The winter that never ends

I so didn't mean to leave you all hanging after my wordless wednesday post two weeks ago. I really didn't. But I had two grant proposals and some minor drama involving a co-author to deal with, and so my poor little blog fell to the wayside. One day I will tell you all about my grant proposals and co-author drama, and knowing me, that will probably be in July. Next year. I mean, I haven't updated my picture albums since Christmas 2012, so to say I'm behind on life is an understatement.
Anyhow, I digress.

Several of the pictures I posed two weeks ago (which you can revisit here) showed copious amounts of snow and ice. And as I'm typing this, the temperatures are only just now peeping out of the twenties. Fahrenheit. That means that on this day, March 26, 2014, at 9:24am, it's still freezing. I can't even begin to tell you how completely abnormal this is. When I last posted, I was writing about the deep freeze we were facing. It was quite dramatic, I was on the phone with the Dutch news two days in a row, we had to deal with burst pipes, dying plants, and levels of car window scraping I haven't dealt with since my days in Germany. Once the temperatures soared into the low 50s once again, we assumed we were done with the craziness.

Oh no.
The first picture in the series was taken about two weeks after that first initial freeze. We had snow, y'all. Snow. Two inches of it. It started on a Tuesday, and didn't start to think about melting away until Thursday afternoon. It was nuts. My supervisor pretty much forbade me from coming into work on Tuesday, and with campus closed on Wednesday, I was safe and sound. But definitely baffled. Being the little workaholic that I am though, I went into work on Thursday, and thanks to that I can now attest to the fact that yes, those signs posted before bridges (the ones that say "caution, bridge ices before road) are right. I am also delighted to report that almost six years after wondering about the purpose of those very signs on this  blog, they are there for a reason. Fortunately, every single other driver in Georgia was too scared to get on the road (or stuck in the traffic jam to end all traffic jams), and so I just had fun testing the driving-on-ice skills I acquired in Germany.

And then, spring began, right?

Oh no. You see, the picture of my car covered in ice? That was taken another two weeks later, when Georgia was hit by an ice storm. Most people around here didn't even know what that was until they realized that the rain coming down was made up of pellets of ice.

Also, funny story there.
Ice, like rain, will fill up your pool. Who knew, I know, but there you have it. And as you all know from last summer's woes with rain and pools, you can't let a pool fill up above the liner, because the liner will pop out. And then DixieChick will have a heart attack. So ideally, one drains the pool a little when the water gets too high. It's an easy enough job - turn off the filter, set the system to "waste", turn the filter back on, and voila. Perfection. Or at least a pool that drains.
However, when it's ten below and there's ice coming down from the sky, one may not pay attention to the water level in the pool, and go to bed assuming all will be well.
Never assume. Especially during an ice storm.
Because, you see, ice does fill up your pool rather quickly, and with temperatures below freezing, the system won't let you turn off the filter (it's a nifty little safety thing called "freeze protect"). And guess what you need to do to set the system to "waste"? (hint: the answer is about ten lines up). Yep, you need to turn the filter off.

So there you are, it's six in the morning, ice is coming down in steady sheets, your pool level is dangerously close to the top of the liner, and you can't turn your filter off. What does any self-respecting woman do?
Well, I don't know.
I can tell you what I did, which was teach the kids a new series of very inventive cuss words, try to siphon the pool, which apparently doesn't work with an in-ground pool, and then as a last resort sob into husband-dear's voicemail (as he was away from his desk, as these things go) that our pool was going to overflow and we were going to have pay for a new liner and the world as we know it was going to end. (Don't judge, it's been a rough semester, y'all).

And once again husband-dear saved the day. Seriously, without him, I don't know what I would have done. Gotten a bucket and started draining the pool by hand I guess. No, he pointed out that our pool system, like all electrical systems, has a breaker. Yes, my twenty-two years of education have not been wasted at all. Not at all.
So anyway, husband-dear explained you could just flip the breaker instead of turning off the filter, switch the valve, and flip the breaker back. Now my image as an independent woman might have been saved had I been the one to do that. But no, unfortunately, that image is tainted for good. You see, by the time the husband reached me, I was on my way to work, cussing myself out for now being late for a meeting too. So instead my poor, underappreciated, hard-working spouse came home, drained the pool, and went back to work.

Can't help lovin' dat man o' mine!

So anyway, this is a very roundabout way to tell you all that I'm seriously done with winter and ready for spring. And summer. And vacation. Bring it on!

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

The pool that almost is

In lieu of a proper post, which is long overdue, I instead present you with a few pictures of our pool. No, it's not done yet. Yes, it should have been completely done tomorrow, even accounting for rain delay. But it's not and that's because we're apparently nicer than the average home builder, and therefore easier to convince that a delay is inevitable. I have tried plying them with cookies and cake, and I believe that husband-dear has a militarily inspired chewing out session scheduled for tomorrow. I don't think the pool builder knows yet.

