Summer Returns

The cooler weather didn’t last long, the heat has returned today with a vengeance. I remember a few years ago when I first got my first swimming pool that the water was cold all summer. I had to get a solar blanket for it, I didn’t think that having a pool was worth the cost of the chemicals because it wasn’t used that much. Some friends that I know got rid of their pools after that season because it was never warm enough to swim comfortably.

I got the pool for my Grandkids because I wanted them to learn to swim. It worked well, my oldest Grandson can swim well and my two oldest Granddaughters are floating, dog paddling, and swimming expertly underwater.

This year has been the best year ever for owning a swimming pool in southern Indiana. The girls have lived in the water this Summer. They are dark brown from the sun and their hair is a couple of shades lighter. But today the water was cold after a couple of cool nights. They were shocked in more ways than one when they jumped in because they are used to nice warm water. They keep getting out to warm up in the sun.

It’s hard to believe that it is almost September, this Summer has been just one long, super hot, steamy blur. It started out stormy with lots of rain and is ending up dry and dusty. We have gone from grass that wouldn’t quit growing to grass that is drying up and not growing at all. I wonder what this Winter will be like.

August Already?

Where did the summer go? Where did the year go?? I can't believe that I have only blogged one time this month. I can't believe that it is already the 14th of August. Christmas is just around the corner. I am trying not to panic...

If you are young, enjoy your youth while you still have time because as you get older the faster time goes by. I was young once and it wasn't that long ago. Days used to have so much time in them. Weeks took forever to go by. A month was nearly an eternity. Not anymore, years are more like weeks used to be.

This summer has just flown by. School has already started or is getting ready to start. I have been spending some quality time with the Grandchildren and they are about to kill me. Seriously, swimming with Grandkids can be hazardous to your health when you are an old Granny. I am so sore tonight as I type this that I can barely move my head and the calf of my left leg is swollen and tender from horrible leg cramps.

The problem is when your oldest Grandson says that you can't dunk him, well, then you just have to prove to him that you are still in control and he isn't as big and tough as he thinks he is at 10 years old. He is big enough and tough enough for me to lean on while trying to walk to the house after I had dunked him several times and my leg cramped up when I tried to go up the ladder to get out of the pool.

I got the pool because I wanted my Grandkids to learn to swim, which is something that I never got to do when I was a kid. They are all doing pretty well, the oldest can swim like a fish and the next to the oldest is diving and swimming with her face under the water with water wings on.

The others still have a ways to go but the trick is to keep them in the water as much as possible. Our two year old Granddaughter is just sure that she can swim. She has no fear and tries to break free of your grasp. Her Mother, Papaw and I just do not have the courage to let her try it.

Muggy

August has returned with a vengeance. It is still overcast here today but it is just plain hot and humid. When you go out the door you walk into a sauna. The air is too thick to breathe.

Our Grandson is coming to spend the night after school. I suspect that we will spend this evening and tomorrow in the pool.

We got around 70 bales of hay in the loft last night and still have three wagon loads in the neighbor's barn that has to be put up there on Monday or Tuesday when my DH has his next days off. I think that I have decided to go ahead and buy 50 bales of the pure alfalfa for my goats. That will have to be picked up and put in the loft this evening, if it doesn't rain.

My Husband is all for selling two of the does. He isn't putting any pressure on me to sell them all. He was also real understanding last night when he got home and discovered that I had bought a gun without his permission.

Our oldest Son called this morning to find out if Dad was mad about the gun. I told him that he was mad because I bought it out from under him. The person that I bought it from was needing money and I was suppose to tell my Husband about it but I went ahead and just bought it myself. It was just what I had been wanting. I told my DH that he never asks my permission when buying a gun, so turnabout is fair play. Besides that, you can always use a new gun, right?

The Girls

Yesterday was just fun, the girls were here. When my oldest Son called and he heard the commotion in the background, he asked, "if the girls were here?". That terminology will have to change when their new brother arrives.

The girl's ate, which is one of their favorite things to do, boys don't seem to really enjoy food like girls do. Then their Papaw took them swimming in what I thought was a really cold pool. Their poor Papaw thought so too, when he got in, but they didn't seem to even notice. Even the youngest one who is a year and a half didn't complain.

After swimming they ate again. Then I took the oldest two girls for a walk to where they plan to build a new house on the back corner of our property. We have to walk through the Enchanted Forest to get there.

The horses have many paths through the Enchanted Forest and the youngest girl who was leading the way kept asking which path to take. I told her that she would have to choose her own path. She had a hard time with that concept, she didn't like making that decision.

The oldest girl was walking behind me on the path, she was talking non-stop. Sometimes it gets a little difficult for these two sisters, because they both love to talk as much as they love to eat.

When we finally made it to our destination, the youngest girl announced that she was itching all over. The oldest girl asked where she was itching and she again said, all over. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that there were some places that she wasn't itching, so she started a running list of all of the places that she wasn't itching, body part by body part.

