Swimming

This post feels really de ja vous or however it is spelled so apologies if I've written about it before.  

Anyways, with my time off this summer, I've spending quite a bit of time pool side.  The community pool in my neighborhood has a 25m section and while earlier in the summer it was always packed with kids and their families making it impossible for lap swimming (we have no lane lines or a designated lap time), now that the kiddos are back in school (it's year round school where I live) and I have had the pool all to myself, or close to it.  

Some things that haven't changed:

1) Swimming still comes naturally to me.  Even after not swimming for a couple years I can slip into the water and it feels as comfortable and as natural as reconnecting with a dear old friend or putting on a pair of jeans that never fail you.  

2) Water (to clarify, pool water not deep, dark, can't see the bottom open water) is still amazingly soothing to me.  Astrologically I am an air sign (traits: aloof, clumsy, desire for change, social, flexible, communicative, etc), but according to Asian calendars I was born under element of fire (traits: passionate, go-getters, intuitive, enthusiastic, leapers before thinking, fighters, power/strength, fast thinkers/doers etc - all of which can be used for destructive purposes or rebirth - think Pele).  Ayurvedically I also have a lot of pitta, or heat/fire, in me (self-confident, physical strength, gets irritated if they have to miss a meal (Juan calls this part of me The Hulk), assertive, competitive, physically runs hot, tends to have skin and digestive issues etc).  Taking into consideration that my strongest element, by far, is fire followed closely by air (let's all take a moment to acknowledge how air fuels fire), my pitta tendencies, and the fact that I live in the goddamn desert, it is no wonder that I find water grounding and soothing, and, well, cooling.  When I get anxious or nervous plunging my hands into ice cold water has a very calming effect on me.  Even when I get sick all I want is a nice cool wash cloth on my face or neck.  Submerging my entire body into cool water when I go swimming is pure bliss.  Floating around, allowing the water to come up around my ears so that the world is muffled and all I can hear is my breathing, instantly slows me down.  My brain just kinda goes quiet, my body becomes graceful and elegant moving through the water instead of my usual, fiercely annoying special brand of clumsy.  Needless to say, water is an elemental way of balancing myself and literally cooling my naturally heated system.  

3) I can still choke under water.  I know this is the reason why many people do not like to put their face in the water, and maybe it's because I feel so grounded and calm and comfortable in the water, but I've never felt like I was going to drown (save one time at the beach when I was very small hence my issues with deep, dark, open water).  When I swam competitively it was pretty much inevitable that you were going to inhale/swallow a gross amount of pool water.  In a race when that happens you don't stop.  Hell, even in practice, you didn't stop.  In fact, you do the opposite of what you might think and stick your face in the water and cough, hard, until you get the water out and then take a big refreshing gulp of air at your next stroke.  

4) In addition to being able to choke under water, there are other little tricks I learned from my swim days.  Like pulling my cap back down during a flip turn.  Flip turns, period.  Form - elbows stay nice and high on that freestyle.  Creating that little pocket of air to breathe right above your shoulder but under your chin with your stroke.  How to put a cap on without help.  That perfect, snug fit of your goggles to ensure no water leakage.  Tying bikinis up in ways so that they don't fall off.  

5) Breast is still by far my worst stroke.  Always has been, pretty sure it always will be.  Freestyle I've always been strong in, as well as fly.  While my endurance is shot with fly, my stroke is still spot on.  Since we don't have lane lines and no flags I didn't even bother attempting back.  Chances are I would have ended up beaching myself on the wading pool side in the shallow end.  

6) I can also still hear my coach yelling at me every time I breathe coming off a flip turn.  I can hear my coach making strange noises whenever my head would bob up during breast stroke.  I can also hear my mother getting "Just keep swimming" a la Dory from Finding Nemo stuck in my head.  I can also see my friend/teammate Megan counting down my distance swims for me as supposed to counting up on the laps.  Something I still prefer to do in my head.  
Things that have changed:

1) Obviously endurance.  Cardio exercises and even strength doesn't translate over from one medium or modality to another.  Each activity is unique in its own way and if you want to be good at a specific exercise you have to do that specific exercise to create the strength, endurance and power needed for it.  

