Why should you See a Movie at a Film Fest vs. Netflix? I’ll Tell You Why
Yesterday, I went to movie at the 10th Ames-Amzalak Rochester Jewish Film Festival. I went on yet another one of these very long beautiful summer days where I have hours of time all to myself.
Just like last week’s “too much kid free time on my hands” list, I did do some cooking and some heavy-duty cleaning of my kids bedrooms. Then, I heard the voice of Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society in my head: “Seize the Day.”
At some point, I did rationalize away the indulgent thought of going to a movie, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, all by myself. My husband was working hard in his windowless office all week. Who am I to go out and enjoy a film, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week? After all, any movie shown at the Festival, between now and August 2, I can eventually see on a DVD rental.
But I went. And I enjoyed.
The movie, an Israeli film called Eli & Ben, was set in Hezliyah. Here is the first reason why you should go to a film festival. These movies are hand-picked by diversely populated committees that sift out the best films : Film festival films offer the opportunity to learn about the geography and culture of another part of the world.
How many movies do you know that are set in Herzliya, a coastal town in Israel? How much do you know about Israel outside what you hear on the news? Because of the Jewish Film Festival, I have seen movies set in the mystical city of Tzefat, hip Tel Aviv, a kibbutz, or spiritual Jerusalem.
Foreign film festivals allow you to improve language skills. After viewing enough movies in Hebrew, I start to recognize sentence and verb structure that I hadn’t thought about since college. I only wish that when I visit Israel everyone can walk around with subtitles.
But the main reason is the communal feeling you get from going to the theatre. Remember how I said I went alone? I really wasn’t alone. As I settled into my seat at the JCC, I was flanked by two friends that I had met there by complete chance. It couldn’t have worked out better if it was planned. Unlike going to a commercial theatre, film festival theatres are filled with the pre-film chatter and schmoozing and catching up with friends. The film was then personally announced by the festival’s chairperson. Sometimes, the director himself may be present to introduce the film or answer questions afterwards. During the film, I sat with an audience completely engaged with what was on the screen. Our emotions played off one another as we laughed, sighed or gasped in unison. If I Netflixed the same film, I most likely would have zonked out on the couch before it was even over.
Here is a list of movies I have enjoyed at Jewish Film Festivals through the years. True, most people, even pass holders, are not fortunate to see all of them on film. Whatever ethnic, racial or other niche you find yourself in, go see a good film in the company of others.
Here is a list of just some of the films I have seen thanks to the Rochester Jewish Film Festival. To see descriptions of these movies, or an archive from past film festivals, go to www.rjff.org
- Ben & Eli
- Walk on Water
- Zrubavel
- Pinchas
- The Syrian Bride
- A Late Marriage
- Live and Become
- Lemon Tree
- Close to Home
- Defiance
- The Case for Israel
Parenting on a tube
Last week, my family stayed two nights in Lebanon. We sat on one of the world’s biggest harem pillows eating halvah as we watched a belly dance performancee. After that, we saw a fireworks display over a river. That day, we also picked raspberries as we hiked through the wilderness and swam in a pristine lake, and sampled some of the best guacamole this side of the Rio Grande.
Where were we?
New Jersey.
I know. I’m starting to sound like one of those tourism ads of the 1980s starring Bill Cosby. But I can’t help it. My family and I had a great mini vacation in The Garden State, the place of our former residence. New Jersey is conveniently sandwiched between visiting the family back in New York and our home in Rochester. Between our old life and relatively new life.
Ten years later and I still feel a pang when we drive by the exit that we used to take to go home when we lived in Central New Jersey. Every return trip to Rochester, when I see the exit for S. Plainfield off of Rt. 287, I think, we could have been home by now.
My kids are getting older. They have no memory of our tiny Cape Cod in Fanwood. I think they are getting to the point that they are actually enjoying parent-free time (demonstrated by the camp countdown that started 40 days ago) more than hanging with parent time. That’s to be expected. But, damn it to hell, I wanted some happy family memories before we shipped them off.
Now, the highlight of our just-the-five-of-us mini vacation was a four-hour tubing excursion down the Delaware River. A time of family bonding. Togetherness.
tubers enjoying tubing down the Delaware
Do you see these happy people in the picture to the right? That is not us. It is a picture from the Delaware River Tubing Co., the nice family-run business that supplies the tubes, the mid-river hot dog (or veggie burger) lunch, and the bus ride back up river. We did buy a waterproof camera from them, but I broke it. I would have had much difficulty navigating my tube and photographing the family anyway. On the course of the river, I lost my hat, and nearly lost both of my shoes.
