When I was a kid, I had a home chemistry kit. I don't remember doing anything with it other than making a mess, but…well…I had it.

Now, instead of a cute kit, I have a pool. During the summer, a pool is a recreational device. The rest of the time, it's the grown up version of a home chemistry kit.

Today, we spent $95 on: Calcium Hardener, Alkalinity Booster, Dry Acid, Algaecide, and a very cool brush with a 10 foot pole. This is in addition to the tub of chlorine we already have, and the bags of SHOCK! which are stored across the room from the chlorine, even though Shock! is chlorine, because they're different kinds of chlorine.

Used properly, this array of white powdery stuff will kill the algae in my pool so I can vaccum it away, change the bacteria count, hardness, ph balance and surface tension of the pool water, to keep it crystal clear and swimmable, and give me stuff to put in the cute little blue shed in my yard.

Alternatively, I could poison people, or build a bomb (that part's easy. If you mix Shock! and regular chlorine, the explosion is way cool).

I bought all this, and was even given a really nice chem lesson from the folks at The Poolyard (they're cheaper, and more knowledgable than Leslie Pools, by the way).

And over the next three days, I'll be reclaiming my pool.

On my wishlist for summer:
-A toy sailboat, preferably a racing schooner, to stay in the pool when there are no ppl
-An oval or rectangular patio table, with chairs
-Pool toys.

Oh, right.
We also went to OSH, which is my favorite non book/clothes/stationery store in life. I bought a scuffle hoe to replace the scuffle hoe Fuzzy threw away when we moved. Scuffle hoes are my friends.