How to remove a squirrel from your fireplace, or I heart Google

The area I live in is semi-rural. I live in a small subdivision built in 1970, in a village of about 1500 people, surrounded by dairy farms, cornfields, and bush. So we do tend to interact with the local wildlife a bit. For example, there's been a skunk digging up my back lawn for the past couple of weeks looking for grubs. This morning, I took Old Carp Road on my way to work. It winds through forest for much of its length, and on the trip I had to honk my horn to get a fat doe to leave the middle of the road and I passed three wild turkeys grazing (or whatever it is that turkeys do) under the trees. The other evening, four fat raccoons came out of the culvert in the ditch beside my house (four!) and climbed my oak tree. I shouted at them to scare them off, but they just looked at me, and if those tiny paws could have formed the right shape, they'd've given me the finger for sure. But I digress...

This morning I got Leah up early for a 7 a.m. dentist appointment. At 6:45 she was sitting on the couch waiting for me to get my go-cup of coffee, when she suddenly said, "Holy Cow, Mum, there's a squirrel in the fireplace!" Our fireplace has an old brass surround with bi-folding glass doors (like old closet doors) and behind that, a chain-mail curtain, so that you can enjoy the heat of a fire without having sparks jump out and burn the carpet. Both the doors and the curtains were closed. I could see something moving around in there, but it was dark. Leah said it was a smallish squirrel, I couldn't see it very well, but the cat sure wanted to check it out. I decided to wait until after the dentist -- hey, maybe I'd get lucky and it would climb back out again. Maybe. If I was really lucky.

Forty-five minutes later we were home. The squirrel was at the front of the fireplace. He was huge. And grey. And he was sort of hanging from the chain-mail curtain. I could see his paler belly and the underside of his tail. What the hell was I going to do? Well, when in doubt, google it. Surely I wasn't the first person in the world to have this problem. So I went downstairs and googled "squirrel in fireplace". There were a surprising number of hits. Probably not as many as would result from "Hugh Jackman shirtless", but a respectable number nonetheless.

The first site, a wildlife rescue, said: "Do not remove the squirrel through the fireplace as it may escape into the room. Secure a heavy rope from the top of the chimney and drop it down to the fireplace. The rope provides a perfect escape route during daylight hours." Riiiight. I'm going to risk life and limb climbing a ladder and stuffing a rope down my chimney for a freaking squirrel. I don't think so. I'd sooner follow the advice of the 16-year-old staying with us: "Why don't you set it on fire?" (I'm pretty sure she was kidding.)

The next site, DoItYourself.com was a goldmine of information (and if this ever happens to you, this is where you should go for advice. Screw the rope down the chimney). It said that you have a couple of other choices:

Removal Through the House

Close all doors to any rooms in the house that the squirrel is not in. Close all of the curtains on the windows or the doors in the room where the fireplace or exhaust fan is located. If necessary, use newspaper to cover incoming light sources. Leave the curtain open on the window or the door where you want the squirrel to exit. Open that window or door as wide as possible. Remove the screen, if necessary. Open the door to the fireplace or the cover from the exhaust fan so the squirrel can exit. They will escape towards the light.

Now you're talking. That made a lot of sense. I locked the cat in the bathroom, the girls all went in my bedroom to watch TV, and I opened the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. I closed all the other doors and curtains, and the sun shone in the open door like a beacon to squirrely acorn-filled freedom. Gingerly, I opened one of the fireplace doors and the mesh curtain and jumped back. The squirrel didn't move. And I don't mean a cowering-in-fear kind of not moving, it was more of a not-breathing-ex-parrot kind of not moving. Great. Now I probably had a dead squirrel to deal with. I had changed into old clothes and was wearing heavy suede gauntlet gloves, and I pulled the mesh curtain aside. No movement. There were tufts of fur on the floor of the fireplace. He must have been thrashing around pretty good to cause that kind of damage. The body looked funny, though. Kind of formless and fluffy rather than furry.

Slowly, I put my hand out...and grabbed hold of....a big wodge of the grey insulation that had been stuffed between the edge of the fireplace surround and the fire brick inside the fireplace. It must have been dislodged by the squirrel running around in fear after falling into the fireplace. It was hanging against the mesh curtain doing a remarkable impersonation of the underside of a squirrel. The real squirrel was long gone, he probably climbed back up the chimney before we even left the dentist's office.

