A Post About Nothing

Actually, that's not true, of course. Obviously there's something here, or else you'd just be staring at a blank page. Do that for too long and people begin to whisper about you behind your back.

But since I'm trying to get back into the swing of regular blogging (or at least something a little better than once-every-six-weeks blogging) here I am.

So let's see... Hurricane Irene was what? A month ago? (yikes, has it been that long already?) Aside from being without power for almost five days, the worst of our damage was to our pool.

It's hard to tell from these pictures, but the vinyl liner bubbled and pulled away from the surface and the bottom (in one part of the shallow end, the bottom of the liner rose to break through the water's surface.)

The pool guys came out about a week after the storm to assess the damage. Now, this liner is only a year old so having to replace it really wouldn't make me happy. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be replaced (for now), but the pool did need to be drained, the liner reset, and then we could refill and close the pool.

Now, this pool is huge. I've tried to get pictures of it emptied, but I need something in the bowl for scale and no one is brave enough to climb down into it (except the Boy, but the temptation to just leave him there might be too much to overcome. Kidding. Or am I?) But it holds somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 gallons. So trust me when I say, this pool is huge.

It takes about a day to empty, and then almost a week to refill. We use the garden hose, and let the water run. And run. And run. It gets shut off at night, but that's pretty much it. It takes about 6 days to fill, as long as it isn't too hot out (the pool gets afternoon sun from about 1 until sunset. When we had that heat wave at the beginning of the summer, the pool water was like a bath. It was nice.)

So, we drained it, the liner was adjusted, the vacuum was set in behind the liner to suck it flat against the walls. And the refilling begun.

Until...


(you knew it was coming, right?)

My husband noticed there were new creases in the floor at the slope of the shallow end. So we shut the water off and called the pool company. This was over the weekend. We're still. waiting. for. them.

So I'm not real happy. I'll be even less happy if the walls of my pool end up damaged because there's no water in it. I don't know if this will happen, I don't even know if it can happen. But, since I'm a big believer in Murphy's Law, I know that if it can, it will. Especially with this pool. In 4 years, we've had to replace pretty much everything but the ladders.

I'm really hoping to have this pool filled and covered before the first snowfall. When I was a kid, I thought the coolest thing in the world would be to live in a house with a pool. Let me tell you, they are pretty much more trouble than they're worth. I don't think I'd ever buy a house with a pool again. Never. Again.