It's a new week!

Didn't get to work out very much this weekend, as the hubby was out of town and that just throws my game off. I did do something brave and exciting last week though.  I signed up for adult swimming classes.  Gulp. The reason for my gulp...

My Mom's dad died when she was 12 years old from an accidental drowning.  It was during the depression and she was the only girl in a brood of five.  Due to losing her beloved dad, and she was a Daddy's Girl, I'm sure, she had a fear of allowing us around water.  Honestly, I don't even know if she could swim herself, I never asked.  I remember going to visit a family friend that had a lovely in ground pool and wading around in the shallow end.  I was chubby then and had a yucky kid's bathing suit. I was excited about the outing and convinced mom to let me pour myself into my much slimmer sister's suit, because it had a cute pleated skirt on it. Baby brother was probably about five and he was going to run and do a cannonball jump in the water.  It was the shallow end and he would have probably had a blast.  When she heard him yell "watch this" and start to jump, she was up from that lounge chair screaming "stop him, stop him" in such a fashion that I was pretty much afraid from then on.  She acted like there were alligators in the pool. 

When we were in our early twenties, my sister and I took swimming lessons at the new pool in town and learned to float and swim some, enough to get to the edge of the pool if we were in trouble.  She has her own pool now and is more comfortable than I am, and encouraged me to take lessons again, because she knows how it feels to be uncertain in water. I don't like to have fears or phobias and I'm hoping that at the ripe old age of 57 that I can conquer this thing.

I want to swim laps.  I want to be able to know that even though I'm in 6, 7, or 8 ft of water I can still swim. My main problem is that I don't like to know that the water is over my head.  I like to have my feet on the bottom of the pool. Shucks, I don't even like to sit with my feet dangling  in the air.  Sis says it's sounds more like a fear of falling than fear of drowning, because rationally I know that I'm not really going to drown, because she and I are so buoyant that we can't even stay under water.

But I digress.  Fast forward to Sunday when I got out the new bathing suit that I had only worn once and realized it is a size 14. OM Gosh I haven't been a 14 in years.  I certainly wasn't a 14 when I purchased it.  Apparently I was still in denial at that time. I tried it on and I looked again like the chubby kid who is squeezed into her sister's cute swimsuit. So Monday I was on a search for a size 18 granny suit and lo and behold there was one left in the stock room at Catherine's.  So tonight at 6:30 pm I will be traipsing into a locker room, (first time in years) preparing for a swimming lesson.  I don't know what to expect. I'm ok with public nudity, but I don't really like it.  Yikes.  I feel like a kid.  Do I lock everything up in a locker?  What do I do with my key?  Will there be room for me to have my glasses handy?  I don't see well without them.  Will there be boys there?  Will anyone be looking at me?  Wahhh, I'm scared and I don't want to go.

Ok, regroup...I'll be ok, I just know I will.  I feel so silly having these emotions.  This is something I really want to do.  I want to be a swimmer.  A swimmer, not a wader.  I want to swim laps.  I WILL swim laps.

Alright y'all, wish me luck.  And, just for now, let's not share any of those "I almost drowned" stories with me, okey dokey?