Here we go again...

So I tried this once before with the organic thing...um...yeah here's the update on that:

I drink organic milk, eat organic cereal, gravitate towards organic other stuff when I see it, and well that's about it. Reason: started the organic stuff the last week of March; opened the pool the first week of April, there went the money and the time!

What has changed to get me back to here?

I got a new computer (yay!) so I'm not at my OLD dinosaur anymore thus making it easier (even easier when I get the wireless router hooked up). Plus I have found several blogs that I am becoming mildly obsessed with, plus I think I'm kind of funny and hopefully you agree! Not to mention I'm going to need somewhere to vent over the next semester with all that's on my plate (a plate that looks like a compulsive over eater at a $2.99 buffet by the way...more on that shortly). I also plan to interject what I have learned about pool maintenance over the last few months as well (those are the REALLY funny stories!).

Tomorrow (well Saturday, may be today by the time I finish this) is the last day on my phone calendar that has nothing on it until December 11. Here is what we have:

• Working 40 hours per week (including a MAJOR move at the end of September to combine two offices into one)
• Taking 9 hours of grad school (which is full time, Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-9, and one online class)
• Becoming a new member of the Junior League of Norman
• Helping with CrossTimbers’ (my church) youth group
• Prayer Team at CrossTimbers
• Book Club at CrossTimbers
• Planning a charity golf tournament (though I don't play golf!)
• Keeping up with the pool
• Relay For Life (though I will miss all the meetings this semester due to class)
• My adopted son (friend Michelle’s 12 year old)’s football games
• Landon’s (friend Lisa’s 16 year old) football games
• Spoiling my new “nephews” (my beautiful friend Valerie’s little one, JJ, born July 6 and my beautiful friend Brittany’s little one, Chase, born August 17)

I think that’s it…oh and breathing and sleeping from time to time :)

I did say “no” to something though! I REALLY wanted to apply for Leadership Norman, but the deadline was today and I did not do it. I have time in the future, when I’m done with school. Hopefully I don’t regret that decision!

So for my last week before school starts I had a very exciting week! Baby Chase made his grand arrival. His mommy, Brittany, is one of my very favorite people. She understands the power of a great pair of shoes! (She’s one of my blogging inspirations!) We go to church together and Chase is just adorable; the only problem is that he was supposed to be CHARLOTTE! We were so very convinced that this baby was going to be a girl and were so very surprised when the ultrasound revealed otherwise. I even walked into the hospital and said “so he really was a Chase not a Charlotte?” Nonetheless I positively adore him and will spoil him rotten. It will be quite fun for him to have JJ to grow up with at church and I will be secretly be turning them both into OU fans! (Brittany is a Texas Tech fan and Valerie is an OSU fan!) Tonight I took dinner to them tonight and will share my newly tweaked recipe (recipe sharing is my favorite part of blogging!) I will get better of taking photos of stuff to post on here! And when I get a release from Mom I will post baby Chase pictures!

Easy Chicken Enchiladas (started at a Tasty Tuesday with a few minor adjustments!)

1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 4)

1 cup shredded cheese

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup salsa

1 cup nonfat organic Greek yogurt

1-2 tsp chili powder

8 burrito size whole wheat tortillas

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut chicken into manageable chunks and cook on stove until cooked through. Allow chicken to cool and shred into bite sized pieces. Meanwhile combine soup, salsa, yogurt (originally sour cream, but a whole lot less fat and calories!), and chili powder. Combine a little more than half of salsa mixture with chicken and cheese. Fill tortillas with chicken mixture and place in 9x13 pan. Cover enchiladas with remaining salsa mixture. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes or until heated all the way through. Serve with Mexican rice.

Generally one enchilada is plenty for a meal for me! I hope that the Pillers enjoyed these tonight, with my healthy tweaks. I told Brittany to be honest, so we’ll see! :)

Tomorrow is going to consist of a lot of sleeping in and then even more pool work. It has been the dreaded 8 weeks since I last cleaned the pool filter so that has to happen. I really would offer food, alcohol or maybe other things to get someone to do this for me. This time I will backwash before I open the filter (now that’s a fun story for another day!) More to come! :)

Do You Want Mustard With That?

Correct answer: no! Well at least as far as the pool is concerned.

Last week I noticed there was some algae on the sides of the pool. I figured it was just time to clean the filter, because I hadn't actually done that this year. Surprisingly the filter cleaning went quite well, as opposed to the battle it was last year. I figured a few days later it would be clean and good to go. However over the weekend I noticed that there was still some algae. My next guess was that the chlorine needed to be bumped up because Oklahoma has turned into Death Valley with the temperature hanging out around 107 every day, so I dumped the rest of the chlorine sticks into the skimmer and figured I would be good.

Come Tuesday the pool still had this annoying algae. I really intended to run by Thompson's after work, but got convinced into going to Pita Pit and Passionberri with my wonderful friends Courtney and Stephanie (totally worth it). So Wednesday I come home and get a water sample and head across town. I explained situation with the algae and that I thought it was just dirt until I noticed that there was some on the sides of the pool. I was asked if when I brushed the pool if the algae went away, but then came right back to the same place and the water was still clear. I said, well actually that's exactly right. I was diagnosed with mustard algae. I was sent home with a bottle of Banish and orders to brush the pool, put in all the Banish plus four bags of shock.

I am a very good directions follower. I came home and did exactly what I was told (after slightly fighting with the pump to come on and stay on, still not sure what's going on with that.). Fast forward to Thursday and I have a pool that seems to be algae free, but a little dirty and quite cloudy. In went the proper dosage of PolySheen (highly concentrated clarifier).

Today it looks a little bit clearer, but still a bit cloudy. I took a sample in and was declared algae free! Apparently this mustard algae zaps the chlorine and I had wonderful chlorine saturation in my sample. I asked if cleaning the filter again just in case would be a good idea (it is), so tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get motivated) I will vacuum the dead algae, dirt and other normal crap from the week, backwash and clean the filter. From there within 24 hours I should have a perfect pool again.

I am an Algae Killing Machine!

This is what mustard algae looks like if you wondered (though not from my pool):

PS - If you wondered, this is my 200th blog post!

Country Girl, City Girl

I've been hearing fireworks going off the last two nights while I was working on my paper (or chatting on facebook when I was supposed to be working on my paper!). List night I was otherwise entertained, but tonight I finished my paper and had turned on the light in the pool so I decided to go have myself a little float and hope I could see some fireworks.

