its been a long time...

once again its come to my attention that i haven’t been keeping up with my updates. bad miche!

when we last left off i had told you that i was going to try some of jennifer abrams ideas during my offseason. well i have given her all the information she requires to get us going. she is going to see what manipulations we can make to my training to help bring up some of my lagging areas and she is also going to try to see if she can make some improvements in my posing. i will let you know how that goes. we start september 1st.

went ahead and popped my head even further out of my shell. posted up several, very tiny, colour pics from my shoot on my board. for the most part i’ve been told that i look beautiful and gorgeous and other odd choices like that. there was even a couple of posters who were most curious to figure out wether my hair was in braids or curls. for someone who is still dealing with the ‘smallness’ issue, all the comments about beauty and hair do not sit well with the athlete who lives within. i guess its because when they were asking to see the shots they assured me that they would tell me honestly if they could see a bber. since they aren’t mentioning it… i can only assume they can’t.

the family went to hawaii on the family cruise and now they are back. usually i’m incredibly lonely when i am home alone and usually i hate the lonliness. interestingly enough this time it wasn’t as bad. of course in true ma and pa form they started bickering almost immediately upon returning home. mom asked me to go buy her chinese food for dinner, dad assumed that he would eat some of that and that started the first war. then they would get into it when one or the other would start trying to recount some holiday adventure. the other one not telling the story would correct some minor detail and then the story telling would stop while they bicker incessantly over the minor detail to a story that wasn’t exactly holding my interest in the first place. so i would use that time to head to the silence and the sanctity of my room.

oh talked to my nutritionist about my poor sleep patterns. i’ve been having trouble establishing normal sleeping patterns. some of my friends were suggesting some sort of sleep aid. but my nutritionist knows me and my pattern on insomniac behaviour. he knows its stress related, he says the sleep aid would get me sleep, but would not fix the problem. he has given me some suggestions to help get to sleep and ive been able to get about 5 hours a night since ive been trying it.

sleep is good

a quick update

just another quick post to let you know i'm still here. i haven't collapsed in some overly dramatic depressed funk. in fact my mood is currently quite the opposite!!

as you know i've been feeling quite small and less and less like a bodybuilder. well my friends, my coach... they all tried to tell me that i was every bit the bodybuilder regardless of how i felt i looked. as much as i appreciated their efforts because i could not 'see' it for myself it offered me little comfort.

i knew i needed to take some form of action as my mood was likely not going to be good for me in the long run. well i posted my feelings on a natural bodybuilding board i've joined and i was encouraged to see that the way i was feeling was actually pretty common. i also sent an email to that natural female bodybuilder that i admire, jennifer abrams.

well as luck would have it jennifer was able to really put things into perspective for me. she recognized that my physique leans towards the ectomorphic-mesomorph, in comparison she is a mesomorphic-endomorph. basically she has a fuller more muscular look to her physique where as i tend to have a leaner muscular look. that is why it so hard for me to see myself as a bodybuilder. to further illustrate her point she sent me the url of ifbb pro debbie patton. debbie is, you guessed it, a endo-meso and one look at the pics in her gallery and i could so see the similarities. granted i am no where near the condition debbie is but we 'look' alike. debbie got her pro card by competiting through team universe which is the 'tested' npc show.

anyway jennifer suggested there may be other things i could do in my offseason to help me achieve that bodybuilder look that i seek. i talked it over with me coach and he is cool with me giving it a shot. so i am going to try and see what jennifer might do differently. i am pretty excited about this, change can be a good thing when it comes to physiques.

but just so we are clear. i am a rookie, i have only 1 show under my belt. i am confident i can get workouts emailed to me and i can do them properly and safely. but when it comes to show time... my coach and my nutritionist have to be people i can see. there will be no changes in the 'team' when it comes to show time next year.

todays thought

popular opinion is that i think too much... rather i think i feel too much. i would like to stop that. i would like to return to the jackie frost/ice princess persona i was in my youth. i wasn't anymore popular then than i am now... but sh*t didn't get to me then like it gets to me now.

short and sweet today folks.

yikes!!! and other things

so yesterday morning i am in the kitchen getting my meals organized for the day, much like i do every morning. my mother comes into the kitchen and she is in the mood to talk. we start off with the usual small talk and i happen to mention that i'm very tired, that i haven't been feeling well lately because i haven't been sleeping well.

well my mother comes back with 'my daughter needs some exercise'. now i know that she knows i train 5 days a week so i remind her of that and she says, 'my daughter needs a different kind of exercise'. at this point she has on this grin that frankly i found pretty freaking disturbing and she goes on to add 'that will put you to sleep'.

