Abel

Darling Dork of a brother you are! Thursday was my first full day in Texas... ever. It was nice, hot but nice. If there was one thing that I had purposed to do before this summer was over, was to swim more often than I did last summer, which was only once. So when I heard that there was going to be a swimming pool there, I was very pleased. On Thursday morning, several persons has determined to go to Wal*Mart for some reason, leaving behind Mom, Grace, Abel, and me. We decided that it would be a good time to go swimming in the pool. I got the impression (not having looked around the place much yet) that the pool was not terribly close: I figured it was a little ways behind one of the houses we were staying at. Grace was busy, so Abel told me to get ready and we'd go ahead of them; they could catch up later. So I put on my swim trunks that I bought last year for my one swim, grabbed a t-shirt and towel, and followed Abel outside. (It was somewhat ironic, I thought, that my last and only swim of last summer and my first swim of this summer were both with Abel.) I realized that this was the first time in a while that I'd walked around outside barefooted. But I figured that I wouldn't have any trouble, Abel was barefoot as well, "No worries!" My bad. I followed Abel to the road and realized that the pool must be at the house of our other second cousins down the road. "It's only about a quarter mile down the road," Abel says. But it was more like a half a mile down a black paved road who's surface temperature must have soared over 100 degrees; or we could walk beside the road in the stones and terrible coarse grass and thorns. I don't remember my feet being in such agony before, or ever feeling such relief in a pool before. The bottoms of my feet had burned slightly, making the next day or so uncomfortable to walk. I also discovered after I got back that I had cut the bottom of one of my toes, but didn't realize it at first because of the overall agony of my feet at the time. I did feel it somewhat later through the week, but blamed it on my new shoes.

To end this on a more positive note, that was the first of something great: and I'm speaking of the pool. I swam most every day of my vacation, twice a day on a couple occasions. It was a beautiful pool with an interesting diving platform (You can check out pictures of it using the link to the right). Growing up I was not nearly as home in the water as many of my brothers and sisters. It was at a family camp that I really started having loads of fun in the water. I guess you could say that I re-found that joy in that pool over vacation.

Long live buoyancy!