Brendan's 1st swim meet...and henna

Well, his first this year that is. He joined our neighborhood swim team, the Westbrook Stingrays, last summer. They practice every morning 8-9am, and have 4 meets each summer. These swim meets are crazy events - huge numbers of people (parents, siblings, swimmers) all crammed in around a pool - typically an outdoor city pool. We get there at 7:15am so Brendan can start warm-ups 7:30am - this is on Saturday mornings. The heating area is a madhouse of kids - is that Brendan? Are those the 9-year-olds? Oh, he's sitting down, must be in the next heat. I love his orange goggles that make him stand out - last year I videoed a total stranger the length of the pool thinking it was him.

The backstroke is his favorite, which the coach says is unusual - while adults typically enjoy floating on their backs, kids don't like that feeling as much. For the first time, at this meet, he swam the butterfly in a medley. Such a hard stroke - he was sooooo nervous about it - but he did really well, and after that race, he said he wanted to enter the 25m butterfly in the next meet.


The night before this meet, my girlfriend Monica had a 40th birthday party, and everyone got a henna tattoo! It was so fun - never had one before. The artist came to her house, and had a ton of photos and books with designs to get ideas from. I was drawn to a design with a Hawaiian-flowery-feel to it. I combined a couple of designs and came up with this....

So, each part of the tattoo has a meaning. The circle in the middle of the flower represents centeredness (my goal!! daily!! by the minute!!); the flower is made of hearts - love obviously - but the 6 hearts make it an even, balanced love. The other hearts at the bottom show being grounded in love; the other designs represents reaching, growing - and the drops of water, are water - flowing, changing, always moving. She said she guessed I was a water person - I agreed that being by water is one of the few times that I can truly live and just be in the moment without my mind shooting off in various unrelated worries/thoughts/etc. Nice! I'm very sad that it only lasts a couple of weeks or so.