Sometimes cliches exist for a reason, and as excited as I get when the pool goes up, as happy as I am in it all summer, I never really hit the full depth of how much that pool means to me as when I am facing the oncoming autumn and knowing it's about to go away for a long, cold winter.  So I'm frantically swimming as many days at the sky will let me, and trying to store away every moment of pool joy to mull over in my winter blankets. 

And I'm reminded it's not just a pool.  It was a lifelong dream of mine to have my own, and a project that Nikki and I worked on together (and continuously work on making keeping it easier and better) to happen, but most of the work was from Nikki.  It was a great, big, huge gift to me because he loves me, and that probably makes giving it up each winter harder in my head than it needs to be for something that is just a cycle of the seasons, but I'm like that.  I"m looking at finding a way to haul a stupidly heavy table upstairs to the boy's old bedroom that has sorta been in flux since he moved out while we try to figure out what we want for the house to be the craft table (Nikki does models, we both sew a bit, I do origami, we finally decided we dont' have guests often enough to justify spending the money to create a guest room and we actually do want a craft room) instead of buying a cheap light one because that is the table I ate dinners, played games, made crafts, and just sat at and talked with my grandpa.  That and an old bookshelf he'd made in high school woodshop are what I have and remember him by.  Nikki never even hints at replacing it in the dining room even when he sees something he likes at the furniture store because he knows that table is NEVER LEAVING.  However, I am happy to put it upstairs, and it's even practical, because it's an old table I forget what ti's made of but highly heat resistant, Grandma didn't even have to put down trivets unless there was a table cloth, so it would be good for use with our glue gun and other heat-related projects. 

I just sometimes need a tangible, real, touchable thing to go with my memories.  And sometimes that brain mechanism makes simple things like putting away a pool really, overdramatically sad.  At least I have Nikki and Halloween fun to bounce back with.  As I'm feeling stupidly resistant to my pool going I'm equally stupidly excited about Halloween.

And then there is the practical habit we fell into this year, we talk in the pool.  After the swimming and the playing and the splashing comes the floating and talking about our problems, our worldviews, our thoughts, dreams, whatever.  And I realize consciously it' snot the pool, it's being in a place without distractions, so we've set up two weekly us times, one for fun and games and one for talking about everything, both of which are inviolate.  Because without that communication and connection, this marriage doesn't function well in a vacuum, and we both have a habit of being easily distracted.  Relationships are all about recognizing needs and weaknesses, and addressing them as much as they are about feelings.  I think we're getting massively better at this. 

And I"m a huge fan of the antidepressant pills, probably because they got it right.  They didn't turn him into a zombie.  They didn't change him as a person.  They didn't make him magically happy.  What they did do, which I believe is the actually intended purpose, is fix the chemical balance in his brain so that he feels his actual emotions appropriately to what is going on around him.  He's happy when fun things are going on, he's sad when sad things are happening, he's angry when it's warrented, etc. etc.  Before he just didn't really feel...anything.  THose attitudes all over the internet STILL make me rage, you know the ones, "It's all in your head, pills are junk you just need to walk daily in the forest!".  While exercise is certainly part of it, and nature helps, neither is going to FIX HIS BRAIN.   Both of them have been incorporated into the Healthy Nikki Project, however, they couldn't fix what was wrong until the brains needs were addressed.  And I've got an endlessly simmering anger inside that he does feel ashamed of having dysthymia (a form of long term depression) and taking the pills.  NO ONE EVER should have to feel ashamed of a medical condition or the treatment for it (except maybe the cliche but actually true people who end up in emergency rooms because they lost 'things' in 'private areas', for the sake of all sanity the information how to be safe is all over the net!).  Making people ashamed doesn't help, it doesn't remove the problem from society, and it just makes it harder for people to recover or live happily (not everything can be recovered from).  Gah.

Okay, I'm done free form thinking now, worked myself up into a rage on behalf of defenseless people.  LOL  WEll, at least it's not sad anymore, adn I think I"ll put on something bouncy like Insane Clown Posse (I know, I"m warped, but Halloween is in my brain) and do some housework or something productive.