Not Your Usual WW: IG Photo Dump

Since my surgeon wasn't working today and I actually have a day to spend at home with no plans, I'm taking a note from Dom's blog and pouring some of my Insta photos on here to kinda-sorta get you guys caught up on daily goings-on around here.

Note: My WW are never wordless! ;P

These are in chronological order starting in January. I'm trying to include only the ones you haven't seen already on the blog (ex: you've seen the brunt of the equine pics from the last 2+ months on here already), and a few that were taken for Insta but didn't ever make it on there because I sometimes overthink what I want to post on my social media.

From the last ride on Lily at the old barn.



Zercher squats are my favorites.



Cold dawn on the dirt road I take on the way to the surgery job to avoid the worst patch of traffic on Route 15. In the winter I'm always greeted with the most glorious sunrises on this little road. I usually stop to take a photo, since no one uses this road.
Pics of it have made it onto my IG many times.

At the surgery job. This one didn't make it onto IG; I took it for my mom. I had been doing my paperwork (techs make their own anesthetic protocols, prep their patients for surgery, run anesthesia, do pre- and post-op treatments on their patients, discharge patients, are in charge of invoicing charges, typing up discharges, and writing their anesthesia reports after surgery. As well as the usual tech stuff like placing IVs, drawing blood, taking x-rays, etc, etc, etc...) This was not my patient but she was a very very needy one that would bark anxiously nonstop if left in her kennel, so we were all taking turns holding her. This made her insanely happy and she would just chill forever with you. She was  in an over-the-shoulder bag (note the black strap over my shoulder) so she could be carried around like a papoose. This was during my turn holding her. She didn't care that my hands were busy typing; she just wanted a lap to hang out on. <3

The in-laws came to visit from Florida the second week in January, literally arriving the day my mom left. So we took them exploring all over to areas they hadn't seen before.


Carlos taking a photo of the frozen Monocacy River (as seen in the background of the previous pic.)


The frozen Monocacy. This is less than 5 minutes from the old barn. We keep talking about getting a kayak so we can go here in the summer: the river is pretty flat and the water level low. You see people out rowing on it all the time.

Taken at Cunningham Falls with the in-laws.


Also at Cunningham Falls.


Carlos's dad walking away from us. He's not the most patient person. Lol

First time not wearing snow boots in two weeks straight...temps had climbed up into the 40s FINALLY.


The partially frozen Potomac as seen from White's Ferry on the C&O.


Carlos's parents have been married for 45+ years and they still hold hands in public. <3
(Not on IG.)

First posing class at A's gym back at the end of January.
(Those who read the first series of competition posts will remember me talking about A's gym.)
I decided to start practicing again in mid-January and immediately said, "Eff this. I'm not winging this again!" So I reached out to A with plenty of time this time around and signed up for posing classes with her, in plural. (This was all my own idea. Trainer was actually proudly bragging about me going out of my way to take posing classes to a student of his that came to shadow one of my training sessions. At some point I'll write about all of that too.)
I've been doing the hour-long drive one-way into D.C. every other week to take these. I get homework! It's AWESOME to know what the hell I'm supposed to be working on. It also gets me away from practicing in front of mirrors and puts me in a new space in front of someone with high expectations, so I get to pose while being nervous, which is a good thing: it's helped me to get over it, stop overthinking every move, and trust that I can flow through it.
Carlos started going with me, which has been immensely helpful: he now knows the way it's supposed to look and can give me pointers/reminders when I'm practicing at home.

From an ice storm at the beginning of February. I always love the ice on the trees. I had just gotten home from work and had to stop and take these.

Also didn't make it on IG: my peaceful place: the OR. On this day I had Michael Franti playing on my phone in the background while my surgeon worked on a dog's TPLO. The patient was coasting along smoothly with his anesthesia and it was lightly snowing outside. It was the perfect way to spend a snow day.
People laugh when I explain this, but it's true: my two days in the ICU are where I work to my maximum physical, mental and emotional limits while I get my adrenaline fix, whereas my two surgery/anesthesia days are where I get to sit down and relax while being an absolute control freak. :D This is my idea of balance. *shrug*

When your trainer says you're going modified keto and need to eat 100g of healthy fats/day + 200g protein/day. (Also didn't make it onto IG.) This absolutely blew my mind. I normally eat 40-60g of fat per day, and am used to automatically reaching for lower fat fare. It took an entire week for me to figure out how the hell to add that much fat into my diet in a healthy way, but once I got the hang of it, it expedited how quickly I got used to it. Nut butters have been a staple since the end of the last show, especially all things almond butter, so that was easy. (The Fluffbutter pictured here is so incredible that I would just eat it straight from the jar with the measuring tablespoon. Yes; that good!) I went back to adding coconut milk to my protein shakes as well. And then one of my coworkers at the surgery job was doing Whole 30 and she was telling me about MCT oil and ghee (clarified butter) so I looked into them and realized that they were going to become my besties. MCT oil seriously makes a difference in kicking "Atkin's flu's" butt (the lethargy and brain fog that come with low carb diets), and anything cooked with just 1 tsp of ghee tastes AAAAAAHHHHMAAZING.
While this is considered a diet, I actually really, really liked it and wouldn't mind eating like this all the time. It's easy to turn it into lifestyle eating thanks to the higher protein.
I had zero sugar/carb cravings, decent energy once I got used to it...







