I Got This

Famous last words. I didn’t ‘got this’, and damn near killed myself trying. 

We have an above ground swimming pool, 14 x 28 feet. It’s huge. And it’s especially huge when it needs to be covered for the winter.  

We have a cover, but I wanted to keep the water off the top of the cover, so decided to build a tent/roof over the pool. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

The pool has a deck built on one end and a ramp down the side, so I can get my scooter up to the deck without going around the house to another ramp that leads to the same deck. Confused yet? 

Well, it matters not whether I can scooter up and down when my primary goal was to build a roof/tent.   I decided that I could make one side of the cover higher and make my roof like a lean-to.  Then the water could not collect on top of it; the acorns and leaves would just roll right off. Uh huh.

First I had to get the wet vac out from the shed to the pool because there was already lots of water on top of the cover.  Moving that wet vac while on the scooter is a feat in and of itself, but I got it done. 

Donna came out to help, but here’s where the wheels fell off. “That’s OK, honey, I got this.”

Got the wet vac in place and plugged it in. Had to get off the scooter to lift the wet vac, also to plug it in. Started the sucking process. The wet vac we have is only 5 gallons, so I knew I had a few vac fillings to get all the water out.  

Because our yard is on a slant, the pool is on its own pad. So to operate the wet vac, it must be hoisted about 16” into the air onto the pool pad.  And each time it fills up, the operator - that would be me - had to step up and back down to empty it. It only took me about three times up and down when I knew that “I got this.” was a huge mistake.

But I soldiered on and got all the water out, well almost all of it. I was breathing hard and pretty unsteady on my pitiful feet when pulling myself up on that pad for the 5th or 10th time. 

Then came the lean-to building.  I had the tools, had the necessary posts, because I am nothing if not prepared. To what end I don’t know.  I started placing posts next to the ramp preparing to raise that side to make the cover taut and unable to catch leaves or water.

No matter how high I raised it, the cover would not get taut and it was beginning to show signs of being pulled too tight. Uh oh.

My design was a failure. My body failed me at about the 3rd post.  I staggered to my scooter, hauled the wet vac back to the shed and abandoned my project. 

Nothing like a big failure on a relatively small project to bring home that what we could do ten years ago, we ain’t got a chance of doing that now.

No more, “Honey, I got this.” It was a hard lesson to learn.