Two weeks ago our swimming pool looked a lot like something Shrek would bathe in. The water was a deep brown color, and the only things swimming in it were frogs and mosquitos. <\/p>\n

We didn’t get around to opening the pool at all last year. I’m not a guy who generally “puts down my foot” on things like this, but I told my opinion — if we didn’t open the pool this year, we should just get rid of it. The hundreds of dollars we put in to chemicals each summer would pay for lots and lots of trips to the Community Center’s pool. Just sayin’.<\/p>\n

Susan was bound and determined to get the pool swimmable this year. I told her I wouldn’t take the lead, but I’d help when needed. The weekend before last we spent several hours sucking the muck out of the pool. We didn’t cover the pool last fall, which meant when all the leaves fell off the trees, they landed in the pool and decomposed, turning into a brown, yucky mess. Susan used the vacuum while I stood in the center of the cesspool, stirring gunk to the top and occasionally coming up to have mosquito larvae removed from my person. Blech.<\/p>\n

This past weekend, the pool began showing signs of life. With a few more scrubbings and back washings, the murky brown water was replaced with a cloudy green, which eventually transformed into a slightly less cloudy blue. It’s not crystal clear, but it was good enough to swim in. And we did.<\/p>\n

Susan continued to vacuum for a bit while I used one of the kids’ goggles to skim the bottom of the pool, looking for rogue leaves. Mason (with no life jacket) and Morgan (with one) swam around in circles and had a blast, complaining only when one would splash the other (“He got me wet! In the pool!”). <\/p>\n

Sorry Community Center, we won’t be visiting any time soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago our swimming pool looked a lot like something Shrek would bathe in. The water was a deep brown color, and the only things swimming in it were frogs and mosquitos. We didn’t get around to opening the pool at all last year. I’m not a guy who generally “puts down my foot” on things like this, but I told my opinion — if we didn’t open the pool this year, we should just get rid of it. The hundreds of dollars we put in to chemicals each summer would pay for lots and lots of trips to… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}