Beauty and eyes and beholders

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholders. And since we behold our pool, we think it's beautiful. Our eyes keep telling us it's not exactly cosmetically perfect, but who wants perfection when something can have character!

The pool saga does go on as we hope it will for the rest of the summer, blissfully so. Well, we haven't quite reached the stage of bliss yet, but there's more water inside the pool than what has seeped into the ground.

And, the only real water that seeped into the ground escaped when I fell overboard last night. I'm still trying to remember what position I was in when that happened. I just know that suddenly I was falling OUT of the pool and an instant later, Bill, who was still IN the pool said, "Well, we lost a little water on that one."

Then he reminded me of Tom Johnson's prophetic utterance: I sure do see a lot of those pools on "America's Funniest Home Videos." The plan here at the Lovestead is NOT to add to the the television show's content. Heck, we don't have time to carry a video camera while working so hard to get our blue Wallie (that's for walrus) into shape.

The beat goes on and so does the water bill, but I'm still thinking our flawed pool will do us justice as the temperatures soar over the next few days. The best thing is that the people passing by our place will have to just plain stop to behold that blue thing back there behind the barn. They can see it from a distance, and from South Center Valley Road, it doesn't really look too bad.

And, if anyone coming to take a dip in our pool says one critical word about its appearance, well, you can imagine what's going to happen to them. We'll just send them to the nearby perfectly shaped plastic doggie pool, and they can frolick with the Border Collies, who (sorry, Cis) will follow directions and stay out of the pool.

The only pooch we worry about invading our wet space is Old Annie Dog. She's the "do as I damn-well please" dog, so it's possible she may try to crawl in, but we're banking on her arthritis keeping us safe.

We'll keep working at trying to make a better-looking pool, and that will require having to stand inside it, so we figure it's a win-win process cuz wet and refreshed doesn't give a hoot how the process of cooling off in the water looks.

On another note, I hope everyone has a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. I could tell I've been retired too long when yesterday, thinking I was gonna beat the crowd to the grocery store, I met the droves furiously doing their shopping at Yoke's. It was only when Billy Bopp, the beer man, told me that today begins the three-day weekend that it dawned on me.

So, I have a feeling the troops are gonna show up next door, ripe and ready for another round of Meserve family trap shooting followed by Meserve family wild and crazy fireworks. I'm just hoping that doesn't scare Bert Wood's cows too much cuz they graze on Meserve family land.

And, it would be a big shock to hear a big loud blast and suddenly have a herd of cows tromping through our swimming pool.

I don't even want to think of that possibility. Cows can look and laugh at us, but they must stay home.

Have a great weekend. We'll wave from our beautiful pool if you drive by.