The water was warm. The currents were minimal. It was like a lazy river ride at a water park. Only, the river was real. The kids were – bored.
Floating down a river for four hours with the family taught me many lessons that can apply to being a family:
- You can only control so much. You have to go with the flow.
- Children need solid boundaries. Encourage them to stay in their tube as much as possible.
- You can try to stick together. You may float away from each other from time to time, but eventually, we all come out of the river together.
- Try to go against the current to stop, or go backwards, and you will capsize your tube.
- Always make sure your shoes are securely fastened, or you can lose them in river mud.
- Facing rough waters is always a little better when you hold someone’s hand.
Back on dry land, the next day, on a bridge between New Hope, Pa., and Lambertville, NJ, we watched an impressive fireworks display. Last year, Toby cowered at the booms of fireworks. This year he cheered them on, the louder the better.
“I sure wish we lived in New Jersey!” He said.
I guess he was 10 years too late.
In pursuit of a fine-free summer of reading
In our debt-inflicted society, there are some who cringe at the thought that their credit card will be denied when it is swiped at the department store, or the supermarket, or the gas station. For me, it is my library card.
I am under the impression that I will personally offend the librarian if an outrageously overdue book shows up on my account, accompanied by a hefty fine. What book has slipped under a bed or retreated to the deepest recess of my son’s closet? How much do I owe in overdue fines and will I need to take out a second mortgage to pay for it?
In any case, a few dollars in overdue library books are worth it if the book is enjoyed by a child – or adult – through the summer.
There is something magical when a child puts vowels and consonants together and realizes they can read. It just clicks. Words on street signs and cereal boxes come to life. Best of all, they can pick up a book and read to themselves. Libraries in Brighton, Pittsford, and Mendon are offering plenty of incentives this summer for children to curl up with a good book, whether it is under a tree or on a beach blanket.
On June 25, the Brighton Memorial Library kicked off its summer “Make a Splash into Reading” program that runs through August 13 and is sponsored by the Friends of the Brighton Memorial Library. Beach balls hung from the ceiling as youngsters were greeted with leis and ice pops by children’s librarian Tonia Burton. Girls dressed for the occasion in Hawaiian printed dresses. They decorated paper-framed sunglasses and said they couldn’t wait to read titles such as Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale.
Registered children received game boards with pictures of beaches separated by five blank spaces. For every day they read 20 minutes or more, they move one space on the board. When they reach a beach, they return to the library to pick a prize out of a beach pail – and borrow more books. After a child reaches the fourth beach, they receive an invitation to the summer reading party in August. For every person that finishes the reading game, the Friends of the BML will donate three books to the library.
If you missed the kickoff party at your local library there is no need to worry. It is summer, after all. Register your youngster in person or online at www.brightonlibrary.org, www.townofpittsford.org-library, or www.mendonlibrary.org.
It is relatively easy to steer eager new readers to books that contain vibrant illustrations and lively prose. But what about those independent-minded tweens and teens? Deena Lipomi, circulation and young adult services manager at the Brighton Memorial Library said she rarely offers verbal recommendations because “that might seem too pushy.” Instead, she lets the books speak for themselves.
“I look for books with colorful, modern covers and turn them face side out on the shelves. For teenagers, you can’t strongly suggest a book, or they may not read it, and the book can’t look dated.” To entice this age group, Lipomi also creates book displays by theme, such as the popular vampire series. But thankfully, the classics still endure. Lipomi said that the multiple copies of Catcher in the Rye and Jane Austen are “(checked) out all the time.”
The joy of reading can also blossom in adulthood. Jodi Warner-Farnsworth, a retired French teacher who lives in Canandaigua enjoys the personal impact she makes on the adults she helps to read through Literacy Volunteers of Ontario County.
“The biggest gain I have seen in the people I tutor is the self-confidence that spills over into all aspects of their life. Sometimes, all they needed was just someone to believe in them,” said Jodi.
Jodi started tutoring because she was interested in giving back to the community. She also will be training volunteers this fall. Jodi teaches multi-sensory strategies that help adults with learning disabilities learn to read with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic teaching methods. If you are interested in becoming a literacy volunteer, contact the organization at 585-396-1686 or go to www.literacyvoc.org.
