Allthesilver

This question causes more puzzlement than my favorite question, “Do you walk to work or carry your lunch?”

Did I mention I work in a pool store? I have already lost count of how many customers have asked me, “Do the bubbles go up or down?” If you have a pool you may already know that I’m talking about a solar cover. And you may also know that the bubbles go down.

It’s natural that there would be confusion on the subject, and I don’t recall seeing anywhere on the box where it mentions which way to put the cover.

Another question we get a lot is how to keep the bloody solar cover on the pool??? It is always blowing off or ending up all piled up at one side of the pool. The blowing off issue is taken care of by trimming the solar cover so that it fits flat on the water and does not curve up the sides of the pool. That way the wind won’t get under it and lift it. The other issue is usually because the return jet needs to be turned so that it shoots the water down toward the bottom of the pool and not, as you may have had it, near the surface to swirl the water toward the skimmer.

A solar cover can make a big difference in the water temperature of your pool and will also help to keep it clean, but there are a bunch of drawbacks as well.

1. A solar cover can be a pain in the neck to put on and off. Because of this, people are sometimes tempted to fold the cover over a little and swim alongside the cover. This can be very dangerous as the cover will have a tendency to float over you as you swim.

2. Leaving the solar cover on the pool will prevent the water from “breathing”. The vapors from the pool chemicals are not able to gas-off unless you leave the pool uncovered for at least some of the time.

3. If you don’t have a solar reel and your gameplan is to pull the solar cover off the pool and leave it in a pile on the lawn, you will notice two things when you go to put it back on the pool. First you have a big dead spot on the lawn where the solar cover cooked your grass. Second, all manner of little bugs and bits of lawn clippings are stuck to the cover and will make an incredible mess of your pool if you put it on that way.

4. If you have a lot of chemicals in your pool water or not much calcium, then those dandy “bubbles down” get brittle, fall off, and drop all over the bottom of your pool. Great!

5. And this is the big one. It still sticks in my mind, the story one woman told me, teary-eyed, about how her dog had jumped onto the solar cover apparently thinking it was solid. In his panic, he tangled himself in the cover and although she jumped in after him, she was not able to save her dear companion. What really gets me though is the thought, “What if she had gotten tangled in the cover as well?”

We sell a lot of solar covers in the course of a pool season. Do I like them? Not really. I think I’d rather deal with cold water than the hassle of a solar cover. Just my opinion.

Solar Sun Rings

We do have a new product that I am liking quite a lot called Solar Sun Rings. They are inflatable five foot frisbee-like things that have little magnets to chain them together. They float on the surface of your pool and provide the heating of a solar cover while still having gaps where the circles don’t touch so that the pool still breathes. You can put enough on to cover the surface of your pool, or add just a few for a little boost to the heating. They look nice in the pool, you can take them out one at a time and stack them, and if you get lazy and decide to swim with them in the pool they are not likely to harm you. Cost? More than a solar cover, but they don’t need a reel, so really, not so much considering the benefits.

If you have a pool (or a spa) and you use or would like to use a solar cover, Please! give the Solar Sun Rings a look!

As I have said before, I’m not much for text messaging. 

Typing on the phone keys is so much slower and more labor-intense!  The only text messages I have gotten lately were pictures from Dana in the middle of the night.  So, as I was sitting, making beads and watching Babylon 5, I didn’t immediately recognize the little tootle-y noise my phone made.  I would have thought it was something Ivanova had done if it weren’t for the fact that my phone screen lit up.  I put down my work and went over to the phone for a look.

Senior Prom '07

It was from Dana.  He said “Mom I’ve been thinking you’re a good mom and I love you.”  I told him he is a good son and I love him too.  Then I asked him what brought that on?  I was wondering if he was feeling down or just having one of his revelations.  Dana is known for having insights come to him and he writes great stories about them.  I know that while he does have quite a lot of fun at his training, it is certainly not all fun and games.  The nature of his career choice is quite stressful anyway, and air traffic control is known to be a very stressful job.  But no, he was just talking to his friends and apparently they were comparing notes on how they were raised.  He wanted to let me know that he loved me and appreciated the things I had taught him about life.

It has always been my hope, that although things may not have been ideal in their childhood, at least my sons would learn from the experience and become stronger for it.  I wanted them to be competent and independent.  It seems I got my wish!

