The dream and the nightmare.

Twenty years ago we moved to our current home on a large one acre lot.  We had moved from a tiny house with a tiny yard so it almost seemed like we had a park in our back yard.  Our children were still very young so my husband set about  building a play set with swings and a climbing tower for the kids, as well as a large sandbox.  As the kids got a little older, we added a trampoline to our play things in the yard.  I loved having all those wonderful things for our kids and their friends to enjoy, but every spring I'd bring up the same subject.  I wanted a pool.! I had always wanted a pool.

I grew up in Milwaukee where we knew just one person who had a pool.  It was an above ground pool with a little deck in the middle of their yard.  Oh how I envied them for having the luxury of being able to walk into their back yard and swim when ever they wanted to.
We had access to public pools of course.  When we were young kids, our parents would drive us to the pools and as we got older we were able to ride our bikes to either Hoyt Pools or Madison Pool.  They were a great place to get wet and we went often.  I do have fond memories of checking my stuff into a basket then, we would then get a numbered key to pin to our swim suit.  Girls of course, had wear swim caps which I thought was silly since my short pixie cut hair was as short or shorter than how most boys wore their hair in the 70's.  We also had to stop after taking a shower and have one of the attendants "check our toes". Now  there's a job I never aspired to get.  Imagine spending your day looking between the toes of hundreds of people.  Yuk!
I grew up and eventually married and we moved to Menomonee Falls when I was pregnant with our first child.  I was surprised that there were not any public outdoor pools like the neighborhoods where I grew up.  We could swim at the high school or take classes at the YMCA but those were indoor pools.  The only outdoor venue was Menomonee Park's Lannon Quarry.  If you are a city kid who grew up with clear chlorinated pools, a deep dark quarry doesn't sound very appealing.
So I started my campaign to have a pool for our family.  Our first yard was barely big enough for a small kiddie pool but it was better than nothing and I sat in it on steamy days and played with the kids.
But once me moved to our bigger yard, I campaigned harder, but to no avail.  My husband always had a logical reason why it wouldn't work.  The only place that he could see a pool was where our kids play set was situated and even after our kids were grown, I didn't want him to take it down.  I'm glad he didn't as our grandson now enjoys using it.
This past spring, everything changed.  I came up with a suggestion of putting the pool closer to the house with an extension of our current deck that would connect it to our back patio doors.  Low and behold, he liked the idea!!  So we visited Pool Park in Menomonee  Falls and shopped for a pool.  By  Memorial Day we had picked our our pool and put down a deposit on it.  They gave us an approximate date of installation of mid June. We left exited knowing that by late June, we would be splashing around in our own backyard pool.
We couldn't have been more wrong.  A combination of a  rainy weather in early spring and poor communication with the various contractors produced one delay after another.  It was beginning to look like the pool wasn't going to be installed before summer was over. Finally the day before we were to leave for any out of state vacation the installers showed up to install the pool.  We found out then that we also needed to hire an electrician and a company to bring a semi load of water to our home.
We finally had our pool and never even had a chance to swim in it before we had to leave for our week long family reunion at a campground in Kentucky.
When we got home, the weather that had been hot and sticky when we left was now chilly and cloudy.  Even with solar cover and eventually a solar heater that my husband put together the temperature rose to the mid seventies.  We had owned the pool for over three weeks before I decided cold or not, I was going in.
To pool was colder than any dip I had ever taken into Lake Michigan, but I didn't care, It was heaven swimming in our own backyard pool.
It's early September now, and although we did have a  couple weeks of   hot weather that raised the temp up to the mid eighties, it is now cool and back to the low seventies.  I still jump in once a day and occasionally can find someone brave enough to join me.  I know it's days are numbered, at least it's days of being open for swimming are numbered.  We'll have to close it up, just as soon as we figure out how to do that.  So like the trees after they lose their leaves, the pool will rest in our back yard ready and waiting for next summer when we will have the entire summer to enjoy it.  Please, please let it be a hot one nest summer!

Five years ago I realized one of my dreams.  I, along with two friends, opened a place called The Healing Space on Main.  The seed for this dream was actually planted in Bristol, England in 1998.  I had the privilege of spending two weeks at the University of Bristol while working on my Masters in Social Work at UWM.
It was an exchange program where students of Child Welfare in both countries had the opportunity to walk in each others shoes for a few weeks.
 We worked in agencies and visited court rooms during the day and had evenings and weekends to visit the many amazing sights in that part of England.
Although I enjoyed visiting Stonehenge, Bath and the streets of Bristol one particular outing had a lasting effect on me.  My friend Linda and I had a whole afternoon off and she found a place called the 'The Relaxation Center" for us to visit.  The Center was located in an old three story home surrounded by English cottage gardens.  We thought we were just going there for massages but found out that it was "ladies day" and we were welcome to stay the whole afternoon.
In addition to massages the place had a hot tub right in the middle of the all the gardens, and a sensory deprivation chamber (tried it, didn't like it) and a relaxation room.  The relaxation room was what intrigued me the most. It was a large room with high ceilings  with four triple bunk beds piled high with colorful pillows and an assortment of shelves stocked of books of every kind.  We were told we could spend as much time as we like there, napping, reading or even eating.  We even had the option of ringing for a snack and tea from a small menu that was posted.  We had a most enjoyable afternoon there and left feeling like we had experienced a little bid bit of paradise.
As I continued with my Masters work, I became more and more certain that I wanted to become a psychotherapist and began working in agencies that provided me with field experience.  I found all my jobs to be interesting and challenging but image of the Relaxation Center in England never left me.  Gradually I started to write down ideas for a holistic wellness center that would include my practice and hopefully the practice of others like massage therapists, yoga teachers and others who were interested in the idea of holistic healing.
My dreams and ideas really started to take shape when I found that a long time friend of mine, Arleen, had a similar vision.  Arleen had been an RN for years and in recent years had been drawn to holistic nursing, but was finding resistance in the traditional medical field.  Arleen along with another nurse, Patty combined our ideas and resources and opened The Healing Space on Main in July of 2008.
Five years have passed and both Arleen and Patty have gone onto other ventures and the Healing Space is no longer on Main but on Appleton Avenue in Diane Sutrick's Peace Yoga building.
The Healing Space has changed and adapted, as have I, through the past five years but thanks to the support of family, friends and clients, the dream continues on.
I am blessed!!

So here I am blogging again.  I actually did a little blogging a couple years ago but life got in the way of my writing about life when I really should have been writing about the life that was happening.  So my posts may be a wander around a little with reflections on things that are currently happening and few things that happened a while ago.
I am calling my blog "I was just thinking 2day" because it seems like that I so often find my self driving or walking and thoughts and revelations come to me unbidden and I think "I should write about that".
So maybe it was spending part of the summer helping to 'edit' my friend Gail's latest book or finding a few of my own attempts at short stories that inspired me to get back to writing.  It also helped that Gail was my teacher for two sessions of creative writing at WCTC a few years ago which was a very good class to motivate my writing as we were expected to have a story every week to read to the class and have the class and teacher give feedback on it.
So on that note, I welcome your feedback, good or bad.  But please make the bad constructive as I'd like this to continue to be a learning experience. Thanks for reading.