A lesson in art and New York City appreciation
Seeing New York City through my daughter’s eyes is quite refreshing. She loves the pizza, the culture, and the excitement, She was blown away by the hip-hop performers that flipped and jumped through a crowded uptown train. I also wondered, how did they do that without kicking anyone in the face and when do they find an empty car to practice?
And now, just like me, she loves the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As they get bigger, I want to expose my children to as much as possible of the city where I was born and raised. Good and bad. The culture definitely falls into the good column. I’d like to thank my parents, who for one summer, took my brother and I to a different museum in New York City every weekend. Even if my brother gaped at the nude paintings and sculptures.
I’d like to thank them for staying in New York City while so many other of their friends have moved away to Florida.
I’m also thankful for art history professors who sent us to the Met to see works of art up close and personal before we wrote our final papers on them. Visiting a building that contains so many masterpieces, seeing the actual brushwork, standing before a painting exactly where the artist once stood gave me an appreciation of color, line and composition that stays with me to this day.
It’s been 15 years since I have made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place that feels (I hate to say it) as sacred to me as the inside of a house of worship. It has been way too long. So off we went to the Met: my mom, Jolie and I.
At some point, surrounded by Picasso, I switched my cell phone off. This was holy ground and should be treated as such.
I watched Jolie work her way through the Picasso exhibit, then allowed her to pull me this way and that through European Baroque furniture, Greek and Roman sculpture, all the while looking for the next work of art to take in and all the while wishing she had taken her sketch book. And asking when would be the next time we would return to another day at the Met.
A switch has been turned on inside Jolie to love all that is great and cultural about New York City. But she could do without the noise, the smells, and the crowds. There was a bit of a learning curve with using her Metro card in the subway.
She has yet to understand that putting up with the city’s unpleasantries as they hang on to their claim to living in the Big Apple is what give New Yorkers their character. For her, she wouldn’t trade the relative peace and quiet of Rochester for the center-of-the-universe qualities of New York City. It is turning out to be a nice place to visit but she wouldn’t want to live there. It’s just not where she is from.
Rochester, in all fairness, with all of your wonderful quality of life aspects, your great suburban school districts, incredibly affordable housing and 10 minute commutes to anywhere, you are not New York City.
Yes, I have come to appreciate Rochester’s cultural treasures, like the Memorial Art Gallery, the Eastman House, and the eclectic Artisan Works. But nothing compares to the treasures that dirty, crowded, noisy New York City holds. When I describe any of Rochester’s “tourist attractions” to friends back in New York City, I always preface it with “for a city of its size, Rochester has …..”
The MAG can never be the Met, and that’s okay. It is 10 minutes from my house, contains wonderful sculpture gardens and amazing traveling exhibits of Monet, Degas, and O’Keeffe since I have lived in Rochester. It has free parking.
NYC friends and family: I love and miss you all very much in the months and years I do not see you and the few precious days I visit with you over lunch or a holiday meal while living up North. But I have decided that when visiting NYC, I need to start playing the tourist instead of spending much of my time in living rooms. Please try not to be offended and try to understand, and make plans to come along with me to a visit to the Met or MOMA next time I’m in town.
Revisiting Toy Story and toys
When my daughter was barely out of diapers, we left her baby brother home with dad and had our first mother-daughter date to see Toy Story 2. At the theatre, I treated her to popcorn, which I think was $3. I had to get her one of those booster seats so she could sit up and see. Even so, she climbed out of it into my lap a few times out of fear of Zurg. Afterwards, I took her out for her first Starbucks hot chocolate. With whipped cream, of course.
Back then, Andy was about to go off to Boy Scout Camp. Now, Andy’s off to college, and my daughter and her brother are also a few weeks away from their own sleep away camp adventure. Luckily, we still have their youngest brother around this summer. He wasn’t even a glint in our eyes when Toy Story 2 came out.
No booster seats were needed for this latest adventure with Woody, Buzz and the gang. My daughter, now 13, hasn’t sat in my lap in years and reached out for me only to plead for another handful of M&Ms. My sons preferred the popcorn. A large popcorn is now $8.
As I watched the movie, I thought of the speed at how my children are growing up, even my six-year-old son can no longer be classified as a baby, and wondered about the fate of all of their toys.
I remember even into to my tween years playing in the basement with my brother with all our toys. We would spend hours creating our own universe with classic 70’s play figures. Harrowing dramas would be played out among Weebles on their treasure island. The treasure Island with the plastic palm trees complete with a treehouse and hammock.
