This one's for the ladies

Yeah...like the other gender reads this...well, Sweet Man may, since I added his email to the Feedburner....cuts down on the redundancy of our days....

But I digress....

I am not a feminist. I willingly accept my role as volumptuous woman, to domesticate and to be cherished... and protected to some extent. My Sweet Man may disagree, but I rarely have a problem with the submission part of marriage. (This is an off-the-cuff assessment of marriage for me...need to express my role as woman a little better, at another time perhaps. Don't jump down my throat, s'il vous plait.)

And as such, I often take for granted the minutiae of getting a job done. I ask Sweet Man to do something and he does it, eventually. I look at a project as a whole, not the mini-steps along the way that can be foiled by any number of problems. But today without a male counterpart and kids in tow, I roared. There were challenges today that other days I would have gladly deferred to the expertise and brute strength of another. But I didn't really have that choice. And not having that choice was good for me.

You may remember, I came back from Wichita for two reasons: my momma and that blasted pool.

Today the daunting task of cleaning and filling the pool loomed. This is a job usually reserved for Sweet Man...he starts up the season and I enjoy it...arbitrary and now I see it's unfair.

My fantastic FIL had helped me Thurs. to clean the wood all around the pool as I drained the swamp while my fantastic MIL kept my babes. He finished his task and I was almost done but decided to return in a couple of days to finish draining. So at noon Saturday, the babes and I arrived and immediately I opened the drain valve to continue the emptying of the last few inches, hoping I wouldn't flood my downhill neighbors. No chance of that, since the drain was not working...hmmm...clogged? I tried to blow out the line from either end...even braving the stripped screws to remove the drain grate. I started to realize that the pipe from the drain was actually uphill from the rest drain. And the drain was higher than the corners of the pool....hmmm...who engineered this? No time to blame...gotta find a way.

I remembered a small pump sitting on the garage shelves and ran to get it. Don't know much about pumps...but I put my waders on (to ground myself : ) threaded the hose on, and plugged it in. It cheerfully whirred away and Bug was all too happy with the job of making sure there was green water pulsing out the end of the hose. Actually, he was all too happy to spray his sister with green water.

I called Sweet Man to glean some Shop Vac knowledge and he suggested siphoning the drain line to get it going, which consisted of filling the drain line with water from the garden hose and then running it downhill; it would work regardless of the height of the drain...so for about 15 minutes I tried that...looking foolish filling the line and then dropping it to run up the steps to push more water to the drain so that the flow would continue....didn't happen. I stopped running.

Okay, pump kept working and I knew I could walk away from it for a while. I decided to throw in another task...the kids and I painted the front porch (that blue is one of my all time favorites.) That was interesting...and fast...and now finished!

Ran up to check on the pool...and there were just green puddles remaining. I bent down and Shop-Vac'd each one and hoisted the full Vac up to the pool deck to dump it 3 times. That brought back Spring Valley memories of watching the guys hoist 5 gallon buckets of muck with rope and muscles to get the concentrated biomass out, yuck.

Oh, my back...bending to suck up puddles and standing to lift the Shop Vac up over my head to dump it over the edge of the pool deck...I don't think I've ever wanted a beer more....

Bean, turn. on. that. clean. water. (She waited all day to do her part.) Slipping and sliding commenced in the barely skimming water. We did it. (Insert maniacal laughter...mawahaha!)

All of this to say that this is a big victory for me. My choices at many points were walking away and finding someone else to take care of this mess OR figuring out a way to get it done. I usually give up at the first sign of difficulty...but today, it was Jesus and me...we were gonna do this. Between curses and prayers we did. My fantastic neighbor, John (who will be plumbing the pool works - thank you!) looked over his fence and said, "The pool looks great!" Roar!

Bring on the next challenge...hold that thought...I see a few already on the horizon....