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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I am a Superhero

After my first race involving an ocean swim, I realized that I needed a new wetsuit. That was the bad news since wetsuits are expensive, particularly the full body kind which is what is recommended for ocean swims. The good news is that my experience swimming through many "warm spots" in the water made me more open to the idea of buying a slightly used wetsuit. After all, I used to believe that a used wetsuit would be icky because there was a good chance that the prior owner had peed in it. Now I realize that even if I buy a new wetsuit, I will still end up swimming through many other swimmers' pee. A used wetsuit therefore warranted at least a look.

The stars and planets all aligned and there happened to be a wetsuit on eBay that was 1) my top choice brand 2) had only been worn once and most importantly 3) appeared to be in my size! I say appeared because it seems that the people who determine the sizes for wedding suits have taken over wetsuits. In other words, size 0 supermodels may need X-Large. I went ahead and bid on the wetsuit and won it, spending $70 instead of the $300 that a new wetsuit would have required.

In the days since I placed the order, I became increasingly convinced that the wetsuit would not fit. In fact when it arrived yesterday, I was scared to even open the box. Well, perhaps I wasn't exactly scared. The truth is it was the hottest day of the summer (98 at the beach), and Aunt Flo had arrived. The thought of squeezing my bloated sweating body into a hot full arm full legged wetsuit made me want to get extra packaging tape just to make sure that the wetsuit didn't leap out of the sealed box and chase me around the house.

I've been doing weekly outdoor lake swims though, and I really would like to test out the wetsuit tomorrow to see how it works in the water. Thus I begrudgingly opened the box and almost screamed out loud in horror. It was tiny like a deflated balloon! I hoped that the wetsuit would swell up like a balloon when worn, because otherwise it didn't even look like my big toe could fit into the ankle part. Then I read the instructions on the tag which said, and I swear I'm not making this up, that I needed to put socks on my feet and plastic bags on my hands to help ease on the wetsuit. I'm surprised that "amputate a couple of appendages" also wasn't on there.

Still I did need to know otherwise how am I going to outswim the sharks next month in my race? I applied Body Glide to my legs as was recommended. I then announced to the Big Giraffe that I was getting a pair of socks. He was confused and said that he thought I was trying on the wetsuit. However, he seemed unphased as he lounged on the couch eating a mug of ice cream.

I came down with a pair of Christmas socks, since they were thin, and proceeded to tug on the suit. The suit did initially catch my feet, prompting the Big Giraffe to comment that he didn't know wetsuits had flippers on them. Then the suit widened, and my feet came through. I then pulled the wetsuit up to my thighs. At that point I realized that I had forgotten to apply Body Glide to my thighs. The Big Giraffe was still lounging with his ice cream, but he was too busy laughing at me to eat much.

I then announced I needed plastic bags. The Big Giraffe looked even more confused. I went ahead and grabbed two gallon sized ziplock bags and put one on each hand. I then slid my arm into the sleeve. It worked! I then repeated with the second hand. Although the Big Giraffe quipped that experienced triathletes could magically do a superpunch with both hands to put both arms into the suit at the same time, I now realize that you only need one bag. In the future, I intend to use a sandwich bag rather than a gallon-sized bag. A sandwich bag should have two advantages. First, it will help you avoid having to slip a bag all the way down from your elbow out of the sleeve of your wetsuit. More importantly, it will deny your spouse the opportunity to make snide remarks, like recommending the use of a kitchen garbage bag in case the gallon-sized bag may have accidentally left some part of your body exposed. I think the biggest struggle was trying to get the bag off my hand.

Finally it was the moment of truth. Would it zip? The Big Giraffe was actually helpful and zipped me up. It fit! I could even comfortably breathe! I went to look at myself in the mirror. Oh yeah, I looked like a superhero! A superhero wearing Christmas socks that is. I had forgotten to take them off and decided that on race day if need be, I'll just swim with them on or maybe cut them off.

My older son (OS) came downstairs to grab a boo boo pack from the freezer because...you know injuries can occur when you're "sleeping". He was very impressed when I told him I was a superhero. I think he actualy believed me!

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: With 2 socks, one plastic baggie, and one wetsuit, you too can look like a superhero.

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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