Sorry for the lazy title, but it’s late and I’m tired.
As of last week, I’ve made more blog posts this year than last year, and I’m on track to beat 2020 as well. I suppose that’s a plus. The experts tell me regular posting is a good thing, so I’ll keep up with it. My problem is that I’m very impatient, and I want instant results. And that’s just not going to happen. Objectively, I know that. Emotionally? Well, that’s something else entirely.
The pool is now open at Wayfarer’s Refuge. We got a nice above-ground pool not long after we moved here and enjoyed it quite a bit. Keeping it up has been problematic, to say the least. Fireworks season makes it tough to keep the chemicals up. The pumps that come with most pools don’t seem to do a great job of filtering the water. We took it down the first two winters. Then we decided to try winterizing it so we wouldn’t have to drain and refill it.
That was the year it got down to 11 degrees for a few days. We ended up with over a foot of ice in the pool.
At one point, someone backed into the side of the pool with our mower, slicing a nice hole in it with the mower’s hitch plate. We used some of that miracle tape As Seen on TV ™ to patch the hole, and it worked okay. We always had a little dribble from the patch (we put the tape on both sides of the liner). It probably would have worked better if we’d drained the water just a little more and cleaned the liner better.
We took it down last fall after we let the magic smoke out of the pump (meaning it burned out and quit working in the middle of the season) and started talking about whether we’d replace it this year. Or maybe the pump died in 2020? I can’t recall now, but it seems like maybe it was ’20 because the prices on replacement pumps were just outrageous at the time, and I think that was because of COVID.
At any rate, I found an easy-set-type pool last week in Aldi for about seventy bucks, so that’s what we’ve got. It’s only eight feet across at the top and about 30 inches deep, which really is just about perfect for Grandson. This should get us by for a couple of summers, and maybe when we’re ready to replace this one, we can afford a bigger one.
And wouldn’t you know it? Grandson didn’t even get in the water this week. I did Sunday after mowing, and again later in the week. It’s just deep enough for me to sit on the bottom and rest my head on the air ring. Pretty relaxing.
The animals seem to be doing a little better. No regressive behavior, anyway. I think they do miss their buddy though. Youngest Daughter headed off to camp for the next three weeks, so she’ll stay busy. I’ve only dreamt about Shadow once, but I was certain I felt her jump up on the bed earlier this week. I know it wasn’t Sif because I moved my foot over and didn’t feel a cat. I’ve caught…glimpses…of movement too, like stuff just out of the corner of my eye. Who knows? I’m sure it all has nothing to do with my new paranormal story.
Reading
I did manage to finish Butcher’s Fool Moon last week; I just didn’t want to write about it in the middle of a sad post about Shadow. Loved the story, and I’m definitely going to work on reading the rest of the series.
I picked up Jimmy Buffett’s A Salty Piece of Land, a 2004 novel about a character originally introduced in Tales from Margaritaville. I think I’ve read that one, though I can’t remember much about it. I’ve also read his memoir A Pirate Looks at Fifty, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I feel like I tried to read Where is Joe Merchant? but couldn’t quite get into it.
Writing
I’m about 5,000 words into the paranormal story I started last week. That’s a good thing, right?
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