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My Trash Can Beat Me Up Today

Seriously... I'm not making this up. It hit me in the side of the head. Hard. You see it was so incredibly windy today. And, also cold and full of intermittent snow showers... I'm not sure what happened to spring. We did get a taste of it, but it has retreated once again. Anyway, as I was saying... I was dragging the trash can out to the end of the driveway and the wind hit it just the right way to pick up the lid and thrash it right onto my head. I saw the whole thing happen... anticipated it even, and yet still couldn't stop it from happening. I made it out alive, without even losing my hair clip, but the trash can has been in a timeout on my front porch ever since.




A common phrase in Colorado, probably should be the state motto, is "If you don't like the weather here, wait a minute" and isn't that the truth... by Monday, the weather is supposed to be in the 70's even hitting 77 on Tuesday... nothing like the cold front of today. Of course, sometimes these radical changes in weather can happen within the same day... you should never be caught out without a jacket even in the summer. Though it's the wind that's unbearable in the spring. And, it drives Sanjay crazy, too. His fears all lie with physical things like flying in an airplane, riding the gondola and blowing wind that could possibly take him with it. Today every time he stepped out of the car he was screaming... "Mommy, Mommy, hold my hand, hurry". Priya, on the other hand, is afraid of all things emotional, like getting lost from Mom and Dad and replaying in her head images of snakes and wicked witches from scenes that she saw on TV. These two children are so very different... I'm anxious to see how this plays out as they grow older.

Can you walk like this?

Sanjay has been walking on his toes like this for a while now. It's become a circus act for him because the rest of us really can't do it but we love watching. I think it can only be done by children of his age, or weight, I should say. It's just scientifically, biologically not possible for a grown adult or even a 6 year old to put that much pressure on toes that are bent backwards. Give it a try and if you can do it, please send me the proof in pictures! :)

Those Pesky Teenagers

7:15am... sunny day and no forecast for snow or anything that would be cause for concern and I hear on the radio that our school district is on a 2 hour delay. What? Can this be? So, I call my good friend KO who is on top of these things and sure enough, she heard the same thing but didn't have any details except that it had something to do with the buses running behind schedule. It turns out the teenagers in our school district have a problem reading the calendar and they were one week late on their April Fool's prank. Every bus in the school bus depot (all 120 of them) had flat tires when the first driver reported to work in the morning. My initial thoughts were... "dang I recently posted about how great it is to live here"... and these teens just slashed the tires of all the buses. But after reading the story, it seems that the tires were just deflated, so it wasn't as malicious as I suspected. Nevertheless, I hope I never hear of my kids involved in a prank like this when they are older. Geez, the things we have to look forward to as they grow up.

This made me think of all the rebellion in my teen years. Most of it, I won't write about here, but there is one thing that I think is safe. Safe because when the kids read this years from now... it's something that they won't be able to do because the technology has changed. Back in the old days advertisement billboards for shopping centers and gas stations used the backlit board with slide-in alphabet letters instead of the all-digital ones we see today. Remember those? Occasionally something would be missing or out of place and it would read "KIDS MELAS RE HER" instead of "KIDS MEALS ARE HERE". The letters might also be in varying colors and always all caps. Anyway... I was on a mission to collect all the letters in my name, so I went around grabbing what I needed from these boards. Then, in college, I proudly displayed them in my dorm room. (Note: I went with the E-E spelling of my name because E's were a lot easier to come by than a Y)



I wish this was the most absurd and senseless thing I'd done as a teenager, but I can't make that claim.

Wishes from Sanjay

At the end of the day after he's heard some really good examples from Priya, like:

** "Dad, there's a spider on your head. April Fool's"
** "Caroline, your shoe is untied. April Fool's"

this is what he comes up with for me...

"Mom, you don't have a face. April Fool's Day!"

Riddle Answer

It looks like some really smart people read my blog! You're right... the answer is that the date reads the same when you turn it upside down. Congrats!

State Meet (Part 2)

After the state meet, I realize why I keep swimming and competing, besides the obvious, that it keeps me in shape. It's the camaraderie. We were there to support each other in every race... we shared war stories, if you will. I even came home with a battle wound on my foot. One of our swimmers made the national top ten list in her 1000 yard event, we had enough swimmers to enter a couple of relays, we watched an 87 year old complete the Brute Squad meaning he swam the meet's 3 toughest events (1650 yd free, 200 yd butterfly and 400 yd IM)... we even saw a 47 year old break a national record in the 100 yd freestyle with a time of 47.47 seconds (incomprehensible for me). He beat all the other swimmers in this event, including the younger folks. To give you an idea of how fast he was... the winner of the youngest age group swam it in 52.78 seconds, more than 5 seconds slower. For all the race results, click here.



Today's events for me were mixed... I had a great 500 yd freestyle race. Turns out, I was seeded in the same heat as my best swim friend Karen and we ended up swimming right next to each other in lane 9 and lane 10. She was scaring me all morning with her incredible concentration... iPod in the ears and avoiding contact with all of us. I knew this race would be close as we swim together at practice and are nearly the same speed. Her seed time was faster than mine, but I felt stronger this year than last. She was hoping for this scenario... swimming side by side so she could pace off me, but secretly, I was dreading it. Off the blocks she tore down the lane... I'm thinking to myself, "this seems a little fast, but I can't let her get too far ahead or I'll never catch her". For the entire race, we were never more than a half-body length apart... it must have been exciting for our teammates to watch. We could hear them yelling at us at every turn. I was slightly trailing her for the first 18 lengths of the race... then somewhere during the last 2 lengths I managed to catch and out-touch her at the finish by 4/10ths of a second. We both shaved several seconds off our times from last year. I swam it in 7:18.22 dropping 14 seconds from last year's time.

Karen and me after the race...



My other 2 races were backstroke events which I normally love swimming... but I wasn't happy with either backstroke swim today. Both were slower than last year's races and in the 200, I ended up turning too close to the wall and banging my foot hard on the side of the pool... ouchie! Then on the 4th turn I was a little too far from the wall. Despite all of that, I ended up with a first place gold medal in this race for my age group. Go figure. Anyway, next year I'll increase my backstroke training... either that, or I'll change it up and swim something else. All in all, a fun time and I'm looking forward to it again next year.