Bad Dreams and Sports News

What happened in real life last night: A mosquito *bit my ass* (like almost between the cheeks!) while I was brushing my teeth through my underwear. The downside is that I have a constant urge to scratch my butt; the upside is that I must have a pretty firm rear, otherwise it would have been jiggling* too much while brushing my teeth for the little bug to land and have his bootyliscious feast. I then fell asleep watching the US Open.

*When I originally typed that sentence, my inability to spell (and the inability of MSWord SpellCheck to understand intent) had me talking about "giggling" rather than "jiggling." I just want it stated, in case I ever make a similar spelling error that I do not catch and correct, that under NO circumstances does my ass ever, EVER giggle.

What happened in my dream world (you can see the transformation of what happened at night to what I dreamed about): I was being chased by spiders (but like BIG spiders, like the size of crabs...not really chased but they were pursuing me in my flat and I kept having to smash them), and was slated to play world #1 (and Swiss hottie) Roger Federer in the first round of the Australian Open. It was really high pressure (duh) because *no one had ever seen me play.* I was a rumoured phenom, but everyone knew I wasn't a pro and had never played a match like that. I had all this public support in Australia (and from a coaching team), though, because people kept saying: "You've never done it before, but you can, now. It's in you even if it's never been used." It's kind of like I've always said: Anyone with well-functioning limbs and medium stature can physically make the MOTION that generates a 120mph serve, the problem is that it takes most people 15 years of non-stop tennis coaching to be able to do that...similarly, I could *theoretically* hit a forehand the same as Roger Federer, it's just infinitely unlikely. SO, in this match, it was like I needed to hope for this serendipitous moment where I'd hit shot after shot at his level, and I kind of woke up when we went on court, but I remember it hitting me that I could not count on a miracle streak of points, and kept flashing back to the spiders chasing me.

I'll end my tennis news (guess this wasn't really NEWS lol: "Veiled Chunk Dreams He Plays Roger Federer in Meblourne, Rumoured to Suffer From Arachnophobia"), by this FANTASTICALLY attitde-y quote from Venus williams in her post-match interview after losing to unknown Bulgarian teen, Tsvetana Pironkova, in the first round of the AO:

Q. Why should we believe that you'll be back to where you were?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Well, I think that at the end of the day, I don't care if you believe or anyone else believes in here, because it's me. So believe what you want to. There's always going to be nay sayers. You may be one of them, I don't know. Guess what, I don't care.

My last sports update (and I'm too lazy to lookup the actual name, times, etc.) is that an Ethiopian runner has broken ANOTHER long-distance world record, this time setting a half-marathon (just over 13 miles) time of less than 59 minutes. Curie ran her first half-marathon EVER in the Fall (I think I blogged about it, actually), and finished in about 99 minutes. Now, I realize that percentage-wise (and minutes/mile wise) this sounds like a big difference, but really, what IS 40 minutes? I can hardly brush my teeth, get my ass eaten by a mosquito, and since my morning Whitney Houston repertoire while attempting to get dressed in 40 minutes. To me, Curie is stunningly close to breaking the world record, at least when her distance from it is measured by what I can accomplish in the time she'd have to shave-off her debut finish, which is almost nothing.

The two TOTALLY unrelated photos with this post are of Martina Hingis (I LOVE HER!) practicing her volley's in preparation of her first round match, tomorrow, at the Australian Open. I'm SO nervous for her! It's an oddly beautiful photo (she has a very untraditional beauty about her). The second photo is of another favorite athlete of mine, Michelle Kwan, doing a cool laid-back spin. I haven't bothered to blog about all her injuries drama, the drama about her provisional selection for the Olympics, etc., but let's just hope that she's healthy and can finally take the gold!

VC