Exciting News and other Rainy Day Projects

So I finally did it.

You guys know I've been making stuff, and growing stuff, and preserving stuff, and knitting stuff, and baking stuff, for like (counts on fingers) A LOT OF YEARS, and of course everyone's always all, "you should totally sell things", but I've always shied away from doing a farmer's market because they have to get up at like 3 a.m. to pick herbs and veggies and then package everything and put them in the car and drive across town and set up a booth and load and unload and sell and explain and count change and all that, and I'm just too lazy for all of that.

But...

In the back of my mind has always been the thought that, yeah, the whole 'homestead' thing is kind of a big deal right now, and since I've been living the homesteady life since as long as I can remember, I'm fairly qualified to profit from my experience, right? Right.  I feel like I've been living this way since way before it was a cool new Movement or a trend or a YouTube lifestyle.  I've even milked goats!  I mean, I don't feel like I want to start filming my whole life and doing a YouTube channel, (although I could and it would probably be awesome, but again--lazy), but I do have the time to set up an online shop at Etsy, and that seems to be a good outlet for All The Things, and since I have such a wide variety of things I could market, I never wanted to be limited to a single stream.  Like, how confusing would it be to go to a farmer's market booth that sells honey and wax, candles, soap, knit hats and socks, possibly sweaters, garden seeds, dried herbs, infused oils, elixirs, body lotion and wound salve, AND jam and jellies?

So- what I DID do was go and open a shop on Etsy, which is still very much not filled out yet because when I sat down to jot down a few things that we grow here that I could sell, (like dried herbs), I ended up with a three-page list of products, just off the top of my head.  And since we're doing bees and honey now, we can add that to the list, so anyway yeah-- I'm on Etsy now.

Bear with me if you want to order things there, and I promise I'm not going to change this blog and suddenly be all-- BUY MY STUFF GUYS-- because I like this blog as it is, and I hate when blogs change and become all sales-y, so don't worry, this is probably the only post I'm going to yak about Etsy, unless I run into funny or weird things there to wisecrack about.  could happen

Excuse me now, while I spend the rest of the week trying to get decent photos and information up at the online store, because I've been on there all day and it's a lot more time-consuming that I thought it would be.  At least it's raining out today and I have some time to fool around with it, so - wish me luck.

Oh, PS, I'm on Etsy at  https://www.etsy.com/shop/NorthIdahoHomestead

...and on instagram @northidahohomestead

...and on Twitter @nihomestead

(not doing Facebook, and you can see why here)

See you there,

toodles-

The herb garden this spring--TOO MANY THINGS for two people

Beautiful chamomile picked yesterday

Chamomile, arnica and sage.  Again--too much, so why not sell it?

And a Hearty GOODBYE to 2017

You guys.  SO MUCH has gone on since ...um...(counts on fingers) last June.  Let's review, shall we?  You can also almost just zoom through and see the pictures, for a quick update on my life, but if you like to read my scattered off-the-hip updates, well, yeah...there's that, too.

We've had:  *inhales* ...A bunch of yard renovation, a wedding followed by a beautiful reception, a graduation followed by a gift Jetta, an empty nest, a funeral, my first first-class seat on a plane (OMG THE FRONT OF THE PLANE, what is even happening?), a great Christmas party, a cookbook published(!), a hip replacement, an amazing vacation, and...a wrecked gift Jetta.  *insert super-annoyed-mom eye roll here*

Oh, and I managed to crochet our newly on-her-own graduated youngest daughter a super cool afghan in February, and knitted a new scarf for myself this weekend, in between cross-stitching everysingledayevenonvacation on my giant recreation of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry.  See?

I've literally taken this across the country in my carry-on, twice.

