Personal Failures and Gnarly Swimming Pools

Talk about tragic!  It's as though March never even happened.  Flu, work, sinus infection, flu again, basic life drama....no blogging.  I hang my head in shame.  Thank you to all of those who nudged me to post, but I bombed.  March is my FAVE crafting month because it is all about my favorite color....GREEN.  I didn't even bother to do my standard holiday sock wreath and Eighteen 25 subway art, and those two items probably take no more than fifteen minutes total.  I'm a disgrace to the blogosphere.  Art was printed, too lazy to stick it in the frame, socks were purchased, too lazy to cut.  I throw myself on your mercy. I promise I had good intentions, see?

I did get one green thing in March....my once refreshing pool diseased with black, yellow, and green algae.  Green is definitely on my list of top ten favorite things, but a green pool, not so much.  I have been fighting the algae for years, it's one of those things that once you get, it's hard to get rid of.  It's like the herpes of sun states; irritating, ugly, and shameful.

Every year I make the swimmers in my family dive down with chlorine hockey pucks to scratch off the black spots, but the black algae is stubborn, leaves a stain, and with a 17,000 gallon pool, it's too much work for average folk.  Nonstop stress about the algae, this winter I gave up on the pool altogether and was left with this horrifying scene. After several bids from pool companies, I realized the salt water chlorinator was no longer with the living, causing this unholy mess.

Sometimes, things are better left to the professionals.  What haunted me for years, was solved in the space of hours with a slow drain, acid wash, chlorine wash, and refill.  Why oh why didn't I hire someone to fix the pool issues sooner?  I couldn't believe how quickly the plaster was back to it's natural beauty.  The pool had some pretty massive and unsightly scratches on the bottom from a few years ago when a terrible wind storm whipped all of the metal patio furniture in the water, I had them buffed out while it was drained so that I could sleep at night.  Imperfections make me nuts.  So what if we eat Ramen Noodles for the next six months to recover the repair costs, at least it's no longer a neighborhood health hazard, and the scratches are a distant memory.

I designed this pool and had it constructed because I don't like the idea of swimming in other people's urine, and uh, other stuff.  As a kid, my friends and I spent every day of summer vacation at the public pool, and true....we survived.  But whoa, that indoor petri dish was like swimming in a vat of Clorox, now I know why!  Probably 500 kids swimming each day, and yes even I peed in there....like all the time.  I'm woman enough to admit it.  To all those that still swim in public pools, hats off to you brave folks!  I dare you buy test strips at your local pool supply store....dip them before you get in, just to see.  Pool chemicals are a tricky and mysterious business, and they can only do so much even under perfect conditions.  I'm impressed with people who swim while on vacation or partying in Las Vegas at places like Rehab.  Wait, impressed is not the correct word, I mean HORRIFIED!  Beer, urine, vomit.....much worse.  DON'T DO IT!  I can't even let my mind wander to public jacuzzis.....the devil's playground.  GAG.  Okay, that's my public service announcement for 2011.

 Las Vegas Advisor

The pool refurbishment was the only real project that got done in March, and only because I paid someone else to do it. I'm trying to relish in the fact that it looks so clean and beautiful and not focus on the fact that the weird guys who solved the problem, also enjoyed perpetually spitting their chew all over my tumbled stone pool deck.  Who does that? Better something accomplished than nothing.  April will be better.  I promise.