@postaday 147; #postaday2011.
I want to get this done quickly so I can get to bed and get up early and let the wind torture me on my bicycle. A three day weekend! Three days to ride, swim, hang out with the family, make some healthy food and track my Weight Watchers points!
After I took a nap and woke up at 7 tonight, we Benderettes headed for The Oahu Club. The weather is cool and the wind is brisk, so, as we like it, the pool was nearly deserted except for the masters swimmers and the tennis gang. I got a lane to myself and did 500 meters. I am nursing a sore left arm, which I suspect is a bicep injury, so when I first start swimming it’s difficult to get that arm out of the water while doing freestyle. It loosens up some, but it doesn’t really ever feel good. Getting through those 10 laps and nine flip turns is all I want to do. When I get through, I get out, do my hair, hang out in a chair and play Words With Friends, Word Feud, and catch up with email, Facebook and Twitter. The girls stay in the pool until closing time, 9 p.m.
Tonight, Sophie did 1200 meters. She used to be on swim team, and she misses the workouts. When she was nine and 10 and swimming with the team for practice, I’d be amazed at her perseverance, lap after lap, never whining about the work. I had Charlotte and her on swim team for a while. I was on swim team from 6-16 years old and I loved it. I didn’t always like the practices, but the swim meets were so fun and I got my share of blue, red, yellow and green ribbons.
Many years later, I’m a new project, a work in progress. Last week when we went to the pool for the first time in a few years, Masters Coach Joe Lileikis called me out and said he had seen that I had signed up for the masters swimming workouts. So I told him about my arm and he said we’d work with that problem. Joe is one of the world’s most positive guys, a cheerleader for everyone, just an amazing influence on those of us at the pool who want to improve our swimming techinques. He also teaches 8th grade history at Niu Valley Middle School. Next year Sophie may get him and that would be fabulous. East Oahu is lucky to have him.
Tonight he cleared a lane so I could have it to myself. Next Thursday I’ll get my first stroke clinic with Joe. I wondered as I was doing my laps tonight what he must be thinking about me. Am I an Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins, a malleable form waiting his shaping and guidance? Am I an old 1968 GTO uncovered in the back of a junkyard somewhere, one hideaway headlight stuck open, one hideaway headlight stuck closed?
I am always a work in progress. In the end, I get pushed out and away, forced to step out on my own, teetering with uncertainty, with far less confidence than that of my teachers. Personal development should never really stop. There is always something within us, or about us that needs rehabilitation or maybe just a little tweaking. The first step occurs in the mind. Without making the decision that one needs something, it cannot be achieved.
G’nite.
Love,
me.
Lavagal 