I also petted a MOOSE.  Yes, I know.  Dangerousssss.  I'm crazy.  Shouldn't have done that.  Etcetera.  But yeah, I totally did, and I was up on the porch safe behind a big pillar when I did it, and she couldn't get me, and she didn't seem like she cared, so I just went with it.  Since no one believes me that we had a totally tame-ish wild moose in our actual front yard (for like weeks, actually--the bushes barely survived it), I did manage to video the whole thing with my free hand while simultaneously watching her for signs of attack-moose mode so I could duck back inside and avoid being trampled or pummeled or beaten to death by her hooves, or whatever happens when mooses attack you.  Is "mooses" a word in that case?  No idea.  When "moose" attack you...that doesn't sound right either. Whatever.  Anyway, I totally petted her.  And I'm making "petted" a word, too.  I'd post the video but apparently it's not in the right format to upload, and I'm too lazy to figure that out, so here are some photos.  Maybe sometime I'll post the video in a separate moose-related post...

what are you doing?

Not sure that's a good idea...

Ok, whatev.  These bushes are too delicious.

We also had an orphaned baby hanging around a lot.  And, a whole other one (I hope!) who decided that our garden fence line would be a good place to...lie down and die.  (no photos of *that* but omg what do you do with a dead baby moose? No one wants to help you with that...)

Anyhoo...we're EMPTY NESTERS now, and it's hilarious how many people use that whispery-concerned voice when we tell them that, like we've just suffered a bereavement, and they ask "Soooo, how's *that* going? Are you guys, you know, doing ok?"  And we're like, "Ummm, yeah.  We're fine with it."  Why wouldn't we be?  We raised our girls to be independent, smart, capable women, and, voila---there they are; doing life, and rocking it.  Our oldest got married last April, and we hosted a beautiful evening reception in our back yard in June for them, followed by our youngest graduating from high school in June and moving to her own apartment in July.

Are they sweet or what?

Purple sky unedited and just...amazing! What a beautiful night!!

On a side note, I did totally finally manage to get that cookbook project published, which I promise I will write about in another post.

And, since Shane and I started out as best friends who also find each other incredibly hot (I know, awkward TMI), then took a detour into parenthood, we now find ourselves with all this empty house and free time together and, wait--what? --possibly some discretionary money that's just...for us?  What's THAT about?  When I find extra money in the bank account, I'm immediately glancing over my shoulder and wondering "Wait-what bill did I miss?" Still adjusting to that.  And guess what? IT'S FREAKING AWESOME.  It's like when we were in our 20s and we could just...get up and go out if we felt like it.  Out to dinner.  To the bookstore.  To Home Depot (yes, girls, we still do that on Sundays).  We may even take a road trip sometime.     

I know.  Crazy.

It helps that we still are best friends who find each other incredibly hot (even though we qualify as what my 80s-highschool self would call "totally super old"), and we still love to do everysinglething together and enjoy each other's company immensely.  I love that we have the place to ourselves.  I do love when our girls come and visit, and we have a houseful of young people hanging around, relaxing, eating and visiting (and yes, playing on their phones).  But then I love that they all leave and go home at the end of the weekend, too.  So, yeah.  Empty nesting is a revelation.

Ok, what else?  Oh, yeah-- I'll just state once for the record that 2017 MORE OR LESS SUCKED, in spite of some terrific bright spots.  In general, it was just like one punch in the junk after another.  Like, can we get a break here yet? And apparently the answer to *that* question was a resounding "no", for most of 2017.  Oh sure, it had its good moments, but seriously...2017 will be remembered as the Year From Hell, more or less.  Our youngest graduated and moved out, and we had about ONE WEEK of "whoopie, we're empty-nesters" before Shane was diagnosed with a destroyed hip joint that was rapidly deteriorating and would require a total hip replacement as soon as possible.  *cue Jaws music here*

For a guy who works outside, on his feet, in and out of equipment all day every day, this was bad news.  Bad, bad.  It also meant we skipped all the things last summer that meant walking anywhere.  No hunting.  No walking around the fair.  No wandering around Home Depot.  No walking ANYwhere that wasn't 100% necessary, because he was in so . much . pain.  And the narcotics and even the non-narcotics that they gave him for the pain made him depressed and super...cranky...to be honest.  Even he noticed it.  The hydrocodones also gave him terrifying nightmares along with the depression, so he mainly just powered through with Tylenol and Ibuprofen.  Not fun-- at all.  For either of us.

