Give Me a Break

Life this week was a beach.

It’s Sunday evening and she’s snuggled up in her bed fast asleep by 8pm.

Photo by Norbert Buduczki on Unsplash

We survived it. The winter break of 2026 is behind us. That’s 5 days with 2 weekends as bookends - for those who don’t have kids. For those that do - you understand my pain already

It’s been….fun. She went to a craft school for 3 days and then when to a Ninja-tumbling venue where all the little buggers ninjas bounced around on foam pads and swung from ropes for a few hours.

She’s exhausted. And it all came to a head this afternoon.

You see, we’ve made some plans to our Sunday swimming lessons - We cancelled them because it was a pain in the ass to drive across town for her to have 30 minutes of swim class for her to only have about 10 minutes of actual swim time. The pool was hot, overcrowded and both BW and I dreaded going each and every Sunday.

So, when renewal requests came in - we ignored it this time around. She didn’t like to go anyway half the time.

This is all great and all but the child still needs to learn how to swim. BW can’t right now for a few reasons so this leaves me to take care of the everyday and one of these everyday things was to find new swimming lessons for the child.

I was searching and all I could find were crappier venues or they were too pricey but then I realized that not even a quarter mile away from us at the high school is a pool. This pool has FREE SWIM on Sundays - with a lifeguard. This last part is important.

You see, I’m the primary caregiver at the moment and that means that I get to take her to the family swim. Except….Dad can’t swim. No doggy paddle, nothing.

To quote Bob Seger: “Like a Rock” is my swimming style.

But I figure we’ll do fine - she’s got the basics and she can go underwater. We’re not going for the Olympics - we are going for swimming across the pool - and close enough.

So, as one can imagine - this swimming with Dad has been a great big excitement and today was the day: after lunch we were going swimming. Dad - the one who can’t swim - isn’t as keen on this idea as the child, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

We drive to the high school around the corner and the parking lot is empty. NOT A CAR. This doesn’t look good, but we found the door we were supposed to go into and so we parked the car and walked up to the door only see a sign taped to the window that read:

HEATER BROKEN - POOL CLOSED - SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

You could feel the silence just before the screaming started.

Remember when they were babies and you would take them to get vaccinated and you could see them scream before you heard them?

Well, I experienced this today again with the child, and after a few seconds of silence for her brain to figure out that there was to be no swimming today - she. just. lost.it.

Nothing I could say or do could help. She demanded that we do something else and she rattled off 3 or four non-swimming ideas that were not going to happen because we didn’t need to go get any other entertainment today and we did not need any more sugar for the week. It was the last day of school break and yes, this is disappointing and she did not let me forget that fact for a good half an hour or so, but life sucks sometimes and there will be more disappointments to come

It took a lot of huggies to get her to settle down, and then like all thunderstorms - it was over before you knew it , but holy - this child does not do unexpected plan changes well and accepting disappointment is not her strong suit.

She’s a pro at expressing her disappointment and today she let us know.

Tomorrow, I get to express my happiness that it’s a school day.

And in about five weeks time? Spring Break is here.

Maybe we’ll go swimming.

Until Next Time,

TH and Co.