Summer Begins

When I talked about going to the Mad Dog soccer tournament, I should have shared this picture that I took there.

This is the very cute Gavin Splash Park in Wilton. If you live nearby you’re likely a regular, but if you’re a bit farther and want to visit someplace beyond your “home” pool, this looks like a fun visit with little ones.

We’re officially in summer mode. Just a few days after school ended, we flew to Colorado to visit Cute W’s family. More on that trip soon. We returned late on Friday night, took a day to recover, and then I drove M and one of her friends to SUNY Geneseo for a soccer camp on Sunday.

M’s still at camp. To my text barrage of questions about how camp’s been going, M answered with one bare-minimum text: “It’s good and fun.” Okay, then. I’ll just have to coast on that until I see her again on Wednesday night. So soon, you ask? Why yes. It is short and far away and expensive. But Geneseo is M’s favorite of the SUNY schools, and the whole point of the camp is to see what the soccer coach and team is like. So if all goes well and she likes the campus and the people and they like her, we’ll have invested in some peace of mind with a viable possible post-high school life. And if she hates it or they don’t like her, well, at least we’ll know.

J, meanwhile, spent the weekend binge watching Stranger Things. She had tried it back when the show first cam out, but she got too scared early on, way back when all the Christmas lights that Winona Ryder had strung up were flashing. But with so many friends completely freaking out about season 3, she decided to give it another shot, and now she, too, is obsessed. Luckily, Monday morning brought the first summer camp, which pried her away from the TV. It’s Young Women’s Engineering Camp, brought to us by the school district. This is J’s third summer attending the camp, and it’s her last, too, because it’s for the middle school set. On the first day I brought her a half hour late because I’d somehow missed the email with the exact schedule. Then, today, we arrived one minute early. But as she was getting out of the car, I looked around, nervous that we’d gotten something else wrong. “Is everyone going to a different door?” I asked. “No, Mom,” J assured me. “I’m probably just the last one. After all, it’s a girls’ stem camp.” This made me laugh out loud: of course nerdy girls all arrive early!

When she’s not watching TV or nerding out at camp, she’s preparing for a volleyball camp that’s coming up soon. One of the tasks? New volleyball shoes. Cute W ordered a ton of different ones online since there usually isn’t much of a selection just out in the wild.

Then of course they all go back except for one pair. J was super-excited this time because the sneakers she thought were the cutest were also the most comfortable. That doesn’t happen often, so it should be appreciated. We also had to buy tube socks. Apparently the volleyball girls wear them on their arms so that if they’re diving for balls repeatedly they get a little arm protection? This is news to me. Speaking of news, the bad news is that J hurt a foot during a casual 4th of July volleyball game, so now we’re all a little worried about her recovering before volleyball starts, because it sounds like they’re going to work them hard!

Meanwhile I am a bit of mess. I have some sort of stomach-digestive tract ailment that began during our Colorado trip and has persisted for quite a while. When we finally arrived home I switched to a mostly-rice-and-water diet, hoping that that, along with some probiotics, would help. Nope. I called the doctor Monday morning and got an appointment later that day, and I was super-excited for a firm diagnosis with a convenient, quick-acting cure. Instead we managed to eliminate a lot of possibilities, and she advised that I take it down to a “clear liquid” diet of water, popsicles, Jello, and ginger ale for a day or so. At this point I’ve had nothing but water, popsicles, and probiotics for 26 hours (not like I’m counting, but yes, I’m totally counting!!) and honestly? I still feel not-awesome. But also my stomach feels worse after consuming anything. So now I am trying to decide if I should continue to fast in hopes that my stomach will appreciate the break or give up and eat a little more because not eating anything at all also feels bad. And frankly, I feel pretty cranky about it all.