Dialogues

That evening, tuckered out in front of the TV, PP savored the discovery of yet another trashy t.v. show: Holly Hunter as a sassy trashy bleached blond detective in Saving Grace who while investigating the murder of a 99 year old gamblin man, had to tell her best friend how her husband had betrayed her. Then the best friend had the predictably teary, yet slightly warped, nervous breakdown during which she made Holly promise not to ever sleep with another Married Man, which PP thought was a bit unrealistic given Holly's obvious appeal.

At the muted commercial break, after all this intense dramatic dialogue, PP realized, unlike Holly, she hadn’t spoken to anyone all day.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She had had a conversation with a composed young swimmer while taking a shower. Now PP is definitely NOT thrilled about the plethora of kids allowed to use the WOMEN’S locker room at the Hilltop Y. This is something that she’s appreciated immensely at the Oakland Y---no kids under 18 allowed in the women’s locker room. No exceptions. In fact, if any of those sneaky underage darlings did try to venture into the Oakland Y’s Women’s room, there was signage all over the place instructing Members to use the White Phone to call upstairs and have the infiltrators booted.

This is as it should be.

Yet, PP has been swimming long enough to know that kids rule often when it comes to pools, locker rooms and showers.

That was just a given. So, when this young lady stood at the entry to the showers calmly staring at PP in the shower (This is another thing PP hates—Kids that stare at the naked women. In the shower. Out of the shower. They stare. Of course, this is natural. But again, just another reason to keep them quarantined in their own lock rooms. )




“Did you have fun in the pool?” PP asked, deciding chatting might be better than the stare down.
“Yes.” She nodded seriously, wrapping her Hello Kitty towel round her pink suit.
“What’s your favorite stroke?”
“The backstroke.”
”Ah.”
“And the …..” she paused searching for the correct term.
“The breaststroke, with the frog kick?” PP demonstrated with a kick in the shower, but then realized too late that this would only exacerbate the unwanted staring.
“Yes,” she nodded. “And the….” Again she searched for the word. What’s up with that? PP wondered. She can swim all the strokes but she doesn’t know the names of them?
“The freestyle?” PP offered, making the arcing arm motions in the shower.
Swimmer Kid nodded. “And the butterfly!” she announced confidently.
“Really? The butterfly? Wow. That’s a hard one.”
SK nodded again.





“You must be a really good swimmer!” PP smiled through the spray.
“Yes. I had fun in the pool.”
This seemed to signal an end to the dialogue. The kid had a natural storyteller’s knack for ‘framing’ her narrative.

“You can get in the shower now,” Mom bustled in, all business, instructing her daughter.
SK meekly obeyed, her attention now completely on Mom. PP was a distraction of the past.

Which was fine by PP.
Though at the end of the day, when PP looked back on it, she thought, there must be a story here somewhere with that Shower Staring Kid....

And there is.

But only a slight one. Esp when compared to Holly Hunter's story. Who of course, in the end solved the murder, toasted her best friend's grudging forgiveness of her cheating husband, and polished off a basket full of barbecued ribs with her cynical boss before heading to the pool.





(You all do know PP just made that last bit up, right?)

Hilltop YMCA Zoo

It was a ZOO! At least on a Friday night. (PP had swum last Sunday and it had been a swimmer's Paradise. Her own lane. No screaming kids. A lovely waving lifeguard.)

Yet, on this particular Friday, well, it was anything but a swimmer’s paradise. Unless you're an 8 year old fish.

And she was.

When initially her father (PP assumed he was Dad--who else would be taking an 8 year old swimming? Okay, maybe a brother or a cousin.) But Dad. This seemed right. He was encouraging, but serious. And so was she. In her little Speedo navy suit. Bright pink goggles. Hair pulled back in a pony tail.

She was ready to go.

Yet PP was dubious when she first spied a kid. A kid? Wants to swim in her LAP lane?
C'mon.

Yet, the Dad was so nice, "Can we share your lane?" A shy smile on his friendly round brown face; a weed-like tattoo on his bicep that was surprisingly non-intimidating. Maybe because of his daughter. How could he be a big tough trouble- maker with a sweet little fish at his side? (Though this is an old stereotype of tattoos, PP knows this. They have connotations of coolness or even ordinariness nowadays.)

