Heart Smart

I apoligize. I know it's been awhile. I will be done with my regular swim season tomorrow and will only have to worry about post season swimmers until the end of Feburary. I also started my spring semester class. It's Saturday mornings from 8:30 -12. Kind of sucks, but it's way better than Friday night class.

I admit I have been avoiding updating the blog because something significant happened and I have been coming to terms with it. As some of you may know Travis and I have been unsucessful in trying to get pregnant. I finally worked up the courage to go to the Doctor to find out what's going on and was greeted with some unpleasant news. The Doctors are very concerned about my heart. Apparently I have a flutter and extremely high blood pressure/other heart irregularities that have technical terms I don't understand. They took a lot of blood (and were not gentle about it) put me on a very strict diet, and are asking me to document basically every step I take. I have to visit the nurse's office at school every week to check my BP and some other stuff. At the end of March I will go to the hospital to have further tests done to determine if the blood flows correctly to my heart, blah blah blah.

It's hard because I feel just fine, no different than before. I don't think I ate that bad and I'm stressed, but no more so than at any other time. I do have "heart cramps" which I thought other people got. Guess not. They are concerned because I have similar symptoms to my Dad's A FIB condition. (For those of you who don't know my Dad has undergone 2 heart surguries in the past few years and almost died after they botched his last surgery.) So I'm alittle concerned/anxious/paranoid. And the worst part... they feel very strongly that I should not try to get pregnant now or soon because they don't feel my heart could stand the pregnancy right now. Don't get me wrong, I want to live, it's just somwehat startling and depressing.

The upside: I will lose alot of weight which is always good and I am signing up for every 5k or biatholon in the spring. If I have something to train for I think I will be more motivated during my workouts. I am also signing up for a walking marathon in Maine in the fall. Yeah I'm not that cool, i'm walking and jogging if the occasion arises. My diet is going well although I dreamed about eating potato chips the other night and woke up alarmed. I don't even like potato chips. Bland food is growing on me. And for whatever reason this is a blessing in disguise. I am learning a lot about self mastery and that's something I lack. So there it is. I am fine and I have faith that I will be better if I follow the Doctors orders. In the mean time, low sodium no taste.

Winter Break

A's. That's how we started off our Christmas morning. We received our fall semester grades and Travis and I both got all A's in our grad classes. That, in and of itself, was the best Christmas present I received. Other than that winter break was spent mostly sleeping, eating, and coaching. We received a few snow storms which Brocky did not think was cool. This was like the moment in A Christmas Story when Ralphie had too many layers on. Not stoked to sled. But he did have on his cute Pats beanie. GO PATS!

Travis was good enough to get me a lot of gift certificates so that I could go pick out fun clothes instead of angry lesbian clothes which I have apparently been wearing according to my students. He in return received fishing and golfing gear. His big present was a ticket to go see Jerry Seinfeld perform. Who knew he would come to Springfield?! But he is Travis' favorite so I think I won for best gift this year.

Other than that we had a swim team fund raiser at the bowling alley. It was awesome! The Reed's tore it up (suck on that Stott's!) Most of the kid's were very well behaved and we had a great time making fun of the kid's from the suburbs that were there. I had a higher score than the other swim coach that is super competitive and it felt so good.

We went to and caught a varsity basketball game in the New Haven Holiday Tournament.Yeah. Besides the refs we were the only white people there. The stats on Hill House High School: 1200 kids, 1100 black, 75 hispanic, and 25 white. Seriously. But it was fun. We didn't play well, but it was good practice for our guys. We're the team in the black.

So that was pretty much our break if you add in gaining a lot of weight and watching a lot of movies. Teaching is the best! It was nice to be us again for a week instead of being Mr. and Mrs. Reed all of the time. We hope everyone had a great holiday and has a wonderful New Year's.