Club Scheffler

   I had nothing to say the last couple of days, but today, as I was attending to the pool's needs, I thought I would talk about Club Scheffler.
   We have a pool, and it's pretty big. It's 20' by 40', and goes from 3.5' to about 8' deep, in a straight slope. No hopper in this pool! We estimate it holds around 44,000 gallons of water!
   When Jesse was small, there were always kids going swimming, and when Hubs worked at the garage, he would bring all the guys home at lunch time to cool off. Back then, the pool got a lot of use. These days, however, I am the only one who uses it on a regular basis. I think Jess and Hubs both have only been in it maybe three times each so far this year. Sara has been here a couple of times too.
   Before we opened it this year, Hubs and I discussed having it filled in. It really is a lot of work for him, since he does all the vacuuming. And if, for some reason, we decide to move somewhere else, it's too much work for Jess since he's gone, almost literally, from near dawn til after dark, and has no time to do the necessary chores involved in taking care of the pool. I convinced Hubs to open it for one more season, then in the fall we can decide.
   I am making the most of the pool this summer. I am down there every day, for at least a little while. Every morning I get my suit on, go downstairs and turn on the filter, then go in the pump house and check the pressure on the filter. I let the air out of it also. Then I open the gate, and walk out to the skimmer, check the skimmer, and dump out all the pine needles, dead frogs and bugs and such that have collected there.  
    I carry my nook, the house phone, and my cell phone out to the table and chairs we have at the far end. Then I have to go back to the club house, because I usually forget the test kit. I test the pool, then jump in the shallow end and reach under the bottom step and get the thermometer to check the water temp. We like to keep it down kinda deep, so we get a more accurate temp reading, and not a false reading since the water in the top four inches or so is much warmer.
   Then I start to skim. I always do it from inside the pool! I have taken the skimmer head off the pole and keep it on the side of the pool so I can just grab it. I skim from shallow end, back and forth, to the deep end. When the water gets too deep, I have two noodles that I straddle to float on for the rest of the pool. This way, I'm getting some exercise too. I discovered a long time ago, it's waaaay too much work to skim from the edge of the pool. Many bugs and things are too small to be seen from way up there. It's much easier to see them from in the water!
   Our pool doesn't get really warm. First, because it's got so much water, it takes a lot to warm it up. Second, it's not in full sun all day. It only gets full sun from 11:30 a.m. til about 4 p.m. or so. This year, we actually hit 82 degrees for a couple of days when it was so freaking hot for those two weeks! Since it's been raining and chilly the last few nights, the temp has been hovering around 76-77 degrees. Still a really nice temp for cooling off!
   There are so many memories associated with our pool! Teaching Jess to swim, his first summer we put him in the water, and he was kicking his chubby little legs like a little frog! And I'll never forget the underwater pictures we took after our vacation to Hershey Park and Sesame Place when he was four. Every year we have had lots of frogs in the pool. We swim with them for a while, then we catch them and set them free.
  We have had our share of animals in there also! There was a very angry snake in there one year, and another time there was a baby skunk. We rescued him, but still aren't sure he survived. We've found dead rabbits, mice, moles, and even worms in there.
   I don't know if I can convince Hubs not to fill in the pool. We are still talking about it, and he will not agree to making me a lawn backgammon board. I keep trying, though. I thing it would be fun to play backgammon in the lawn, with big playing pieces cut from some of the trees we need to take down. He thinks it would be too much work, to actually play the game. He's probably right.