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Hey, we must have a round-up of some awesome Olympics stuff, no? Like this clip of Dara Torres (gush) who makes her stretches do double work for her if you scroll down to watch. Or hey, how about eating 12,000 calories a day like Michael Phelps? (Mmmm, french toast.) Maybe we could just sing the praises of Olympic heroes before, like Ray Ewry, who held the records for the most gold medals, including one for the olden days event, standing high jump—a record of five feet, five inches (meaning he could clear me if I stooped one inch.) Little known fact: these three stories gave rise to the expression, “Stretch like Torres, eat like Phelps, jump like Ewry, live happy you freak of nature.” Yeah.

Now while we are talking gold, I want to hand out a medal of my own. And I’m even going to do it in the style of the Games, my own homage, yo, with an announcer and everything. Here we go. I’ve been kind of moody lately, which is code for “very difficult to be around” with my combination of weird defensiveness and ultra sensitivity. [Here is where the blogger starts the compulsory whining element of her program. This is really her strong element, even in a crowded field, and she's taken the national title in it three years in a row now.] My ulcer has even returned for the first time in years, which adds to my cheery demeanor. I know a small part of it is I really miss teaching classes, cuz I’m not doing that at this exact moment, though I hope to remedy that in the near future. But I never realized how much stress-relief and joy I got from just making other people suffer, and then having them curse me for it later. You know how people talk about liking tangible results for their work, like “oh, I built this cabinet with my own hands, what a good feeling”? I guess my version was hearing “you devil, that was sadistic and slightly fun.” [Very successful whining. Note the full extensions in her bitching. Just masterful. She's really at the top of her game.]

Anyhow, I’m about as fun to be with right now as a snake trying to swallow a hedgehog, and apparently very into bizarre down-homey expressions as a side effect of my spiral into madness. And that’s where my mother comes in.

Back story: I mentioned a while back that my mom, while she may drop an f-bomb here on FF for fun, is infinitely less foul than I am. [Okay, she's working on the tangential self-revelation portion of her program now. The judges may not like that she mentions another human being here, but let's see if she can bring it back to self-involvement soon.] In fact, she’s quite sweet, and generous with praise, and fairly sentimental, and wells up easily over touching commercials, and so on. She has barely a bitter bone in her body, and she likes to tell me how strong and wise I am and how proud she is of me.

So while she is offering sincere compliments and hugs, I’m more likely to make an off-color joke or twelve. And as you know, I’m maybe the opposite of all the above, at least most of the time. If I cry, it’s because I’m really PMSed and it usually comes from rage. When I awkwardly tell someone they are doing a good job at something and they doubt me, I laugh because I know my life would be so much easier if I could say kind things when it was warranted, let alone offering them up for the sake of someone’s ego. [Ooooh, well-done. It looked like she was going out of bounds there for a minute, but she brought it back around to her own self. Good execution.]

Now, I respect everyone’s differences, so every once in a while I get it in my mind that I should say something nice to my mom without adding some crass reference or couching it all in bitter humor. Aaaand I’ve probably managed to do that exactly zero times and counting. But while I’m over here having a shitty head-fuck time, you know what my mom did?

First, she sent me a card (another difference: she sends me cards for like, Arbor Day, but you’ll never ever get a card from me) and on the cover it said, “Bitch? Moi?” You know, that kinda touched me, because it wasn’t her style but it showed she was being nice about mine.

But here was the great thing she did next. She came down and did a personal training session with me. [Okay, this is a tricky element, the story telling, she's fallen down here in practice, so note the concentration...] Now, my mom does yoga, and Pilates, and works with a trainer on strength training, and she’s reversed much of her osteoporosis as a result. And she patiently listened while I gave her my annoying trainer feedback on what is great about her program (her strength training is killer-good) and where I’d tweak it. Then I get her into our barn/training hell hole, and put her through some fucked up shit. She has really awesome push ups, better than most people I’ve trained, and a natural back squat, and I know because she had to do a hundred million or so, plus lunges and rows and push presses and the worst of all, running for every round. Yes, I did that to my own mother, the woman who squeezed me out of her parts-I-don’t-like-associating-with-my-mom, the woman who raised me and bought me school supplies and made me Halloween costumes, I made that same woman do a bunch of stuff and then run. EVIL, thy name is li’l ol’ me.

Oh, and when we finished all that “we” (meaning my mom while I looked on) did kettlebell swings and upright rows and box jumps. [The blogger is clearly going for endurance. Can she finish the program in the alloted time? Will she soil herself in the process? Let's watch.]

So during the first round of agony I told my mom that people often call me “bitch” and curse at me when I train them, and she should feel free to do that too if necessary, though I understood it might be weird to think of her sweet kid that way. She sort of chuckled like it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. By the third round of running I began to wonder if she might in fact use the c-word on me, or perhaps get a little violent. But even though it was hard, she of course did it all without stopping once, and even took the first jogging steps of every round, because she’s a champ, and a total badass.

Then the next day she called me and left me a message. [Okay folks, the blogger is now totally bored with using the announcer convention, so she's dropping it now. TYPICAL.] Because I’m me, I braced a little for the sweetness, it chafes my natural sourness. And her message said kindly, “Kelly, I just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you…” Then she laughed dryly and went on, “Every time I go down stairs, with every step I take. I’m sore all over. We sure found muscles that, um, weren’t being used. Thanks.”

So fucking what if I welled up? Yeah, my mom made me feel better, because she told me I hurt her. I don’t pretend to be a healthy person. But it was just nice of her to say it, and to say it in the way I’d most wanna hear it. And that, people, is why my mother gets the gold medal, because she’s good and she made me feel good. The end. Now pretend I finished with my arms up and didn’t even take the little hop-step I usually do when attempting a particularly sentimental dismount.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under aw, blah blah, body building, exercise, feelings, healthy crap, love, parents, running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.