What an anticlimax. Two things occurred to me at that point: 1) if this ever happens again, I'll know how to deal with it (thank you Google), and 2) it is better to be lucky than good.

Ken is lucky he's not sleeping on the couch.

Two barbies (well a Ken and Jasmine from Aladdin), a decorative cushion, and my bathing-suit cover-up sarong look like this:



I didn't ask the girls what was going on in this scenario -- probably just Ken and Jasmine taking a nap (Ken is in swimming trunks and Jasmine is in a cute 2-piece top/skirt set), but the determined way they're ignoring each other got me thinking.


"I was not looking down her dress."
"Shut up, Ken."

Fun in Toronto

Did you ever look forward to something and then find that it wasn't as good as you expected?

Did you ever meet someone in real life that you had 'met' online and find yourself with nothing much to say because the person was so much different than you were expecting?

Yeah, well neither of those things happened last week when I got together with Josie (No Internal Editor) and Jen (Jen on the Edge) and her wonderful family. The girls and I had the BEST TIME in Toronto at Miniblogstock 2008. Jen and Josie are just as funny and sarcastic and great in real life as they are online. Jen's girls are lovely. And Jen's husband Pete makes me wish that human cloning was further along than it undoubtedly is. I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to post about it -- I needed some time to recover from 11 hours of driving in two days followed by a two-day end-of-season soccer tournament and a sleepover play date I had scheduled at my place and then promptly forgotten about so it was a bit of a surprise when I got the call asking what time they should drop off the girl. Yeah, advancing maturity sucks, people.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Toronto. I got up at quarter to four in the morning and finished loading the car, got the girls up at 4:30 and we were breakfasted and on the road by 5:15. We made good time except for a half hour detour in Belleville to find some ibuprofen for Leah who had decided to run a fever. And after reaquainting myself with Toronto traffic and driving manners (I've gone soft living in polite Ottawa for so long) we finally arrived, after circling the hotel like vultures for about 15 minutes due to one-way streets and no left turns and met everyone in the lobby of the Sheraton.

Talking non-stop, we walked down to Union Station and jumped on a streetcar for Ontario Place. The girls bonded instantly with Jen and Pete's two daughters and we spent a wonderful afternoon at Ontario Place, which was full of fanciful sculptures which are lit up at night for the Chinese Lantern Festival. Check out this one, my favourite -- it's a huge temple made entirely of dishes:

The girls spent almost an hour running around a play structure that looked like a cross between a McDonalds playland on steroids and a Habitrail.

We did the bumper boats (word to the wise, don't go on the bumper boats if you need to use the ladies' room. All the water splashing around will be a test of willpower, and with all the water that ends up inside the boat under your bum, you get all the discomfort of actually peeing your pants, but none of the relief) and the Wilderness Ride -- a log flume ride that was pretty good, but wet.

We saw an IMAX film called "Adrenalin Rush" in the Cinesphere, which was about skydiving and base jumping and was very exciting. Too bad the guy introducing the movie seemed to have mainlined some valium right before the performance. His monotone voice was truly mind-boggling, and had Josie and me in fits of giggles. It felt like high school again. But in a good way.

We ended up back at the hotel relaxing in Jen and Pete's room, where Pete took a picture to commemm comemmor so we could have something to remember our meeting by:

Then it was down to the pool for the girls to have fun.


And finally, to bed. Where Leah found out that the Tooth Fairy can still find you in a hotel. (And I nearly had an aneurysm trying to stay awake til the girls fell asleep so's I could slip some money under L's pillow for the tooth that fell out in the car on the way to Toronto.)


The next day dawned a bit foggy and rainy, but off to the CN Tower we went. This is the CN Tower as seen from our hotel room:


My pictures of the girls standing on the glass floor didn't turn out as stomach-churningly as Jen's did, but Leah gamely posed for me suspended over a horrible drop:


(Josef Karsh I ain't.)

We made it back to the hotel with Rachel whining all the way, and after some restorative ice cream, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Ottawa, where Max was very glad to see us.

