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It was called the Badass Babes Light. A GoRuck event.

The title sounded interesting. But after reading the description, I definitely wasn’t going to do it.

Two hours. Unknown physical challenges. All under the weight of a ruck.

Not doing it.

Team work with no one I knew.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

The hour came, and a handful of the gals I just met threw their packs on and looked at me…”are you coming or what?”

And so it began.

Me and 93 of my newest gal pals corralled in a large field. A woman stood in front of us. It was her job to warm us up for the challenges / adventures to come.

50-40-30-20-10 she said.

50 jumps over your pack

40 pack deadlifts

30 reverse lunges (pack on your back, of course)

20 weighted air squats

10 burpees with a jump over your pack.

Oh, and when you’re done, you can either sit in a pack-on full squat hold, or a pack-on plank.

I looked around. No one to complain to. Just do it. But if this was the WARM UP, I had a strong sense of the madness to come. I seriously thought about just walking away. No one was there to stop me. Who would know?

But I just decided to stick it out a little bit longer.

What followed was a 1.5-hour tour de force of strenuous exercise. 60-pound sandbag suitcase carries in a circle, pack-on pushups, more burpees. Clip the bags together and carry it with all your fellow badass babes in a line. Pick it up, put it down, pass it one way, pass it back. Put the sandbags down. Step ups on a long local bench with your pack on. Up, down, up, down. Then the 5-gallon buckets come out. The leaders each fill one with the salt water in the canal behind us. They come back up to the long line of babes and start picking people off by the bucketful as they step up, down, up, down. Thankfully it was hot as heck. But shouting encouragements to others when an unexpected dump came left me with a literal bad taste in my mouth.

More walking with the clipped sandbags, back to the original corral. Then, we had to lift and toss the bags, all 25-30 of them, around a circular path. 90 plus women, 30 bags, so we were taking turns with the tosses. This had to be my favorite part. I love my sandbag at home, which isn’t quite so heavy but I do know how to clean it to my chest and launch it. This made me feel so strong and like I contributed. Finally, back to a big circle with more sandbag throws and pushups with pack.

I forgot what may have been the hardest part for some, which happened at the very beginning, even before the warm up. All this was done with nothing to hold back your hair. I have short hair and had nothing holding it back anyway so when they told everyone at the beginning to take their hair down I just stood there. As you’ll see on the patch we earned, the badass babe has long flowing locks so the two dudes in charge said it’s a rule to have our hair down. I wondered for a moment if that meant I wasn’t woman enough. Then I decided I didn’t care what their narrow definition of femininity was anyway. What would three men know about that? Not much. Nothing that mattered to me, at least.

30 minutes of yoga and cool down and I earned my patch for my ruck. I am a total patch chaser and I knew what it meant. All the Street Parking Women who completed it took a group pic, but otherwise there was no evidence it happened. I was too busy suffering to grab a photo. I do have the patch, of course. Another effort and experience for the books. I didn’t give up.

It started out with the warning. I had a crazy crew with me. We acted our shoe size more than our age, but we had so much fun. 

We squirted.

We flicked.

We stroked.

We squeezed.

We made such a mess.

We outright threw paint.

We called it art when we were done.

We loved dressing in our jumpsuits.

We had an absolute blast being us.

I suppose that is what the the evening was about. Splatting paint all over and calling it your art masterpiece. We all laughed. We all felt the ooey gooey of the paint seeping through crevices of our protective gear to hit our body. Some of us had paint in our hair. Some painted their shoes. We definitely started out in our bright white jumpsuits but soon ended up covered in color, mostly thanks to each individual’s shenanigans within our group. I would say that that none of us are plain, thus the color suits us just fine.

We had teens in attendance. We had the roaring 20’s represented. We had some dirty thirty girls in the mix.  A couple of 40-somethings. And then we had the master’s age group. The menopausal fifty-plus girls. The golden ones. Evidence all of these age groups can have fun together,  actively engaging and laughing together. I will not ever underestimate the power of that community bond. Precious memories made on this day.

This was a new take on a paint with guidance activity. I’ve done the painting pottery with my kids. I’ve done the sip and paint parties with the girls. I’ve attended many parties with paint but this one takes the cake. Such a blast for all. If you get a chance to get messy with your special group do it.

Hands on fun. It’s definitely a must do at some point. Heck I can’t wait to get to the old folks home one day and demand this as an activity. Off I go to find my next adventure. Everyone needs a little color splatter in their life to keep it interesting. Don’t you think?

