Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

Anna on Safari

(After viewing this you will see why Jack usually buys an absolute buttload of the animal feed, since Anna tends to simply dump the feed out instead of rationing it out.)

On Saturday we took Anna to Global Wildlife, a free-roaming wildlife preserve. It was seriously stinkin’ hot, but Anna just utterly adores going there, and is fine with the heat as long as we keep pouring water over her. Unfortunately I didn’t really have the option of soaking my shirt in water… okay, I probably did have the option, but I think the others in our safari train would have looked askance at me had I done so.

This place is really terrific for kids because they can get right up to the animals and feed them. The zoo has far more variety of wildlife, but except for the petting zoo, there’s not much interaction. Jack has taken her out there several times before, but this was my first time.

Unfortunately, we went rather late in the day (but not late enough for it to be cooler) and so the animals were kinda already stuffed full of food from previous tours. We never could get the giraffes to come over to the train, though Jack tried valiantly.

But, even when I was doing some serious wilting in the heat, Anna was still having a blast.

The last segment of the safari is the cows and buffalo (actually they’re bison and not buffalo, but everyone calls them buffalo, including Anna, and if you ask Anna what she saw at Global Wildlife she will screech, “BUFFFFAAAAALLLOOOOOOOOOO!”) The cows all have incredibly long slimy tongues, and I tried to get Anna to touch one of the tongues, but she wanted no part of that.

I survived my first powerlifting competition, coming in second in my weight class and fourth overall! (Women’s division) I started out with a very tame 120 (a weight I KNEW I could press), then moved up to 135 (which is my raw max), and for my third and final lift I went for 150… and made it! (I have a great video of that lift that Jack took, but it’s going to have to wait until I can get to work and edit it for length.) I wore a bench shirt for the meet, but instead of using the super-duper one that is not yet broken in, I wore a very low-level “Blast” shirt that worked out perfectly.

Anyway, the meet itself was a heckuva lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of great people in the powerlifting community, got to see some incredibly strong men lift some incredibly heavy weights, and had the chance to see Jesse Kellum lift 800 pounds (at a bodyweight of 211. The man is Fucking Strong!)

I also (unfortunately) had the chance to see what happens when a powerlifter attempts a very heavy bench press when he has a stress fracture in his wrist. Everyone heard the snap, and the scream that followed. The weight rolled and the spotters managed to keep the 575 pounds from crushing the man, then he rolled off the bench and screamed again–an unbelievable sound born of the agony that only comes when a bone decides to see what the world is like on the outside of the skin. He was instantly surrounded by people with ice, splints, and towels, and fortunately a lot of paramedics, doctors, firefighters, and police do powerlifting. The meet was held up for about an hour as he was tended to and subsequently bundled off in an ambluance, and then the meet went on.

A few pictures:

This is me in my bench shirt. As you can see, it does lovely things for my boobs.

This is my second lift (135 pounds.)

This is the whole group from my gym. Yeah, I’m the only chick.

And, this is me with Jesse Kellum, the man who pressed 800 pounds. (Also, the one who talked me into competing in this meet.)

And, of course, I have to include an Anna Pic, since no entry is complete without one. I just have to say that Anna was amazingly good, especially considering how long the day was and how little there was for her to do. She only had one meltdown, and that was a short one.

Thanks to the marvels of overnight shipping, I now have a new power cord for my laptop, which means I can cease rationing the battery life and actually post some pictures and stuff.

Unfortunately you only get three pics today since I didn’t have time to crop and resize all the ones I wanted to post.

So, here in all of its blue, black and green glory, is the bruise that the bench press shirt left on my arm. Actually, the shirt itself only left the thin red stripey bruises. It was the stupid “sleeves” that I’d put on earlier that were supposed to make it easier to get the shirt on (which, by the way, did NOT) that left the big blotchy bruise. Or rather, it was the attempt to remove them after they’d become stuck under the shirt that left considerable petechial hemorrhaging on my right forearm and the nifty bruise on my upper arm. (We finally got it all off by just taking the whole damn thing off and starting from scratch at getting the bench shirt on without the benefit of the sleeve thingies.)

Next up in the pics is the St. Louis Arch. This is the closest I got to the Arch.

And, finally, this is my darling child on her Easter Egg hunt. It’s kinda hard to tell fom this picture, but the line of eggs on the ground is the trail she was leaving behind as she walked through the yard. She’d put an egg in her basket, and then as she went to the next one, she’d leave a trail of eggs as she allowed the basket to bump on the ground behind her. It was Too Cute.

I am deeply contemplating writing some Wiggles slash-fic.

Now, if I can just get through Superbowl weekend…
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Turns out that not only did I have the highest score on the Sgt’s exam, I had the highest score EVER. Ha!
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I also managed to barely squeak in under the wire for sending off a submission to Polyphony 6 and getting it postmarked by the 31st. I was at the post office at 3:45 pm on the 31st to make sure my submission got the right postmark on it. I fully expect that story to be the last one received by the editors, considering how slow the mail service is around here lately.

Unfortunately, it’s not the story I wanted to send to them. But, time just got so crunched up I never had enough time to sit down and make the other story right. It’s going to be a good story, eventually, but it sure ain’t there right now. However, the story I did send is by no means a bad story, and actually it may have a better shot since it’s kinda unclassifiable, which pretty much falls into the guidelines for Polyphony. Oh well. We’ll see.
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I got up at an ungodly hour this morning again, and cranked out twenty minutes on the bike. I’m actually a bit discouraged at how slowly the weight is coming off (as indicated on the scale.) I’m trying hard to remind myself that I’m almost definitely gaining muscle which would throw my weight off, but it’s still rather hollow comfort. The need to have a scale tell you how fat you are is deeply ingrained, and so when it shows that I’ve lost totally zilcho since Sunday it gets a mite bit discouraging. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m still losing inches. I would just really like for the numbers on the scale to start plummeting.
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And, Anna is beginning to learn her letters. Right now she knows K, O, P, R, T, W, and S. I think she needs to focus on vowels a bit more if she intends to do any serious reading in the near future.

So, I was over at my sister’s house (doing continued work on the costumes for the revived-version-since-the-original-got-fucked-by-Katrina Fucking Play That Will Not Die, otherwise known as Beauty & the Beast) and I was telling her about the DVR we got when we switched back to cable, and how we absolutely luuuuurrrrrrvvvve it, and how cool and great it is. And I said, “And it’s nice to be able to rewind things that you’re watching, especially if you live with someone who is rather deaf who is always saying things like, ‘What’d they say? What’d they say?’”

At which point Anna came running in from the other room, screeching, “Daddy? Daddy? Daddy?”

We took Anna to the zoo yesterday. They’ve done an incredible job of cleaning it up ad fixing it up after the storm, and there are only a few places where you can really see where it was ravaged.

Anna had an absolute blast! She’s old enough now that she can enjoy the animals. Much of the time we didn’t even try to keep her in the stroller, and did our best to keep up with her as she ran, screeching, from exhibit to exhibit.

Well, except when she was riding on Daddy.

She also got to touch all sorts of neato wildlife.

We also tried to go on the carousel, or “flyin’ horses” as it’s known down here. That was not as successful. Anna flatly refused to sit on any of the animals, so we compromised by sitting in one of the “sleigh” seats.

But, all in all, Anna enjoyed herself.

Anna pumps up.