Five Little Duckies Sitting on the Bed

 When I am not knitting, writing or home from work, the weekends can get taken up with adventures with my granddaughters, ages 8, 6 and almost 2.  Namely duck hunting.  Now, to make things clean I am not a hunter of ducks or anything, except I may get my in town hunting license to take out a couple of deer, they are such a menace to our neighborhood. 

But the kind of duck hunting I do is with my granddaughter, I hide the ducks, they find them.  When my daughter, Laura, was alive, she loved buying party favors, little games and fun things for kids, namely her nieces, to have fun with. One of those items was 100 rubber duckies in all colors.  I think they get bought by other people to put on Jeeps, but we found better uses than that for these crazy colored rubber ducks.   I hide them all over the house. When the granddaughters come over, nothing amuses them more than going on a treasure hunt.  And since reading is hard for the two youngest ones, using written clues is not so much fun. But finding 100 ducks hidden in Grammy and Baba's house is very fun!

It gives me quite the workout to hide 100 ducks though. We only have two levels to our house, but running from room to room on each level, stooping down to a low level so the 2 year old can find them wears me out!  But it is worth it.  They get so excited and whoop and holler running all over the house finding the ducks.  The 2 year old goes around saying, "Duck, duck, duck." each time she finds one.

These ducks come in disguise, some are colored as superheros, some are unicorns, military, clowns, you name it.  They are hilarious.  It's good clean fun and sometimes they even get used in the bathtub!

While the girls search, I have time to sit and knit about half of a row.  They are really fast.  I think come next Easter, I'll be hiding rubber ducks instead of eggs. Of course they won't contain a treat inside them, but honestly the girls care more about finding the ducks then getting bits of chocolate inside them!

 

Old Style Typing and New Knitting

 I am rummaging through our offices, ordered to throw out any unnecessary equipment that we have  accumulated over the years, which when you work with computers is a lot. Because computer components are always going out of date, being upgraded, and what have you.  To my excitement,  I found two electric typewriters and a whole box of ribbons to go with them!   And even better, I plugged one in and it works!

Now if you are not familiar with electric typewriters, let me send some old history your way!  When I was in high school, during the late 1970's we took something called a typing class.  It was a classroom set up with 25 typewriters, things you typed on to create letters, poems, essays, term papers.  Most of them were NOT electric which means your fingers had to punch hard down on the keys. Much like the old straight stick and clutch on a car without automatic shifting.  Are you still with me? Sorry I am digressing to an ancient age.  Anyway, we students would fight over who got an electric typewriter because it was so much easier to type on.  

Nowadays we, myself included are so used to typing on a little keyboard that doesn't make any noise, unless you want it to and when we make mistakes, all we do is back up or tell the program to correct them.  Not so, in the old days.  Then, if you were lucky again, you could use the correction ribbon that some typewriters came with. It was was a clear ribbon that sucked up the printed letter you mistakenly typed.  Now some of these had white ribbons that just stuck correction fluid over your mistake also. There was a lot of variety to this.

I am going to bring a typewriter home so my granddaughters can try it out.  Meanwhile, I am still trying to get the granddaughters to learn to knit or crochet.  They feign interest for about five minutes then get distracted...must be all the ducks they are hunting for. (another story for another time).

I finally finished their Christmas sweaters and I have begun strictly knitting a sweater, at least one if not two before Christmas again.  I vow to finish a knitted sweater in this lifetime!  It is such slow going and I am only knitting and not even doing fancy stitches!  How in the world does anybody do those fancy stitches without getting lost?

Anyway, here is the front of the sweater, don't you just love the colors? I bought the yarn online from KnitPicks and will have to look up the name, sorry, I am not good at remembering things like that.

But the feel is soft and wonderful although it is a little lightly spun so the twist comes undone at times and is hard to pick up stitches without paying close attention, again, something I am bad about. But so far so good.  I hope to piece together the front and back soon and begin on sleeves...which will take forever!

 

Stanley

 My husband and I have a friend at our house. Her name is Stanley. Yes, HER name. And she is a squirrel.

