Stumbling Through Adulthood

What a difference a sport makes!

AC, gymnastics: ANY injury to upper or lower limbs ==> 6 weeks out minimum, no activity, maybe PT.

Linnea, rowing: broken foot ==> 6 DAYS post break she is cleared to be back in the boat.

Let me tell you. Even though she could not move off the exam table, she did a spectacular Linnea (upper body only) happy dance. She was SO freaking thrilled. The PA was smiling so hard to see her! He knew he'd made her day, LOL.

I'll point out that AC fractured her 4th metatarsal (Linnea's is the 5th) and she was out the full 6 weeks.

She isn't going to Western Regionals, alas, but it means she's still a possible for Nationals. Even if she doesn't make it, it still means she has a chance, which is all she is really hoping for.

Whee!

And yeah, she needed a small boot.

1. From the yahoo answers Tumblr:

2. Our neighbor's are moving, job reasons. I'm very very sad. They've lived next door for... probably close to 15 years, and the kids were all friends. We're going to miss them. And with our luck, the new people will chop down all the trees and smoke stinky weed.

3. AC's first weightlifting competition. Saturday morning. I texted her good luck wishes. She texted back about how things were going, noting that in many ways, it was just like gymnastics: a whole bunch of girls with chalk waiting around to warm up.

Then at about 9:15 I got a call: she'd dropped a 35lb weight on her left foot. Yipes. Normally, her coach loads the weights, but they had a family emergency so she was solo, her hands were sweaty and ooops. So yeah. We noodled for a bit on ER vs Urgent Care, but at that point, I fully expected her to scratch the competition and get some medical attention. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Text a bit later. "It doesn't hurt."

A photo was sent. It looked... pretty bad.

Text a bit after that. "On the plus side, people think I'm badass :p"

Hum. Badass doesn't square with "scratched and went to get medical attention". It does, however, square with "ran around the gym with a broken foot and played soccer on it the next day". Note that gymnasts are tiny girls in sparkly spandex around a core of tempered steel.

Text again: "On the board! Green green red. 62.5 65, failed 72.5 because my arms noped out" (Note: numbers in kg. That's lots of kg imo.)

Definitely not "scratched and went to get medical attention".

Text from me: "You competed with that foot?"

Response: "Maybe."

She competed with that foot.

Further texts elucidated that those numbers were for the bench press, that she's done 112.5, 115, and 120 kg on squats, and later she announces she won a gold medal. On that fucking foot.

Which, a later trip to Urgent Care showed, has a hairline fracture.

Anyhow, here's her medal, LOL. I'm not showing a picture of her foot, but she'd have won the "purple foot" award if they had one. Also now showing the photo of her with her medal, but it's kinda funny, she still does the gymnast hands, something most gymnastics parents would recognize. LOL.

I don't think it's just AC's gym, because I see enough "gymnast doing a handstand in some weird place" photos from other gyms/locations, but whenever we go some place with sand or snow, etc, and AC is in a good mood, she'll have someone take a few photos of, usually, her doing a handstand.

I did NOT appreciate the ones she wanted us to take on a beach on the Oregon Coast when she was about 5 minutes post ACL surgery. Heh.

Anyhow, taken yesterday, by dh. The handstand one isn't great because of his timing, she had better form before and after. What was funny, when she got into the split? She moved to dry sand, checked it's slippery-ness and dropped into a split. I mean, I can do a split still, but I need to be warmed up and I move carefully. No swooping to the ground.

I love the ring. That's the position she wants to get a tattoo of, btw. Dh is freaking out about that, he is not fond of body art... Not a moral objection (as in, he doesn't think people who get tats are prison escapees or tramps, or anything), it just profoundly squicks him out. Which I get, because most piercings don't bother me but ear gauges make me nauseated.

Anyhow. A few photos taken Sept 7 at Deception Pass State Park.

She's as beautiful as she always is on meet mornings, with the... different look of hair tightly pulled back into a pony tail.

But today, she's pale and nervous, poor sweet.

She'd use to go off to meets with a happy unconcerned attitude, today, not so much.

It's her first meet back.

It won't be stellar, she's still not 100% back. Heck, it's probably going to be mess.

She's stressed. Very very stressed. She needs two minimum all-around scores to be able to compete at State. In previous years? Piece of cake? This year? Her season was short, so she has three meets to make those two scores, which of course Freaks. Her. Out.

Because she might not.

And she desperately wants to go to State. Last year, she could have expected to place. This year, she just wants to get there.

But! I am SO freaking proud of her. SO SO proud of her getting through the pain of the injury, the fucking surgery, rehab, the months of not know how much she could do, re-learning to fly through the air with an enourmous brace on her knee, for getting to the point where she can even compete.

It's not a great photo, since she wasn't really in the mood for photos before she left.



I'm nervous. Dh is nervous. She is nervous. I SO hope it goes well.

