The Evolution of a Back Yard Pool

                                                                                                                                               

When our children were younger we were fortunate enough to live next door to wonderful people who loved them. They had a swimming pool and our kids had standing invitations to swim. Our children became very strong swimmers and we all enjoyed their pool. I am sure that I appreciated that wonderful circumstance. I am also sure that I did not appreciate it enough. You see, all the cleaning and maintaining of that pool went unnoticed by our whole family. By the time we engaged with it all we saw was a sparkling blue watery playground.

Switch forward a few years and we moved from that home and those neighbors. It was 1993 and we needed a larger home because we were all getting larger. So we moved into a very nice home in a nice neighborhood on a golf course with a swimming pool. Life raced along and career, school, church, sports and a busy life consumed us all.

Along the way that swimming pool became my nemesis. I seemed to need to constantly clean the miserable thing. I spent hours upon hours brushing it down, removing leaves, vacuuming, shocking it, pouring $1,000’s in chemicals into it and it would still be green and murky looking. Changing pumps, filters and of course liners helped. I seemed to get more proficient in the process and on occasion it would look sparkling, cool and inviting.

I admit getting into it and floating around on an inflated apparatus was a very nice source of relaxation. We all sported some pretty impressive tans in the summer. That is, when the weather permitted. I recall many times when my kids were in high school and later, college they would plan to have friends over to get into the pool and voila our semi tropical location here in Florida would produce the afternoon thunderstorm and cancel all plans. During prolonged hot weather periods the water in the pool felt like lukewarm bath water.

Then there is the capital investment side of it. After I became a real estate broker, later in life, I learned that a pool is a neutral asset. There are as many people who would hate a pool as there are who would love a pool when it came time to market your property. On top of that is the liability associated with owning a pool. I have a fence around my property. However I added a $2,000 kiddy fence put there by an acquaintance in the fence business who gave me a “deal” on it.

Along the way a beloved pet, Maggie, drowned in it. I still have nightmares about pulling her out of it. That was almost 10 years ago in 2010. Also there is the financial shock of having to replace liners at $5,000 a clip.

The liners seem to have a life span of 10 years. I replaced one in 1996 at that cost. Of course we were pretty engaged in getting into it at that point in time. Then in 2006 with our three children pretty much moved out, married with children, etc. I decided that the thing I wanted most of all was to fill it in. I had the man with his back hoe on the road practically when my wife sat me down and showed me videos of our last July Fourth holiday. Of course that occurred around our pool. Watching our little grandchildren splashing around in the pool was more than I could resist. I not only replaced the liner but built a much nicer, concrete deck around it and added some other amenities at a cost of $10k plus.

Well, we took a great vacation to the Smokeys back in August. When we got back I noticed that the pool was down about a foot. We were in the midst of one of the worst heat wave droughts in 50 years so I felt perhaps it was just intense evaporation. So I put in the hose and got it back up only to find it down another foot in a couple of days. I did not even bother to look for the leak. Liner is now 13 years old so it is beyond its life span.

It is impossible to find someone to do any kind of work around your house.  So I spent almost 6 weeks and finally got two disparate bids. As I put out the word my wife and daughters were distraught. My grandchildren became militant. However, no one swam in the pool at all this past summer. It was time and it became a done deal.

Now that it is done,  I experience some unexpected pangs of emotion. At the same time I cannot prevent myself  from smiling and occasionally breaking out in glee. Yet, also I find myself with a little sadness and nostalgia. My ownership of this pool now spans more than 25 years. I assess that passage of time. My three children have graduated, married and given me grandchildren. I retired from a 30 year career and started a second career. Filling in the pool sort of becomes a simile for the passage of that time. As the albatross hung around the neck of the ancient mariner in the Coleridge poem the pool has hung around mine. I wonder if the mariner ever got rid of his albatross? I surely have mine and in due time when the summer sun beats down and I am swimming in my daughter’s pool I will never have any regrets for cutting that bird loose.

Take your Vacation

Take your vacation. Sometimes you just have to shut it all down and undertake a change of scenery. If you stay home you always have some sort of routine task to consume your time. It is healthy and good for your overall production to use that leave that your company provides you, if you are so lucky, to benefit your mental health.

Get up in the morning to a different day. Sleep all day if that is what you want to do. Just to see that the same 24 hour roll out on a new day takes on a little different slant away from home. There is nothing wrong with sitting on a porch and looking at a mountain off on the distance, hearing a river run constantly, hear the surf pound all day and all night. Just mixing it up brings renewal.

