Pool Life

When you live here in Northern NJ and have a pool, you use it every second possible.

Because we have the "princess temperature" thing going, we can happily extend the season.

What they DIDN'T tell you was that your pool shorts would have a very short life.  Chlorine is not particularily friendly, being a strong corroder and all.  

Here's where things take a nasty turn. These suits have an inside netting, for support and stuff.  No biggie- you put them on just like your everyday summer shorts.

Except

After a few hours in the pool, the netting sort of adheres.  When you race in to remove these things, the netting has decided to cling to some very nerve-rich areas. 

Now, you would expect a seasoned swimmer to preprare for this, but no.  I pull them off and cry out in agony.  Time and time again.

Lobsters

Lobsters aren't the mild thing you see in the tank at the grocery. They are preditors with very scary skills.

I was Scuba diving - checking out the boat mooring, and I ran into one.  First off, the claws were up...and open. It is weird, but not impossible to pee out of fear in a diving suit. Lobster - one pound.  Me, a few more pounds, yet I was terrified.

Forget I was in a full-body diving suit. So there it was. Claws raised, and me.  Then the unbelievable happened.  In one second, it disapeared.  One second.

These guys have very strong stuff in the hind quarters.  I never knew.  No wonder you hold the tail end firmly as you dunk them into boiling water.

I'm a coming, Miriam

Our little fishing village is, well, little: everyone knows everyone.

In my grandparents day, this was way more pronounced.

The family story I've heard is, well, of the ages but my Grandmother was out sailing and got in trouble.  That, in motor-free sailboats would mean she capsized. In 60 degree water. Thank the gods that she stayed afloat and I have a father.

Anyway, a local fisherman saw her distress and raced to the rescue. "I'm a coming, Miriam".

He was in a row boat.

Moorings

We have moorings in the harbor here.  Actually, so many, they are regulated.

These things are nothing more than, oh, 1000 pound granite rocks.  Your boat is going nowhere.

I know this partly because when I scuba dived the harbor, it was pretty obvious. Lobsters were threatening me, but these moorings were not about to move.

A brief story: our boat didn't move an inch during Hurricane Bob.

Rocks

I trust you've heard the phrase "the rocky coast of Maine." It is that in spades. The rare sandy beaches are few and far between. And the phrase really doesn't capture the essence of the coast. "Where ledge meets the sea" may be more descriptive, if not quite so romantic. 

Even rarer are pebble beaches - beaches composed entirely of rounded rocks that fit comfortably in your hand. There are a couple nearby. My mother would have us help her lug a bunch back home, where she would paint little designs and sayings on them and sell them at her church benefit. I use them in NJ as paperweights on our picnic table. They are beautiful and really quite handy. 

Things sort of got out of hand when we were scooping them up like furtive criminals to form a base for the wood burning stove in our cottage. Picture my Sainted wife - skirt up - holding a bunch of rocks. 

Oddly, I think the bystanders thought us weird.