I see so many kids, the same ages as my sons, who don’t have any motivation to improve themselves or to learn new things, who don’t seem like they have a future to look forward to…   I used to say that the more I see of other people’s kids, the better mine look!  But I don’t have to compare my sons to anyone else’s to know what good kids they are!

Anyone who knows me, knows I have been a horse person since birth.  I started trying to get on any horse that would hold still since about the time I could walk.  When I was little, my mother took care of a handicapped woman who had a mule and a donkey.  I had to climb up on the fence to get on, bareback, and hang on to their scruffy manes with both hands.  They had no bridles, and did not wear halters. 

If I got on the donkey he wouldn’t move unless I had a stick.  He wouldn’t let me get on with a stick.  So, I usually rode the mule.  He didn’t move whether I had a stick or not.  I used to put a halter on him and lead him out into the back pasture where I could climb a stone wall to get on and he would trot back to the barn.  If I was lucky, I could turn him a little and make the ride last longer, but really, he was in charge.

When I was nine, my mother decided I might as well have riding lessons.  One of the things I have learned in the decades of horses since, is that people who say they know “all about horses”, don’t.

This is me on King, my lesson horse, when I was nine.

To the casual observer dressage may seem boring and difficult to understand.  Unless you know what the horse and rider are trying to achieve, it is hard to see why one horse scores well while the pretty one you liked, did poorly.

Those people who “do dressage” are constantly learning as they are also training their horses.  It is a slow process, and the best horse and rider combinations are generally older, very experienced teams.  And they are still learning.

Today, I heard it said that the television coverage of the olympic equestrian events was limited because people found it boring.  For those who agree, I invite you to watch this video of a beautiful grey dressage horse.  I don’t know anyone who has seen this who found it “boring”.  If you think this horse is boring maybe you’d rather watch a 12 inning baseball game…

Sort of???  How do you sort of have a dog?

Well.

.......the little doggie in my bushes

Somewhere about the begining of December 2006, I was pulling out of my driveway on the way to work.  There once was a garden at the end of the driveway, with daylilies and wild roses.  Now it is overgrown with hickory trees and a tangle of rose vines.  I had to creep out to the edge of the road so I wouldn’t get creamed by an unseen motorist, and as I paused, I noticed a little doggie in the briars.

I got out of my truck and went over to the briars for a better look.  The little dog got up and snuck through the briars and off into the woods.  She was holding a back leg up at a weird angle and seemed pretty skinny.  And young.

When I got home from work it was dark, so it wasn’t until the next day that I saw the little dog was back in the briars again.  It made good protection.  I sure wasn’t going to try and push through those gigantic thorns!  I tried calling her to me but she was very frightened and cold.  She stayed put.   I brought a dish of food out and left it at the edge of the briars.

By the next day she had eaten the food.  I left her some more.  I called my friend Linda and told her about the little doggie in my bushes.  She’s a little black dog with short hair and looks something like an Italian Greyhound (but not quite).  This is a small town, we know everyone’s dogs.  I had to wonder whether this one had wandered off and gotten hit by a car, or whether some miserable person had dumped her out of a moving vehicle and she was hurt in the landing.  It was cold.  It was December in New England.  I wanted to bring her in the house and take care of her.  She wanted to stay in the briars.

Dana asked me, “What are you getting me for Christmas?”  I said, “I got you a puppy!  She’s out in the bushes by the mailbox.”  It was a joke, of course, but we started calling her Dana’s dog anyway.  We kept feeding her, on into the spring, but she still would not get near us.  Her leg seemed better but she still limped on it.

My friend, who drives a propane truck, would stop by and try to get the dog to come to him.  She’d act like she wanted to, but at the last minute she’d turn and run off.  Linda knows a woman who is an animal control officer, and she wanted me to get some tranquilizer and put it in the dog’s food so I could catch her.  I was afraid the dog would get wobbly and totter out into the road and be run over.

It got to be summer and I started putting the dog’s food in a dish inside my empty dog pen.  (My German Shepherd was long gone.)  Eventually, I was able to pull the gate shut with a rope when she went in for her food.  There!  Now I could get her used to being handled.  She could finally be taken care of.  Dog license.  Rabies shots.  Vaccinations.  Worming.  So I thought.

The poor little doggie was so depressed that she wouldn’t eat or drink.  At all.  It is a nice big 12X24 pen with a comfy dog house and some nice shade trees overhanging it.  I went in the pen with her and would sit next to her stroking her head and talking to her.  She tolerated it because she knew there was no escape.

