Damn, it's been hot lately! I'd like to tell Mother Nature to "Shtick This!" but in a not so nice way. However, I'm not exactly sure where to tell Mother Nature to put it. Does she have an ass? Doubtful.
We all know that Mother Nature is a fickle bitch, but enough with the heat already! She has other tricks up her sleeve, so why not throw us a thunderstorm or a cold spell for a change. This constant heat is not even creative on her part. Yawn. Come on, woman, it's time for a change.
We all know this drought is going to drive up the cost of our food for the foreseeable future along with other complications it's bringing us. However, I'm more annoyed with how it's affecting my ability to get outside and actually enjoy my summer.
As a teacher, I value my summers because the rest of my years are so jammed full of activities and responsibilities that I never have a spare moment to do something fun for me. Here I am with a couple months free, and I have to spend most of one stuck in my house to keep cool.
I can't stand being cooped up long, though, so I inevitably end up outside at some point each day, but lately it's mostly just been to move my sprinklers in a pitiful attempt to save my lawn -- there are parts, now, that are beyond salvation I fear. I can't walk my dog at all some days because it doesn't get cool enough for him to walk very far until it's already dark, and the swimming pool during the afternoon when it's over 100 degrees isn't even refreshing because the water is actually too warm, and the cement surrounding the pool is too hot.
Everything is suffering in this heat -- the plants, the animals and the people -- so I say we all join in a revolt against Mother Nature and demand that she bring us a reprieve of some rain and a cool snap. Who among us has any pull with the woman? I don't -- not after I mocked her pathetic attempt at a winter this past year and then ridiculed her for not bringing any snow for a snow day out of school. Sorry, M. N. If this here is about my snarkiness, then please forgive me and bring us some rain. (But if it really is, then get over yourself, woman. Geez. Can you say "petty?" . . . Oops, sorry, I'm doing it again.)
I guess, for now, all we can do is grab a fan, a cold beer, and strap on our shortest shorts and our tank tops because I hear that there's no chance of rain for a long time yet. So, until the rain comes and the days cool off, I invite Mother Nature to literally stick this up whatever orifice she has!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Swimming
I love to swim laps, and I have an almost perfect freestyle stroke which I taught myself after flunking the one and only swimming lesson class I ever took as a child. Why did I flunk? Because I wouldn't swim across the deep end. Why wouldn't I? It wasn't because I couldn't; it was because I was afraid. At that depth, I was absolutely positive there was something lurking at the bottom of the pool that would rise and eat me as I splashed my way across to the other side. Silly? Yes, now to the middle-aged me, but not to the five-year-old me. That me was 100 percent certain that I would be devoured. So, instead of flunking me and making me feel humiliated, why didn't the lifeguard instructor simply have me swim across the shallow end of the pool?
Anger at the injustice and stupidity of the one and only class I've ever flunked (even at the young age I was when it happened) flooded me, and I refused to ever take another swimming class. I can be extremely stubborn when I latch onto a cause, so my mother didn't press the issue with me, especially since I loved swimming and went often and eventually mastered many aspects of it on my own.
However, later as a teenager, I realized that in order to become a lifeguard and pool manager, I'd actually have to take another swimming class designed to teach me survival skills. The instructor I had was an intense man who was very demanding that we be able to swim all the strokes correctly, so once again I suffered humiliation at never having even tried a butterfly and looking like a total ass doing it, but eventually I got the hang of it enough to meet his exerting demands. The one stroke that I thought I was doing correctly prior to the class, though, was the breast stroke. Turns out I was totally wrong! He made me do that stroke hundreds of times outside of the water and then in the pool while he walked alongside yelling at me until my technique was near perfect.
Prior to that class I had always enjoyed swimming laps while doing the crawl stroke, or freestyle, but after that class I absolutely LOVED swimming laps and being able to integrate the various strokes I'd mastered from that domineering teacher. A lot of people think I'm strange because I simply love to swim laps. They see laps as boring and even as too difficult, but it's those two aspects that I love the most.
