Thursday, June 26, 2008

Morning dip...

Today I feel a lot better, so Seth and I decided to go and check out one of the local pools! We haven't tried this before, and now that I've been, I'm really excited about the possibilities.

There are two city pools within a 5 minute radius of us! One of them is closed for renovations this summer, but the other is open for business. It cost us all of a whopping $.75 for Seth to get in, and it'll be $1.60 for me to get in once I get a punch card. The price without the card is $2.75, which still isn't bad at all!

There is a HUGE kiddie pool with a lifeguard, and you can take your float in there. The deepest it gets is 18 inches. Seth "walked" around in his floatie and watched the other kids to his heart's content. At this point, the other kids are the biggest attraction wherever we go. He's quite the little observer.

Right next to the kiddie pool is a splash park. It has fountains and this thing that fills up buckets and dumps them, and a sprayer that comes on randomly that you can turn on your unsuspecting friends. I'm keeping Seth far, far away from the bucket dumper. He was already a little afraid of the splash park. I can imagine him getting caught under the dumper and refusing to go back to the splash park until he's 36. I'm hoping to avoid this scenario: he's six, and he has a nightmare, and he tells me through trembling lips that it was about the "sp- sp- lash park," and I have to nod and tell him I had that one last week. I hate the bucket dumper, too.

Here's one of the best parts, and I applaud whoever came up with this rule. In the mornings, the kiddie pool and the splash park are open to individuals and families only. No large groups. That means that no summer camp will bring 50 8-year-olds and 2 16-year-olds to the kiddie pool when we're there. I have to clap my hands with glee over that one. We can go, enjoy a morning there, and come home exhausted for a good afternoon nap.

And can I just say, I love this job! I'm a minivan driving, suburban mom. Sometimes that still hits me as I load my stroller up, and I look around me furtively, sure that someone will find out that I'm a fake and take away my license. It's still a new position to me, and I feel a little weird in my skin when I have a new mom experience. This is what stay at home moms do sometimes. They take their kids to the pool on a weekday and watch them enjoy the stuff out of it... and if they're lucky, they get to chat with another mom and get a tan in the process. What an awesome thing to have that in the job description! =)

I've got a chicken in the crock pot, and it smells great. Which leads me to a story. I hate raw chicken skin. I attribute this to a particular cheapness of mine in college. I was living with Amanda in a little house our senior year, and to save money, I bought a bunch of bone in chicken with the skin on, and we took the skin off and froze it. And now, I won't touch raw, skinny chicken with a ten foot pole. Don't even think about asking me to take the skin your chicken. I'll laugh at you.

But... a whole chicken is so incredibly cheap. Sigh. So I thought I'd try cooking one and making David take all the meat off the bone. Have I mentioned I also don't like taking chicken off the bone? I would have to become a vegetarian if all the chicken processing plants were suddenly shut down. I'm hoping that I can strike a deal with the aforementioned husband that I'll do the dishes if he'll make the chicken look less like chicken and dispose of the carcass for me. Wish me luck! He's not a pushover...

1 comment:

Rachel said...

That's a great rule at your pool! I wish our city pool was like that. It opens at 11:00 every morning to the public, but earlier than that, the camps and huge groups get to come. So there's no way to beat them, they're already there and then the pool is way to crowded. We just don't go. I hate it and wish we could, though!! Have fun!!