Week 2: Sparkles and Sick Cats

We’re in year two of this pro triathlon thing. More or less. You can read all my weekly recaps.

When we got our new cat Snoop, poor Tupac got so stressed out he made himself sick. At first he seemed fine, then he developed some kind of urinary tract infection and blockage and had to have a mini-surgery. This is, apparently, a thing that happens with male cats: they stress themselves out so much they get sick. After he recovered, he was mostly fine again. The two of them were getting along, except for the fact that Snoop is insane and tries to break everything in the house.

And then Pac got upset again, and had to go back on some meds. It’s a whole thing now. Is he upset today? Is he stressed out? Are they play-fighting or really fighting? Can’t we all just get along?

Really, though, I get it. Things are up and down. Some days you’re stressed out and just want to sleep without some little guy trying to jump on you every two seconds. And some days you’re cool with it.

I’m out of shape. That happens after two months of almost no activity — which went a month longer than I expected because of all that bullshit. I’m starting to get back in shape now, a little bit. Some days it seems like it’s coming around; some days it definitely isn’t. Last weekend, I rode four hours with Steve and it was the hardest I’ve ridden in, I don’t know, it was actually really hard, so maybe the hardest I’ve ridden outside of a race period. And then I was exhausted all week. Yesterday, I rode a very slow three hours and then took another nap.

On Friday, we went down to San Jose to watch the figure skating national championships. It was fun and interesting and also long (San Jose is not close). But one of the things that really stood out was how different it is from on TV. It’s real-er and less packaged and more obvious how hard they’re working. Which should be obvious always, but isn’t. Most of the time it’s hard work and hope, and then sometimes it’s sparkles and TV interviews. And it turns out so many of the dirty, rough edges sort of get blurred out by the time it’s on NBC.