Stanley made herself known not long after we moved into our house. There is a nice concrete patio just off the kitchen with a 1960's style metal awning.  The awning had been damaged by the limb of the oak tree that also stood just off the kitchen.  We had the oak tree taken down because that is all you could see from the kitchen door, it was massive and rotten.  Since we had just moved in we were still accessing what things around this forty year old house needed to be updated, fixed etc. so we had not yet addressed the damage the awning had since it was on the small side. 

But small or not, our friend, Stanley, knew about it. At this point, the squirrel got called a he, hence the name Stanley. I don't try to figure out the gender of squirrels because they are so fleeting.  But for weeks we had seen a squirrel take up residence in our front yard and found out he was quite the voyeur.  Several times I was sitting on the couch in front of the large front room window and suddenly feel eyes on my back. I would turn around and a squirrel would be sitting on the brick window ledge staring in through the glass.  It didn't matter if I jumped in surprise or yelled, he just sat there, staring. 

We would also find him sitting on the front sidewalk next to the front door. Just sitting and watching the street.  He would not move unless  we opened the front door and disturbed his revelry.

But one day our daughter was visiting and was sitting on the patio outside the kitchen door when she kept hearing a rustling and scratching sound.  The next thing I knew I saw her taking the broom  handle and pounding the underside of the awning with it.  Even though she was an adult, I felt the need to remind her not to tear apart her parents' home so I opened the door.  "What in the world are you doing?"

"There is something up there!" she replied poking the roof some more.

"What do you mean, something up there?"

"It's making a rustling noise and scraping noise."  she replied.

"Maybe it's a snake," I teased at which she promptly dropped the broom and ran inside the house.

But later, when I was in the kitchen, I looked out and saw a squirrel jump off the awning roof onto the barbeque grill and to the ground.  Then a few minutes later I saw it come back and jump up to the grill and to the roof.   Hmm.. this needs investigating. So what did I do, I alerted my husband.

The next day he looked at the awning and noticed a dent with a very small opening.  "Just large enough for a potential squirrel to be hiding food," he told me. Oh dear, that is not a good thing. It is right over the kitchen door and who knows what will be falling out of the awning roof then.  So he and my daughter got out the ladder, and some tools to pry open the awning and see what they could see.  As soon as he climbed up the ladder and banged around on the metal, he heard scurrying. 

I came out the door and decided I had better add to the backup. So with my daughter and me standing behind him while he was on the ladder, he lifted up the awning roof and all hell broke loose!

Four baby squirrels went running everywhere in all directions!!! Lucky for my husband none of them jumped directly on him but it was good my daughter and I were standing behind him because of course he jumped and we kept him from falling off the ladder!

Oh my gosh, there were four little babies running like mice all over the awning top. One raced down to the far end and came over the edge. It held onto the awning with one paw. My daughter and I shrieked and looked to find a bucket to catch him in. But suddenly he jumped onto the house brick and made it to safety.  Another one ran down the other side towards a shed at the end of the patio and jumped to safety to the ground.  The other two went running along the roof line an onto the brick. 

  We all felt a mixture of laughter, regret at disturbing babies in the nest and relief that none of us or any of the squirrels were injured.  We kept an eye out for them for several days following and to our relief, mom had rounded them up and they were up in a neighbor's tree feasting on nuts.

But Stanley has continued to hang out in our yard, stealing bird seed and tearing up the decor and bird houses I keep. I guess she is still a little perturbed with us for destroying her perfect hiding spot. She was back this fall again, stealing the black walnuts I had put out to dry.  She even went so far as to eat them on the front stoop and leave the crumbs behind, stinker.

Oh well, life with nature. I sit in my rocker knitting and watch the antics outside enjoying the show.

 

 

Slips and Trips and Falls

 Mylanta! I have not grown in grace in my older years but this is getting ridiculous!  I  was walking between the church office and the church the other day, something I do several times a day. The school is situated between here and there so I met the PreK children coming out to recess.  As I walked and began waving and saying hello to them. I love seeing their smiles and waves.

I stepped down off the curb and I turned again to wave when my foot hit the parking stob I forgot was there and down I went,   hitting my hip, knee and hand hard. 