I wanted to go. We'd have to bring Perry and Linnea and she said that having us there would stress her out. So I'm home. And stressing.

And so so proud.

Will probably be cross-posted to the AC's ACL.

1. She's doing pretty damn good. No pain in the actual knee, but some in the rest of her body from having to compensate.

2. She persuaded the PT to allow her to go on a backpacking trip. Oh, she won't be carrying her gear, and it isn't a long hike in, but still. She'll be leading the trip, a middle school climbing trip, and I do SO hope they're well aware of her limitations. But the PT ok'ed it, and I'll bow to that, since the PT who did? Is pretty hard-assed about stuff like that. The PT's conditions were 1/2 mile walk in boots at the local wildland park, and while it wasn't at that park, AC pretty much blew that out of the water yesterday at Nisqually with a 3 mile walk.

3. Insomnia. The child is having a hard time sleeping. I don't think she's ever been this not-tired, to be honest. She's so used to regular, sustained activity, and now she's dealing with waking up in the middle of the night, and being unable to get back to sleep. I may have to take away the iTouch, even though it is her alarm: once she wakes up, she starts to play games, and that doesn't help her get back to sleep.

4. Normal people and crutches: normal people use crutches to help them get around while one limb is out of commission. My daughter? Was caught using the crutches to support her weight, while she was starting to get into a pike... Hard to describe, but she was planning on her body being at a 90deg angle, her legs up in the air, while supporting all her weight on the crutches/her arms. When asked WTF she was doing, she responded that she was "maintaining" her press-to-handstand fitness. Yeah, no.

5. Normal people also don't attempt to jog in place with no brace on, months before the physical therapy schedule allows that. At this point, she is, iirc, cleared to jog in the water, not a dry land. She said it didn't hurt. I was not impressed.

So there. She's recovering, and it's going to get harder and harder to hold her back. We've had some ups and downs, with some small bouts of depression, but she feels... confident right now, and I hope things continue to progress.

I love that kid so much, and I'm SO proud of her!

The child tested positive for freaking Influenza B, and she wants to go to gym this afternoon?

Let me think... No.

So I volunteered at a meet at AC's gym today. Yesterday State, today, this.

A few observations?

The woman who asked if she could go in to make sure it was the correct session before paying and then didn't come back? I wasn't too happy... but then she stopped to pay on her way out. Thank you.

The woman with 7 kids, one of them a gymnast who doesn't pay, who complained that there was no 'family admission' price? Too bad, lady. And I gave you a break on two of the younger ones, even though technically I should have made them pay. Do you really expect the world to cut you a major break because you chose to breed 7 kids?

To the gym parents -two dads- who were signed up for the heavy duty lifting at the end of the day, and who cancelled by crossing their names out on Friday evening, so the meet coordinator, who was at State with us, didn't find out until this morning? You suck. It was a lot of heavy work, and for a while my spouse was the only guy there. One guy who was doing something else volunteered to stay, thank goodness, because some of those jobs? Really do need very strong people. I mean, I'm strong, so are two of the other women who were there, but balance beans? Weigh a fucking ton. My knees and back hurt, and I'm not a knees and back hurting kind of person.


To the other parents of the optional gymnasts, and the gymnasts themselves, who all asked about AC, and were concerned about her, and felt bad because of how her season ended? Thank you. My daughter is lucky to be part of your community.

AC is still very sick. Her fever is above what I consider ok to let work, so we've been pushing Motrin and Tylenol, and it's not coming down much. She's coughing and miserable.

Plan is to take her in tomorrow to get a flu test. If it is positive, I'll push for preventative Tamiflu for Perry. He's leaving for France in a bit over a week. Cannot have him get sick now.

We're all washing hands etc, but still. The good thing is that D, the next door kid, had the flu last week, when AC was hanging out with her (now I know why she had to go over there and D wasn't allowed outside. Sigh...). Anyhow, nobody else in her family caught it. Also, half of Perry's class was out earlier this month, and he didn't get sick then either. Fingers crossed.

In an hour or so, I have to go to the gym for volunteer work. I'll be there until 8 or 9 tonight. I'm leaving the kids alone, I think AC is ok enough to call 911 in case of total emergency, and I told Perry and Linnea they could sit in front of the TV all day, with either video games or on demand from Netflix. Fingers crossed there too...

Was surfing jobs on craigslist. One looked... ok. Part time, a meager $10/hour, no benefits, labware maintenance, basic chem prep (I can do all that), as well as assisting in experiments. OK, this is pretty much what I'd want to do, wet lab stuff. Then the killer. You also have to be the janitor. WTF? They really know they have people fucked, don't they? Anyhow, I won't be applying.

It's rather like the ad I saw a few weeks back, for a lab tech position.

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE
1. Bachelors in Chemistry, Physics, Engineering.
2. Educational and/or laboratory experience in surface chemistry, micro-fabrication, nanotechnology, genomics, biochemistry, and/or molecular biology.

