Pool!

I now have a backyard pool!

We actually ordered it MONTHS ago, but you know how everything is disrupted nowadays. It was supposed to arrive in 2-4 weeks. After 8 weeks I thought we should just cancel the order because not much summer was left, but John wanted to wait a little bit longer in case it showed up.

When I finally gave up and went to cancel the order, the company (in China) appeared to no longer exist! At that point we assumed we were not getting a pool. I was just about to file a complaint with Paypal, (which is how we paid for it) to see if we could get our money back, when out of the blue, it showed up!

Turns out it’s a smaller version than we had paid for, and the package did not include the cover and the filter we had paid for. So I’m still thinking I should contact Paypal. But I’m very grateful to have the pool.

Obviously it’s too small for real swimming, but I can do my post-surgery exercises (I never got physical therapy so I’m just making up my own post-surgery exercises). I also just float around. It definitely seems to help me feel better. It gives me some core exercise without being too difficult. It’s a gentler type of exercise than the floor exercises I have recently been trying to do.

We knew the water would be very cold at first, so in addition to water from the garden hose, John cleverly thought to pump the water from the hot tub into the pool.

Here’s John cleaning out the hot tub. We’re going to leave it empty for a couple of months and then get it filled back up for winter.

John’s like, come on in, the water is fine. And it was!

Happy me, in the pool!

The first few days we put a tarp on it, then we were able to buy a solar cover (it was supposed to come with one, but didn’t). We get a lot of wind which blows leaves and dirt in, and we don’t have a filter, so we need to keep it covered. All the reasonably priced filters are currently backordered, so we’re just going to wait and buy a filter next year, because we’ll be taking the pool down soon.

The solar cover is basically just a really big section of bubble wrap. It works too! The top few inches of water get quite hot. It also stays on in the wind (so far).

We’ve had the pool for a few days and I’ve used it every single day so far! Often 2-3 times per day, only getting out when the thunder starts in the afternoon.

Oh, hey, speaking of wind and thunder (it’s monsoon season in Albuquerque), my friend just sent me this:

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