A friend of mine noted on facebook last night that she didn’t think she would make a good pro basketball player – noting that she didn’t see the point in continuing to play if you had already lost the game.

She went so far as to say she would just want to quit if there was no way she could win.

And I thought about it for a minute.

Why do we keep playing when there is no way we can win?

My own child has won state three years in a row now, so it’s not a question I have struggled with or even thought about before.

But it didn’t take long for me to come up with my answer.

You keep playing because you don’t know who is watching.

You keep playing because years from now, someone might dig in just a little deeper because they saw that you never gave up – even in the last few seconds with no shot at winning.

You keep playing because years from now, you won’t be glad you quit with a few seconds left.

You keep playing because that’s just what you do - you finish the games you start!

You will not win every game you play.

But there’s more to it than that.

On paper, we should have lost three times this year before we made it to the state game.

Three times, y’all!

I remember E-mailing my friend and telling him I felt like I was going to have a heart attack!

It’s Texas, after all, and football is a big deal here!

But the fact that we were supposed to lose didn’t mean we weren’t going to put up a fight!

Sure, the other team could have won, but they would have left the field knowing they had played a game!

The hardest game of the season came down to the last two seconds.

Two…seconds!

Literally, with barely any time on the clock, either team could have won.

And after that game, Micah would tell me, “I’m more sore than I’ve ever been in my whole life!”

And he had the bruises to show for it too!

But you know what?

I bet the person he was up against would say the same thing.

Only one team could walk away a winner, but everyone there could rise to the occasion and give it all that they had – even if all they had was to keep playing until the last buzzer sounded.

We had a nail-bighter of a game Friday night.

It was one of those games that came down to the last few seconds.

Literally, at the two-second mark, we were not sure if we would hold on to our lead and make it to the finals.

I looked down on the field to find my boy, and he was down on a knee.

I knew he was praying, unable to look.

I asked him about it after the game. He said that he couldn’t watch that last play of the game.

He only knew the game was over when he heard the roar of the crowd.

He had to look around to make sure it was our roar and not theirs!

And I saw the moment he realized his team had won. He leapt into the air, higher than I’ve ever seen him jump, and hugged the guy next to him before running to the field to join his pile of happy teammates.

He played the entire game, and was bruised from head to toe.

The only reason he wasn’t out there for that last play was because it was on the collective shoulders of the defense to hold off the opponent one last play, and he is on the offense.

When the game was over, I ran down to the field with my best friend, and we jumped the fence to get to him.

Alan got to him first, and Micah began asking him, “Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?�

I sprang up out of nowhere and jumped up to hug my Baby Huey of a ball player.

“That was my proudest mom moment ever.�

He just smiled, and I added, “No really….that was my proudest mom moment ever!!! For real!!!�

We lingered for a bit longer, and then, in joy we all went home.

The long ride home fueled by energy and excitement. No need for caffeine to keep us awake! Didn’t really even need food!

The next morning, we began searching the internet for highlights of the games.

We like to see if we can spot Micah in any of the plays or Jonah in the band the next day on the local news reports.

What we came across, was the end of the road speech made by the opposing team’s coach.

We watched in silence.

It was a little hard to watch.

For there, it became evident that our joy was a direct cause of someone else’s sorrow.

There knelt the team in a huddle. Heads bowed low. Sadness and tears. No leaps of joy.

In their silence, the coach began to tell them how this game would never be a good memory to them, but that they would become better men because it.

They would learn how to deal with adversity, and they would learn that you don’t always get what you want.

As I listened to the speech and watched the those boys, I thought about that moment with my son.

A moment I will never forget, because I could see the look of pride on his face when I stood there bragging on him, and the look of anticipation as he went off to collect words of cheer from his waiting mema, aunt, and dad.

For a moment, I wondered what the other mothers were saying to their boys.

And in the end, I hope it’s the same thing…this is my proudest mom moment ever.

Because those boys walked proudly through the line to shake our boys’ hands.

They didn’t sulk, and they didn’t run from the field full of fans waiting to congratulate them on a season well-played.

They had walked on to that field as the number one team in the state, and they took no joy in how far they had gone.

There is rarely joy in almost making it, and almost every time someone’s dream comes true, someone else’s has been shattered.

And many times over the course of their lives, they will look back on that game. Maybe to push a little harder, or maybe to teach someone else about losing.

Wild Kingdom has descended upon my house.

It all started with a stray cat birthing a kitten right on my front door step Sunday afternoon.

I opened the door and looked at her and she looked at me.

Then we both ran!

This is one of those times when you know what sex the stray is, being as it popped out a kitten right in front of my very own eyes. There was no wondering.

And I don’t know nothing about birthing no kittens, so I was just running away. She however, was running in.

In my house.

With the kitten in tow.

It was snowing, and I was her only option.

She looked for the crack in the door and ran in the second she saw it.

A few hours later, I left to pick up Jonah and the new batch of chickens.

There were four of them. Kevin, Zeus, Fawn, and Toesy. Yeah, we already had a Kevin Chicken, but he went to be with the Lord.

Secretly, I think Jonah picked that name because I told him what man Kevin said when he found out there was a chicken named after him.

