stacy b-log

Yes, you read that correctly: Kellee "Goat" Stooks and I, Stacy "Toes" Bertinelli (Team Limoncello), tried out for the Navy SEALs today. To say that we failed to make the team is something of an understatement. For starters, they don't allow girls to become SEALs, but even if they did, neither of us is 28 years old (maximum age to apply), and after our performance today, I can say with some degree of certainty that we would not be among their hallowed legions.

But at least we tried ... and we had fun ... and we were quite entertaining in the process.

Which is to say: Each of us swam 500 yards - breaststroke or sidestroke only, because you can't do the fly, backstroke or freestyle without coming out of the water, creating some splashy noise and making yourself into a nice target for a sniper. Then, after we managed to avoid drowning, we got to do as many push-ups as we could in 2 minutes, as many sit-ups as we could in 2 minutes and as many pull-ups as we could... period... and then we got to run 1.5 miles. Oh, and we were competing against aspiring Navy SEALs and Olympians who actually medaled in swimming in Beijing.

And we lived to tell about it - with photos!

Our day began at 0920 hrs - this, after Kellee quaffed martinis all night on Friday and I stayed up way past my bedtime. Did I mention that we decided to undertake this little challenge on... THURSDAY... a mere 48 hours before? And that we hadn't been training AT ALL? Sweet husband Pat insisted on joining us as cameraman and sherpa - just so the SEALs wouldn't have to dispose of the bodies themselves. Here we are at the starting block.

Before we dive in to our little adventure, a refresher: SEALs are the Navy's special forces who conduct clandestine missions by SEA, Air and Land. First, you have to join the Navy, then you have to qualify by passing the SEAL Physical Screening Test (PST), then you get to enroll in their Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL (BUD/S) program, which consists of 12 months of initial training, followed by 18 months of pre-deployment training, and then, IF YOU SURVIVE THIS FAR AND ACTUALLY PASS, you get to do super-cool things that you can't tell anyone about - or else you'd have to kill them. Learn more about becoming a SEAL here, and prepare to feel inadequate. According to our team leader Bo, more than 75 percent of the people who sign a SEAL contract, FAIL.

So the SEAL Fitness Challenge is a fun way for the general public to attempt the SEAL PST and see how fit (or in our case, how challenged) they are. It's part recruiting tool (of 331 participants, only 35 were women) and it's part public relations love-fest. Consider: All the sailors / SEALs that run this event are cute as anything you'd see on the cover of People's Sexiest Man Alive edition, as fit as any Ironman Triathlete and as friendly as deacons on Easter Sunday. Plus they had a live band, demonstrations for the kids, interactive booths for prospective sailors, and a rope-climb for lame-assed, uninjured, wimpy spectators. Oh, and the Navy Leap Frogs - their aquatic paratroopers - also rained down from the sky.

According to the literature, the PST is "a general indicator of whether you have the baseline fitness necessary to complete the demanding SEAL training program (BUD/S)."

The standards that must be achieved to enter BUD/S are as follows, with our results beside (or below) each benchmark:

500-yard swim (using sidestroke or breaststroke) under 12 ½ minutes - Stacy B 13:20; Kellee 14:30
42 Push-Ups in 2 minutes - Kellee 20; Stacy B 13
50 Sit-Ups in 2 minutes - Kellee 60 (that's Pilates for you!); Stacy B 37 (that's a beer-gut for you!)
6 Pull-Ups no time limit - Kellee 0; Stacy 0; little 9-year-old kid wearing a backpack: 8
1.5 Mile Run under 11 minutes - Kellee 13:24; Stacy 15:42 (what did you expect?)

Just for your reference, US Olympic swim team silver medalist Lacey Nymeyer, 21, of Tucson, completed the swim in 6:56, did 60 push-ups, 94 sit-ups and 13 pull-ups, and she ran the mile-and-a-half in 8:59.

To simulate the SEAL experience as closely as possible, they assigned us to a color-coded team (WHITE) led by a very motivated SEAL, the aforementioned Bo, who (man after my own heart) had his very own bullhorn.

As we waited for TEAM ORANGE to clear the pool so we could begin, Bo shared the unique fitness challenges of the SEAL lifestyle. For example, SEALs run an average of 100 miles per week - I, on the other hand, do not run 100 miles in a year. One time, Bo did the sidestroke for 7 hours because his SEAL class had to swim nine miles back to the mainland from the island where they had been deposited to spend a delightful afternoon of physical training. We, on the other hand, felt like our little 500-yard adventure was a 7-hour, 9-mile slog - even though I beat two boys (and Kellee) out of the water. Come to find out, my sub-14-minute finish would qualify me to be a Navy diver (if I had rocks tied around my ankles)! Here I am, stealthily emerging from the depths to affix some dynamite to an unsuspecting boat...

