My clan has been loving seagulls for generations, I can't prove it but I feel so lonely

I decided that I needed to step up my lyrical contributions if I'm going to get through this lunacy with any shred of victory.

I didn't sleep well last night. I woke up at some ungodly hour and started daydreaming... at night. I was going to put "night dreaming", but it could get confusing trying to differentiate between night dreaming and real dreaming. Anyway, I must have had some sort of nightmare, possibly about work (I barely ever remember my dreams), and my body was all geared up with cold sweat and painfully awakened brain. It was ridiculous, but not in a humorous way. I spent the next hour (day, week, century?) playing through my mind the exact circumstances that would create a worst-case-possible rescue:

1) I was in the basement and couldn't see the situation unfold = zero preparation
2) The other guard on duty wasn't paying attention. For some reason Carolyn was the person in my mind, and she was talking on the phone. I'd like to take a moment to say that I like working with Carolyn a lot and that I don't think that that would ever happen.
3) The victim was a "special needs" patron. Possibly just because my brain was trying hard to find the absolute worst-case scenario, Arden's sister was who appeared in my head. She was spluttering, on the verge of going under as I emerged from the basement door.

The rescue itself didn't get too much play in my mind. I dove in, Pia carried her to the wall, and lifted her out myself.

But then my brain decided to fill in two blaring gaps in its story.
1) There's no way she'd be calm enough for me to bring her to the wall and lift. I'd need to Pia her down to the shallow end, probably disconnecting the deep-to-shallow divider rope as I went. I'd need to try and bring her out on the stairs, assuming that she wasn't hysterical and remembered me from our only meeting two days before.
2) There's no way she would have been at the pool alone. I played through a couple of really spectacular yelling matches with workers who showed up from the changeroom just in time to do nothing helpful. But, those people are trained better than that. Whoever was with her would have taken her through the changeroom and into the pool. So where were they now? Well, in a drowning situation, the number one thing that a victim will do is grab anything that comes near them and push it under in order to keep themselves afloat. Can you blame them? Of course not, they're dying for god's sake. If you aren't trained to avoid it, you're in pretty big trouble if a sinker latches on to you. But still, she's a young girl. Who would be weak enough to succumb so easily? Well, in worst-case terminology, her sister was the most likely choice. I played back again from when I came back from the basement: Would I be able to see Arden under the water, possibly already unconscious on the bottom? It would depend on how close they were to the wall and how deep the water was. Well, I went with the assumption that they were close enough to screen her from my view. But surely I would have seen her when I dove in to get her sister. Maybe. Depending on whether or not she'd traveled along the bottom to the point where I would have jumped over her and not seen because I was looking ahead. Could I have gone down and gotten Arden and carried them both to the shallow end? Not likely.

So here was the kicker: I'd have to stabilize her sister first, which would take about 2 minutes at the least. That reduced Arden's chances of survival significantly, especially given that I couldn't tell how long she'd been under already. But there was no way I could go for Arden first because her sister would be unconscious and in the same situation by the time I got her out of the water.

So that was how I spent the wee hours. And it wasn't like a dream that I could wake up from and say "Man, that was fucked" and forget about it. I was awake, all my perceptions slaved into imagining this situation, while my brain burned off the adrenaline or whatever was coursing around inside me. I'm now pretty wholly convinced that the worst possible feeling in the world is the one I had in my head then: My absolute best was required, I delivered, and still there was an unbearably high chance that it wouldn't be good enough. And that someone I cared about would die because of that.

But eventually I went back to sleep.
(and there ends the morbid part of today's salvo)
And then I awoke at 7:50 to The Hawk's morning show. A woman on the show informed me that I can save 10% on the cost of cooling my home this summer if I make sure that my air conditioner is properly shaded, and that I keep scrub and brush away from it.
As alluded to I went out shortly thereafter and was handy. I biked over to Geoff and Marie's house. They are a couple of my grandma's friends who like to drop by the pool for senior swim a few days every week. Geoff (and that's pronounced "joff" not "jeff" like Nutter) mentioned that he'd had some repairs done to their bathtub, but it had leaked and caused some damage to their kitchen ceiling. Clearly I was the choice for removing the damaged plaster and lathe and putting in a square piece of formica counter top into its place. This is on the ceiling, yes.