...and my body went nuts with it in a good way. We had just started dropping the 1RM with powerlifting. Still lifting super heavy shit here, but just starting to add intensity into the equation with shorter rest periods and more reps.
Again: this continues to be all natural. I was working out 5 days/week eating clean food in the amounts an athletic human being is supposed to. (Think up to 2,500 calories/day.) That, and no alcohol.

Chicken with Goat Cheese sauce. It's one of my favorite recipes. Normally would have served it with red baby potatoes but this was in the advent of keto, so spinach it is as a side.

I slaved over this dog for the entirety of both 13-hour shifts one weekend in the struggle to keep him alive. This was blood transfusion #11. Yes, eleven. His owners weren't ready to let go, and were willing to do anything and everything to save him. He had every single odd against him: we all thought he would die in-hospital. But he was a trooper. He cooperated with every treatment and he just kept on going. During downtime I'd sit with him in his cage and pet him, just so my contact with him wasn't only about treatments. He appreciated it so much.
He was hospitalized for two weeks with us and he ultimately defied every single odd and all scientific logic: he walked out of that hospital alive, to our complete astonishment. No one knows how he did it. Miracles are miracles because they aren't common. This was a true miracle. The cost? His final bill would have paid off my entire student loan debt and we still would have had money left over for a nice downpayment on a house in the historic part of downtown Frederick. His bill would have covered the colic surgeries + hospitalizations of FIVE horses in Northern Virginia.
Advanced veterinary care ain't cheap, and there is no reason why it should be.
Remember my post about pet insurance??? Sometimes it's worth having if you want a shot at a miracle for your pet. Most people would have euthanized this dog because of the exorbitant cost of his highly specialized care.

Photo collage from my second posing class with A. She's the one in red tights in these pics.
Posing is crazy important: you can have a perfect body but if you can't show it off properly with your posing, all that hard work ends up being pointless. It is stupid hard when you start realizing the nuances of everything you're supposed to do correctly. You'll focus on one thing, forget another; focus on that thing, then forget three others. Walking with confidence in the 5" heels is also a part of it, and how you stand on stage while other people are doing their rounds. I was practicing all of those things here and finally actually starting to have fun with it thanks to A's positive attitude and encouragement. The bottom right pic is the comparison side pose. 

Center pic from the collage above. I love this photo. A is awesome.

IG is weird. If you post a pic with #shoulders on it, you get like 15 hits in 10 minutes. This was going on week #2 of adding back more consistent shoulder work. I had developed some shoulder twinges during the previous competition season from working them so hard and had been under strict orders to rest my shoulders while we did powerlifting.
It is crazy how quickly they responded once we put them back to work.

Abs and veins starting to make  comeback here. A proper off season in this sport is mentally tough because you have gotten used to looking super lean and cut, but in order to gain muscle you have to gain some degree of fat too. Again, this was very calculatedly and deliberately done. More on that later.

Last solo squat session before moving on into hypertrophy training. Light weight here at 135 lbs x 10 reps for 4 sets.

Both taken at the public gym before Trainer sessions. (Not on IG.) They are one month apart with the pic on the right being the first. Subtle differences in here, but they are there.

Powerlifting officially finished for now and lifting intensity doubled. My shoulder striations started to come back as my body fat % dropped further. Fun fact: I still weighed the same here as during the off season.

With my Converse suede boots. (Not on IG.) I love those shoes.
I was hanging out at the Frederick public library while waiting for Carlos to punch our parking ticket (if you're a library member, you get a discount at the garage next to the library.)

Hanging out in downtown on a beautiful 72-degree day in February!

Another snow day at work: wet snow on one of my patients when I took her out into the yard for her walk, and on the single tree in the same yard.

The resident feline blood donors at our hospital. (Not on IG) Azalea is the gorgeous tabby, Myrtle is the black kitty. Blood donors get a 1-year stay at our hospital. They are usually younger cats between 1-7 years of age, adopted from a local shelter, and they live a life of luxury at our hospital for the duration of their stay., with their own furniture, windows, toys, water in bowls and a running fountain, cat trees, and their own slaves (us techs) at their beck and call. ;) Once their year is up, they get adopted out (usually to the hospital staff) and a new pair of kitty blood donors is brought in. These two are already up for adoption.
I LOOOOOOVE Azalea...