A nearby cruise ship – really one of my brother’s large dump trucks turned upside down, was about to sink, only with the Pirate Weebles nearby to save the passengers.
Old-school Fisher Price people – the kind today’s kids might choke on — were trapped in the elevator shaft of the Fisher Price multi-level car garage, the one with the rotating car platform on the top level. My brother would take a few fire trucks from his vast collection to save them lest the poor painted figure that was still made in the USA would be crushed! Somehow, a Barbie doll would always wind up unclothed and tied up, hanging precariously from my dad’s recliner. That was my brother’s doing. I think Luke and Leah flew in to her aid.
And now? What do the makers of Toy Story 3 offer our children as a way to “play” with toys? In the 40-minute, commercial-filled video that preceded even the previews, to accompany the movie, there are not actual toys being marketed to our children, but a Toy Story 3 video game.
Yes, a video game where children can “play” with Jesse, Buzz, and Bullseye and create their own stories. The Toy Story 3 marketers know, and even mention in this commercial, that kids don’t really play with toys anymore. According to a January article in the New York Times, if our kids are awake, they are most likely looking at a screen. Why play with a plastic action figure, or slink a slinky down the stairs when you can do all that with the help of a mouse, or a joystick, or whatever contraption they use to move images on a screen these days?
Serving a rescued Barbie a tray of food in first class in her Barbie Friendship Cool Airplane – the one that came with its own food trolley — just seems like a lot more fun to me.
Kids, play with your toys. Even if you leave them all over the floor after you’re done.
Marco? Polo! Oh no … what’s that?!
I’m warning you, this blog entry is a bit gross.
It was our family’s first trip out to our community pool. We love driving there, especially for our inaugural trip. It’s a 20 minute drive from our house that takes us through pastures with grazing horses and corn fields with corn stalks that grow taller by the day.
If you are fortunate enough to have access to a public or semi-private pool, you know how long it takes to pack up the towels, sunscreen, and the optional giant foam noodle (as mentioned in my previous blog). There is the effort in making sure that a supply of snacks are packed and a change of clothing for the shower.
All this preparation is paid off by that first plunge into a sparkling clean pool.
Here comes the aforementioned gross part.
Let me just say that we have been swimming at this pool for a decade now, and we love going because of all the friends who we see out there any time we go. Our kids have gone to camp here, as many children in the area for decades since the 1930’s.
Every trip to the pool becomes an unplanned social outing for us. And finally, our children are at the age where they are all confident in the pool and we let them go off with friends and down the slide. So it was no burden to me when a friend asked if I could watch her daughter for a moment so she could get out of the pool. In fact, I enjoyed having swimming and walking races with this delightful 5 1/2 year old I have known since the day she was born.
Until I saw some brown matter hovering near the bottom of the shallow end of the pool.
I immediately informed the lifeguard, who had problems hearing me above the ever-present shouts of Marco? Polo! that has been a long tradition in any pool in North America. I pleaded again to check this brown matter out, while I coaxed my little friend to swim over to the other side of the pool. Because when it’s your first swim of the season, and you made all that effort to be at the pool, you don’t want your worst fears of what you thought you saw in the water confirmed.
But alas, the lifeguard gave a sharp, long blow on her whistle and yelled, “Everybody out of the pool!!”
Yep.
The lifeguard staff promptly did exactly what they were supposed to do. They evacuated the pool and attended to the situation. It was the closest thing to a Caddyshack moment I can ever remember having at a pool.
There are strict federal guidelines about what to do in these situations, because these situations have caused to make many people sick if not handled properly. In fact, in 2005, New York State officials had to close a state-run spray park because hundreds of people became ill after exposure to contaminated water.
So, as they say, it happens. It just has never happened to my direct knowledge. But it hasn’t made us afraid to go back in the water, and when the lifeguard finally gave the okay – 90 minutes later, we jumped right back in.
I hate you! Now play with me now! Sibling love
One year on the last day of school, my oldest children got off the bus, greeted their visiting grandparents with a big hug, and went directly to the backyard to be bored. Eventually, with nothing else to do and no one else to play with, they started to play their favorite game: kick the ball on the swing.
Kick the ball on the swing always requires two people. One person swings, the other, in perfect synchronized timing, throws the ball at the exact moment the swinger swings forward. This way, the swinger extends their feet and catapults the ball into the air. The goal is for the ball thrower to catch the ball. But sometimes, the ball goes as high as the branches of a nearby pine tree. Or, even goes over the roof of the house.
