The sick cow

I am happy to report that I have finally discovered two downsides to owning a pool: bugs and rain.

As we all know, bugs love Georgia. Big bugs, little bugs, bugs that crawl, fly, creep, or all three at the same time, bugs that sting and those that bite, green bugs, brown bugs, red bugs, they're all very much at home in Georgia. And unless you're a squeamish yankee (and anyone not born and raised in the shade of a Georgia pine- "and that's home ya know"- is obviously a yankee), you don't pay them any mind. Or as those uppity yankees would say, you don't care. 

Needless to say, I do care. I don't like anything crawling, creeping, or buzzing anywhere near me. Granted, the past six years (six?! Six?? How did that happen?) have seen me mellow out a little. Roaches no longer send me flying up onto kitchen counters, and spiders just have me reaching for my flip flop. In fact, last year, when we had a roach fall out of an air vent on to the couch I was sitting on, I just egged Zoe on to eat it because I really was not in the mood to get up and look for our can of roach spray. I know. I have come a long way. A looong way. 

Anyway, all of this to let you know that when you own a pool, you become much more intimately connected to the lives and cycles of the local bug population. Our pest guy (yes, we have a pest guy. No, we are not gross, we just live in bug heaven) pointed this out to me when we first opened our pool. I was wondering why we had oodles of ants in our pool, and he replied that they got hot just like us and liked water too. I might have responded with not in my pool, to which mr. Pestman just laughed and told me that after the ants left we'd see Junebugs (check. Big, round, and brown), wasps (check again, both big and small), cicada killers (not sure but I think these are the enormous black spiky insects that I've been finding in our skimmer lately), and then, once fall hits, kudzu bugs. After one  summer, I am now also able to add spiders (mid to late august), ants again (after a hot dry spell), and, yes, frogs (anytime it rains). Although not bugs, they are gross (seeing how most of them are still alive when I catch them), but also strangely helpful, since they do eat as many of the bugs in the pool as they can manage before the chlorine sends them to the big lilypad in the sky. It's been one big biological experiment in my skimmer, people. 

The second downside is rain. Not rain per se, of course, although that does definitely mar one's ability to fully enjoy the pool, but the things one needs to do when it 's been raining a lot. This past weekend, we've had about ten inches of rain, and one of the rules of thumb when owning a pool is that one should not let the water get above the skimmer. It has something to do with the overflow that is attached to the skimmer. Or perhaps the ability of the skimmer to return water through the pump. Or perhaps it was something else together. Or our pool builder just loves the idea that all his new pool owners are out in the rain tending to their pool. At any rate, when your pool level gets too high, you want to drain some of it out by via the pump. You don't want to drain too much as you don't want to lose all your salt, and so the bottomline is that you will be outside in the rain for a considerable amount of time watching your pool and pushing buttons. If it rains a lot for long periods of time, and you have a salt water generator (or SWG for those 'in the know'), you might even hit the pool jackpot and find your salt levels so low you have to add a bag of salt to the pool and brush it out. In the rain. 

So yesterday, after three days of biblical rains, and two runs out to the pump to drain the pool, I realized my salt levels were so low my SWG was no longer working. At this point, the rain is coming down in sheets, the ground is completely saturated and as a result sports deep puddles of water, two of your neighbors need to get their sceptic tank drained, and all of your shoes are soaked through.  And it's just your luck that you need to go out and maintain the pool that you insisted on. The pool that you promised you would take care of...

So what does any self-respecting Dutch woman do? She does what generations of farmers with sick and pregnant cattle have done before her: she dons her waterproof riding hat, her wooden shoes, her impermeable raincoat and gets it done. She first drains the pool a few inches, and then drags a forty-pound bag of salt across the wet grass, makes sure it's evenly distributed along the deep end, and then brushes the pool until the salt has dissipated. Rain is running off the brim of her hat, down her back, and everything is wet, but still she keeps on going. 

And this would have sounded incredibly cool had her two boys not been standing in the kitchen, watching the entire spectacle from the cooled, dry inside of the house, all the while laughing at my outfit and taking pictures. Revenge, my dear readers, will be very sweet:)

P.s the odd looking planks were part of the fence project that husband-dear has since finished