Beyond My Duties as a Wife and Mother

For the past couple of weeks our pool sweeper has been broken. The back-up valve was cracked. I took it into a pool supply shop and was told that it would cost about $75 for a new one. Since Trever and I are handling the chemicals ourselves (trying to cut costs where we can) the homeowner said that the sweeper is our responsibility because it would normally be covered under the pool maintenance. We disagree, but we are choosing our battles. I looked on EBay and bought a brand new one for $42, including shipping.

The part came in today so I put it on the sweeper and was waiting for this thing to work. Well, no. No such luck. I then thought that I should clean out the filter because maybe that would help. Plus I haven't cleaned it out for about a week now.

As I popped up the filter cover I screamed. In the filter, floating, was a BLOATED DEAD HAIRLESS BABY GOPHER. I am assuming it was a baby because it was hairless. Stupid things are blind. I guess it was out looking for a drink in our backyard and fell into the pool. At first I thought it was a mouse, but no it had those wonderful bucked teeth.

I shot Trever an e-mail at first. I told him that he had a job to do when he got home. Then after thinking about it, I thought "Hey I can do it." I put on my rubber gloves, got a small broom handle to pick up the filter because there was NO WAY I was going to put my hand in the water with that floating rodent. I dumped the basket into a plastic grocery bag. I then washed the basket out. I need to buy more chemicals after pouring the last of our chemicals into the pool. There is no way I am getting in there for at least a week. I want to make sure the chlorine cleans EVERYTHING.

I took the gopher bag to the garbage can, but I didn't want to just put it on top of the rest of my garbage. I didn't want to smell a dead rodent every time I lift the lid. Unfortunately our garbage doesn't run until Wednesday. I lifted another garbage bag so that I could place the gopher under it. As I lifted the garbage bag, LIVE MAGGOTS fell off of the bag.

Can I throw up now? I have officially handled too much gross stuff today! I am off to scrub my body with bleach.