Monday's Question of the Day - 8/11/14

MoochNNoodles

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Another weekend over too soon...  
  Sunday afternoon for my family was spent visiting with a friend of mine from middle school!  We haven't been close consistently since then; but we became friends again when I was pregnant with my first and she her second.  We used to meet for lunch dates during the week or at parks so our kids could play.  We were also shopping buddies twice a year for our kids (and maternity stuff here and there).  Her mother is also basically our family photographer.  Her 3rd and my 2nd were born exactly one month apart thanks to me delivering early and her going late. 
  Her husband got a transfer about a year ago and I've missed having her around.  Its hard to find someone in the same place in life with me like that.  So they are "home" for a visit and we were invited to a little BBQ at her parent's house today.  That meant good company, good food, 2 birthday cakes (because 2 of her kids had birthdays recently and the grandparents weren't there to celebrate!) and swimming!!

This was my 2 year olds first time in a big pool.  My 4 year old hasn't been in one in a year either.  They both LOVED it!  I tried to teach them some swimming basics with floating and what not.  They just enjoyed it all so much.  My husband even commented tonight how much fun it was playing with the kids in the pool.  I absolutely love to swim.  I could stay in the pool for hours.  The only reason we got out when we did today was to get cake. 
  I even get in the kiddie pool with my kids in our backyard; but that's not quite the same.
  Swimming is the only form of exercise I truly enjoy. 
  As a kid I'd get in the pool when it was in the 50s out! 
 <-- that is what I'd do if I tried that now! 
  I was 7 or so when I took lessons to learn to swim.  I never was interested in competitive swimming; but there is just something about being in the water!

Do you like to swim?  Can you swim?  How old were you when you learned to swim?  Where do you prefer swimming: pool, lake, ocean?

Thanks for letting me rattle on about my great day!  
 
 
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Winchester

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I know what you mean about the weekends. Gone way too quickly. We really worked this weekend, especially yesterday. We were up in the garden by around 7:30 or so and it was go, go, go pretty much all day. Every muscle in my body aches this morning. Between working on the new composter, quite a bit of weeding, picking and freezing vegetables, cleaning house, doing laundry, etc, well, I could use a day off just to relax. And we ended up sleeping last night with no front door, just the storm door. Rick finally decided that he was painting the front door so he had to take it off, take it to the back yard and work on it there. It has one coat of paint so far and he wasn't putting it back on and then taking it back off again today. So he slept out on the couch last night to keep all the boogeymen out of the house. 
 

Sorry, I digress....back to swimming. I'm glad your kids had a good time. Pools can be so much fun!

I don't know how old I was when I learned to swim; it seems like I've always known and it was never a problem. I lived with Grandma during the summer and there was a creek across the road from her house with a huge swimming hole. My cousins and I spent our summer in the creek. Grandma always came to the creek with us to make sure we didn't kill ourselves. My parents also took us camping in the summers, to a local state park with a mountain lake with the coldest water around. We were kids; cold water didn't bother us at all. (Now? I won't even stick my foot in the water until the temp is about 85 degrees!)

Dear Richard, OTOH, does a mean dog paddle, but that's about it.When we installed the pool, he walked into the deep end while it was being built; there wasn't any water in it at the time and he said it would probably be the only time he'd ever make it to the deep end. Our son is a fish; he could dive into the "deep" end, sit on the bottom of the pool and wave up at us. He and I used to live in the pool during the summer. 

I've been in the Atlantic Ocean, but that's it.

We have a small in-ground pool; it's probably around 30 years old now. It's certainly nothing exotic, but it gets the job done when we're so hot and sticky from working outside that we can't take it anymore. It goes from 4 feet to 8 feet. So I guess we're pool swimmers more than anything else.
 
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pinkdagger

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That's so cute! Swimming is the only exercise I enjoy too and I LOVE it, but I started learning how to swim when I was 3 or 4 and stopped lessons one level short of becoming a lifeguard when I was 11 or 12 because I didn't have the endurance to tread for something like ten minutes straight or do the butterfly stroke.


I've spent more time in pools than I have lakes (all of the beaches nearby are for lakes), and unfortunately I've never swam in the ocean. Sometimes our lakes are a bit scummy so it's touchy whether or not I would want to swim in them all the time. I'll take a pool any day though.
 

Draco

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I enjoy swimming! Though I find myself going less and less.. between lack of time and no confidence in my body (ew).

I like to swim anywhere, lake pool or ocean. But if its the ocean, the waves has to be manageable (meaning, no storm out on the water!)
 

sivyaleah

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I can swim, but only underwater.  I never learned the "proper" way.  I'm an ok swimmer, can hold my breath a LONG time which helps if you're only swimming underwater.

