How Many Extension Cords Does It Take To Fill Up A Pool?

This is not a math quiz.

It’s about a matter of necessity or what you have to do when you can’t turn on a spigot with access to an unlimited water supply (although we technically do – from the mountains). Resources are precious out here, regulated not by the water company but by Mother Nature.

Winter is done and somehow we’ve skipped by spring rather quickly and belly-flopped straight into a summertime heat advisory. Today was in the nineties with the prediction tomorrow being the same or higher.

Not being content to wallow in the livestock watering trough I’d bought in the stead of my failed pool venture of last year, I found myself digging through the dust-laden shelves in search of the plastic heap that was The Pool. Or rather, I asked my husband to find it.

The thing requires approximately two-hundred-thousand gallons of water to fill it which is problem when the springs have suddenly dried up or at least the rate of flow has dramatically decreased because of said heat-wave.

You have to have sense of determination around here at times.

We have two springs at the top of the hill. The original and The Squitzer as we call it after my husband broke some rock away when we were digging it and excitedly exclaimed “look at this – we have a squitzer”!

The water was literally squirting out of a crack in the bedrock under pressure. It was a nice sight. It fills up faster than the original but we haven’t had to use it over the winter months and I needed the water from both springs to fill the pool to capacity.

This meant I had to hunt for an extra thousand or so feet of extension cord to reach the top of the hill because The Squitzer required the pump. We can’t siphon it because it’s sunk deeper into the ground, unlike the other spring.

After about an hour of locating cord and lugging it up the hill, I had to dredge the damned spring. Once a year we clean out months of accumulated clay and debris from trees that’s fallen in and decayed.

This is a lot of work to fill up a pool but it’s freakin’ ninety-plus degrees; about two-hundred in front of our trailer. Even the cats have retreated into the “basement” of the fifth wheel to sleep through the worst of the heat of the day at this point.

After the dredging, I have to pump the dirty residual water out of the hole lest I create a mud pit rather than a pool. I want pristine water. Sparkling, shimmering, bug-free with no pine cones floating around. And warm, dammit.

I dragged the blue-vinyl mass into the brush and found a sunny spot and spread it out. I inflated the ring after I cleared the spot of branches and pine cones.

Now I needed power. Not a problem thanks to good ‘0l Mr. Sun and our solar power system.  I made my fiftieth trip up to the top of the hill carefully checking the connections of the two-thousand feet of extension cord, placed the pump in the now pristine waters of The Squizter and plugged it in.

Believe it or not – it worked.

I ran two miles back down the hill for the six-hundredth time to the pool in the wilderness and found, to my delight, that water was coursing out of the hose into the pool.

To the best of my calculations it will have taken about two-hundred thousand feet of extension cord, five-hundred thousand gallons of spring water and one week to fill the pool up.

Then I can recreate.

The Garage Sale

This is based on a true story.

The Garage Sale

Here’s a cautionary tale
A five year old, some change, a sale
The neighbors had way too much stuff
Seems she didn’t have enough
Mom and Dad were sleeping in
The day was young for Deon Lynn
Asked her dozing Mom and Dad
Could she borrow just a tad
Took the money went and shopped
Got some more and didn’t stop
Back and forth between two homes
Deon with her cash did roam
Bought up all the brickabrack
In a corner made a stack
She was proud of her good taste
With great care her stash she placed
When her parents did arise
They were in for a surprise
In the corner of the room
Deon’s stash shown in the gloom
Fruit arrangements painted bright
So gaudy they emitted light
Everything no one desired
Our child happily acquired
Destination curb no more
Now it sits behind our door
The crowning glory of the lot
Was a velvet painted clock
Next to this amazing piece
Plastic bird that had no fleece
Centerpieces blinding flowers
There they sat they now were ours
Deon beamed she was so proud
Everything she bought was loud
We thought fast we had to act
How to deal with this with tact
Course we told her it looked great
It was time to decorate
To her playhouse it all went
Where its time with us was spent
Her taste improved as she got older
Beauty lies with the beholder

Fishing Is Like Threading A Needle

Catching a fish is not a sure thing for me because it seems as if anything that can go wrong, will.

Think about it: you have to attach a super thin, almost invisible line to a skinny, long pole then tie a hook onto the end with fingers way too big for the job. Then you have to squeeze a piece of lead onto it without dropping the tiny chunk of metal into the dirt. Then you have to add a float.

That involves catching the now wildly swinging invisible line with an extremely sharp hook on the end that is now trying to wrap itself around the end of your pole fifty times when you’re not looking, and wrapping it several times around the hooky thingy on the float. Now it’s time to add the bait.

Keep in mind that all the while, you’re being buzzed by horseflies and mosquitoes because you left the repellent in the car next to the tackle box. The fish bucket is next to the tackle box.