I can’t tell y’all what he said, cause it’s real ugly.

I picked Toesy’s name.

She has five toes where there should be three. I thought it was clever.

They spent the night in the bathtub on Sunday because it was snowing and all.

So yeah, 3 baby kittens and 4 baby chickens….a mama cat and me!

I came home at lunch yesterday to check on the babies. All varieties.

As I got closer to the house, I noted the chichiua in the middle of the road, and I do mean the absolute middle of the road y’all.

So, no pun intended, I thought I might play chicken with the yappy little dog.
See…I have a history with this dog.

It may look cute, but it is clearly of the devil.

Every day it shows up in my driveway at lunch. You think it’s there to be loving and cute, but no.

It’s there to go Cujo on me.

I swear it has a restraining order on me.

If I get even a foot away from it, it let’s out a bark that sends me running in the house.

No wonder a female dog is called a bitch.

I hate her.

But anyway….yesterday she was between me and my house.

And I just knew she would move before I did, because I’m in a car and all…and she’s the size of a teacup and wearing one of those sissy dog sweaters.

But in the end it was me who did the moving!

So…I move over for the dog and pass the kittens to check on the chickens…

where I see little tosey had drowned in her water bowl.

The water bowl that was not half her size.

Literally, she would have had to lay down helpless to have this happen.

But we’re all a part of the animal kingdom…

Some of us look for any crack in the door to find a safe place to rest.

Some of us stand up to mountains and bark till they look like molehills.

And some of us lay down, because we have decided our problems are bigger than we are…when all we really have to do is stand up.

You have to rise above the problem to see that you can conquer the problem.

If you lay down, you’ll never get out of the dish.

I noticed an ad with Kirstie Alley in it yesterday that just kind of stopped me in my tracks.She was more or less flaunting her size.

Or maybe she was trying to make light of it?

I’m really not sure. She was smiling and laughing. Pushing things away with her hips.

I seem to recall that at one time, when she was thin, she was talking how miserable being big is. Yet here she is making fun of it.

But I notice a trend of excuses every time someone gains weight back that they had lost.

It usually starts with, “It was just too hard to maintain.�

Then goes to, “But I wasn’t any happier.�

And as Oprah so famously put, “I am not defined by my size.�

Or as the Biggest Losers will say, “I didn’t know how to handle it when the people weren’t around.�

So many excuses.

So few good ones.

Maintenance is serious business. So serious that over 90% of the women who lose the kind of weight I do, will gain it back in a year.

The statistics for getting it off and keeping it off long term are even slimmer.

Yet…I continue to keep mine off.

I’m getting close to the five year mark now.

So what has made the difference?

I remember my friend, who has been clean from a drug addiction for over a decade, telling me one time that the moment he lets himself think he’s conquered his addiction is the day he goes right back to hell.

And I believe this is true for me too.

The moment I think I’ve conquered it, I’ve lost it.

Because that would lead me to believe I didn’t need the gym.

Or I could go back to eating fast food all the time.

Or my Oh Yeah! Bars would be replaced with candy bars.

Just like a former addict views drugs, I view junk food. I see it as something I haven’t conquered. And why would I repeatedly go into battle against something I could not conquer?

You’ve heard it said a million times before that you have to pick and choose your battles.

Junk food is not a battle I’m going to pick.

How can I draw my sword and fight the battles that are truly worthy of my time if I’m using it as a skewer?

The good thing is, when you do pick and choose your battles, you learn who and what is a worthy opponent.

I thought the junk food cravings would follow me my entire life. And they would, if I picked up that battle again and indulged.

I continue to walk away from that battle, and junk food cravings are so far away that I can’t even see them in my review mirror. But since objects in that mirror are closer than they appear…I just don’t turn around and move on.

I had to take a piece of advice from my own Blog yesterday.Any success I have in this world, any achievements, any accomplishments, came hand-in-hand with learning to surround myself with people who will lift me up and not tear me down.

I found myself clinging to those words yesterday, even though they were written for someone else.

I heard from my dad’s sister yesterday. And we all know, it’s never good when I hear from my dad’s family.

I had received a check from my grandmother’s estate for $197 a few weeks ago, and I have not cashed it yet.

Now, those of you who follow along know that my father died this summer and that I was disowned in his will.

And you will also remember that I had not seen him in 30 years at the time of his death. My aunt and uncle had found him and did not tell me.

To make matters worse, I learned that he was in a hospital in Vegas while I was in Vegas two months before he passed.

My aunt would later tell me that she E-mailed me and, she didn’t know what happened to the E-mail.

With a matter this important, you would think she would follow up, or tell me of her visit with the man I had not known in 30 years. My aunt E-mailed back and forth with him. My uncle flew to see him.

Meanwhile, I was unaware he had been found.

So, it was to my surprise yesterday when I received an E-mail from my aunt checking to see if I had received the funds, because the check had not cleared the bank.

The $197 check.

Yeah, those funds. Those big whomping oh-so-important funds.

While it wasn’t important to her to see that I had the message about my father’s whereabouts, she made sure I had received a check for $197.

