Back Home: Swimming, Biking, and Avoiding Work

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I've been adjusting to getting back into my life in North Carolina. I was expecting to be energized and inspired, which is true for the most part (though not as much as I'd hoped).

Swimming
It's finally warm enough here to go swimming outside! I'm lucky in that my parents live on an inlet sound. The water is warm, only a little salty, and no chlorine! I still do go to the YMCA but there's something just so much more refreshing about swimming in nature. My goal is to swim every day; I haven't quite lived up to that yet but I'm getting close.



Fins
Having SCUBA dived in a previous life I had a pair of fins lying around. Though my dad was tempted to get rid of all the SCUBA gear since no one's used it in years I asked him to save the flippers. When I'm swimming normally I have enough movement in the water to move my left leg in almost any direction and in any motion, though speed may vary. The right leg is stronger than the left so I have a slight tendency to veer toward the left. For anyone who's used flippers, they exaggerate your every movement. Now instead of listing slowly to the left I steer into left wall practically every kick. Though not what I want it to be yet, it's good to have something to work on I suppose.



Biking
I have been using the hand bike more and more every week. I don't use it every day but I make sure to use it a couple of times each week. The area around our house is flat, with miles of farmland in between us and town. At the moment the top distance I've gone is about 8 miles (we clocked it on the car odometer) but I want to go farther still. I felt tired afterward but not exhausted, so I know I can go farther.



Otherwise things have been pretty calm. I'm picking out new classes for next semester but for the mean time I'm enjoying my relative time off (from school work anyway). I have good friends who drag me out to make sure I spend this time doing something fun, always walking of course. So all in all things even out I guess. My life hasn't changed too dramatically but enough that I've noticed.



What to look forward to: the disappearance of my wheelchair. I've been keeping it around, more as my security blanket than anything else. Though I only use it in the house now, both my doctors and therapists have told me to ditch it completely. But it's difficult after all this time. So they've given my parents permission to hide my wheelchair! We'll see how this goes. It hasn't happened yet but my mother has been sending me warnings that it'll happen soon. I'm going to miss you wheelchair.



If you haven't seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog you need to! From Joss Whedon, with Neil Patric Harris and Felicia Day. It is amazing!