Welcome to the desert

So I totally did not mean to leave you all hanging after my last wordless post.

Well, in all reality, I'm sure that none of you actually felt left hanging. I mean, between a very traumatizing attack on the world's most famous marathon, and a crazy, seemingly never-ending manhunt, I'm sure we all had other things on our mind than DC's challenge to figure out the meaning behind her three pictures. And, well, even if this had been the most normal of normal weeks, I highly doubt whether anyone was sitting around thinking to themselves that O Em Gee, DC better get her act together.

Let's just say that I don't like to leave people hanging.

So, to respond to all the comments: Yes! We are getting a pool. And not just any old above-ground pool, no, a bona fide in-ground, concrete vinyl-lined Grecian shaped pool. Yes, it's crazy, and we are possibly completely insane, but there you have it. A pool.

Now when we sat down with the pool designers, we considered every option possible: how much deck, what kind of deck, what kind of lights, how many, a diving board or a jumping rock, what kind of coping, what color, and a whole host of other things I never even thought about when I first thought a pool would be a good idea. I mean, did you know there are three kinds of cleaning robots? And at least four types of pumps? And twenty types of liners? And you have to make decisions about every. Single. One. Of. Them.
Remind me to never build my own home.

Anyway, one thing we definitely did not consider was the incredible mess our yard would turn in to. Obviously, we realized building a pool would involve digging, but somehow, we imagined the dirt would magically disappear. And the dumptrucks and backhoes would just fall from the heavens into our backyard every morning and disappear at the end of each workday. Instead, this past Monday a dumptruck and a backhoe appeared in our backyard and proceeded to not only dig a ridiculously large hole, but also leave mountains of red clay piled several feet high, and create yards and yards of deep, muddy trenches throughout what remains of our backyard, down the yard beside our house, and all the way to the street.

Personally, I don't mind. Every extra mound of clay signifies one step closer to a beautifully finished pool, and thinking about that makes it all OK. Husband-dear, on the other hand, takes a less light view of matters. With each pile of dirt hauled away, he sighs about sprinkler systems, sod, the fence, and a host of other matters that I, in my pool-induced euhoria have completely brushed aside. I mean, who needs sod when you have a pool deck? Or a sprinkler system when you have a pool full of crystal clear water? Clearly, husband-dear is a kill joy. Or, considering the fact that I have never seen a piece of sod or sprinkler pipe up close, while husband-dear turned that into a career prior to joining the military, he is possibly just a realist. I'll let you be the judge and share our current view from our back porch: Is it like the New Mexican desert I keep talking about? Or maybe not?