And again, she had signed her name Claudia. Not Aunt Cookie, as I had called her as a girl, or even Aunt Claudia. Just Claudia.

And somewhere deep inside, Old Fat Adina came back for a visit.

I wanted to show my aunt the video interview that I had done at the Arnold.

I wanted to show her the pictures from the weekend.

She doesn’t know that Jonah raises chickens or that Micah’s football team won state a second year in a row.

To her, I am still the fat little girl who didn’t wash her hair or brush her teeth.

I was on the treadmill when I got her message and promptly told her that I had gotten it, but not cashed it.

And as I walked, I planned what I would send here when I went home. Links and pictures…

But I had been talking to my hot ISS friend Kevin about my diet just that morning. And I remembered him telling me one time that I have to work just as hard on the inside as I did on the outside to maintain my loss.

And then I saw a facebook message from my buddy Gregg Valentino telling me he loved me when I fussed for having to join his fan page! And you know…he has probably told me that more times than any member of my dad’s family. OK, then all of them combined!

And wait a minute, y’all!

What was that I told Drexel yesterday?

What were my very own words?

Any success I have in this world, any achievements, any accomplishments, came hand-in-hand with learning to surround myself with people who will lift me up and not tear me down.

I could have sent my aunt the link to the interview and those pictures.

I could have told her how great my kids are and how much I am loved.

I could have.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I wiped my silent tears and kept walking.

She will not lift me up when I am down.

And if I choose to immerse myself in trying to prove to her that I am worth what she could not give me, it is nobody’s fault but my own.

I have a date with destiny, and her name is not Aunt Cookie.

Someone had commented on a picture of mine yesterday on facebook.

It’s one that’s been there a while, so I hadn’t looked at it recently.

But I sure had a good memory when I looked back at it!

It’s funny how pictures can bring back memories of people who aren’t even in the picture!

I had been E-mailing back and forth with someone who was helping me along the path to becoming a normal size girl.

He was always good to offer words of encouragement when I needed them.

But usually progress pictures came to him from the neck down. I made a habit out of chopping off my face.

It’s just something I did.

Then I got to thinking about it and sent him a picture with a note that said, “I just thought you might like to see what I look like, since I always chop off my face.�

A few minutes later, I got a message that said, “Killer.�

I didn’t really think much about it, other than to thank him.

But the next morning, I got another reply to that same message. It said simply, “Don’t chop off you face.�

I laughed and replied, “I thought I sent that to you yesterday and got a reply already?!�

“I was on my phone and couldn’t see it.�

I only chewed on him a little for replying without seeing, because his second reply was so dang good!

Another time I sent him a before picture I stumbled upon that had my face looking rather, well, let’s just say plump.

That one was sent with a message, “This is ugly, but I’m showing you anyway.�

And he came back with, “Not ugly, but you sure was swole!�

And I laughed!

But you know, sometimes we surround ourselves with the wrong people.

He’s not a wrong people!

He helped me when he had no clue what I looked like, and he helped me just the same after…and he didn’t care how bad the before pictures were.

He told me just a week ago that my judgment was cloudy where he is concerned, because he knows he can do no wrong in my eyes.

And it’s just like I told him, “Everyone needs someone like that.�

As far as cloudy judgment? That is reserved for one!

But…

Any success I have in this world, any achievements, any accomplishments, came hand-in-hand with learning to surround myself with people who will lift me up and not tear me down.

I was posting up some Arnold photos yesterday when I took note of the date I had joined one of fitness websites.

It was almost five years ago.

And I didn’t join anything till I was almost through losing!

So, I took a little stroll down memory lane.

I remember holding off on joining that first gym, because I knew it was a forever thing. Something I had to continue once I started.

And…well…it’s just that I hated it so bad.

And the thought of going forever held nothing for me. Nothing at all. (Obviously, because the only holding was me holding a donut in one hand and a diet coke in the other.)

What I didn’t know at that time was that I was a fitness baby.

You know, like when you’re young you hate to take a bath. When you grow up it’s just a thing you do.

And, oh Lord, didn’t we all hate naps as a little kid?

Can you imagine hating a nap now?! (Please shut the door and be quiet on the way out when I find the time to take a nap!)

There were things we learned to do along the way that we had once hated.

Eating veggies.

Picking up after ourselves.

Being nice and not running with scissors!

Things that seemed like pulling teeth at the time, became like, well, brushing teeth!

Things you just learned to instinctively do without dread or even giving that much thought too at all.

And although I didn’t pick up healthy habits until later in life, it wasn’t too late to make them instinctively a part of what I do.

I don’t remember the last time I dreaded taking a nap, eating my veggies… or going to the gym!

Healthy habits maintained over time become who you are and what you are.

Thank God for that!

Hey, guys!

I just posted a whole bunch of pictures from the Arnold in my gallery! Check it out!

I had SOOO much fun!

 

Football games on Thursday and Friday.

UFC 103 tonight - hoping for lots of blood and knockouts.

Olympia next weekend.

I think I'm officially a guy!!!

Football games on Thursday and Friday.

UFC 103 tonight - hoping for lots of blood and knockouts.

Olympia next weekend.

I think I'm officially a guy!!!