last night’s dream… which i only remember because i repeated it over and over again from the time i hopped (or dragged) out of bed at 6:30 this morning until now… realizing that writing it down may have been a smarter way to go as far as recalling details.  but here is the gist…

as you may know i spent most of my childhood swimming.  swim practice at 5am before school and at 3pm after school every weekday and swim meets on weekends.  hence my overly competitive drive or my ‘olympic champion wanna be’ way of life, as i like to call it.  so many of my stress dreams or other dreams take place in the water, as last night’s did.

i’m at the olympic trials getting warmed up for the 100 butterfly.  of course the pool is not the beautiful stadium style pool you see on tv during the games, but rather a little swim club one, surrounded by trees and tennis courts like at newfield swim club in stamford, ct where i grew up swimming.  the other competitors are around 12 years old (around age of my last memory at the club), and there is me, almost three times as old, fully not in swimming shape, attempting to warm up.  once the race starts, i am back to the butterfly swimmer i used to be.  kickin’ some ass.  touching out my closest competetor with a time of just over 1:05.2 (the last race i ever swam nationally was the 100 fly and that was my time, strange memory).  about 15 seconds slower than a real olympic swimmer would get of course, but in my dream it got me to the olympics.
and then i woke up.

even in my dream i did not get to experience the actual olympic games. 

and then i thought about it for a few minutes.  thought about what had happened over the past few days.  and realized this was my subconscious’ way of celebrating our beard nomination.  i know the beard awards are not really as big as or similar to the olympics… though it would be sweet if each state walked out in matching jumpsuits for some sort of opening ceremony before the awards began… but for an out of shape person over 30, it is as close as i am going to get.  unless i continue to hone my croquet skills and get the game recognized in the olympics.  (shout out to manager dan who wears his champion croquet jacket a few times of week at the goat).

in the food industry, it IS the olympics, or the olympics crossed with the oscars.  (pretty sure none of the beta movies starring my sister stacey and i are going to get an oscar any time soon either.) and just as i would be honored just to walk in to the opening ceremonies, i am beyond honored just to be nominated.  to sit in the front part of the room along with the other nominees of the evening.  surrounded by all of the culinary greats of the industry.  and then go out and have a drink or a few with my partners to celebrate after the awards, whether the goat wins or not.

congrats to everyone on the goat team!! it is because of you working your asses off that we have been nominated.  love you!