"I think I'm going to throw up," Kellee said, emerging from the same pool - and there would be plenty of time for that, because up next on the agenda was the push-up "evolution." The SEALs don't call their athletic endeavors "events" or "exercises." I'm guessing this is because evolving is a lot harder (and slower) than mere exercising. Here's Kellee showing how it's done on the push-ups - you will be glad to know that neither of us threw up, though one of the boys in our group did so twice.

Here I am evolving through some sit-ups - again, vomit-free.

And this is where things got interesting: The Pull-Up Evolution. We had as long as we needed to complete as many pull-ups as we could. For me and Kellee, that would be one-half each, or one combined, but according to the SEALs, that would be ZERO. They didn't handicap us because - as I pleaded to Team Leader Bo, "We have five-pound weights strapped to our chests!"

"Yeah, and those will help you in the event of an unplanned water evacuation," Bo replied, through his bullhorn. "Do the pull-up."

The interesting thing about the pull-ups (and sit-ups and push-ups) was that my body just failed me. I knew what I wanted it to do - I wanted it just to get my chin over that bar, or extend my arms through that 14th push-up, or just... get... my... elbows... to... my... knees... one... more... time... but no, my muscles (or lack thereof) wailed, "No mas, sister! You might make the Navy WALRUSes,* but you ain't making the SEALs!"

Which brought us to the run: Here's Kellee - she of the bum knee - lapping my sorry ass at the finish line. Bo was so proud.

Despite our inability to achieve a single, military-grade pull-up, they still gave us a white T-shirt for participating. Those who met the SEAL standards (including both the Olympic medalists) received brown T-shirts and those who reached the competitive SEAL standards, received blue T-shirts (and a likely visit from a Navy recruiter). For your entertainment, the competitive SEAL standards "statistically give the candidate a much greater chance of completing BUD/S." Here they are:

500-yard swim (using side+stroke or breaststroke) under 10 minutes
80 Push-Ups (in 2 minutes)
80 Sit-Ups (in 2 minutes)
11 Pull-Ups (no time limit)
1.5 Mile Run under 10 minutes

Yeah, right. That being said, we had a great time (and hurt like hell today) and are already planning for our next Team Limoncello adventure: Saturday, August 8 in Seattle - the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge. We want our brown shirts, dammit - and we're actually going to train for it! (As always, you're welcome to join us - or just sit back and laugh at us)

*WALRUS - Wide-Ass Lard-o: Really Unfit for Service.

Posted by stacy at 05:00 PM | Permalink

We framed... we sawed... we hammered... We doubled the size of our backyard deck by ourselves and managed to stay married in the process. Behold, the Patrick and Stacy World Headquarters Backyard Deck:

Small, Petite, Decent but Workable Before:

Amazing, Awesome, Incredible and Humongous After:

Go ahead and admit it, you can't wait for Mardi Gras 2010 to trip the light fantastic on that dance floor - and no, we do not contract ourselves out. Mom already asked. And yes, I realize we said we weren't going to spend a lot of money on our fur-cation, so you'll be happy to know that we paid for half our materials with the coins I rolled from our change jar ($450) - though we had to take it to four different banks to get it converted to paper. Now that's what I call recessionary economics.

You can read more about this adventure, see pictures of Stacy using an actual saw and not amputating any of her own limbs, plus learn how to persuade your wife to help you build a deck... all after the jump.

I was a bit skeptical (as was Pat) that this little undertaking could take a toll on our relationship. I'm not the most coordinated person in the world, and I don't take instruction well (OK, I'm a mule), and really, who wants to spend her Spring Break being told "you're not doing it right" by her husband while undertaking back-breaking manual labor on his behalf at his behest? In fact, who wants to spend his fur-cation patiently instructing said wife in the ways of using a screwdriver without impaling her own eyeball or finding himself sleeping on the couch? Good times... good times.

But we had a week to kill and we'd been talking about expanding our deck for a while (its puny square-footage was painfully revealed at Mardi Gras 2009), and really, there's only so much you can do with a box of Peeps and a glue gun. So with Pat's painstakingly drawn plans in hand (and seriously, this guy missed his calling as an engineer), off we went to our nearest home improvement store to order 46 sticks of lumber, two boxes of nails, three 5-pound boxes of deck screws (fancy, they don't tell you how many screws per box, only the weight of the box - in grams - which calculates to 625 screws per box after you get home and weigh an actual screw on your food scale. Just sayin'), 30 joist hangers and six 80-pound bags of Quikrete. And yes, an 80-pound bag of Quikrete weighs about 400 pounds.

On Saturday, we shoveled about 3,000 pounds of gravel to level out our work surface. Then we dug six 1-foot post-holes which is a lot like pounding concrete with a pickaxe for about three hours... per hole. Then we sunk the posts which involves Pat holding bags of Quikrete over said holes while I douse him with water, and then I got to use the handsaw to level the posts - careful... careful... Stacy saws

Here is the fruit of our first day of slaving labor:

Here is how you do not want to wake up on a Sunday morning: Lumber delivery!

