Tomorrow we hit the road. It is vacation time, Virginia Beach bound. I spent most of the day today getting a bunch of last minute things done at work to be ready for being gone more than a week, but we are set. Stuff is packed and loaded, reservations are made, cats are taken care of, already have gas in the van. The plan is to get up early tomorrow, leave the kids in their pjs, throw all the toothbrushes and things in the van, be gone by 4:30 am, and get to Roanoke by late afternoon.

I finally went to see the doctor today about the lump on my shin, which has not gone down in the least in the past week. He was concerned it was infected so he put me on a week of antibiotics, and tried to drain it but not much of anything came out. And I have two stitches because of that. He wants to see me in a week again, but we’ll be gone so it’ll be two weeks. I played softball with shin guards on this evening. I didn’t get hit by anything but we were very shorthanded due to VBS and vacations and such, so we only had 7 players at game time. The other team loaned us a player so we could play the game, but we also had almost nobody playing where they normally would, and the best players were gone, so we got shellacked 20-2 but it wasn’t as close as that. That score was for 3 innings of play.

The week was dominated, at least at first, by the lingering effect of the softball game on Tuesday. We did well, maybe our best game of the year, and even played 2 extra innings before finally losing 12-11. But a couple innings in, I took a hard liner off the shin (the first comebacker this year that I haven’t caught…it was too low) just above the ankle. I was able to throw the guy out at first base, and pitched the rest of the game (unlike last week) but later on and overnight it started to swell up like crazy. I kept taking Motrin and putting ice on it, but the swelling was all down my ankle and foot and up the shin and calf, especially the giant lump where the ball had hit. Anyway, that immediately cast doubt on my ability to run the Kalamazoo Klassic 10k, which I’d paid for a few weeks ago and was planning to run with Julia. We were coming up to Michigan for Ryan’s graduation party on Saturday, and I’d planned to run it in the morning, but a few days before the party and the race I was still hobbling. Beth wanted me to go to a doctor but I didn’t think there’d be anything for him to tell me except yes, it’s a bad bruise, stay off it, elevate it, ice it, take motrin….Anyway, I decided to make it a game day decision. We all came up to Kalamazoo Friday after I got out of work, and stayed overnight at the Hampton on 9th Street. I picked up Julia (and her friend Luisa) in the morning Saturday, but I didn’t know until after the race had actually started whether I’d be able to run it. But it wasn’t very painful during the race, and I finished in 54:51, good for 139th place. Beat the girls by 10 minutes. But Julia won 2nd place in her age group. Afterwards, we went to tend to Becky’s grave before hitting the party, after which we had some time to kill before dinner so we drove around the county roads Beth and I used to know back in the days. After dinner we headed home. Sunday was a pretty quiet day, for Father’s Day Beth and the kids got me a hammock with a hammock stand for the backyard, which is awesome, but I spent pretty much all afternoon working on repairing the camper screen and (the big one) deep cleaning the minivan. Getting down into the crevasses and getting out the magic erasers for all the grubby stuff on the door handles and whatnot. Getting ready for the big trip east on Friday.
Also during the week, the girls came home from camp. Missy, as usual, loved it (this is her 3rd girls-only camp in a row) but Natalie not so much. Seems camp really isn’t her thing.