Back from State weekend, and it’s hot

Well, that’s a wrap on the State swimming weekend for Asher. This also means that his season has come to end.

It’s been a pretty bizarre year and a half with swim team in general, due to covid. Everything came to a total halt last spring, followed by a summer with very, very small and more infrequent practices. Meets were completely on hold for MONTHS, and when they resumed there were no spectators and were much smaller. Everything has just been really strange- inconsistent and always changing.

Things picked back up in a somewhat more normal capacity I’d say starting in ~February/March of this year. This State meet was the first meet that I was allowed inside to watch, though. It was kind of surreal to be sitting in the bleachers again, actually watching him swim, for the first time since February of 2020.

Asher had a great weekend. He swam all 3 days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the afternoons. He was part of 4 different relays and qualified in 3 individual events.

His little group of best friends (the kids we carpool with) were also there, so he was just really excited about the whole thing. The State meet is a big deal to the kids- it’s a big honor and accomplishment to qualify and be there at all. Plus, he just loves hanging out with his friends between races and stuff.

He swam really well, too. At State, unless you are the very best of the best, it’s not likely you will actually WIN at this meet. There are sometimes 50+ kids in a single event, and they are the very top kids from all the clubs in the state.

So, Asher did not win any races this weekend….:) But, he improved his personal best times in all of his events, which is what it’s really about anyway.

I think that’s what is cool about swimming. While it’s obviously a “race” in the pool, the real race can always just be against yourself. Your time today vs. your previous best time. If you beat yourself, that’s a win. I think it allows for kids of all abilities to find success in the sport. Even slower kids/non-State level swimmers can still improve their own times!

(He’s on the younger end of the age group, too. He’s just 11, and is competing in the 11-12 group. So some kids could be a full year older, too. For 11, I think he actually placed really well! So proud of him! He works really hard at it.)

One thing that is kind of crazy to notice at these meets….the SIZE difference of the kids at this age. It is just unreal how big, tall and strong some of these kids are! And this was a 12 and under meet, so they couldn’t be over 12. Some of the boys literally looked like full grown men compared to Asher. Same with the 12 year old girls- many were SO developed, physically, with hips and very womanly shapes.

Both of my boys are on the very small/short side and seem to be late developers, too. I think Asher is a bit more aware of it now. Overall I don’t think he’s too bothered by it, but I think somewhat- and more lately. It also probably feels almost “unfair” to be swimming against a kid who is a foot taller than you.

I try to tell him this might be an advantage. Asher is really fast, even against the bigger kids. So I’ve said, Maybe when you finally grow, you’ll be unstoppable!!! 🙂 The bigger kids won’t have much more to grow. Haha.

All in all- an exciting, HOT, fun, busy weekend. We stayed at my parents’ house and got a lot of good quality time in there too. Now, he gets a ~6 week break from swimming until it starts again in early September. They say it’s important for youth athletes to take a couple bigger breaks each year, to prevent injury, etc. (Maybe this will be the season during which he will GROW! lol)

In other news:

Our air conditioner broke last night. And it’s like 90 degrees outside. YAY.

I came up from working yesterday afternoon and thought, jeez, it’s really warm in here. I thought maybe it was just from the sun shining in the window, at first. But when Ivan got home, we did some troubleshooting and realized the air conditioning unit is not even running!! Seems totally dead. Great.

Ivan futzed around with it for a while, tried flipping the circuit breaker, resetting it, etc…nothing.

I called right away and the AC guy said he could come last night for $165, or today at 4 pm for $90. We decided we could survive one night of heat to save $75. Haha.

He said it “sounds” like it might be a fairly easy fix, if it is what he thinks it might be…. Hoping this is true and that we don’t need to replace the whole thing. (fingers crossed, because a friend recently told me they spent like $4k replacing theirs…)

I noticed the hamsters weren’t sleeping in their houses like they usually do, and seemed hot, laying out against the glass! So I moved them down into the basement, where it’s much cooler.

I woke up in the night feeling a bit hot, despite sleeping with the window WIDE open and the ceiling fan on. I laid there a long time worrying that the hamsters might be getting hot downstairs after all!!!

But they are fine. It’s really not too bad in the basement. Flint came out to greet me this morning:

Thought of the Day:

You are not just waiting in vain. There is a purpose behind every delay.

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for the fact that we NORMALLY have a functioning air conditioning unit. It would be terrible to live without it here. The summers can be very hot and humid, at least on some days.