I attended a conference recently and I didn’t have the agenda ahead of time. Not my fault just the way the story goes. My first session was an LGBT training that covered a lot of ground. I wasn’t expecting to be fully engulfed in the subject, but I welcomed the learning opportunity. I surprisingly learned a good bit and felt the topic deserved some space on the blog in case others could benefit from the same knowledge.

L is for lesbian.

G is for gay.

B is for bisexual.

T is for transgender.

This is not a judgment post rather it’s an educational post. One to share information without judgment no matter where you come from or how you feel about those in these these categories.

The clip above is small but it’s worth a zoom to read about each category even if it’s just to understand a little more than you already knew about the subject and/or categories.

As noted above I learned a lot about a topic many fear. Too much to include in one post thus I will leave you tidbits that struck me as interesting.

• Assisted living facilities today are not welcoming for the LGBT community. Many older generations struggle with acceptance thus having same sex partners share a space would be very much out of the ordinary and not welcomed. Just think many elderly today lived through the 80’s in the midst of the aid’s epidemic. That may be their only knowledge on the subject.
• 1953 Gays were banned from federal jobs. 1973 you couldn’t get fired from federal jobs for being gay (if you even got a job). 1993 Don’t ask Don’t tell hit the military, but ended in 2011. In 2016 the Obama administration ends the ban on transgender in military. Shortly after trump bans transgender again in the military after he became president. Then in 2021 Biden overturned the ban on transgender in the military. So much disapproval within the government. So much confusion. I’m not choosing either side I’m merely noting the chaos.
• Q is for questioning. Those questioning if they are gay, bisexual, etc. I feel like I’ve lived under a rock for not understanding the depth of this phase for many individuals in varying age groups. So many variables such as religious beliefs, family dynamic, social norms, and so on.
• I also didn’t realize how many young people become homeless because of the disapproval they receive when they come out about their sexual preference. Some are even forced into Survival sex to stay alive. This was probably the most saddening for me as it involved suffering of young people. However on the flip side I learned of that some incarcerated people choose to partake in survival sex in exchange for protection while in prison. However once out of prison society doesn’t recognize those same people as gay, rather its more accepted due to environmental conditions Liek an all male prison and the need to survive. What an irony in my mind. A child can be forced into survival sex yet a prisoner faces less judgment for similar choice.

• if I go any further I would be too long winded on a controversial subject. I would however encourage you to read up on the history of LGBT since 1980. You will learn more than you want to on aids. You may see some interesting videos. You might even think about how you don’t agree with people who choose to be vegan or vegetarian but you don’t deny them food. In the same contrast we shouldn’t let those in the LGBT fear society because they choose to live a certain way.

• just a good food thought post. Life is a journey. Life’s journey is full of lived experiences. Today I lived through the lens of another who is in the LGBT community to foster growth in myself. I can only encourage others to expand their knowledge on the subject.

 no sides taken from me ont his subject as I am neutral. I will always choose to love others for who they are not what they practice behind closed doors. 

Feel free to post comments or feedback but know we won’t share hate messages rather we will just have awareness on how our audience views our post ont his controversial subject.

“Describe your perfect day in 4 words.”

We’ve been starting our day with positive thoughts and prompts in 3rd grade summer school. It’s part of our efforts to address the whole child and connect in meaningful ways with every student.

Boy, they were stumped on this. Then again, some of my students are shy or not used to sharing or speaking up. Many of them don’t know each other well.

So I went first.

Here’s my four:

-nature

-move

-friends

-ice cream.

First, yes, I know ice cream is two words. And I could pretend it’s hyphenated but of course it isn’t. I’m just giving myself a pass on this. I maybe should have just said dessert but the truth is I’ve been thinking about ice cream often lately. I enjoy it, especially in the summer, but I’ve trained myself to really only have it when it is special, like homemade or unique. I haven’t had opportunities to have special ice cream so I’ve really been thinking about it.

The other words are more general. Nature could be the beach, or the mountains, or a hike or an outdoor swim or even staring up at the stars. But my perfect day would have to include some kind of outdoor natural experience.

Move…even though I move every day in one way or another, a perfect day wouldn’t be a rest day. My day is totally thrown off if I don’t do some kind of exercise right at the beginning.

Finally, friends. These could include family that I am friendly with. Although I like my alone time, maybe even more than most people, the perfect day would include sharing it with some friends.

Students chimed in with activities like basketball, football, reading. Some had a food or even a picnic. I asked friends who had their own take on their top four. It’s hard to narrow it down. Later I wondered if I should have included coffee. Or flowers (which could fall into “nature,” I guess.)

What would you say? What are your four ingredients to the perfect day?