Satan’s Bathtub – Part III

The never ending battle between me and the possessed swimming pool in my back yard continues this week. I tried something different this winter and closed the pool. Closing a pool seemed simple enough, just drain some of the water out of it and open the valves in case there is a freeze so any water in the pipes can expand. Then put the pool cover on it and that’s it.

I thought this would be better than running it all winter long. It would save electricity, and save me a lot of time checking chemicals and cleaning traps. Then at the beginning of the summer all I’d have to do is pull off the cover, close the valves and crank up the pumps. After a few days of balancing the chemicals it should be good to go! Right?

Wrong.

The first problem was that the pool cover wasn’t a true cover. It didn’t overlap the sides to keep out stuff, it’s just a large, industrial bubble wrap material you put on your pool to help keep the water warm. I didn’t think it would let leaves get through, but it did. It also let anything else through that happen to venture out on the cover… like a very unfortunate Possum. It must’ve been in there for several months because it was very, very dead. The stench when the cover was pulled off was horrendous, and the poor animal was so water-logged that it broke apart when it was fished out.

I finally got the cover off, and of course the water was dark green. I knew this would happen, but I didn’t take into account that the cover would let leaves get in. It let in A LOT of leaves, too. The leaves made the water even worse. It was like a stagnant pond. I scrapped leaves off the bottom for 3 days. There was about five large garbage bags worth.

I cranked up the pumps and dumped in a ton of chemicals, and after four days of cleaning traps, backwashing filters, and dumping in chemicals the water has finally reached a light green hue. It’s slowly getting there, but I learned my lesson. I will just run the pumps next winter!

Superheroes

Ever play superhero when you were a kid? Wouldn’t it be cool to have super powers and melt stuff with your eyes, or have bullets bounce off you? Unfortunately we grow up and life shows us that there are no superheroes. At least I thought there weren’t until tonight.

I went to the Kidney Foundation’s Gift of Life dinner and benefit that honored “living” donors. My brother-in-law Jim is a living donor. He gave a kidney to his friend Ollie. He met Ollie over 23 years ago when he was first getting sober. Jim is an alcoholic, and a few other things, back in the day. But he turned his life around and joined AA and found sobriety, and his version of God.

Ollie was there and helped him through it. He was recovering himself, and had been sober for about 10 years when they met. Their friendship grew as Jim became stronger in his sobriety. Ollie saved his life.

23 years later Ollie had been on dialysis for a long time. Without kidneys his health was poor. He was weak. Gaunt. His blood system was polluted and it made him very ill.

Jim couldn’t see his friend go through this, so he told Ollie, “Take one of my kidneys.” After a series of tests that confirmed a match, the doctors spent about 3 hours taking one of Jim’s kidneys and placed it in Ollie.

The Bible teaches us that there is no greater love than for someone to lay down their life for a friend. John 15:13. That kind of unselfishness seems foreign in this world of excess and “I gotta get mine.”

It was interesting sitting in a room of people who had donated a piece of themselves, who sat next to the person that received their gift. The love between them all was very evident, and their stories were astounding: a daughter who donated to her mother so that her own daughter would have a grandmother for just a few years more. A son who donated to his father because he knew it was the right thing to do to repay him for all that his father had done for him. A wife who gave to her husband, out of love. And a man who prayed for his friend to get a kidney, and then God told him “give him yours.” The stories went on and on about how these people gave of themselves.

And Jim, he unassumingly stood up and said, “It was the right thing to do. God expects no less from all of us.” He returned his friends kindness of 23 years earlier when he helped him into sobriety and saved his life. Now he had saved Ollie’s.

Superheroes. Yes, they really do exist. I sat in a room full of them tonight.

Life's Like That

I read an article by Jerry Bullock that I thought was very interesting. Check it out: Life's like that.