How Do You Stay Fit?

August 24, 2008

Those of you who know me, know I had a Chet Edwards sticker on my new van well before I even had license plates for it. Thus, you would expect that I had prepared a cute entry for Erin's home page in case Barack Obama named Chet as his running mate (he made the final four, but not the championship). It included the following quote from Erin:

"Chet Edwards is a great man. He knows what he is doing and will help America. One more thing. . .he's is my best friend over age 11."

We were all a little disappointed, because the inauguration (was I getting ahead of myself?) sounded like loads of fun. Anyway, he didn't get chosen, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that had he been chosen and elected, we could not have had a better advocate for pediatric cancer and neuroblastoma in the White House. As it played out, he'll just have to put his full energy on getting the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act through the Appropriations Committee, where he is a high-ranking member.

On to less lofty, but perhaps more interesting topics. Erin, Walter, and I had a good last week of summer. Erin decided she wanted to work on personal fitness (which apparently involves me working on my personal fitness, too). Had I had the sense to settle in a neighborhood with other families and children her age, I suspect I would not be viewed as such a classy prospect to spend time with. As it was, we did cross country, off-road bike training on Monday (three miles, twenty three minutes) and kayaking on Friday. I took the other days off, but Erin soldiered on without me.

Thursday, soccer practice fit the requirements for a good workout. I can't remember what she did for exercise on Wednesday (though I could look it up in her little planning notebook, if I had the energy). On Tuesday, I tricked Elaine into lending me Nico and Adam, so I wouldn't have to be her workout partner. I think they went with marathon hopscotching as the AAD (aerobic activity of the day).

Hopscotching fit with the other retro theme of the week. Erin discovered Walter's complete collection of Classics Illustrated Comic Books and she has spent hours with them. Here are the first three in the series (I think we can all agree these are classics, even though perhaps not the best books ever written)

By the time you reach number 160 in the Classics Illustrated series, you might think they stretched the concept too far:


This weekend the Mystic '97 competed in their second and final warm-up tournament (as if we here in central Texas actually need warming up on the next-to-last weekend in August). It turned out to have worked out well that Erin focused on personal fitness this week. We were quite short handed at the tournament and played two of our matches (sixty-minutes each) with no subs and only an hour break between them. The girls (including Erin) were very brave and battled until the final whistle blew in each game.

Note to self: remember to email Erin's doctor with the information that Erin took a ball to the face kicked from about ten feet away that knocked her to the ground. No doubt if I don't, the radiologist will think Erin's neuroblastoma has spread to her cheek and skull when they read her bone scan on Thursday.

We do need to activate the coast-to-coast praying and luck generating network. In the latter part of the week Erin, along with Hans, Sam, and Will are all doing scans to check the effectiveness of their most recent treatments. I would like to think there was so many supplications being sent up that we cause a brown out in the prayer grid.