Isn't my cutie sweet? I'm so proud of him. He improved his time on freestyle by about 25 seconds last week. Alas, this week he was back to over a minute again because he had some kind of asthmatic fit on the way and he couldn't find his bathing suit and wore one of his brother's suits and it was falling off and he had to keep yanking it back up while he was going across the pool. But he's still a swimming superstar in my book!



And Frances qualified for Champs in another event this week. I've never had anyone qualify for Champs in swimming before, so this has been a fun surprise. She qualified in backstroke at the second meet and has continually improved her time since then, and now she has qualified in freestyle. She was lucky not to get DQ'd in butterfly this week, and her time went down by about a second and a half, but she is still fewer than two seconds from qualifying in that event as well. And she may be on a relay team, since her relay teams have done exceptionally well. Even last week, when she wasn't on the A team, her B team won second place. Considering the Blue times that several of the A team members have, it's a pretty good showing.

My boys are gone. I know they should be gone, and I'm excited they are gone, and I was the one who insisted that they should be gone. But I still miss them. It's just incredible how the dynamic of a place changes once you have even one fewer warm bodies.

I am continuing to do a bad job of my summer, and sadly there are only a few weeks left. I need a big, fat, honking vacation. Tropical island. No plans. Warm, sandy beach, hammock, gigantic frozen drink (or 12 of them), maybe a snorkel, just so I can say the word snorkel and laugh. Snorkel, snorkel, snorkel.

Instead, I'm still in my pajamas at 9:30 a.m., sitting in a very messy house with unpacked boxes from our carpet extravaganza, with a child in a dirty swimsuit playing Strawberry Shortcake on the Nintendo DS and with a dog who won't stop licking her foot.

Last night I spent most of the night playing cleanup from my computer disaster (inbox wiped out, anything left resorted into about fifteen different mini-mailboxes that had nothing to do with the sender) and trying to have a crash course in keeping up with my various commitments. I think the reason I'm not dressed right now is that I still have a zillion things to do to make right all the stuff I botched last week or should have done but didn't that I'm thinking if I just sit on my floor long enough with my computer I'll start to grow roots down into the subflooring and not have to actually face reality.

I also was supposed to break my Starbucks habit and I didn't. Heh.