I am leaving...for New York, that is. So if the boards are a little quiet, and a little dust settles over the keyboard, just know that when I return, I'll be more explosive than ever. Big plans are on the horizon. Big plans! I have a sense of confidence, of adventure, of sight into my future that I've never thought possible before.

My shoulder workout was phenomenal today. Only three exercises: side lateral raises, 20-pound dumbbells for 15 reps, Smith machine reverse press, and front lateral raises with a 35-pound plate (owww!). I have new striations in my shoulders and I think the front delts are actually filling out (or was that a remnant of my bout with ice cream on Sunday?). I had to rush through this workout, for like any girl, I waited until the last minute to get my packing done. My day was spent rushing from the hairdresser (she cut and highlighted my tresses...yeah, who am I kidding...tresses...ha!), to the nail salon (pink toes...very cute!), to the mall to get my eyebrows tweezed (ouch!) and to get just a few more outfits for shoots, and then a rush to the bank, a mad scramble for the store, and here I am...hours later, and I don't think I'll be getting any sleep. But for some reason, I'm wide awake! Nerves? Couldn't be...I'm not doing the competition, and thank goodness. I was incredibly worried about how I would feel flying up to New York and being around everyone. After all, they're dieted down, lean as I'd like to be, and looking incredible (of course, they didn't munch on a cheeseburger and a pint of Ben and Jerry's last Sunday, so I have one up on them...ha!). But I'm fine...truly fine. I have this sense of total security and comfort that my ultimate choice to sit this one out was truly the right one. I have no regrets.

I'll be doing what I do best...making others feel good about themselves. I can't wait! Now, would someone mind lending me a sleeping bag and a nice comfy pillow? They have yet to announce how many figure girls will be gracing the New York stage, and quite frankly, that worries me. Notice how anything without a price tag is well out of the reach of the wallet? Yeah, I have a feeling the same is applying to the Figure Nationals. No mention of the count is a troublesome sign that this will be the longest prejudging in history. Not even I, a figure competitor, could state with a straight face that my attention will be glued to the stage. If you're there, please come talk to me! Either that, or I'm going to be on my cell phone the whole time talking to Amanda or someone and trying to stay entertained...lol! Quarter turn to the right...quarter turn to the right...quarter turn to the right...thank you ladies. Sigh...what did I agree to? Lol!

I promise to finish reading The Da Vinci Code. I think I'll bring my CD player as well. And I might try to fall asleep on the plane, though it's usually impossible unless they have those moveable headrests that keep your head from tipping over and waking you up (those of us with long necks have a worse time with this problem...trust me!). I don't remember if I got an aisle seat or a window seat. Please, please let me have been smart for once and chosen an aisle seat. I have to run to the bathroom so much during a flight that it's absolutely embarrassing. And what's sad is that I get back and drink even more water, so I'm sure to have to get up again.

Okay...I have cookies to bake. I don't know why I promise these things, but I want a cookie, so I guess I better get my butt off of this computer and get it into the kitchen.

I look forward to returning and chatting with everyone on Wednesday! Details about the chat are on the homepage of the site; please don't miss it! Two sessions are available, so there are no excuses!!

Let me leave you with a couple of closing notes:

"If you are looking for Home and find instead a sand-pit, try looking for a sand-pit. Then you'd be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because you might find something that you weren't looking for, which might be just what you were looking for."

I thought that with the discussion of rain recently, this was very fitting: "It isn't much good having anything exciting like floods, if you can't share them with somebody."

Both are great finds from Pooh's Little Instruction Book. The bear actually thought about much more than just sticky, yummy honey.

Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back!

Jodi :)

Petey talked about dreams on the message board, and so when I ran across this poem by Emily Dickinson this evening, it kind of got me thinking. I have a feeling I'll be taking this book on the plane with me to New York on Thursday (good lord, I need to start packing....heels, bikinis, cookies, sanity...yep, I think that's everything!), along with The Da Vinci Code, which I know I'll finish and not have to worry about getting only snippets of it during cardio.

Dreams

Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain.
But so adjust my daily night
That it will come again.

I'm at a point where I want to make certain things happen in my life. I have this image of what my life should be...what I want it to be...but if I don't adjust my circumstances, then that image will fade as reality takes hold. I have to figure out how to do this though. Isn't that sometimes the hardest part? You know what road you must turn down, but getting there is a bit convaluted?