While I did enjoy floating on the glowing pool and it was quite relaxing I was very disappointed that I couldn't see any fireworks. I could completely relax in the peace and quiet and dark. I am not one of those people that is scared of the dark (if I have a flashlight or cell phone handy), in fact one of the bedrooms in my house has blankets over the windows so I can sleep in total darkness (and some of you have questioned if I use the whole house :)). Though I was disappointed with the lack of fireworks I did enjoy floating. I did notice a few things about my backyard while floating.

Two things that are important to note before I get too far into this story.

First of all, this may come as a shock to many of you, but I grew up in the country. And I mean seriously in the country. We lived thirty miles away from "town" on 120 acres. I grew up running through the pastures all by myself (with no cell phone). There were certainly more four legged creatures in my neighborhood that the two legged variety. This was how I spent the first eighteen years of my life.

Second, from August 2010 through May 2011 I did not stop. I was working full time, going to school full time, volunteering with church and Junior League, a lot, plus trying to have a social life. Naturally I am very introverted (this may come as a shock to many of you as well because I hide it pretty well) and having to be "on" for ten months completely wore me out. I remember when I started my first "big girl" job I would get home and be totally exhausted and that lasted for a few months until I got used to it.

Okay back to the backyard and floating on the glowing pool. Though I have lived in Norman for the last twelve years and quite love it, there are still moments that I have to realize that some things are not okay within city limits. One of these came last year when there was a GIANT snake in my front yard and I wanted to shoot it. Apparently shooting snakes in town is not okay. I mean I guess I understand why, but the only good snake is a dead snake and even that is still questionable to me. I was also surprised to learn that there was a limit on the number of dogs you can have and they all have to be registered. Really? Not to mention you can't have a horse in your backyard! (Unless that horse is disguised as a dog, like Zoe in my backyard!) Obviously you also cannot set off fireworks within the city limits. I really do understand that one because I am terrified of fire and hooligans generally are not all that careful and I don't want my house going up in flames. (Though I wish a deviant or two would have set some big ones off in my neighborhood tonight.)

Tonight's discovery of country versus city is the fact that the sky just doesn't look the same. It was cloudy tonight so that probably had something to do with it, but the sky just isn't as dark and there is always a glow. The stars are farther away. They aren't as bright. Nighttime just isn't the same.

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no desire to move anywhere resembling "the country" ever again. I like being five minutes from Walmart, within walking distance of a gas station, having 911 service, the ability to have dinner delivered, and garbage service, but there are some things that you miss out on if you didn't grow up in the country or spend a generous amount of time there.

You might be wondering how I just came to all these conclusions tonight. Like I said in point two I have been really busy the last year. To be honest I haven't spent all that much time outside, unless it involved working on the pool, getting a tan, or tending to the horse.

I am tired. Emotionally trying to be "on" for ten months solid with very little down time has completely drained me. It's not that I don't want to be around my friends, but I just need a break. When the weekend comes around I don't want to entertain, I want to relax, and relaxing to me is being by myself. I like to float on a raft and work on my tan with no noise, without having to carry on a conversation. I like to sit in the whirlpool and read without worrying about someone accidentally letting my dogs out. I am not one that genuinely enjoys entertaining; in fact I quite hate it. I can never relax when people are at my house. I love my friends, but right now, I really love just being by myself.

I just finished reading a very good book called Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle. It was for my post traumatic stress class, but I really enjoyed reading it (and luckily it was a quick read because I had five days to read it before the paper was due!). One of the things the author mentioned was about their unit's preparation for Iraq. The commanding officer kept them very busy. The author said "He must've known that boredom brings problems, allows too much time to think. So, besides preparing us for war, was he also protecting our minds? Keeping us sharp and focused by not allowing us to think too much about what was going to happen once we made it into Iraq?"

That concept really hit me (probably because someone once asked me my motives for being so busy and alluded to this very idea). I got to wondering if I really was keeping myself to keep myself from worrying about other things, namely the fact that I am nowhere near I thought I would be at this age. There are more times than I care to admit that it is really hard being involved in the things I am involved with because I am not where I thought I would be and where a lot of people think I should be. I can relate to these people, however a lot of times frankly I don't want to. It feels that if I was doing all these things and keeping myself so busy then I could justify the fact that I am not married and don't have children. Where I live I am about eight years behind. In the good ol' Bible Belt it seems as though everyone (or at least an overwhelming majority) gets married the moment they walk across the stage from their college graduation, if not earlier. There were so many negative feelings around me that it made me feel like my life was meaningless because I'm not married and don't have children.

Yeah, I just went there. I know my friends love me, of that I have no doubt. I know my life is meaningful and I am doing amazing things and will continue to do amazing things, but there is a stigma around here that you can't possibly understand anything if you aren't a wife and mom. To be honest I'm sick of that.

I am almost thirty and I'm not married and I don't have kids. And you know what? That's okay. I love my life and where I'm at. I love who I am and who I'm becoming. I love where I've come from. I have finally accepted that I am not going to be able to make everyone happy. I cannot please everyone. People are going to judge me for what I do whether I go out or I stay in. People are not going to like the decisions I make with my life.

All that matters though is that I like what I'm doing. And I do. I like where my life is going. I have the utmost faith that all the things that I want out of my life will happen, at the time they are supposed to. Until then all I can do is live my life the way that I see best fits me. For now that is taking some much needed "me" time and floating in my pool, all by myself, on the weekends.

There will come a time when I want to open up, both the pool and my heart, and I'm willing to allow that to happen, but I'm not pushing it. I don't need to go out searching for something that I know will come to me at the exact correct moment and not a minute sooner. All I am asking for, from the people in my life, is for you to accept me for who I am. Please don't try to change me. Please allow me to make my own mistakes. I'm going to make some mistakes, we all do, but I firmly believe each of those mistakes holds a lesson, no matter how small.

I am really excited for what is coming up in my life because I know it is going to be big. That is part of why I am taking a little breather to regroup. I am going to need a lot of energy for the next phase because it is going to be amazing.

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course Of Course

Except when that horse is a dog.

I have a very large dog that lives in my backyard. For many years I didn't think she was that smart, but apparently she's not quite as dumb as I thought.

This is the horse:

Her name is Zoe and she is very sweet. Unfortunately she thinks she's about four pounds and should be an indoor lap dog. I do not agree with this analysis.

As I have a pool in my yard I didn't want her to have full run of the yard, so she has a pen. Lately she has not exactly wanted to stay in the pen. In order to mow her pen the lawn guy has to move the fence to get the lawnmower in. At first this wasn't a big deal, but as the years have gone by the stake that the fence is attached to hasn't gone as deep into the ground and the gate has not shut as well.

