J'ai de l'eau dans mes oreilles.

[mrissa]

But it was good; I'm definitely doing this again tomorrow morning, and possibly ever other morning I'm here.

The odd thing about swimming while dealing with vertigo is that the force of waves produced by two smallish women swimming in a long, narrow pool is enough to knock me for a loop if I try to stand up in it afterwards. (So I did try. Repeatedly. What's the worst that happens if you get knocked off your feet in five feet of water, and you're five-foot-six and already have been swimming? You float an inch or so off where you were standing and get your feet back down and try again. Therefore it's pretty safe, and probably good for me to do.)

It took me a few lengths to get my scissor kick back. It wasn't that I didn't have the strength, it was that I never swam sidestroke enough for it to be natural. Backstroke I had right away, the specific arc of the arms and like that. Breaststroke the same. But the scissor kick on my sidestroke took a bit of feeling out. Amazing how much easier that sort of thing is once your legs are pulling their weight, so to speak. I hadn't been swimming in way too long. Now I'm wondering if we can figure something out. Hmm.

More later.

Comments

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I think that if I decide to swim at all, it'll have to be at night-- I'm a night shower person, so I could lump de-swimming and getting-clean into one.

In middle school, my class had gym right before lunch. This was good most of the time, but there was recess in there too. During the few weeks of the year that we swam-- conveniently placed in December-- most of us huddled by the door, glaring at the supervisors who wouldn't let us in. There was a year in junior high where I had second-period gym, and during swimming, I just left my hair braided and floofing out because it was too much trouble to do anything else to... and I drip, drip, dripped my way through the rest of the way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We had no recess as of middle school, but in grade school I hated the philosophies that made us stay outside in circumstances adults would never stand for.

The worst of swimming in high school was that I didn't have time to wash, only to rinse very briefly, since my next class was on the far side of the school and the swimming teacher based his ideas of how long it should take you to get ready on the premise that you were a boy with a crewcut. (This was the early-mid 1990s: nobody was a boy with a crewcut. Not even greykev, whose father certainly would have given him one if left free rein.) So I spent the whole quarter drippy and dry-skinned and stinking of chlorine. Also I did much of debate class with my head completely on one side to let the water out of my ears.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

A lot of teachers, even gym teachers, have unrealistic expectations of how gym interacts with school. My father and one of his friends were complaining once about their students-- Dad's a good teacher, certified for absolutely everything, so he gets a lot of the catchall classes and is only now getting anything people want to take-- and one of their complaints was that some students wore their gym uniforms to class.
"Oh, some of mine don't even shower after gym!" Dad's friend said.
"Um," I interrupted. "Nobody does. There's no time, and they turned the water off anyway. I don't know anyone who has ever showered after gym, except for swimming."
It took a while to convince them.

I wouldn't have minded middle school recess if they'd done anything to make it appealing. "Go spend twenty minutes outside," means very little if the only thing to do outside is play basketball or soccer, if you brought your own ball. I was and remain perfectly fine as long as I have some playground equipment. Or even if they plow something in the winter, so everyone digs tunnels.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah. My mom was horrified, but nobody in my middle school or high school gym classes showered afterwards, except if they'd been swimming. No time, often no water, strongly socially discouraged.