"Sure," PP tried not to act too accommodating. After all, she'd rather have her own lane.

Obviously, this was definitely not in the cards this night. The 'family' side of the pool was packed. Hundreds of screaming, splashing kids. (Okay, maybe not hundreds, but it sounded like that many)

The ear piercing cries of "Marco Polo" echoing in the pool’s A framed inside arena. (Can't kids come up with another obnoxious pool game already? Hell, PP & her sisters were torturing her parents with this cry 40 years ago!)





Ready to Go Girl shifted eagerly back and forth from foot to foot, anxious to get started. Again, PP wondered how this was gonna work out. Circle swim? With a kid?

Shit.

So when she asked Dad if they wanted to circle swim (and not very nicely either), he just gave her a big friendly grin and said, “No. That is okay. We will swim on this side,” motioning to splitting the lane down the middle.

Okay, PP nodded, wondering how the hell this was gonna work out. Though when she thought about circle swimming with a kid, she thought maybe splitting the lane might be the better option. For her. And as you all know, when swimming, it’s all about PP!

And the two of them did it somehow. Stayed on their half of the lane. Well, most of the time. Dad would take off. Daughter would follow. She was actually quite a good little swimmer. A most passable freestyle which reminded PP of her own way back when. In Hacienda Heights. Swimming back and forth back and forth, lap after lap in the dear little pool. 100’s of laps at a time. (It was a shorter pool than the Y, granted, but still PP was pretty serious about lap swimming, even when she was 10!)





Sometimes Ready to Go Girl would get too excited, want to jump in front of Dad and not wait. Once she was so anxious, PP stopped at the wall to let her go before her. “You wanna go ahead of me?” she asked.

RtGG looked at her wide-eyed through the foggy goggles, nodding shyly. No verbal answer necessary as she took off in a speedy flash.

She really was a little fish.

PP wanted to tell her this. What a good little swimmer she was. But they got out before she had a chance.

Yet, somehow, PP knew that RtGG knew she was a good swimmer. It was evident in her stroke, in her enthusiasm, but most of all in the way she followed Dad, so eagerly, back and forth back and forth back and forth.

There is something about the Father/Daughter swim experience, isn’t there? PP remembers her father and the Mr. Banana Buddy games and the Dead Bug games and how special (cliché yet true) these times were and the memory still is.





And so for all those fathers who take their daughters to the pool (and the daughters who can swim!) PP’s willing to share her lane with them.

Even if it is a Zoo.

El Cerrito Pool Shower Secret

Shhhhhh……

It’s a secret. Or at least it was to PP. Till she got in the know.

She’s new (again--she did swim here quite a bit when Dashingly Handsome BF lived in the Richmond Annex) to the El Cerrito Pool. A lovely pool, but alas FREEZING! (At least the two times she’s swum there recently.)

This is too bad since she can walk to it from the Cottage. But then again, walking isn’t everything. As all of you swimmers know.






So, she swims. She freezes. It’s late afternoon, early evening. The shadows of the big pine trees spread across her end of the pool to protect her from the evil sun. (Well, almost. There is a smite of sunshine at the lifeguard end that she tries to swim around by going really close to the wall. But hell, this is a bit much. Even for a sun scarred PP!)

In any event, she’s got Goosebumps up and down her arms & legs, and can barely finish her workout cuz she’s so cold. Disgustedly, a young fit Young Fast Young Asian Girl gets in the lane with her to share. Passes her every 4 laps or so. Waits at the end while her coach/father? gives her the next set. She’s not cold at all (PP can tell she's not cold. She's just so relaxed and bored. Can you be bored if you're freezing? PP thinks not, but has to analyze the reasons for it another time as it's really beside the point now and not a part of the story. Of course, she coulda written her analysis here instead of this aside, but she didn't cuz she doesn't really know or hell, doesn't really care.) In any case, PP seethes in warmth coveting envy as YFYAG just hangs out at the end for like 5 minutes at a time.

How the hell can that be?

Oh to be young and fast.

Actually PP was never that fast. Well not in the pool at least.

So, when PP does emerge from the pool and scurry into the showers to warm up, she’s a frozen fishsicle.





