T minus 28 and 27 days.      Dear 7 followers,

I am sure by now you are all in a state of complete and utter panic, having checked back here countless times yesterday and perhaps even late into the night, waiting anxiously, anxiously for an update.  Knowing it was my Open Water Swim Day.  Perhaps you even considered calling out the coast guard having not heard from me all day.  Well, dear followers, that panicky feeling you have, that pit in the bottom of your stomach, that dread in your heart,  multiply it by fifty and you get a rough approximation of how I felt yesterday heading into Long Island Sound.  With water temperatures hovering around minus 12 degrees, gargantuan pieces of black seaweed wrapping me in their slimy embrace and questionable forms of sea life coming out to nibble /  greet me I made myself one with the ocean.
Or, more accurately, I closed my eyes, plugged my nose, tried to shut out the screaming in my head and suffered through exactly twenty minutes (and not one second more) of water torture.

Today is a well deserved mental health day.