Singularly Blessed: Second Meet = Basically a Pro

Last weekend I went to my second swim meet! I enjoyed it more than the first one - I think because this time I knew a little more what was going on. And even if I still felt halfway clueless, that is way better than completely clueless! Right? Right. It got off to a kind of rocky start because when I went to drop my dog off at the kennel, they told me they had never gotten a copy of her vaccination records from the vet. I had left my number when I made the reservations with instructions to call me if there were any problems...did they? NOPE. And they absolutely refused to let her stay without the records. I didn't know what on earth I was going to do...I needed to be on the road RIGHT.THEN to get to the meet on time. I was praying and freaking out and trying not to completely lose it. God was so gracious that he allowed my awesome piano teacher and his wife to kindly and graciously agree to watch her for me. As it turned out, they fell in love with my sweet little Sofi. It was so sweet because they kept sending me updates and pictures of her. They even facetimed me once so I could see her! :)

Anyhow, so I eventually made it to the meet - but I missed my first event. :( I was rather sad about this and pretty stressed by this point but I had to get over it and move on mentally to the rest of my events. The good news is that (with the exception of 50 breast that I got DQed in = more sadness) I lowered all my times!!! :) That's what my goal was for the meet so I was pretty happy. I learned from my teammates that a great way to keep up with when your event is is to write your event and heat and lane numbers on your hand. Which I did. I also printed off the programs before I got there and highlighted my events. Bam. So, this meet I knew where I was supposed to be and when. That was a huge improvement from last time when I didn't even get a copy of the program until the second day and was kinda lost about where I was supposed to be and how this whole meet thing worked. Oops. I was also prepared for any down time with my trusty old cell phone and ipod and the delights of trivia crack and facetiming my sister. Oh and lots of snacks. Unfortunately, there was surprisingly little downtime so I hardly got to eat any of my snacks and only got to play a little bit of my games and music. Oh well. I guess *technically* I'm there to swim not play trivia crack and eat grapes anyway.

This is my "Game Face." It only took me like 5 tries before I could keep it long enough for the picture without busting out laughing!! haha

Saturday night we had a team dinner which was pretty fun! I get really, really hyper at meets so I wanted to play games and have a bunch of fun that night but everyone else said they were too tired to play games. Bummer. I'm going to have to work on convincing them how fun games are...Coach Carolyn *promised* that at the next meet we would play games...which I am totally going to hold her to. I was officially inducted into the team that night though - by receiving my special Greenville Splash monogrammed underwear. It's a team tradition to receive these when you do an overnight meet with the team. I am not sure whether to be excited that I am now an official member, disturbed that we have "team undies," or embarrassed that we were being given underwear in the middle of a restaurant on a Saturday night! haha Anywho.......

My crazy team!

I made myself go to bed instead of hanging out in the hotel lobby like the last meet but I'm afraid I still didn't sleep well. Meets just make me too full of adrenaline and I just can't calm down! :O Maybe this will get better with time....The second day I continued lowering my times but I was tired....(think not calming down enough to sleep could have anything to do with that?? Nah. Must be something else.) Our team came in first place from the out of state teams (5 years in a row!) and 2nd overall - out of 39 teams with 5 teams who had more people! I think I'm part of a pretty amazing team. :D