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Saturday 3rd August 2024

7908/20849
At the pool when it opened so we could get to the Rapid River before it got over crowded. My main memory of the last time we were here was going down this as a family and it being a lot of fun, but I think it was social distancing rules then and so we didn't get hampered by other lunatics failing to wait their turn or bother to try and keep the gaps. Ernie was still too scared to go on, unlike his brave 3 year old self, so Catie and me took it in turns to go on with Phoebe. But five times was enough for her, so we did other stuff, as the pools got ever more packed out.
We took it easy in the afternoon, but later Phoebe and me took a bike ride to search out Pokemon gyms and I played a bit of online poker. I only do things that start Poke now, which is great news for my wife. She loves being poked in the eye with a finger. Or so I assume.
A bit of drama in this fantasy world as there was a medical emergency in the next cabin and a distraught mum was calling an ambulance for her son. The ambulance seemed to take a long time to come, but when Catie offered her basic first aid skills, the lady told us that her mum was a nurse, so things were being covered.
It was a really horrible thing to witness, though much worse to experience of course and our kids were freaked out too. But we couldn't do anything to help and so carried on with our day. You are told to hug your kids tight when something like this happens to someone else, and of course you do (or I would if Phoebe would let me), but we should hug our kids tight anyway. The one you have today will not be the same in a year's time. Your forever losing a part of them, but the horror that they might go entirely, not to be replaced by a new version of themselves, is too much to contemplate and yet too vivid to ignore.
The kids played on an adventure playground as the ambulance went past. Soon we were distracted by Ernie going too high up on something and not being able to come down and losing his shit (he's like me in a lot of ways, though I think I would have been too cowardly to get up there in the first place) and Phoebe bravely taking big risks as she pushed herself to try stuff out. I worried that we'd need to call another
ambulance out. I worry about that most of the time though.


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