Just yesterday a family member - and avid reader - asked, "Hey, I haven't seen a blog post lately?"

Good thing this is number one on today's to-do list.

After taking the summer off, it's time to get back to the blog. It's only now that I realize I may have forgotten to alert my readers to my hiatus. Hope you missed me!

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the MacPhail Hero's contest! It was a successful campaign - thanks for those clicks!

I asked Little L what I should write about, and she said, "the pool!"

Let me begin.

Last winter, Axel convinced me that it would be a good idea to put up a modular, above-ground pool in our backyard. He had actually brought it up the summer before, but it takes a long time for me to get on board with his Big Ideas. "We'll make so many memories! We are all so happy when we're swimming," was his main argument. I relented, the pool went on winter discount, it was delivered in a box and put in the garage.

As Memorial Day neared, we didn't make any plans, because that weekend was reserved for pool set-up. It was a scorcher on Saturday, and it took a team of highly qualified engineers to figure out the instructions. We watched the Intex set-up video at least 12 times.

That last paragraph could be a whole post in itself. Ordering pool chemicals, reading blogs online, and arguing over whether we should actually put the pool up. Plus a visit to a pool store for a water test, where the owner said, "Oh, you got a discount pool" as if that weren't a good thing (and proceeded to sell me nothing).

Once the pool was up, Little L couldn't wait to get in. None of us could.

But hot as it was outside, the water was ice cold. It was an abbreviated swim.

Over the course of the summer, Axel vacuumed the pool with the special pool-vacuum we now own. I scooped up bugs using the skimmer and popped new chlorine tablets into the floater thing as necessary. We learned how to do something called "backwashing" when the filter began to run less efficiently.

We did all that when we were in town - but we went out of town four times. Luckily the pool survived. When we were home we tried to find time to get Little L in for a swim between soccer practices and (oh, the irony!) swim lessons.

It was about half-way through the summer when I realized I could also go swimming without Little L. With my new bluetooth speaker, I could listen to my Disney mix all on my own - and I could sing along to Let it Go without Little L telling me to be quiet so she could hear Elsa. Swimming in the pool on my own felt luxurious - and productive. Axel asked daily," Did you go swimming today?"

Translation: "Is this thing worth it?"

Little L gets cold quicker than the rest of us. Except for the hottest days, she would only spend about 20 minutes in the pool before she wanted to get out. Often times she clung to me for warmth as I walked around the pool and we listened to Elsa sing. Cuddling and Disney tunes? There are worse ways to spend your summer.

What about having people over to swim? While we have a beautiful patio, it was covered by said pool, so there wasn't an outdoor lounging area. Given that half-an-hour was about the limit for the under-10 crowd, that meant that the few times Little L had a friend over for "swimming in the backyard," they ended up spending most of their time playing inside the house, and left a "hurricane tornado" of unicorns, fairies, and Disney princesses in their wake.

I felt bad, because I thought we would invite family and friends over for a swim. But, to be honest, hosting isn't really my thing. I wouldn't have minded if they came over to swim and then left right after the swimming - like how you might meet up at a park or public place. We didn't have the capacity to get the pool vacuumed and skimmed and clean the house to an acceptable standard. Even if the idea was to stay outside, we'd have to clean the bathrooms so people had somewhere to change. On holidays and birthdays, we usually go out or to our families' houses. So the pool spent Fourth of July all on its own. And many times we did meet up to go swimming with Little L's friends - at the park.

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend. What were our plans? "Pool Closing!!!!" it said on the calendar, an all-day appointment from Saturday through Monday.

Turns out, though, that we should have started on Thursday. That last week of summer the pool maintenance and usage had slipped a bit, with both Little L and me back at school. But Labor Day weekend was supposed to be hot, so we thought maybe we'd be able to get a last swim in.

But what was that green stuff on the walls of the pool?

"I think it's just pollen from the trees," I told Axel after a quick dip where I discovered some slimy stuff on the pool's walls.

"It looks green," Axel said. "I'm pretty sure it's algae."

So we spent the last few days of pool season hoping the "algaecide" would work and the pool would be crystal clear by Saturday morning. It did kill the algae, but the water was still a greenish hue, and it was time to connect a hose and start draining the pool.

As the pool drained at half the rate it had filled, Axel suggested a trip to Home Depot for a shelving unit for the garage. You see, when the pool arrived in its vacuum packed box, the parts and pieces took up no more than a large box. But now we were going to need a storage solution.

So the pool storage was morphing into pool storage / garage cleaning. In the moment, it seemed like a double-whammy. In retrospect, anything that motivates us to clean the garage is probably a very good thing.

And then came the moment when I dropped a metal leg of the new shelf and it was rendered unusable. Thankfully Axel was able to shove it in eventually, and hopefully he won't hold a grudge.

Despite our efforts to buoy everyone's spirits with a quick lunch at Punch Pizza, it was Sunday, the pool wasn't even empty yet, and we were all hot and losing patience.

As dinnertime neared and I was ankle-deep in greenish water, emptying the remaining inches with a bucket, we decided it would be best if Little L started binge-watching Elena of Avalor on DisneyPlus. Every time an episode ended, she looked at us through the window and we held up a finger - one more. This went on for hours. For some reason, she didn't think taking down the pool was that bad.

Saturday night came. With Little L in her loft bed with visions of Elena defeating her enemies, Axel and I were back at it - unfortunately without a magical septer. By this time, the pool had been emptied, wiped clean and dry, and the poles had all been found to fit perfectly on the new shelf in the garage. We had finished the canister of Gatorade powder - Axel had been mixing us gallons of red stuff all afternoon as we sweated in the sun. The frequency with which he said, "I don't know if we're going to do this again next year" had been reduced from once a minute to once every ten minutes. I was giggling giddily at every quip Axel made about how easy the guy made it look on the YouTube tutorial we were watching.

Axel had wanted the pool would make memories, and honestly, how could I ever forget putting it up or taking it down?

If you're thinking of getting your own*** above-ground pool, here are some things you might want to consider:

• Do you have an entire weekend at the beginning and end of the season for set-up / take-down?
• How much do you travel during the summer?
• How much time do you spend at home when you are in town?
• How much of your socializing do you do at your house?
• Do you want to host people, either in your yard or your house? Is your yard and/or house ready for this?
• What is an acceptable level of use for it to be "worth it" to you?
• Do you have the time and patience to learn how to maintain a pool?
• Is the cost worth it to you?
• What are the other options (nearby public beaches, pools, water parks)?
• Do you have room to store the pool itself plus all of its accessories (as I look around the garage, I feel so far from the "Loft Living" of our condo days).

As I reread this post, I realize I seem pretty skeptical about the pool. It was a steep learning curve and I'm not sure we used it to its full potential. For us, it seems like we need to accept that the way we use the pool is for half-hour swims before dinner. Maybe we hadn't envisioned it that way, but now that we know, we can maximize those quick dips.

As the items got stored in the garage and our patio came back into view, Axel and I returned to more calm conversations about the pool. "I mean, to be honest, if we didn't already have it, I wouldn't say we should rush out and get one," I told him.

"Right," he nodded, perhaps with a hopeful look on his face.

"But since now we know how to do it, and we know how to store it, and we have everything we need..."

Time will tell. But I'm blocking out our Memorial Day weekend - just in case.

***Many of these same questions could be asked if you were thinking about getting, say, a puppy...