I got down to work. First I had to true up the hole so that it was square. That involved getting Geoff's "saber-saw" and going to town. After about 5 seconds I got a piece of plaster in my eye that I'm pretty sure I could have cobbled a garden path with. Then I got some safety glasses. It wasn't until after I was done that I considered how unfortunate it would have been to cut through the wires controlling the kitchen light fixtures while wielding said saw. Also, Geoff told me of how he built a 20-ft sailboat in his basement using only that saw and a 1/4-inch screwdriver. Cool, hunh?

After I cleaned out the hole and made it nice we went down to the basement to cut the counter-top into the right shape. I'd like to say that I wielded Geoff's circular saw with precision, but then I'd probably also have to announce that I no longer possessed any of the fingers on my left hand. Geoff cut it nicely while I held it down and frowned uncomfortably at the sparks issuing from the cuts he was making (although apparently people just make countertops out of anything. Woodchips, metal, even cement can all be in the mix...).

Once we took the piece up and tried it in the hole Geoff called it a day. We cleaned up the plaster debris and I got on my way with a promise to be back next Thursday (coincidentally the only free day I'm going to have out of the next 7).

So, to finish up, since I started with a little bit about my worst fears on the job, here's a sampling of what it's actually like to work at the pool:

Wednesday July 26/2006. Probably the most accident-prone day I've ever worked.

I started at 3:00, which was the time the pool is reserved for our in-house summer camp kids to come and swim. Myself and another guard named Shannon shared the excitement today. Justine managed to keep her hands clean the whole night. Anyway, within 15 minutes of the start, Shannon was dealing with a kid who got kicked in the face. She's gonna have a beautiful mark on her face. Next, she saw one kid hold another under the water. She claims it was an accident and that they were too young to know what was going on. Whatever. I would kicked 'em onto the curb.

And the god punished me for my wicked thoughts: Another kid thought it would be really cool to try and sneak up behind his friend while said friend was holding onto the wall and kicking as hard as possible. Needless to say, the marriage of 1st metatarsal to nasal bone was accomplished with ease. Blood. Everywhere. No tears, no broken friendship, just blood. On the floor, soaking into his trunks, all down his arms, all over his face, long dribbles down his chest, and all over my hands before we were through. "Do you have any dangerous blood-born diseases I should know about?"
"wud?"
"Let's just go get you cleaned up in the shower. Shannon, sanitize the deck for me."

And that was camp swim. At 4:30 lessons began. My first class is pre-school and has 4 kids, and they run the fucking gamut. One is a girl who's already passed all the pre-school levels, but can't move up into the next program stream until she's 6. One is a girl who is either an attention whore or a total brain-case. She whines and screams about having to do anything by herself, but as soon as I neglect the other kids and get beside her to help, she just does it on her own. The third is a boy I've taught before who is reasonably skilled, but gets distracted really easily by the other kids and just tends to follow anyone that starts to misbehave. And by "anyone" I mean kid #4 who is a total shit-disturber. The kid can't pay attention for more than 3 seconds, which means that he isn't with me long enough to find out what we're doing, which means that he doesn't ever do anything. But yesterday he went one step further. After a relatively minor swallowing of water (and trust me, I can say that with a certain degree of authority) he threw up. Luckily the size of his vomit was roughly about a tablespoon, and he had the good sense to do it into the gutter of the pool instead of onto me or into the main body of the water. Thus, I just sent my kids over to be watched by Shannon (yeah, we're a good team. Justine just kind of floats along. I'm surprised she didn't show up in the first part of my post) and cleaned up the mess with the help of the kid's mom. But I still have to fill out the relevant paperwork. And it turns out that there's no way to get out of closing the pool. The time we remain closed is dependant on the amount of chlorine in the water. In this case it was 2ppm. That meant 25 minutes closed, or basically the entire next lesson. That pissed off those parents as well as Shannon and Justine because they thought I'd been letting them swim in vomit (which isn't strictly true).

So, yeah, I'm kind of getting tired of work. I have to teach Aquafit tomorrow morning. Anyone who feels up to it should drop by at 9:30 for a fast-paced action ride into good health. Also there will be plenty of middle-age (and up) women around in bathing suits. Wipe the dribble from your chin and leave a nice comment.