June 27, 2005
Some like it cold.
Texas has no cold water. I tried faucets, pools, fountains and showers all over the place, but all of them only made it up to a tepid stale bathwater temperature. I was startled by how frigid the cold tapwater was when I filled up my glass back at work in Vermont. Like, painful cold.
This was true for the pool too. Baking your swimming pool for three days in 100-degree air doesn't make for a refreshing swim. And my idea of a refreshing swim is when your kid's lips turn blue after 10 minutes in the pool. The first thing I did after landing was jump into our community pool. Brrrr... it was perfect. Water so cold that you can't ease into it without squealing—we all just jumped in and screamed underwater until we got used to it.
We don't have a pool at my childhood home, so pools to me evoke vacations and hotel stays. While we swam last night, Dave asked where we should go on vacation this year (yeah, we plan early, eh?) and I couldn't imagine why we would need to go anywhere with such a deliciously cool piscine just steps from our house. The poor man just wants to go on vacation, and between my work schedule this summer (new projects launching) and the fact that a magazine and glass of lemonade feels like vacation to me, he's getting a little frantic.
Okay, back to Texas. I'm not used to hydrating the way you have to hydrate in Texas. By the middle of the second day, sitting under a tent in 97-degree weather, the pounding in my head was a clue to what not to do in Texas. I bought three bottles of water and in about an hour felt better. I also bought a popsicle from an enterprising lad from a local ice cream company—I couldn't read all of the spanish on the package, but there was something arroz inside. I think it was a rice pudding popsicle, which sounds a little gross, but was actually very good. Frozen rice pudding with cinnamon and raisins. I made a mental note to try this in our freezer. So weird... yet so good.
Oh and birds make funny Texan sounds too. Like branches rubbing against each other, squeaking and groaning.