The Pool and Its Cleansing

The first part being excerpted from a facebook wall post I left my friend Emily Mueller

We have spent the weekend cleaning our inground pool, which hasn't been cleaned or covered in two years. Prior to the operation's undertaking, we extracted two dead squirrels and a large mole, all bloated, floating, and looking like they wouldn't be out of place in the Dead Marshes of Middle-Earth.

We emptied the water out with a large red bilge pump and were left with several square feet of decayed leaves and muck. Twas most disgusting and toward the end I was in the bottom of the pool scooping out sewage with a large bucket, whilst my sister stood and ground level laughing at my predicament and doing her best to assist me with the rope she was hardly using and the bucket she was barely pulling. The leaf slop had to be emptied from the pool's deep end manually and dumped in the grass, it was too thick for the bilge pump to suck. I was basically moving a swamp up a 15 foot cliff, bucket by bucket, in the sweltering July heat.

Although some elements of the job were horrifically nauseating, other moments were very exciting. When Naomi finally consented to come into the drained pool and help, she found herself helplessly sliding on the slimy incline of the pool liner toward the muck awaiting her at the deep end. She screamed bloody murder the whole way, a redhead penguin careening toward the jaws of a hungry, slimy polar bear.

We also had the pleasure of discovering a new friend. Naomi and I found a turtle and named him Kroijcek; this morning I went to the park and put him in a God-made swamp where he belongs.

We found a frog the last time the pool was cleansed, so I have formed a theory. When we found the frog, it had been a year since we last opened the pool. We waited two years and discovered a turtle, Kroijcek.

It is only the natural evolution of things to find an alligator or something if we don't clean it for three years. The only downside to this experiment is we a cesspool of stagnant water as the centerpiece to our backyard for half a decade, and I'm not sure the rest of my family shares enthusiasm for such sacrifices in the name of discovery.

Hoping your pool is clean and your turtle is happy,
Joshua

Polish Cruising

Dear Reader,

The blog site requested I give a title to this cohesion of rambling tripe. Insomuch as the current title may mislead some in my complete ethnic affiliation, it will do no small amount of good to state that I am not altogether Polish. I believe sections of my genetic pool consist of Irish, German, and Mandolorian, for I enjoy four-leaf clovers, Bach, and bounty hunting. Plus Mom told me.

If it is at all possible to replace the title with "Polish Cruising", I would hasten to do so. Thus far, I have not progressed to a knowlegeable level of the website's limitations, whether I am to be consigned to text alone, or whether I may program the service so that, in the course of reading said blog, a large rubber chicken may appear on your screen and squawk, bringing your trusting nerves to fever-pitch hysteria. In any case "Polish Cruising" seems to me a far more appropriate title for this blog.

For a Pole, the nationality, not the object, there is but one particular vice which grips him beyond all others. Other nationalities have vices; Americans, for instance, vest too much interest in the mindless activity of the cookout; Filipinos are friendly almost to vomit-inducing levels. For Polish people, thier vice consists of "Polish Cruising, and it occurs the moment he enters a parking lot with an automobile.

Even if it is a sleet storm with forty mile-an-hour gusts and there is a large crack forming in the pavement from an earthquake due to the planet's core melting, the Pole will daintily drive from parking space to parking space, sometimes circling the entire parking lot to find the ideal resting place for his vehicle.

What constitutes an ideal location? It can depend on many factors. If it is a hot day and he doesn't want the sunlight hitting his seat so it's egg-fry level temperature when he returns to the car, he'll park driver's side shadeward. He could drive around looking at the Denny's from all angles to determine which window seat he wants so he can view his car from there and possibly chase down the auto thieves because none of the doors lock on his car. Sometimes the genetics kick in and he putzes around the parking lot for no reason at all.

In any case, this vice grips me steadily, and it tends to bleed over into this typical typed tripe you see before you. If I look like I'm arriving at a point in my musings, oftentimes I'll drive right past it, and you'll wonder why that wasn't as good a place as any to pull the car in and end it. Now you notice this post is just as much warning as explanation.

Thanks for reading,
Josh GrablowSki