Luckily for me and for the children's sake, where I fell was on the other side of a car parked there so they did not see this happen. I would have felt forever guilty for making that impression on their little brains.  Of course that horrible thought also drove me to quickly try to get up. But it took me two attempts to finally get to my feet. 

 I laughed it off just in case the kids did see me and so their teachers did not coming running to my aid. But unfortunately that day we had painters at the church who were painting an outside railing and one of them did see and also saw me struggle with getting up. He came over to check on me.  Again I laughed and told him I was fine, just a klutz but seeing my gray hair he repeated, "Are you sure you're okay? I am sure he was thinking,  'Some old lady just face planted on the parking lot, what do I do? Call 911?'

 Even more embarrassed, I struggled to hurry over to the church rectory door and get inside where I could evaluate my injuries in private.

I am still at the age where an accident like this gets me horribly embarrassed and instead of worrying about my injuries, (for instance was my hip cracked, did I further injure the arthritic knee, what if I can't knit or crochet with my hand now?!!!!)! I just wanted to run away to privacy and nurse my wounds!

Ah, pride...literally goeth before (and in this case, after) the fall.  So much pride that I disregard my own common sense.

But I must have been okay because I was able to walk and get inside the rectory basement before I started crying at the pain in my now bleeding knee.  I cleaned up best I could in the bathroom in the basement and made sure my hand and elbow were not gushing blood before I hobbled back over to my office to covertly search for bandages. 

Later when I went home for lunch I found a huge bump and bruise on my hip, my new hip that is. (oh great, now I've busted a new hip)  but the new injury there was caused by the  keys I had in my pocket at the time of the fall.  My hand was sore but not bleeding and remarkably I had not torn my pants where my knee was bleeding.

I spent the rest of the day humbled inside my office determined to not ever fall again, but this morning, I tripped up the stairs in my office building. Oh mylanta!!! I am a danger to myself... 

Tomorrow is Saturday. I am going home to sit and knit all day. Safely...with no curb hopping.

 

Did I Tell You About The Time...

 Have I told you about the time my family all went whitewater rafting in Colorado? Well, let me tell you that was an adventure and the reason my hair totally turned gray. It was 2006 and my husband and I decided us and the kids badly needed a vacation, but not the beach which was our usual choice. No this time we headed to the mountains, and not just any mountains, we chose the Rockies and a very, very cold river called the Arkansas which was actually in Colorado but it ended in Arkansas.

Anyway, none of us had ever been rafting on a river before. I had been canoeing, my husband had done the same but the kids had only done inner tubing down a slow river in our home state of Missouri.

But hey we were needing some adventure and boy did we get it.  We signed up and filled out permission slips for our kids, 'Warning: your life may be in peril during this float... you are signing away your right to sue us if you don't come back.' 

Okay, it didn't really say that, but it did warn us of the risks of injury or death by getting into this raft. That is pretty much the same thing and made me stop cold as I was signing everyone's release forms. Seriously, maybe this was too dangerous for our three kids ages, 20, 18 and 15.   But being the kind of parents that think we should carefully expose our children to different adversity and adventures in life so they know how to handle themselves confidently, we went ahead and my hair began graying at that moment.

We got in the raft, learned how to stroke with our paddles in unison and set off down the very fast current of a 50 degree river. It felt more like 20 degrees but our guide assured us we would not survive in that kind of water so it had to be 50 degrees. The rafts always travel in twos so there was another family behind us, but they decided not to paddle and let the guide to the risky stuff!

  We took several  Class I and II rapids and feeling confident headed down the pike so to speak to the Widow maker rapids.  Boy was that aptly named, except it was almost the WidowER maker.  

We hit the side of a rock and flipped the boat enough that my son, one daughter and me went flying through the air and into the water. My daughter fell on top of me and we found ourselves struggling to get our heads above the water. I kept pushing my daughter's backside to push her up, but it turns out that I was pushing the bottom of the boat.  She had already  bobbed up along with my son and I was the missing person.