He dragged his leg around from June through December, barely able to walk some days because of the pain, plus his hip would randomly give out and he'd fall.  He did manage to work until December 13th, when he went in for a total hip replacement.  To make a long (long, long, painful) story shorter...he came through it with absolute flying colors and was back at work 3 weeks later, on his feet, outside, in the snow, moving logs.  My brother actually moved out and stayed with us for most of the winter, and was a huge help at the log yard and as a backup watchdog for Shane, which made me feel a little more at ease watching him go out in the snow to work.  I'd send them off to work in the morning and be mouthing to Jesse behind Shane's back "do NOT let him fall down!!"  So yeah...that's behind us, thank God.  I'm not posting any surgical photos, though.  You're welcome.

THEN we took a amazing and much-needed Disney trip to DisneyWorld with a cruise to the Bahamas and back, which was almost literally just what the doctor ordered.  Somehow we also rolled the dice with letting them assign our room category, and we scored the BEST stateroom ever, with like 40' of private deck at the back corner of the ship.  It was absolute heaven.  We've always gotten an inside-mushrooms-in-the-dark stateroom, but this was so worth it, just......so much yes.

our room was about 3 decks from the top, right side, upper corner.  HUGE wraparound deck...

And of course, I always get home from Florida and immediately start already planning the next time I can see palm trees because - duh - Idaho - palm trees.

As I write this, it is still cold enough to snow here (March 26th) and too early too cold to go outside and start on any garden stuff yet, though I do have my seeds and potting soil and trowel all at the ready, so I can get our vegetables started for this year.

We also bought a meat smoker, and I didn't think I would, but I've officially fallen in love with smoking our own meat!  So far we've smoked some salmon, our own bacon, and our own ham, and omg-- the taste...can't.even.  I die.  IT'S SO YUMMY.

My first smoked ham

Oh, and if you're still wondering about the wrecked-gift-Jetta from the opening, well, yeah...everyone's fine.  The Jetta's not.  So, that's probably about all we need to say about that...

Boyfriend: 1.  Jetta: 0.

Oh, and the Christmas party we sometimes host, where I make like 45 different appetizers that don't need a fork (no matter what Aunt Alice says..), and start baking in like October, was AWESOME.  We squeezed something like 64 people in our downstairs, and it was just a lovely time with everyone.  Shane's surgery was the following Tuesday, so we wanted to see everyone before he was down for recovery.  I'm already looking forward to doing it again this year.

The List

Anyway, I just thought I'd do a quick(ish) update.  Hopefully I'll start writing more often, now that 2017 is over and done, and it took its black cloud/punch-you-in-the-junk mood with it.

Plus, there are more of my hippie childhood stories that are too good not to share, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, and hope you're all having a lovely start to 2018.  It's gotta be better, right?

My "Disconnected" Life

Guys.  I have a confession to make.  Well, more like a statement to make.  Or maybe it's just like a memo that you didn't get yet, which totally hasn't mattered, because you're sitting there all living your life and not really knowing that I've been over here going through all kinds of epiphanies and stuff.  And since I may or may not have lots of words to say about all of it, I also compiled a bunch of fun photos to make this more like a photographic memo, which should make it more fun for me for you.  

So here goes-

I don't remember what the date was, but it was maybe two weeks ago now, when I turned on the internet news and saw that there had been a(nother) college campus shooting by a(nother) demented...I don't even know the word.  For the sake of clarity, we'll just call him a terrorist.  He doesn't deserve any attention.  Anyway, of course I read the story, because the whole entire world drops everything and reads these stories.  And something in me just snapped.