We started on our journey back home, with the youngest still reciting different names for the same body parts. I told her that we would stop at the first good "sitting" boulder that we came to in the Enchanted Forest and she could scratch the places that itched. The good thing about living in the Limestone Capital of the World is that your Enchanted Forests have good places to sit down.

When we got to the first boulder, it was too big for the girls, ages 4 and 5 to get up on, so I had to lift them. I had a canteen full of sweet tea that I handed to the youngest one, who drank, then shared with her sister. Things were going fine, everyone was sharing and no one had even remembered to scratch.

Then that all changed when the oldest one thought that the youngest one should let her hand the canteen back to me to drink and the youngest one wanted to hand it back to me. So, tempers flared and the oldest one gave the youngest one a slight shove, to which the youngest one answered with a grab and a vicious pinch that resulted in a sharp and loud slap across the cheek. It all happened so fast that I had a hard time separating them.

The peacefulness of the Enchanted Forest was then shattered by the wailing of the youngest Princess. Enchanted Forests tend to lose their charm when the beautiful Princesses are wailing. I finally managed to distract her enough for peace to return. We continued on our journey, talking, listening, choosing paths, picking flowers and picking up rocks.

All in all, it was just a perfect day, they caught some chicks with the help of their Daddy and Papaw. Then of course, they helped me milk.

Swimming

One thing that I never learned to do when I was a kid was swim. I always regretted that, I wanted my Grandchildren to learn, so I bought a swimming pool a few years ago. Our oldest Grandson, has spent a lot of time in the pool and learned to swim underwater very quickly. He could just not figure out how to swim on top of the water or even dog paddle. Finally this summer he has learned to swim like a fish, he can swim on top of the water, dog paddle and float.

We spent a couple of hours in the pool yesterday, we raced from one side to the other many times, using every form of swimming that we could think of. He can't beat me but it won't be long before he will be able to.

I am jealous of the fact that he can swim on the bottom of the pool, I have not mastered that yet and may never be able to. I am a natural floater, no matter how hard I try to swim completely submerged, something is always surfacing.

I love my pool, it is the one place that I can be very active and not have back pain. I also love taking care of a pool, I got that from my Dad. He took care of the swimming pools for the Monroe County Community Schools before he died of cancer. It was at a time when they first started putting pools in schools. He had worked in maintenance for the school system for many years and they sent him to training when the first pool was built.

I used to go with him to the big filtration room at Bloomington North High School in the evenings and watch him test the water and add chemicals. That huge new pool was always sparkling clean and clear.

I don't use any chemicals in my pool except for bleach. I have a large sand filter and it seems to do it's job. My pool water was clear enough yesterday that I threw 10 mostly clear marbles into it and my Grandson dove for them.

My goal is that all of my Grandchildren learn to swim. I think that just having plenty of access to a pool at a young age is the key to learning.

Deam Wilderness

I was on the phone with my eldest Son while he was reading my blog Perfect Horses and Kids. He was having a wonderful time talking to me on the phone while being online at lightening fast speeds, he was telling me how fast he could pull up a page, then saying things like, "I have high speed internet and you don't.", he is just warped and cruel like that.

Anyway he was laughing as he read my blog about hauling horses in the bed of a pick-up truck, and he said that I should blog about how we used to make our kids ride under the horse instead of on top. I will tell that story in a future blog.

The area that we rode in was a national forest and back then there were no restrictions on where you could ride, you could make a trail wherever you wanted to. That area is now called the Deam Wilderness and the horseman's camp is called Blackwell.

We made most of the horse trails with motorcycles when I was a kid. My Dad and Uncles would haul motorcycles in and ride through the woods. They were logging there back then and they left big piles of sawdust and wood shavings everywhere, those were just perfect for playing with motorcycles on.

Can you even imagine a national forest that you could just use like it was yours? My Dad and Uncles drove their nice family cars and trucks back into the forest on logging roads and I remember getting hung up with those big old cars that were heavier than tanks. No one had 4-wheel drives back then.

We would sometimes get stuck on the frame of the car in a rut that was deep enough to hide a ferris wheel in. My Uncle would just jack it up and run the car off of the jack. You couldn't tear those old solid cars up.

My family would sometimes haul horses into the Deam Wilderness area and drive back a log road and just camp by the first pond we came to. We would spend a couple of weeks of vacation time swimming, riding, fishing and frog gigging. No one ever bothered us there, unless it was family coming to visit.

We didn't have to worry about hikers or DNR people walking in on us because nature, natural resources and conservation weren't popular back then. The only people that wanted to get out in that area were people like us and there weren't many people like us, we were way ahead of our time.

So while my eldest Son may rub in his high speed internet connection to me, I can always make him green with envy by talking about driving back to those ponds and spending a couple of weeks of seclusion in the summer. Not having to stay on the beaten path but being able to wonder where ever you wanted to go. That is something that he will never be able to do, well, at least not legally.