Turns on the shower. And...shit.
Lukewarm? No, it can’t be!
She stands there shivering, holding her hand under the stream hoping that it will get warmer. But it doesn’t.

Goddammit goddammit goddammit!

She’s never going back to the El Cerrito Pool again!

Yet then, voila! A Shower Angel in the form of a middle aged suburban woman magically appears from the other side of the shower (It's a large metal pole in the center of the tiles with four nozzles coming out of it instead of being on the walls—this only adds to the magic of it all for some reason.)




SA smiles beatifically at PP. “If you don’t turn the spray to its full pressure, it gets warmer,” she beams as she reaches around and adjusts the handle for PP, the water pressure gentler as it sprays.

And it works! Ahhhh! Warm water to thaw her out!

“Wow!” PP exclaims. “I never woulda figured that one out!”
“Yes, well, it is unusual, I will concede,” SA smiles mysteriously as she asks around if anyone has some shampoo she can borrow. Which by the way PP has never understood. How can you borrow the shampoo? You take it. You use it. You leave. Do these women remember that they were given a precious smite of shampoo and return the favor next time?

Maybe.

PP is at least going to practice this good karma with the shower if she ever ventures forth again to the El Cerrito Pool.

Or at least divulge the ‘secret’ of getting a warm shower at the El Cerrito Pool for any of her brave-the-cold swimmer readers that may find themselves in the same frigid predicament that PP was.

Before the Shower Angel, that is!

Got it!

PP's Luddite computer brain has figured out how to not use the Netscape email anymore. (Totally by accident. She has no idea how she did it.)

So....onward ho all stories tangentially and literally water immersion connected.

Sigh....it's such a relief. Whatever would she have done without her backlog (waterlog) of 250 plus swimming stories?


Pool ponder for the day:

Why the hell did PP ever choose swimming as her obsession? It is kid-infested in the summer! Arrrgggg!

Help!

Help!

If PP deletes her stupid Netscape email cuz she's not using it anymore and this email is her 'primary email account' for this blog, will she lose access to PoolPurrs if she deletes the Netscape account?

Is PP worth $9.95 a month?

Any advice/action/comment would be much appreciated.

In the meantime, PP is going to the pool!

Swimming in ants and cats at the Cottage

At first it was just a couple scouts. Sniffing around the cat’s kibble dishes. PP gets out the Windex and delights in drowning them. (Is this evil? No. Ants are evil. Unless you’re an ant. Then you’re very small and helpless. And a bad swimmer. Though PP must grant that she may not be such a great swimmer either in a pool of Windex.)

She moves the cat dishes. Into the little area that crowds access to the coffee maker, drawers of ramen, tubs of kibble. Oh it’s all so stupid!

Why does the Cattage have ants now? PP hates hates hates ants! They are simply the most pesky persistent pests around. Why do they exist even?

PP sees no reason for their existence. They just create ant chaos and PP frustration.

Plus they can’t swim.

But maybe this is the key.

If PP can somehow lure them into the bathroom and up into the toilet bowl, then she can drown them and flush them out of her cattage. (The toilet has no tank lid still—the landlord has mysteriously not called her back about replacing the antique toilet with a new toilet yet….what does this mean? PP doesn’t want to go there right now. She has a headache. From the ants. And the runaway cat.)






Parker has escaped in the midst of Windexing the ants. Yes. 10 minutes before she had to leave for work. Nowhere in sight. PP gets out the can of cat food, pries open the metal lid. The other two cats come running. But no Parker. PP goes out onto the patio. Taps the can with a fork. Ding ding ding. Usually this works to entice the runaway inside.

But not Parker.

Well, Dorothy Parker (Parker’s namesake) was always a bit of a trouble maker wasn’t she? At least when she drank. Fortunately Parker hasn’t had any kitty martinis so she should be able to find her way home.

But what if she doesn’t? Then what?
Oh why oh why oh why did PP let her escape in the first place? Right. It was the goddamn ants’ fault!

So PP calls in late to WWU. It’s okay. Wonderful Admin Woman and Delightful Diligent Student are both cat people. They get it.

But this still stresses PP out.
Where oh where is that Parker Pudding?

