More Swimming, and a small rant

Today's afternoon swim was at the public pool in Elkin. Aside from "adult swim," when they blow a whistle once on the hour and all the kids have to clear the pool for ten minutes so that adults (in this case, a woman in a floaty ring and a middle aged man) can have the pool to themselves, it was a fun pool. I don't understand why they need to clear out the roped off children's wading area during adult swim, but that's how they do it. T. passed the "swim test" required to be allowed to jump off the diving board by dog paddling the length of the pool. I'm not clear on why they need to swim the length of the pool to use the diving board, but only swim the width of the pool to use the slide, when both have the same distance from landing to ladder, but, again, that's how they do it. Both kids had a great time splashing about, and I got to read The Provincial Lady without fear of surprise snake attacks.

After our swim, the children played at the playground. They had a modified version of a see-saw there which was a big hit! In Florida, at least, see-saws seem to have gone out of style, and I don't think my kids have ever played on one. We tried to register at the recreation dept. building for end of July swim classes, but they don't accept hand delivered registrations and checks there -- you have to mail them in. That seems odd to me. Aside from the fact that they don't run things exactly the way I would (and since I wouldn't want to run the place, I guess I shouldn't grumble too much), it seems like quite a nice recreation center.

We stopped by the library on the way home to pick up a book T. had requested, and got to pat puppies. A woman had brought in two of her dog's litter of ten five week old puppies to visit the librarians (I think five weeks is awfully young for puppies to be gadding about town, but she didn't ask me.) just before closing. They were cute little sheepdog mix puppies, but after a couple minutes T. and K. wandered off to look at books. They've seen more puppies and kittens in our almost-year here than they saw in their whole lives in Florida, because neutering pets seems to be not the done thing up here. There are plenty of local customs which I am trying to understand before I judge harshly, but this one really bothers me. (But we did not take a puppy.)

** You can't see him very well, but the picture of the blue slide is supposed to show T. shooting off the end of the slide, into the water. My timing isn't great. When we were house-hunting, Ed and I referred to this house as "the brick house," because of it being brick and all. T. called it "the blue slide house," because he saw the pool with the blue slide as we drove through Elkin and we told him that we'd be able to visit that pool if we bought the brick house. By the time we moved in and pulled ourselves together enough to check into things like local pools, the pool was closed for the season. It took almost a year, but today T. finally got to slide down his blue slide.