Swimming at the rehab center

I thought it might motivate me to go and swim for physical therapy if Rook and Moomin came too.

We got to the pool half an hour before it opened. Right behind the center, there’s a huge park. It looked like hard terrain, with a gravel and grass path, a hill up to a wooden bridge, and then down to a grassy park with (hooray!) pavement. I had to do the gravel bits myself, popping wheelies, but Rook pulled me up the hill.

The thing is: I knew it would hurt, and be really hard, and probably foolish, but I still wanted to do it. Moomin ran around exploring. He climbed trees. It’s just that… I don’t get to have that fun any more. I get to be *near* people having fun. On one level that’s great, and it was certainly better than spending the whole day (again) in bed working. I think Moomin had a good time.

Then in the pool I had to really think about moving my leg around, and work at it. I just wanted to cry. At some point it just feels sucky to be around people having fun if they expect you to also be all fun-having when you can’t. I have to go off by myself a little at that point to deal with myself and whatever pain I’m in. I used to be a fun person. Now that barely ever happens. Anyway. I’ll get better, it will just take a while.

Moomin can swim like crazy now! It’s so great! I love to see the self confidence he has now in the water! I’m really proud of him!

I liked thinking that he will get used to coming to the rehab center with me and will see other people in wheelchairs and with different physical abilities. He seems to just accept that sometimes I can walk around, and sometimes not.

The center has a new display up with stuff about its founder and its history. I had no idea it has gone through many name changes. I like that they put up all that history stuff. It used to be the Community Association for Retarded. They kept the initials but changed it to “Community Association for Rehabilitation” and now it is “Abilities United” which I think is much better. C.A.R. makes me think “Car? Why Car?” while AU sounds like “Alternate Universe”, which is what it’s actually like to be disabled.

We had dinner and a board game night with some friends at our house. Rook did all the shopping and made dinner and chocolate chip cookies. I was too fried to read to Moomin tonight, but we’re on about Chapter 4 of Wind in the Willows now, after finishing Black Beauty with minimal distress (We skipped the Ginger chapter). We made comic book heroes instead.

In the car we came up with good plans for his birthday. He would like an Ocean themed party and I thought up some ideas like a baby harp seal piñata and a life size game of “Hey, That’s My Fish” in the driveway with blue tape and candy fish, and streamers for the ocean.

The rest of the day I worked from bed on my laptop. I have to work all day tomorrow too. That’s just how it is. I have too many projects – work, book editing, upcoming conferences – and a lot of physical pain on top of that. It’s hard to be a good parent right now.