This happened in Oregon, where I have lived before.  I adore Oregon.  Roseburg is one of the towns we always drove through and said "Hey, we should totally MOVE here, because it's gorgeous and quiet".  So, for this to happen there, really just got me.  Plus, he targeted Christians.  Blatantly.  Executed.  Christians.  Which is what I am.  Which means, if we'd moved to Roseburg and sent our oldest to that college (could happen), our family could have been living through this nightmare right now, with all those other families who are living through it.  

I won't try to wax eloquent on that, but I read the first day's worth of news on that story, and I just...cracked.  I'm done.  I don't want to know what's going on out there any more.  I don't want to hear how evil people can be.  I don't want to see the endless debates about whether this was or was not a terrorist attack or how it revolves around gun control or not.  I don't want to see a constant stream of photos of loved ones grieving the sudden loss of a child/husband/fiance/friend.  I'm just...done.

I turned off the internet and walked away from my desk.  I spent a solid week avoiding my desk, except to work.  I had to use the internet connection to run customer credit card transactions and answer emails, but other than that, when I opened the Google main page with that search bar and all my saved page tabs at the top of the screen, I just stared at it for a minute, then clicked it *off* and walked away.

Actually, it gave me kind of a satisfyingly wicked sense of control to decline the invitation of that blinking mouse cursor, waiting for me to click my way back into the harsh reality that is the world today.  Kind of like that feeling you get when you really want a piece of cake but you're on a diet so you grab a carrot stick instead, and you feel all strong and grown up and girl power-ish.

So, I read more books.  I worked on a crochet Christmas gift.  I played with the dog.  I got re-obsessed with nail polish because why not?  I adore nail polish.  I continued with our South Beach diet, which is working and is a story for another post because yay, weight loss!

We went camping, even further from the world of internet and terrorists and in-your-face angst and online trolls (what is with the comments online? Are they even people?).  No cell service for 3 days was heaven.  I sat by the lake with the dog.  We sat around campfires with our large extended family of in-laws, cousins, nephews, nieces, and parents and just enjoyed each other and the mountains.  I read some more.  On the way up, I had to call a sister-in-law to ask her why all the flags were at half-mast, because I hadn't heard any news for over a week, and God forbid...what's happened now?  She wasn't sure, so I took that as a good sign that hopefully nothing earth-shattering had happened.  (I think it was for the funerals from the above event).

When we got home, I did get back online to keep my French lessons current, because that's just a goal I want to accomplish.  I  have enjoyed my Instagram account just for nail art and nail polish because, again, why not?  I haven't checked Twitter.  I haven't checked Facebook.  No, wait--I did log on accidentally and see my feed once, and the first thing I saw was a comment by a loved one that just made me want to scream "REALLY??!? You're saying that? ONLINE?"  I composed a message to elaborate my point, then deleted it and logged out. Walked away shaking my head.  I went back outside with my coffee and shook it off by listening to the waterfall and the birds, watched the yellow leaves rain down from our birch tree, and enjoyed that only-in-the-fall juxtaposition of sun on my face and cool nip in the breeze.

Ahh, much better.

OK, in all fairness to the internet and the goodness thereof, I do have a few blogs that I still read, because they show up in my email in box, and this morning I *did* have to Google "how to get the smell of dirty socks out of clean dried laundry" (which is probably self-explanatory, and also gives you a peek into my laundry life that is possibly TMI).

Other than that, I haven't been back online.  I just don't even care any more.  If any good news comes along, I'd be happy to hear about it.  Other than that, I'm just done.  Not hiding from reality, just...blocking it out of our house, which is our haven from the world, and I'm going to keep it that way.

Wow, that was a lot of words.  But then, if you're reading this, you're probably not surprised.

In case you skimmed this just to look at the pictures, here's a pictorial essay that says the same thing, but with less words.

So I turned off my internet...

...AND social media, because NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU'RE HAVING FOR DINNER

Yo.     Stop.

My friends, when I tell them I haven't been online for 10 DAYS..."Whaaat?"

Them:  "Doesn't that feel like you're living in a CAVE? How can you TURN OFF THE INTERNET?"

