Sorry, Kermit

I have an above-ground pool. It was here when my ex and I bought the house. Of course, now I'm the one responsible for pool maintenance, opening and closing, etc. We live on the edge of a ridge, and the winter winds howling up the side always managed to blow the pool cover off, despite everything my ex tried to stop it from happening. There's a deck that partly surrounds the pool, and it's hard to get the cover down in the crack between the deck and pool.

So, the first year I had to deal with the pool myself I went out and bought a leaf net instead, and put it on the pool in the fall, after cleaning and super-chlorinating the pool. The wind can blow through it, so it remains anchored. It keeps out the large debris, but smaller things that show up in the spring after the ice has melted, like tree pollen, those catkin-like things from the birch and poplar trees, and copious amounts of bird crap, can get through the mesh. Add sunlight and heat, and they've brewed up one hell of an algae swamp in my pool.

I'm too ashamed to take a picture of the green water complete with mats of algae floating on top. With help from friends, I've got the cover off, and the pump out of the basement and hooked up. I've raised the water level in the pool and have spent more than three hours skimming the algae out of the pool. Today, I have to drop a sample of pool water off at the pool place, and they'll run a test on it and the computer will spit out a list of the steps I need to follow, and the chlorine I need to add, in order to turn my swamp into a swimming pool again. (Seriously, the way it is now, I don't know whether to add chlorine, or stock it with bass.)

And I want to get it up and running as soon as possible. Why, you ask? Could it be the fact that I don't have air conditioning in the house and the temperatures over the next few days will hit 40 with the humidex? Well, partly. Is it because the kids are practically foaming at the mouth to go swimming? Ummm, yeah, that too. But the real reason that I would like to convert my swamp back into a pool is the fact that my bedroom is at the back of the house, and I like to sleep with the window open. And the frog that has taken up residence on my deck and has been swimming in my pool has started calling out at night for a mate so that he can raise a family in my pool/ecosystem. And I can't sleep because he's so freakin' loud.

(Note: I will ensure that Loudmouth is not in the pool before I add any chemicals. He's a Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor), and since he's nocturnal, he should be sleeping safely under the deck when I'm working on the pool. Just in case you were worried.)