What if she’s lost? Or out in the street? Or gets run over?

PP can’t stop herself from these missing cat thoughts.



She plops down at the cute little patio table with the open can of cat food sitting forlornly in front of her. Near tears. (Why has she been so emotional since moving to the Cattage? Well it is a big CHANGE! “You’re so vulnerable now,” DL had soothed last week during the Toilet Trauma.)

Glances at her watch. 11:45. She’s supposed to be at WWU in 15 minutes. It’s a 45 minute drive. What was she gonna do? Should she just go and let Parker fend for herself outside today? Or should she call in sick and not go at all? Or should she call again and let the DD Student know she’s gonna be really late?

It’s all too much.

PP goes back inside. Stands in the middle of the darling little cottage and ponders.


Then a little bell jingles. Faintly. Could it be? Then the thumping of little cat feet. Then whoooosh….in runs Parker who immediately plops down in the middle of the rug right at PP’s feet. Breathing rapidly. Eyes wide with mischief. Like she’s had no idea that she’s been the cause of such consternation.

She is a cat after all.

“Parker!” PP is so happy. “Where the hell have you been?” PP bends down to pet her. She’s all wet!

Has she been swimming? Is there a kitty pool nearby that Parker has discovered? Does Parker even like to swim? (PP knows that Pablo likes the water, but Parker? Not so much)




This may explain everything. Parker found a kitty pool. Gave swimming a try. Found out that she hated it, so just got the bottom of her belly wet and her little paws.

Then ran for cover at the Cattage to escape the wet.

And as for the ants?
The Windex is only a temporary (albeit satisfying) solution.

PP found some deadly traps in the garage. Plastic squares to be strategically placed on ant trails.

She hopes this works.

Otherwise, PP isn’t going to be the only one testing the waters. The ants’ days are numbered. If not by drowning, then there’s always the politically incorrect environmentally unsound RAID!

She just has to be careful the cats don’t get near it. Otherwise, what?

She’ll just have to throw up her hands and go to the pool.
What other recourse is there when all is too overwhelming?
None. Whatsoever.
Unless you’re Parker.

Toilet Trauma

It’s not exactly a swim story, but then again, PP is certain that by the time she finishes writing it, there will be some tie to swimming.

There always is.

You all know that she’s moved into her fabulous ‘cattage’ in El Cerrito, complete with sweet patio garden, cat climbing-up loft and unbeknownst to her, an ‘antique toilet.’

Midnight. (Isn’t it always when some trauma occurs?) The toilet won’t stop running. It won’t flush all the way. The water is swirling swirling in ineffectual spasms.
So what does PP do?

What any long term renter would do given the toilet's obvious ineffectiveness to shut up and suck up. Take off the tank lid and try to fiddle around with the stupid floaty ball thing in order to make the suction-up thing stop sucking.





So she does this. Takes off the lid. Carefully. It’s heavy. Very heavy. And a lovely mustardy golden color ("Appropriate color," says JL when she first used the bathroom) As PP lifts the lid from the toilet a gush of water cascades onto her bare feet. Shit. (No pun intended.)

It’s a mess. Water everywhere. The whirling mechanisms inside the tank are sputtering and sizzling. Like there’s some sort of angry snake inside the tank. Hey, here’s the swimming connection. There’s a mischievous toilet tank snake (not unlike the sinister Black Lake Snake from Indiana) that is sabotaging the equipment from swimming around and around, wrapping its slinky slimy snaky body round the toilet tank's equipment.




Of course, there isn’t really a snake. But there is something Evil afloat as she endeavors to stop the goddamn hissing floating ball thingee from its running water frenzy.

She’s leaned the heavy wet lid against the bathroom door. Careful not to drop it or break it. Knows that it’s a special lid even then. The bathroom is small and crowded as everything but the shower is at the cattage.

Speaking of which, Pablo, the Big White Trouble Maker Cat starts to meow at the bathroom door to see what’s up. Or use the box. Or lick the water off the floor. Or cause general cat mayhem.

Which he does.

“Meow meeeowww meeowww!” he demands.





“Okay, Pab, just a minute,” she answers, frazzled by the hissing toilet snake.