After three days she still would not even drink and she was starting to lose her hair on her thigh from just lying there.  I opened the gate and walked away.  As she ran off, I thought she wouldn’t come back.

She did.  I still feed her.  She comes running, all excited, when I pull in the driveway.  Almost wants to jump up on me.  But not quite.  If I turn to walk in the house, she’ll bump the back of my legs with her nose.  And sometimes, when I call her, she’ll come and put her nose in my hand.  She still won’t let me pet her.

She brings things from all over the neighborhood.  Milk jugs, paper bags, little tiny work boots, mittens, (the neighbors have little kids), dog bones, balls, etc.  She plays with them in my front yard, flinging them in the air and barking and racing great circles around them before flinging them in the air again.  She leaves all her toys under a Douglas Fir.  Once in a while I go out and fill a trash bag with her collection but it isn’t long before she’s brought home new stuff.

Sometimes, when I’m out driving, I pass the little dog more than a mile away from my house, trotting happily along.  She always comes back though.  She sleeps in my garage.

It’s been over a year and a half now.  Maybe I should give her a name.

The other night while baking some garlic bread for supper, the smoke alarm went off.  It is a really annoying one, in the hallway, not even near the stove and it goes off for no apparent reason at all.  Frequently!

There was no smoke.  I grabbed a kitchen towel and waved at the smoke detector with it.  It stopped beeping.  About the time I got to the stove the alarm started up again.  Damn!  Waved again.  Stopped again.

Half a minute later, the alarm again!  Derek finally pried himself away from his Lord of the Rings game long enough to quip “You’re supposed to take the stuff out of the oven before the smoke detector goes off!”  Ha, ha!  Very funny.

This time I decided to just take the bread out of the oven.  It wasn’t really even crispy on the edges yet.  Where were the potholders?  Who knows?  I grabbed a couple of dish cloths and folded them in my hand to grab the cookie sheet with.  As I was taking the pan out (the alarm didn’t bother going off again with the oven door open) it twisted just enough so that my fingers slid onto the single layer of dish cloth.  I immediately felt the excessive heat and knew I should just drop it back on the rack, but NO, I put it up onto the top of the stove anyway.  Yep!  Burned my fingers.  On my right hand, too.  Derek said, “Ma!  They make potholders for that!”  No kidding.

I ran cold water over my fingertips for quite a while.  They still hurt.  Great.  I didn’t have any ice because I threw out the ice cube trays recently since they smelled like old freezer.  Of course.  I was eyeing the bags of frozen food and trying to decide which one I wanted to sacrifice for my fingers.  I decided my fingers would have to make do with a cold can of soda. 

I got the rest of the supper done and sat down to eat with Derek.  It wasn’t too bad eating mashed potatoes and garlic bread (not quite crispy) with my left hand but taking the fingers off the can of soda for 15 seconds to cut my steak cause them to feel like they were going to explode  I had to cut quickly and get the fingers right back on the can.

I must have burned them really badly for the amount of pain I was experiencing.  On the can, fine.  Off the can, flames of hell.  They were really red, but I couldn’t see any blistering.  Yet.

I finished up supper and sat down to my computer with a fresh, cold soda can.  There was Dana, online.  I told him about my poor, decimated fingers.  He said I should sue the makers of the oven for not having a warning label.  CAUTION! CONTENTS OF OVEN MAY BE HOT!  Another comedian.  I’ve always been a believer that we should take the warning labels off everything and let the problem rectify itself!

Typing the messages to Dana was slow.  My fingers were killing me!  I had to type for a few seconds and get the fingers back on the can.  I’ve tried hunt and peck.  I can’t find the letters that way.  I need all my fingers.  Finally, I decided to put an end to this silly burned finger stuff.  I took my fingers off the can, I looked at my fingertips and said to my fingers, “You can stop hurting me now.  I know that you are burned, but I have done everthing I can do for now.  There is no need to remind me that my fingers need attention.”  Yep!  I gave my fingers a lecture.  The pain stopped.  No more soda can.

I told Dana I had fixed my fingers.  I told him how.  He said, “MA! You’re a NUT!!!!”  Yes, I know.  But it worked.  That was two days ago.  Today my fingers show no sign that they had been burned and they did not cause me any more pain after I told them to stop.

I am a firm believer that your mind has an enormous amount of power over your health.  If you believe you are “catching something” you search within yourself for signs that you are correct and your mind obliges you by producing an illness.  The opposite is also true.  Picture yourself well.  Believe it, and it will be so.

