Filter-Friendly.

Mae and I headed home from my niece's volleyball game yesterday afternoon with the goal of setting up the backyard swimming pool.  I fully expected Kenny and Kyler to be home from golfing and was slightly hopeful that they had already set up the pool.  Hindsight tells me this was a foolish thing to hope for.  Not because it's not something they would do, but mostly because the pool was still in the back of the Jeep, of which I was driving. 

We pulled into the empty driveway and I realized this task would be solely up to me and Mae.  No big deal, though.  It's just a pool. 

We got the actual pool part set up pretty easily.  Before we could begin filling it with water, we had to attach the filter.  This has always been Kenny's job, as anything more difficult than hammering in a nail flusters me.  But I didn't want to let Mae down (who, by this time, was already in her bathing suit with goggles on and blowing up her inner tube).  I opened the filter box and dumped out the one-hundred pieces of disassembled filter.  Mae's eyes immediately swelled up with tears and she said, "Oh NO, where the heck is DAD at?!" 

After counting backwards from ten to calm myself, I decided I could do this.  I opened the instruction booklet to page one.  I cried a little and my left eye started twitching.  I carefully closed the instruction booklet, tore it in half and threw it right into the wind, where it catapulted back into my face. 

After counting backwards from ten thousand to calm myself, I started putting random pieces together.  Some of them didn't fit.  But some of them did, so I decided that must be where it goes.  Mae warned me that this was not a good idea, which only gave me more motivation.  After about fifteen minutes, a lot of random things were fitting together and forming what looked like something that might work.  I got really into it.  I used to love Legos, and this was basically the same thing.  At one point, Mae asked who I was talking to.  I told her, "Oh, I'm just talking it out."  She said, "So, when you talk it out, you talk to Dad?"  I didn't even realize I had been saying such things as, "Haha!  I don't even NEED your help, Kenny!" 

About thirty minutes after start time, I gave Mae the cue to turn on the hose (the cue was me yelling, "Turn on the hose!"). 

As the pool was filling up, Kenny and Kyler returned home.  Kenny looked outside.  The very first thing he said was, "Cool, the pool's set up.  So, who put it all together?"  I proudly explained to him that I set up the pool and put the filter together all by myself, there were no extra pieces left and I didn't even use the instruction manual.  He looked terrified.

Much to everybody's surprise (I'll admit, even my own), it works and it works right.  Unfortunately, I think more is now expected of me.  I may have just cursed myself.  I suppose it's never too late to learn what a wrench is and how it works, but that's definitely a job for a different day.  Today, I will just bask in my wonderful (and lucky) filter assembly happiness.