My husband, our other daughter and the guide were searching frantically for me on all sides of the boat when suddenly I popped up out of breath and the guide grabbed me by the life jacket and yelled, "Swim to shore!" and threw me back into the water. My son, daughter and I had to swim to shore while he, my husband and other daughter had to paddle to keep from flipping over.

We made it and the WidowER maker did not win that day. But boy was that scary!  As soon as we all got back in the raft there were hugs all around and our adventure continued to the pull out place.  

Since that experience, we actually did go whitewater rafting again this time in West Virginia on the New River. But thankfully it was not the life threatening experience it had been in Colorado.  

I don't know now, at my age if I would chance doing the crazy Arkansas ride again or just rest leisurely in a raft paddled by the guide, like the family who was behind us did. They didn't even get wet but boy they got a great picture of us!

 

Furiously Knitting!

    So why do we call something we do really fast and intense as furiously doing something?   The word furious itself means to be mad.  Oxford's online dictionary defines this word as such:

adverb

adverb: furiously

1. 1.

   in an extremely angry manner.

   "he furiously denies the claims"
2. 2.

   in an extremely energetic or hurried manner; intensely.

   "Terry was furiously scribbling away

    

    

   So I find it funny that you can be furious, meaning mad, you can furiously deny a claim which means in an angry way or you can be in a rush and scribble furiously.  

    

   So would you knit furiously?  I for one, know that if I knit either in a furious way or while furious my knitted project is NOT going to turn out well!  

   Sometimes I crochet furiously, in other words in a hurried way. But I can do that with crochet because if I mess up while furiously crocheting I can easily rip back mistakes that will inevitably happen!

    

   Okay, enough with odd words and the English language. On to projects...

   I have been not so furiously working on three sweaters for my granddaughters, thankfully they are 7, 5 and 19 months so these are not big sweaters, but I have to tell you, these sweaters are killing me!

   The first one, the purple one, I had knitted, which took forever.  I was so very proud of myself. I have only knitted a cardigan for myself before and my gauge was way off, it would fit a horse which I don't have so I only wear it at home. But it was pretty and I was proud of it so I did not unravel it.

   But knitting these smaller sweaters has been a chore!  The purple one is for the 5 year old. She loves purple.  After I finished it she tried it on, it was short...so I may still land up crocheting a lacy bottom edge on it. We'll see. I am trying to get all three done by Christmas.

   The second one, the red and black one I had knitted all the way to one sleeve when I found out my sleeves holes were totally wrong!  In a moment of despair I unraveled the entire sweater. Yes, I know!!!!   Why???? I don't know!!!!  I was in despair!!!!

    

   I decided to crochet the silly thing the second time to save me from more angst (this was also during the time of family crisis and sorrow and I just could not handle trying to knit something so hard right then.)

   Crocheting went much faster and honestly smoother as you can shape easier when you crochet, but I still like the look of a knit sweater.

   The third sweater, the pink and white one, I was beginning to panic I would not get these sweaters done in time for Christmas (this was in September, mind you) so I also crocheted it. 

    

   As you can see, they are mostly finished. The dreaded trimming and pulling in loose ends still must be done.

   So, instead of resting up, I found four skeins of a really colorful yarn I had ordered online. Hmm, maybe I could SLOWLY knit a sweater from this one and take my time and whoever it fit would get it...

    

   I began knitting and I loved the yarn,Wool  Wonders from KnitPal, a worsted weight called Autumn Leaves that was a little fuzzy.  I really wanted to knit the entire sweater in the round from the bottom up. I ordered a knitting sweaters for kids book, Style Your Own Kids' Knits by Kate Butler. 

   

   
   But none of the patterns were for bottom up so I made up my own.  Well, that was okay at the bottom, but once I got to the arm holes my idea and lack of pattern fell apart.  

   So...once again............I unraveled the whole sweater, winding up my yarn into a ball, actually almost two balls because I had already gotten into the second skein I was so far along.  Yup.....

   I started over, this time beginning with the back on a set of straight needles. It is going much better...so far.

   

   
   

    

   During these projects yes, I have become furious. Furious at myself for 1. not using a pattern, 2. not using a pattern..3. fearing I would not make all three before my deadline.

