I had a really busy week with my friends, sports and school. But by the weekend my body said enough was enough and I ended up sick.

He said

The theme of spare vacation days to use up before the year’s end continued this week with me working Sunday and then, off Monday through Wednesday and then off again Friday & Saturday. It made for a very strange work week, but a very good week for relaxing which I surprisingly found I was needing. There has been a lot going on this fall both mentally and physically and you don’t know how much it is weighing on you, until you get some reduction to just how scheduled and busy your life feels. Work has been great—it has just been very busy. Emelia’s schedule while mostly taxied by Danielle, still keeps our spare moments quite structured. And, then there is having parents in Long Term Care and then a brother with a steady run of more serious health concerns. It all adds up and you don’t realize it, until you get some bit of slow.

The saving grace in all this not getting the best of me, has been being able to get so much saddle time riding the bike. I have said it before: aside from the obvious health & weight loss benefits cycling has brought me, the biggest benefit has easily been for mental health. Being able to put in my AirPods, crank some music and get out for an hour and a bit of riding daily does so much for my head-space! And given my current streak of 238 straight days on the bike and just 92 kms from crossing over 8,000 kms on the year (so far), I’ve accumulated a lot of mental balm this year. But, in the last couple of weeks with my vacation, I have really put a big, late year surge into that bank and it has felt great!

For Emelia, with the first Cheer Comp of the season out of the way, the focus has turned to tweaking from what feedback they got from the results. And, that work began in earnest last Sunday and continued through the practices this week on Tuesday and then, today. They, as early as last Sunday, were already making adjustments to their program and they look bent on improving on their performance and their results which is great to see. They already are off to better start this season than their start last season, so it will be interesting to see where this season takes them. But, if that wasn’t enough going on in her life this week, wrestling practices as they ready for the season started to take their place in Emelia’s schedule. Then, when you add in that she has a job and a work schedule – as well as – an ever-expanding social life, the girl seems to be go-go-gooooooo…

All of that finally caught up with her Saturday though… Emelia part way through the day Saturday started to complain that she wasn’t feeling so well. Having to work that night at Silver City (and really liking seeing her bank account grow), she went to work and tried to survive the shift. After Danielle & I got in a visit with Mom & Dad, we got the message from Emelia that they were letting her go home from work as she was just not feel well enough to be there. Danielle popped over, picked her up and had her home and in bed by 8pm last night. We were all in bed early last night, but Emelia obviously in the worse position of us all. But, she was officially out for the night at 11 pm and  wasn’t awake until 11am this morning. She managed to make it off to Cheer Practice today but as we type is back up in her room trying to rest and rejuvenate before the new week starts. Word is she feels a bit better tonight, so let’s hope that trend continues!

She said

This week has been absolute insanity. Work which has already been very busy with the planning of one of the biggest event on campus planned for today. Well things were already busy with more events added to Fall Preview Day that blew up when the team was pulled into an urgent meeting. The result of the meeting meant that an event that had been being in the planning stages for months was now suddenly changing. The university received noticed that a planned protest was going to happen on campus in the afternoon of our biggest recruiting event. The protest was planned to be peaceful but similar events at other universities had blown up and it at times not fully peaceful. Without going into great details these changes meant just about everything about the day had to change.

With incredible full university support, an insane amount of work and insanely long hours against all odds we pulled off the impossible. And with the hard work of all our staff the parents were none the wiser and the event was a roaring success. All the parent feedback we were receiving was that Western was hands-down the best open house event of any these parents had been to. Some of the parents had been to many other universities and Western was the last they had seen and all were just blown away. As a unit we are so grateful for so many helping us through was seemed like impossible odds. I banked about 30 hours of overtime alone this week. I wish I could take tomorrow off to sleep but work needs to continue.

John and Emelia were so supportive of the crazy hours and long days I had to pull off this week. Emelia of course is burning at both ends as well. She really had not fully recovered from her first competition before she was back to training, adding in wrestling practice, work, school and her social life. Friday was a PD day which resulted in basically Emelia moving into one of her best friends places for a few days. I am thinking that after very little sleep and a few of her friends battling the end of viruses meant she was pretty well guaranteed to end up sick. On Saturday she came home later morning from her friend Bree’s place. Very shortly after she was in bed and sleeping. After a few hours of sleep she woke up and started to get ready for work. Even as she was getting ready she said she was starting to really feel like garbage. She gave it a solid try but after 90 minutes at work she messaged she was feeling really sick, nauseous, muscle weakness and terrible body aches. She told her supervisor and they sent her home right away. We got her home, had a shower, and gave her meds to she went right to bed. After 12 hours of sleep she woke and was able to get to cheer training.

This week we are hoping is going to be a little less crazy. But in the middle of this we were able to visit Greg in the hospital, visit with Testza and the girls, see our BIL Shawn a few times and even a visit with Helen and Doug. So it was all about balance this crazy week.