You can think me a nut if you wish.  But I am a healthy one!

Derek and his girl at her senior prom

Derek is my older son.  It’s not easy to get photos of him, he is a bit camera shy.  He looks really sharp in a tux, but, unless there’s a big wedding, he’ll probably never wear one again!

He’s 22 now and is working for Magnetic Seal in Rhode Island.  They make parts for airplanes and helicopters (in particular, a magnetic seal for the rotors of military helicopters).  His job is called “Inspections” and is a sort of quality contol with an attitude. 

Derek is very bright, and it is hard to believe he quit high school.  Actually, he attended four years of high school, and then was told just before graduation that he did not have enough credits to graduate, and in fact, wasn’t even in the right classes to get the credits he needed! 

I blame that entirely on the school and the guidance department.  He had complained at the beginning of the year that he had not gotten the classes he had asked for and was told to “put in a slip” to see the guidance counseller.  He did not get an appointment.  He even tried to approach her in the hallway and was told he had to make an appointment.  When I finally got called in to speak with the principal because Derek was skipping the class he had been put in, I was told it was too far into the year to change his class then.

So, a wasted school year later they were telling me that Derek would have to go to summer school to get the credits.  Then they called me and said that they had reviewed his credits and found that some of them were not in classes he had needed, and he would have to come back in the fall for another semester.  He was, of course, not at all happy with that.  He told the principal he would just get a GED.  The principal pretty much said he did not think Derek was capable of passing the GED exams.  When the guidance counseller called me to say that she had discovered that Derek would actually have to attend TWO YEARS!!! of high school to get the proper credits, that was when Derek quit.  The principal gave me a speech about Derek being doomed to have a minimum wage job all his life.  I said that I was not worried, I know how smart my boys are.

Derek did go on to take the GED exams.  He did not study or take any classes to prepare for the exams.  Out of a possible score of 800, with a minimum of 410 being required on each section to pass, he scored a 700 in Language Arts - Reading, a 550 in Language Arts - Writing, a 710 in Mathematics, an 800 in Science, and a 700 in Social Studies.  An average score for all sections of 450 is also required to pass.  His average was 692.

The high school told me numerous times how much more difficult it is to pass the GED exams than it is to graduate from high school.  You have no idea how much self control it has taken for me to not march down to the high school and rub the transcript of Derek’s test results in their faces!

And, as to his working a minimum wage job all his life, he is working at a job that requires extreme precision, advanced computer and design skills, and a security clearance which had to come from Interpol.

I did ask Derek why he scored so “low” on his Writing portion of the tests.  He said “Ma!, they said to pick a character from a book or movie and tell how he influenced my life!”  Hmmm…..  I said, “Did you write about Winnie the Pooh?”  He perked, “Crap!, I didn’t think of him!”

Dana managed to get home for four days vacation around the fourth.  Finding flights took him a bit of maneuvering as he wasn’t notified that his leave was officially approved until the last minute and the majority of available flights did not fit his schedule.  Finally, he got the flights online.  One from Pensacola to Boston and another from Boston back to Pensacola.

I asked him if he wanted to do anything special when he got home and he said he wanted to sleep and eat steak.  So, I got a large pile of porterhouse steaks (fortunately, they were on sale) and stocked up on soda and iced tea.

Derek picked him up at the airport about noon on Thursday since I had to work, and they did a little brotherly bonding on the long drive home through stop-and-go traffic.  It seems like only yesterday I would have to pry them apart because they were trying to choke each other to death in the living room (ironic) or putting their fists through each other’s bedroom doors.  Sigh.  Finally, they seem to have gained some respect and even admiration for each other.  Who would have thought? 

I had not seen Dana since his leave after boot camp when he looked pretty thin and run-down.  He’s looking better now, healthier and stronger, and older.  He is going to school now but he still has to get up at the “crack of dark” to have PT before showering and changing for school.  He generally skips breakfast because he says there isn’t really enough time for the shower and change and then waiting in line for chow.  He doesn’t want to risk being late for school. 

So far, Dana is still learning how to talk to the planes, how to recognize different aircraft, and which ones get priority.  He is doing pretty well in school, apparently, as he said he was currently second in his class.  He did complain about all the paperwork though.  The Marines don’t let you get away with skipping your homework.  He can’t wait for the part of school when they will let him on the flight simulator.  His former roommate told him that if you crash a plane near the tower, there is a fuel truck parked there that will blow up too!  Cool!  He wants to try and get a plane to fly right into the tower to see what will happen.  I would think they’d frown on that stuff, but maybe it’s good that they see what a disaster it would be if they make a mistake like that.