I recently reached a turning point for me. I don't know...that shoot I did with Jon, Tim, and Steve that weekend really opened up the floodgates of emotions, opened me up to...well...me. How long do we have to search for ourselves? I've had to really work through figuring out who I am and what I want. Dreams are fantastic. You can mold them and shape them into whatever your heart desires and whatever your mind can concoct. But most of the time, our dreams our buried in our subconscious. We never truly tap into our resources, into our destinies (and what is that anyway...who's in control of that? Are we? Do we control our futures, or do we just move when our strings are pulled and end up exactly where we were meant to be?) But if I expect a dream to become a reality, then I must wake up and grab it quickly, before my memory fades and my dream's existence disappears...only to return another evening when I'm too unconscious to be aware of it's power.

What is your dream? What do you want? And do you only achieve it in the middle of the night when the moon sits high in the sky and the world is quiet and your breathing has become even? When you are no more aware of your existence and your potential than you are of the beating of your heart? I want that awareness to rain down on me like the storm from last week.

Yes...I talked of "warm fuzzies" on the board, but I want to add one in here: the luxury of strolling about in the rain, not caring about getting soaked. The sky pours out its emotions, and I embrace them. It's exhilirating; it's like taking the rules and molding them into what you want...taking expectations and throwing them out the window. Where once you would have run to escape, you now stroll and accept what has come; where once you would have waited for dryness, you now rush to meet the challenge head on. Try it sometime...stand out in the rain on a warm summer day, and you'll feel alive too. It's you and nature intermingled.

I'm now going to mingle with my pillow. And dream a little dream that I hope to carry with me into the future of reality.

Jodi

I'm back. I went into the living room to grab Maya Angelou's book of poems (though I love so many of them, two of my favorites: "Caged Bird" and "Still I Rise"), and suddenly the following poured out from my fingertips. I can't make heads or tails of it, but there it is. And there it sits until I decide whether I like it or need to push a word here, bend a word there, mix a few up elsewhere. What do you think? I don't even have a title for it.

A crystal fog
So murky and blue
I cannot see
This vision of you

I squint and glare
In the bright sunlight
But still I'm blind
No matter how I fight

Push open a window
Feel a breeze
A soft trail of ice
Beneath my knees

Beads of sweat
Run down my face
I wonder how
I'll get out of this place

Take a moment
Let time stand still
Hold this space
And remember your will

A crystal fog
So murky and blue
Maybe now I see
This vision of you


Good night, everyone!

Jodi

I must share a bit of good news, but I'm not going to leak out a ton of it because I don't want to jinx it. Let's just say that a bit of music (really good music from what I heard tonight in the samples sent to me) and a bit of my words might create the right mix for a future ear. And that's all I'm letting free in terms of information!

I haven't posted a lot about my workouts, so let me discuss my leg workout today. Amanda drove out to my gym (she was running late, so I decided to run even later. I have to stay true to form...lol!) to do legs with me. She was supposed to take me through a really tough, high rep leg workout, but I think I kicked her butt a little bit too! She introduced me to a version of the leg press. Be very careful if you try this. Your joints must be aligned perfectly, and you must have good control doing presses with one leg at a time. Basically, you lie on one side, place your foot on the platform at an angle and keep your knee and hip joints even with the direction of your toes. You will then press, bringing the knee towards the chest and utilizing the lower glutes to really push the weight up (it'll almost look like you're doing a side kick). Hold onto the handle closest to you. It'll feel really weird for the first set, but you should be able to feel this all along the outer sweep of the quad and into the outer glute and hip region. I know that I feel it now! She had this bright idea of doing each leg for a minute at a time. Ha! Very funny! Not!!! I had a 35-pound plate on each side and was nearly crying in pain, but I managed to make it through. Mind you, we had done two sets of regular one-legged presses already, so my legs were already a bit shaky.

We then moved on to straight leg deadlifts with a barbell. I did 80 pounds for 20 reps and kept a wide stance, my toes facing forward rather than out. I like to change up the stance as well as the toe placement to hit the tie-ins differently each week. My butt is getting more and more sore as I write this! When I do these deadlifts, I stretch down to about midshin to right above the ankle. I have to make sure I don't involve the lower back, and if you stretch too low then that's exactly what happens. I want my glutes and hamstrings pulling me up, not my erectors (those column-looking things in the lower back). I also squeeze my glutes together at the top of the exercise, but that might be a bit too much information that you didn't really want to know (or maybe you did...lol!).