After debating whether or not to put down the pole and go back to the car for everything you forgot, you decide instead, to use a rock to dispatch the fish if you catch one. You thread the worm onto the hook trying not to spear your finger in the process.

Finally – you’re locked and loaded. Time to cast.

You release the line while grasping the portion on the pole that is now loose, you bring your arm back – and cast. Unfortunately a bush has grown unexpectedly behind you and you have now caught it.

You can practically hear the fish laughing at you then realize it’s your husband.

As you swat at the cloud of gnats that are circling your face, a sandwich is beginning to sound appealing but one more try. This time you manage to land the lure halfway across the river but the current quickly routes it directly towards a sunken tree trunk.

You frantically reel it in as it approaches the obstacle but it’s too late. The hook does it’s job well – it has now caught an entire tree. Just a quick tug will jerk it free and – the line breaks. All that is left is a tangled mass of spiderweb-thin nylon and the float.

You could barely thread the hook but somehow, what’s left of the line has spontaneously tied itself into thirty different boating knots. This is a sign, you think.

You put down the pole and prepare to go grab that sandwich when your friend casually meanders up with his pole ready to go, casts it perfectly, and snags a trout within seconds. He effortlessly reels it in, kills it, cleans it and wanders off to have his dinner.

You just stand there with your ball of filament and stare.

Metal Detecting – A Rhyme

Got myself a gold detector
Precious metals a collector
Up and down the hills I’ll go
If it’s summer or it’s snow
Digging here and digging there
Garbage buried everywhere
Beeps all sound the same to me
Have to shovel just to see
Is it treasure is it trash
Maybe someone’s secret stash
Fifty bullets rusty nails
Takes the wind out of my sails
Maybe someday I’ll find gold
But for now it’s something old

Hermits

Today, my husband and I took turns peeking suspiciously out our closed curtains to see if the neighbors had fixed their broken-down truck which stood near the entrance to our property.

Neither of us wanted to go outside and expose ourselves to the perceived scrutiny of one of the men who stood around the vehicle with its lid propped open. You see, we’d had this place to ourselves until “they” moved in about a year ago and to this day, we are about as anti-social as they come.

Why didn’t they tow the truck the rest of the way up the hill to their property where all the tools were? Why leave the truck out in the “open” where we could watch every move they made? Didn’t it bother them? Is this a cultural thing?

I hope you get that I’m talking tongue-in-cheek

We understand the psychology of social anxiety. Some of us are more introverted than others and have the perception that we are different and might somehow be unliked by others; in this case – the locals.

We get that it’s our own insecurities and we joke about it freely.

The truth is, however, that we want to be left alone. We want our privacy and if a seven-foot tall fence was in our budget, you better believe we’d have one by now.

Human relationships are the most important part of life but every time our neighbor (Lawnmower Man) starts up his Sears Special, we find ourselves halfway hoping he’ll run over a really big branch that will stop the machine in its tracks – at least temporarily. Although I’ve chatted with him a few times, I’ve always left the conversation wanting to run away as fast as I can.

He has a lot of plans for his property but his property is smack next to ours and every time we hear the chainsaw start up, we cringe and hit the real estate ads. I want to be in control of when I socialize and watching my neighbor cut the grass right up to my property line thirty feet away every other day unnerves me.

We moved to the country for solitude.

Where we came from, our neighbor’s doorstep was two-hundred feet from our own and I was not allowed to plant a single bush for privacy because the HOA said we couldn’t.

One day I set up a carnival-like play area for my then youngster with bean bag throwing, an alien bubble-making tub, and other fun stuff. The power-hungry president of the HOA showed up on my doorstep to point out that the driveways were not designated for such use.

I took the matter into my own hands and ended up uncovering so much corruption the whole organization had to be overturned.

This history is, in part, why we are so reclusive.

Hemmed in and getting panicky, we are carefully planning ahead to ensure we have a buffer around our new home when the time comes – lots of acreage surrounding ground zero – our front door.

This evening, we finally heard the thunderous rumbling of our neighbor’s V-8 and we rushed to the blackout curtains to take a peek. The hood was down – this was good. All tools were put away. Almost time to skulk out from beneath our rock and sprint to the car for the pop.

But alas, the man and his accomplices decided to gather around the truck to chew the straw for another hour.

Cornhole and the alien bubble-making booth will have to wait until tomorrow 🙂

 

Endcap Entertainment

Impulse-buy sports.

Since we can’t recreate away from home, our family’s been looking for new ways to keep busy here on our property. The only games we had were Uno and Pass The Pigs which were getting old.

Fortunately we have room outside to spread out so we looked for outdoor diversions.

