The Pool

Last weekend, Ian and I bought a pool. Since March, we've been playing this game:

Ian: "It's hot."

Laura: "And you need a pool!"

In June, we decided it was hot and we needed a pool.

Upon purchasing the pool, we spent the whole weekend swimming. That same weekend, I wrote a blog post cheerfully describing the wonderful awesomeness of owning a pool. Snippets included:

"We bought happiness!"

"Pools are better when you're an adult. Because you can drink beer in them. Make sure you put that in the blog."

"POOLS ARE THE GREATEST THING EVER I WANNA LIVE IN THE POOL!!"

The blog post was edited and arranged, sitting in my draft box, just waiting to be posted.

Then events took a sudden turn:

Ian: "Yay! We're swimming in the pool! I love the pool!"

Laura: "The pool completes me!  <squints at the glass door> Uh, Ian, look at Winnie."

Ian: "What? Why?....Oh. Oh god."

Winnie, ever anxious to be with her humans, sat perched on the edge of the couch, staring through the glass door, boring holes into our souls.

She looked like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Laura: "That's...really creepy."

Ian: "I think she wants to murder us."

Laura: "Red-rum! Red-rum!"

Ian: "Look at her. Oh god."

Laura: "She's going to hack us into pieces."

A few days after seeing Murderous Winnie peer through the glass, Ian phoned me, sounding anxious.

Ian: "Listen, the pool looks...sick."

Laura: "Sick?"

Ian: "I'm worried about it."

Laura: "How exactly does it look?"

Ian: "Deflated."

Laura: "Uh oh."

Ian: "Errr, and another thing. The chlorine did something to the pool."

Laura: "What?"

Ian: "It bleached out the bottom of it. I probably should have read the directions first."

While cleaning the pool, Ian had haphazardly tossed a packet of chlorine in and called it a day.

At the time, I had figured putting chlorine in a pool was one of those innate man things that comes naturally to the male species. Like reading magazines on the toilet or cooking steaks on a grill. Turns out, it's not.

The next day, I looked at the pool.

Ian: "I think the rubber is melting and it's reforming into that bulbous shape."

Laura: "The bottom of the pool looks like a white fluffy cloud now."

Ian: "Try not to accidentally drink the water. It's probably over-saturated with chlorine. Um, we should probably get out soon. To be safe..."

Laura: "I just drank pool water. Will I be okay?"

Ian: "Yes."

Laura: "Will you drink some too, just in case?"

Ian: "No."