One negative result of being a dual income family is that when school is out you have to get 'coverage' for your kids. A couple weeks ago we sat down to figure out what that would look like with our parents and got the majority of the schedule hashed out. There were a couple days where we couldn't get anyone in, and one of those days happened to be the second day of their summer vacation: This past Monday.
So Monday afternoon, after Lily and I went for a nice walk through the neighborhood, I decided to get the pool fired up. The "pool" is one of those $50 - 60 Toys 'r' Us jobbies where you inflate the rings. It's maybe 6' in diameter. I pulled it out of the bag and inspected it for damage.Two weeks prior I'd driven Emma to the bus stop and heard this bizarre "Whooshing" noise. It sounded like nothing so much as a strong gale force wind blowing right outside my window. But it disappeared whenever I stopped the car. So I got out to look.
Under the front bumper, wedged beneath the front of my car, was the plastic bag with the pool inside it. I stuffed it in the trunk of my car and knew there'd be issues.So I inspected the pool for damage and there, at the bottom, were three pea sized holes. Dammit. I used to have a patch kit, but I must have thrown it away. I looked for anything that might fix the hole and eventually settled on packing tape. Because of course that will work.
But the GENIUS idea I came up with was to fill the even smaller baby pool (we take it to the beach so Lily has water to play in that won't drag her out to see if we turn our backs) on top of the tape, then fill the bigger pool and hope that the weight of the little pool on top of the tape would seal it.And it sorta did...at least until the bigger pool got SO full that the baby pool started to float.
So then I had the genius idea of filling the baby pool even MORE because then it would be weighted down and not float. The stress of the extra weight strained the seams of the baby pool which sprung a leak and began slowly losing air.
It was a goddamned disaster at the amusement park...BUT...Lily came out and played in it anyway, and if the leak was slow enough to make the sides sag...at least it stayed together until the end of the day, because...
...Emma was
doing volunteer work at Leslie's company. This involved lots of work
with animals. Collecting eggs, milking chickens, shearing the horses,
etc. I'm a little unclear on the details, but she's doing it all
summer, and loving it.BUT...day 1 (that very same Monday) she came home with very sore feet because we had wanted her to try the first day with her tennis shoes and then tell us what sort of work boots she might want. (We'd gotten wind that the other kids were wearing duck boots and Emma was skeptical.)
So she wore her shoes (which were apparently too tight) all day and ended up with very sore little tiny feet.
And at the end of her long day, I told her to take off her shoes and her socks and just dip them into the cold water of the slowly slumping husk of the concentric fun zone I'd stupidly constructed for Lily.
We'll buy a new pool for Lily.
And Emma had seen her fellow volunteers wearing their duck boots and decided she too would get duck boots...and in her size...and so we went to LLBean and bought her duck boots...no more foot soaking required, perhaps. Also...GENIUS!
The End.
