Friday 2 July 2010

Just Keep Swimming

After the evening when the pool was as hot as a hot bath, and not really conducive to swimming, especially after a meal, the weather has been cloudy with rain for a few days. I've managed to swim in-between the rainy periods and each time, the pool has been cooler.

In fact today it got down to a temperature where it took me a little getting used to before I immersed myself this morning! It's still not as cold as the heated indoor pools in Britain though. The water and air temperature is so cold in those places that it puts many adults off going swimming, which is very short sighted of the management in my opinion.

This morning it was difficult to get the insects and other debris out of the pool because it was distributed within the water, and not just on the surface or on the bottom. I don't do anything with the bottom stuff, but don't care to ingest insects or get them stuck in my hair. I thought this was due to the wind creating little waves, but no. It'd been cleaned! A guy who came to empty the rubbish bin (sorry - trash can) told me. I hadn't noticed, because there was still dark stuff on the bottom at the corners, but looking closely I saw the amount was less. That would explain the amount of stuff floating in the body of the water.

Yesterday we had a power cut (sorry - outage) just after 6pm. I went swimming at about 7pm and met a swearing, beer drinking, smoking guy, who decided to sit on the pool side while his dachshund ran around the edge. His intruder alarm was making a continuous din and he couldn't find the instructions to cut it off. His dog was going crazy and he was too hot.

I'm shy about showing my body in public and am so grateful that so far I've not met a soul at the pool all the time I've been going (apart from the ground maintenance guys flitting about doing their work.) So I was a little perturbed when he sat down with his cooler of beers and started talking to another guy who stopped by. I just kept swimming (like Dory). I lost count of my laps but it was probably over 40 and I got tired and had to get out. Fortunately he was on the phone at the time so he took no notice of me.

Well, today I thought I could probably do 50 laps and I did! Now, I told you that the length of this lap pool was probably longer than a normal width, but I've changed my mind. I now think it's more like a width.

Instead of counting my laps I've started dedicating each lap to a person. So now I just count up the number of people I prayed for and this is better than losing count. I wasn't sure I would remember all 50 people when I was in the pool so I made a list and kept it at one end to refer to. It worked very well. I do a violet fire mantra for each person. You can learn more about the violet fire here.

I gave myself a goal of doing 60 laps by 9th July, (which is when we're moving to another apartment) but I had my doubts that I would achieve it. Now I think I might exceed it. I have plenty more people I can add to the list, so that won't be a problem.