First of all, laps are not boring -- they are therapeutic and meditative. I go into a deep inner place that calms me as all I hear are my breathing and the muffled sounds that reach me through the water. I also concentrate completely on what my arms and legs are doing and timing my breaths to the movements, so for about an hour all my exterior worries and problems melt away.
As to lap swimming being difficult, it isn't once you master the strokes, but even then, it is the perfect exercise. It's also one I should do way more often, and then maybe I'd actually be in shape. If anything is difficult about lap swimming for me, it is appearing in public in a bathing suit! Ouch! Now that is what I call painful and difficult. Of course, if I did more laps more often, I wouldn't have that problem either. Hmmmm, something for me to think about, wouldn't you say?
Lap swimming is also a great metaphor for life because you almost literally swim in a circle (it's really a straight line, but you come back to where you start, so you get my drift, I hope). We all know the feeling of swimming and swimming and never really getting anywhere in our lives, and that is exactly how lap swimming works. I swim an hour and end up exactly where I started. Also, sometimes I like to go to the deep end and tread water for half an hour (no, I'm no longer scared of something rising from below to eat me -- should I be?), and we all know that sensation of paddling like crazy to keep our head above water either in our jobs or financially-speaking.
For me, the love I have for swimming and that I've always had despite that one embarrassing moment in the deep end of a pool in Papillion, Nebraska when I was five shows that we can all rise above our failures because often our failures are not really failures at all.
Anger at the injustice and stupidity of the one and only class I've ever flunked (even at the young age I was when it happened) flooded me, and I refused to ever take another swimming class. I can be extremely stubborn when I latch onto a cause, so my mother didn't press the issue with me, especially since I loved swimming and went often and eventually mastered many aspects of it on my own.
However, later as a teenager, I realized that in order to become a lifeguard and pool manager, I'd actually have to take another swimming class designed to teach me survival skills. The instructor I had was an intense man who was very demanding that we be able to swim all the strokes correctly, so once again I suffered humiliation at never having even tried a butterfly and looking like a total ass doing it, but eventually I got the hang of it enough to meet his exerting demands. The one stroke that I thought I was doing correctly prior to the class, though, was the breast stroke. Turns out I was totally wrong! He made me do that stroke hundreds of times outside of the water and then in the pool while he walked alongside yelling at me until my technique was near perfect.
Prior to that class I had always enjoyed swimming laps while doing the crawl stroke, or freestyle, but after that class I absolutely LOVED swimming laps and being able to integrate the various strokes I'd mastered from that domineering teacher. A lot of people think I'm strange because I simply love to swim laps. They see laps as boring and even as too difficult, but it's those two aspects that I love the most.
First of all, laps are not boring -- they are therapeutic and meditative. I go into a deep inner place that calms me as all I hear are my breathing and the muffled sounds that reach me through the water. I also concentrate completely on what my arms and legs are doing and timing my breaths to the movements, so for about an hour all my exterior worries and problems melt away.
As to lap swimming being difficult, it isn't once you master the strokes, but even then, it is the perfect exercise. It's also one I should do way more often, and then maybe I'd actually be in shape. If anything is difficult about lap swimming for me, it is appearing in public in a bathing suit! Ouch! Now that is what I call painful and difficult. Of course, if I did more laps more often, I wouldn't have that problem either. Hmmmm, something for me to think about, wouldn't you say?
Lap swimming is also a great metaphor for life because you almost literally swim in a circle (it's really a straight line, but you come back to where you start, so you get my drift, I hope). We all know the feeling of swimming and swimming and never really getting anywhere in our lives, and that is exactly how lap swimming works. I swim an hour and end up exactly where I started. Also, sometimes I like to go to the deep end and tread water for half an hour (no, I'm no longer scared of something rising from below to eat me -- should I be?), and we all know that sensation of paddling like crazy to keep our head above water either in our jobs or financially-speaking.
