It was the last night of the week of Mudcrutch shows at the Troub. Not even my painful-yet-adorable heels and a crazy crowd could keep me from enjoying this show. I think I scared a former coworker when I knew all the words to "Summertime Blues."
I know I said (maybe not on here but in real life) that I was going to cut down on shows this year, but I just can't. This coming weekend I have Russell Brand at the Roxy. Mommy likes.
Yesterday was Sunday which means Dive Day. What a difference a week makes. I was probably like 100% more comfortable with the regulator. Especially because we did even harder and scarier things. My regulator was pretty much like my comfort binky. As long as I had it in my mouth I knew I would be okay.
We spent the majority of our pool time at the bottom of the 13 feet pool. It did take me a while to equalize on the way down, but I got it. So we were on the bottom of the pool and I was like, wow, I'm really doing this. And I'm ok with it. I'm not panicking. Then came the exercise wherein we took off our masks. WHAT? Yeah I guess it's a possibility or something and we had to practice. Before we complete a challenge our teacher always gives us the "ok" sign that we then have to mirror back to her so she knows that we're ready. For this particular exercise when she ok'd me I shook my head back. WAS SHE KIDDING ME?! I then asked (all in rudimentary hand signals) if I could hold my nose. (Once our mask was taken off, she would swim us around the deep end and then we would have to replace the mask and clear it of the water (a skill we learned back when we played in the shallow end last week - if you'll remember, I didn't like it then either).
Long story short too late, I was petrified, swimming around, holding my nose, breathing through my regulator like it was the lifeline that it is. The other guy in my class said you could see my fear. I'm sure it wasn't pretty. When it came time to put the mask back on. I panicked and choked but she held me in place. If I were 60 feet down and something similar happened, I wouldn't be able to shoot to the surface. I coughed and choked through my regulator and it worked. I calmed myself through the panic and got my mask on and got it clear. It wasn't the most fun experience of my life, but it was definitely a big confidence booster.
We did a few more tasks and when we got to the surface I thanked her for not letting me swim to surface when I freaked out. She said if I would have really freaked out I would have fought her and swam to surface so that I should give myself some credit. Then she said class was over because I took in more water than she was comfortable with.
I also learned more about what the weekend of May 17-18 holds in store for me. On Sat the 17th, we'll be doing 3 dives from a boat off the coast of Catalina (there are some ship wrecks there, so that should be cool). 3 dives in one day is kinda scary tho, but it does make me feel better about the $135 cost of the charter boat (lunch is included too). Then on Sunday the 18th, we'll go to Leo Carrillo beach in Malibu. We'll do a free dive (which is where we dive down on a held breath - no regulator) and then a swim-out scuba dive (wherein we swim out a couple hundred yards from the shore and then dive). Yeah. WHAT? Needless to say, I will only be sleeping and diving that weekend.
Oh. Totally unrelated, but I discovered the most wonderful thing this weekend. Investigation Discovery. It's back-to-back newsmagazine shows about crime investigations. It's pretty much awesome. After I watched for a few hours (total time vacuum), instead of feeling like I was ready to solve a crime, I moreso felt like I will eventually be killed either by a stranger or somebody who has promised to love me. So maybe the programming should come with a warning.
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