i had no real comeback for that, frankly i was well horribly uncomfortable and pretty freakin disturbed. exactly when did our relationship change? i don't want a 75 year old girlfriend. i was quite happy with the way things used to be, where we didn't talk about our sex lives... or lack thereof.

i lay the blame soley on the shoulders of dr. phil and oprah. i think i need therapy!!

onto something lighter. i was on my way to my car at the 5 level garage i park at close to work. there is an elevator and a couple of stairwells that you can use to get to your vehicle. well as i passed by the elevator i happened to notice a mo'nique sized woman wrestling with the doors of the elevator. the doors would not open nor close all the way. behind mo'nique were a couple other people and they were watching her push the doors whilst they discussed the fact that there were indeed stairwells. i should also add that mo'nique was not an elevator repair person but just someone who clearly had no intention of taking the stairs!

now maybe it's just me but that was not an elevator i had any intention of getting on, even if she had 'fixed it'. i went straight for the stairwell and started climbing. i think that said a LOT about how lazy we have become.

take the children for example. the instances of child onset diabetes is higher than it has ever been. the children are overweight and horrifically out of shape. generally the only muscle that receives regular exercise are the text messaging/gameboy fingers and what do the parents do? they buy these couch potatoes knapsacks on wheels and shoes with wheels in them!!

a couple days ago i saw a young girl rolling through the underground mall. she was pushing herself along on her scooter while her mother walked along. i shook my head.

not that it would ever happen, but if i had kids they would be like fawkin' marines in comparison to the mamby-pamby kids i see.

walkin' down memory lane

a friend was recently demonstrating her google 'prowess' and it inspired me to check what hits still existed from my skating days. well one of the first hits took me to the myspace page of one of the guys from the circuit, someone i haven't seen or thought of in years. well the skaters for the most part are still pretty connected so i was bouncing around alot from myspace to myspace. matt andrews, azikiwee, mike o, arlo, jess... it's almost like everyone is still out there.

i must admit i am not thinking about actively getting onto myspace. i would love to re-connect with some of the skaters and maybe even find some of the others who haven't gotten onto myspace yet either.

and finally i think the search for osama could be concluded quite quickly if my queen of the google friend fired up a browswer window!!!

back in the saddle...

first and foremost i am a bit behind in my posting and that fact was recently brought to my attention. i'm sorry.

since i've last been in here i've done my photo shoot. i was only able to get down to 137lbs. i may not have looked stage ready but i think i did look good enough to shoot. i had some detail, seperation and some ab detail so all in all... i did well.

so how'd it go? well in the continuing saga of miche livin' outside the box this ranks right up there. first there were the wardrobe changes tucked in amongst the rocks and trees. there were more instances of commando dress than i care to admit. then i was crawling over rocks or in the sand! All in all it was pretty fawkin' nutty.

the photographer showed my coach and i a few images that he shot. ok wow! on the screen were a few images of a woman with hair like mine, in a suit like mine. the difference between me and the woman on the camera? she looked like she could easily fit on the pages of musclemag, flex or ironman.

but the best part is i'm offseason!!! 25 weeks of available growth before my next 20 weeks of dieting. time to get huge!!

i think big things can happen this offseason. i'm calling for a 70lb db bench, 225lb bb bench, 250lb squat, 225lb stiff and a 60lb shoulder press!

time to get 'er done!!

friendship, is it in you?

i have a new definition of friend... courtesy of one of my bike forums.

pepper went down in west virginia, hurt badly and unable to ride. jupiter and some others were riding down in north carolina, but they could not be reached in time. word went out on the board that pepper needed help and addy and ts grabbed a trailer and headed for the canada-us border to bring her home.

i've met some really wonderful people on my bb journey. some i feel would 'grab a trailer' should i need them. my wish for all of you, is that regardless of what journey you are on, may you find friends who would grab a trailer and come get you!

here's hoping your brave new world is full of true friends. from what i've read the waters are full of those who aren't. sadly we both know that should you need it, i would not hesitate to grab a trailer for you. what's sad about that is that i think we also both know, that should the situation be reversed... i'd be on my own.

for the record pepper is now safely back home and resting as comfortably as her injuries allow.

balance

i slept last night!! i have been having a lot of trouble with that lately. i just haven't wanted to/needed to go to bed. and poor sleep spells trouble for a bber, be she on season or off.

i've been experimenting with a different mode of training and while i am going through that i am also dieting for my photoshoot. i can only imagine that those two variables collided with the activity of caribana (the annual cultural celebration of my island heritage), and it proved too much to bear. i could barely rise this morning to go to the gym to train. upon my return i HAD to sleep again. i still struggled to wake up from the nap but i had plans with a friend to go see miami vice.

i rode my bike out to her place. sadly it took longer than i thought and she did not have the correct start time for the movie. so in its stead we watched 'the devil wears prada'. i've seen ann hathaway play this role before... i guess she has found her niche. when 't' and i rolled up at the movie theatre we got more than a handful of looks. of course the fact that i was in full leathers didn't help much.