At any rate, it should all be done by next week Wednesay. But don't start showing up with your floaties just yet...

Over koningen, stilzitten, en klompen

Natuurlijk ging ik iets diepzinnigs zeggen over de inhuldiging van Willem Alexander. Ik had zelfs het geweldige plan om dat op 30 April zelf te doen. Maar ja, net als mijn verjaardag valt Konningedag de laatste jaren tijdens de drukste periode van het jaar en dus kwam het er niet van.

Vandaag is het commencement, de voornamelijk lange afstudeer ceremonie, en dus de eerste keer in pak en beet drie weken dat ik niks anders doe dan zitten. Drie uur lang. En aangezien ik eindelijk ontdekt heb dat er een app is voor bloggen, heb ik nu eindelijk iets te doen. In plaats van zenuwachtig wiebelen en elke vijf minuten mijn 'hood' rechttrekken, kan ik nu gewoon bloggen. Wat een ontdekking. Straks ga ik commencement nog leuk vinden.

Dus. Koninginnedag. Of heette het deze keer al Koningsdag? Ik heb eigenlijk geen idee. En daarmee ben ik meteen aangekomen op wat ik eigenlijk wilde zeggen: Zo'n nieuwe koning is natuurlijk helemaal geweldig, maar nu hoor ik er weer een beetje minder bij daar in Nederland.

De inhuldiging was geweldig, de prinsesjes uber-schattig, Beatrix waardig maar ook lief, de voorstellingen tijdens de boottocht hadden me soms in tranen, en ik kan zelfs prima leven met "De dag die je wist dat zou komen". Desondanks weet ik nu al dat ik een van die irritante mensen ga zijn die maar niet kan wennen aan het woord Koningsdag, en die het over tien jaar nog steeds heeft over Koninging Beatrix, in plaats van prinses. Net als mijn oma dat vroeger deed met Juliana. Alleen doe ik het dan niet uit ouderdom en gewoontje, maar omdat in mijn dagelijks leven Nederland alleen maar in mijn hoofd aanwezig is, en mijn hoofd ondertussen een aantal jaren achterloopt. Ik hou de Nederlandse samenleving gewoon te weinig bij (en ben dus elke keer als ik hoor dat Rutte premier is verbaasd, ik bedoel, ik was net gewend aan Balkenende) om aan dit hele nieuwe koningsgebeuren net zo snel te wennen als alle andere Nederlanders. En dat is gewoon een beetje vreemd. Want if it walks like a duck, dan zou je verwachten dat het ook talks als een duck, en sja, dat wordt dus steeds minder. Ik tel de jaren af totdat ik een wereld-, of in ieder geval Nederland-vreemde expat ben. Of een halve duck zo u wilt.

Nu we het toch over watervogels hebben, laten we het eens over ons zwembad hebben. Dat echt steeds minder op een grote kuil lijkt, en steeds meer op een zwembad. Het beton is gestort, de leidingen zijn gelegd, en afgezien van het feit dat de leidingen voor ons sproei systeem geheel tegen de planning in zijn meebegraven, en dus weer opgegraven moeten worden, liggen we goed op schema. Klein nadeel is alleen dat onze tuin nu echt een grote rode klei rommel is, en je dus met geen mogelijkheid de tuin in kan zonder ontzettend vies te worden. De honden, en voornamelijk Shelby, zijn absoluut niet gecharmeerd van deze ontwikkeling. Niet alleen is de voortuin lang niet zo spannend als de achteruin met al haar puppy vrienden in aangrenzende tuinen, als ze een keer de achtertuin in mag, moet ze zich daarna onderwerpen aan een genante wasbeurt waar mevrouw niet van gediend is.

Gisteren wilde ik zelf de vooruitgang zelf eens van dichtbij zien, en stond ook voor de vraag wat ik in hemelsnaam aan kon dat niet een kilo klei mee naar binnen zou slepen. Alles met zolen is in feite uit den
boze, en om nou op blote voeten door de kletsnatte klei te struinen vond ik een beetje ver gaan. Wat dragen mensen die naar buiten moeten in de modder zoal? In een keer had ik het: klompen! Natuurlijk!

En zo kwam het dat mijn oude klompen, die al jaren ter decoratie in de woonlamer staan, in een keer weer aan het werk moesten. Ik zal u vertellen: ze werken perfect. Ik zakte niet weg, en er bleef geen spikkel klei aan de onderkant hangen. Die oude Nederlanders waren zo gek nog niet. Maar goed, ik heb ons 'zwembad in wording' dus goed kunnen inspecteren, en het wordt echt geweldig. Nou moet het alleen even ophouden met regenen.


Als u zich trouwens afvraagt waarom het merendeel van de foto's van mij op dit blog mij laten zien in pyjama, in mijn achtertuin, dat weet ik ook niet.