Swimming my way out of a funk...

This one is a good news / bad news sort of post. I am trying to focus on the good news for reasons which you will see when I get to the bad news. Before I became completely addicted to Lifetime Fitness, I swam with a masters swim group every morning at 5:45 for several years. It was my original life changing, fitness inducing experience after graduate school. I love everything about the pool: the smell of chlorine when you walk in, the forced sets that included butterfly, the goggle marks that stay with you for hours after you take them off and the way your skin smells like chlorine the rest of the day. I love swimming, still do! It was the first time I could see results from exercise and became completely addicted. The only downside was getting ready for work in the locker room at the pool. It really wasn't a huge downside but this girl has wavy hair that does not behave in high humidity and lets just say it was pretty humid in that locker room. Oh - and they only had ONE electrical outlet in the locker room. Imagine more than 1 or 2 ladies fighting over a single outlet each day.

Once I took the tour at Lifetime Fitness and walked through the luxury of a climate controlled locker room with MULTIPLE outlets, I made the choice to trade my masters group for the all around fitness experience of Lifetime. I have been completely happy but have missed group swims. It is so much easier to stay motivated while swimming 3500 yards if you are among friends. It is easy enough to find swim workouts on the web but quite another thing to motivate yourself to do them by yourself.

I got a call today that they FINALLY got enough people to commit to having a masters group at Lifetime! YAY YAY YAY! Isn't it perfect time that it is just in time for me to kick my ironman training into gear? I am so excited! A little sad that I will miss boot camp 2 days a week but thrilled to get back in the pool.

So the bad news. I wouldn't really call it bad news as much as just the reason I am in need to swim myself out of a funk. I think I mentioned that I was in a funk a week or so. I am still working through it. The most reason event started about six weeks ago. My Mother, who lived with her aunt in Mississippi, was in the hospital. She has had a lifetime issue of prescription drug use that is problematic. Without going into too much detail, I have sort of become her guardian of sorts as of late. I put her into an assisted living facility a few weeks back and she hates it. Everyone who has dealt with this in their own famiies told me to expect that reaction. She is having a hard time adapting, does a lot of complaining when I talk to her and I just no longer really know how to help. My mother and I are not really that close so it makes this process even more difficult. I am mostly handling the situation out of a sense of obligation. I would hope that if I ever were in this situation that someone cvould forgive the past and help me out.

Everyone that knows the situation tells me I am doing the right thing, this is what she needs, don't feel bad. I have such mixed feelings. On one hand, I wish there were more I could do, I wish she could be closer to her friends (the facility is several hours from where she was living). When she needs things like diet cokes or makeup, normally family would bring it to the residents but she has no one nearby. On the other hand, and I feel guilty for saying this, I wish I didn't have to deal with this. Those of you with close family ties probably think I am awful but to go from hardly speaking to your mother to being responsible for paying her bills and her care and well being even from a distance is really taking its toll on me. (I know, it is worse for her...that is partly why I feel guilty). I did great the first several weeks before she actualy moved in to the facility but now that she is there, I just feel like I was tossed into a situation that I am not emotionally equipped to handle. I don't want to call her because she is so unhappy and complains so much and I know I can't do anything about it but I know I need to call her. I have not been able to drag myself to the gym for almost a week now. I took a few days off last week from work because I couldn't get anything done. I would sit at my desk on the verge of tears. I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am truly not looking for a sympathy, just putting this out there as some form of therapy for myself, I guess. I am hoping the swimming will kick start me and get me back to my happy self before I turn into one of those people who never leave the house. :) Tomorrow is another day and Tuesday I will swim!