For Porgie's seventh birthday, she wanted a pool. We bought her a 10ft Intex pool, which actually cost a pretty penny. We set it up on a "level" section of the backyard. I put the word level in quotation marks, because we were just eyeballing it. I am sure you can see where this story is going.
The pool filled up in a very lopsided fashion, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They splashed and played and had tons of fun. But after about two weeks, one side of the pool collapsed and all the water went rushing out. John and I decided that before we set it up again, we would try to make the ground more level. We wanted to have it all fixed and ready by the 4th of July.
To remedy the problem, first John tried to dig out the high side. Unfortunately, there were a million tree roots, which made it basically impossible. So, John decided to buy some dirt and build up the other side. I should probably mention that it has been raining a lot lately. For the past week, there has been a thunderstorm nearly every afternoon.
On Wednesday night, John went to Lowes to buy some dirt. He pulled his van into the backyard and started to unload the bags. While he was doing this, it started raining again. It was pouring buckets. John hopped back in his van and tried to pull out of the backyard. But his wheels just spun hopelessly in the mud.
By this point, John was livid. He was screaming and being pretty over-dramatic. I was really hoping he would somehow manage to get his van dislodged from the mud, but after 30 minutes of pure hell, he gave up. His van was stuck.
The next morning (the 4th of July), he went back to Lowes to buy some plywood to put in front of his tires for traction. After an hour of rearranging boards and going backward and forward, he was finally able to get his van out of the yard. But holy crap, our yard was destroyed.
After all of that chaos, it was finally time to put down the dirt and set-up the pool. John swears that the dirt was level, but when he filled up the pool, we had the EXACT same problem. It was still lopsided.
So, we wasted a bunch of money on dirt, got a vehicle stuck in mud, and destroyed our backyard for another lopsided pool. Oh the joys of parenthood.
3 comments:
Oh my goodness! That sounds horrible. Hope it works out!
We had an above ground pool. What a nightmare. We ended up putting the poles on stepping stones from Home Depot b/c they kept sinking. After 2 summers, that pool went bye bye. :)
my parents brought out a pool this last trip - i wanted to keep it in the box. they are always more work than fun. sorry about your yard :(
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