Last year the gate wouldn't latch and she got out. That was fixed by weaving a leash through the fence and gate. That worked until very recently.

About two weeks ago I had put her back in the pen after the big storm and a few minutes later she was roaming the yard. I realized that she had managed to crawl under the fence to free herself. Following the disaster that was that storm and the clean up that followed I wasn't up to figuring out how to get her to stay in the pen, so she was a happy indoor dog for a few days.

A few days later I realized that she absolutely could not live in the house and I had to figure something out. I just needed to block where she was getting out. I have a very heavy bench that generally sits by the pool. I picked it up and hauled it to the back of the property (where the gate is) and used it to cover the hole. Success!

Today was lawn day, so Zoe got to be an inside dog for the day. Usually she goes right back out at lunch, but I had a lunch date with the lovely Katie Dodd, so she got the whole day inside. When I got home everyone went outside and Zoe went back in her pen. A little while later I was inside mentally preparing to clean the pool filter (more on that in a bit) and guess what I saw outside my bedroom door...Zoe. I grabbed the leash and back to the pen we went. I put her in and sealed the gate with the leash not knowing how she was getting out.

I said earlier that she was smarter than I previously thought, however she is not brilliant. My fluffy dog, Ty, is pretty small and can squeeze between the gate and the fence to get in to visit Miss Zoe. Apparently Zoe had been watching him go in and out and decided to try it herself, successfully. What was not successful was that she did it while I was watching. I put her back in the pen and moved the bench over and put a large tree branch over the part that was exposed that I thought she might be able to crawl under.

I go back in to change clothes to clean the pool filter. I look outside and there is Zoe. I am a little irritated at this point and head back to the pen to figure out what she's doing now. Apparently I put the bench over part of the gate, but she could still wiggle out. I then began the search for items to keep the gate closed. Luckily I happened to have some rubber bungie cable that I use for the pool cover sitting in the pool cabinet. I had left the leash on the gate this time around, so Zoe got walked with a bungie cable.

I got her back in and this is the finished product:

I added the stone just in case she tried to crawl under again!

Poor little Ty Ty will not get to go visit in the pen anymore, but that's the price we pay to keep the horse in the corral!

In other news I think I've finally got this pool thing down! I noticed a few days ago that there was quite a bit of dirt in the pool. I didn't really think all that much about it because of the leaves that had fallen due to the storm and they kept flying back in anytime the wind blew. Then I started to notice that this dirt was accumulating at the corners of the pool. I knew it had to be a little bit of algae and I knew what had to be done: filter cleaning. I had not done it this year and I've known that it needed to be done, but I was putting it off as long as possible. I won't go into details about the process, but you can read about them in the 2010 pool drama, here, here and here if you want a little laugh. Let's just say there was no drama to cleaning the filter today! I simply backwashed, used my ratchet to get the seal off, pulled the guts out, hosed them off, put everything back together, filled the pump basket to prime the pump, turned the pump on and it was perfect! It was crazy. I just new that I would be cursing and mad by the end of the evening. I managed to have the horse situation and the filter cleaned in 38 minutes! I was SHOCKED! I then brushed the sides to get the algae into the water so it would make it through the filter. I should have a perfect pool in a day or so! Woo hoo! I really like the pool when it doesn't make me cry.

In neighborhood post-storm news, thirteen days later the city finally removed all the tree branches from the neighbors to the south's front yard and the neighbor to the north finally got the tree that landed on their car removed. With my freshly cut lawn our cul-de-saq finally looks good again!

Pool Saga 2011: Part Four

When I left off with part three the pool was good to go except I could not get the lid off of the filter basket. My wonderful neighbor came over at lunch on Tuesday and loosened it for me, as well as removing the squashed (dead) frog from the basket. I really couldn't ask for a better neighbor.

Monday night I had shocked it and put in stablizer, after which you are supposed to wait 48 hours to backwash, so I could vacuum, but was going to wait until Wednesday night so I could backwash the filter after I vacuumed. Well as they say, the best laid plans...

Tuesday night we had a microburst, or I guess that's what they decided to call it. It was a really bad storm and you can read all about it here. The pool ended up looking like this:

I knew there would be A LOT of work to be done and I was right. I came home after work Wednesday and started to it. Well, let's back up, Tuesday night, after the storm passed I used the leaf rake to remove all the debris from the top of the water. I worked on it until it got too dark to work on it anymore, or I would have kept going. So Wednesday after work I started in some more. I spent about four hours working on it that night and was determined to have it totally clean by the time I went back inside, because there is no way I was letting my perfect pool turn green this year.

I scooped and I scooped and I scooped. Finally I thought I had scooped enough. I then filled the hose and got the vacuum ready. I had apparently left way too many leaves in the pool and should have scooped some more. I got a clog in the valve just before the pump basket, so I took it apart and removed the leaves. (Sidebar: fresh, crisp leaves are much easier to scoop than wet, algaed leaves) I kept up the vacuuming and did pretty well and had the pool looking pretty good. I did have a few minor mishaps of the hose coming off the vacuum to which I said a few four letter words about how you shouldn't have a pool by yourself, it is a two person job, but moved on.

I got almost done and the vacuum stopped sucking. Uh oh. I realized that I had another clog. I looked everywhere: in the vacuum (because that had happened once or twice already), in the skimmer, in the pump basket, in both valves by the pump basket, nothing. To say I was frustrated might be the understatement of the year. I said a few more choice words, burst out crying and ultimately had a full on panic attack. In the process of this little meltdown I did what I had been taught to do: shock the pool, just in case, and add more chlorine sticks to the skimmer, even though I didn't think water was getting through. I had also backwashed the pool hoping that it might do the trick, which it didn't, but I put in Eco-clean in the skimmer because that's what you're supposed to do. When I had the water flowing from the main drain and the skimmer I had really good water flow, though I knew it was from the drain and not from the skimmer, but I knew that the shock would work its way through the filter. I went in and to bed thinking very bad things about the pool, cursing it, thinking we should have never replaced the liner, and wondering how much it would cost to fill it in.

Thursday I was a little more calm when I got home from work and went to check on the pool. First of all, in Oklahoma we have a lot of wind, so all the leaves that fell from the trees two days before and the ones I had removed from the pool the night before were now in my pool, again...great. I went through my best troubleshooting on the pool to figure out the exact problem before heading to Thompson's. I opened up the pump basket and all my Eco-clean from the night before had gotten trapped. This was a good sign! Something was getting through the skimmer, even if it was just a little bit. This explained why the pool was looking good, even if it had leaves it in, the chemicals were still circulating. I threw it on recirculate, since the Eco-clean had not made it to the filter, and headed to Thompson's.

