The Queen's Rambles

Here’s a post from Friday night. Auto-restore saved it, so I may as well post it.
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I am seriously reconsidering the idea of going to the beach for a holiday. I have a terrible fish phobia, so I won’t be going in the water. There are things in the ocean. Things that are even worse than fish! And there’s no way on god’s green earth that I trust Elsa anywhere near a single drop of water.

Oh.

My.

God.

That girl.

She’s always been a water baby, but today really illustrated the dangers of her attitude toward the water. We went to our friend’s community pool and I ended up pulling Elsa from the bottom of the pool at least 10 times.

I’ve been taking Erik to the pool since he was 9 months old. We lived in an apartment with a pool for his first three years of life, so he spent the whole summer in the pool for three years. How many times did I have to pull him from the bottom of the pool? ZERO. Nada! Zilch!

He would wear his little life jacket and he would never jump in without me right there with him. Even when he was tiny and two and disobedient, he would wait for me. We would spend hours in the pool. He’d float around and I’d follow, but he never got his face wet.

Elsa is a whole new ball game.

I got her a floaty thing recommended by the survival swimming school in town. They say it is the best thing to use, so I believed them. It worked ok, until she decided she didn’t need it. She took it off and refused to wear it. She kept cannonballing off the side of the pool over and over again. Then she figured out that if she ran away from me while I was in the water I couldn’t catch up with her, so she’d run away and cannonball in.

Obviously we had to leave the big pool and go into the kiddie pool, which was not nearly as nice.

So it should have been ok, right? The water only went to her waist, so what could go wrong? I look over and see her sitting in the middle of the pool, completely submerged and unable to get up.

She was fine every time I fished her out. In fact, she was pissed at me for touching her. She would kick and squirm away from me, not caring that when she finally succeed in escaping the evil clutches of her mother, she dropped to the bottom of the pool.

Soooooo. . . trip to the coast? Sounds like a total nightmare all of a sudden.

Also, I need to find her monkey backpack/leash. She has started running out in front of cars in the parking lot. Yesterday she made her escape and came very close to being hit by an SUV. Thankfully the driver was on the ball and was able to stop her. He even rolled down his window and told me it was ok and that she was alive, so I should take a deep breath. I guess I looked more than a little frazzled. I’m so used to her being Miss Shy baby and clinging to my leg.

On a completely unrelated note, I may have helped improve the lives of two hermit crabs. I can’t believe I give a flying fig about the poor creatures, but I do. We went to a local indoor playplace called the Playseum on Thursday. They had a pet room that included two hermit crabs. The conditions were abysml. No salt water, no temperature or humidity gauge, totally dry sand, nothing to climb on, no place to hide. Erik was really angry since he is now an expert on hermit crab care. I have to admit I was pretty upset as well. Why make a pet of a living creature if you are going to keep it in such cruel conditions?

I came home and sent them a message via FB (since they didn’t have an e-mail address). I got a message back apologizing for the conditions, along with a promise that they would read the website link I sent them and fix the crabitate up to the website standards. They said they would invite us back when it was ready and we could see if we approved. I hope they mean it, but I guess we will see. It is not cheap to properly set up a crabitate unless you are able to get some of the supplies second hand.

Holy shit. It sounds like armageddon is going on out side! I think I’m a little scared! I wonder if I should go out and get the pool. I’m not so sure it would be wise to go out there. Hmmmm. . just looked out the window and the pool is in the neighbor’s yard. Guess I’m going out. Hope I make it back in!