It's a temp position, and you have to be available to work the hours they decide, 8 hours shifts, some of them ending at 8 p.m. There will be "extended hours", whatever that ends up meaning.

All this for.... $8.50/hour.

Nice, eh? And btw, $8.50/hour is less than my state's minimum wage, so the ad was edited a few days later to offer the much more generous $8.67/hour that the state mandates, and the job description changed from lab "tech" to lab "intern". Nice. But yeah, rock, meet hard place.

I Can Haz Cheezburger and failblog (no, I'm not giving links) used to be on my daily reads, and I was a very early visitor, having been a fan of what were called lolcats before Cheezburger. So, daily read. And then I found an ad on craigslist from them, which prompted this post of mine, Disappointed. Now? I despise them and don't read any longer, though I'll click it someone sends me a link. They are funny, and I don't prevent the kids from going there, but my contempt for Ben Huh and the whole outfit knows no bounds. They found a way to make zillions off of other people's creativity -good for them- but then advertise from a skilled position at minimum wage. That, to me, turns them into scum. Share the wealth, folks! You can say a lot of nasty things about Microsoft and Bill Gates, but he did do right by his employees, as did Jeff Bezos, and a few others.

Thinking about Japan makes me want to cry. And I'm very afraid that we're rather lost sight of the tsunami devastation because of the nuclear issues. Sigh. I don't like the way the trend is going, and btw? Seems like Japanese corporations are filled with same kind of lying asses as our own.

I had a couple links to share, but I appear to have lost them. Sigh.

About AC's beam routine yesterday. I don't think I've ever been as proud of her as after she got back on that damn beam after her third fall.

This week, I think I'm going to start posting some original fic of mine. Don't know how I'll divy it up, or if I'll post a bit each day or what. I'll figure it out.

And now off to the gym. It'll be ok. I must keep telling myself that.

So. She was sneezing with a runny nose earlier in the week, but as the week went on, things seemed to get better, and nothing was settling in. Since dh and I were also both sneezy and snuffly, we called it allergies and hoped that she'd be good to go for State, which was this morning.

Um. No.

Yesterday, she emailed me from school that she was sick. Picked her up, and sure 'nuff. Headache, slight fever, snotty. Not good. She went to gym anyhow -this is AC, remember? She went to workout hours before I took her to the ER for freaking appendicitis-, but we knew she'd only be there for a few hours, since we were leaving for Silverdale, over on the Peninsula, that evening.

Picked her up, fed her a light dinner, got in the car. She wasn't feeling well, and fell asleep right away. She had a slight fever.

Got to our hotel at about 9:30, she went straight to bed. And woke up pretty much every half hour all night. So, as a result, did I.

She couldn't fall back asleep at 4 a.m., so I suggested she shower then hoping that would help with the cough and congestion.

Yeah, congestion. Bad stuff for AC, since when she's congested, her balance goes. And that is not a good thing for a gymnast, to say the least.

We had to get up at 6. She'd managed a bit more sleep, but was feverish and just icky. Ate a light breakfast, and it was off to the meet.

Poor baby was so pale. I felt so bad for her. Between appendicitis at the beginning of her season, and this, it's been a rough time. And she'd been doing so well.

We'd considered giving her a decongestant of some sort, but she's never, to best of my recollection, had one before, and since they tend to make me jumpy, it didn't feel safe, if that makes sense.

So there we were, with a sick kid, at State. Poor coach. I think she was hoping AC would place on beam or floor.

Bars were their usual mediocre self.

Beam was a bloodbath. Beam has been a good event for her this year. She'd been scoring consistently in the low 9s, placed a few times, and had not fallen a single time. She made up for it this morning, falling three times. The third time, her coach went over to her, and they talked for a few seconds (she has a full 60 to get back on to finish the routine). To her credit, she got back on and finished, with a very nice front tuck. Her score was abysmal, but she finished.

She pulled it together on floor, scoring a nice 8.8. They started medalling at 5th place with an 8.9, so that was a good score for that meet/event. She did really well, and looked good. No step outs, her ring leap was beautiful.

Vault was ok. By then she was starting to wilt visibly.

So there. State 2011. She should have done better, could have done better, but when she woke up this morning, we weren't even sure she'd be able to go to the meet. 3 Motrin helped a lot.

She's a strong kid, that one.

She slept all the way home, opening a eye once to notice we were on the ferry. We had her sleeping bag with us, and she cuddled underneath it, she was cold. Her throat hurts, and she's coughing. Poor baby. We're home now, she's bundled up, under covers, attempting to do her homework. She's supposed to flash at a meet at 8 a.m. tomorrow. I'm guessing I'll be doing it, but she still thinks she will.

Heh. Dh got a series of photos from the last gym meet, and this series came out pretty well. I'm putting it under a cut because it's going to be pretty image intense (five photos).

( AC's back walkover on beam )