I had posted pictures Wednesday night and Mike commented on them, so he knew the situation we were facing. Clearly I was not the only one in this situation, he said they had about 80 calls on Wednesday with storm problems. I explained what all I had checked and that I had narrowed it down to the skimmer. He put in a work order to have the line blown clear. Then he told me to shock it and put in some extra chlorine: done and done! I was very proud of myself for having done exactly what I was supposed to without being told! The have taught me well at Thompson Pool and Patio! If you have a pool you really should go to them, they are the best, and are totally understanding and heck, they can keep me from having a nervous breakdown about the pool, that is saying a lot! We discussed the Eco-clean situation and he told me to mix it with water and then pour it through so it would have a better shot of getting to the filter.

I wasn't expecting the lines to be clear until early next week, but again, Thompson's is the best! I came home Friday night and was clearing out the skimmer basket and noticed I had great water flow. Woo hoo! I used the leaf rake to remove all the leaves I possibly could before I started vacuuming (a lesson I will not soon forget). I got it all vacuumed and clean and perfect again.

Today I enjoyed four hours of laying out and floating and reading. I decided that I'm glad I didn't fill that silly little hole in and I guess I do pretty much love it. Crazy as it is, when it is not trying to kill me and my anxiety level, I love working on the pool. I really do. I wouldn't pay someone to do it for me (okay if I had enough money I might). It is really relaxing and gives me such a feeling of accomplishment when I can get it back to perfect.

As I was floating around I looked at my yard and my pool and had to think, how on earth is this my life? I don't know how I got this lucky, but I sure wouldn't change it for anything!

What the Hail?!?!?!?!?

I got off work Tuesday and went appliance shopping (I'm going to get all new kitchen appliances in the next six months or so, thus I was scouting prices and styles and such). On my way home I got hit by a sprinkle or two, no big deal...so I thought.

I came home and was eating dinner and checking in on blogs and writing a little bit and all of a sudden it sounded like someone was shooting at me. It was not gunshots, but HAIL. And I don't mean a little bit. I ran out to the front yard and crammed the car in the garage. This is what it looked like (my picture didn't turn out, so I'm stealing my friend Brianne's, but it was the same thing here):

Imagine that all over the yard. It looked like it snowed. It was CRAZY. The storm came so fast. Apparently they called it a "microblast". I'm still not ruling out a little tornado. A friend shared this video from youtube shows what we were up against, watch how quickly it comes and goes and look at the damage in that time frame.

I generally bring my outside dog in when it is storming, but this happened SO fast that it did not happen. She was smart enough to get under the storage building and as soon as I could get outside to get her I did. I heard her whining and crying and just knew she had been hit by something or was stuck under the tree that fell. She was fine though, just a little (okay a lot) scared, however she got to come in and spend the next day in the house, so I'm pretty sure she ended up happy.

After the storm I went to check the damage (didn't have much else to do because the electricity was off by this point). I had one tree split:

And part of my bamboo privacy shade on the north side fell. Luckily the fence was fine, but the zip ties were ripped off (I fixed that today and we're good to go). When I went out the front to check on the fence my neighbor to the south asked if I had seen the neighbor to the north's damage. I hadn't, but here it is:

There is a car under that tree. They haven't done much on the clean up effort because the tree is still sitting there four days later. Oh well. I'm sure they'll get a nasty gram from the city.

Here is the damage I had, well not damage, but the pool was a WRECK:

All of that green is leaves from the massive trees in my backyard. It was crazy the amount that fell in such a short time. And yes it was still raining when I went outside and took pictures.

This is my poor sad pool. All the dark stuff you can see in the pool are leaves; hundreds of thousands of leaves. Before this happened it was PERFECT (well there was a little dirt that I was going to vacuum the next day, needless to say I did more than that!).

I cleared most of the stuff off the top that night. (The power was out, what else did I have to do?)

This was the morning after. Still lots and lots of leaves in the pool.

I got my power back around 1:30 am, which was very, very lucky. There were downed power lines about a mile from me that kept the road closed for two days. The next morning I was awoken by a call that said our office was closed, but on standby because we had no power. I only live about a mile from the office, so I was quite surprised by this. The office didn't get power back until around 11:30 on Thursday (storm happened Tuesday) and it blew off part of the roof and destroyed seven out of eight air conditioning units, so it was a little toasty in there.

As for the pool...see Pool Saga 2011: Part Four

Pool Saga 2011: Part Three

Two and a half weeks later I stopped by to check on the liner status and find out the liner is in and the work team had the order to put it in! Mike said the first step would be to drain it. I said "step one: done", you see a few weeks earlier I got a "nasty-gram" from the City of Norman over the "stagnant water" in my backyard. Clearly they did not see the rips in the corners and realize that I must have been in the process of getting a new liner, so I just drained the thing, again. The bad part was that about a week after I drained it we had a HUGE rain storm and it filled the dang thing up about halfway in the deep end, so I got to drain it again.

I was in the midst of Oklahoma United Methodist Annual Conference (there will be a blog about this eventually so swimming wasn't a priority. I snapped some pictures before the liner installation began:

the little problem

the big problem

from the east

from the west

So now we see the problem, right? That was June 1. On June 2 I came home and found the pool looking like this:

Naked pool!

Clearly I was not aware of all the things that go into replacing a pool liner. I have now figured it out, somewhat. Step one, drain pool. Step two, remove old liner. Step three, fill in any holes and whatnot. So that was Thursday. It stayed like that forever and forever and forever (or until Tuesday).

What I have forgotten to mention is that garden gnomes were doing all of this! Until the very last day I never saw a human doing anything and they were very sneaky about it! (I am by no means complaining, it was just really funny.)

I came home Tuesday at lunch thinking about spray in bed liners (hehe) and walked in, thinking no one had been in my backyard and saw this:

There's a liner in my pool! There's a liner in my pool!

This is the vacuum that has to run to pull the air out from behind the liner while it fills (who knew?).

Notice anything wrong here? Yeah nothing was cut out. I didn't think about that, I guess

I just assumed it would come all ready and cut, but I was wrong!

This was about 11:30 am on Tuesday! There's water! The gnomes strike again!

Onto Wednesday! I got a little nervous because the water level was rising and the light under the diving board was hiding behind the liner. Wasn't so sure about that. So here are Wednesday's pictures:

Light cut out! (sorry for the wretched picture, my phone wasn't playing friendly)

Stairs cut out!

