Bitten & Defiant! Yeah Barbara!

From my good friend, released 2/7/14!

So disappointed in the Super Bowl this year. I was hoping for a more exciting game. This is where you find yourself saying; Next year.

Weather here has been a real disappointment. We broke a record for having the most days below freezing in a row. We've had barely an inch of powdery snow on Thursday and broke another record of having the most traffic accidents, over 700, in the Dallas and Fort Worth area.

I love to power walk and I thought to myself, last year at this time it was in the upper 60's and I walked almost every day. Not this year, that's for sure. I'm on the treadmill instead watching Country videos on CMT. It gets kind of boring. I love being outdoors, the fresh air and people who honk at me because they recognize that crazy woman who walks every day. Other people are walking as well with their dogs and I get to sneak in a pet or two!

We have a pool with this house. Our first ever and it has been a bittersweet affair. I love to swim but the maintenance of having one is a real budget drain. It seems something always goes wrong with it; the Polaris looses a wheel every winter and summer. (I swear there is a party going on at night while I'm asleep.) The pumps break down, the filters need to be replaced and how about the new board to run the entire operation?  $$$$  The first year, I tried to maintain it myself, but it was too overwhelming. So now we have a pool service that has been taken over for the third time. The technician comes and cleans the pool but rather than him knocking on the door, these guys call the office who in turn calls me to ask if I'm home? Uh, yeah. I'm answering the home phone number?  This Friday, I got the call from the office to tell me the pool needs serious water. If there is not enough water in the pool, the pumps cannot work properly. Remember me saying how cold it has been? With the pool, there is a Freeze Guard that kicks in when the temps are close to freezing to fire up the pool so the pumps and pipes don't freeze. My poor pool has run nonstop for the last five days braving the cold and dry weather.

At this point, I haven't even opened up my blinds because the cold air seeps through the windows and it has been cloudy and very depressing. After the call, I did open up the blinds and I saw my pool and they were right. It needed a lot of water. I'm thinking to myself, no big deal. I walk over to the outside spigot, turn it on and nothing. Duh! The spigot plus the hose is frozen. Great. What am I supposed to do? I called my husband frantically and he said just relax. With the warm up expected over the weekend, the spigot and the hose will thaw out. Just unravel the hose so it will thaw out later.

Now the hose situation is one where he has jerry rigged it so it is really two hoses latched together.
You have to understand that I'm only five feet tall and this hose, feeling like a popsicle, is close to 72 feet long. I'm glad no photos were taken of me trying to wrestle with this thing. Now what?

I now can hear the pool trying to turn on but it can't because of the lack of water. I am seeing $$$ about the electricity bill and more $$$ if the pumps break down because of this. Finally, I came up with an idea. Taking my two buckets that I use for cleaning the house; one is a two gallon, the other a four gallon, I fill each one up twenty five-times and empty them into the pool. Finally, the pool is running!

It took an hour to do this and I felt great! However, the next morning my body protested and I could barely make it out of bed. My back was killing me not to mention my biceps from lifting the buckets of water.

Saturday, the temps got into the upper fifties. My husband calmly attached the now thawed out hose, threw out part of the hose that was filled with holes, turned on the spigot and voila, filled the pool with water. He turned to me to say; Patience, Lois. Grrrr!!