Call Me Selfish - It's about time

(Kyle drying off after swimming)

Yes, I haven't been around here lately. Instead of sitting at home allowing all the pressure of life to get to me, I've been spending every free minute...when I can...doing something I truly love to do...something that erases stress, and brings me back down to Earth....it's better than Xanax ; swimming.

The central a/c is still not working...

I am still hand washing every night since the washer is still broke...

That advocacy job is on the back burner....

Although writing for the paper is rewarding...it only adds up to a part-time job...

Partial unemployment benefits are running down

The car is leaking oil, and the muffler sings in a baritone tone as we rattle and shake in it every time we drive it.

Yahoo (my ex in prison) still doesn't want to follow the rules about him not sending mail direct to the house, or to me...it's actually now getting sad...

It takes about 2 minutes to read the help wanted ads in the county, and within the area I think is safe to drive the car....

Volunteering as much as I can still - but feeling overwhelmed with it all...

Summer is here, and the children are bored! (That's a nightmare all of it's own!)

So, yes, the same stressors are still taking their aim at me....but lately that's when I say;

"Kids get ready! We're going swimming!"

Now my boys haven't realized the reason we've been going so much doesn't have to do with me being a caring mother seeing to their needs...wanting them to have a fun summer.....nope, it's not about them - IT'S ALL FOR ME!

Now I've never been one for public pools - concrete and chlorine ---ewww...yuck!

Laying side by side on those plastic chairs, babies screaming - and time in the water consists of dodging drivers - nope, no public pools for us.

We get in that shaky baritone thing I call my car, and we drive about 16 miles due west to a state park called Mill Bluff. It's a little state park - a few camping spots and lots of hiking trails - beautiful bluffs jutting out of the Earth that surrounds it and a swimming area fed by spring water with a sandy beach waiting for all of those who have come to relax ...play...and swim.

The trip to get there sets the tone for rest and relaxation - now I could take 12/16 straight there but rather than the obvious route, we take back roads...twisting roads that wrap their way around farms and through the backsides of little towns. There are times that I can count the number of other cars we pass during that 16 mile stretch on two hands - yes, quaint and tranquil!

The kids and I always get a little excited as we pull into the park - we look to see if our usual spot is open - we grumble if it's not (don't people know it's OUR spot?!?!? What the hell???) I pass through the entry, sometimes stopping to talk to the park worker if it's Joe, a fellow Democrat - and some one I've known for almost as long as I have lived in Wisconsin -

Joe and his wife Shirley are a nice older couple that have a farm outside of town and I tend to run into them quite a bit when I venture outside of the house - they're good people and company - and always have a humorous opinion on something headlining the news - My children are still getting use to Joe's sarcasm, especially Justin as the twist and turns of sarcastic humor still escapes his black and white thought processes....yesterday for example Joe looked to the backseat of my car and asked me if those "ugly children" are mine...I told him that I felt sorry for the poor lil buggers on my way to the park...they were camping out along the road so I thought I would be charitable and give them a bath while swimming but I planned to dump them off at a farm on the way home (yes, this is how we talk) - Kyle (11) got the humor - all Justin (15) heard was "ugly" - of which all of yesterday I spent trying to explain that "No, Joe is not a mean old man."

From our welcome into the park we carry on to our spot...if it's open. The children immediately dive in and I lay out on my blanket with a book while I get toasty warm from the sun's rays. Once my skin is beaming with heat that's when I then dive into the cool waters - and then that's where stay for about an hour...swimming...my feet rarely touch the sand beneath the water - there's something about floating..kicking...swimming...that I find to be freeing - relaxing.

I usually repeat that pattern a couple of times....get out of the water...get toasty warm again, and then swim another hour. I ignore the boys yelling at each other as they throw sand, pop each other with the pool noodle we bring, or complain that the other one is not fun - I will intervene when Justin gives Kyle swimsuit wedgies and only because I can't afford another suit should he rip Kyle's.

So yes, there's my guilty pleasure - my natural Xanax to deal with the stress that this year has brought me. - I wash it away while swimming. Sometimes when I am laying there drying off under the sun's rays - I think about all of you...wonder if any of you love water and swimming the way I do - do you find it healing? Sometimes I tell myself I should blog about it when I get home - but usually by the time I am home I need to catch up on the other things in life that need my attention, and lately I've been drifting off to a nice natural sleep with no worries keeping me up all night - nice, huh?

So if you don't see me around here much you know where I am...and if you do see me blogging a lot, then you know the weather is not cooperating with my summer passion....