For me, the love I have for swimming and that I've always had despite that one embarrassing moment in the deep end of a pool in Papillion, Nebraska when I was five shows that we can all rise above our failures because often our failures are not really failures at all.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Shaft and Balls!
Now that I have your attention with my title, you dirty-minded little sicko, let's talk about baton twirling. Yep, that's right -- baton twirling. You know, that long shaft with a ball at either end (and one ball is bigger, just like in real life, right fellas?!).
I've twirled and taught baton for most of my life -- I'd say for about 36 years now. I realize it's a skill most closely linked to either beauty pageants or half-time shows at football games. I've never taken part in either one of those activities, but I've loved to twirl since the first time I wrapped my pudgy five-year-old fingers around that skinny metal shaft.
What is it about twirling a baton that I find so enjoyable? Perhaps it's the fact that I can take a long, hard, non-pliant item and make it do what I want it to do -- unlike the obstinate and non-pliant people I work with. There is something about a spinning baton as it spins through the air that is beautiful to behold -- the light sparkles off the silver shaft, and the effect can be mesmerizing.
Another thing about twirling a baton is that you come to know the tricks of the trade, and you learn that what looks really complicated isn't all that difficult after all. I find that to be true of most things in life -- sometimes you just have to dive in and find out how something works to realize that you can do it, too. Some of the twirls are very complicated, though, but you don't attempt those until you can do the easier ones with ease.
A baton is metaphorical in other ways as well. If you take it for granted and stop paying attention to what you are doing with it, you will either drop it and look foolish, or you'll smack yourself in the head with it and look even more foolish. The baton needs and demands your full attention.
Learning to twirl a baton is like learning any other valuable skill -- it demands time and dedication. It is a good activity for any young kid; although it is one mostly performed by young girls. It reinforces and develops coordination and dexterity, and it teaches young kids discipline.
When I first picked up a baton as a little girl, I never imagined I'd still be twirling one into my 40s, but I am. Of course, I only do it now as an instructor, but every now and then I admit that I will grab my baton when I'm at home and twirl it around my house. That is until I lose my concentration and smack myself in the head.
I've twirled and taught baton for most of my life -- I'd say for about 36 years now. I realize it's a skill most closely linked to either beauty pageants or half-time shows at football games. I've never taken part in either one of those activities, but I've loved to twirl since the first time I wrapped my pudgy five-year-old fingers around that skinny metal shaft.
What is it about twirling a baton that I find so enjoyable? Perhaps it's the fact that I can take a long, hard, non-pliant item and make it do what I want it to do -- unlike the obstinate and non-pliant people I work with. There is something about a spinning baton as it spins through the air that is beautiful to behold -- the light sparkles off the silver shaft, and the effect can be mesmerizing.
Another thing about twirling a baton is that you come to know the tricks of the trade, and you learn that what looks really complicated isn't all that difficult after all. I find that to be true of most things in life -- sometimes you just have to dive in and find out how something works to realize that you can do it, too. Some of the twirls are very complicated, though, but you don't attempt those until you can do the easier ones with ease.
A baton is metaphorical in other ways as well. If you take it for granted and stop paying attention to what you are doing with it, you will either drop it and look foolish, or you'll smack yourself in the head with it and look even more foolish. The baton needs and demands your full attention.
Learning to twirl a baton is like learning any other valuable skill -- it demands time and dedication. It is a good activity for any young kid; although it is one mostly performed by young girls. It reinforces and develops coordination and dexterity, and it teaches young kids discipline.
When I first picked up a baton as a little girl, I never imagined I'd still be twirling one into my 40s, but I am. Of course, I only do it now as an instructor, but every now and then I admit that I will grab my baton when I'm at home and twirl it around my house. That is until I lose my concentration and smack myself in the head.
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