Just until April, that’s what I tell myself every year around this time. Swimming should be all nubile beauty, sleek water and natural light. During the winter months, though, it’s filled with dirty water, hideous florescent lights and things the eye shouldn’t behold. It’s when my patience with ugly nudity and rude people starts to wear thin on my mermaid mentality, because at this point I’ve been swimming at the gym for about 3.5 months.
Seriously, I don’t change outside of my shower or bathroom stall and I certainly don’t bend over in all my glorious nudity when the only thing protecting me from the outside world is a bend in the wall. I don’t hang my shower bag over other people’s items. And I most certainly don’t stick my feminine hygiene products on the wall of the shower. It’s disgusting. When swimming my laps, if I’m sharing a lane, I make sure that I stay on my side, even though it takes a little extra attention and I can’t relax like I usually do… I expect the same courtesy in return.
Our local gym’s pool has been closed off and on during this period, making it difficult to be reliable. They claim they renovated it, but it looks the same to me. Scuzzy dirty sidewalls, band aids in the bottom and random dirt in the corners. Yuck. Tony says a sign was up saying it had been shut down by the health department. That makes more sense to me since I was well on my way to chlorine burns again. This week they have it shut down to replace the lights in the pool. I didn’t even know the thing had lights in it and I’ve been swimming there for over 4 years.
My backup plan when this happens is to swim at another gym, but it’s further away, and when my schedule is as limited as it is these days, it makes it really hard to be motivated about it when every traffic light is in a conspiracy to take my precious minutes of sleep away from me. But I go anyway. Because even though I hate getting home after 10pm, and then I have to shower and lotion up, I love the feeling of accomplishment I feel.
Our community renovated all of its pools this past winter and, yes, it’s a renovation you can actually see. I can’t wait for them to start heating them for the season… in April. I will be posting pictures of the newly fancified pools and in the meantime, I keep telling myself, “Just until April, just until April.”
Jammie J's Quest 