Fear/Anxiety

It's late--admittedly not that late for me--but here I am posting some drivel to my dilapidated blog.

You may not remember, but I've had a string of narrow defeats at the Regional Cross Country Championships of late.

But this year, I've got five of the fastest 15 PCHS runners in history on the team (4 of them in the top 10), 2 guys who have run under 17 minutes for 5k, 1 just over 17, and two more under 18, plus my next two guys are right around 18:30. Last year, our scoring 5 ran an average time of 18:07 and missed qualifying for state by two points. Two weeks ago, without my number one guy, we ran an average time of 18:05 on the same course. We ran a scoring-runner average of 17:09 earlier this season (a school record), and we expect to be that fast again at the regional meet.

But...our region got tougher this year. There are no fewer than 4 teams in our region with at least 3 guys under 17 minutes. Plus, 4A powerhouse Liberty moved up to our region, and though we beat them in the season opener, they took 4th from our region at the Coronado Cougar Classic on the 18th. Even if our top runner had raced that week, he couldn't have moved us ahead of Liberty even if he had won the race!

There are six schools in our region who will have a scoring-runner average of 17:45 or better, and one of them will stay home. The race will be so close--again--that every point will really count for everyone. I suspect that Durango will win the region and that, probably, Palmer will take second, but the next four spots are really up in the air. Who knows which team will take 2nd and which will take 6th? It's impossible to say. Last year, spots 4, 5, and 6 were separated by only 3 points! I'd bet that this year places 3 through 6 are decided by less than 25 points.

I believe we can make it through, but we can't know until the 16th.

The end of a really bad day...

...and then I walked out to the parking lot, only to find my spot empty except for this:
















This is true irony -- not Alanis Morissette irony -- actual, dictionary-definition, textbook-example situational irony.

I, The Coach, did indeed find this beautiful example of situational irony in person though--fortunately--it was not my car.

Finding out the Hard Way

So, our 2-year-old has his first peanut butter sandwich. Consequently, we had the paramedics, some firemen, and a police officer at our house shortly thereafter.

Two ambulance rides, an overnight stay in the hospital, and a prescription for self-injecting epinephrine pens.

It's not like my being allergic to cats, tobacco, or pollen. I'll just get a headache or a runny nose. He'll die. I'm pretty sure I never understood how serious a peanut allergy was until it was my kid in the ambulance, covered from ankles to forehead in a red, hivy rash -- knowing that his throat, stomach, and lungs were having the same reaction simultaneously.

More than 1 in 20 kids have a food allergy that causes anaphalaxys, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphalaxys Network. And now my kid is one of them.

I fell a little bad saying this, but I wish he had just broken his leg like I did as a little kid. I eventually got over it. But this poisoned-peanut affliction? It will actually get worse with time. You can't develop a resistance to it. You just learn to stab yourself with the epi-pen and pray.

He'll never eat a Butterfinger. He'll never get to shape peanut butter cookie dough ith a potato smasher. He'll never shell peanuts at the ballpark. And the kicker for me is, he might not even get to be near people who do those things depending on his sensitivity.

I realize it's not the end of the world, but it's kind of hard to wrap your head around something that will last him longer than I've been alive.

Argh.