Un-Olympic Events

I've lost count of my many Un-Olympic events that I have failed to earn a medal.

It is Olympic time - summer games 2016 and a friend of mine had challenged all of us on FB to list our Un-Olympic events that failed to earn a medal.  This challenge made me remember a lot of Un-Olympic events in my life from: 'walking out the front door' (I get hurt a lot walking out the front door) to 'walking in saddle shoes after a rain storm'.  So, today a friend, Doug, tagged me in an awesome comment about a 41 year old gymnast currently competing in the Olympics and her tough vault which ended in her landing too hard and going forward and turning that disastrous landing into a somersault. I jut know that she meant to do that. It was all in her planning - I know it. Okay, maybe not, but she saved it! So, that landing made me remember my Un-Olympic event #5,498.

Picture this: Gymnastics, for gym class, at Mounds Park Junior High School -  1973 - 8th grade with one of my dearest friends, Linda S. Our gym teacher thought that Lindy and I would do great at gymnastics, so she had us work at whatever we wanted to do for extra credit for the class. Lindy and I played a lot of sports together: softball (eventually going to Nationals 5 years later), flag football, floor hockey, and volleyball (she was by my side when I landed on the volleyball and fractured my ankle - ooo, another Un-Olympic event, spiking the volleyball during warm ups and landing on it with your foot) and I was at her side when she dove into the pool and scraped the bottom of the pool with her nose (yet, another Un-Olympic event created by us). I helped her tape her broken nose (hey, we saw this on TV) so she could play softball (National tournament) and together we created a paste of baby powder and Noxzema to soothe our very sun burnt shoulders so we could wear our bras and polyester softball uniforms to play softball in the 200 degree Georgia heat. Neither one of them worked, but hey, we were in this together.

So back to 1973 and 8th grade gym class and our attempt at being gymnasts. We tried all of the gymnastic things - balance beam (yeah that didn't work), acrobatics (nope), parallel bars (couldn't lift ourselves up) - just think of the gym scene in Grease, where Danny Zuko is trying to get his letter and find a sport he could do - that would be the two of us in the middle of all of the gymnastic apparatus thingies. Our gym teacher, Miss Anderson, decided that Linda and I would be great at the vault (considering our epic performances on the other gymnastic apparatus, this one would be a piece of cake ). So, we were ready and psyched. We were the only two in the gym on the horse/vault and taking turns spotting each other.

We actually didn't do so bad, in our minds, until Lindy decided to be super girl. I had jut finished my klutzy attempt at running and hitting the whatchamacallit that you jump on to leap onto the horse and then do your thing in the air and hopefully land on your feet on the mat. My thing was surviving the leap. There was a whole lot of giggling from us as we were attempting to be gymnasts. And there was a whole lot of landing on the mat and flying forward on our faces as the other one was trying to catch the flying one to avoid injury. It probably looked more like a wrestling match as we tried to catch each other and ended up rolling off of the mat onto the floor. Then came the epic super girl attempt by Lindy. She took off running at super speed and leaped off of the jumpy thing and had perfect 10 form and with her arms in perfect form, her body lined up to make a perfect jump,landing and....then it happened: she flew right over the horse and landed in my arms and we both sailed off of the mat and rolled across the gym floor still holding on to each other for dear life. As we laid there on the cold floor, in our lovely two toned blue one piece gym suits and white knee highs, with our arms still wrapped around each other, We both decided right then and there that gymnastics was definitely not our sport. We stood up, brushed ourselves off and together decided we were sticking to softball and walked (possibly limped) out of the gym side by side. We didn't look back.

And, here is the video of the 41 year old gymnast from Uzbekistan, that brought back the memory of my attempt at being a gymnast. Thank you Doug for tagging me in the post to see this. Thank you for making me laugh, I needed that.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/oksana-chusovitina-attempts-dangerous-vault-olympic-final

The forgotten blog

I kind of forgot that I had a blog. I had started it with the intent to type every day. Or once a week. Once a month for sure. Um, it's been longer than a month. I was really shocked to see that it's been 4 years. I hope to type more than a few times every 4 years. Now I feel really silly, that I've ignored my blog for 4 years. It's not that I haven't witnessed God's smiles in the past 4 years, I have. I just have felt like I didn't have what it takes to write anything that anyone would want to read. I was very discouraged. A lot has happened in the last 4 years that has taken the wind out of my writing sails. It's been a frustrating 4 years, that's for dang sure. So, here I go again. And I have to acknowledge and thank my adopted daughter, Stefanie, for asking her friends on Facebook who has a blog. Sweetie, you are my smile from God to make me start up my blog again. And, thank you to my youngest son, Mark, for reading what I type to let me know how it is and for encouraging me to listen to God's nudges and not argue with the Lord when He said in that still small voice: 'write.' So here goes - again......I hope I entertain readers with how I view this thing called life and God's smiles. And, it is rather difficult to write a blog - to type your feelings on life makes you feel quite vulnerable. It's kind of like those bad dreams that you have of being back in high school and your are either in your pajamas or, ahem, not in your pajamas. My intent in writing my blog is to make you smile. or laugh. Maybe help you grow closer to God and see His smiles in everyday happenings. I know for myself, finding God's smiles in everything has taken a number of years of letting go and letting God; of trusting Him with my life and my family; of opening my eyes to all that He has shown me on this journey that is life. So, some of my blogs will definitely be about God's smiles that I have noticed and, like today's, just my own smiles on what I have notice in this crazy world of ours. I hope, dear readers (if any are out there) that I entertain you with how I see life. God bless you! So, here we go again......

