Its water broke!

Early this morning Big Blue's water broke.  I looked out the window about 5 a.m. just in time to see a waterfall seeping over the spot where water had seeped out of Big Blue the other day.

Thought I had that situation solved, but not!

I raced out the door toward the pool as fast as my 64-year-old legs could carry me.  By the time I reached Big Blue,  the waterfall had begun gushing.  

I pushed the limp blow-up rim back toward the inside of the pool,  raced to the other side and turned on the air compressor.

I discovered quickly that it's extremely difficult---well, actually impossible--to hold on to an air hose and stop Niagra Falls on the other side of the pool at the same time.

So, I dropped the hose and ran back to the waterfall, holding the rim up and entertaining a quick, awful thought that I could be standing there doing this all day if I wanted water to stay in the pool. 

With one hand, I held back the flood; with the other, I motioned, "Get the Hell out here!" to Bill, who I knew was watching the action from the sliding glass door of the house.  

Sure enough he was.  He just trotted to the pool; after all, I was holding the water back.

"Go plug in that hose and blow up this rim!" I ordered.  He reached the blow-up hole and announced that the cap was open, figuring maybe that was why the rim had gone limp.

"I opened the cap to air it up," I yelled.

"Oh," he said, inserting the compressor hose.  

Here's the deal with Big Blue.  I thought after that first disaster of the year with Big Blue earlier this week and after a night's sleep to dream about it, that a true miracle had happened at the Lovestead.

The second day after my frustration with the pump that didn't work, all the sudden the pump was working fine.  I even added more water and blew up the rim.

A few hours later, I realized that we hadn't quite reached miracle status, so my chances for sainthood are still a long ways off. As if!

Turns out that leak in the rim continues to let most of the air escape after a few hours. Having a rim full of air is crucial to water staying INSIDE the pool. 

So, I've been airing it up every few hours.  Yesterday I did another all-out search for where the heck that leak could be.  

Even wore my glasses and used a bottle of dish soap, as suggested by Bill.

"If you find a place where you think it's leaking, squirt some soap on it," he had explained to me a day earlier. "If that's the place, the soap will bubble."  

Well, you can imagine how great that would be for me to see suds on Big Blue and know where to patch the leak.

I spent nearly half an hour caressing the rim, listening for escaping air, bending over and searching up close and personal----to no avail.

So, I figured if I let the compressor work a little longer, maybe the air inside the rim would stay there a little longer.  This morning I'm sure there's a good scientific reason why that's faulty logic,  cuz the air did not last the night.

The pool still has about 3,500 gallons of water inside, and the grass on the southwest side should turn really green today. 

While he was working the air-compressor controls, Bill said, "We'll just buy a new pool."

"It's not gonna be another one like this," I said.

"Yeah, it will be one of those with frames," he said. 

Now, of course, I'm thinking about the economic wisdom of letting those 3,500 gallons of Oden water go, buying a new pool and filling it again with 4,000 more gallons of Oden water and maybe-----if we're lucky----having about three hot days this summer.

There's a lot to ponder.  In the meantime, I've turned off the pump and will offer a reward for the eagle eye who can find the leak in our Big Blue rim.  

The reward:  a free swim in the pool when I patch the leak and the pool stays full overnight without help from the air compressor.

As if Big Blue's water breaking was not enough to bring a groggy head to a full alert, we had more drama while walking back to the house from the pool.

Horses' heads were in the air.  Horses were snorting.  Kea was barking.  Suddenly we hard a loud, piercing----EEEEEEEEAh in the woods. 

"What is that?" I said, then answering my own question.  "That's a baby deer." 

Sure enough, we saw Mom a few minutes later.  A few minutes after that, she decided her baby needed to go elsewhere, so I heard it protesting all through the woods while I was leading horses to pasture. 

The horses were still upset, racing around and snorting.

I think Mom and fawn are far enough away by now to allow things to settle down a bit.

All that stuff had happened by 6 a.m.!

My friend Diane commented the other day on Facebook:  never a dull moment at the Lovestead.

On this morning, I'd take a few moments of dull.