She turns and opens the door for him just a crack. But this is enough to send the heavy toilet tank lid sliding down the wall and crashing to the floor, shattering into a dozen pieces.

It is astounding how much damage one broken toilet tank lid can cause. Not only did the lid itself break into irreparable pieces, but it also broke Pablo’s blue water bowl into a half a dozen pieces and sprayed the entire door half of the bathroom with water and bits of porcelain.

PP stares in disbelief before bursting into tears, leaning against the sink in a traumatized mess.

How the hell did this happen? How did she let it happen? She’d never done anything like this before. It was just horrible. She’d only been here at the cattage for 3 days and already she was trashing the place.

Shit. (Pun intended)

Pablo sat down and blinked up at her. “Meow?”
“Fuck you, Pablo! Look what you’ve done!” she hollers as he scurries away.

In tears she begins to clean up the mess, carefully scooping up the shards of golden porcelain into a big garbage bag. They cut right through it. Damn. What the hell was she gonna do? It was such a mess.

The landlord was gonna kill her.
Or evict her.
Or yell at her.




(PP has Landlord PTSD from her previous landlord yelling at her about her asking him to fix her broken heater. And this hadn’t even been her fault. What would this new landlord do upon learning of her incredible toilet tank lid clumsiness?)

Walking out into the moonlit yard to find a box to put the shards into, she spies her landlady standing in moony light with her little dogs. “OH, K. You’re not gonna believe this,” PP manages to speak without crying. “I tried to fix the running toilet and broke the lid and….”
K shakes her head. “I told C that it was broken. He should have fixed it. Don’t worry about it.”
Dubious, PP manages a halfhearted smile, “Okay, yeah….well, I’ll just call him in the morning and tell him about it…”





Finding a hello kitty plastic shopping bag, PP wanders back into the cattage to collect the shards and thinks, Okay. Yes. If the landlord had fixed the toilet before she moved in, she never would have had to take the lid off in the first place and then it wouldn’t have slipped off the wall and shattered into pieces.

Oh, helpful Readers! What do you all think?

A) Does PP owe the Landlord a new toilet?

B) Should she try to find another ‘antique’ lid to replace it? (The landlord the next morning had made a point of saying that he wouldn’t be able to replace it. To find the same color. That it was an ‘antique’.)

C) Or should she just take K's advice and not worry about it? Breaking the lid was an accident (or a Pablocent)

Shit shit shit.

Or as the mischievous tank swimming snake would say, “Hissssssssss!”

Epilogue
PP does feel better today.
Writing helps.
And of course, she's had a swim.
This always brings any trauma back into perspective. At least while she's in the pool. Just keep the cats and toilets out of her way!

The Motley Crew

They were a motley crew as the cliché goes. Piano Movers. What a gig.

PP is moving (if you don’t already know—she’s been whining about it for weeks. All that’s saved her little bit of sanity has been, of course, swimming.)




But today, the piano is moving! To the cottage in El Cerrito. Which, by the way, is only 5! Blocks from the ‘legendary’ (this is what the Lovely I sighed enviously when told of the cottage's prime pool locale) El Cerrito Pool!

Yet the crew that backs up into the drive to pick up PP’s precious piano seemed dubious at best--definitely NOT swimmers! 3 big smoking guys are crammed into the front seat (who smokes anymore? PP thought it was only on Mad Men that smoking was so pervasively matter of fact) Clouds of tobacco smoke waft out of the passenger side as one of them grunts out. He’s enormous. At least 6’5 or more, with a lime green t-shirt pulled over his round bursting paunch and a black foot cast on his right foot.




“Wow!” PP exclaims when she sees the foot cast-—how the hell can he move a piano with a bum foot? “Did you sprain your ankle?"

“Broke it,” he puffs, “in three places.”
“Ah….” PP has no idea how to respond to this as the other two beefy guys hop down from the seat, one right out of ZZ Top’s band (Okay, PP is HORRIBLE at popular rock culture, but she thinks this is the right comparison); the other with an orange Texas t-shirt on with a steer's wide white bull horns blazing against his ample chest.




These were the guys she was entrusting her piano to?

Oh dear!

But what to do? Just cuz they were smoking and limping, did this mean they couldn’t move a piano?

