Well I have just watched four hours of the Olympics.
The Fab Five won the gold medal. Michael Phelps won his nineteenth medal to become the most decorated Olympian of all time. I sat on the couch and ate cookies.
Yet my adrenaline levels are off the charts. I have cheered. I have cried. I have lamented the day I quit gymnastics at age eight because I might have been an Olympian if I had just mastered walking across the gym floor without tripping.
I’m not sure how I’m ever going to settle down and go to sleep. So instead I’m watching Sweet Home Alabama for the 842nd time on the Oxygen channel.
It’s hard to pick a highlight of the night so I think I’m just going to give a quick rundown.
(Yes. Apparently this has become a blog solely devoted to Olympic coverage this week.)
(But only for those of you who aren’t looking for hard-hitting journalistic insights.)
1. The Russian female gymnasts love them some glitter. I’m not sure how you say “There is no such thing as too much glitter” in Russian, but I bet their coaches do.
2. I find it interesting that it’s 2012 and we haven’t found a better way to hold back hair than those plastic, bendy Goody barrettes that I wore in a series of unfortunate school photos from 1976-1982.
Do better, hair accessory industry.
3. Words can’t express how thrilled I was for Jordyn Weiber. She proved to have the heart of a champion when she bounced back from her disappointment on Sunday and helped lead her team to gold.
Her smile after she finished that first tumbling pass on the floor exercise was priceless.
4. I needed more of Aly Raisman’s parents.
5. Thank goodness Michael Phelps won two more medals and broke the record. I was afraid Andrea the poolside commentator was going to take him out back and shoot him if he failed.
She clearly graduated from the Journalism School of No Mercy and Bad Questions.
6. Caroline decided halfway through the balance beam routines that she needed to practice her gymnastics. Even though she quit gymnastics two years ago.
And then she spent the next hour twirling and jumping around our living room while intermittently stopping to stretch. I think Bela Karolyi would be impressed.
7. Without question the overstatement of the night goes to the gymnastics commentator who declared a mistake by one of the Russian gymnasts during the floor exercise to be “ABSOLUTELY CATASTROPHIC”.
I’d like to buy him a dictionary. And some perspective.
Your house falling in around you equals CATASTROPHIC. Failing to land a cartwheel? Disappointing, yes. ABSOLUTELY CATASTROPHIC? I think not.
8. Loved seeing the mens’ relay team win the gold. Not only did it help Phelps achieve his goal, but I think it gave Lochte a little bit of confidence back.
9. I did a back dive off the diving board at the pool today.
No. That technically has nothing to do with the Olympics.
But it was the closest I came to any sort of athletic endeavor and I wanted you to know. It helped offset the guilt I felt about eating the chocolate chip cookies. I’m almost forty-one and I can still do a back dive.
Which reminds me that I need to take three or six Advil before bed.
10. Is it just me or would anyone else really like a pair of those green tennis shoes that the Fab Five had on during the medal ceremony?
And did you watch their interview with Bob Costas at the end where they all said the earliest Olympics they remembered was 2004?
Wow.
I’m old.