Monthly Archives for April 2009

I Didn’t Die


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I have always wanted to be a better swimmer. My mother (yes, this is all her fault) was on the synchronized swimming team in high school and she wore noseplugs whenever she swam. As a kid, I never learned how to put my face in the water without a mask or noseplugs, so as a 41-year-old lady I decided the time had come. I would finally solve the mystery of what goes on under water. Was everyone holding their breath or blowing out constantly? Were they blowing out through their nose, mouth, or a carefully coordinated combination of the two? Was it a gentle, constant flow of air, or was it more like clearing the impacted snot out of my head? And what if the impacted snot flew out into the pool and started floating around?
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On a whim I decided to sign up for adult swim lessons at the Y as part of my current self-improvement kick. That was 48 hours ago and I’ve been worrying about it ever since. I actually took my anxiety medicine (now for public speaking, flying, the dentist, AND swimming lessons) but I was still shaking while I waited for class to start. I saw Jana on the way to the locker room and told her that I was headed for the Adult Beginner A class. She said, “It’s hard to believe there’s something you’re not good at.” There are actually lots of things I’m not good at but that’s another post. I gave Jana some messages to pass on if I died, and told her to make sure someone got the rum cake recipe from Ben so I could live on.
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As I sat shivering beside the pool making small talk with the other sinkers I tried to figure out who our instructor would be, hoping for someone who would slowly and gently help me ease my face into the water. The only instructor in the pool was the coach of the YMCA swim team, Lavinia. I’m pretty sure Lavinia is Russian, and every time I have seen her she is barking orders. I had never seen her smile. I was a little relieved when swim team practice ended and she went to the locker room.
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She came back. She ordered us into the frigid water and told us to go under water 5 times. Yeah, ok. I could have stayed home and done this in the nice warm tub. The sad thing was that every one of my sinker friends had no problem putting their face in the water. When Lavinia came to me I said, “That’s my problem – I can’t put my face in the water.” She said, “Just do it…I need to see your problem from under the water.” Every time I stuck half a nostril under the water she said, “I couldn’t see anything.” I finally got pissed and made a half-hearted but double-nostril dunk and she moved on to her next victim. I cried a little.
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There were about 20 people in the class, and some of them couldn’t swim AT ALL. One woman said it was the first time she had ever been in a pool. I can swim. Give me a set of noseplugs or a mask and snorkel and I can swim like Michael Phelps’ great-aunt Tilly. I’ve just got to get past the face-in-the-water thing. Surprisingly, by the end of the first class, everyone could swim and I could put my face in the water. I need a lot of practice, but I guess most of all I just needed Lavinia to give the order. She even smiled.
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The I.R.S.

I haven’t talked much about this on the blog because it just sucks so much, but some of you have heard my sad story about trying to clean up the mess created by someone (who will remain nameless) who used my social security number to collect rental income in my name to avoid a tax levy. I was extremely hurt by this abuse of my trust, and it was SO FRUSTRATING to try to work through the situation with the IRS. Every time I’d fill out their form saying that it was not my income, they’d send me another one back saying, “OK…so you agree with adding this under-reported income to your gross income.” It was obvious that nobody read what I wrote, even though I made numerous calls and followed their instructions to the T.

Well, my patience paid off. Today I received a “Closing Notice” from the IRS. It says that I’m all set – it’s over – I’m done. I actually called the IRS when I received the letter because I wanted to make sure that I was all set for BOTH tax years that this fraud was committed. The representative told me that yes, I really was all set, and for both years. Yay.
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WE ARE THE BIGGEST LOSERS!!!

We had the wrap-up meeting for the fitness challenge at the Y tonight and our team won! Between the 5 team members we lost 47 pounds. I haven’t been able to work out much in the last 2 weeks because either my ankle, knee, or back has been killing me and Dr. Bob keeps telling me to take it easy, so my expectations weren’t very high. I got on the scale tonight and flicked the little thingie to the right. The scale stayed firmly in the down position. I started moving it to the left pound by pound and the scale didn’t move until I got down to the next set of numbers. Even with the minor setback of the last 2 weeks and the fact that I had to weigh in at night, I’ve lost 10 pounds! Since last year at this time I’ve lost about 20 pounds, but I’ve only been serious about trying to lose weight for 2 periods of about 2 months each. I’m hoping that my new habits will stick this time and that my injuries will heal so I can actually get some good workouts in! I’m nowhere near where I want to be but at least I’m headed in the right direction. I’ll try to find some photos to post shortly.
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Sign of the Times

Yesterday I stopped at the Bank of America on Needham Street in Newton – not exactly a high-crime district. I was really surprised to see an ARMED GUARD standing out in front eating a banana. There have been more bank robberies lately so I guess it’s becoming a necessity, but it was still surprising. Armed guards are much more common in other countries – we saw them everywhere when we were in Africa. Sometimes they have machine guns. Scary.

Speaking of the bank, the new ATM machines are so cool! You don’t need an envelope to make a deposit, and when you feed your checks into the slot, it scans them and figures out the amount of the checks. Be careful because the amount was incorrect on one of mine, but it’s still pretty amazing. I always get the receipt with the checks printed right on it, just in case.
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