Jakandy Bennu

So.. Wildcat got this little 8′ x 30″ pool for his birthday. It wasn’t expensive and it didn’t look too hard for us to set up. We saw that is required a level place to set up… but we didn’t realize it had to be EXACTLY-ON-THE-DOT level.

We live on a hill. The front yard is “flat” and there are a couple of places at the bottom of the backyard that we thought would be close enough to level. It took us a month to even get to setting up the poor boy’s birthday present. But we decided to do it.

We wanted the pool in the backyard (which is fenced and would keep kids and critters out). We walked and talked for 2 hours trying to decide which slope was the flattest. hee.

We played with the idea of renting a machine to rip up the earth in the backyard and make a little pit for the pool to sit in, but come on… it’s an 8ft pool that’s only 30inches deep. So- we decided that we were making this harder than it needed to be. We picked a spot, put down a tarp — and started filling the pool with water.

Dragon came running out of the house with his swimsuit on.

After about 6 inches had filled part of the pool on the down-hill side — it started sliding. Down. Down.
Landed about 6 feet from where we had it sitting. It wasn’t going to work.

Much to the sadness of both of the boys, we gave up. Not going to happen. We basically blew $50-ish and about 3 hours of time messing with the pool that we shouldn’t have bought in the first place.

It does have to be EXACTLY-ON-THE-DOT LEVEL. Grumble.

Wildcat said “thanks for trying anyway, guys.”

Three days have passed since our attempt to make our little pool work on our hill. Today, while we were painting the den that we’re working on, we decided to give it one more attempt. That stupid pool can’t beat us. Maybe we’re just stubborn. Well… no maybes. We are.

The driveway is gravel. The Blueberry Farm has their pool set up on their gravel driveway. So- we decided to try and level a spot in the gravel.

And after a few last minute tweaks in the “grading”… we laid the pool down and started filling it.

It worked.

We now have a pool in our driveway at the side of our house.

We pulled the fence from around our garbage cans and in conjunction with the dog exercise pen with a tarp on it, we managed to “fence” the majority of the pool area. At the least, the big blue pool won’t be AS noticeable. My neighbor saw all the ongoings and doesn’t seem bothered by the “white-trashness” of the setup.

It’s just for a couple of months, anyway.

The boys had fun today. They played in the pool for about 2 hours before afternoon thunder rumbles came in.

And we had fun today. We got the den painted (sidenote: the new floor laying was delayed due to the “floor” not arriving -it’s coming on FRIDAY now — ugg) and Wildcat’s swimming pool is standing steady on the driveway.

Score: Pool-1 Us-1

Yep. It’s a tie. But it’s better than losing to a stoopid plastic pool.