Friends and phones and lizards in my pool

On Monday morning I found a poor dead lizard at the bottom of the pool. I fished it out with my skimmer on a long pole, and set him on the warm rocks in the flower border. I knew he was dead but I still half expected him to warm up and run off. I was sad when he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He had probably been dead for hours.

It got me thinking about whether there were any tricks to keep lizards from drowning in pools. We already have somewhere else for them to drink – we have a little, plug-in recirculating fountain in our front yard. But maybe the backyard lizards don’t venture that far, and we should put a fountain in our backyard too.

Lizards don’t belong in pools. Either do iPhones. This morning I went on a short jog, fairly early in the morning before it got too hot (yes, it is now officially hot in Tucson). As soon as I got back from my jog, I started my daily task of cleaning the pool (which I currently enjoy, although I suppose it may someday get old and tedious).

Today was a special day because I had invited my new friend and neighbor, Tish, and her sister Marcia, over to use our pool in the afternoon. I first met Tish when we got home from our trip to Florida. She stopped by and told us she had unplugged our fountain in our front yard while we were gone. We had neglected to turn it off before leaving for Florida for an entire month, and eventually all the water evaporated – at which point the water pump started making a horrendous noise as it tried to pump dry air. Tish is the sort of person who does what needs to be done, and our fountain needed turned off! This was before she even knew us.

Since the fountain pump incident, I have frequently run into Tish and her dog Basil while out walking or jogging. We’ve gotten acquainted, and earlier this week she told me her sister is visiting from Mexico. Tish’s pool isn’t heated and the water is still quite chilly, so I invited them over to hang out in our pool this afternoon. It turns out Tish is a champion swimmer (literally), so now I get free swimming lessons!

Anyway, because I had company coming, in addition to simply skimming the pool and plopping in the robot, I got the big pool vacuum out. The robot vacuum does a great job with leaves and debris (and is very cute) but it doesn’t get the silt. For that, I need to connect vacuum hoses so that the pool pump will send the silt through the pool filter. I was just getting it set up when suddenly the pool vacuum handle got away from me and slid down onto the top step in the pool.

I stepped onto the first step, just up to my ankles in water to retrieve the pool vacuum handle – when suddenly the vacuum rolled another foot and the handle scootched just out of my reach. So I stepped down onto the second step, now knee deep, and the dang thing hopped down to the third step, heading toward the deep end one step ahead of me. So here I am playing hop, skip and jump, chasing a runaway vacuum leading me down the steps into my pool. I did not want to let it roll any further, all the way into the deep section, because then I’d have to go diving for it. I was in my jogging clothes – shorts and a tank top – so I figured, what the heck, I don’t mind getting a little wet, it’s already hot at 8 AM. So I waded in.

And that’s how my iPhone went for a morning swim. It was in my pocket! I had just walked into my pool with an iPhone in my pocket. Not my best moment!

Luckily it was a very old phone that I ruined in about 5-10 seconds early this morning (after my first cup of coffee but before my second cup of coffee). John and I had been planning to buy new iPhones, but we’re also planning to go boating in Florida again soon, and we thought, “Huh. Brand new iPhones on a tiny, dingy-sized sailboat – not a good idea.” So luckily, I didn’t walk into my pool with a brand new iPhone. Instead, I walked into my pool with my old iPhone.

But I now had no phone. John is currently in Albuquerque, so I couldn’t even use his phone. I will not bore you with the rest of today’s technological headaches. Let me just say that it’s much easier to order a new iPhone if your old one is still working. It’s not possible to compete security code text verifications with a dead phone. At one point this morning, John was talking with me on Facetime on my computer while he was simultaneously talking with Apple or ATT on his phone, when all of a sudden I spotted a lizard in the pool!

Another lizard had fallen into my pool! This one was alive and on his back, struggling. I did not want him to drown! I ran over there with my computer still in my hand, and grabbed the pool skimmer with my other hand to fish the lizard out as fast as possible. I leaned over the pool, with my computer waving around out over the water while I tried to scoop up a panicked lizard. All of a sudden I had a clear vision of my computer falling into the pool, OMG, I’m going to dunk my computer in the water. On the same morning as my iPhone. That would have been a story. How would I ever have explained that? Losing both an iPhone and a newish Mac into the pool on the same morning?

But never mind the computer, I was determined to save that dang lizard. I scooped the lizard out of the water and set him on the warm concrete. He sat there on the skimmer and looked at me for awhile. He must have been too cold or scared to move. But his head was up and I could see him breathing.

John was apparently so focused on the conversation with Apple or ATT that he had not noticed my video footage clearly indicating that my computer was at that moment waving around in the air like crazy in the vicinity of the pool. In fact, if he had glanced at the video feed, he would not have even seen me; instead, he would have had an alarming view of an expanse of pool water, only inches from the screen. However, he was intent on getting done what we had to get done with Apple and ATT. So that is why he never knew the drama that was occurring on my end of the line; how close we came to losing the new Mac and how I saved the life of a lizard today.

I also managed to navigate across town to an Apple store without a navigation app (because, no phone) to buy a new phone. Turns out my last backup to the cloud was in December, so I lost a bunch of recent Tucson numbers, but at least I was able to download most of my contacts.

And I made it home in time to have a great visit with Tish and Marcia!

The moral of this story is: backup your phone before you take it swimming.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com