Summer

The weather is taking a turn, for the better or the worse, is certainly a personal idea.

You see I am an early spring/fall/winter person.  The best thing I like about summer in Illinois is going to the pool.  I like cool crisp air. In Illinois it goes from spring very quickly into hot humid summer.  I don't like to run the air conditioning, and I don't like very hot and humid weather were I feel sticky all the time, even as I step out of the shower!

I have two favorite things about summer.  Firstly, I enjoy the long days. On weekends, I call them the long lazy days.  I don't feel the need to do anything in a hurry.  Secondly, I love to swim and then feel the warmth of the sun as I lay with a good book or magazine letting the sun dry my body.

This year I am very disappointed.  The Urbana Park district has decided to wait until June 7 to open the public pool.  The very worst of it is they are closing the pool daily at 5:00pm.  Now for those of us that have to work, there just isn't much time to enjoy the pool.  I am sorely disappointed. I usually don't even get to the pool until around 4:30-5:00pm.

When I first came to this town, we bought a membership to Windsor Pool, a private pool club. My girls swam for the Windsor team.  We had lots of fun.  The pool is wonderful and we could walk to it. When the divorce happened, I struggled to maintain the membership.  The girls were still swimming for the team,  but last year we made the switch to the public pool.  We have to drive to that one and it is much more crowded, but we still enjoyed it.  

Now we are in a real conundrum.  It is costly to drive anywhere these days, the public pool is not really an option since they have cut out the opportunity for working people to use the facility and the private pool is costly for membership, but we can walk to it and it is open until 8:00pm. So I am trying to figure out how I can squeeze a membership for the family out of my meager budget for the private pool. The people of Urbana voted down a property tax increase for the Park district. Perhaps many of us feel like are real estate taxes are rising at a rate that we may all be selling our homes soon.  Wouldn't it be nice if the people in charge would look at where the existing money is going  and maybe reallocate some funds so all of us taxpayers could enjoy the public pool this summer.  

The government keeps telling us we are not in a recession,  but I seem to be struggling more to make ends meet as single income single mom. I won't be air conditioning the home until I absolutely have to because of course the power companies raise rates during the winter and the summer when you need to use the services.

Perhaps I will just spend more time in the garden and at the library this summer, instead of the pool.