Adventures at Collier Pool

The last couple of weeks, we have been on Dead Week and Finals schedules out at A&M-Kingsville.  Normally for me this means that I'm still out there every day getting caught up on everything I didn't find time to do during the semester (and, deal with the fun end of the semester student inquiries about how they are failing your class when they haven't shown up since Spring Break!).  This year, though, I really only went out on days that I had either class or an exam scheduled.  The other days I spent at home in heavy nesting mode.  My baseboards and cupboards are probably the cleanest in Nueces County right now!  :-)  I also spent some time getting the courses that I will be teaching online this summer completely ready to go online so that all I will be doing throughout the semester is monitoring their discussions and grading.  For me, the most difficult and time-consuming part of teaching online is getting everything ready, the actual class goes fairly easily!

One big bonus of being home is that I've been able to swim every day at an OUTDOOR pool.  Our pool at school is an indoor pool, and it's been great to have it close by to swim in 2-3 days a week during the spring semester.  But nothing, NOTHING, beats an outdoor pool.  It just reminds me of so many years of lifeguarding and pool managing - which brings back some really fun memories of different phases of my life.  Now I'm on the other side of the lifeguard tube, and find myself grinning as I listen to the guards complain about things that we used to complain about, and becoming a 'regular' who they undoubtedly make up stories about to keep the time passing and guarding interesting.

"My" pool in Corpus...Collier Pool

My favorite about about the pool (other than being weightless and releasing so much hip pressure) is the people.  This is one of the things I used to love about guarding, the people watching.  Over the last couple of weeks, I have been sharing a lane with an elderly gentleman.  I still don't know his name, so I'll call him Elmer.  Elmer cracks me up, he is the stereotypical 70-something year old man who has lived a full life and doesn't really care what people think of him.  My first day at the pool, I chose his lane because he was a slower swimmer and I knew that I wouldn't drive him nuts swimming slowly myself.  The first couple of days it was just a smile here or there, and the cursory "have a good day" as one of us left.  He asked about my due date after a few days, but other than that we didn't really talk.  So I was cracking up yesterday when he asked me, "What are you going to do if that baby comes out here?  Those lifeguards look too young to know anything."  I smiled and told him I hoped he'd be able to help. He then chuckled, and told me, "Good luck!"  So I guess Elmer isn't volunteering to help out should little Miss Gaines decide to make an appearance at Collier Pool!

Today, I was about an hour later getting there than normal, and I had him thinking I was having the baby.  He told me that he and the guards were thinking I must have gone into labor because I wasn't there right at 11:30 like I usually was.  Which brought a smile to my face, because I remembered being those guards - the ones who knew peoples' schedules and hypothesized what was going on when they weren't where they were "supposed" to be.  It makes me smile being on the other side of the story now.