Of course, it is much more fun to be the swinger than the thrower. And there must be a fair and even amount of chances for the thrower to be the swinger and the swinger to be the thrower.
This was not the case on that last day of school, where my son had enough of throwing and just gave up, with a pout.
This is where my daughter, who I believed had just finished up the 4th grade, yelled: “That’s not fair, I threw more to you than to me. And there is no one else to play with and I am bored! And I hate you! Now get back here and play with me now!”
This fighting and loving seems to be, according to my neighbor, a favorite form of entertainment for brothers and sisters. I can go through all the parenting magazines like Family Fun or read books like Kids Unplugged. I have art materials and cooking projects ready to go.
And what was the chosen activity of my three children on their first afternoon of summer freedom this year? Hit your sibling with a giant foam pool noodle. THWACKTHWACKTHWACK! Let the summer games begin!
There are no tomatoes like Jersey tomatoes
Our first house in Fanwood, New Jersey was on a street called Shady Lane. It was anything but shady. There were very few trees around our 1950’s Cape Cod, the former site of one of the countless farms that were sold to suburban developers. The one advantage of living in a neighborhood that was once farmland: great soil.
“You have to dig a trench and plant your tomatoes horizontally to encourage the roots and make your plant less leggy,” my mom instructed as I planted my first garden. My mom was raised in an apartment in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, but knew all there was to know about tomato gardening from her tiny yard in Staten Island.
So I planted my first tomato plants. Jersey Big Boys and a few plants of cherry tomatoes. The support cages I surrounded them with were so tall it gave my neighbor, a chain-smoking retired firefighter, chuckle with skepticism.
“You really think they will get that big?”
But they did. Each night after work, I would come home to find new flowers on the plants that continued to grow and stretch inside their cages. Thanks to that soil and constant New Jersey sun.
The sun was merciless that summer. In fact, New Jersey in 1998 was under a severe drought alert and temperatures reached 90 and above. Every night, after my husband and I bathed our kids, I would haul out the bathwater, one bucket at a time, to water my tomatoes. By the end of the summer, I had baskets of tomatoes to enjoy with my neighbors, who weren’t laughing at my puny tomato plants anymore. I brought in bags of cherry tomatoes to snack on in my office in Manhattan and left some in the break room for my co-workers to enjoy.
Contrast this with my garden in Rochester. My neighborhood: home to 80-year-old towering sun-sucking Sugar Maples. Unlike the loamy beautiful soil of New Jersey, my Brighton neighborhood is the site of a former brick yard. You guessed it: thick, clay soil.
I love trees. I have — no had – 10 trees surrounding my property. But with only an average of 165 sunny days in Rochester, and a huge pine tree standing in the way between my vegetable garden and the sun after 3 p.m., I did the unconscionable. I cut down that tree. I wanted those red tomatoes that badly. Even so, my vegetable garden in Rochester, will never be so kissed by the sun as the ones back in New Jersey. The threat of frost lasts until mid-may. Days of clouds and rain cause blossom rot and blight. Last year, we received so much rain that if my tomato plants could dream, they dreamt of a sunny hillside somewhere in Italy. Or New Jersey.
Only this summer did I witness what other sun-starved Brighton neighbors did to achieve that perfect, sun-ripened tomato: for $25, they reserved a plot of land in the town’s community garden. On a tract of land that used to be a farm. More on this community garden in a future post.
Soccer players get younger as the game gets more US popularity
His shirt nearly touched the ground, but Toby, at age five, was ready to play
You would think I know about soccer. My dad coached high school soccer for almost three decades. When I was the coach’s daughter, I went to nearly every practice, every game. The guys on the team were like my brothers. A crush on one of the players, I knew, would go nowhere when you are the coach’s daughter, for fear of dating the coach’s daughter.
I watched my dad’s frustration when, the first year or so in the early 1980’s, the Tottenville Pirates, struggled to find players to come out for the team. The first year, they didn’t win a single game. Then, as I sat on the bleachers on a grey fall afternoon, I watched a triumphant team lift my dad into the air on their shoulders after the team’s very first win. Years later, the Totenville Pirates clinched the city title several times over.
Fast forward to the present: Today, there are approximately 17.5 million kids who play soccer, according to U.S. Soccer. I was never one of those kids. My brother was. When he was very little, he would go straight from a game in his St. Charles uniform straight to Hebrew school. Later, he played, though I think begrudgingly, for my dad’s team in high school.