Almost finished! All that was left at this point was to cut out the skimmer and the jets.

By Thursday everything was cut out, again the gnomes struck. It had about a foot and a half of water to go when I went to bed. Friday morning, when I woke up with a migraine and had been up half the night with an earache (I now understand why little kids are so upset when they have earaches, it HURT!) I turned the water off because it was about to overflow and went back to sleep. I was woken up around 2:00 by the garden gnomes! They do exist! They got everything all going and put the chemicals in. After that it was a little foggy from the stabilizer, so I did not take pictures, but here is the finished product:

All ready for swimming! (Now just to get the house acceptable for guests!)

Hopefully there won't be a part four of the saga and I'll have a nice easy pool season along with an easy closing come this fall. One can hope. I will say that I managed to miss cottonwood season, but the pool is now open in the middle of what I like to call "grapenut season". I call it this as there are little seed thingys that fall off the trees in my backyard and when they accumulate they look like Grapenuts cereal. Those are the only two seasons I can think of from last year, until the leaves a-fallin season. :)

It is a little dirty and needs to vacuum, but apparently a guy's version of "do not overtighten" on the pump basket and a girl's version are very different, so I can't get it open myself and need a guy to come and help me (accepting offers!). I think there's a dead frog stuck in there (I've fished two out and there was one in the skimmer that I'm afraid went down the skimmer...oops). I laid out today and am a nice pretty bright pink, which is a color better than white, so we're making progress on the tan of 2011!

Pool Saga 2011: Part Two

Or should I say ripS. There were two, in the corners of the shallow end. I'm pretty sure I almost had a heart attack or hyperventilated right there by the pool (pretty glad I didn't because I didn't really want to fall into the water and die).

I did the first logical thing I could think of: try to repair them. I grabbed some extra vinyl and started to patch. Of course I was patching over two foot long holes that were not up against the side of the pool, they were just kind of floating.

I said a little prayer. Okay I said a big prayer, and even put the poor pool on the prayer list at church (yes I prefaced it with: this might be silly, but).

Monday I checked them and the patches did not hold and the holes were getting bigger.

I went by Thompson's Tuesday at lunch assuming that the only possible solution was a new liner, which I did not have the money for. Mike Thompson, bless his heart, kept me from having a nervous breakdown by telling me to call "Dr. Vinyl" and they should be able to repair it for around $400.

So I did just that. Only Dr. Vinyl couldn't. Neither could any of the places that I googled that did vinyl repair. I went back to work and realized the problem I was facing: I had no money and had to have the liner replaced.

I burst out crying and slightly hyperventilating due to a nice little panic attack. I knew exactly what had happened: when we were getting in and out of the pool to clean it the vinyl pulled enough away from the sides that it made kind of a bubble. When we were stepping on it the corners just gave way, the liner was OLD which did not help my cause.

I went to my boss' office, tears streaming down my face and said I needed to go. She took me into the conference room to calm me down before I attempted to drive and I had to explain that I was freaking out because of a tear in my pool liner (this sounds silly, but own a pool and you'll understand).

After halfway composing myself, I hopped in the car and headed to Ardmore to talk to my mom. We met at El Chico where, again, I burst out crying. I'm pretty sure the stress of the previous nine months all came down to that one moment. I was absolutely exhausted, physically and mentally. I had been running like a crazy person, completing 18 hours of grad school in two semesters, all while working full time, being on a relatively time consuming committee in JLN, plus working on a big JLN new member project, and jumping on board another committee, which I will be chairing next year, plus I was helping with youth every Sunday. I was exhausted. I hated being in Norman and I was not happy with life in general at that moment. About a month before I had gone to Ardmore for a weekend and had a really good time. It was stress free and it was nice. I knew that when I was in Norman every moment of my life was planned. Generally speaking I like that, the structure and purpose of it all, but I had just had enough. I hadn't been writing like I like to so much, which I use as my stress relief, I hadn't been reading for fun, which is another stress relief, though I had been going out a lot. I was just worn out.

At that point I still didn't know what I was going to do about the pool. A few weeks later, when things calmed down a smidge, my mom called and said she would help with the cost of the liner (praise Jesus!). I set out calling around to get estimates.

That was a chore in and of itself. I didn't know the measurements of the pool, well I knew it was 24,000 gallons, but that's about all I knew and I figured that would be enough to get an estimate. Wrong! Finally I got hold of a few people who would come out and measure it and call me back with estimates (without charging to do so).

The first I got was $3500-4000. Um, no!

Another was $3200.

One really nice guy came out and measured and it would be $2850 with the thinnest liner they made.

After all of that I went to my favorites: Thompson Pool and Patio and prayed they would have the best price because I really wanted to use them. I went in and they put me on the list to have it measured. This was Monday, May 9 and told me that it would be about 2-3 weeks before they could be out to just measure it. Really? Well that was not the case, Mike called me on Thursday with a price that beat the others (praise Jesus again!) and that I needed to come in and pick out the vinyl.

I went in at lunch and picked one out, pretty quickly, which was thicker on the bottom and sides than the one I'd had previously. I was ready to order it then. This was a relatively large investment, so Mike sent me with a brochure with all the liners in it and told me to think about it and to get opinions from my friends and come back.

I showed about 10,000 people the different liners (okay maybe exaggerating a little bit), and came down to two: one that was thicker all the way and one that was thicker on the bottom, but not the sides (or vice versa). There wasn't a price difference and I wasn't going to get that much more time out of one than the other, so I knew I needed to see the vinyl and would be able to decide then.

I was right. And I ended up picking the exact same one that I had picked out the day before:

Capri Fresco II

I liked that it was lighter than what I had before and I liked that the top looked like tile and not just a printed pattern. Mike said it would make the yard look different because it was so much different than what I'd had before. I liked that idea because I wanted this to be mine, my decision and my pool. He ordered it that day and said it would be two and a half to three weeks before it came in...

Pool Saga 2011: Part One

First a little recap from the end of Pool Season 2010.

September 19 I had the youth group over to swim and had a clear, though slightly cloudy, pool. Then the longest week of my life happened: we closed an office, I was taking 9 hours of grad school (which of course had assignments due that week), and I did not see the light of day at my house until Thursday evening. By that time the pool was black. I don't really understand how it happened in such a short period of time, but it did.

I was a little bit frustrated and dumped all kinds of chemicals into it trying to get it back to clear, though I had NO time and the temperature was starting to fall, so swimming was becoming less likely, however I did not want to close it and cover it looking like that because I remembered how horrible it was to open a few months earlier.