Me:  I already explained this.  WITH PICTURES.

It feels kind of like this...

...And THIS.  But with more laundry and dishes.  And less  beach

Still.  No internet = Very little negative crap in my life.

I WIN.




Still need more?

Hold my calls.  I'll be outside painting my nails.

Peace Out, Man

I thought about writing a whole post about people who should be nicer than this guy from my last post, but then...I looked outside at the sunshine and the daisies and echinacea blooming together outside my office window this morning.  There are at least five different kinds of bees going about their business, birds are singing, and the garden is sparkling where the water droplets have clung to the flower petals and the dill heads, and I thought  you know what? no.

Today, I'm just going back outside.  We are fortunate enough to live on our own 5-acre oasis of calm that is a world away from the craziness everywhere, and though I complain more or less constantly about the overwhelming number of things that need done outside on any given day...I am grateful for every inch of the little piece of heaven we are blessed to live on.  Less weeds would be great, but still.

There are currants to pick in the shade of the weeping birch this afternoon, and the raspberries and blueberries are ripening faster every day.  There are bushels of gorgeous roses blooming.  We have mint/lemon balm sun tea soaking up the heat on the back deck, and there is a hammock ready for a sunset break with a good book.  What else could I need?

It's going to be 100 degrees today, so it's also a perfect day for the beach, and there are tons of choices around here. Later I'm making potato salad and my mom's cucumber salad, and panna cotta to go with the berries after our BBQ dinner tomorrow to celebrate this great country's independence day.  We can watch all the big fireworks displays in the county from our hot tub under the full moon tomorrow night, with no crowds to fight, no traffic in sight, the cel phones off, and I will be with two of my favorite people in the world.

If you stop and take a breath sometimes, you realize how much you have to be grateful for.

Have a fun and safe 4th, you guys.

My little piece of heaven

Wrong Opening Line. Every Time. Yep--That's Me...

Anyone else need to quit trying to make conversation with random strangers?

Don't you love the awkwardness that ensues when you think you're being all hilarious and sharing a joke with a stranger, and the person you're talking to has no idea why you're even speaking to them? Or worse, they appear insulted?  That's me...pretty much most of the time.

Yesterday I thought I actually was being funny (my mistake) when I came out of the grocery store after a giant snowstorm, with wayyyy more than the milk, mayo and toilet paper I'd gone IN for. For some reason, I'd been randomly wandering the store discovering all these lovely organic things I hadn't taken the time to notice before, and ended up buying a lot more than I had planned.  Because, you know, snow.  And apparently my secret shopping rule about snow storms is "BUY ALL THE THINGS."

It wasn't until I walked out that I remembered that there was 3-4" of new snow on top of the ice in the grocery store parking lot.  I guess they plow, but by 9:30 a.m., you're pretty much on your own.

No thanks.  Really, I got it.

             
So--I paused at the exit on the last bit of sidewalk that was clear, holding onto my 300-pound cart, and stared across the parking lot to my car, which I had luckily parked really close to the front entrance, but still...lots of snow separated us.  I stood there pondering for a bit, thinking, "Oh, wow. THIS was probably a really bad a idea".  With that exact *look* on my face.

I was picturing THIS, only with all our food in it...

...so I thought.  Apparently my "this was a bad idea" look, looks just like my "I may say something crazy right now" look, so I guess I need to work on that.

A woman was walking in towards me right at that moment, and we made eye contact.  She saw me hesitating before braving a nearly impossible push to my car, with what I thought was a funny look on my face. I thought it was OBvious that I was standing there staring because I was questioning my own judgement about filling a cart and then assuming I could then also get that cart to my car across a slush wasteland, so I just looked at her and said:

Me:  Ahhh, that moment of regret.

Her:  What??

She apparently didn't see me questioning my own judgement while holding a too-heavy cart that I had no chance of pushing all the way to my car without a dog team.  She thought I was saying something about her, I guess...Maybe she thought I was questioning her judgement in putting on that full-length puffer coat that made her look like a ship in full sail.  She looked like she was actually annoyed with me.

