Poolside naps.

The countdown is officially on.  Fourteen days until my house is clean school starts.  This also means there are only fourteen days left to swim at the pool.  But after yesterday, that might be okay.  When I took the kids to the pool, a realization that has been lingering on my mind all summer finally stared me right in the face:  the kids don't need me there anymore.  They can swim well.  They can get their own food from concessions.  They are publicly embarrassing enough that I don't have to worry about anybody trying to kidnap them.  And I already knew all of this by the end of last summer, but yesterday, as I entered the pool it occurred to me that they no longer crowd around me in the very instant that my tiptoes touch the water.  In fact, the only time they seem to notice I'm there at all is when they want money. 

There are four crowds of people at this pool and I don't fit in with any of them.  Not even a little.  The 'Pool Moms' sit in the shallow end of the pool and talk amongst each other about...whatever it is that moms talk about (I should know this, I know, but I don't and I won't and I can't).  Then there's this crowd of twentysomething guys that spend the entire time doing high dives and flips off of the diving board.  I'd hate to one-up them with my graceful backflops.  Third, there's the teenagers that sneak behind trees and make out with each other.  And the fourth group (and largest) is the kids.  As much as I try to convince them that I'm just a really tall kid (okay, tall, not really tall), it's not working out.  So I sit all by myself and look as sad as I possibly can.  Once, a thoughtful-looking little boy seemed to notice me and my sadness and swam over to me.  Just as I thought he was going to say something kind, he splashed me right in the face and laughed.  I looked around for his parents but nobody seemed to be paying attention so I called him a brat and splashed him back.  If my kids ever did that to somebody, I would hope they'd receive the same treatment.  I'm serious.

The pool's not all bad.  The thing that keeps me going day after day is that it gives me hours of peace.  I can read a book or...usually what actually happens is it looks like I'm reading a book and I'm really just spacing off or I might be asleep.  You just can never tell when I'm wearing dark sunglasses.  Also, I have become wise to this pool and it makes me feel proud of myself.  I know that if you sit in certain lounge chairs, you will be attacked by ants.  Or if you sit too near the diving board, you become 'cannon ball target' and each child that jumps off of the board has only one goal: to soak you with water.  And this is not good at all when you've fallen asleep while pretending to read.  Book + water = peaceful day in ruins.

In conclusion, I will be spending the next fourteen days pretending to read and being ignored by my children.  I will miss this someday, I'm certain.