Desperate times

Only faced with the prospect of either:

a: breaking my blogging streak, or
b: forcing my mother to lie to the front desk staff at the clubhouse and say that I had to show her something on the internet and therefore could go with her to use the "residents only" computer

would lead me to install a trial version of AOL on my iBook.

Blech. Pttuuueey! This is me spitting the bad taste of AOL out of my mouth. I just don't care for the service. Sorry if that offends any reader. It's just so invasive and busy with intrusive icons and cumbersome, to my thinking.

But this way, I have access via modem and the Mac using Mom's AOL account so I can blog.

The day was beautiful here. It was supposed to be up to 102 degrees, but I don't know that it reached that high. We had breakfast out, we shopped at a huge, loud mall, we came back and had "quiet time" (S and I slept, a bit), then we swam until dusk.

It's getting darker now, but the air outside is the perfect temperature.

S went from being afraid to leave the steps in the pool to throwing herself headlong into the water to swim a few strokes, over and over again. Watching her figure it out made me so proud. I felt like I was watching her learn to walk all over again. There aren't too many of those physical achievement milestones left for either daughter, I think. Learning to ride a bike, for S. Learning to drive, I suppose. But that seems not such a big effort of coordination, somehow. Maybe it's because by then, they're old enough to apply reasoning skills and other learned things to what they're doing.

I'm enjoying watching her go underwater again and again, each time more excited and pleased with herself than the last. What if we all tackled life's challenges that way?