If you ever get the chance to get together with bloggers that you read and admire, just DO IT. It's a wonderful experience. Now if I could just have some luck getting the Ottawa blogging chix together for another drink...

5 going on 15

Today, Rachel's bedroom. I'm helping rake up the detritus clean up her room. Sifting through the mess Picking up toys, I come across the Aladdin doll's one-piece white jumpsuit thingie.

Me: Um, Rae, what's this?

Rachel: Aladdin's clothes.

Me: You mean he's naked? [sympathetically] Poor Aladdin, he must be cold.

Rachel: Mom. [with all the disdain of a pms-ing teenager] He's a Barbie. Seriously. What's wrong with you?

Me: ...

****************

I'll be missing again for a couple of days as I'll be getting up at Oh-dark-thirty (or as my friend Ev says, half past crow piss) and hitting the road for Toronto for Miniblogstock 2008 (Hah! who needs Blogher). I'm meeting up with my major blog crushes Josie of No Internal Editor, and Jen, of Jen on the Edge. I'm sure that Hogtown will never be the same. (I'll take pictures. I promise.)

I'm not dead yet

Sorry for the unexplained hiatus. I'd like to say it was because I eloped with Daniel Craig or because I was beamed up to a spaceship (hey, alien probing would be more action than I've been seeing lately), or because I won the lottery and was busy looking at condos in the Turks and Caicos, but the reality is a bit more prosaic.

My mom is up visiting and I've been doing things with her and the girls, and other than that, periodontal surgery is the most exciting thing that's happened to me in ages and I hit a bit of a blog dry spell. So, until I can think of something interesting to write about, here's a picture of my pretend fiancé Daniel Craig to keep you amused.

How to have a crappy day: a primer

1. Have cat knock alarm clock off bedside table so that battery dislodges, alarm doesn't go off, and you wake up late.
2. Since you are going to be late for work anyway, take the opportunity to drop off cheques for July and August parking (even though it's half-past July, they haven't towed you yet) at the Polish Catholic church in whose lot you park
3. Sing this song loudly while waiting for the church receptionist to buzz you in.
4. Trip on your sandals while climbing the tile stairs up to the church office, dropping your purse and bruising your knee.
5. Try not to blush when the church lady, who has come running at the sound of your fall and is picking up objects which have been jettisoned from your purse, hands you a hairbrush and a business card from Fantasia that you got at a party in February.
6. Go into the office to give her the cheques and hear street noises, which leads you to notice that the closed-circuit TV coverage of the church door includes sound. Remember what you were singing loudly while waiting to be buzzed in. Wonder if the church lady will let such an obvious deviant such as yourself to continue to park on holy ground.
7. Walk to work from the church with sore knee.
8. Get to office and have just enough time to go through email before having to walk back to church (with sore knee) get in your car, and drive to the periodontist to have 'pocket-reduction surgery' on one quarter of your mouth.
9. Realize that nervousness about upcoming surgery has given you ummmm...stomach issues.
10. Drive wildly around periodontist's office parking lot looking for empty spot before pants accident occurs.
11. Find bathroom. Avert danger.
12. Wait in waiting room for 20 minutes.
13. Get shot up with enough novocaine, or lidocaine, or Michael Caine to immobilize a water buffalo.
14. Try to answer the bright and cheerful chatter of the hygenist with your frozen and seemingly swollen mouth and tongue.
15. Wonder if it's being filmed for youtube.
16. Try to relax and find your happy place* through meditation while listening to the periodontist and hygenist scrape, cut, suction, and suture your gums while discussing the quality of ribs served at Montana's Cookhouse vs. those served at Baton Rouge in Kanata Centrum.
17. Spend one hour (not exaggerated for effect) on the phone at the receptionist's desk with VISA because every time the receptionist tries to use your card to pay for it, the message "call for authorization" appears, and you get put on hold each time and then forgotten.
18. Find out that the problem is the magnetic stripe on your card (thus removing the unspoken belief you can see in the receptionist's eyes that you are over your credit limit) and that phone messages recorded on your home voicemail by VISA security staff have explained this, to which you reply that you AREN'T AT HOME, YOU ARE AT THE PERIODONTIST'S OFFICE AND THE FREEZING IS WEARING OFF AND YOU ARE IN A VERY BAD MOOD.
19. Finally pay using VISA once the receptionist enters the number rather than swiping the card.
20. Return to work, and after leaving a long, garbled, barely understandable message on the voicemail of a scientist in Halifax regarding Crown copyright, decide it's best for all concerned for you to go home and claim sick time for the rest of the day.
21. On the way home, stop to pick up some Listerine, which the perio has told you to use 4 times a day.
22. After you get through the checkout, you notice that the skies have opened and it's pouring rain. You are not wearing a jacket. Your umbrella is, you guessed it, in the car.
23. Wait for 5 minutes and then decide that the rain isn't going to stop anytime soon. You're headed home anyway, where you can change into dry clothes, so you might as well just suck it up and jog out to the car through the rain. With the sore knee.
    