   But, in another way I am happy with myself because 1. I am sticking to it...2. I kept going and did not throw any of these projects into the unfinished UFO pile, 3. I will in some way have sweaters for the girls for Christmas at least one each if not more!!

   Maybe I should change my title to Persistent Knitting! 

   

   
   

   loving my glass cabinet full of yarn!

   

   
    

   
   

   
   

 

Loving Fall

 I absolutely love when fall finally comes to our part of the country, southeast Missouri which usually does not happen until October.  It is especially wonderful when it comes with a rain storm, wind and sudden chill to the air!

I can remember walking around my college campus in the drizzling rain, up and down the hills to class, wearing an all weather jacket, getting totally wet. When I finally got home mom had on a pot of homemade vegetable stew and had made biscuits!

Now I can only look out my office window and wish I was walking around the campus when fall comes.  Tied to my desk, I am counting down the days to retirement this December. Then I will be able to enjoy the season changes and walk whenever and wherever I want!

I can hardly wait to find a path such as this in the many parks we have in our town.  The smell of the wet decaying leaves draws you further down the path into the wood. What would make it even better would be a dreary cloudy day and drips of rain coming down.  

Then I could go home and put on a pot of soup and make some biscuits, warm up some tea and write or read a book.  

Ahh, fall, the most wonderful time of the year! 

Desperate Times Call for Crocheting

 A couple of weeks ago I was spending some time in a hospital bed getting ready for an angiogram. Yup, I'd been having a little trouble with my ticker acting weird and the doctors all decided they needed an inside look.  Not really knowing what I was in store for other than I could not eat or drink for 12 hours... I was a little nervous.  All they kept saying was it just depends on what they find when they insert that little needle or camera into the vein in my wrist and up to my heart. If it was all good I could go home. If they found clogging, well then they would have to do something about that and it may include a longer hospital stay.

Yeah, so what else do you do when you are awaiting medical tests and who knows what kind of news?  You knit or crochet your worries away.  My husband did me the favor of  recording this reaction of mine to the stress of waiting to go to the surgical theater.

I got most of a dishcloth crocheted while waiting!  Even with iv needles in my and a pulse monitor on my tension finger I was able to crochet.  And my husband just shook his head and laughed as my blood pressure kept going down. The nurse saw this and said maybe all her patients should crochet while waiting for surgery!  I agreed!

Afterward, with good news that my arteries were beautiful, I had to wait several days to get back to knitting or crocheting since my wrist was swollen and black and blue. But it was worth it for the good news.  
 

The Band You're About to Hear

 My family loves music, something that has been passed down through generations of both my husband's family and mine so naturally our kids have picked up the music bug too.  And we love to get together to play music. My husband digs the dobro and harmonica, with a little ukelele at times, my son is a major percussionist and vocalist, our middle daughter loves the tamborine and vocals, our youngest daughter is working on the bass and I play guitar, six and 12 string and sing.

Our parish has an annual picnic and sometimes the five of us decide to work on a few songs to share with our fellow community at church.  The first time we did it we weren't asked if we had a name, we were just the Simmons Family. But the second year someone in the audience asked for our name and our son came up with, "The Band You're About to Hear." This may be a take off of "That Thing You Do" movie if I remember correctly, but we borrowed it for that day. 

Since then it's the only name we can think of, not really agreeing or even discussing anything else.  And now our granddaughters have joined us on stage as evidenced by the picture above.

It is just good clean family fun and we just enjoy being together whenever we can to play.   

Yarn Wars

 I love yarn...bright, colorful, dark, white, it doesn't matter. When I walk into my local Hobby Lobby I have to buy at least one skein, usually more.  I want to just sit down in the store and start making something, usually a bear or a hat. And hey what do you know you can also buy hooks and needles in case you forgot them in your purse!  

All those soft, cuddly yarns waiting to go home with you. The warm speckled ones that beg to become hats. Who needs a blanket, raise your hand and even if you don't I am making some anyway!

Socks...ooo the concentration it takes to make socks is very appealing to me...sometimes I need to dump other stuff in my head and socks are the perfect way to do that. I have to concentrate on sock knitting, all that counting and marking....

