Peak summer

It's Saturday, and a swim meet morning in the DMV. It rained hard last night but the sun is out now, bright and warm; and morning cool is giving way to humid June heat. It smells like chlorine and coffee and sunscreen and wet grass and bacon egg and cheese sandwiches. IYKYK.

I'm no longer a summer swim parent, although my son is still a coach. But I am a summer swim aunt, so I'm here at the Manor Woods pool to watch my 11yo nephew, a summer swimming veteran; and my 7yo niece, who is making her A meet debut. 

I know some people here, so we have other races to watch; and it's fun, though a little weird, to be just a spectator. But the music is loud and the tents and deck chairs are all over the lawn and the kids are in full spirit mode with painted faces and blue and green fingernails and silly costumes. A summer swim meet is a summer swim meet. 

*****

The nice thing about being a summer swim aunt, rather than a parent is that you can come and go whenever you want. We rolled up at 9, and then found that the meet actually starts at 9, so we didn’t miss anything. And we left when the kids had both swum their best events. 

And then what did we do with our extra free time? Well yes, of course we went to another swim meet. A 17-year habit is hard to break. And what’s more fun on a Saturday morning in June, anyway? 

*****

It’s Sunday now, another beautiful June morning, and we're on our way to yet another summer swim meet. My son and some friends joined a local rec league for summer swim alumni and other adult swimmers; and their team, the Swim Reapers, is competing this morning at another old school DMV swim club. It's all sprint distances. It's going to be silly. 

*****

It was actually awesome - swimmers of all ages and many heats of each event, arranged in reverse order by age. No officials - swimmers are on the honor system - and each heat grabs a stopwatch as they finish their races, so they can time the next heat. It works very well. My son and his friend helped the Reapers to a first place finish in the men's medley relay, and he picked up an individual first place in the 19-29 men’s 25 breaststroke, breaking the Reapers’ team record in the process. That was a fun way to spend Sunday morning. Better than church. Sorry, Lord. I’m just keeping it real. 

*****

I usually like to swim laps, but sometimes I like to just get in the pool and swim around the large wide-open shallow end, counting nothing, just moving through the water in any which way. That’s how I swam when I was a child, and it’s still fun. I stay in motion the entire time because even on a hot day, I can’t stay still in a pool without getting very cold. I swim around the perimeter, and back and forth from the wall to the rope that separates the shallow and deep ends. After a morning at a pool that we couldn’t swim in, we spent part of the afternoon at our own pool, swimming like children. I stayed in until I couldn’t stop shivering; until my eyes burned a little bit and my fingers were pruny and I was just plain tired out. Then we went home and grilled dinner and watched swimming again; this time, the Olympic Trials on TV. Meteorologically it’s still technically spring but this weekend was peak summer. 10/10 - would recommend. 

As a matter of fact, I DO have the cholesterol to be out here

It's 8:34 AM on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting in the waiting room at LabCorp, waiting for my 9:30 “appointment.” Why quotation marks? Well I'll tell you. LabCorp doesn't take appointments, so you have to just show up. It's first come first serve. And then when you come, you sign in on a list of assigned 15-minute time slots. Almost like appointments. Why they don't just take appointments in the first place is a question whose answer is unknown to me. 

I arrived at 8:30 and am now signed in for 9:30. I brought something to read so it's fine except that I can't have any coffee until after the blood draw. I didn't realize how dependent I am on coffee in the morning.  I'm really quite miserable - I can't stop yawning and I'm slow on the uptake. Fuzzy-headed, really. Muddled. Not sharp. Not on my A game. 

*****

I might be the youngest person here, and I'm 58, so I’m not accustomed to being the youngest person anywhere. But a medical lab at 8:30 on Tuesday morning is a hot spot for senior citizens, and this crew thinks they own the place. They gave me the fisheye as I approached the lab sign-in list, as if they’re thinking that the young people should step aside and let their elders go first. Normally, I’m all about respect for elders, and not just because I am one. But I have to go back to work after my blood work, and everyone else in that waiting room is going home to watch “Matlock” reruns. They can jolly well wait their turns. 

*****

I read for a bit, and then wrote for a bit, and then watched “House Hunters International,” featuring a young Canadian woman who was moving to Playa del Carmen. At 9:27 I received a text message notifying me that the lab tech was ready for me, demonstrating that they DO in fact know how to use technology and that they could conceivably figure out a way to schedule appointments that doesn’t involve a clipboard hanging from a hook. 

The lab technician was curt to the point of rudeness, responding to my cheery “good morning” by pointing to a chair and barking “sit there.” But she was reasonably competent because the blood draw was quite painless, although I’m left this morning with ugly track marks on my arm. It’s kind of cold today anyway, so my long sleeves will cover the damage. And everyone knows I’m not a heroin addict. 

*****

But it seems that I am a bit of a coffee addict because I was literally shaking by the time I got out of there at 9:50 or so. I was going to just drive home and make some coffee but there’s a Starbucks right across the street from the lab. Starbucks smells lovely, and it really was unseasonably chilly on Tuesday morning, almost fall-like, a very Starbucks morning. Starbucks doesn’t sell pumpkin spice latte in June, and that is a good thing, given my well-documented hatred of Godforsaken PSL, which is a hate crime against coffee. I ordered a vanilla latte, my favorite Starbucks drink. Vanilla latte tastes like 1997. Had I sustained a head injury halfway through that latte, and then been asked who the president is as part of a concussion protocol, I’d have said Bill Clinton. Or maybe I wouldn’t because that latte cost almost $7, so it’s definitely 2024. On my salary, I can have two children in college OR I can buy $7 cups of coffee. I can’t do both. That’ll be the last Starbucks for a while. 

*****

It’s Friday now, and if I’m being honest (and I am always being honest), I’m patting myself on the back for all the progress I’m making on my still-long-but-shorter list of administrative catch-up tasks and medical appointments. With the blood work out of the way, I now have to make two more specialists’ appointments, get an old filling repaired, and then deal with my apparently quite high cholesterol. I’m already taking anti-anxiety meds again because the panic every time I left the house and especially any time any member of my family left the house was getting out of control, and it is a bit better. But I don’t want to take any more medication. So I guess I have to do this the hard way. And since I do pretty much everything the hard way, this shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone in my house is going to be eating very healthy food this summer. They’re not going to like it. But by the end of August, I’m going to have a crossed-off to-do list, and much better triglyceride and LDL numbers. I need to live long enough to glare at the young people in line at LabCorp.