The following is my view from August 1,2016: We have subscribe to a few services to watch TV shows and movies and I shall use only initials as I don't want to get into any copyright trouble for using their names, but I think you will be able to figure out who, or what, I am talking about. One of the viewing services I shall call AP. I am very excited to have AP at my fingertips. Seriously, it is at my fingertips, it’s on my laptop. I’ve been going through all of the lists and finding things to watch. I just finished watching all 6 seasons of Downton Abbey. I think I was the only person on my Facebook friends list who didn’t watch all episodes on channel 2, aka PBS, religiously. I loved the show, but just kept forgetting it was on Sunday night.  I watched enough of the episodes to know that I love Maggie Smith’s character, the Dowager Duchess. So, I watched every episode in a little over a week. I loved it.  I will probably watch it again. It was like a really good book and all of the characters became family you didn’t want it to end. So, I decided to check out to see what else AP has to offer.  

I typed in the word ‘exercise’ and hit the little magnifying glass icon. To my surprise, 252 pages came up with about 20 titles on each page (I think, I didn’t count). I am looking for a specific exercise show that I can watch – I never said I was going to do the exercises, but I do like to watch them and think that I could do that exercise, or maybe that one and then I go on with my daily business. I used to exercise with the daily 1/2 hour shows back in my younger days, I did seriously, but I can’t remember what they are called, but I figured if I just typed in the word ‘exercise’ I might be able to find them. I didn’t expect 252 pages of at least 20 shows per page. As I am perusing all of the exercise shows and clicking on a few or three to add to my watch list, I did notice a few that I am sure are not exercise videos, one starred Rosalind Russell and I don't believe she made an exercise video.  There was even videos to, um, build up your backside. I have enough backside thank you very much and I don’t care to make it any bigger than it is. My goal is to make the backside smaller. I have to say that some of these titles for actual exercises made me blush and bust out laughing. 

And, just for the record, I shall not click on a yoga video. I tried yoga once, a number of years ago and I fell on my head. I really did. I decided right there and then that yoga was not for me. And, did you know that there is even a belly dancing video for pregnancy? I know! It's for the 3^rd trimester of pregnancy, and it's belly dancing for labor.  It’s been a few years since the birth of my youngest son, but I know for a fact, belly dancing would not have been something I would have wanted to do. The mere suggestion could have possibly caused someone to be injured. Seriously injured. My poor husband tried cracking a joke and I just about choked the life out of him. I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind deciding to belly dance while enduring pain that feels as though a mack truck is trying to escape from your body. 

And much to my surprise, as I am glancing through the titles, still looking for my specific show, I found that they also have in the exercise category, a video to relax with: relaxing to the sounds of a toilet. I’m not kidding. For 1 hour and 4 minutes, you can relax to the sounds of a working toilet. Who? What? Why? Seriously, it’s really offered for your viewing, or rather listening pleasure – 1 hour and 4 minutes of the sound of a toilet to relax you. I know that listening to a toilet for 64 minutes is not going to relax me one bit.  That would seriously drive me nuts and make me have to go to the bathroom! If that relaxation won’t work for you, you can also listen to the sounds of rain on a tent. I'm thinking that would not relax me as my family can attest to what happens when I hear a storm on the horizon and we are in a tent. The sound of rain on a tent to me means: water dripping in to the tent, moisture building up and causing my hair to expand like Rosanne Roseannadanna's hair, wind to cause the tent to fall on us, thunder and lightening, lightening striking the trees we are under, and the list goes on. Yeah, I am ready for anything when camping. So when I hear rain on a tent, my first instinct is to execute an evacuation to safer and drier places, also known as the back of the station wagon at 2 in the morning. Yep, I did this on one of our camping trips. And then I sat up to await the dreaded storm, that I knew I heard. After, sitting in a cramped and very warm car for ½ an hour and no storm arrived, I decided to investigate and discovered that the noise I heard was the neighboring camp sites fire. I woke my sleeping family (including the dog) to tell them all was clear (and dry) and we can go back to the tent. They weren’t very happy with me when I admitted that what I heard was the neighboring campers fire and it really did sound like rain - it did! But I reminded them that they all did very well for our first (and last) camping fire drill on emergency evacuations during a thunderstorm while under trees and in a tent. I know I would do better at camping if I was in an RV. or maybe a hotel. with a pool. and served breakfast. or maybe had room service. 

I’m now going back to peruse the  very long list of exercise videos, which also includes a Brazilian war dance workout. That may come in handy when in the woods. I shall add that to my watch list. I’m a good scout mom – be prepared. You never know when an opportunity may arise and you need to break out into a Brazilian war dance to scare off a bear, or a wolf, or maybe a squirrel when out in the wilderness at a campsite with a pool and showers. I shall be prepared. Maybe.