"Pooling" Around

It's summer! Anyone who lives in the metro knows how unbearably warm it is these days. We are itching to go to the beach, but sadly, that isn't workable. Bringing three active kids on a five- to six-hour trip is too much of a hassle (I already have enough wrinkles on my face and stress in my life, thank you). And the expense involved is far from negligible (the bills I'm paying now are enough already, thank you).

Then I thought, if we can't go to the beach, then we must bring the beach to us. Makes sense, right? Right! So, with just a little prodding from Alden (my youngest daughter), I consented to buy a 12-foot-diameter pool to replace our old hole-ridden 8-foot-diameter one. It cost me 4,000 pesos, plus another grand for the air pump and other accessories.

The next day, at barely 6:30 a.m., Alden was shaking me awake. "Ma, come on, it's time to set up the pool!"

It took me an hour to choose and prepare the location (the ground must be relatively flat and smooth), open and "spread" the pool on it, and pump air in. Not bad, I thought. I relished the fact that the manual pumping provided some much-needed exercise for me. What I didn't like was that it took the whole day to fill it up with water! Maybe that's because our water supply was weak and slow, or maybe the pool was just so big (to my thinking, at least).

Two full hours after I set it up, the pool still looked like this:

Then, one more hour later, the kids couldn't wait anymore. They jumped right in (or rather, waded in), unmindful of the low water level.

It was much better the next day, when the pool was more or less full.

Alden and I had a great time. Too bad Raj couldn't join us because of her cough, and Jigme was in school.

Alden was practically in pool heaven. Anyone can tell by this picture :-)

And I felt like I was in some five-star beach resort. Ha-ha.

Summer is fun, life is good. I am blessed indeed! :-)