I’m an adult and I am still happy to be on the sidelines, sometimes with a book, sometimes screaming and jumping when my daughter’s team nears the goal post. I am very grateful for the parents who get out there and coach.
In my town, Brighton, soccer seems to be the new religion. I remember one summer, when my youngest was around six, the family took and after dinner stroll around the neighborhood, looking for people to chat with. No one could be found. Why? Everyone was on a field, in a folding chair, watching their kid play soccer. We never made that mistake again and signed our kids up for soccer every succeeding summer.
At a quick glance, the fields in Buckland Town Park in Brighton on Tuesday and Thursday evenings appear as if they have been invaded by a colony of little green Martians. But if you adjust your eyes, you will see that this is no alien colony but the future of soccer. For the first time, hundreds of the town’s six and seven year olds are all on the same neon-green team and are learning to dribble, pass and score in Brighton Soccer League’s new program called the Small-Sided Games Initiative.
Cities across the country – and now Brighton – are implementing small-sided soccer as a new trend that affords the youngest soccer players “more opportunities to have contact with the ball and gain confidence in the sport,” according to Mike Tullio, a member of the Brighton Soccer League board who facilitates the E, F and Pee Wee divisions. Dedicated volunteer coaches switch off with random groups of ten children each night with 30 minutes of drilling and dribbling and learning how to control the ball, and then 30 minutes of scrimmage play with half the “team” wearing blue aprons.
Is this new method working? Mike said that like anything new, it is too early to tell, and it is a bit of an adjustment. There are a few drawbacks from a coach’s perspective, he said, such as the inability to work with one set group of kids for the entire season.
Brighton resident and volunteer coach Barbara Egenhofer agrees. “At this age, they are really starting to understand the game, and I need to get to know where a kid’s strengths are – be it offense or defense. For younger children, the new setup may be good for straight skill development, but the older kids really want to wear those separate team colors and have a greater desire to play a real game,” she said.
Either way, the smiles on the kids’ faces as they run the width of the field – and score a goal into tiny nets — are proof that they are having a good time. The only drawback for kids – no organized team means no organized snack at the end of practice.
The End is at hand. Time to blow up the pool!
Can you feel it? Can you hear it? The last time this year the school bus will round the corner to drop off our precious passengers. The squeals of children that bound off the bus, their arms and backs laden with a year’s worth of art projects, worksheets, and whatever winter boots and mittens that strayed in their cubby. The initial relief and exhilaration that at last, the school year is over. Only to be followed by the yawning, gaping weeks of unscheduled time before camp.
I look forward to this time of year and dread it all at the same time. I look forward to sleeping in, not having a schedule but no schedule can lead to boredom and the downward spiral of me asking my kids for the umpteenth time to turn off the TV, or get off the computer.
It used to be easy to please my three children when they were little. Entertainment could be whipped up with a recipe of salt dough or a soap bubble mixture. Even in recent years, purchases of those oversized, blowup pools, complete with a waterslide, do the trick but for a day or two.
“Why should you blow that up again, mom? Daniel has a real pool? Can we get a real pool?” Yes, sweetheart, I think. I’ll just call up the contractor, take out a second mortgage and we’ll dig a whole in the ground. In a month, the pool will be in, and we can swim in it for another month before the first frost sets in.
I am quite thankful for growing up having a pool in my backyard. It was no fancy in-ground swimming hole. A humble, round, above ground pool – not even a deck – did the trick just fine for inviting friends over for a party. In fact, everyone in my middle-class Staten Island neighborhood seemed to have one. Where some codes in some housing developments ban these vinyl and steel pools, they were all the rage back home. I always wanted to fly over my neighborhood to see what it looked like with all those round and kidney-shaped pools dotting our tiny backyards.
Even if my kids poo-poo it, this will be appreciated if the weather gets hot enough. I will drag the pool out of my shed, dust it off. I will then bring up the wet-dry vac from the basement and sit in a lawn chair as I watch it slowly inflate. Hopefully, a sharp rock or branch has not punctured it from the summer before. Then it will need a patch. Finding the hole and sealing it is about as difficult as sealing the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and a topic for another blog post.
A blowup pool is worth the investment. It will stave off boredom at least until the community pool opens. Or an invite to a real backyard pool comes along.
No in-ground pool? A blow-up pool does the trick.
About Me
Kreativ Blogger
Versatile Blogger Award
Stacy Gittleman 