Crisp Update
Posted: May 5, 2009 Filed under: Goals, Writers Write | Tags: change of seasons, competitive swimming, family, swimming, writers, writing Leave a comment »I haven’t blogged lately. Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about:
- BBC#1 was here last weekend. We had a great time mostly sitting around watching the flowers grow, playing with digital cameras and laptop computers, and drinking tons of coffee.
- My garden is growing. Expect an detailed report soon with photos.
- Swim season is starting. Chinese Lessons are ending. This time of year, the girls’ schedule moves into a high gear. They are anxious to get into the pool again.
- Bacon is still temping, but he has already been interviewed for two, good full time jobs. Say a prayer for us.
- In spite of what you might hear on the news, I don’t know a single person with the flu, and school is in session.
- I’m working steadily on my book. My goal is three pages a day. I write all morning. It’s going well.
Timing
Posted: July 1, 2008 Filed under: A Zany Life, Mouths of Babes | Tags: change of seasons, competitive swimming Leave a comment »On the way to school one morning this spring, Coco pointed to something out the window of the minivan. ”Mama look! The pool.”
The opening of the neighborhood swimming pool is the official prologue to summer. In semi-tropical San Antonio, we mark the seasons by the condition of the water. When school starts, transparent-blue turns algae-emerald, then leafy-gold, then amebic-brown until early spring. When white concrete is exposed, we know the pool’s been drained for resurfacing. Near the end of April, the rush of Niagara flows from the spigot, and it’s time.
Cherry and Coco are water babies. They love nothing more than a frosty splash at 8:00 a.m. The girls began competitive swimming at ages 3 and 5, and for the past four years, summer swim league defines the months of May and June at our house.
This year’s league championships were held last Sunday morning. It was a great season. Now, for the rest of the summer, the girls will splash and play without swimming laps, and Mom won’t have to get up before dawn to take them to the pool.
Here are a few pictures of my baby dolphins at the last meet.
Sleepy girls before 6:30 a.m. warm-ups
Smiley-faced Cherry with her team before the race
Coco getting ready to swim
Team warm-ups at Josh Davis Natatorium
Pink swim caps make it easy to spot our girls from the stands.
Late Relay
Posted: June 17, 2008 Filed under: A Zany Life, Joined at the Heart, Mouths of Babes | Tags: competitive swimming 2 Comments »The swim meet started at four o’clock. The temperature was an even 100. Humidity hovered at 60 percent, placing the heat index somewhere around HELL. Since only kids could get in the pool, the rest of us were miserable. We suffered through freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly until the sun went down.
It was nine o’clock when the Girls 8 and Under Freestyle Relay began, after the bedtime of all the little girls involved. It might as well have been after my bedtime too, because it was so dark, I couldn’t see anything. Imagine the noise of a gazillion children made hyperactive by concession stand food, a grown man calling out names like a carnie worker at the state fair, and four 12 year old boys picking up, then rotating every few minutes, the canopy we were all standing under….Oh, and I still have vertigo.
Before the race, we were two kids short of having three relay teams. Since everyone wanted to swim, the team director decided to go with it, swimming two and half teams in three lanes. One seven year old didn’t get in line. So there I was, standing with someone else’s kid listening to her wail about not getting to get to swim. Holding her hand, I ran staggered as fast as I could to the far end of the pool just in time to get her into lane 6. Cherry and Coco managed to get into the water like they were supposed to, finishing in second and fourth place.
After the race, Coco didn’t get her award, so I took her back to the starting blocks. She spoke to a man with a nail bag strapped to his waist. “I didn’t get my ribbon!”
“I gave it to your teammate.” He pointed in the dark to the far end of the pool.
Holding a dripping wet, freezing, sleepy, six year old, who swam her heart out, I said, “Even if I could figure out who she swam with, I could never find her teammate in the dark. Can you give my kid a ribbon so we can go home?”
He must have recognized the Mama Bear growl in my voice because he reached into the nail bag and handed one to Coco. It wasn’t the right place, but by this time, we didn’t care.
Gathering our stuff, we slogged to the car. Bacon pulled a red wagon full of folding chairs and sunscreen. I held the hands of two very small, but triumphant baby Dolphins. On the way home, we celebrated finishing the race with strawberry slushes and ice cream.
Cherry, after her first race
