Category: reading

In the summer of 2020, I obtained an inexpensive plastic pool from Walmart. This pool became my reading spot in a summer of staying at home. Credit is due to my waterproof kindle paperwhite, as well as my fear of dropping my phone in water (so the phone stays far away).

I finally packed away the pool in October, a little weepy as I contemplated the long pandemic winter ahead without this pool. And while I had some reading spot success with an indoor kid-size unicorn play tent, it never compared with the pool and I spent most of the winter thinking about when I could get out that pool again.

Thanks to weird Oklahoma weather patterns, this much awaited return of the pool was delayed. I’m early June the pool finally made its debut: Alas, the next day the whole thing had deflated. In hindsight, storing the pool in an non-climate controlled lawn mower shed in a winter with frozen times temperature down to -13 probably didn’t do the pool any favors.

A new inexpensive pool was acquired, although not set up until after a few days of pretending I might be able to “fix” the old one. Oklahoma weather in the age of climate change (too much rain, etc) has continued to disrupt my use of the pool as my fortress of reading, but I’m doing my best considering the circumstances.

Here’s to a summer of reading amidst an ongoing and somehow still worsening pandemic in a world that seems bent on keeping us all miserable. Reading doesn’t fix everything but it certainly can’t hurt.