My relationship with it is mixed.  As a kid, the way I finally learned was by my grandmother offering me $10 the summer I turned 10 to do so.  I was kind of terrified of being in deeper water and remember one camp counselor tossing me into the pool.  That, didn't go well at all.  Anyway, taught myself that summer because money is a big motivating force for me :D

I do enjoy it, but rarely get to partake.  We're not beach people, and while my sisters both have pools they live too far away to make me want to drive out to see them on a NJ weekend when the highways are jammed with shore traffic.  I prefer swimming in pools.  Lakes freak me out for some reason.  Do like the ocean also but, again, that's a rare occurrence unless I'm on vacation.
 

larussa

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My older sister taught me to swim at a young age, I don't remember how old I was.  She taught me in the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean was my favorite place to swim, I just loved those waves.  I also like swimming in a lake. 

Ironically many years later I wound up saving one of my sisters kids.  He was in a tube (an actual car tire) and for some reason no one saw the tire floating further and further away.  I was the only one in the family that was in the water and I saw what was happening.  He was further away than I thought but I started swimming as fast as I could and finally grabbed onto the tire and began dragging him back to shore.  We will never forget that.

I have not been in any type of water for many years, I do miss it.  Lately there have been sharks seen in the ocean here so I'd rather stay out of the water anyway,  just saying
 
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MoochNNoodles

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I've heard about the sharks on the east coast!  One friend of mine reported seeing something that was similar to a manta ray and she doesn't live where they are supposed to be either! 


I do prefer a pool for swimming but I've swam in all 3 and waded in some creeks/rivers.  As a kid my family had a camp in the Adirondack mountains so we swam in the lakes there.  But the town we lived in had several public pools so that is where I took my lessons.  A few friends had pools too; the mother of one had a daycare and I would go to their house when school was out for the summer.  I spent my teen years to present living close to the ocean.  My DD is scared of the waves so we don't have to go often.  I can't stand the tourists.  I'm not a fan of wearing bathing suits often either @Draco; but having kids has helped me get over that.  Or ignore it?  


Yesterday my husband said he is willing to look into getting a pool here!  I'm just not getting too excited because I don't know if we CAN have one because of the lay out of our property with trees and a septic system.  I'm not willing to take any trees down.  I also want to be sure we are aware of the costs of upkeep and things before we get too excited.  If we had one; I'd be in it all the time though.  So maybe!! 
 

oceanbreathes

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I love swimming and I've been doing it since I was a baby.  I'm not sure what age I was when the official swimming lessons started. 

I like swimming.. anywhere: pool, lake, ocean, river, creek.  I'm currently avoiding pools because of the chlorine(I have sensitive skin) and confidence issues.  We tried to swim in a lake recently but it was far too cold.  I was turning blue.  Same with the ocean where I'm from; too cold and too dangerous in most spots.  When I lived along a river I swam pretty frequently and that particular spot was nice and private.  There was also a lovely creek location for swimming but it involved walking through slippery rocks to get to the best part, which isn't a strength of mine.  
 

alyssam

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Do you like to swim?  Can you swim?  How old were you when you learned to swim?  Where do you prefer swimming: pool, lake, ocean?

I used to love it. My cousins and I were fish when we were kids out at the family cottage! I was young. Mom put me in swimming lessons I got to "Level 6" and failed the test multiple times so I quit. That was many years ago I think I was 8 or 9.
I have never swam in the ocean. We have a pool at our current house and I don't go in it often mostly because I hate how I look in a bathing suit 


Growing up, I spent the majority of my summers out at the family cottage. It is on Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada. We had a long dock that went out into a deep drop-off,  a raft we could swim out to and boats and family members to take us water skiing, tubing, fishing, etc. Best summers of my life spent there as a child 
 

peaches08

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I LOVE swimming, and I'm very good at it.  I've swam with some pretty cool things in some pretty cool places too.  The most exciting places would be Belize and Galapagos.  I even had a Galapagos shark come up and check me out when I was swimming back to the boat. 

There are a LOT of sharks here, but an incredibly low incidence for shark bites.  I'm still a little afraid of the ocean here (murky waters due to shrimping and major port), but I'm working on that.  I also really hate how much weight I've gained and don't feel comfortable in a bathing suit.
 

pinkdagger

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It's unfortunate to see the people who feel hesitant about enjoying the water because of self-consciousness.
I bet you ladies look smoking in your swimsuits!

Last year I wore a two-piece for the first time with a group of high school friends and some people I'd never met. Among them, I wasn't alone feeling self-conscious. In the end, a) you're your own harshest critic, and b) other people seldom care how you look in your bathing suit!
 
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