A couple of steaks on the grille and about 14 hours of sleep, and Dana was off doing some more brotherly bonding with Derek.  Dana came back late Friday night sporting a new tattoo.  He has been wanting one for a long time and has been working on designs for it.  The Marines have rules about where you can put a tattoo and how much of it can show and what it can look like.  Derek took him to his friend Drew’s house for the tattoo.  Drew is just learning to do tattooing, but I guess he must be improving because Dana got his tattoo for free.  Drew PAID Derek $25 to let him put a tattoo on him!  Oh well.  At least it is a nice tattoo, a dragon on top of a globe.  Just the outlines for now.  Dana will get it colored in later on in Pensacola.

Dana also snuck (sneaked?) over to his dear grandmother’s house to try and rescue his Camaro.  No such luck.  Apparently his father has been “fixing” it some more and Dana couldn’t get it started.  He had wanted to bring it back home and leave it here.  I’m not sure why it makes a difference which yard it is parked in while he is in the service, but I guess it does.

A couple more steaks on the grille, a movie with his girlfriend, a cookout at his girlfriend’s parents (I believe they are seeing son-in-law material) and a little more bonding with his brother, and it was time to get back to work.  I drove Dana to Boston on Sunday and dropped him off at the terminal.  I asked him if it was worth the airfare to come home just for four days, and he said, “It was worth it, just so I could use the GOOD toilet paper!”

I think someone is having WAY too much fun in the Marine Corps!  I was briefly awakened again last night by my phone beeping a text message.  My bleary eyes couldn’t make out the picture that came with the text, but I knew the source.  Dana was working the night shift again.

That’s Dana, on the left, and the text with the photo said “my latest disciplinary action as COG”

The part that puzzles me is, who does he find to take the pictures and are their mothers getting silly pictures in the middle of the night too? 

 I’m not complaining, of course, I’m very proud of him and happy that he seems to be enjoying his choice of careers.  People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid?” and after thinking about it for many months, I have to say “No, not at all!”  My son is kept track of by the Marine Corps.  He has to be in his barracks by 11pm on his nights off.  He has to get special permission if he wants to go out in town in jeans and a t-shirt.  He is not at some college party getting drunk with a bunch of other college kids, driving drunk, doing drugs, hanging out on street corners, or flunking out of college at my expense.  (Please! don’t send me hate mail!  I know that not all college kids are partying their tuition away.)

Dangerous?  Of course it could be dangerous.  He is entering training for Air Traffic Control, which sounds benign enough.  Actually ATC means that he will be responsible for managing air traffic in combat situations.  This also means setting up the locations for ATC which may be behind enemy lines, and where we don’t already have troops. 

I asked if if we didn’t have SeaBees for that purpose?  He said, “Mom, they’re Navy!”  Ok, but I meant WE as in the United States.  Aren’t the SeaBees the guys with the bulldozers and heavy equipment to build airstrips?  Patiently, he repeated, “Mom, they’re Navy.”  He said “The Marines will have to go in first and make the area safe before the SeaBees will show up!”

Oh well.  For now, at least, he is safe.  His training will last until Fall and then he will find out where he goes from there.

Am I worried?  Not particularly.  I think about the kid who was driving home from work with an ice cream cone and swerved into a telephone pole and died.  The ice cream was melting on the floor of the car when the first cruiser arrived.  Did he drop the cone and swerve trying to save it, or did it drop after he hit the pole?  Freak accident. 

I also think about the kid who stopped on the highway to help a stranded motorist.  Another car rammed the back of his, shoving it into the disabled car and crushing both of his legs between the two bumpers.  He lost both of his legs close to home.

I think about the senator’s daughter who died when she got kicked in the face and neck at a horse show.  It wasn’t even her horse.  It was almost time to leave when some kids had started a game of running up behind one of the horses and jumping on over his rump like they’d seen in some cowboy movie.  Unfortunately, when this girl tried it, she didn’t make a very good leap and the horse had had enough.  As she slipped back down the horse kicked.

 I guess the point is, that life is dangerous.  If you manage to go from day to day without being exposed to any danger, then you are probably not really living.

So while I realize that being a Marine can be dangerous, I also realize that my son is being trained to handle danger and he is learning things that can’t be learned at college.  He is also not wasting his time.  Plenty of time for college later.