Myrtle is very cute too, and is a kitty extrovert that is quite demanding about attention. Everyone loves her.

Most recent cut and color from a couple of weeks ago now. (Also not on IG). It was another 70-degree day in February, hence the tank top. You can't tell here but some of those highlights were pretty bright orange. I requested them that color and loved how they came out. They are blonde now!



I had been struggling with the carpet at home + the heels for posing practice. Our entire apartment is carpeted except for the kitchen, which has linoleum flooring, but it's a tiny narrow galley-style kitchen (you can't open the dishwasher and fridge at the same time: that narrow) which makes for limited floor space for walking. I did all of my practicing on that carpet for the prior show but I wanted real hardwood floors to practice on this time around (5" heels + slippery surfaces are a daunting combo), so I finally decided to do what the majority of competitors do and take my practicing to the gym. I know competitors do this from the people I follow on IG...I have yet to see anyone do this IRL. You guys have no idea how hard this was. We went at 10:00 pm at night to the other gym in town (not my usual one where everyone knows me by sight), an hour before they closed because it was at its quietest. I wore these crazy red "Badass" tights to get myself revved up for it. I was afraid someone would point and laugh because I was inside the studio in high heels, or that I'd get kicked out because...? for some unknown reason I couldn't fathom.
Hint: nothing happened. It was fine. Nobody cared. Carlos played music and took media while I practiced.



In case you're wondering: the part about posing that stresses me out the most isn't even the fact that you're mostly naked while doing this. It's having to walk around in the shoes! Remember my 30 Questions post about me being a tomboy? Yeah. Prior to my last show, the last time I had worn 5" heels had been for my brother's wedding in 2009!!!..because I had a gown I didn't want to have hemmed so I just bought taller shoes for it. I lasted all of 5 minutes on the dance floor with them at the time and finished the night barefoot. In the top left pic I had been grumbling about the heels while slipping them on, telling Carlos I was just going to go into Physique next so I wouldn't have to wear the shoes anymore (they get to pose barefoot...but also have at least 15 lbs more of muscle than what I'm currently carrying..O_o lol)  In the bottom right pic I was like, "Okay, fine. They do make my legs look amazeballs."



This photo made it onto IG three times but I ultimately left it off because...I'm shy. It's not like you can see any more of me with this than you can in a regular bikini! (From this angle, at least.. :P)  But a lot of coworkers follow me on IG now. The story behind the photo is that A had wanted me to wear the suit for posing practice. It was a very weird experience to walk around in an actual gym dressed like this. Thankfully hers is a small private gym so there was no one else there at the time. The general consensus is that I pose better in the suit itself. I know the answer as to why: the criss-cross straps around the back make me more aware of how I'm twisting my body for the poses.
Upper body was on point, lower body always takes forever to truly respond. Lower belly always shows my stress levels: this had been an incredibly busy week with no true rest whatsoever (I spent an entire 7 days only going home to sleep) and it was evident during this practice. It is what it is: this is normal for most people. You all probably can't see it but I can, and I'm bringing it up because everyone has their hang-ups about their bodies that more often than not, the only people that can see them is us. My point: if you want to wear a bikini at the beach, wear the bikini and stop stressing about what others think. For all we know, we only live once! ;)



This was taken following a conversation with Trainer about society's misconception that "lifting heavy makes women manly." No, no it doesn't.


Fun ride on Gracie at the barn. We were originally going to ride both mares. I tacked up Lily and took her into the indoor to lunge, and she was an absolute doll. She was a little spooky in one corner but that was it. However...I thought I noticed a slight hitch in either her RF or LH at the trot. I asked her to canter and she refused. That is not normal: she is usually quite willing to canter on the lunge. Tried it in both directions and she finally complied. There was a definite subtle lameness on the diagonal at the trot after the canter work. I immediately stopped and took her outside to the wash rack so I could investigate further (she had been groomed but she still had mud all over her lower legs). No heat/swelling/cuts/abrasions, so I'm assuming an abscess. I put her back out in the field. In the meantime, Carlos had hopped on Gracie bareback and had been riding her around outside on the property without a care in the world. You'd never know he only started riding 3 years ago.


Of course I had to get on afterwards too!


I ADORE her expression here. We were gaiting up the driveway.

Second round of practicing at the gym. My lat spread (top right) was declared perfect by A the week before.
Compare how much I've leaned out here to the pics from starting the keto diet.

This dude is just...I can't even. I finally had an afternoon where I could just chill at home and he was SO HAPPY. He was all over me: couldn't be close by without touching me. I snagged a bunch of selfies with him trying to catch him in action while he rolled around against my hair and stared at me adoringly.

This is the pic that made it onto IG from the ones above. The way he was looking at me here slays me.
Being loved by a cat that chose you is unlike anything else.