What a gray day...

It's such an awful depressing day outside (in my opinion) and I'm really tempted to do a dull complaining post.... since not much good has happened to me today. But I think instead that I'll do a wry complaing post and try to wring a chuckle out of my readers.

I slept really hard from 11 to 9, and woke up feeling strange. My entire body ached from swimming, dance, swimming and water polo. And even after sleeping in, I still felt so tired that the last thing I wanted to do was get up. But I did.

And I drove Sarah to her art lesson, and then went grocery shopping. It is a fact well known that precisely 87.22% of all shopping carts are evil. Yes... they have personalities. And those evil 87.22% are adept at picking shoppers who are having not-so-awesome days. You thought you picked the cart? Well, that just shows how sneaky they are. The government could learn some tips from shopping carts.

So today, the particular shopping cart that picked me was innocent looking enough. It was even close to the door, instead of being miles away in the almost-empty, depleted tunnel of shopping cart storage. It even appeared to work fine until I'd gotten so far that I didn't want to go back and get another cart. And then it started swerving to the left. Some carts not so evil as this one will swerve gently, and in wide open spaces. This cart swerved sharper and more suddenly and maliciously than a cart shoved by two young boys, and it made sure to swerve when there was an elaborate display of parmesan cheese nearby. However, that is not the end of this particular cart's talents. It also made turning right insanely difficult.

Besides the annoyance of swerving and not being able to turn right, those two faults combine to make an action worthy of being considered a third fault in its own right. Imagine this.... I'm looking at the organic juices on the right, and to the left are shelves and shelves of wine bottles. (I see you wincing... my story is too predictable.) I finish selecting juice, and begin to move forward. The cart immediately swerves to the left, into the wine bottles. I try to stop and turn the cart to the right to compensate for the swerve to the left and encounter the 2nd fault: turning to the right is almost impossible. The cart then accelerates by itself and sweeps down the entire row of wine bottles, sending them crashing to the floor. People stare and the store employees come running.

Don't worry, it wasn't all that awful. I managed not to hit the wine bottles. But as I jerked the cart to the right with all my screaming muscles, I did see that scenario flash before my eyes. Somewhat how I imagine one sees one's life flash before one's eyes in situations where you think you might die.

After that close call, I made it through the rest of my shopping without further mishaps (thank goodness) and as soon as I was through with the cart, I gave it a nice shove into the brick wall of its home as payback. (Yes, I'm fond of such petty but satisfactory retaliation....)

I got home with Sarah, and even started feeling better. Until we got to swim team. Warm-ups weren't so bad, and we had an easy 50 set. But then, we did 3 200 IM's split lane and I was supposed to lead. (This was because I was in the Silver lane for all that were curiously wondering how I managed to lead Platinum.) I tried, but my muscles were refusing to work well, so I ended up making Sarah lead. And then I sat out the 3rd 200 in an effort to recover. That didn't work either. Then we did 20 25's on the :30. That worked pretty well, actually, cause I barely made it, and then I got out of the pool, climbed on the block and dove off so fast that I didn't have time to get dizzy and fall off the block.

By then I was almost completely exhausted. And we did relays. It's very sad.... there are three things we do in swimming that it seems most everyone enjoys: relays and two games, Sharks & Minnows and Capture the Flag (flip-flop). I have difficulty deciding which I hate more. I used to think that Sharks and Minnows was the worst, but then we played Capture the Flag yesterday and I think it's worse. It goes on longer, and there's the potential for getting grabbed, kicked, scratched and then pulled to the surface and tagged more than once in Capture the Flag. In Sharks and Minnows it only happens once and then you get to be the one grabbing and tagging. You do still get kicked and scratched as a shark though.

However, I'm quite certain that relays involving corkscrew are worse than both of those games. Corkscrew, for those that don't know, is a torturous practice not worthy of being called a stroke. You take one freestyle stroke, and then roll to your back and take one back stroke then roll again and take a freestyle stroke and so on and so forth until you arrive at the wall. Hopefully the wall arrives before the wave of nausea. When I was finished with my leg of the relay my head was pounding, I felt sick, and my muscles were completely limp. I eventually dragged myself out of the pool, mumbled something about leaving early and went to take a nice hot shower and change into my dry clothes.

I survived and made it home, and I feel much better now that I've had a snack and sat around comfortably doing nothing. Hopefully I'll be fine tomorrow because I won't get a relaxing weekend this weekend. We have a lot to do.

~Lizzie