So on Sunday, we got to move all of that lumber from the front drive into the backyard... and we weren't even hammering yet. But I was yammering... oh, yes... yes I was. For example, why on God's green earth did we think it was a good idea to plant a prickly pear right next to our deck? I ask this as one who just stopped typing to pull yet another phantom thorn out of my right shoulder, lo these five days later. Oh, and did I mention that my left pec cramped and bicep spasmed as I was attempting this self-surgery? Good times... good times.

Still, Pat soldiered on... though I think it was the protective ear plugs he uses with the circular saw. His ingenious plan was to extend the existing 4x6 beams to the block wall on the south and the view fence on the west, increasing the overall size of the deck from 8x12 feet to 12x16 feet. We would then pull up the existing decking (DEMOLITION IS FUN!) and lay down the 16-footers on top of the new frame.

Here's Stacy jousting with a joist hanger...

I actually managed to hang all of my joist hangers so that the joists were flush with the frame. I had an excellent teacher: Pat would show me how to do a task. I would do one. He would check my work, make suggestions or offer praise and turn me loose to finish my task. Then he would finish twice as many as I had in the same amount of time. If you've read any of my previous blog entries, you know that "slow and steady" are the words I live by - whether I'm trying to or not - and my unofficial mantra mattered most with the joist hangers because in his haste with the 24-ounce Vaughan hammer, Pat hung his joist hangers too high and he had to go back and redo eight of the 21 that he hung. I only completed nine... but I did them perfectly. (So I left to go play cards.)

Onward to Monday, where we got to do some serious screwing...

Yeah, I know what you were thinking... we screwed 650 screws into that deck - and this after my back started to spasm and I began eating Aleve like Smarties. Our dogs were absolutely no help at all, though they did supervise the jobsite in a professional manner - and they managed not to poop in the work area.

And truly, at this interval was where I really had to pause and admire my husband's genius: We wanted the deck to finish flush with the view fence so the dogs could have some lovely unobstructed views of passing neighbors without the risk of their precious paws slipping between a crack. (It makes for better barking.) Here's how smart Pat is, as he screws the final board into place...

I will allow Roy a moment to genuflect... and no, Mom, we're not going to extend your deck next time we're in Shreveport... I don't care if it's Mother's Day. That's what Daddy's for.

Actually it is what Daddy's for - because in all of this, I realized that I pretty much married my Dad, which I think is the best compliment a daughter could ever give a man. When I was a kid, my father built a huge view deck off the second story of our house. He put up a privacy fence and a gate and put a nice trellis over our pool deck. He even asked my sister and me to put our handprints in the concrete. Building our new-and-improved deck, my husband and I uncovered where Pat had signed and dated the original deck he built with our friend Paul - Had it really been 10 years? So we initialed our Quikrete and signed the new deck. Sentimental. Sweet. Nostalgic - just like my Dad. Also, like my Dad, my husband is patient... incredibly patient... with his mulish girl and he's a helluva teacher and engineer (if only he could help me with my calculus problems). I married a man who believes in a job well done, loves to solve problems and enjoys the process of work.

And if you want to know how you can persuade your wife to help you build a deck as pretty as ours... well, re-read how we started Monday. Enjoy!

Posted by stacy at 04:37 PM | Permalink

So Pat's employer graciously offered my sweet husband a one-week, NONPAID vacation in the form of a furlough. Since he had to take this "fur-cation / vaca-lough" before the end of the first quarter, we decided to coordinate it with my Arizona State University spring break (March 9-13). Depending on how you look at it, this week-long sojourn is either a sign of the times or a sign of the apocalypse.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Unlike my classmates who have trotted off to exotic locales (Lake Havasu) for exotic beverages (Milwaukee's Best) and exotic endeavors (waking up in their own vomit on Dad's credit card), Pat and I have undertaken a few household chores that we'd been avoiding - cleaning out the office and doing yardwork (more on that later). Oh, and did I mention we gave up alcohol for Lent?

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Just because we're sober, doesn't mean we have to be serious, which is why I've also used this week to participate in a fun creative endeavor that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten around to. Behold, the Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest, 2009.

Depict an historic or cultural event by using marshmallow Peeps (bunnies or chicks) as your medium. I was inspired by current affairs and chose to re-enact "Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey." You may have caught this on YouTube - where another turkey gets the axe in full view of the cameras. Here's my depiction from two angles - one as though you were watching it on MSNBPeeps...

And the other as if you were on scene with the governor, the TV crews and the decaPEEPtation.

Now, I can't win the contest because I am not a resident of the District of Columbia, but I hope to make the finals. Will let you know when voting commences so you can give a shout out to YOUR PEEPS (and vote early and often for me). I may actually have enough time before the weekend is done to crank out another PEEPtacular diorama, so stay tuned...

Posted by stacy at 02:39 PM | Permalink