Follow the leader

Date: 3/30/09

Yards: 500

Yards to date: 147,950

Miles to date: 89.7

I wasn’t supposed to swim tonight; it was my usual night for deep water aerobics. But I got to the pool about half an hour early and there was an empty lane, so … I did a quick 20 lengths to try to catch up.

I haven’t done any swimming the last few days because I’ve been miserable. Last Thursday, I had to make the agonizing decision to put Star to sleep. She had been so sick and the steroids, our last shot for a treatment option, weren’t working. They were supposed to stimulate her appetite, but she had stopped eating. I tried everything from cooked ground turkey to baby food. She’d lost a tremendous amount of weight and I couldn’t stand to watch her starve. 

John and Katie came home Friday; I just wanted to spend every minute with my family. If last week was any indication of what the weeks ahead are going to be like, I’ll be in Augusta by Easter. I can’t live like this. It was awful for both John and me. We just handle these kinds of things so much better when we’re together. 

That was one of the reasons I wanted to get in some laps tonight. I have been so incredibly stressed out and depressed for a good week now.  John went back to Augusta this morning; I’m going to try to go over there for the weekend.

I got out of the pool a few minutes before water aerobics was supposed to start. Our instructor, Tatiana, is always very prompt. When she wasn’t there by 5 after, we knew something was up. We weren’t quite sure what to do, but no one wanted to leave.  I mean, we’d all made the effort to be there, we’d gotten into our suits, put on our exercise belts, and gotten wet. We didn’t want to leave five minutes after we got in the pool.

Then the oddest thing happened.  Other people in the class said I should teach it. They said, ‘Tell us what to do.’  So I did. I didn’t really teach the class as much as facilitate it. It was kind of like follow the leader. I remembered a few things, Carley remembered a couple of others, Ann and Marie tossed out some ideas, our lone gentleman mentioned an exercise he liked, and I just called them out. 

At one point, someone said we hadn’t done anything really hard, so I called out some sprints. I really thought we might get through 20 or 30 minutes, but doggone if we didn’t do the whole hour. I was really impressed that we all stuck it out.  Carley said if I blogged about this, I had to include her comment that she was really impressed with me. But I think any of us could have done it.

At the end, someone made a joke about me taking tips. I pointed out that since I am unemployed, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Tags: deep-water aerobics, losing a pet, stress