Last Week of Summer???

Seems early, right??  Sadly, this is Emma's last week of summer vacation before she starts high school!!  The charter school is not part of our school district, and therefore sets its own schedule, and its schedule starts next week for freshman.  She has her walk thru, pictures, gets her schedule and books on Monday. Tues - Fri is freshman orientation where she's linked up with a senior and 11 other freshman.  They spend the 4 days doing activities to get acquainted with the campus, lockers, routines, meet other kids, etc. The idea is that when real school starts the following week, all the nerves and jitters of being on a new campus where they don't know what's where or who's who will be gone. 

This week she's finishing up an on line course she opted to do this summer to start off high school with having already earned 5 credits.  Takes about 3-4 hours to do 2 lessons, and she had to do 40 to complete the course. She's got about 8 left to finish up.  She's been pretty good about staying on track, even when we were in Disneyland, she worked on them at the hotel during the rest of the families nap time.  Her only real break has been this past week when we were camping and had no internet.

These next pics are randomly tossed into this post, because I can...from the state fair.

 Sophie is a pro rib eater....and goat whisperer.

Speaking of camping...what  a needed escape that was!  Without going into too much detail, that "wonky heart" thing that my heart sometimes does, especially in heat (my 2 dnf's at diablo 50k were due to this) reared up with a vengeance.  Instead of once or twice a week, it was every 5-10 beats, around the clock, for about 2 weeks. After an ER visit, tests, cardiologist, dr, the general thought is stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, low potassium and iron came together to create the perfect storm of PVC's (premature ventricular contractions).  Not overly concerned, lots of people have them all the time and don't even know. I feel every single one, and have for as long as I can remember into my childhood.   I've mentioned the wonky heart here on the blog over the years, but had never seen a dr for it until this past month when things got crazy.  It was nice, after a lifetime of feeling something weird, to have a name for what's happening. It was also kind of neat, in a twisted way, for Brian to be able to watch the EKG and see them happen.  I could hold  a finger up when it happened and he could see the extra beat and then a pause of beats on the monitor.

So anyway, back to camping....I started on some meds to help with the anxiety, which will hopefully help with sleep eventually, an Iron supplement, and bananas, and after a week away from life, out in the woods....and guess what??  I'm back to just an occasional PVC once or twice a day, like normal.  There's still a few tests and echocardiogram just to cover all basis coming up, but things feel back to normal.  Camping was great. We slept in way later than normal, swam and floated, fished and caught nothing, napped, read, hammock-ed, played games, campfired....and then started over the next day doing about the same thing.  It was right about 90 everyday. Jumped up into the 100's the day we were leaving, so we packed up everything the night before and got out of dodge early the last day to void the heat. 

So....that about catches you up on life.  Em starts school, first football game it Aug 13th which starts our Friday night lights season (I love high school football games!!)  Sophie and Myles start the 22cd. My goal is to be involved with school stuff....but it's become clear I need to get back to my alone time on the mountain to destress and find my happy place : ) Last year I was at the school almost daily volunteering, so I need to find  a better balance this coming year.