into a full on flare up. I am really hurting and am trying to keep up with my prior level of strength and intensity. I am having to change from free weights to machines and stability balls and bosu balls and body weight exercises. I also have to push through the pain in some things and in others know when enough is enough and to BACK OFF or face permanent destruction in my joints or ligaments/tendons. Right now I am so inflamed that my eyeballs, inner and outer ears, spleen, and the nerves under my middle toes are also inflamed and feeling a lot of piercing hot pains almost constantly. I am on naproxin right now waiting fo rmy doc appt so I can go back on a regualr med to get this under control.

I am afraid to tell the doc I lift because they nix that for RA patients, other than light lifting. They want me to stick with PT and the warm water pools and water aerobics. Can't see that stuff getting me back to the stage, can you? I am going to ask about steroids and see if it would really be counterproductive to my ligaments/tendons/joints to use them. I have to be careful that my muscle strength does not outstrip my ligament/tendon strength and damage my joints even further. What I really need is a rheumatologist who is knowledgeable about weight training. That would be a Godsend!

Oops!!!

This pic is ZERO makeup, I swear! Her lips are red from being chapped LOL! And she was super cold and wanted to go home, not do pics so she is glaring at me. But still, look at how green her eyes are! And this hair! So pretty...

I just posted but I want to post a few pics of my daughter so people can see how beautiful God made her. She is WONDERFUL in every way and I love her to pieces. I am so blessed ot have a daughter like her! Beauty, brains, a kind heart, she is the total package. An angel!!! I will look over her pageant pics but I am hesitant to put them on here because with the pageant Glitz makeup, you can't recognize her and I worry about child stalkers who look for pageant girls. These pics are of my daughter WITHOUT the pageant glitz and glitter. A normal girl. BTW....that first pic is from when she did her robotics competition. She wants to go into engineering in college.

If there are any Tracker Divas who want to see her pageant pics, including headshots, I will send them to you via personal email. Just email me your addy through here or tracker and I will set you up through Kodak Gallery to view her stuff in one folder.

Okay...I am outta here! Gotta go eat some dead animal.

Just Some Brew-Ha-Ha Today....

No cool or gross picture or anything to brighten the post, just gonna be my rambling thoughts today. I have had a lot of stuff floating in my head for awhile and nothing has seemed to work itself out so I thought, why not post it here and get it OUT of my head? Maybe throwing it out to the Universe will help untangle some of this knotted mess that floats between my ears, yes?


Mess #1. My weight: It isn't changing, up ro down, nothing. I am frustrated. I was four weeks into a hard core clean diet and my weight was climbing and it wasn't muscle, it was FAT!!!! So I started cheating out fo frustration and my weight began to fall again. So now I diet half-ass and my weight is stablized at where I started 6 weeks ago. Hmmm.....But my lifts are going up and so as long as I eat, my strength grows. That CAN"T be a bad thing, right? Maybe since I am classic ectomorph, I need more time for bulking than other women do. I am tall and on the skinny side (except for my butt which is HUGE!!!) and my bones are bird thin. I spent a lifetime on next to no nutrition and so my body just hordes fat, be it from clean calories or dirty calories. I think I might be one of those rare people (all of them ecto's) who get to be scrawny strong little shits and no muscle to show for it. And I am Irish genetics and so we end up looking wirey anyways. So there I am with that. Frustrated at working my ass off and seeing no changes except for some good strength. Don't get me wrong, I love the strength and the stares I get in the gym for it but I started lifting so I could gain muscle mass and change my physique into something wondrous. Ain't happening and I am pissed.

Mess #2. Squats: I now hate them. Well, I mean, I still love doing the exercise cuz there is something about doing them that is exhilerating but since I, again, am not seeing muscle growth from it, I hate them. It seems to be a perfectly pointless exercise then, huh? Considering that I often have some nerve that is getting pinched somewhere and so my legs go numb while squatting. I can usually prevent numbness by keeping a narrow stance so it isn't always a problem but sometimes it still occurs. Not to mention it gives me a pain in the neck, literally. And before anyone posts saying, you are not doing them correctly, yes I am. How do I know? because several men, including my powerlifter husband, have coached me on them. And I competed in one rinky-dinky powerlifting meet and tehy said I had excellent squat form and depth for being a scrawny woman. So I am dropping my low-rep, high weight squats for low-weight, high(er) rep squats and putting my max effort into the leg sled and deadlifts. I have been using the recumbent bike set to the "Hills" program with some intensity level cranked up and that really burns my quads. I am seeing some minor definition come into my quads this last week from doing the bike so I am going to continue it.

