Me vs Swimming...with an Accomplice

I'm still not a good swimmer. 

All of last season I spent trying to understand why my legs were about as useful as chopsticks in soup, and this year isn't looking much better.

A few things have changed. We have a new coach.  I'm convinced that she goes home at night and just cries at the prospect of trying to decipher my obvious aquatic failings, however I do enjoy the new and bizarre drills she has us do. 

The strangest one so far: imagine for a moment you are doing the chicken dance. Bend your arms up to make ineffectual little wings, and flap them around a bit. 
Good. Keep that image in your head. 
Now picture yourself jumping into the fucking water and try to swim using your ineffectual little wings. It looks a lot like you think it would. Basically you are a drowning chicken.

I have also convinced a friend to join me in the pool this year. I really have no idea why she agreed to do it. Climbing into a bathing suit and jumping into the water in early May when there is still some snow on the ground is not as fun as it sounds, but I'm assuming she joined mainly to enjoy the quality comedic performance I bring to the pool each evening. 

Together we've managed to bring a whole new level of grace to the water. 

For fun, and because we were otherwise completely done with the whole "lesson" part of the night, the two of us decided to pretend we were qualified to teach ourselves how to flip and turn underwater.
When done correctly, these turns allow you to seamlessly change direction and continue swimming when you reach the end of the pool, and if you're not us, look good doing it. 

But if you are us, as we were, then it probably appeared more like a case of the halt leading the blind, but where both parties were also drowning. 

Now, in theory, this move seemed simple enough. Somersault over, push off the wall, and swim in the other direction. Emerge victorious at the other end of the pool.

What actually happened was more like this:  somersault over sideways, push off something (wall, person, or thin fucking air), and then submarine down and skin your ass on the pool floor because you weren't even close to pointing in the right direction. Finally, emerge coughing and choking because you managed to suck a litre of water up your nose like someone desperate to prove they can use a neti pot.

Or, if you're my friend, you can attempt the somersault, not make it even close to a full rotation, abort the move underwater, and then for no definable reason, do a handstand. She even pointed her toes. A solid 7 out of 10.

Once she came back up from her underwater gymnastic routine, and I stopped laughing long enough to ask her why on earth she had done a handstand. She told me that once she realized that the somersault wasn't going to happen, she panicked and did a handstand. 

I can honestly say that I've never done a panic handstand before. 

Well done.

Me vs The Tiny Trailer Reno - Part 1

As a person with no patience for fiddly shit (which includes removing doors to paint them, and measuring of any sort), I'm currently struggling with my recent decision buy and refinish a 1983 Bigfoot trailer.

To be fair, the trailer is in incredible condition for it's age, but it does need some love.

The fake wood panelling is, well, awful, and it has some water damage that needs attention. The cushions, while in reasonable condition, are better suited to a love shack from the 80's than a trailer I want to live in for any period of time. I'm pretty sure the dust coming off of them predates the dinosaurs. And the ivy decoupage wallpaper border is nothing short of a nightmare to get off the walls.

But it works, so that's great. I don't have to fix anything before it's usable, which is a good thing because I'm shitty at fixing things, I don't want to fix things, and if I do find myself in a position to fix a thing, it will probably be done very slowly.

So this will be an ongoing project, but I wanted to share the beginnings...

This is the trailer. It's cute and tiny. My poor 6'2 ft tall husband should probably invest in a tent.
Happily there are no holes, and the colour isn't visually offensive. I'm not painting the outside.

The walls with the water damage were wrinkled and came off in your hands. Given that I have a two year old that would definitely fuck around with anything that came off in his hands, that shit had to go. Luckily the guy who we got it from redid the floor and left me some of the vinyl stick on floor boards.

You can see at the top of the
fake wood walls where the
ivy used to be

They stick, so now they are stick on wall boards. The rest will get painted soon. You know, soon like eventually, and I'm probably going to try to paint around things because I'm pretty sure that if I take the screws out to get the cupboard doors off, they will never go back on again.

I've also done my best to get the terrible ivy wallpaper off. I've done a medium job at it, but I'm sick to death of pulling it off and inhaling old wallpaper dust. Hopefully the paint will cover what's left if it tolerably enough because some of that shit appears to have been welded to the walls and short of it being burned off, I'm pretty sure it's going to outlive me.

So much ugly fabric in
one place

The cushions are getting recovered, because so help me, they are ugly as fuck. The fabric is also splitting and probably contains enough source material to clone a colony of dust mites.

The new and better
fabric

The difficulty here is that recovering cushions requires time, patience, measuring skills, and a sewing machine. I have none of these. This should go terribly.

So that's where I am so far. I'll post more as I go along. It'll be interesting.

Me vs Ticks

It’s tick season in my neck of the woods, and over the last week I’ve pulled ticks from myself and from my youngest kid.

I brushed the first one off my shoulder while I was on the phone with a friend. I felt what I thought was s mosquito on my shoulder, and swept it off. When I brought my hand back, I had a tick stuck to my finger. 

Like any reasonable person, I shrieked like a giant, terrified, baby and shook it off. 

Onto my floor. 

Inside my house. 

Then my very tolerant friend got to listen to my panicked ranting about lyme disease as I hunted around my kitchen on my hands and knees trying to find it again. The only thing worse than a spider that disappears in your house is a tick that pulls a similar vanishing act.

But I found it, and he became my prisoner.

I call this one Bob.

