Hello sea cadets,
Did you all have a good weekend? Wasn’t the weather beautiful. Guess what I did... I went swimming, in the river Bann! I may be scared of small insects but put me in a wetsuit and I’m game for anything 😆 I call it my superhero cape 🦸🏻♀️ but being a superhero has many challenges.
Challenge 1: The outfit.
It’s been nearly 6 years since I last struggled my way into my superhero cape and having bought it when I was still at school it doesn’t quite fit how I remember it 🤦🏻♀️ That being said, 10 minutes and a bucket of sweat later I finally had the perfect outfit.
Challenge 2: Breathing.
Not going to lie breathing was a struggle! A wetsuit that was a size (or 3) too small plus a very tight life jacket, also bought many years ago, makes simple tasks pretty difficult.
Challenge 3: Getting the sidekicks ready.
Well if I thought my cape was hard to get on I was mistaken. Getting a 4 year old and a 2 year old suited proved to be a much more difficult task, even for Captain Wetsuit.
Challenge 3: Entering the water.
The temperature in the car read 22 degrees 😎 the water temperature... who knows because it was so cold all thermometers would have frozen solid instantly 🥶 well not really but it was very cold.
Challenge 4: Getting out of the water.
We had a great time jumping into the water, swimming about and floating on our backs. The problem came when I had to get myself out of the water and back onto the jetty again. Not a pretty picture considering I couldn’t breathe or move in my super tight wetsuit, I couldn’t feel my hand or feet from the freezing cold water and unfortunately strength is not one of my super powers! 🤦🏻♀️
Challenge 5: Getting the capes back off.
Little did I know that getting into the wetsuits was the easy part! At one stage I considered just keeping it on, forever but then I thought it was a little impractical for school and couldn’t decided what shoes would match so I persevered and succeeded.
All those challenges were absolutely worth the effort, especially when I saw how much fun my two little ones were having. They absolutely loved it and even asked if we could go back and do it all again tomorrow. They both conquered so many fears yesterday and went to bed extremely proud of themselves, as did I.
** You should never EVER go into the river unless you are supervised by an adult and there is life saving equipment around. We were at Drumaheglis Marina today where there is access to life saving equipment on the jetty, we all had life jackets on at all times and we had access to a boat should we have drifted too far. The water conditions were calm, there was very little flow and no others boats were out at the time we were. We also had people in and out of the water supervising us so we had taken all safety precautions we could.**
Have you ever done anything like this? Have you ever done anything a little scary, a little difficult or a little out of your comfort zone? How did you feel after? I bet your were so glad you pushed yourself and I bet your parents were even more proud of you than you!
This is how you might feel when you think of going to secondary school but when feelings like that arise remember the times you did something scary before and how fantastic you felt after. If that doesn’t work just picture me floating in the River Bann with my wetsuit and life jacket on. If nothing else it’ll make you laugh for a minute.
I hope you have all been thinking carefully about your top tips list for enjoying primary school and remember to email your advice to me before Wednesday of this week.
Chat soon
Captain Wetsuit
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