I am retiring this December and I cannot wait to have more yarn time!  There are so many projects I want to do!  Sorry, cannot volunteer for that I have hats, bears, socks, blankets... you name it. My volunteer times is knitting, crocheting and sewing!  I will teach my grandchildren to work with yarn and fabric!

Yarn is in my future! 

The Frog

 I was on my way to our storage rental the other Saturday and as I stopped to get in the gate I glanced at my passenger side mirror.  Hmm that was weird, some strange green thing was perched on my window edge. I thought it was a Magnolia blossom from our neighbor's tree.

 

 I leaned back to look in that side mirror when I saw a pair of eyes.  Little black eyes. Suddenly the green thing moved. Why, it was a tree frog!  He was hanging on for dear life on the edge of my car window.

 

Suddenly he jumped onto the mirror, his webbed feet sticky tightly to the glass.  I began to laugh and even more embarrassing I started to talk to him. He rode with me into the storage facility and as I stopped and parked I got out to take a  picture of him. 

He hung out until I was finished loading some items into my car. As I drove off I wondered if he would ride all the way back home which I figured is where he had gotten on.  But as I went down two blocks he must have seen something that interested him and off he went.  

I was worried about him, now he was in a strange neighborhood and could get squashed by another car. But there was no car behind me so he was safe that way.  While I missed my green companion I wondered if he had just gotten bored with the old neighborhood and wanted to explore town. What a way to meet new...um...tree frogs?

So I wished him good luck and drove back home, a little sadder for having lost a companion who thought the trees were greener on this side of town! 

I Am Not Strong

    I don't understand why people keep telling me this. I am not strong. Why would you think that just because I am standing here, after losing both my mom and one of my daughters within a month of each other, that I am strong?  

   I am not strong. I cry every day. While the death of my 92 year old mother was expected, the death of my 36 year daughter was not. She was ill, but we expected her to recover. I am not strong. I keep questioning God why.  Why did he not answer our prayers for her recovery? Why did he let both things horrible things happen at the same time?   I am not strong.

   What makes you think I am strong?  We had to plan two funerals within weeks of each other. My husband and I spent four weeks out of town in an Intensive Care Unit with our daughter, one week was in her room sleeping on the recliner and bench, the other three weeks in a hotel.  We cried, we held her hands, we talked and encouraged her, we cried, we were exhausted beyond words.  I am not strong. 

    I want to go to my mom and cry, cry over the loss of my daughter, but my mom is also gone. I want to cry over the loss of my mom with all my children, but one of them is missing. I am not strong. 

   My husband and our other two children have had to pack up and clean our daughter's apartment, take care of her funeral arrangements, distribute things we cannot keep, settle her accounts. This came just after we have been doing the same for my mother's things just weeks before.  I am not strong, I am exhausted, grieving, worn out from trying to figure out what we should have done differently to have kept our daughter from dying. Worn out from answering teams of doctors' questions.  Worn out trying to figure out why this happened.   I am not strong.

   It is ONLY  because of the love of our families that we are getting up each day. Both my husband's siblings and his dad, and my siblings and our nieces and nephews are we able to find a reason to get up each morning. I am not strong enough to get up every day and face the emptiness, the huge hole in my heart.  I am not strong. I must have their love and support and prayers to get through each and every day.  And sometimes, even that does not feel like enough. 

   So please do not tell me I am strong.  I am struggling. And I need prayers. 

 

Old House Stories # 2- The Critter

 I have a lot of memories of our old house, here is another one:

A squirrel was sitting in my house gutter the other day. He had really gone too far. I mean, we have hawks that swoop down on such unsuspecting critters like him and here he was sitting happily in the middle of the gutter, munching on maple seeds staring in my kitchen window. I stared back wondering if he was really watching my face or was simply in maple nut nirvana. Either way he was going to get himself snatched off the roof if he didn't stop stuffing his face. More seeds in that ever expanding belly of his and he wouldn't just be lunch for a hawk but find himself stuck literally in the gutter.

