I love the pool in the summer. I love the way you usually have to walk through a bathhouse/ bathroom area and there is that brief moment of not knowing what you’re about to find out in the pool area. In most cases, the pool area is sort of blocked off from the parking area so especially if you’ve never been there before, walking through that bathhouse can be very exciting. I love how our pool area smells like a mix of grilling, fabric softener and watermelon. I love how it’s just loud enough that you can sing along to the radio and no one else really hears you over the sound of water slides and hollering children.
I usually really love getting to read a good summer book while the kids play their hearts out, but this year, Lila is proving that to be difficult. So instead, I am spending a lot more time that usual watching the people around me while I continually pouring water into tiny tea cups with the little one. Lila is fascinated with pouring at the moment, that and loading and unloading her toy bag. It can go on for hours at a time and don’t you dare interrupt her cycle. Everything must go in before anything can come back out.
So back to my people watching…..I am trying to figure out which of the life guards is the pool hottie. There always is one, that one person who walks out from the break room and just the right summer song is playing as they saunter out to their post, almost as if it’s their own personal soundtrack. That beautiful person, who even though they are sitting out in the sun all day, doesn’t seem to break a sweat and their hair still looks incredible. The lifeguard that seems to always be watching over the busiest section of the pool because people are hoping that if their swimming skills should fail them, this is the guard that will jump in and save them.
When I worked at camp in Florida, that lifeguard was named Jeff. Our swimming area was actually a natural spring and floating out in the middle was a little dock that you could swim too, lay out on, and always had a lifeguard perched on. Jeff usually took that post, not necessarily because he liked it so much, but everyone else seemed to appreciate him being there so much. He would swim out to his lookout, and the whole camp just seemed to stop and stare. Keep in mind that this was a natural spring and it wasn’t uncommon to come up out of the water and have moss or some other natural vegetation on you somewhere, but to Jeff, that sort of thing never happened.
I’ve also been trying to pay close attention to see which of the guards have a little something for one another, because you know there are summer flings going on. That’s half the fun of working at a pool, is the little soap opera that is going on behind the scenes. These stories aren’t unfolding quite as easily as I would like. I don’t know if we are getting there too late in the day or what, but so far, my life guards at the Jewish Community Center are turning out to be rather boring.
I have seen some interesting things though, not life guard related. I watched a little girl who was just a few months older than Lila frolicking around wearing her swim diaper on the outside of her bathing suit. I suppose this method would work, and I know that those swim diapers don’t really do much except keep the pooh in, but still……It was all I could do to not go up to the mom and just ask what that was all about, because it was starting to really fluster me.
I am also a little perplexed at why our pool grill serves falafel with a nice little salad and a side of hummus, yet they don’t have good ol’ nachos. I suppose I should feel special and lucky that we can get such yummy treats and the grill is actually a grill, not just a snack bar. But my people watching would be so much better if I had a side of nachos.
Another thing at the pool that has me fascinated. There is a pregnant woman who comes daily around the same time we do. She isn’t just pregnant, but more on the due any moment side of things. Everyday I expect her to not show up because she’s finally having that baby, but every day so far, she will waddle in with her adorable little belly and equally adorable little girl, named Abigail. The mom looks like she’s about 15, and in real life, would be teeny, tiny. She still is teeny, tiny…with the exception of that huge belly attached to the front of her. Since I already have about 12 friends who are pregnant and due this summer, I have gone ahead and added her to my list. She has no idea, I’m sure, that she is on my pregnant friend list. But I can imagine that they day I take the kids and she isn’t there, I will come home and report to Brandon almost as excited as when one of the people I actually have a relationship with goes into labor. I’ve even named this pregnant lady, Hadassah, because it seems very Hebrewy and in my head she’s having a little baby boy. I wonder if in their heads, everyone else has dubbed me the crazy lady who is trying to match up all the lifeguards, likes to sing out loud, stares longingly at the snack area and makes up stories about everyone else. I would deserve it if they did.
In other news today, we missed piano lessons today due to Mattie locking the car keys in the house. She almost always forgets to shut the door behind her, and wouldn’t you know it, the one time she did it locked. Here we all were outside, Reese without shoes, and no phone or keys. Needless to say, piano was going to be out of the question, but the bigger concern was how we were going to get back in the house. It wasn’t terribly hot outside, but we only had the diaper that Lila was wearing and breakfast had been a while ago. This situation had the potential to go really bad really fast, so i figured I needed to come up with a plan to get us back inside. And wouldn’t you know it, this was the morning that all the neighbors seemed to be out and of course the crazy lady that walks up and down the street all day long doesn’t carry a phone on her. I even asked the garden guys next door, but they didn’t seem to be big on speaking english.
The next door neighbor lady finally came home and you would have thought that my kids thought she was the ice cream man. Mattie almost beat her into their garage and with her urgency, you would have thought that we had been living out of our garage for a week. thankfully, Ms. Reece let us right in and the kids forgot all their worries about having to spend the rest of their childhood in the front year when they caught sight of her bowl of m&ms. I called Brandon’s cell phone, which he didn’t answer and left him a message to come home asap. Now to call the office……but what in the world was the number? Isn’t that sad? I call that number everyday but I have no idea what it is because it’s programmed in my phone. Thankfully, the Reece family actually keeps their yellow pages…unlike us. After calling all of the numbers for the clinic and leaving messages with all of the secretaries I could that Dr. Baughman was to come straight home, we finally got ahold of him.
This is probably about the time that you are thinking to yourself, don’t you guys have a spare key? Hasn’t this happened before? And the answer to both of those is yes. But the spare wasn’t where it was supposed to be and on a side note, Brandon is at Lowe’s as we speak getting keys made for our neighbors and the security man who patrols our ‘hood.
I’m sure my street is very happy that me, or more specifically I, have moved in. From being suspected of burglarizing my own home and now this, I think I probably keep them very entertained. I also think that Mattie was really on to something with the simple action of shutting a locked door to avoid the music lessons that she hadn’t adequately practiced for. I wish I had thought of it years ago when I was taking piano lessons. You’re a smart girl Mattie Belle!
Mama Tried 
so fun!