't' has not had the opportunity to see me in full-diet mode before so i am sure today was a bit of a shock. i was due for a meal partway through the movie and unbeknownst to 't' i came prepared. at the appropriate time i opened a pocket of my bike jacket and removed a plastic bag that held a ziplocked portioned meal. i proceeded to dine on chicken and green beans while popcorn snacking and soft drink slurping went on all around me. i then opened another pocket and pulled out an individual portion of crystal light which i poured into my water bottle. i gave it a shake and boom i had a tasty treat. 't' compared my jacket to a clown car from the circus, apparently she half expected a mini microwave to come out from somewhere. please... i rode an hour in full leathers with frozen food in my pocket... there was no need to cook my meal any further!!!

today starts the a.m and p.m bouts of cardio. tomorrow night, if i can get off of work in time, will be my first hip-hop class.

and because its been so long since i've left you a pretty picture... this one is from today. enjoy!

i still haven't found... what i'm looking for

i was in the kitchen a little while ago, cleaning off the foreman grill and i got to thinking. i started to wonder 'why am i here?' not in the literal sense, why was i in the kitchen at that particular point in time. the answer to that was quite obvious as evidenced by the lack of cooked chicken in the refrigerator.

i was wondering why i was or why i am. see part of me thinks that we are here for a reason. i can't really explain it but i've always felt like there was something that i am supposed to do. i know enough to know that i am not here to cure cancer, fix the whole in the ozone layer or promote world peace! you know if the responsiblity for any of that rested on these shoulders... well suffice it to say, it would be in all of your best interests to update your interplanetary passports!!!

i've been thinking again about how i don't really fit in anywhere. there was a family function today at my brother's place, he wanted me to go... but i just feel out of place when i'm around my family, as odd as that sounds. i don't fit in at work, that is for dayumm sure, they are a bunch of hard partying, fast living kind of folk. i can't really say that i fit in at the gym, nor do i feel i fit in with my friends.

i know so many people who know what they want to do, they know what they want to be, and it often seems like they know exactly how to get it. whereas yours truly is tryin' dis, dat and de udda ting... just trying to find my way.

i am a square peg... in a land of round holes.

so... why am i here?

the game??

my coach preaches bodybuilding is a hobby... and expensive hobby, treat it as such. make sure your well rounded, have friends and interests outside of bodybuilding to ensure you keep a level head.

you see there are piranahas and sharks in the bodybuilding waters. they prey on the weak and the desperate. they promise you more than they can deliver and when they have used you up, they cast you aside like trash and latch on to the next 'big' thing. i am fairly confident that i won't fall prey to the evil side of bodybuilding. i have no reason to believe that this sport will morph into a career, i have already done the 'professional' in an alternative sport thing and finally my coach, should i choose to lose my dayumm mind, will effectively and firmly apply his size 10 otomix to my azz and snap me back to reality.

another warrior has fallen in the professional bodybuilding ranks. chris cormier has been hospitalized for the past two months. he is currently re-learning how to walk! a training mishap has aggravated a previous injury and he ended up with an infected vertabrae in his spine. this can be a fatal injury. in an interview i read yesterday, he plans on coming back from this and intends to hit the stage in 2007.

i've decided to take the classes. my coach suggested previously that taking hip hop dance classes would improve my posing and stage performance. improvements in this area, i hope, could potentially lead to guest posing engagements. while i realize at this point that nobody would currently be inclined to pay me to pose... it is another nice sub-goal to work towards. i am a goal oriented person by nature. i like working towards a target lift, bodyfat percentage, placing, etc...

i like to keep myself from going crazy worrying about the end goal by leaping over smaller ones along the way.

to sleep, perchance to dream

first and foremost, although most of the 'planning and thinking' have been taken care of sleep still alludes me. i came home quite tired yesterday and as quickly as possible got myself into bed. i was in bed from 9:15pm and i finally gave up and got back up about an hour later. i sat down at the computer until 11pm and tried that sleeping thing again.

i know that eventually my body will get the sleep it needs, it is just frustrating waiting for it to do so.

last night i went to a dance school to check out a hip hop class. check out as in observe not take. i am contemplating taking classes as it would likely take my posing to 'the next level'. i would like to be one of those people who are known for exciting posing routines. hell... some of those folks can even pick up some extra cash guest posing. now that would be cool. not sure if that class was for me though, the pace seemed rather frantic... i also fear trying to keep up would have me shedding muscle mass by the millisecond.

decisions, decisions

scale is starting to move to the left again, which is good because we are on final approach to the photo shoot.