Suddenly, a friend of his decided this was just too good to miss and there were now two squirrels in the gutter loading up on seeds. Normally I would have thought good deal, they are cleaning out my gutters from the yearly scourge of maple helicopters landing all over my roof that end up clogging the gutter downspouts. But they were making such a mess with the husks of the seeds dropping them all over my desk that I thought for a moment, you deserve to get picked off by a hawk. Shame on me.

Finally I had enough and send Watson, our Basset/Springer Spaniel out to chase them off. Poor Watson, he is getting up in age, but his eyes have never been his strong suit. He comes out the back door all ready to engage in battle with the intruders but he can never quite see where they are. I can point up to the roof all day and he will sniff the ground nonetheless. Low to the ground, Watson has the heart of the Springer Spaniel and the legs and dragging belly of a basset hound. He stir up some mighty fearsome barking but it will be all day before he reaches you.

Squirrels off the roof for now, I move on to filling my seasonal swimming pool. It's the type of pool you put up every year because my husband and I don't quite want a year round pool in the back yard. We seem to have amnesia when it comes to remembering how much trouble it is to drag five hundred pounds of hot sticky vinyl in the middle of the yard, slide the metal support tubes into sticky vinyl sleeves, set up the metal legs all without damaging our fingers, shins and ears of our neighbors.

My husband and I are aging too, as in we are getting too old to think just the two of us can do this by ourselves every year. But not just getting old as in in creaky bones and muscles but also our hearing. How can two people who are standing back to back not hear what the other one is saying when they are standing in the yard working on a project? It's beyond me. All I know is we are constantly yelling, "What? What did you say?" I am surprised neighbors don't come out and interpret for us. Of course none of them are much younger, so maybe they don't hear us.

Back to the pool, so the box says it takes only thirty minutes to set up and begin filling the pool. It takes us ninety, with a lot of sweat, swearing and wine at nine in the morning. Last year my wonderful husband built a wood deck by the pool so our grandchildren and I could get in and out easily. It made it so wonderful not having to climb up and down a rickety ladder. We kept the deck throughout the winter, but moved it down the yard so it wouldn't be standing right in front of our main deck all winter looking all forlorn. Of course that meant pretty much disassembling this deck because it was too heavy for us to move. It worked out great during the fall and early spring as a miniature playhouse for the and the granddaughters to play on. But, of course, once we got the pool assembled the deck had to be moved back in place. Which meant disassembling it again, and also reassembling it next to the pool. I think it was easier to build in place the first year. This time we had to keep pushing and pulling the five hundred pounds of vinyl along with poles and legs to get it in the right spot for the deck or else the ladder would not fit along a flat side of the octagonal pool. Believe me, we thought we knew where it would fit against the deck, but when you push, pull and scream at five hundred pounds of vinyl it tends to sit wherever it wants.

Finally, it was done. Back in the house, I washed vegetables to have with lunch when I looked out and saw the squirrel was back but this time on top of our pergola. The pergola sits on the deck right next to the pool deck. The next thing I know, Watson is outside barking, in the wrong direction again, at a squirrel he can smell but not see. The barking was enough to alarm the squirrel, but now I can see it panic as he realizes where he would have normally run and jumped when the dog came running out there was now a giant blue five hundred pound vinyl thing in his squirrelly path.

So, this squirrel is no dummy, he improvised and he jumped to the pool deck and and down the ladder. Now because I had immediately begun running the hose to fill the pool as soon as we had set up it up, I know that there are a few inches of water at the end of that ladder, but the squirrel did not. He suddenly reappears looking rather freaked out at the prospect of maybe having to swim instead of run. He is back on the pool deck closer to the loudly barking dog. Much to the squirrel's further chagrin, my husband appears on the deck to see what the dog is barking about. And the squirrel Olympics begins. Mr. Squirrel is so panicked to see a human and a dog blocking most of his paths to freedom, he begins running up and down the pool deck. He makes a quick decision to leap to the pergola and running along a narrow beam flies with hope and a prayer to the top of the house.

I am happy to say he made the leap, much to the amusement of my husband and myself. Watson, of course because he hasn't been able to track him still thinks the squirrel is lurking around the pool and keeps barking.

So summer has officially begun in our backyard.