End of Summer Means Hassles

Everyone knows that Labor Day signals the end of summer, back to school, no more fun, blah, blah, blah. Labor Day means a lot more to anyone with a pool....hassles. The opening and closing of one's pool is exactly like putting up and taking down your Christmas tree. It's a pain in the ass to drag everything out, get everything all organized, spouses fight about how to do everything the right way....but you know once you get past the hassle, it will be worth the effort and quite enjoyable. There's always the question of when to put up your tree; you don't want to put it up too early, but you don't want to be too late either. Same with a pool; when to open it. Too early and the water won't be warm for a week or two; too late and you may miss some nice warm days to enjoy it.

Now once the Holiday season is over, how long do you wait before you take the tree down? Too early and all the work to get it up doesn't seem worth it, but too late and people start to wonder about your "obsession" with the Holidays. Once Labor Day hits, you start the guessing game of when to close the pool. We have made the mistake of closing it on Labor Day weekend and it always seems we have some very hot days right after Labor Day and you kick yourself for not having waited. On the other end, we have waited until late Sept and then had stormy weekends and were unable to close it until October - very bad since by then you are guaranteed to have a pool full of tree limbs, leaves and pine needles. And the you get the same "Ugh, I really don't feel like spending my day doing this" kind of feeling when you think of taking a tree down and closing a pool. It really does take up most of your day and usually spouses will again be arguing over when to put the chemicals in and who is going to stay up late to add the last dose b/c you started too late in the day and you have to wait 3 hours after you added the last chemicals. Then to get the pool cover on is quite a feat in itself! We always have those blown up pillow thingys that you have to tie to the sides of the pool to try to keep them in place, but they almost always pop during winter. My husband always rigs up some kind of rope and pulley system to get the cover on "smoothly" but something always goes wrong. Kind of like the roadrunner....every year he tries to rig up something different to get the cover on the pool easily and it never seems to work the way he wants it to.

So while we are dealing with back to school week this week, in the back of our minds we are trying to figure out when the last use of the pool will be.