A trip to the grocery store was the answer.

Bowling.

We found the giant bowling set in a display at the end of the Haircare isle. With fat, two-foot-tall plastic pins and a hollow ball, it is not to be confused with yard bowling.

It is an illegitimate game with implied rules and is guaranteed to be broken or forgotten about within twenty-four hours of purchase unless you consider the potential for creative destruction.

I couldn’t get the pins to stand up so I filled the bottoms with dirt making it impossible to knock them over with the shell that was the ball. After attempting to pack it, too, full of dirt with unsatisfactory results, I hung the pins from a tree and we threw rocks at them instead.

They’ve been sitting in the shed ever since except that I cut the bowling ball in half and used it for a smelting furnace mold.

Horseshoes – A short story.

My husband picked up the horseshoes game a few weeks ago and we set it up without reading the instructions as per protocol. We positioned the stakes as far apart as we figured we could throw then lobbed the shoes.

If not for the overhead screen of branches the game might have lasted.

All of the shoes, having been knocked off their trajectories, eventually ended up in the nearby bushes next to last-year’s lost cache of slingshot balls where they will remain until tick season is over.

Note to cat owners: Check the pits before gameplay.

Badminton – with an emphasis on bad.

Yesterday we picked up a badminton set, or rather, four racquets and eight shuttlecocks. Most of the family outdoor play equipment had sold out so there weren’t any full sets left on the shelf.

During the ten whole minutes we spent running around flailing at the birdie, we learned this sport is best played away from equipment, rocks and solar panels. My husband speculated that getting a net would also improve our game. Makes perfect sense.

Still, it beats Yellow Jacket Tennis – What is Black and Yellow and Flies All Over?.

Wiffleball – AKA long distance running.

This was another endcap special at Safeway. They were on sale at two for the price of one so I grabbed two.

Play involves mostly running after the ball which inevitably ends up in the bushes next to the horseshoes and the slingshot balls.

If you have an overly enthusiastic five-year-old who thinks running after a ball is the next best thing to ice cream, you can save a lot of energy.

Cornhole – Beanbags gone professional.

Cornhole came home the same day as the badminton set. I’d never heard of it.

It’s beanbags – outdoor beanbags.

It may be a professional sport according to the words emblazoned on the panels with the holes in them. I’ll have to check Youtube to see if it’s true.

My husband says I’m a shark and that I should play professionally. I have a hard time believing that. Maybe the hopscotch I played as a kid is finally paying off.

Thankfully, beanbags don’t roll.

Next week we get a pool.

 

 

Chasing Bridgette

Bridgette is my husband’s other woman.

I’m not even jealous because she’s a part of our family. She’s heavier than me but stronger and she’s willing to take the garbage out. Unfortunately she’s been sitting in one spot for over a year now.

You might say she’s lazy but Bridgette is our 1986 Ford F-250 pickup truck and my husband is very sentimental about her. She might need a new engine. We’ll see.

My husband acquired her in a moving-out deal and she pulled us and our trailer from our old to our new home and throughout our three-month journey in-between in 2017. Bridgette The Truck

To me she has a personality – she reminds me of a horse.

That summer, she threw a shoe (got a flat), leaving us to camp on the side of the road for three days while the tire store put seven hundred dollars into matching replacements and a rim . She lost her brights right after we pulled onto the freeway in torrential rain on our final journey over the mountains and across the state to our new home. I had to drive the whole night with the low-beams on.

Her driver’s side window wouldn’t roll up that night and we had to pull out the door panel in order to manually push the glass up so I wouldn’t freeze for the drive.

We were told by her owner that she had a hole in her front gas tank and to not fill it up too much or it would leak. Her defrost was broken, and her four-wheel drive mechanism busted the first winter we lived here leaving us to walk and/or push her through the slightest of slippery conditions.

But we love her. Especially my husband.

That’s why we’re contemplating putting so much cash into replacing the engine.  We had the other repairs done last year before catastrophe hit and we limped her home for the wait.

Our driveway recently dried up enough for someone to come and get her so we called the repair shop a couple of days ago and made arrangements for an inspection. This morning we called the tow company.

When he arrived, I told the driver I was writing about it so he took the time to describe how a vehicle is secured as he hooked her up. He backed up and slid brackets under the tires before hoisting the rear end up then wrapped two chains around both axels to keep the truck from “jumping” out on the bumps.

Bridgette has a manual four-wheel drive lock so he disengaged it from the drive train so as not to drag her to town. He wrapped the driver’s seatbelt around the steering wheel at the top and locked it into place to keep the wheels facing forward. He stuck red lights onto Bridgette’s hood that complimented her running lights quite nicely.

The driver asked us if they were expected in town, we said “yes”, and off he went with our beloved beast.

