going with whatever moves me

That was my theme for the day. Get up and swim? Get up and bike? Get up and read? Get up and go back to sleep? Sleep in? I went to bed on Saturday night determined not to have a plan for Sunday morning and to do whatever I felt like doing. Whenever I woke up. No alarm. No agenda. Not the norm for me.
Annoyingly, I woke up around 7:00 a.m. anyway. Geez. It wasn't because the sun was shining brightly through the window in my bedroom. Nope. It was rainy and dreary outside so I rolled back over in hopes of sleeping at least a little longer. No real luck there so I finally allowed myself to get out of bed. And that's when I spied by bathing suit and could only think of one thing - Barton Springs. I honestly thought that it was colder outside than it was, which would have made the springs feel toasty. No such luck. It was pretty mild and the springs felt a little nippy at first but after a length in the clear green water I felt comfortable.
And fast. Even though I wasn't working on being fast. I was just trying to stretch and be long and think about my arms pulling all the way through the water. But somehow that translated to some speed - I think my body was trying to warm up! Did about 3.5 laps - down and back, not too sure of the distance, but I didn't care. I was in it for fun today and not for a serious workout. And I was swimming with fish! And I didn't freak out. As my family knows, my love for the water doesn't necessarily translate into an intrigue of knowing what is in the water with me. In fact, I'd really rather not know. But today not seeing the fish wasn't an option. There were two huge schools of them. One near the diving area and the other near the floats at the opposite end. And they didn't seem to be bothered by me and I didn't let myself be bothered by them. A peaceful co-existence. How nice.
What a lovely way to start the day. Doing one of my favorite things - swimming. In one of my favorite places - Barton Springs. What a treat to have this place here in Austin. Seriously, it's by far one of the things that I love most about Austin. For those of you who have never seen it, here are some depictions of it by an Austin artist, Cindy Stapper (she also painted the other picture in this entry) :

Yes, it's this beautiful. And I'm excited that CDA training will plunge me into it more often (pun intended).