I didn’t write anything yesterday. Well, I wrote all day, but I didn’t write anything non-work-related. I write every day, 7 days a week, and I think it’s been at least three years since I’ve missed a day. I also broke a little NYT Connections streak. I started the puzzle in the morning and set it aside to finish later, and then forgot. I even have a reminder set up on my phone so that I don’t forget Wordle and Connections, but I guess I didn’t hear the alert.
So that’s two streaks inadvertently and carelessly broken, which means I start again with day 1.
That's fine. Every streak begins with day 1.
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Is this important amid all of this (gesturing wildly at everything)? No, not really except that little things are always important to me. I live for the mundane. I love everyday life and as much as certain people and certain Administrations are trying to ruin everything good about everything, I refuse to roll over and let them win.
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A few days later and I'm on my way to the first meet of the second half of the college swim season. Marymount vs. Randolph Macon. Marymount won that meet by five points last year, a very close margin for swimming, so it should be a good, competitive meet.
It's Saturday morning and raining steadily. I'm glad I'm not driving - the windshield wipers are lulling me into a sleepy fugue state, which is not a good state to be in on the Capital Beltway. But I'm sure my husband will yank me right out of this nice little fog with some crazy hair-raising aggressive driving move.
And there we go. That took sixty seconds. I'm wide awake now.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about this time of year. Holiday stress and the shit show known officially as the year 2025 had me hyperventilating a little, and I thought that I just wanted to get past the New Year and into peaceful winter hibernation enlivened by weekly swim meets. We don't get our peaceful winter hibernation this year, but at least we still have college swimming. The 200 Medley Relay will sustain us as a people.
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I wear contacts for presbyopia. Most of the time, they work as well as I need them to, but there are days when I can see either distance or up close, but not both. Yesterday was such a day. Up close was sharp and clear, and distance was a fog. I couldn’t see the record board on the opposite side of the pool (I like to look at it because my son’s name appears on it several times) but I could easily read the text messages of the lady in the bleachers in front of me. To be clear, I did not ACTUALLY read her texts, but I COULD have if I’d wanted to.
The lady with the phone was, I surmised, a Randolph Macon grandmother. She took a photo of her grandson, and then got her daughter to help her put the photo on her lock screen. They were both adorable.
The meet ended in a split, with the Marymount boys winning by a comfortable margin. The girls fell short but it was closer in the pool than it was on paper. My son won two individual events and was a close second in his third event. And of course, the powerhouse 200 Medley Relay dominated the pool as it’s done all season. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around with my son and his roommate at their favorite sports bar, which was nearly empty when we arrived at 245, and nearly full when we left at 5 for a quiet and cozy Saturday night at home. A 10/10 day.
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My sister texted me on Sunday to let me know that she’s already booked her beach vacation. I’m not even capable of thinking about anything past the day in front of me, let alone renting a beach house for a week 7 months from now. And as much as I love the beach, I think we need a change of pace this year. I’ll figure it out later. My sister can talk to me in April.
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Other than the swim meet and a few other little things here and there, I mostly laid low this weekend. I can’t really sleep but I did rest for a bit. I went outside and I watched hockey and I took a break from the gotdang news. After a few hours of sleeplessness on Sunday night, I fell asleep at maybe 4:30 and I woke up to find that we hadn’t yet invaded any new countries and that ICE had managed not to shoot any civilians. It’s the bare minimum, but I’ll take it. Meanwhile, if you’d told me in 2019 or so that Jerome Powell would one day be my hero, I’d have scoffed.
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I thought that if I just kept writing this post, then a theme would emerge or a point would occur to me. If you continued reading this all the way through, then I’m sorry, but all sales are final. It’s time to wrap this up. I’m now several days into new writing and Connections streaks. Maybe I’ll get good at writing again. Maybe I’ll figure out how to make connections again. A demain.
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