The next one came out of my 2 year old’s hair a few days later. He handled it better than I would/did.

This is Paw Patrol Tick. Guess who named him.

After frantically scanning every known resource online and canvassing a few knowledgeable friends, I determined that we probably weren't going to die because Bob and Paw Patrol Tick are dog ticks, and not deer ticks. 

They also hadn’t had time to feed and blow up like some kind of nightmare-driven balloon animals, so we were good. 

They do, however carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, so if you notice either of us being sick or spotted, please drive us to a hospital.

And because I’m strange, I’ve kept them. 

They’re living in my fridge in little containers. I check every day to see if they are still moving. They’re surprisingly resilient.

Since we obviously live in a place with an appallingly active tick population I wanted to see what my options were. Most websites said to stay out of grassy, bushy areas. Well, currently I live on a desolate rocky wasteland, and that hasn’t seemed to curb the issue. I literally have no grass that they would hang out on. And the day I got my tick I was sitting on my upper deck reading a book. I don’t even have a potted plant up there.

So staying out of the grass wasn’t really cutting it for me.

Our other options were deet (which I’m allergic to) and coating all of our clothes with permethrin, which for those of you who don’t know is a synthetic insecticide that acts as a neurotoxin. While considered safe to humans, I’m not sure I want to wear clothing coated in it on a regular basis.

And then there are the natural repellants. I was fairly skeptical about their efficacy, however they were a much more attractive option.

  

So, like any reasonable person would, I decided to investigate and see if these natural repellants worked. My plan was to use Bob and Paw Patrol Tick as test subjects, because really, how often do you get to play with refrigerated ticks?

Me and my six year old set up a cookie tray and brought out our ‘participants’. Our repellants of choice were vinegar, tea tree oil, and lemongrass oil as suggested by the internet. 

The testing site

I did not obtain informed consent, and I can only imagine that Bob and PPT were not willing subjects, however as I wasn’t asked if I’d like my blood sucked from my body, so I had very little sympathy.

My daughter documented our experiment with photographs and was a wonderfully macabre lab assistant, handing me one q-tip after another coated in scents to make the ticks run.

Bob doesn't like vinegar

Vinegar was the clear winner, and neither Bob nor PPT liked it. You could draw little vinegar circles around them and it would take them a minute or so to break through. Lemongrass and tea tree were also somewhat effective, but not as good.

Overall I considered it a good opportunity to find if any of the suggested methods of tick repellant worked and to teach my daughter about the experimental process and the importance of testing internet theories.

Now to figure out what to do next with Bob and Paw Patrol Tick. They are still in my fridge.

Me vs Swimming: Season 2

Coming this May!

If you enjoyed Me vs Swimming and it's sequel Me STILL vs Swimming, you can look forward to many more adventures coming up, as for no definable reason, I've rejoined the swim team. 

I expect highlights to include getting into the water in early May and freezing my ass off and realizing that not swimming for the winter does nothing for my skill level.

Staring:

Jamie who can't kick 
Confounded coaches who can't understand why kicking is so hard for Jamie
and
Friends of Jamie who lap her constantly unless Jamie is given pity flippers

Swimming: Season 2 coming soon to a pool that is probably not near you.

Me vs Equal Representation

For years I've been aware that I am not the obviously gifted one in our family.  I spent years trying to figure out what my awesome talent was, and short of being very punctual, I drew a pretty universal blank.

My sister, however, has this (irritating) ability to master almost everything she touches, while I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my house clean and get my toddler to eat more than crackers.
She's an amazing skier (I've blown my knee twice while trying). She rock climbs, and is also great at that (I can drag my way up a rock, but I don't make it look good). She picks up a guitar, and teaches herself to play (Yeah, I have zero coordination when it comes to playing an instrument). And of course she can cook. And bake. (See earlier reference to crackers)

Does it sound like I'm jealous? I totally am, but I love her, so that's ok. :-)

And then there is her artistic talent. Pick a medium, and she will be good at it. Very good at it.

Grab a pencil and boom:




Painting? We had the coolest nursery wall ever:

Clay had a bumpy start:














...and then apparently got over it:

Surprisingly, this really hasn't bothered me that much over the years, however every now and again I feel like I need to point out the disparity in appreciation as demonstrated by other family members.

My parents house holds no less than 5 pieces of my sister's art PROMINENTLY displayed on walls and in curio cabinets.

I specifically said prominently, because to be fair, I did find this:



A picture of whales that I took years ago. You will notice that I found it carefully tucked in a drawer. Maybe it's a display drawer?

When relating this story to my sister over Easter (and making sure she was aware I'd be putting her art up here), she recognized the photo as one she had used as a template for a whale picture she has painted. Ouch, though to be fair, my "art" pretty much consists of the adult colouring books available at my local grocery store, so I can see why that doesn't get a frame.  

But not even my parents obvious artistic favouritism (which is well deserved...I can't draw a straight line with a ruler) can touch the time when my grandmother introduced my sister and I to her friend. She began by telling this woman about how talented my sister was, how artistic, how brilliant, basically how the rainbows never ceased to shine when she was around, et cetera. Then I think she realized I was there too. She looked at me in a vaguely panicked way, and you could see the moment that she realized the hole that had been dug. She looked at her friend and gave me the most memorable introduction I have ever experienced: "This is Jamie. She can read."

Literacy Level: Expert
If you need something read, I'm your girl. I will read the shit out of it.

Except this month....I'm way behind on my book club reading.

Stop laughing.