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Last year: Carpets are not supposed to splash. |
Matt and I picked up some ice cream for dessert, and showed up at the Brandt house around six. We had "sloppy joe pasta" for dinner (that is to say, pasta with sloppy joe sauce on it) and Braz explained his theory that Kris and I could be trained to eat spicy food if we were brought to it slowly - he confessed that there was a tiny drop of habañero sauce in the sloppy joe mix.
I laughed and told him that I wasn't morally opposed to spicy food, and that if he wanted to try to "train" us to it, that was fine - as long as he didn't take offense when he went overboard and spit it back at him!
After dinner, in order to give us time to digest, we drove over to Target so Matt and I could buy some cheap tennis rackets. We got a couple that we thought were half-decent, after which Braz decided he'd pressured us into the purchase and kept attempting to get one of us to take his old racket so we could take one of ours back. After we reassured him that we'd been talking only yesterday about getting our own rackets so we could play with them, we changed clothes and headed over to the clubhouse.
Now, when I say "tennis" I'm not talking about a competitive sport. I'm talking about the four of us jogging around the tennis court in an attempt to keep the ball in play as long as possible. And when I say "in play" I don't mean strict tennis rules, either - the ball can bounce as many times as it wants, bounce off the fence and trees, and do all sorts of other things, as long as someone can get to it and hit it. We're not exactly the Olympic team in training, here. We were out to have fun, and that's what we did.
My feet are never very good at the best of times, and I'm still adapting to the new arch supports that I got on Tuesday, so I tried to let Matt do most of the running around on our side of the net. Still, I did a fair amount of jogging around, and it was probably only about fifteen minutes into playing that my right heel started hurting too much to continue.
Luckily, that's when Kris decided it was time for us girls to go swimming. There's a pool at the clubhouse as well as a tennis court, so we'd worn our bathing suits under our shirts and shorts. The pool is too shallow for diving, so I waded in slowly - playing tennis in the warm evening air had raised a sweat even in the short time we'd played, so it felt good to get in the cool water. We swam around for a while, and a bit later the boys joined us.
Braz is an underwater swimmer the way I used to be (I'm too bouyant at the moment to really swim underwater very efficiently) and he took great delight in sneaking up on Kris when she wasn't paying attention. We spent some time at a game where we would stand on Matt and Braz's cupped hands and let them launch us backwards into the water. We swam and splashed, and eventually Braz proposed a game of "Chicken."
"What's chicken?" I had to ask.
Turns out I'd seen it being played before, but hadn't known a name for it. I sat on Matt's shoulders, while Kris sat on Braz's, and then we tried to topple each other into the water. It sounded like fun, so we moved into the deeper end of the pool and "mounted up." Kris and I were too busy trying to keep our own balance to really work very hard at toppling each other, but Braz managed to make Matt lose his footing, and we crumpled into the water. Matt managed to snort some water, but after a few moments, he was fine. I lifted my leg to throw it over his shoulder for the rematch, and immediately, without warning or provocation, I got a charlie-horse.
Say it with me: Ow....
Matt carried me into the shallow end of the pool so I could stand up while nursing my shrieking calf. (Yeah, I know I said the pool wasn't very deep, but I can't stand flat-footed in five-feet of water.) I rubbed my leg until the pain reduced a bit, and then Kris suggested that the best thing for a cramping muscle would, of course, be the hot tub.
Well, of course!
I tried to put my foot down and discovered that even with the water supporting most of my weight, my leg didn't really feel like straightening, just yet. So I hopped over to the wall that separated the pool from the hot-tub, with the intention of just jumping up onto the ledge and climbing over.
Well, I managed it, but in jumping up onto the ledge, my other leg threatened to have a charlie horse, so I just sat there very still for a minute until it decided it wasn't worth the effort, and then slid into the blissfully warm water. Matt massaged my calves, and then I did some runner's stretches, with the hot water swirling around them. It helped.
Braz and Matt started talking about going back to the house to get our stuff so I wouldn't have to go that far (the non-assigned parking spaces for the complex are right by the clubhouse, so my car was only steps away), but Kris and I firmly told them that there was ice cream to be had back at the Brandt home, and b'god, we weren't missing out!
So we headed back to their house. Kris and I got out our diet journals and figured out exactly how much ice cream we were allowed (I must say, it's very nice having a diet-buddy!) and we sat around for a while eating ice cream and talking and laughing at Braz and Matt's silliness.
Matt and I didn't get home until about 10:30, but it was - all in all - a fantastic evening, leg cramps aside. I'll need a few days for my foot to recover (and hopefully adjust to the new arch supports), but I'm looking forward to the next time a lot.
I'd about forgotten how nice it is to have friends who live close enough to visit casually in the evenings. I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to play instead of just sitting around watching movies or reading. This summer has seen a lot of playing, starting with the water gun fights clear back in May. Diet babble aside, I think it's good that I'm being more active, even if it's just to splash in the pool and swing hopelessly at a few tennis balls, or make cheerful conversation with Kris about what new diet recipes we've discovered.
I wonder if this is what I was craving when I said about a month ago that I didn't want to game so much. It's not that I don't enjoy gaming (well, okay, I wasn't enjoying my game very much, mostly because no one else seemed very interested in it) but that I've needed to be doing other things. I've wanted to become more active, and needed friends to do it with.
So now, between tennis and swimming with the Brandts, gaming with the Hicks' (and Braz, since he's decided to give Matt's 7th Sea game a try), and assorted occasional other activities (T's having a cookout in a couple of weeks, for example), I'm feeling like my life is full. I'm feeling positive and happy and excited about the future.
Word of the Day: upbraid - to criticize; to reproach or find fault with; to scold
After it became clear that I wasn't going to call him nasty names for the gunk he plastered all over my poll, Braz decided to upbraid me for not making the Comments box bigger. He insists that next time, I should provide him with a much larger box in which to enter his nonsense.
- River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Current Projects:
- nothing
Diet Progress: 2.5 lbs lost
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