Wednesday

I am a slow swimmer. I'm steady, I can go a long time without stopping at all but I go slowly... It's been a while since I've listened to a book while swimming. I starting listening, this morning, to Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains. I felt like it really slowed me down but, after I got own and sync'd my wrist with the Misfit app, turns out I was wrong. It usually takes me an hour to do 1.3 miles. Today I did 1.3 miles in an hour. Cool.

When it first came out, I read his Soul of a New Machine. It was fascinating. When I got to the end, I started at the beginning again and read it through a second time. I do not remember ever doing that with any other book. That man can flat tell a story.

Plus, now that I've figured out how to make iTunes know it is a book, I can, if I like, flip between book and music without losing my book place. Excellent!

The house cleaner is due today. So I go through my usual angst about that. When I'm not here, she seems to get done more quickly which is better but I don't really have any place I want to go. I love having a clean house but I hate having to deal with the cleaner. She's very well meaning but I'd really rather the house got cleaned by magic. Plus she's always always late and then kills another 15 minutes complaining about why she was late - traffic, family issues, etc. Plus the orchid looks way worse today and she's going to have a 15 minute fit over that as well. Sigh. Can there be anything more tacky than complaining about the help? Sometimes I do not make myself proud.

My internet keeps having hiccoughs and it's very annoying. It will stop for a minute and then resume - over and over again. I did see, yesterday, on Reddit that it's not only me so at least that's a little comforting but still. Get It Together. WaveG.

Now I have managed to screw around doing not much of anything for more than an hour. Time to get started on this day!

swimming and me

hopefulspirit asked me how I got into swimming... This is how.

I spent every summer while I was growing up in the swimming pool. We belonged to a club and Mom would dump us in the pool and go play tennis (now, there's a gene I did NOT get). We took all the swim classes and loved it. But once I left home for college, I did not see another pool for 50 years.

In 2004 I took a job that enabled me to work at home. My commute went from 30 minutes on the bus and 15 minutes walking, twice a day to 20 steps from bed to work. I worked long hours. I loved the job. And then, one day, about a year or so later, I realized I had not actually moved in 18 months and my body was screaming WTF????

So I joined the gym across the street and went every day. I walked the treadmill, I did floor exercises. I sucked at it and I hated every single minute. It got so that I'd wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking of excuses not to go or reasons why I could only stay for 20 minutes that day.

Then one day in 2011 I heard about water aerobics and found out they had classes at the city pools and I went to one. The minute my fat ass hit the water, I knew I had found bliss. I enjoyed the class so much. It did not feel like work at all. And there was no mirror and no sweating and the other people in the class were old fat people like me.

It wasn't long before I quit the gym and started going to aqua fit classes at every pool in the city. A good teacher made a fabulous workout. But, sadly, most of the teachers weren't that good and working around the class schedule was kind of a pain. And the lap swimmers looked so cool.

So in 2012, I started swimming laps. Initially, I swam for 30 minutes doing real sets. 100 yards and rest and then switch strokes and more rest and so forth. But, all that got tiresome and one day I just started swimming - American crawl - and didn't stop until my 30 minutes were done. Then I wondered if I could swim a mile. In May of 2013, I did it! The city pools don't have a lot of lap hours that are good for me. Weekends were particularly difficult. So I ended up swimming 45 mins 5 days a week.

Then, in 2015, my medicare clicked on and my insurance offered up Silver Sneakers that gave me access to gyms with pools. Just about that time they opened up an LA Fitness 15 minutes from here. They are open every single day from 5am - 10pm and weekends they open at 8 and it's nice and quiet and lovely.

Soon I was swimming every single day - for an hour and loving every minute of it. And that's the story. To me, it's like discovering fried chicken and cream puffs are really kale. I'd swim every day even if it was discovered that it was harmful. I'm so grateful I found it.

Dolls and bears... the origin stories

This time it's lifeinroseland with the question (I love these questions, by the way)... asking about how the bears and dolls got started...


My Mom taught me to knit when I was 6. (I begged and begged her and she said 'I don't have the time or patience to teach you and then answer a million questions.' I told her 'show me once and I'll never ask a question, I promise.' )

She did and I didn't (ask) and then I taught myself the rest. Years and years later, by the way, I taught her how to do some tricky stitches and do easier, prettier seams. I made sweaters and hats and mittens and gloves until I, and everybody I knew, had enough. Then, in the early 90's, I started knitting blankets for charity (AIDS Hospice). After about 10 years of that, happily the AIDS Hospice, due to lack of patients, turned to other diseases and could no longer accept the blankets. And it was August and hot anyway, so I started knitting toys.

I tried a bunch of different teddy bear patterns but finally just made my own and just kept making them. It's wild that I've been making them now for about 12 years and never really get tired of them.

My Mom taught me to sew when I was about 10. Same deal. No questions. I used to make all my own clothes and actually did that until I was about 30. Then it became hard to get good fabric. I did not do much sewing until a couple of years ago when I found a table that fit the guest room and was the perfect size for a sewing machine.

I've always loved quilting fabrics but not quilting so I decided to make dolls. And the lady who takes my bears and gives them to needy kids, said she would be glad to do the same for dolls and the rest is history!

And here are today's dolls: