Recalculations

We had to make several recalculations this week. Since Jay, Rose, and Amber were extra busy, I had to recalculate how to use my time during the school day so I could mow and maintain our vast lawn. Since my ankle tendons were still aching and stiff, I had to recalculate (yet again) my expectations on the recovery process and when I can return to running. A runner with special needs got cleared to join our cross country team on Thursday, causing us to recalculate how to run practice with 50+ kids, 2 coaches, and 1 kid who needs extra supervision. It was a lot. A wildfire caused air quality to spike into the red and our cross country meet in Wenatchee was cancelled. Jeff recalculated like a pro and created a time trial event on our track for the cross country team on Saturday morning. 

Sunset in our backyard.

Journal excerpts from the week:

Monday, September 15th:  Rose: "At practice today, when I was taking a walk break, someone in a passing car rolled down their window and yelled 'if you walk, I'll tell your dad!' I'm not sure who it was."

HAH! Jeff and I got a kick out of that. Lots of people in this town know our family of runners!

Today was very tiring. I vacuumed the house and did the elliptical for 30 minutes before driving Amber to school. At her request, we went to Maverick on the way so she could use some of her own money to buy some snacks for her overnight 5th grade trip to Camp Dudley that's tomorrow. Amber spent $18 and got quite a haul of expensive gas station candy (mostly various gummies) and chips (Pringles). I assume (and hope) she's going to share with friends! 

When I got home from taking Amber to school, I mowed the lawn for 2 hours. It was thick, long, and wet enough that it didn't cut smoothly. Plus, the wet grass kept clogging the mower and draining the batteries faster than usual. It was an ordeal, and I only managed to mow half of the lawn in that time! 

When I finished mowing, I thought I had just enough time to eat and shower before the piano tuner came. I had enough time to eat and take half a shower, haha. I rushed to get dressed and let the piano tuner in. Then I cooked dinner (butternut bacon soup and cornbread) while the piano was tuned mercilessly. At the end, the tuner played some beautiful complicated music that made me think I may never get actually good at the piano, haha. I loved listening to him play though!

Once I cleaned up the kitchen, I had to play my newly tuned piano. Then I rushed out the door to cross country practice, after which I drove Rose to piano lessons and Amber to the library, then to her piano lesson. It was a very full day! My soup was so good.

Tuesday, September 16th: Rose and Amber left home before 7am this morning for Camp Dudley, the location of Amber's 5th grade overnight trip. Rose is a counselor, Amber is a participant. Our house feels so quiet and empty without them! Jeff dropped them off at the elementary school and went straight to work, and since Jay was already at seminary, our house was empty by 6:45am. I decided to play piano first, before launching into my hefty to do list.

After an hour at the piano, I cleaned 2 bathrooms, folded laundry, did a mini strength session in the barn, biked 7 miles (38 minutes), and then mowed. I finished mowing the yard today. The grass was so thick and wet, it took way longer than it should, the mower kept clogging with long wet grass, and the batteries drained extra fast. Same story as yesterday. Near the end of a long mowing session wherein I laboriously changed the mower batteries twice, I was tired. I prayed to have the batteries last this one last row so I could finish mowing without changing the batteries again, and they did! The batteries died exactly at the moment when I finished the row. It was one of those rare immediate, obviously recognizable answers to a small, seemingly insignificant prayer, that meant so much to me.

It was a lot and once again I was pretty tired by XC practice. We gave out the award socks for the meet on Saturday today: we gave them to Jay and Kaylee for their gritty racing tactics. Jay won his first pair of XC socks! He wasn't there when Jeff announced it though, because he was off helping someone. He must be a team captain or something. 

My ankle cracked once yesterday and once today, so it seems to be coming out of its extra tight phase. Now it's just very tight instead of too tight to crack. It only cracked the one time today, and it was after 7pm, soooo I'm probably not out of the woods quite yet. But it is nice not to have so much pain and hobbling stiffness as I did a few days ago. Come on, tendons! Loosen up! 

A whole contingent of the wresters on our XC team have been progressively lazier and more annoying over the past 2 weeks. Jeff and I had a vent session during dinner tonight. 

Wednesday, September 17th: Another intense day! After Jeff left for work this morning, I spent about an hour and a half outlining my Sunday school lesson for this Sunday. When I opened my journaling app, I was shattered to discover that half of my September scripture thoughts note was deleted during an app sync. I really needed those notes to give me ideas for my Sunday school lesson! Even though I didn't think it was actually possible to recover the deleted notes, I prayed for help. Then I asked Google how to restore a lost note. Within five minutes, I had my note back! It was a rare quick turnaround immediate answer to a prayer that felt huge and meaningful. I am so thankful.

After lesson prep, I did a 45 minute workout on the elliptical machine. During my workout, I noticed a little bird had flown into the barn and was beating itself up against the window trying to get out. After my workout, I used a sweatshirt from our lost and found to catch the tired birdie and release it outside. It freaked me out a bit because it thrashed and flapped a ton and kept fluttering away from me, but thankfully it was kind of caged in by the blinds on the window, so it didn't fly up to the high barn ceiling. After several attempts and some squealing, I was finally able to catch it without damaging its delicate wings.

After that avian interlude, I put my dirty overalls over my workout clothes and gathered up the long long drip line hose from the fruit trees into a relatively neat massive coil, and put it away. Then I mowed around all of the fruit trees. It looks so much better now--all tidy and clean! When Rose saw it on our way home today, she said "ahhh that is so satisfying to look at." My feelings exactly! Since I still had battery power left on the mower after mowing by the fruit trees, I re-mowed one wing of the lawn by the shed. It had cut super unevenly on my first mow, and I managed to make it look better today. Day 3 of too much time on the lawn mower.

After a frazzling hot sweaty XC practice wherein I played the part of coach and [unqualified] physical therapist while also helping Jeff time the workout, Rose and I went to parent teacher conferences for her honors English class and honors biology class. She has good teachers, but the teachers took their time for conferences, so we were at the school for over an hour and only saw the two teachers. While we waited, Rose told me all about Camp Dudley. It sounds like she and Amber had a good time there together. Rose was very tired and felt quite done with 5th graders, haha.

We stopped by Jeff's classroom on our way out, to say hi. Rose has French first period, so we joked about her being a problem student for Jeff. 

When I saw Amber for the first time after Camp Dudley, at the end of XC practice today, she gave me one of her signature power grip hugs, and lifted me off the ground. Even a few of the high school boys were impressed with her strength.

Leftovers for dinner, obviously.

Thursday, September 18th: Today was the first day all week that I didn't mow anything! It was so nice. I lifted with my friends Liz and Danae in the morning and did lots of laundry. Jay stayed home because he was feeling run down and exhausted after two bad nights of sleep, courtesy of allergies. This morning before seminary, Rose caught a spider and 4 pill bugs for her biology class project. I was so surprised and impressed when Rose told me she caught the spider that she saw on her bedroom floor this morning! She scooped it into a baggie even though she was terrified. After school Rose told me that the empty plastic soda bottle that they're using for this biome project in class tipped over and smashed the spider in its baggie today! She was sad and indignant that her courageous catch got squished so quickly, haha. 

I picked a gallon of cherry tomatoes today, and there are so many more still out there! The plant is a 4'x6' sprawl now. It's actually pretty hard to pick the tomatoes because the branches are so heavy but fragile to lift and reach under. 

[end journal entries] 

My journaling energies petered out after Thursday. Friday I went on a 15 mile bike ride all over the dusty bumpy gravel and dirt roads of the countryside near our house. It was hard and bruising but also felt wonderful to get outside for exercise. I spent all week exercising mostly indoors, then standing around at cross country practice, sweating it out under the merciless hot sun. (It was in the mid to high 80s all week long--grrr!) Standing around sweating does not fill my soul with happy outdoor exercise endorphins at all, so my bike ride was almost medicinal. The grapes in the vineyards are ripening in this warm endless late September sunshine and that sweet smell blew the cranky cobwebs out of my head. 

On Friday, Jeff informed me that he had convinced the head boys' wresting coach to take the assistant cross country coach position we've been hoping to fill for weeks. I talked to his wife in the hallway during a long wait at parent teacher conferences, and she said he was considering it, and Jeff closed the deal later in the week. As long as everything goes through, we will have 50% more adult supervision for our large team next week! And bonus: the wrestling coach will be able to keep a select few reluctant miscreants from his team in line and working hard on our team.

The Wenatchee cross country meet was officially cancelled on Friday afternoon at 3pm.

Saturday was our replacement meet team time trial on the track! We made it a 2 mile run for the high school team, with a 1 mile race for the middle schoolers. Jeff called it The Smoke Out, and got all official by setting up the automatic timing system and everything. I helped put up the tent and wind cables. AMBER ran the middle school 1 mile and got a new PR of 7:15! That's 16 seconds faster than her previous best that she ran last month. We were all so impressed!

Jay ran a solid 11:20 two mile, then came back 8 minutes later and ran a 5:20 one mile. He beat Jeff by 5 seconds in that race. Jeff started 30 seconds behind everyone else (after he got the timing system going) and didn't have a warmup, but we were proud of Jay for beating his dad, 5:20 to 5:25. 

Rose started her 2 mile run strong but got a side stitch halfway through and struggled to overcome it before rallying for the final lap, finishing in 15:59. 

We had a very peaceful and unexpected Saturday afternoon at home. I watched several episodes of a k-drama and dozed during part of one. It felt so rare and special to have that wonderful restful afternoon on a Saturday during cross country season.

I have to tell one more cross country story: this week one of my coaching challenges was a small freshman boy who looked so odd when he "ran" that I didn't know if he was hurt or goofing off or just super uncoordinated. After watching him for the first few weeks of the season, Jeff and I finally decided that he simply didn't know how to move his body to run. On Monday this week, I took him aside and gave him a short lesson on how to run: I had him stand on his toes on one foot. He couldn't quite manage that, so I had him stand on two feet, on his tippy toes. Then I had him try pogo hopping on his toes, using his ankles to spring up and down. Then I told him that running was similar: hopping from one foot to the other using the ankle to spring up. He tried it, then I threw him in to the next hill repeat. He still looked a little wonky but, still much better. 

When it was time to run back to the school from the park, I challenged him to run past one house, then walk past one house, and alternate that pattern for the whole mile back to the school, practicing that springy hopping from foot to foot. Back at the school, he arrived MUCH faster than ever before, with a big grin on his face. "I got back so early! I wasn't last!" he told me.

"Did you run one house and walk one house the whole way?" I asked.

"I ran TWO houses and walked TWO!" he grinned.

That was a turning point for this kid. His running form still gets wonky every now and then, and he still can't run super far or fast, but he has started learning how to move his body in a run! On Saturday, he ran the one mile time trial in less than 9 minutes, and actually looked like he was running most of the way--no more floppy jolting like before. It was something I never thought I'd have to teach, but it was super satisfying and fun to see him learn and adapt and succeed!

Rose and Amber, testing out the freshly tuned piano.

My new neon reflective compression socks aren't exactly necessary for an indoor elliptical session, but they made me happy, so maybe they were necessary after all.

Library date with my Amber girl! These always stretch me to my limit because it's right after cross country practice. Worth it.

My exercise schedule while I can't run includes: 2 days of biking, 2 days of elliptical machine, and 2 days of lifting. (One of the lifting days is combined with one of the bike or elliptical days so I work out 5 days per week.) It gets the job done, but getting an aerobic workout without running is so hard!

The 5th grade classes from Amber's school at Camp Dudley. The school district got a grant to make this fun overnight "outdoor school" trip possible, and I love that they got to do it! The principal sent several pictures of their adventure. Amber is in a white shirt on the top right close to the stairs in this picture.

Counselor Rose is on the far left in the foreground, 3rd head from the left.

Rose and one of her teammates (Emmi) from the cross country team were the counselors in Amber's group.

Another stellar sunset from our backyard.

Winding up the drip line. The hose was all tangled up in the weeds that grew up around it while being watered all summer. We would keep watering the fruit trees, but Amber accidentally broke the connector to the hose, and since the fruit has finished up, we figure we may as well start watering again next year.

Success!

Waiting, waiting, waiting at parent teacher conferences. When we sat in the hallway, I was surprised at how many names I knew of kids who were passing by. I guess I've been coaching for long enough that I'm starting to know lots of names. It's always extra satisfying to remember a name of a kid I haven't coached recently.

Rose caught a cricket and the only container we had to hold him was an old cumin spice bottle. Rose fed it grass through the holes in the lid.

This is just two tomato plants: one cherry tomato plant and one beef tomato plant. (with a tiny jalapeno plant in the middle) This flowerbed is at least 8+ feet wide and 4+ feet deep. I didn't add supports for the tomato plants while they grew so they're sprawling all over the place.

Rose had her first ever running picture in the local Sunnyside Sun newspaper! She's in the top left, where my finger is pointing.

Triumph picture from my 1 mile uphill mountain bike climb up Lewandowski Road, which dead ends into the ranch gate.

These apple boxes created a welcome patch of shade during my bike ride.

Amber, running her fastest mile ever, while Jay cheers her on.

The starting line of the high school 2 mile time trial race. Jay is 4th head from the left (no shirt), and Rose is right behind the girl in all pink. 

Jay, cruising along with the varsity boys. I was too busy checking splits to take any more pictures after this.

On Saturday evening, my friend Camille and her husband George came to our barn to meet up with our physical therapist friend, Daniel Hernandez. He drove an hour all the way to our house to give us a free PT session. He brought his three kids, and Amber and Rose had a blast playing the floor is lava with the plyo boxes in the background.

I was so tired for most of this week, and now that I've written about all of it, I can see why!