24. Get soaked within the first 30 seconds. Realize you don't remember parking your car that far from the store. The flash flood in the parking lot creates puddles so deep that you are submerged to your ankles. You are wearing jeans. They are not flood pants. Your wet birkenstock-like sandal goes shooting off your wet foot and hydroplanes across the giant puddle. Twice.
    
25. Make it to the car, get in, swing the wet hair out of your face, put the car in reverse and the rain stops. Like someone turned off a switch.
    
26. Go home, take some more Advil, and sleep, you're going to need your strength for when the kids are done at daycare.

*more on the happy place meditation tomorrow

Again with the drinking

Was blog-jumping a while back and came across this meme at Whiskey in my Sippy Cup. I filed it away and forgot about it until today. Because I've been on vacation and far, far away from my computer. Well, not geographically far, since we stayed at home, but mentally far, far away, like splashing around in the pool. And playing at the playground. And feeding ducks at the Arboretum. And running around screaming at the splashpad. And sitting on the deck under the gazebo drinking wine and reading.

I'm a classic. Who knew?

You Are a Classic Martini

You are a sophisticated drinker, who knows that simple quality is never over-rated. You're a knowledgeable drunk, but sometimes you're a know-it-all when you're blasted. You should never: Drink and gossip. You tend to forget who's standing right behind you! Your ideal party: Has a real bartender. But no one mixes a better drink than you. Your drinking soulmates: those with a Chocolate Martini personality Your drinking rivals: those with a Margarita Martini personality

What Flavor Martini Are You?

The weekend by the numbers

I ran this same type of post last year at this time. And was reminded when I saw it quite serendipitously on Rude Cactus this morning. So, due to a lack of originality, and without further ado, I present:

My weekend by the numbers:

Number of children with strep throat: 1 (Better than last year, when I had 2 children with chicken pox)

Number of years since my ex walked out: exactly 3 on Sunday

Number of glasses of wine consumed in celebration of singlehood: 2

Number of nights a sleep-out in the tent in the backyard (practice camping) was attempted: 2

Number of nights actually spent in the tent in the backyard: 1

Number of storybooks read by flashlight: 3

Number of silly jokes told and giggled at: 1,583

Number of times I said, "It's only the wind in the tree.": 312

Number of children who ended up actually sleeping *ON* me in the tent: 2

Number of times I woke during the night due to being elbowed: 14

Number of big trucks and heavy machinery that rumbled past the backyard at an ungodly early hour of the morning on their way to the new subdivision being built : 26

Number of Advil taken for lack-of-sleep headache: 1

It must be a sign

The girls bought this at the dollar store:


Rachel keeps hanging it on my bedroom door knob.

Five years old, and already a working knowledge of irony.

I don't think I want to sail on *that* pirate ship

Rachel, running around the house wearing a black eye patch emblazoned with a skull and cross-bones, brandishing a foam-rubber cutlass:

Rae: "Mom, I'm a pirate!"

Me: "Cool. Say something pirate-y."

Rae: "Arrrrrrr, me herpes!"

Me (envisioning a cold-sore-crusted Captain Jack) : "I think you mean 'me hearties'."

Rae: "Are you sure?"

Me: "Yep."

Horror at Make Out Point

You can enlarge by clicking if you can't read the text.

Not all urban legends are false......the Evil Ninja Assassin Cat returns.

Horror at Make Out Point

In theatres Wednesday.

