chasing the sky

Now is not the time to be writing a new blog post.  From where I sit I can see the list of To Do's written in green ink on the whiteboard.  

Change sheets, clean out fridge (house sitter is Vegan), feed animals, take out trashes, sweep, mop, vacuum, make breakfast, pack with Beach to fly, pack car bag, pack BC, pack me, pay and mail bills, clean out car, make lunch, get eggs, feed turtles, prep dinner, pick up contacts, workout, shower, math, reading, laundry, clean bathrooms, walk the dog, work, gym, hand off Beach to her team, clean kitchen, set coffee pot, load and start dishwasher, set alarm for 3AM.

Yep. Tomorrow we drive 11+ hours and Beach will fly.  Her back is so bad this is where we are; buying one way plane tickets hoping it will give her some relief.  We need a huge head start to catch her.  Another 4AM of slipping off into the darkness and racing ourselves down I-15.

Her back is so bad right now her coaches are removing skills from her routines.  It will effect her start values and in a funny twist it could hurt OR improve her scores.  Gymnastics is part voodoo, part magic, the rest is a mix of physics, math, and pain.

We have done everything we can afford to do to help her.  The bad back is related to the injury she had last year in her hip/hamstring.  The time it took and the skills she avoided to heal the fracture left her so tight that her back is suffering.  Or she has a fracture in her back... only an MRI would be able to identify that.  However, we don't think it is.  She isn't in constant pain when not working out.  And her pain is worse after taking time off because she gets tighter.

She stretches, she rolls, she ices, she heats, she takes omega's, drinks smoothies, shoots black and sour cherry juice, takes supplements, and works on her core.

She is fifteen.  How insane this all seems.

But I don't have anymore time to think about it.

I already see Beach flying high through the blue while we drive along the black below her.  All of us chasing the sky in our own way.