She wasn't rocking this look.  At all.  But I digress...

I mentally apologized to her for trying to make her smile and recovered nicely by saying, "You know.  That moment of regret when you realize your cart's never going to make it to your car." She still looked at me like I had just asked her for some spare change, frowned, and went inside. Or maybe she was making a note to NOT make the same mistake.  (You're welcome, lady!)

It's always kind of a let down when you make a joke with the WRONG PERSON.  I consoled myself with the fact that she just didn't get it, but I still felt like kind of a freak as I dragged my cart (and actually almost spilled it once--yeah, THAT HELPED) to my car...

Exactly this.  Only with a grinch load in the cart, and more snow.  Good times.

I should have asked her to help me.

Note to self:  try shopping at 5:30 a.m. next time, because apparently that is the only time you will see any concrete in the parking lot.  Or, hire a sherpa with a yak team.

I MADE IT!!  WE CAN EAT!!

I'm Not Little, and I'm Not a Mermaid. But Still...

I love to swim.  I have always loved to swim.  I love water in general; I love lakes and ponds, rivers, the ocean, and above all, swimming pools.  I didn't learn to swim until I was about 9 or 10, though, and I guess I can thank my dad for "teaching" me by always threatening to come with us to the lake and throw me in off the dock.  So I taught myself.  Then I realized, the answer to that age-old childhood question of "what animal would YOU be?", for me, was without doubt:  a fish.  (But I'd have to be a shark or a whale, because of course smaller fish just get eaten in that whole circle of life thing, and I'd just want to SWIM without that whole hassle, so, yeah--shark, definitely.)

 Remember how awesome this was?

After I learned to swim, we spent what seemed like every summer afternoon at our local lake.  I was always that kid who would stay and play in the water until the sun literally went down.  "I can't get out, Mom--I'm a mermaid!"  Not even Doritos Nacho Cheese chips could lure me onto the beach, which is saying a lot, because we were a hippy family who mostly consumed stuff like wheat germ and garbanzo beans.  Oh, and Brewer's yeast (what the HECK what that all about?).  Even Nacho Cheese wasn't enough to get me out--I was a mermaid, and mermaids don't eat chips. 

No time for Doritos, Mom--I'm a mermaid!

Then I grew up, but on the inside, I was pretty much still that mermaid. 

We put up a 24' round pool for a few years when we lived in southern Oregon, and I swam twice a day, pretty much every day.  It was heaven.  My very own pool, just for me.  And no one cared if I did handstands and underwater backflips, even if I was a 28-year-old mother of two...It ended when a big wind came through one year when it was half-empty for the season, and blew it literally inside out and crushed it, while I watched in horror from the dining room, and that was that.

Next we moved back to the inland northwest, where it is cold way too much, and the lakes here, while plentiful, are also pretty much MELTED ICE WATER, all year.  I got an earache last time I went underwater at a lake here, in August.  So I decided, if I wanted to swim again and not suffer ear infections in August, I needed to find a pool.  Which, if you're a grownup, and unfortunately I am, means joining (dun-dun-dunnnn) a gym. 

aieeeeee

I don't like gyms.  I don't like memberships.  I don't like crowds.  Or locker rooms.  Or crowds IN locker rooms.  But I really missed swimming, so about 5 years ago (this was before I sank out of sight into wedding cake madness), I bit my lip (and my fear of nearly-to-completely naked chatty people), and I joined a gym.  I swam as often as I could, but between the pool's open lane schedule and my kids' schedules, trying to arrange a time to swim laps got so complicated that I was going once a week, if that, so I quit.

I still missed it, though, and it hasn't turned tropical here yet, since global warming isn't working out quite the way I'd hoped, so I decided to join another gym that has a giant pool that, so I hear, is easy to get into and always available. 

This is what I wish for, when I hear "pool"...