I laughed. I cried. I might even have peed a little. (You know, from the laughing.)

Supposing you don't live under a rock without access to television, Internet, or newspapers, you must be aware of Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt's impending twins.

Go read this. You'll be glad you did. Your panties, maybe not so much.

And it's not even Monday

Back at work after the long Canada Day weekend. Late, because we got up late this morning, because we got in late last night, because we went to Dunrobin for Canada Day fireworks, and didn't get home until after 11. Not sure I'm ready to be at work. How do I know this? Well maybe the fact that I have yet to type a complete sentence (you know, with a subject and a verb and some articles and stuff). Or that I was standing, half asleep, in the corridor outside my office this morning, getting mildly annoyed that I couldn't open the lock on my office door. And then realizing that it was unlikely to happen as I was pointing my car remote at the door and pressing 'unlock' repeatedly.

Bring. Me. Coffee.

*****

And big thanks to all of you for all the kind words about Leah. The first night was definitely the worst. The fact that she had the appliance in on the Thursday of a long weekend helped, since it meant that she did a lot of activities that tired her out, and I let her stay up later than usual, which tired her out. We're not home-free yet, but it's getting better.

Scattered

Scattered is a good way to describe my thought processes (or lack thereof) today. I had very little sleep last night and today will prove busy, with a French test in the a.m. and an afternoon to be devoted to wading through the 150+ CVs received for an English Scientific Editor job competition.

Yesterday, Leah had a dental appliance put in to curb her thumb-sucking. She's tried valiantly to stop on her own, but like smoking, it's a hard habit to overcome. I just wish there was a patch for her to wear, because looking at her tear-stained face last night was almost too much to bear. Positive reinforcement, rewards, bad-tasting stuff, all were overcome by her compulsion.

Night time was the worst. I took the girls to see Kung Fu Panda yesterday evening in an attempt to take Leah's mind off her mouth. It seemed to work until bedtime. And then it all became clear -- how was she going to get to sleep? All her life, she's lulled herself to sleep (and she always drops off within 5 minutes of lying down) by sucking her thumb. It wasn't easy. She tried sleeping in her bed, and couldn't. She climbed into my bed and tried to sleep. I rubbed her back. No good. More tears. I told her she could read for a bit until she got sleepy. Nope, Lemony Snicket just provoked more overtired tears. I finally put a movie on (after telling her it was a one-time deal) around 11:30 and I dropped off to sleep beside her. I woke up a half hour or so later, halfway through "Spirited Away", and she was finally asleep. I'm hoping that the first night was the worst and that it'll get better from here on out.

I really didn't want to go this way, but the thumb sucking was exacerbating an already narrow jaw that will need orothodontia, which can't start until the habit is broken. A bad Catch-22 situation evolved in that she has lost her upper front teeth and the appliance will be visible until the permanent teeth descend. But the thumb sucking is stopping the teeth from growing in, so we had to put the appliance in in order to help the teeth come in. At least I was able to postpone it until school was out. That's a small mercy, but at least she isn't worried about being at school wearing it.

This morning I told her that last night was probably the worst, and that things will get easier as she learns to find other ways to fall asleep, and she was in a pretty cheerful mood. I hope that the half pot of coffee I drank can get me through to tonight, when we'll have to deal with it again. Wish me luck.

Thrifty

Andrea at A peek inside the fishbowl posted this last month on the subject of thrift shopping. I didn't get around to taking part in her challenge, but the post stayed with me, especially the part where she says (about thrift stores):

"Some folks wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this because they think (a) the clothes have been stripped off bodies at the city morgue or (b) they’re going to catch cooties or something or (c) they’re caving to the stigma that second-hand shops are domain of the poor and no one else is allowed to shop there. Sadly, there are a lot of people who can’t afford to shop anywhere else, that’s true, but I look at it this way: I give tons of stuff away to second-hand shops to resell so my conscience is clear. Besides, this is the kind of shopping that’s actually good for the environment. By not buying new I’ve saved some cash AND saved something from going into the landfill. "

I love the second-hand stores and the garage sales. You never know what treasures you're going to find. We still have two working VCRs, and lots of people have got rid of theirs in favour of DVD and now Blueray disc players. My girls don't care what technology their movies are served up in, so long as they can watch them. You can pick up movies and books for a buck or two at the Sally Ann. My favourite dress that Rachel ever wore, periwinkle blue velvet, came from My Sister's Closet, a second hand/consignment store in Kanata. Here We Grow Again in Stittsville is a great second-hand/consignment shop too.

