Just keep swimming...

Before he left for his most recent work trip, I asked J to help me work on my swimming technique. I am by no means a great swimmer - it's been probably 15 years or so since I took a swimming class. I can do a back stroke well enough to stay moving and not sink, and I'm pretty good at floating - I have lots of buoyancy! One thing I've always had trouble with, though, is the front crawl or freestyle stroke.

The Y in our area has two pools; a large lap pool with six lanes, and a smaller pool that's mostly for water aerobics and open swimming. J has swum a few times there and like it, so since I bought a new suit we headed over. I wasn't too nervous about swimming - I used to love the water - but I was a little nervous to have him instruct me. Not because he isn't a good instructor, but rather because he swims really well. I didn't want to look too much a fool in front of my hubby! Then again, I do quite often anyway...

Ahem.

I know the principles of the front crawl; laying face-down, kicking while rotating arm movements, and somewhere in there breathing. The hard part for me is actually doing all that. We started out with some basic exercises. J grabbed a kick board and had me swim a couple lengths holding the board in front of me and practicing my kicking. Then we added on breathing while kicking - learning to turn my head while kicking. After that we added in arm strokes, all while still holding the kick board. It got very complicated! However, I kept at it, and after a few more lengths I gave it a try without the board.

I sucked an awful lot of water that evening, and had one heck of a headache the next day. But I swam 8-10 laps and played around in the pool for a while, and had lots of fun.

Yesterday I decided that I needed to keep up with my workout and so I headed back to the gym. I took my suit with the idea that if the pool had any free lanes I'd swim, otherwise I'd go upstairs and do some cardio and weight training. The pool was relatively empty, so I donned my suit, showered off, and hit the pool.

I swam for about 40 minutes and did 12.5 laps. Six back-stroke, six front crawl, and one length floating/back-stroke to the end where I'd left my towel. I didn't suck nearly as much water as the other night, and I am learning a little bit more about the whole experience; to keep kicking when I try to breathe, twisting my neck more to bring my face further out of the water to breathe, the importance of not panicking and concentrating on my efforts. While I'm by no means a great swimmer or swim very often, I think it's something I should keep up. Especially since it's helping my healthy livings/weight loss goals; I checked the scale this morning and had lost 1.4lbs!

Maybe some of that was water-weight, but I'd like to think I lost the weight because of working out in the water.

Slackity slack and clickity clack

I have not been very good at keeping up with writing the last few weeks. However, here follows a remedy!

February was fun. For Valentine's Day I made a nice meal for Jeremy and I - strip steaks with mushrooms and cheese. Earlier in the day we saw Avatar on IMAX and in 3-D. My first ever IMAX film, though I guess I saw some 3-D things at theme parks when I was younger. The movie was really good, but I think I could have done without the 3-D - I was frequently trying to take my glasses off and watch the movie that way because the 3-D kept bugging me - it wasn't over done by any means, I just couldn't seem to focus on it properly. Overall, the experience was fun, the movie was very good, but I don't think I need to see another 3-D movie for a good long while.

I knitted on some socks, spun some more yarn, worked on more job applications, filed taxes. Nothing very exciting, until the end of the month. The Crafty Ladies decided to take a spring break vacation, and so we had Craftaganza 2010 on the last weekend of February. We rented a house right off Lake Michigan, within walking distance to the beach. It was very cold and snowy while we were there, so we stayed warm with lots of good food and snacks (I made some chocolate truffles, chicken & dumplings, and homemade bread for my contribution of food), wine, knitting before a cozy fire, took a couple dips in the out door hot tub, and even took an excursion to the lake.

We hit the hot tub Friday night, then again on Saturday. It was quite chilly out for our first dip and the wind was blowing quite a bit. The hot tub was situated at the edge of the house, just beyond the slope of the roof. Every time the wind gusted some of the powdery snow blew off the roof and landed on our heads. We all had shimmery halos from all the snow droplets - it was really beautiful, and whenever we'd get a bit warm from the hot tub, we'd just pull up a bit from the water, get dusted with snow, and then drop back down into the water again. Saturday night there was not much wind, but the little there was blew high in the sky. While we were in the tub, we could see the clouds pass over the moon and it was really beautiful. LH and I were chatting and soaking for a bit after everyone else went inside. While we were visiting, MTB came out and took a really lovely picture of the moon that night:

 During the day on Saturday, we took a walk on around the neighborhood and down to see the lake. TW and IS and I climbed the snowy stairs down to the beach, and I even made a snow angel.

We left on Sunday with much better weather heading out than we had coming in. The weekend was a blast, and I had a lovely time. I'm pretty sure the other ladies all had lots of fun, too! It would be wonderful if we were able to make this a yearly tradition.

So now March has come upon us. It's hard to believe that it's already the third month of the year. J and I will be celebrating eight years together on St Patrick's Day. Definitely one of my favorite holidays. I will have to make some more corned beef & cabbage in honor of the occasion.

This week I took an orientation/training class for substitute teaching. I'm still hoping one of my applications will pan out soon, but it will be nice to get some more experience with students. Hopefully my papers will go through quickly and I'll be able to start subbing as early as next week, though it may take another week beyond that.

I'm looking forward to March. I've got several projects in mind; from finishing the socks for WW, to a calligraphy/illuminated drawing project for LH, even a few academic things I'd like to get underway. Should be a fun month.