Yesterday evening I went to swim practice: I am officially back. It was kind of strange, but still enjoyable. I forgot how much I hate the smell of chlorine. Since the short-course season (all of which I missed!) is over now, it was a games day. We played water polo. It's not real water polo, since the pool is about four feet deep and we use lawn chairs on their sides for goals; it is, however, extremely fun. Unfortunately, someone always gets hurt. This time, before we had even picked teams, a little kid got a pretty bad injury: one kid pushed him in but another pulled him back so that his side slammed right up against the edge of the pool, which is pretty hard. He got a bad bruise, but he elected to play anyway!

Anyway, we play by dividing into two teams, as evenly as is possible, putting each on one side of the pool, tossing the ball in the middle (coach or someone else has to do this) and then swimming to get it. My team was, I thought, the weaker of the two, but we had one of the few boys on our team (who is a really fast swimmer) so that kind of offset the disadvantage. Nevertheless, we fell to 0-2 early, as our defense wasn't particularly good. Then Chad, the fast swimming boy on our team, scored one, so we were 1-2. At this point, Coach Patrick said that a little kid--by "little kid" he meant someone age 8 or under--had to score. We managed to get our little girl, Bella, to score for us, making the score 4-2: a little kid's score counts as three points in our system. Coach made Chad switch teams so that the other side could get a little kid to score, but I was playing goalie and I didn't let them score. I don't believe in allowing people to score just to make them feel good about themselves. Actually, it wasn't some ideological statement--I just wanted to win! Anyway, after they had tried, unsuccessfully, for fifteen minutes to get a little kid to score, Coach said that anyone could score again. Somehow, we scored two more goals, so the score was 6-2. Then I gave up a goal; our defense broke down again. I switched out with Chad, who was back on our team, but he gave up a goal too. Coach announced that the next person to score would win--a very funky way to play, but what can you do? I played goalie, and despite numerous (at least 10!) shots on me with absolutely no help from my team, I didn't give up the winning score. We finally scored to win it, which was gratifying. My sister was annoyed, though, because she was on the other team. There was a lot of stuff about cheating (by using two hands or touching bottom) and unfairness, but she is just a sore loser. I'm probably a sore winner too, but I like winning so I think I'm going to keep doing it.

I'm thinking I might join a soccer team. I don't really have a good working knowledge of how to play soccer, although of course I know the rules, but I think I'd be good at it. I might even play goalie. This is one of the worst posts I've ever made, but I can't be bothered with such things as quality at a time like this.