Then we called and found out the shop was closed. What if there was no place to park the truck? What about the keys?

We freaked out and jumped into our car and sped after Bridgette.

Down the hill we went and sure enough, we could see the white speck that is Bridgette about a mile ahead of us on the straightaway towards town. Trying not to speed, we caught up to her at a railroad crossing a couple of blocks away from her destination.

The driver was positioning Bridgette in a vacant spot behind the shop by the time we’d parked and I hurried over to explain but there was a key drop-box and it really wasn’t a big deal after all. I thanked him for putting up with my incessant talking and picture taking and we left her to wait for her turn on the lift.

What we do depends on the estimated grand total – repair or not?

I’m willing to have another woman around as long as she sleeps outside.

Lawnmower Man

He moved out to the country just to cut it down and tame it
Should have bought a condo and had someone else maintain it
With chainsaws, mowers, chippers, tillers, every shape and size
He’s here to stay he’s clearing the way it’s time to colonize
At six am we hear the roar he’s got the chipper chipping
Another tree he’s on a spree the landscape he is stripping
He has big plans with his bare hands he’ll mold it to his taste
A cul-de-sac and traffic lights not one inch left to waste
I wonder why he chose to live in natures splendid glory
The turkeys, deer, the wolves and cats this was their territory
When we arrived before his time ’twas tranquil and so soothing
Its time to go we like things slow we’re packing up and moving

The Long Long Long Driveway

It is a buffer between us and anyone who isn’t hell bent on visiting us.

The postal service won’t drive up after that one time they dared and left us a note saying “never again”.

The UPS driver delivers but only in summer. The first few times he drove up the easement, we could hear the overhanging branches scraping along the sheet metal shell of the box truck. He finally asked us to cut the trees back but we still know he’s coming before we see him because of the rivet-busting potholes.

The route is dusty in the summer, clogged with heavy snow and slush in the winter and becomes a bog in the spring. It hasn’t been graded and graveled in God knows how long and has a very steep incline towards the end.

It is our driveway – seven-tenths of a mile of natural disaster area. It is our only way in and out and it is the bane of my existence. We have been within eyesight of our front door and had to abandon the vehicle with our groceries to go get the shovels and salt.

When the thick layer of snow and ice begin to melt and the ground is still frozen, crevasses open up and torrents of water with no place to go converge to form streams in the ruts. When the ground thaws, driving through the mud displaces giant slabs of Play Doh-like ooze. On subsequent passes, we drive on the tops of those and squish them down until the road is finally flat and dry again. We lay down rocks in the worst places.

We had the gauntlet to ourselves until the neighbors moved in. One of them drives a little sedan that isn’t suited for the terrain. I occasionally see them make a run for the last portion of road – speed helps. I can hear the wrenching sounds of the suspension as they lurch along, bouncing violently over the uneven ground. The scraping of oil pan against bedrock sends shivers down my spine as the car careens up the last fifty feet of hill to safety.

A couple of weeks ago we spotted what is still left of it abandoned halfway up the grade, with it’s wheels frozen solid in knee-deep mud. I don’t know how they got it out.

The sheriff once drove all the way up over an issue about a dog. We found part of a bumper near the gate the next day. The Washington State Patrol once stopped us because chunks of our driveway were calving off the underside of our car onto the freeway.

Someday we will have our little slice of heaven repaired. Until then, I shut my eyes tight and pray every time we back out of our parking spot.

A Belated Thanksgiving Poem For The New Year

Turkey Day

Turkey Day is on it’s way
My Mom is acting funny
She’s on the phone I heard her groan
While talking to Aunt Bunny
My cousins (there are six in all)
Are coming with Aunt Mazy
She’s bringing green bean salad
I heard Mom say that she’s lazy
For Uncle Fred it’s garlic bread
Enough to feed his four
My Mom’s now pacing, muttering
’bout locking the front door
Plasticwear and folding chairs
Cheap cups, spoons, forks and knives
Mom says no one does their share
The husbands or the wives
Grandma Grandpa on their way
I think it’s time we pray
Clean the couch now Dad’s a grouch
He says his hair’s gone grey
Uncle Ted and Aunty Jill
Are bringing their eight too
They have a dog, spike the eggnog
Tell Mom when she comes-to
Scour the basement and garage
We’ll put all the boys there
We need more room break out the broom
It’s time we said a prayer
God help us all – it’s Uncle Paul
We’ll put him in the attic
No sudden moves speak quietly
He’s prone to being erratic
As for my Mom
Let’s keep her calm
She’s on the verge of tears
Now dinner’s done
This battle’s won
Let’s give her three big cheers

Featured Photo by Ruth Caron on Unsplash
My own photo below as seen from our sliding door.