And...

Four weeks. Three doctor visits. Repeated bidding on Ebay. Two class films and lectures. Worrying, waiting, wondering... and I finally got back into the pool tonight and...

I was bored.

Been there. Done that. Same crap, different day.

I started thinking, "Do I really care about this?" "Why have I spent all this money and worry?"

I know what the problems are:

1. I'm doing this alone. While everyone else is dinking around with their partners at the bottom of the pool-- taking pictures, rolling around-- I'm preoccupied with how pruney my fingertips are, how much air I'm breathing, what my hair's doing. I need a distraction. It's time I did some heavy recruiting. I've got one friend threatening to dive...

"Scuba Dive may call you, Any night, any day, In your heart, you'll hear it call you:"Come away...Come away. Scuba dive will whisper, In the wind of the sea:"Here am I, your special water! Come to me, come to me!"

[Just a little sumpin sumpin for my geeky musical-loving friends]

2. There are no fish in swimming pools. No coral. No sunken ships. Plenty of sunken ear plugs, elastic bands, and floaties I don't care to mention, but really nothing interesting to see.

3. I feel like I'm in a time warp. I've gone with different people every time. Pool 1 was me looking foolish. Pool 2 was me proving I'm not really foolish. Pool 3 was me having to repeat Pool 2 because Zen apparently didn't believe Smiley when told that I'm not foolish.

I did get to do a tired diver drag (or some such nonsense on the surface). I also got to pull my mask completely off my head (at 13'), put it back on, and clear the water out-- all without having to surface. I had to ask to do it. Zen's giving me hand signals to do the flippin' Pool 1 skills and I shake my head and mime doing the new one. He gives me the okay and (of course) I do it fine. Ha!

Okay, fine, so for some reason I had this huge temptation to suck water into my nose and there was some hair tangling and it wasn't, you know, smooth... but I DID IT.

And then there was the little problem of me demanding weights (Zen said I didn't need them, Smiley had let me use them and things had gone so much better that time). He gave me two big torpedo thingeys that hooked onto each side of my BCD (vest) and sure enough, they made me sink. At one point I started to float and was mellowly wondering what was happening and it turns out one of my weights had fallen off. Zen grabbed it and grabbed me like a run away balloon and I went back to twiddling my thumbs.

So not a totally uneventful evening, anyway. I asked Zen afterwards if I was going to get everything done that I needed to in time for my trip and he said, "I don't know. That's up to you."

Enough with the zen, Zen. Let's get this baby in gear. I'm tired of idling.