Closed For Maintenance

It’s thirty-seven degrees eff out and I’m schadenfreudischly* happy that the pool is closed today for unscheduled maintenance. Even though without swimming, my sanity may be in a tiny bit of danger. The pool is not scheduled to open until Monday morning, eight ay-em, when if I’m lucky the temperature will be north of forty. Eff. Even if it isn't, I'll go.

If I’m truly lucky, the temperature will be fifty degrees and a downpour will impede visibility on my ten-minute drive to the pool. If we don’t get a whole heckuva lot more rain this season, I’m putting my foot down, and proclaiming:

Proclamation One: No veggie garden this year.

Okay, maybe one tomato and one basil, but that’s it. If a tomatillo comes up on its own, I might water it just a bit, too. But tomatillos are practically native, practically weeds, practically need-free. Also, I have an oregano plant (a perennial amongst annuals for you wholly non-planty people) that has come back from being one hundred percent dead sticks (Styx) many a time. It looks as if it’s coming back again this Spring, despite the sadness of the rainfall.

The other day my weather app had a warning banner across the top, with yellow triangles and exclamation points at both ends. I’d never seen a warning banner for Belmont on the weather app. I opened it up, and the warning said, Protect your delicate plants. Temperatures plummeting into the thirties over the next few days.

I scoffed. I went to college in New Hamster, in northern New England, where the temperature would stay below zero (Fahrenheit!) for two weeks at a time.

And yet, here I am, filled with guilty happiness that the pool is closed, so I won’t have to skitter from the locker room, grab a kickboard out of the bin, and jump gratefully into the nice warm pool, frozen to the core in my modest middle-aged swimsuit that’s an atomic monolayer thick at best.

Plus! After my swim, I have to get out of the warm water, return my kickboard to the bin, and skitter back to the locker room with my arms wrapped around my now-wet Angstrom-thickness modest-cut swimsuit, yelling Brrr! Brrr! Brrr! because that seems to help.

The lifeguard nods and gives me a tiny smile as I hurry by. She’s seen the performance from me before, about three times a week. And she’s wearing an anorak, nice thick pants, scarf, gloves, hat and sunglasses and still has a big towel wrapped around her.

My friend Ryn is close at my heels, brrring her way to the locker room, too. We jump into the hot showers and revel in the heat. But not too long. There's a drought on.

Her husband, Raun, swims with us, too. But he walks calmly and quietly into the other locker room, the one with Pants Stick Person on it, while ours has Dress Stick Person.

There is no locker room with Ridiculously Thin Bathing Suit Stick Person on it, or I would go into that one.

Ryn is not only my swimming buddy; she also goes to the same church. One September, after I’d skipped out on the skimpy summer services and returned for the Water Communion service that opens the new church year (a fitting service for two swimmers), I said to Ryn at coffee hour, Hey! I haven’t seen you in a long time with clothes on! You look nice.

Well, that raised a few eyebrows.

Proclamation Two: The hole where our apple tree used to be shall remain a hole this year. We will (again) delay planting the two citrus trees we’ve planned.

Citrus trees grow well here, and after established, take nearly zero watering. After established. Enough said.

I’m also starting to wonder if we really want a Meyer lemon and a Mexican lime. Both Lee and Ryn have big big big Meyer lemon trees in their yards, and they’re generous in sharing their lemons. Amongst this lemon plentitude, should we consider an orange instead? I yum for oranges, but if homegrown oranges are so great, why oh why do you see half-rotted oranges littering the ground under orange trees, when you ride your bike through neighborhoods to ogle fruit trees? Oranges are the most common litterfruit! I have data.

Proclamation Three: The front yard shall remain a wasteland of dirt and weeds. We’ll reserve a tiny amount of water for the madrones, because I love them and don’t want to lose them and they are hanging on by a thread, even though (because?) I cut them back to minimum branchage last year.

My husband, Beau, will not be happy about the front-yard wasteland. We have a beautiful landscaping plan, drawn up by my friend DuBarb, designed for low water usage.

After established.

I see our dirt-n-weeds front yard as a badge of honor, as responsible citizenry as a drought dweller. My significant other says that almond farmers use all the water in California and are to blame, not us. Even though he is the native Californian, and I am naturalized, he wants a landscaped front yard. I care less, which doesn't mean I couldn't care less. I could.

Our neighbors on one side have an absolutely gorgeous front yard, and they maintain it meticulously, using nail clippers and tweezers. They very likely agree with Beau. Our neighbors on the other side have an absolute wreck of a yard, front, back, and sides. Beau regularly cuts back the blackberry vines that insert themselves through the crack in our fence, looking for new territories. I think, Free blackberries? Yum!

The pool is closed for three days for maintenance. I don’t know why—maybe someone found a Baby Ruth bar floating on the water and they need to bring in the guys in hazmat suits. Anyway, I’m glad to be warm and dry in my nice house, even with garden veggies from the store and a drought-honoring front yard.

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*I debated whether or not to include the second c in schadenfreudischly. I mean, where should the German root end and the Anglicized corruption begin? Also, since the schadenfreude is directed at myself, I thought, should I write selbstschadenfreudischly? But that doesn't fit on one line when you're reading this story on your phone. And I don't trust Apple to hyphenate such a monster of a word properly, would you?

[Photo from a website called SF Bay Gardening. The drama of the caption exceeds something I would write, so I reproduce it gleefully here: The largest thorns are almost an inch long, like an iron maiden punishing you for those sweet foraged berries.]