Surround yourself with loved ones. Yes, those are the same people that drive you nuts at home. However, they will look and seem differently to you in new surroundings. Talk to them before, during and after a trip. This will make your overall relationship with them a little taller as you share a journey.

Read a good book with all that extra time you have. It never fails that a book lends you a new perspective on things. Sit and daydream. It is amazing what sorts of ideas your mind will spontaneously produce when it has the time to roam.

My family, just a few weeks ago, spent a week together in the Great Smokey Mountains. There are 16 of us. We stayed near Bryson City in three different mountain cabins. They were located in a 20 mile radius of my wife and me. We also had local relatives in that area that we got to see. There was lots of hiking, tubing, whitewater rafting, picnicking, shopping, eating together, sightseeing, visiting and just plain being lazy. We have been back for 6 weeks now and I cannot help thinking about various elements of that trip. I hear the same thing from children and grandchildren.

During the thirty years that I worked for DuPont there were many different trips I took with work colleagues. We went to some pretty interesting places and participated in team building activities. The interaction spurned many unique discussions and new approaches to our business.

There is no more important team than your family. You need to get off together and do some team building now and then. It pays dividends and fosters many wonderful ideas and fresh takes on relationships, interaction and approaches to solving problems.

 

Keeping a Baby

11 August 2019

I am a semi-retired septuagenarian. I have owned my own business for the last 18 years and retired at 55 after 30 years with a Fortune 500 company. I did a lot of important things for the Fortune 500 firm and was well satisfied with that career. I did a lot of traveling all over the country and was given a full retirement after the company decided to sell our division.

My wife and I set up housekeeping in 1973. She was fully employed at the time with the state of Florida as a social worker. We were blessed with a son in September 1974. Rather than going back to work she decided that she wanted to stay home and be a full time mother. I agreed to buy the diapers and she agreed to do most of the diaper changing. However it seems I did my fair share of diaper changing and delighted in doing so. That son will be 45 years of age in September. We added two daughters and Mom stayed at home all along the way.

My son and daughter in law have one little girl who is 8 and they had another little girl who is now 17 months. Before the little baby was delivered they began to look for child care. The going rate was $1,000 per month. My wife and I provided most of the child care for our other little grand daughter. I began to process that fact and announced to my son and daughter in law that I would keep the new baby full time and come to their house to do so. I expected to get paid, albeit not $1,000 per month. We thus keep the baby out of day care, I get paid a little bit and do it at their home.

We are into the 14th month of this arrangement and it has not yet killed me. Overall I would have to say that I have enjoyed it a great deal. I work 8 hour days starting at 8:00 AM. I took over when she was 3 months old. It was pretty easy with her sleeping all the time and all I had to do was feed her and change her and sit around and watch her.

I have watched her start to take first steps, begin to say words and make demands on this old man that keep me getting up and moving around the house. Our relationship has developed its own characteristics. We argue over whether we are going to watch Baby First TV or MLB. She can't quite work sentences yet so she stands in front of me and just yells and points. I have to figure out what her demands are and do my best to fulfill them.

She loves me and I love her. Our family just spent a week in the Smokeys. We were in three different locations and got together a lot with extended family. After we had been separated for 3-4 days when we finally got together all she wanted to do was sit in her Bop's lap.  To the exclusion of everyone else. All 7 of my grand children call me Pop. She calls me Bop. She came around a corner in her Mom and Dad's cabin in the Smokeys and found my 17 year old grand daughter sitting in my lap. She demonstrably made it clear that she did not approve. She made her way to us and began pulling at Caroline and made it clear that she was in her seat. 17 year old Caroline said to her, " Now, just wait a minute. He was my Pop before he ever was your Bop." So now they are fighting over me which just adds to my escalation in self esteem. No one at the Fortune 500 company ever fought over me.

I have a newer, more enhanced respect for my wife and her role in our family over the years. I always told my children when they came home with the announcement that one of their friends families had just acquired a new beach house, mountain cabin, car, boat, pool, etc. that our luxury was that Mom stayed home. Looking back I can honestly see that has made a HUGE difference in our family. I know that some folks, if not all folks, need a two pay check financial stream to make it these days. I am happy to be able to provide a way where my little grand daughter stays at home, naps in her own bed and plays in her own toy box.

I have to say that Bop is quite happy to be getting a pay check to add on to a pension. I also am able to work any real estate transactions from my son's house. I am happy mostly to have the love and allegiance with a cute little 17 month old grand daughter. Some days are longer than others. Some days Bop is not quite on his game and drags a little more. However, this is one of the best jobs I ever had. A labor of love that loves you back.