2) I kick now!  I used to not kick unless I was doing fly because all my power came from my kick.  Otherwise my feet just kinda half heartedly and lazily fluttered behind me.  I kick now.  

3) I cannot spend hours in the sun without copious amounts of sunscreen applied multiple times.  When I was a kid and spent literally every day of summer pool side for a good 6hours at a time, I only ever put sunscreen on my face.  By the time school started I was so brown it looked like I spent my summer on some tropical island and was actually a native of there.  I'm still that brown now (for the first time since I was a kid) but now I have to lather on the sunscreen head to toe every hour that I am at the pool/in the sun or I burn.  I have two theories on this.  First, melanin apparently is like muscles in that you use it or lose it.  Since I am no longer spending all my time outside, my skin doesn't protect itself as well as it used to.  Second, I practically live on the face of the sun and am convinced that there is less ozone here in the desert and so the sun is literally more intense here than it is elsewhere.  

So after all that word vomit, this summer has reminded me how much I love water and how, in a way, I need it in my life.  So, babe, this is your fair warning that I want a pool in our backyard if we don't live in a place with a community pool.  

Randoms

I haven't blogged in a month, so randoms it is.  

1. Much to my dismay, I'm starting to develop plantar fasciitis.  And it sucks.  If shin splints weren't bad enough now my feet hurt.  Though I do find that putting a water bottle in the freezer and rolling my feet out every morning and night is helpful.  And not wearing flip flops as much as I like to is also helpful but, meh.  

2. We went to Sedona for Memorial weekend and I am in love.  It was so beautiful and a much needed escape for our day to day.  I'm determined to write more on this in a different post so we'll keep it to the following: awesome, amazing, magical, lots of wine, helicopter ride!  

3. Now that I'm done with school (and can I please get a big fucking amen for that whole process being over with?) I have more time to meal plan etc.  So I'm back to grocery shopping more regularly.  A bonus to being in school and not having time to cook every day forced me to use recipes that yield a lot and then have a lot of leftovers.  Which in the long run is saving us money, so, win.  

4. Also now that I have more time I'm able to walk the dog more regularly, something which we are both grateful for.  I forgot how nice morning walks are.  And walking is good for the body and good for the soul (good for my feet if I would stop wearing flip flops when I go walk...).  This morning I was that crazy lady talking to my dog on our walk about how mommy is an idiot for wearing flip flops again and for wearing all black and how not only do mommy's feet hurt, but she's a gross sweaty mess.  I must have passed a good three or four people giving me weird looks before I realized that to them I was talking to myself so I just looked crazy.  Whatevs.  They can judge all they want.  Sappho and I had a great chat ha.  

5. I'm reading again.  Whaaaattt???  For the first several weeks after school was done all I could do was watch TV and nap.  I watched so much trashy day time TV it was nuts.  But that was literally all my brain could handle.  Now I'm reading again.  Still working on the Highlander series and am still on book 2.  Not gonna lie, I feel like I need to write down a flow chart of who is who and who their allegiance lies with because I feel a little lost right now.  

6. I'm job hunting for a social work type job.  I feel perplexed about it.  Not about getting a job in my degree field, that I feel good about.  I feel perplexed about that whole, part time or full time, agency or hospital, stay a little picky or time to get flexible about what I'm looking for, etc etc.  Yesterday I made a pros and cons list to try to find some clarity and that process looked more like, write the list, throw the list across the room, pick the list back up, cook some food, stare at the list, add to the list, swear at the list, email some mentors, and eat peanut butter right out of the jar.  Productive is relative in this sense.   

7. I got to spend a great Sunday with some awesome ladies doing brunch and swimming and getting drinks pool side and now I want that like, every weekend.  It also brings up my need for water and my desire to go swimming. Time to start harassing the HOA people to get my damn pool key.  

