A bit of this and that

It's almost 8 am and a pack of (non-wild) girls....13-15 year olds, just ran by the house.  Gosh, at least 12 of them our exercising in a group run.  Oooop, there goes another smaller pack a little bit behind....  That's a lot of organization for before 8 am.

A woman walking her big dog was having a hard time getting him out of the neighbor's yard sprinkler.  He was having a good time getting cooled off and getting a drink.

This past weekend my husband's brother, Jim, came to stay with us and we all went to a Twins game.  They lost, but it was a fun game.  It's really hard to find 5 tickets together that aren't all in the sun for most of the game.  So John and his brother found a pair in the shade on Club level, and the kids and I found some out in the outfield overlook.  Even finding 3 was hard - I guess you aren't supposed to go to the game in odd numbers. 

The kids were very well behaved.  When we were leaving after the 3rd inning to meet John and Jim TC Bear was shooting out t-shirts in our area.  We stood in the aisle about 10 seats down from where we were sitting.  Wouldn't you KNOW it?  That damn bear shot a t-shirt right into Katie's seat.  The lady sitting next to us reached over and handed the shirt to the boy sitting in front of us.  When we returned to our seats with cotton candy and cracker jacks we were filled in by our other neighbor on how we missed the t-shirt shooting.  "Yes," I replied, "we saw it.....why do you think we came back with cotton candy?"

I swam again last night too - after I put Will to bed.  I got 8 laps in - 3 with the kickboard, 5 swimming freestyle/backfloating.  Other than feeling like I was going to throw up and crying in the hot tub afterwards, it went well.  (Eye roll.)  I spose my endurance level is improving if nothing else.  And like everyone tells me, I'm getting comfortable in the water.  (I am?)

Swimming is hard.  It's more physically taxing than I anticipated and the mental issues are sometimes overwhelming.  Do you want to hear about my experiences as a child?  Of course you do....
It was nothing traumatic, but I remember it very clearly.  I started out taking 2 summers of private lessons.  I worked with a sweet girl - Casey.  She was the daughter of a high school teacher and very patient with me when I refused to do things she wanted me to try.  She is the sole reason I can backfloat today - I still hear her voice in my ear telling me to push out my belly button.  After 2 summers, my parents didn't want to pay for private lessons anymore - public lessons were cheaper and I thought I was ready.  I must have been about 7-8 and was taking swimming lessons at the local pool, (indoor at the time).  My aunt Carol was taking me because I was staying with her for the week, and the lessons were every day.  I started at station 1.  In order to move on to the next level, you had to do 10 bobs.  I finished that the first day and moved on to Station 2.  Station 2 was doing a front float for 10 seconds, and backfloating for 10 seconds.  It took me a couple days, but I finally did it, and moved on to "3".  Station 3 was where we had to front float across over half the width of the pool and backfloat back.  On my first day at Station 3, I could front float across fine.  But then on the backfloat, I would always stop in the middle thinking I couldn't do it.  On my (maybe) 3rd attempt the jackass running station 3 yelled at me in front of everyone when I stopped.  "What do you think you're doing!?!  You stop, you lose!  Don't be such a baby!  You're never going to get anything right!  You're never going to swim!" and on and on....

I went back to the wall, crying.  I got to the steps, walked out of the pool told my aunt I wanted to go home and I never went back.  I never even went back to that swimming pool with friends.  A few years later they renovated the pool and made it an outdoor one, I think I went there twice before I graduated high school.  I still remember the asshole.  He graduated with my brother, and my husband.  Years later, in high school - he was a sub for my German class and I remember telling him (out of the blue) that I didn't like him at all, and he wasn't a very good teacher.  He was a sub - he said nothing. 

So here we are.  I'm trying to convince myself that I can swim, but there's a giant voice in my head saying that I'll never do it.  Hence - the crying when I got out of the pool after 8 laps.  I had wanted to do 10, but I just didn't have anything else in me for the night.  I have my first lesson Thursday night.  I doubt anyone at FOSS will make me cry, but I'll let you know if they do.