if you view my complete profile, you may note that one of my interests includes swimming. i really don't know why i put that there. maybe it's because i am a pisces and i am drawn to water. honestly, swimming is one of the very few forms of exercise i will partake in voluntarily.
i remember taking swimming lessons as a very small child (maybe four or five years old). the main thing i remember is a girl in the class only had half an arm. Her mom had measles when she was pregnant, and that was the explanation given for her difference. i never thought much of it after the question was answered honestly. this little girl ended up being quite beautiful and popular; she was even a cheerleader in high school. it was a snobby high school, with over 700 kids per class. we learned to blow bubbles together, and that was about all we had in common.
i swam in pools and in the ocean every chance i got growing up, but i was never an athletic, competitive swimmer. i was a "swim from point A to point B swimmer." i graduated from dog paddle to breast stroke. i had to do the crawl at summer camp in order to check out a canoe or sail boat, so i imitated it enough to get by and pass the test. as much as i liked the water, no one could say i was a good swimmer.
i was a competitive runner in junior high and high school. because i was on the varsity track and cross country teams, i had a special gym period called PEA (physical education for athletes, i think). this meant you started your sport's practice the last period of the day, if you were in season. this meant you practiced 50 minutes longer than the other shmucks on the team who signed up for regular gym and got to play dodgeball or badminton during the day. (and you wonder why they call them "dumb jocks".) between track and cross country, it seemed as though i was always "in season", but somehow i ended up with a session of swimming with the varsity swim team. being competitive and a perfectionist, i figured out how to do the crawl, and i didn't completely embarrass myself.
i quit running in college. i've tried on occasion to pick it back up again, but i hate it, and i hate what it does to me physically and mentally. i had back surgery at age 25; the neurosurgeon said i had the discs of an 80-year-old woman. i was stir crazy after the surgery, so i took up swimming so i could participate in some form of exercise. that lasted for a couple years, and then like many exercise programs, i fell into something else, or fell off the exercise bandwagon.
i didn't start swimming again until i was pregnant with the Punkin. i actually walked two miles a day in the morning, and swam a mile after work throughout the entire pregnancy. i used to walk around my neighborhood at 4 o'clock in the morning, three laps to a mile, figuring i was never more than 10 minutes away from a bathroom. now i have morning duty with the Punkin, and i have no desire to get out of bed at 4 in the morning. so the best i can do is swim.
i don't think i really enjoy it, but i guess that means it's exercise. there is a fundamental difference between swimming and walking: i cannot stew, worry, or obsess excessively when i am swimming. i count my laps. four crawl, one breast stroke. four crawl, one breast stroke. i look forward to the breast stroke laps. after the second crawl lap, i think to myself "i'm half-way there." i count to five; i count to ten; i'm nearly a third done. i count to fifteen; i count to twenty; i'm more than half-way there. i still can't do a flip turn, but i have rationalized that i am getting more exercise by not doing a flip turn.
time to count to five.
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