8. I dyed the bottom part of my hair dark purple about 4 weeks ago.  It took 4.5hours to get it done, and for about two weeks every time I took a shower it looked like I had murdered Barney in my shower.  Now that it has faded a bunch my hair is now less dark purple and more red/brown.  It's pretty, and it's kinda like getting two colors in one, and as much as I want to do it again, if it's just going to fade this quickly, I'm hesitant to drop that much money on it again.  

9. We got a living social deal for some house cleaning, and the cleaning itself was only so-so, but their customer service was hideous.  I will never be using them again.  We decided to shop around though for another person/service because not arguing about the cleaning and who "should" have done what and when etc is so worth budgeting in someone to come in even if only once a month right now.  

10. I've taken up kickboxing (not like, cardio kickboxing.  I mean I have hot pink wraps, black gloves and I wail on a heavy bag kind of kickboxing) and crossfit.  I love both, but I love kickboxing more.  There's something so damn satisfying about being able to kick and hit a heavy bag.  That sounds really violent but I mean that in the most constructive way possible.  I've been told by more than one person that I would be a good fighter and should consider training to fight.  I have serious reservations about this.  First, and most importantly, getting hit hurts.  We partner up and hold shield mats for our partners to kick and hit and I usually partner with a friend of mine and goddamn, even through a shield bag her kicks sting a bit.  And that's with me bracing into them like you're supposed to.  Beyond that, kicking a heavy bag hurts me.  So not only does getting kicked hurt, but giving them hurts to.  I know I'm building a tolerance for it because every week it hurts less and less (except for my friend's kicks, those are getting stronger...) but one of my kicks at full force against a heavy bag definitely smarts.  That being said, taking a body shot I'm much more okay with than getting hit in the face.  I have no desire to find out what it feels like to get hit in the face.  I also have no desire to hit anyone else in the face.  Maybe if fighting consisted of body shots only I would consider it.  But for now, I like my face a lot, I don't like getting hurt or hurting someone else, so I'll stick to wailing on a heavy bag.  

SNOW!!!

I have a bunch of other stuff in the works to post, but this takes precedence!  

SNOW!!!  IN TUCSON!!!! Legit, big flakey, east coast or Colorado snow!

And it's sticking!  Just look at our trash can!

There's actually a BLIZZARD warning out here!  BLIZZARD!  AS IN MASSIVE SNOW STORM!  IN TUCSON! 

I come up form the basement at the hospital where I intern at and the outdoor elevator doors open and this is what I see!  Holy crap!

That's my roof!  With snow on it!!

And my neighborhood!  With snow on the ground!

And the mountains I live up against!

And my freeway exit.

Crazy!!!

Pretties

A couple of my friends have mentioned that they have felt the faintest gentle brush of fall.  That they can smell it in the air, feel it in the breeze, etc etc.  My ass.  It's hotter than balls still and I am starting to fantasize about taking a flame thrower to my porch in order to manage the mosquito problem due to this weird "cooler" (by cooler I mean between 95 and 105, but icky sticky humid) summer weather.  

SO, to keep my pyrotechnic proclivities in check, I've been marveling at the sky.  

That is some good looking sky.  

A slightly different coloration from the first one.  And yes.  Yes I was driving while these photos were taken.  Yes I was a stop and not actually moving.  I think.  Anything for a pretty shot, right?

I was not driving when I took this photo.  This one I took outside my house.  I walked out to the car, turned left, and tadaaa!!!  Click.  

The other night when it was a blue moon I tried to capture the freaking awesomeness of it all.  But I broke my camera, and so I had to use my camera phone, which takes high quality pictures (it took all the ones above) but it couldn't handle the night sky and the delicate blue undertones.  So no good pictures there.  

This morning as I went to the gym the sun was coming up and the sky looked like it was on fire.  I didn't have my mental wits about me to fully appreciate it or to get my phone out and take a picture (it was after all 6am and I was coming off a muscle relaxant induced coma-sleep the night before) but it was amazing.  