Unfortunately, we live in a fairly busy area, and pretty much every person in this county has a membership at this gym.  Fortunately for me, most of them seem to just like to work out with weights or on those machine things (I don't get it.  I'm like:  Guys! There's a POOL).  Even so, when I walk in, it usually looks more like this:

only less splashy...

 

 

But still...no mermaids in sight.  And no one who looks like they're having FUN there.  Just lots of serious-looking swimmers.  Swimming. 

What??  People, it's WATER! Why so serious??

 

 

They don't get it, and I don't ask them.  So I find what is usually the last open lane in the whole pool, put on that stupid thing to cover my hair (which I'd rather let loose), and goggles--OK, yes, THOSE are very cool, because you can SEE underwater, even though mine fog up, because I'm a dork and probably don't know the secret to keeping them clear AND keeping the water out of my eyes. 

I'm pretty sure I look exactly like this:

except without the tattoos of course...

 

 

But unfortunately, reality is more like this:

Mind if I join you? Let me just hang up my cape-
 

There are two lifeguards there, and I think, that must be the most boring job in the whole entire world EVER.  They sit there and watch people swim, who know how to swim.  Who's going to get in trouble out here?  It's also weird to swim with people watching.  I just like to swim however I want, but I'm pretty sure they're watching me and making signals to each other like--"OMG she has no form.  What is that? What is she doing right now? That is not how grownups swim.  Doesn't she know this is the competition pool?"  When I see a lifeguard walking around the pool, I'm always sort of half-sure they're coming to tell me I should go swim in the kid pool if I'm not going to take my swimming seriously...and I'm half tempted to go there anyway.  It looks like more fun.

I'd rather be here...

 

 

But, I'm a grownup swimmer, and this is where WE swim, so I gratefully get in.  I'm just glad to have some water to myself. 

 

 

A whole lovely lane of sparkly, bright blue water, just for me...

--No.

I remind myself that I'm here to swim.  So I swim laps, but on the inside, I'm like this:

I try to be serious.  I look to my left, and there's this guy...

Then I look to my right, and see this guy:

Training for the 2014 Olympics, obviously...

 



So I try to focus on my form.  I feel the water gliding over me and around me.  I want to be under the water, where it's quiet and mystical and sparkly blue, but I also need to work out, because I'm pretty sure mermaids don't have body fat, so I tell myself to concentrate on the feel of my muscles stretching and propelling me through the water.  I get my wind up, so I'm getting a work out (because it's a GYM people--you must work on cardio here; we don't come here to mess around, and we certainly don't come here to work on underwater handstands).  I try to work on breathing, so I will look as effortless and graceful as real swimmers, like her:

Instead I am usually just happy I didn't actually suck in water and have a coughing fit in the middle of the pool, and I end up looking more like this:

I'm fine.  Really.

I occasionally stop and float along on my back, because I feel like it (and possibly to catch my breath), dreamily paddling along and daydreaming at the ceiling, but I stop short of underwater backflips, because--well--I'm too old for that.  And I don't want the lifeguards to have to get all the way out of their chairs to see if I'm OK. 

Besides, if you go to a pool and see a 43-year-old woman (who should be working out, because yes, she's got some weight to lose) doing underwater backflips, you're going to want to choose a lane not next to the water freak.  Why is that, I wonder?  Maybe people are worried I'll ask them to throw a coin for me to go find or something...

I guess I need to win the lottery and build my own indoor pool, and then I can swim in it any way I please.

So I swim laps, and I watch the clock, and I get my wind up, and I feel toned and sleek (ha), and I get out and nod at the other gym-goers like, "Hello, fellow grownup," but the whole time, I'm still wondering, why can't I just enjoy swimming?

What is it about growing up, that takes away the magic of THIS?

I think next time, I'm going to try the slide.  I bet I can get at least one ride in before they kick me out.  Or maybe I'll pretend to be a shark and remind this guy that swimming is supposed to be fun.

dunt-dunt.  DUNT dunt.  DUNTDUNT. DUNTDUNTDUNTDUNT