After trying to work in pool maintenance time into my already ridiculously busy schedule and leaves falling at ridiculous rates (I live in a very wooded area) I finally decided to cut my losses and plan on replacing the liner, which would mean draining the pool anyway.

So that was the plan. Spend tax return money on a new liner. Well life has a way of sneaking up on you when you make plans and some other stuff came up that my tax return had to be spent on, so I decided I would just rough it and make the liner last another year.

And here is the timeline of what the pool has looked like in 2011:

Spring Break: planned to start working on the pool, but the previously mentioned life got in the way and put it on hold.

April 1-8: attempted to vacuum the pool to get the leaves out of the bottom. Two problems with this idea: First, the water was BLACK, so I couldn't see what I was doing. Second, I live in a heavily wooded area and left the pool uncovered all fall and winter, so there were A LOT of leaves and the basket on my pump is tiny, not to mention there is the issue of pipes clogging.

April 9: I admitted defeat and decided I would drain the pool again. I put it on waste and went to Junior League Charity Ball. I came home a few hours later and the entire shallow end was drained, not exactly what I expected.

April 10: I cleaned all the leaves out of the shallow end in about an hour, not too shabby. I then attempted to start the pump again to get the deep end drained. It was a no-go. I was a little bit frustrated.

April 11: first trip to Thompson's of the year. I took in the O ring for the pump basket, though it looked fine, and tried to figure out what was wrong. They greased it and I came home, hoping it would work. Again, no-go.

April 12: Enter my handy little sub pump. This little sucker drained the whole deep end (it was a very, very, very good investment last year).

April 13: Kristin, not knowing what she was getting herself into, came over and helped clean out the deep end. It was disgusting, but she was a trooper.

April 14: I started filling the pool and realized that one of the spots that was patched before I owned the house had come loose. It looked higher than I could stand up in, so I decided that I would fill the pool to that level, get a raft, float over, fix it and hop out of the pool. Let's just say if there had been a video camera I would have won $10,000 on AFV. My attempt at floating did not work, so I ended up wading through the muck, praying there were no snakes and fixed it. A little known fact is that when you get a pool liner wet it becomes very, very slick. I have fallen into the water a few times and I tried to scoot up the liner on my rear and let's just say it didn't go very well. As I was in the pool I did not have my phone with me (water+phone do not mix), the ladder was too high, so the only way out was up the steep, now very slick slope. Somehow I managed to get up and out of the pool. I'm not sure if the neighbors saw me, but if they did I'm sure they got a laugh.

April 15: Running up the water bill while filling the pool.

April 16: I see the rip...

Wit's End...

...that is about how I am starting to feel about this pool. Yes I know that to the untrained pool expert you would think that it is time to close the pool. Well I am hosting CrossTimbers Youth Group next Sunday and we are swimming! Plus it's Oklahoma and it could be 100 a few more days before it starts to freeze. My buddies at Thompson Pool and Patio told me not to close it until Octoberish and when it is 70 on a regular basis.

Onto the drama!

It all started last week when we had a little rain, which of course, by "a little" I mean torrential downpour for like 4 days. There was the chair in the pool on Wednesday:

I would, however, like you to notice that this chair is at the bottom of the pool and you can see it. Thursday it poured all day again, not exactly ideal weather for keeping the pool pretty. Friday at lunch I noticed that there were a lot of leaves from the rain, so I start in raking them out with the leaf net, to keep me from having to vacuum so many leaves. I get home Friday after work and the pool is starting to get REALLY cloudy. I jump in my car (it is 5:30, Thompson's closes at 6:00) and drive to get PolySheen (clarifier). I get back home and start in on vacuuming. There are a lot of leaves, so I have to clean out the basket. I get about half of the shallow end done and move onto the deep end. Vacuum is sucking (in a good way) quite well until it stops sucking all together (in a bad way). I expect to have a ton of leaves in the basket of the pump, but there were none. Odd... I backwash, nothing. I rinse, nothing. I filter, nothing. I recirculate, nothing. ARG!!! I finally give up for the night and go to the Norman North/Norman High football game (which is another blog post all together).

Saturday morning, which we will not discuss the beginning of this morning, I get into my game day clothes (BOOMER SOONER!) and head to Thompson's, with this really frustrated look on my face. Zac sees my pitifulness and we talk through all that I did (twice in some cases!) and finally both decide I have a clog. Grrrrrrrrreat. He sends me home with a snake, after explaining how to use it of course. I get home, change into "work on the pool" clothes. I drop the snake in the skimmer. Nothing. I try this a few times and then decide that I'm going to try it at the pump and go backwards. DING! DING! DING! It takes very little time before I hit the blockage. I try a few times and the poor little snake is just not doing the job.

Before I left Thompson's that morning Zac told me to call if I had problems. well, if you know me, you know that I don't always handle frustration with the utmost calmness. So after throwing a few things, screaming and maybe some crying I throw on a dress and head back to Thompson's. Zac meets me in the parking lot (where he had been walking about a customer) and with this wonderful, positive smile asks if I got it. While I appreciate his confidence in my abilities, I was slightly frustrated at this point. I go through my story of what had happened, explain where the clog is, and explain how I almost took a hammer to the plumbing of the pool. Again, with calmness, he explains that you can simply unscrew the top of the valve (where the clog was) and remove the leaves.

See the silver screws? Well I didn't when I was ready to sledgehammer it!

Finally my favorite, sympathetic pool expert offers to swing by and help with it! Yay! I was ordered to have fun tailgating. Zac comes by a little later and we get the clog out, no problem. Pool is up and running again!

I proceed to sleep most of the day Sunday and then Monday I vacuum it. I end up with two more clogs, but I am totally an expert at removing (as annoying as it is) the valve. I get it all vacuumed. It is still cloudy. Arg! Tuesday I go in and get some copper algaecide, which I dump in Tuesday evening, along with four bags of shock, at the prescription of Mike. I was also told to backwash in 48 hours, then backwash in another 48 hours, but if the pressure changes to backwash as necessary. I backwash Tuesday (and bake cookies). I backwash Wednesday. I backwash Thursday. I still have a green cloudy pool. Next trip to Thompson's (in a little black dress and stilettos :) and with a TON of homemade cookies in hand) I get a bucket of shock (8 bags worth). After my horrible adventure to Ardmore I come home and dump it in. Friday, still cloudy, still green.

I have also been brushing the pool. I really hate brushing the pool. No I mean I REALLY hate brushing the pool. I am doing it because they tell me to, but geez I hate it. Plus it is hard to do because you can't see what you're brushing. Friday night I was just about at my wit's end. I don't know if it's really getting better or if it's wishful thinking, but I do think it is getting a little better.