Mess #3. My daughter and her pageants: She is wonderful at modeling, is exceptionally pretty, is beautifully photogenic, and is highly fashionable at her pageants. Yet she isn't taking home the crowns she deserves. And she has been crying lately after the pageants. I can't bear to see her so sad over something so frivolous as pageants! So I am going to talk to her indepth today and see if she would like to try something else, like competitive cheer, or science camp, or pottery, anything other than pageants. I hate to sound like a doting and blind mother, especially one that is vindictive, but here in this local area, my daughter is getting the shaft in these pageants in favor of some local girls who are in tight with the pageant directors. Last weekend, baby girl out-modeled another girl on stage and had way more stage presence, and the judges scored her the same as this other girl in modeling and personality. The girl she was ranked equal to stumbled on stage quite a bit, had to have their pageant coach tell her where to go, and did not smile (she actually growled at her mom over the judges heads!), and she made zero eye contact with the judges which is a BIG pageant no-no. We were shocked they ranked her equal to my daughter. So were other parents. Then yesterday, we got a repeat performance from this same girl and my daughter won most fashionable in her group, but they gave the crown to this other girl and placed my daughter as 2nd alternate behind another girl who modeled as well as my daughter but did not have a very nice pageant outfit. The judges awarded my girl "Most Fashionable" in her group and wrote rave reviews in the judges cards and criticized the other two girls (there was one other contestant who was new and was no contender because she is still learning the ropes and she was placed last) and yet they gave the crown to the girl who was the worst (besdies teh new girl) and gave 1st alternate to the other girl. I have had two other parents tell me she will never get a crown here because she is not in tight with the pageant directors like these girls are. what really pisses me off is that I pay the same money for the same modeling coach (who is one of the director's daughters) and when it is baby girl's turn on stage, she does not get any coaching from her modeling coach and no acknowledgment that she is even at the pageant, no Hi! or hugs or nothing. But the other girls get loads of help while they are on stage (truthfully they need it and my girl doesn't but still....some encouragement would be nice) and she sits with them and helps them with hair and makeup and is just very friendly overall to these other girls (who are winning crowns when they don't have the skills to be winning them) and leaves my daughter feeling left out. So there is my dilemma. I have to do what is best for her even if she doesn't want it. She wants to move up to national pageants and I am just nervous that we will encounter the same thing at a National pageant as we do at the local level only it will be more expensive! Grrr.....I want my daughter to win something to make her feel she is being rewarded for her hard work. even in school, they told her her science project was "too good" and thought she had parental help (she did NOT!). So see, my heart is wrapped up lately in how my littel girl is being treated by others and it hurts very much to see her get discounted the way that she is when she very much deserves to win SOMETHING.

Mess #4. My Figure Comp in May: How in God's name is this gonna happen when I can't drop weight??? It is very frustrating because I am on the edge of some very major changes and have been for awhile and yet NOTHING changes. I have some people at my gym who just can't stop commenting on my muscles but I swear I have NONE! I see a little while I am lifting but it doesn't last. it isn't like I could pump up for a show and stay pumped long enough to place anything other than last to middle if I was lucky. I want to win this time! I am working so damned hard! I deserve to see my body change into what I have always dreamed of. I won't step on stage until I have that body I dream of:( I am gonna be picky this time because I feel I deserve it this time. last time, I just went on stage as the "toned" girl who was more skinny than anything. And I got away with that in the Novice division but there is no more Novice chace for me. I have to bring it or stay home this go round. With my periods being so frequent, and my mass not coming on although I am eating what I should to grow, I am considering asking my doctor for steroids. I know...GASP!!!....stop right there, Danielle. But I have grown desperate! I have been lifting for about 3 years now with no breaks and no derailment, all the while focusing on growing mass and gaining strength. And I wonder with me having RA (rheumatoid arthritis) if steroids would help my joint pain, too. It might be that it is what I am missing. I don't think the docs were correct in saying my hormones were screwed up. I might ask to see another doc and just really push to see an edocrinologist and then ask for steroids to set me up. Who knows? But something has got to change and I know I am not well.

Well, it has been good spilling the crap out of my head. I apologize for all the typos. I SWEAR I went to college, LOL!

I'm Whooped!!!

Haven't been blogging lately because my daughter has a few pageants lined up and that means I am running my ass off getting everything in order for her. But I know she will return the favor when it is MY turn to go on stage for Figure and she will spend hours watching me practice posing and doing turns and walks in 5" heels and encouraging me the whole way! LOL! We are getting her a new modeling/pageant coach and I think it is really going to bump up her stage polish. She saw some girls kick butt and take names at this last pageant who took nearly every crown from the local girls. My daughter was just in awe of their modeling. She kept saying, 'Mom, do you think that girl has the same model coach as that other girl?" When we found out they all had the same coach, we signed her up! They were awesome! They truly deserved to win every crown, they were THAT good!

As for ME...I have been cheating a little here and there but nothing major. I am hitting weights as planned and adding in a 20-25 minute cardio session right after weights instead of training cardio seperately from weights like I WAS doing. Now, the scale is finally dropping. I hope the trend continues. I just have to be careful not to let the cheats "grow" as they can, and you all KNOW what I am talking about! I think white-knuckling my diet was just not a smart move so early in the game. I think I shocked my body and it held on to everything I was eating although I was getting enough calories. I wonder if it recognized comp prep and knew what was to come, LOL! Anyway, the scale likes me lately so let's keep fingers crossed and hands off the doughnuts, right?