The Pool

We have spent a fair number of days at the pool this summer. It has been a good time, almost every time.

It is heartwarming to watch my kids delight in playing together. There are 3 of them, who needs friends, seems to be the attitude. Mac loves to give Sam and Hannah rides on his back. They love to get them. Mac has been helping Sam learn how to swim, and catching Hannah when she jumps off the edge.

They play the radio at the pool, sort of loudly. Some days it is almost deafening. They play mostly oldies, so, sadly, songs from when I was a teen. The kids have heard many of these songs and love to sing along. We have taken to singing along very loudly. This of course has caused us to discover that more people than you might have guessed, from our neighborhood, frequent the pool. I am already there in my bathing suit, which isn't a real pretty picture to begin with, so at this point, what is a little more humiliation?

The above is more for painting the scene, we are loud, obnoxious and impervious to embarrassment. We arrived on the scene yesterday, in a swimming pool mood. Jukebox Hero was playing on the radio. The kids are all excited, they like this song, they "know" the words. Mac grabs his towel, which is rolled up, and pretending to make it into a microphone and as loud as he can belts out "He is a juice-box hero, he has stars in his eyes..." It was a glorious moment.

Yup, that is right, after all these years of teasing him about it, he still really believes that there is such a thing as a juice-box hero. All is not lost. Of course jukeboxes these days are not so common and they don't play records, and he did have to make sure he knew what one was when I told him it was NOT juice-box, but rather jukebox.

Water Slides

Mac's entire purpose in life is to get me to go down the water slide with him. Finally, on Tuesday I relented. It was horrible. You slide down this dark enclosed slide, where periodically you get shot with water in the face. It seemed when ever I opened my eyes to see what was going on I got a face full of water. It was awful. I vowed to never do it again.

We went to the pool yesterday with a friend of mine, who my kids adore. When she showed up at the door, they were thrilled that Miss T. was coming with us. There were squeals of joy. Anyway, Mac resumed his purposeful demands that Miss T. go down the slide. My friend is a fairly fearless person, but she didn't want to do it. I am sure my description of the enclosed slide made her even less willing. BUT in order to keep the peace, I relented to go again. This of course peer pressured my friend into going. We opted for the open slide. Lo and behold, this was actually FUN. I went again. I wished I had done that first.

I suppose, just like life, I prefer to be in the light rather than the dark. I prefer to have some idea of what is coming up next rather than be surprised.