Here is where we sit today, after backwashing and brushing:

It is getting bluer, though still pretty cloudy. I have a bit more visibility. We shall see. It's game day though, so I am off to cheer on my Sooners! Tonight I am spending an exciting evening writing a paper about conflict resolution. Maybe I'll discuss my conflict with my pool...


PS
I find it really funny that most of the words dealing with the pool are not in the blogspot spell check...

Glad to be Home!

Well today did NOT go how I planned!

This was the plan: dress cute at the end of the work day, a quick stop before I headed south, drive to Ardmore (stopping and getting a quick dinner on the way), watch Red, White and Tuna (the first show for Ardmore Little Theatre, and the beginning of my 17th consecutive season of perfect attendance), drive home, go to bed.

Simple enough?

WRONG!!!

The first part of this adventure started out how I planned. We are in the process of merging two of my offices into one, which is involving moving about 150 people around in two offices and lots of packing. I have dressed GRUNGY because of it. I was craving cute clothes and heels, so I put on a cute little black dress before I left work. I made a quick stop before heading south (in an attempt to look adorable), then headed towards Ardmore.

All was well, chatting on the phone with Michelle between the two exits in Purcell and suddenly the car started pulling funny; I thought maybe the wind was just blowing, oh no that would have been WAY to simple! (Sidebar: show starts at 7:00 I leave Norman about 5:00, the drive is between and hour and an hour and a half, depending on speed) I finally pull over, afraid I have a flat tire (Another sidebar: I had a flat August 14 on the rear, passenger side tire, took it to Hibdon's, had them fix it, all was well, BUT I also have a slow leak in the rear, driver side tire) on the rear, driver side. I get out of the car, on I35 southbound, in the previously mentioned cute little black dress and 4 inch pointy toed stilettos, much to my surprise the tires on the driver's side are fine, however the rear, passenger tire is FLAT. Flat really might be an understatement actually. I'm still on the phone with Michelle, who I put on standby to come rescue me, as I am NOT in "tire changing" clothes, plus I don't really have a clue how to change a tire, and have no jack and that X shaped thingy. I call my trusty insurance roadside assistance, who I was a little irritable with, they say they will call me back with the ETA. In the meantime it dawns on me that my wonderful friend Skylar lives in Purcell! I call her and see if her husband, Matt, can come rescue me. She calls him, then calls me back and I call him and we work out details, though he had to run home and get a jack and that X shaped thingy. In the meantime the stupid insurance calls back and says it will be AN HOUR! I kindly call the tow truck (who had no name and which the phone rings approximately 20 times, NOT an exaggeration) and cancel them. Matt and his son Nick show up, change the tire, I pay them in homemade cookies I happened to have in the car and head to the nearest gas station to air up the spare a bit. As I pull into the gas station 3 miles away the stupid insurance calls and says now it will be 20 minutes before the tow truck arrives! So glad that Matt and Nick came to my rescue.

Here is my poor spare that is getting WAY too much use lately!

I manage, without speeding too badly, to get to the show at 7:02 before the director did his intro even! The show was HILARIOUS! If you are in Ardmore this weekend go see it! Friday and Saturday at 7 and Sunday at 2:30 I think. At the close of the show I get stuff from my mom (there is always stuff that she accumulates between visits) including "Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M." by Sam Wasson, the story of Breakfast at Tiffany's: sooooo excited!

I leave Ardmore, praying that my trip home is better than my trip to Ardmore. Except I forget that I didn't get gas before I left Norman. My car gets HORRIBLE gas mileage and having driven about 100 miles before this little adventure I did not have enough gas to go to Ardmore and back to Norman. I realize this at about mile marker 98 on I35 North. If you know anything about I35 North you realize that there really isn't a gas station until exit 106 (Riverwind and Love's). Very soon after my realization that I'm really close to sitting on E my low fuel light comes on. I prayed the whole time that I could make it less than 10 miles to get the gas station. I really didn't want to have to call someone or call insurance and wait again. I managed to make it to Love's. Here is the verdict (Sidebar: my tank holds 18 gallons):

At round about 16 miles to the gallon I could have made it about another 13 miles! (Luckily I did not dare to test this theory!)

I came home to dump 8 bags worth of shock into my still cloudy and green pool. I'm praying that maybe tomorrow it will be less green, or heck not green at all. What I learned about this: don't open the bucket of concentrate chlorine and stick your nose in it to smell it...it hurts! What can I say, don't argue with blond being my natural hair color!

The positives of today came on the radio though (when I wasn't listening to Christmas music, and no I don't have an answer why I was doing this). My two favorite songs, of the moment, were played when I could hear them all the way through: Steve Azar "Sunshine" and Kenny Chesney "Boys of Fall". I dedicate the second to my favorite 10 year old football player, Baley Sechrist, who got hit at football practice tonight and had to have a cat scan and has a neck brace right now. :( Prayers for him please!

Overall not the worst day ever, but I'm sure glad to be home in my bed!

First Week of School!

The craziness that is my life has officially started. Here are the highlights of the week:

Monday - had the server of my largest office crash first thing Monday morning (thank you Hurricane Norman!) so it was not exactly the day I planned!
Started my first counseling class...LOVE IT! We had to go around the room and introduce each other and then had to repeat the names back. I did them entirely too quickly on my turn (about halfway through the class) so guess who got to say them all at the end of class...that would be me...stupid photographic memory! The prof is great and I'm really looking forward to it!

Tuesday - massive headache, went to work for about 3 hours and then slept. I felt so bad I didn't even go help with Scouts with the Sechrist clan!

Wednesday - more headache! (I have had a headache off an on for the last three weeks or so...it is all allergies and the weather changing) I had to go to class any way that night, but I'm going to love that one too! The prof is very much the "devil's advocate" type and he is going to challenge everything that we say, which should be good. We had to introduce ourselves and I went on with my whole story about wanting to work with parenting/pregnant/homeless teens and got an "Amen" from the lovely girl in the class with the Afro, Ebony. It's going to be a great class.

Thursday - Disclaimer Alert!!!! I am NOT going to post about relationships on this blog, past, present or future, BUT this is going to be a small exception!

I was engaged (not going there) and still had my ring (with a GORGEOUS diamond in it), so July 31 I took it to have it reset and got back my custom made pendant Thursday!

These pictures DO NOT do it justice, but it's the best I could get with my phone and I didn't want to mess with my camera:

Basically the diamond is floating and if you look at it from the top it looks like an open heart, which I think is just perfect!