Hiking

We went hiking this past weekend (we being myself, the husband and my sister).  My sister summed it up the best.  1) if you mentally prepare yourself, you can tolerate anything.  2) 2/3 of the battle of peeing in the wilderness if you're a chick is just getting the guts up to do it.


It's hot here.  It's the desert.  And it's also monsoon season, so it's humid.  When we decided to go hiking we all knew a couple things.  First, we knew we would have to be up early to beat the heat.  Second, we knew we would be hot and sweaty and really gross by the time we got back to the car to head home.  But we did it, and it was a blast.  We've all been concerned with how my sister is coping and adjusting to the heat (maybe overly concerned or needlessly concerned) and after a bit of trying to figure out what her new water intake should be down here in the desert and the occasional bout of heat rash, she's basically a desert rat now.  There was a chance of a monsoon hitting while we were out hiking and so we played around with the idea of not going until the following weekend.  But it's monsoon season, dude, and so if we didn't go outside because of the risk of rain, we would never go outside right now (no seriously, the weather people are constantly saying that there's a 40% chance of storms hitting the city, and most of the time they never make it).  So we said, fuck it.  If it rains, it rains.  If it's hot, it's hot.  If it's humid, it's humid.  No matter the conditions, if you mentally prepare yourself for being hot, sweaty, sticky, and possibly soaked through to the skin hauling a backpack that is also sweaty, heavy and possibly soaked through with rain water, when those conditions happen in real life, you can handle them because you've already accepted that as your reality.  


Hot it was, humid it was, soaked through with sweat we were, raining it was not.  The falls we hiked to were completely dry with just patches of the dirtiest water I have ever seen that were being happily inhabited by the world's largest wasps and a ton of mosquitos.  Regardless of that though, we still had a great time.  We took lots of pictures, Juan pointed out all the cool wilderness stuff that us non-natives wouldn't think to look for (snake holes, cacti, and OMG THE LARGEST FUCKING CENTIPEDE IN THE WORLD - blar it was so inappropriate).  


While Aud and Juan went rock climbing for a bit after lunch, I was realizing that I was well hydrated, and was just about to steal down to some lower and empty pools and go pee.  Then I realized that it might not be the best idea to just disappear and not tell anyone where I was, but I certainly wasn't about to announce that I was going to go pee, and then of course if I went alone, what if someone was coming down there to do the same thing and then omg I had no one to create a diversion??  So I waited until they came back and Aud and I went "exploring."  


It took me FOREVER to find a place I was comfortable with.  For dudes, they can stand and face a wall to pee and they basically have all the privacy they need.  For chicks, you have to pull your pants down, and squat somewhere, which means that you need bushes, not trees, to create any sort of privacy, and then of course I have flashbacks to a Grey's Anatomy episode where Addison goes to pee in the woods and then gets poison oak all over her lady parts.  After romping around for a while and my situation was getting dire, my sister just looks at me and goes, "Dude, you just gotta do it."  So I did.  And two things became immediately apparent to me.  1) peeing in the wilderness is not as complicated as it sounds or as stressful as we make it out to be.  Even if you don't hike often and you have only ever peed in first world facilities, you figure out how not to pee on yourself and which way to face and what angle to hold yourself pretty quickly.  2) the hardest part of peeing in the wilderness, by far, is just getting the guts up to do it.  There is no total privacy, there are people who may walk by, you're in a freaking valley with the trail up above you so someone can always see you, but you just have to stop freaking out about all of that and just effing do it.  You just gotta pull your pants down, pop a squat, and get it over with.  It may be the longest 25seconds of your life with your ass hanging out in the open, but it is only 25 seconds, and you're done before you know it, and probably before anyone has the time to spot you and realize what you're doing.  


*Edited to add:


AND, we had these fabulous hats that kept us from getting burned to a crisp!