DawnPapuga.com — Reality 101

This week has been one big ball of exciting craziness after another.  I’m going to be travelling for business this week, and I don’t know if I’ll get to post much.  I have some folks who have expressed interest in contributing to Reality 101 anonymously (some not so anonymously), and what better time to give you some Non-Dawn biased rants?  No time like the present, I say! 

A few quick points before I finish going crazy by being pulled in 93 different directions and someone mistakes me for a chicken with my head cut off:

• Thank you all for the kind words about my “Dear Alexis…” letter!  I didn’t expect such a response, and your comments and emails made my day, so thank you! 
• I know that there’s some complaint about the focus of these Olympics being on the swimmers (Particularly Michael Phelps–see below for gratuitous Michael Phelps photo), but I don’t care.  Hear that?  I love it!!  For someone who gets to watch swimming and diving really only every 4 years, I am happier than a kid in a candy store with a free pass for everything!  I’m getting updates, watching replays, and watching my TV, browser screen, and finishing paperwork and writing simultaneously every night.  It’s like my addiction to March Madness, but worse.  Much, much worse.  I hung up on a family member because they wouldn’t stop talking during the synchronized diving events last night.  Had they been in the same room, I assure you that duct tape would have been put to good use.  The focus has been on Swimming, Diving, Gymnastics, and Volleyball.  Honestly, I’m pretty sure the IOC and Networks must have crawled into my head while I was asleep and created the perfect Olympic schedule to run just for ‘lil ol’ me.  Thanks!
• Randomly:  I am a huge fan of Mesquite BBQ Kettle Cooked Potato Chips.  Yum.
• If you’re itching to get a rant out, a top ten list of snarky wisdom, or just saw something that makes your head want to explode, let me know.  Who knows, maybe this will turn into a regular feature!  (Don’t worry… I know I flubbed the Friday 5 last week–on a movie week, no less–so I’ll keep that the same this week.  I hope.  I’ll try.  I promise.  Look, don’t glare at me like that, I’m only one woman!! )

And now…. My new desktop image and a gratuitous Michael Phelps picture (Oh, I can assure you there will be more…):

Oh, You’re welcome….  :) 

(L to R:  ChachiAKA8Bit, DjLunchbox, DocRemedy, and FatherSpoon)

As previously noted, I’m laid up with a nasty Kidney infection which means I couldn’t even make it to the YinzTeam game last night to cheer my friends on from the sidelines.  In short, that sucks.  Yeah, we’re all connected through the social media outlets and we’re able to keep tabs on one another throughout the day, but part of what makes the Pittsburgh New/Social media crowd so unique (at least in my eyes) is that we use those platforms to actually get together and have fun.  I’ve met some amazing people over the past year or two, and I’m thankful for all of them.

While balled up in what feels like a permanent question mark position, I got a text from @DjLunchbox to check my email.  The pictures I found waiting for me made me smile for the first time since I’ve been in the fetal position with this illness.  The one above is my favorite, and it means a lot to me.  And Father Spoon (aka Doogle) posted a run down of the madness that was the last regular season YinzGame–I understand there were planks to walk…

Thanks, yinz guys, for making me feel better and missed!  You really made my day.

Mark Ruiz.  Laura Wilkinson.  Troy Dumais.  Brittany Viola.  Chris Colwill.  Kelci Bryant. 

Those names may be no more familiar to you than Thomas Middleton, Aphra Behn, Veronica Franco, or George Wilkins.  One is a group of athletes, the other is a group of writers from the Early Modern Period.  The only connection  between the two is my obsession with both.

There are now 49 days until the 2008 Summer Olympics kick off in Beijing.  I wait, quite impatiently, for the Summer Olympics over the 4 year breaks, and the building fervor is akin to a year’s worth of building excitement experienced in February leading up to March Madness.  I love watching most events, but there’s only one that I obsess over:  Diving.  Many of you know already that I used to dive competitively, and you also know that due to a number of injuries and an unfortunate car accident, I had to stop so I didn’t wind up in a coma from flinging myself from a platform.  After that I used to coach diving until I realized that it was impossible for me to stand on the side of the pool and tell  divers what to do instead of getting on the board or platform and showing them myself.  

Diving, for me, was the one thing that I was able to truly find myself in.  Diving was mine.  It was just me, the board, and the water.  Nothing else.  Problems disappeared.  Stress didn’t exist.  If I was conflicted about a problem, or faced with something I didn’t immediately see a solution to, all I had to do was go to the board.   I could only concentrate on the way my body moved on the board, in the air, when to kick, twist, open, or reach, how far away from the board I was, and how to hit the water.  That’s all.  Everything else left my mind.  Nothing else existed.  I had family and friends attend meets and I wouldn’t know they were there until afterward.  Any pressure that I might have felt on stage, or in other competitions knowing that “So and So” were watching didn’t exist in diving.  Quite frankly, I didn’t care.  It was mine, it was for me and me alone, and I was good at it.  I knew I was my own worst competition, and I knew who the other major competitors were.  Some of them made Junior Olympics, others went on to be a part of the USA National team and/or the US Olympic team. 

When I watch any diving meet, especially the Olympics, I am, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible.  You could be sitting right next to me having a full fledged conversation, and I won’t have heard a single word.  If you’re not talking about diving, I can’t hear you.  And if you’re sitting next to me while I’m watching diving, and you’re talking about something else… you won’t be there very long.  I am focused on Degrees of Difficulty, good form, bad judging, and watching some of my favorite divers perform maneuvers that I can physically feel as I sit there.  Talk about the weather has no place on my couch when I’m watching Troy Dumais (pictured below).

All of this to say, I’m fighting the urge to go to a pool/gym and start diving again.  There are a few around here, and I know some coaches.  Yes, I’m old.  No, I’m not 15, or 18, or even 22 anymore.  But Laura Wilkinson is 30 (soon to be 31), and almost certainly going to Beijing.  Mark Ruiz is coming out of retirement to try and make the Olympic team for Beijing.  Overcoming adversity seems to be in the water.  I just know I’ll be watching the list of divers vying for a spot on the US Diving team, and seriously considering getting back on the boards.  At the very least, I’m planning my trip to the 2012 Olympics in London, so if you wanna come, let me know early!  It’s only 1498 days away!