It was my idea to move on to the leg extensions, and I had suggested supersetting walking lunges with them, but Amanda thought some lateral step ups might be better. Lateral step ups are like regular step ups on the bench except that you are stepping to the side rather than in front of you. It was a nice change. I have to be careful with leg extensions, for I tend to want to do a ton of weight simply because I can. I stuck with 50 pounds and did sets of 20 with them, making sure to keep my hip joint at a 90-degree angle (I have to hold myself upright in the seat and not allow my back to lean against the back of the chair...when are they going to make machines for midgets...ahem...vertically challenged people?). I rotated my hips in a bit and turned my toes in together as I pushed the weight up and really squeezed my quads at the top. Burn, baby, burn!! Okay, more like wwwaaaahhh...I want my mommy type of burn...lol! I then hobbled to the bench and proceeded to do step ups as gracefully as one can when being a klutz and having jell-o for legs.

We finished this off with walking lunges outside up a hill. I could do those all day. Seriously. But Amanda got tired, so I decided to sympathize with her and stop when she stopped...lol! We managed to head over to the bikes and ride for 30 minutes and gossip. No, I won't tell you what we chatted about!

Okay, I just stood up to look for a book, and I really want to just sit back down and never get up again. Ouch!! Hold on a minute....

Okay, I'm frustrated. I get the words in my head and then hit the return button, and the screen won't budge!!! Aaarrggghh!!! I'm going to calm down, go eat, and then come back and finish this. I have lots to write about: my gym shoot with Dan Ray yesterday (two words: bicep workout clips...okay, so that was three. I have an English degree; that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it); my shoulder workout with Amanda; my plans for the New York trip, and my continuing discussion of my goals for the future. Of course, that is if y'all even read this! Lol! Sometimes I wonder if some of you just head straight for the bikini shots and skip over all of the jibber jabber I write...lol!! And there it is again...I just tried to make a new paragraph (I hate when people write in one long paragraph) and the return button is working on Blogger. I know it's not my keyboard! I'm talking with Amanda on IM's as I write this and I can press enter there and it works. Dang it!! Food...I need food to calm down. I'll be back!!

"Even though eating honey is a very good thing to do, there is a moment just before you begin to eat it which is better." Yes, another Winnie-the-Poohism. I can't help myself really, but this rumbly in his tumbly bear actually makes some sense. After all, he's had lots of time to think about life while waiting to be set free after that belly of his gets him stuck in tight situations.

But I run across this quote and I wonder if that's a part of what happened after Junior Nationals. A competitor has this great big buildup towards a show. The diet, the training, the planning, the visualization, the posing, the preparations, the running around...everything keeps the mind focused on one central goal, and the night before the show, the nerves race and the heart beats rapidly and the palms become clammy. I don't know about anyone else, but I sit and stare off into space and think how my future will change due to one event, one time in space. All the clock has to do is keep ticking, and a new path will appear before me. It happened this year in Chicago. On Thursday night, I could actually picture the trophy in my hands and see myself moving forward to the Figure Nationals and earning a pro card. Sure, doubt lurked about like a burglar in the night, waiting to steal away the moment of confidence, but all in all, I felt I had prepared properly and looked the best I ever had (minus the conditioning for the 2002 Junior Nationals, of course), so I didn't see why I wouldn't make top five. But I felt this same way for the Emerald Cup earlier in the year. Those same nerves jumped about and wouldn't leave me be. And an excitement burrowed into me. I don't know which is better...thinking about what can happen or actually experiencing what can happen.

I think the really successful people are the ones who are able to move from the unknown into reality. They don't get stuck in that moment before. They accept that the anticipation before biting into a delicious cheesecake might actually be better than the bite itself, but they still take a taste. I'm doing that. I'm moving ahead and working hard to make a few dreams turn into reality. I'm taking nibbles here and there and seeing what happens in the future.

I've spent an entire childhood and the past decade or so of adult life anticipating what can be. It looks beautiful in my mind. But I haven't truly put in every effort to make these things possible. Well, remember how I said I needed a fitness friend, one who could motivate me and make me move forward? Amanda has helped me a ton! I'm contacting photographers I never before had the gumption to contact. I'm organizing disks and images and separating out which ones will go onto comp cards and working to create more exposure for myself. I'm moving outside of my shell of uncertainty and making contacts. I almost feel like I'm in Charlotte's Web and I have a whole world to explore. Amazing...I'm in my thirties and yet sometimes the world looks just like it does to a child.