Friday - Nothing terribly exciting except I finished Eat, Pray, Love. If you haven't read it I suggest you do! It was a great book. For my book club we read it for our August meeting (Aug 5). I had a conflict and missed book club, so I had not finished it. We were supposed to go see the movie last Sunday, but couldn't, so we are going tomorrow! Again, not talking about relationships, but I found this paragraph very, um, familiar sounding:

Today - I had Junior League training all day. Loved it! I am so excited to be a part of this organization. Best part of the day was that we drew for committees to "intern" on during this first year and I got my first choice: Baby Steps. (I'll touch more on Baby Steps and what I want to do with my life later!)

I came home to an icky pool! Algae all over the bottom. The pump has been running really loudly since I cleaned the filter last week, so I'm thinking I didn't clean it very well or didn't get it tightened right. I, voluntarily, cleaned it again tonight and I think I'm back in business. We shall see when I take a sample in Monday!

The Story of the Filter...Part Three (yay! today!)

This post could also be called "God has a sense of humor and likes to watch Wendy get frustrated!"

So a few days ago I start to notice that the pool isn't really filtering like it should be. I get out the calendar (thinking there is NO way it has been 8 weeks!) and low and behold, it had been 8 weeks. Good grief, here we go. I think I realized this about Wednesday. I was busy with Chase's arrival and knew that Saturday would be the day. I don't think I mentioned in previous posts how disgusting cleaning the pool filter is. I thought this was just because I didn't back wash prior to cleaning it. I learned today that this was a mistake. I put off cleaning the filter until around 6:00 tonight. I noticed on my way home that the sky was starting to get dark, but was determined to get this done (remembering that I don't have a free day until mid December, of course). I start to look at the pool and realize that it is looking a smidge green. Since I have managed to get the hang of this pool thing down I DO NOT like to have the pool in any condition besides perfect. There are also A LOT of leaves in the bottom, because contrary to popular belief fall actually begins the first weekend in August in Oklahoma (or that's how it appears based on my backyard). This is what the weather looked like when I started to clean the filter:

Notice the rain???

So here I go. I try to back wash the pool before, to little avail, but better than nothing. I have little problem getting the filter open and the filter out, I even manage to get it to the concrete! This is the before:

Notice the white goop on it? That is what I hose off. I spray the sucker down and end up with this:

It doesn't look all that different, but man, oh man, does it filter better. I think I'm home free on this filter cleaning thing! Until I start to put it back together...it starts POURING! I manage to get the whole thing put back together without too many more problems. I come in, write the first filter blog entry, start the second, look out at the pool, it's stopped raining, but I can see all the leaves and the green. I just cannot bear it...out I go at 7:45 to vacuum the pool. There were SO many leaves! I had to clean out the pump basket about 6 times (prior to the this it had been about 2). I have now dumped chemicals in and I'm hoping by tomorrow the pool will look like this again!

The Story of the Filter...Part Two

The first pool cleaning was April 30. Around the end of June the pool wasn't back washing like I felt it should have. I go into Thompson's and Zac asks when I last cleaned the filter, which I rattle off April 30 (my memory is too good sometimes), about 8 weeks before, so he says it's probably time to clean it. I ask if I will need to bring it in, he says no, I should be good doing it on my own. My darling friends Kimberly and Allyson came over for a girls' afternoon and we swam and chatted (in a greenish, algae covered pool). After they left I set out to clean the filter. I go to my (oh so messy) garage and find my ratchet set. I manage to get the bolt off without needing my fabulous bolt cutters. What I learn from this is experience is this: BACKWASH FIRST!!!!!!!! I had to tug and use every ounce of muscle I had to get that thing out. When I did I couldn't move it to the concrete, thus it stayed on the side of the house and I hauled the hose around the corner and just washed it there. I put it all back together and run the filter again...MAGIC! Worked like a charm! I think at this point that I have this mess down! :)

The Story of the Filter...Part One

Filter Cleaning #1
About a month into my pool career I had managed to drain it, remove the leaves, refill it, and vacuum it, all ready for chemicals (details on these events to come later). I had gotten all the chemicals from Thompson Pool and Patio I would need to open the pool and was sent home to clean the filter, a standard procedure to do at the beginning of the season as well as every 8-12 weeks. I have a Diatomaceous earth filter (aka DE), which I have been told is the best. What I know about it (from last summer) is that every time you backwash you have to dump a ton of this powder stuff into the skimmer.

I am informed this year there is a new stuff, called EcoClean and you use a whole lot less and it comes in a much smaller bag (not the 20 pound bag from last year!) Yay! I was sent home to clean the filter. A seemingly simple process: take the ring from off the filter, remove the top, take the filter grids out, spray them down with the hose, put it all back together. Well NOTHING with this pool was easy the first time (or second, or third...) I go home with my mission. First thing I realize, taking off the bolt that holds the filter together was not the easiest thing.

I, naturally, have an alternative plan: BOLT CUTTERS!!!! I go purchase a pair and off the ring comes!

 Woohoo! I spray that sucker down and put it back together. I got new bolts (bolt cutter, of course killed the original) and screwed them back in, turn on the filter, and water comes rushing out the sides. ARG! I call Thompson's and talk to Mike, God bless his patience. He explains how close to get the bolts, so I go back to work. Still doesn't work. I end up calling a friend who comes over with a ratchet set and we get it all closed up. It was pretty late that night and it was Norman Music Festival so off we went to NMF 3, away form the dear, wonderful pool.

It was a Tuesday, at lunch to be exact, that I went out to the pool to dump in all the chemicals that I had been sent me home with. The pool was crystal clear, an amazing accomplishment! I turn the filter on and...NOTHING. I felt really horrible that day and ended up calling into work and falling asleep...for three days! I did not go anywhere near the pool, or even roll over to look out the window until Friday. I went out and the pool is green and about the opposite of clear. I go into Thompson's with this PITIFUL look. My dear favorite pool expert Zac meets me as I come in and says "I don't like that look" I say, "I don't like it either!" I explain the current state of the pool and ask if I will have to drain it again. He laughs and says no, I have done everything I can (by this point I'm ready for them to just come to the house and fix it, but those guys had a lot more faith in me than I had in myself). I need to bring the "innards" of the filter in and they will chemically clean it and replace any grids that need to be replaced. Home I go to open the filter up. On the way I run out of gas...really??? I get through that, get home, remove the bolts in a reasonable manner: bolt cutters again. Take it in, and magically they get it fixed. Pool filters like a charm! (I also learned during this episode that you can put the pool on recirculate and magically the pool turned from green to blue!)