A couple of weeks ago after a periodontist appointment, I checked out the second-hand store across the street from his office. My score:

One pair of American Eagle Outfitter jeans (Long! Enough! For! Me!!!); a Cotton Ginny long-sleeved T; a Jessica Sport short-sleeved T; VHS copies of Scooby Doo 4 Creepy Capers (for the girls), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (for me), Lara Croft Tomb Raider (hey, don't judge me); The first book from the Lemony Snicket 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' series -- The Bad Beginning (but not the beaded bookmark, that was already Leah's [my mom made it, and if you click on the picture you can see it better, it's really cute]) and one of her favourite "A to Z Mysteries' books -- The Runaway Racehorse for Leah; Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona for Rachel; and a pair of silver-toned candlesticks for me. Total cost: $23.45. I regretfully put back a quilted Columbia jacket, eggplant purple, with the original store sales tag still on it, seeing it was just a bit too snug.

I'm not about to stop buying things new, when I need them, but I'm trying to teach the girls about how advertising works, and how consumerism is not a good thing, and how, in our family we buy things when we need them and not just because we want something new. It's kind of nice to have a side of environmental responsibility along with the main course of living within our means.

And hey, I won a contest! I'm a long-time fan of MamaTulip, and I checked out a new celebrity gossip site that she writes for: Binkywood. I entered a caption contest, and I won! I'm very excited to read my prize, a copy of The Myth of You and Me, by Leah Stewart.

You thought I was kidding about the frog, didn't you?

I wasn't.

Seriously, could you sleep through that?

(Sorry the picture is so dark, I was using the movie function on the camera as a sound recorder)

Lesson learned

If you stay up late and eat a whole bag of President's Choice Wasabi and Honey Rice Chips and wash it down with a Vex Pink Hard Lemonade vodka cooler while reading a Laurell K. Hamilton 'Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter' novel in bed, you have no one but yourself to blame when your dreams are full of zombies and you get hardly any sleep and wake up looking like one of the decaying undead yourself. Only without the all the cool choreography.

Yay! Boo!

The pool is no longer green. Yay!

It's still kinda turquoise and cloudy. Boo!

With any luck, I should be able to get it swimmable by the weekend. Yay!

It's going to rain on the weekend. Boo!

I had time between getting home from work and taking the girls to Rae's soccer game to work on the pool, and I got the pump and filter going. Yay!

There's a leak in one of the connections at the chlorinator. Boo!

I have plumber's tape. Yay!

That's not the problem. Boo!

I have a replacement part already. Yay!

The parts need to be glued together with special glue. And we all know how well I do with glue. Boo!

I didn't glue myself to anything. Yay!

***

I was able to teach the girls to respect nature and do a good deed by stopping the car and getting out to carry a turtle across the busy county road he was trying to cross. Yay!

As soon as I picked him up, he peed on me. Boo!

***

The girls are going to visit their dad overnight this weekend. Yay!

I should catch up on yardwork, pool maintenance and laundry. Boo!

Instead, I'm going to hang out at WestFest with a couple of girlfriends, then we're going to drink some Cosmos and catch the Sex and the City movie. Yay!

***

I finally got a new lawnmower. Yay!

I have to use it. Boo!

***

The frog didn't keep me awake last night. Yay!

The cat kept me awake last night. Boo!

***

What's going right and wrong in your life right now? I promise I'll comment on your comments.

Sex and the Country

Pictures courtesy Google images

Around here:

Birds do it. Bees do it. Frogs seem to really, really want to do it, based on the volume and frequency of the mating calls. Mourning doves apparently do it a lot, judging by the fact that a third batch of babies is being raised in the nest on the garage. Teenage raccoons want to do it too, and are scrapping with each other over the available teenage raccoons of the opposite sex. Loudly, and at night. Did I mention loudly? Must be all that fresh country air.

And not a Cosmopolitan or Manolo Blahnik in sight.

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.)