PP hoped not as she watched them pull out the blankets, the little rolly box thingee and head up the stairs to fetch the piano. Trying to not panic, she hovers while they move the piano away from the wall and tilt it up on its side to reveal 15 years worth of disgusting dust mounds, one of her student’s cheat sheets (Every Great Boy Dreads French), and a squiggly toy snake and assorted dusty cat balls.

She is mortified.

“Wow! A lot of dust sure builds up in 15 years,” she giggles.
Broken Foot man grunts and grins.
“You’ve seen worse, I suppose?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answers as they ease the piano out the front door. “You wanna get a rag and dust it off for your new place?”
“Sure,” PP scurries off to retrieve an old cloth. What a good idea. Maybe they weren’t as motley as they appeared if they were concerned about spreading dust.
She swipes at the back of the piano which is encrusted in the 15 year old grime. It billows into ZZ Top’s face.
He hacks convulsively.
“Oh, sorry,” she mutters, wondering why the dust bothered him since he was a smoker.
Recovering, he leans away from her, wipes his mouth and grunts, before helping to lift the piano into the truck.



They lay out the blanket, tilt up the piano and lift it into the truck. They certainly did this professionally as far as PP could tell. At least they didn’t drop it.

“We got another pick up in Berkeley so we’ll meet you at the address you gave us in ‘bout a half hour,” Broken Foot man tells her as they all pile back into the truck.

She nods as she watches them nervously back out of the driveway before hurrying into the apt. to gather up her swim stuff (of course she’d scheduled a swim into the piano move—she was gonna head over to the Oakland Y after the piano drop off—or maybe even check out the Hilltop Y—but this is another story)

A half hour later, PP has only just pulled up in front of her new abode when the truck sputters up behind her. What’s up with that? she wonders, thinking they sure picked up the other piano lickety split!

“Can you back into the drive okay?” she asks, running up to meet the truck.
“I think so,” Texas Steer Bone Man nods as ZZ Top chomps on a Jack in the Box Burrito and Broken Foot man gobbles the last of some kind of fast food breakfast atrocity.






They went out for fast food?

This only adds to the motliness of the entire operation she thinks.
Perfect.

“The other job canceled,” BF Man tells her as if reading her mind.
“Ah…”
And so the whole process begins in reverse; they steer the piano safely into the Cottage with only knocking off the music stand. (It has a history of shakiness)

“You got a toothpick?” ZZ Top asks her, holding onto the stand.
“Ah, no….” she laughs. “Maybe back at the other apt. Though I think I packed them.” What the hell did he want a toothpick from her for? To pick the breakfast burrito out of his smoky teeth. Ugh!

But no. He wanted to somehow attach the stand back on top of the piano with toothpicks because, he told her, the screws in it presently were too short. And toothpicks were the right length? And so he was going to substitute toothpicks for screws?




Undaunted by the dearth of toothpicks, ZZ Top ambled back to the truck and reappeared with longer screws. Reattached the stand for her. Better than before!

And so, maybe they weren’t so motley after all.

Though PP thought they could do with a swim.

If only to rinse the smoke offa their skin and the fast food outta their teeth.

Alex Trebeck Asks the Moon

“Oh, look at the moon!” PP exclaims as she follows Capt G out of the gym and into the night parking lot. “It’s so beautiful!”

“Yeah it is,” CG agrees, sighing happily after their idyllic evening of hot tub, steam room, pool, (It was 'crowded'! There were other people in the pool besides PP and CG—a swim team, another swimmer, a dad and his son playing catch. PP and CG had to even share a lane for 10 minutes. Imagine! But then the Swim Team got out, and they each got their own lane and it was lovely to be outdoors in the evening golden light shadowing through the pines.)

But back to the moon, which really was luminous.

“Alex Trebeck says, what phase is the moon in,” a voice echoes behind them.

Turning around, PP sees a tall shadowy figure that has followed them out into the parking lot; still has his/her (PP couldn’t specify the gender) towel wrapped round his/her waist as he/she (This system of pronoun reference, while usually a pain, is perfect for gender identification confusion!) waxes game show about the moon.




PP doesn’t understand the phases of the moon question or the reference to Alex Trebeck the Jeopardy guy. It wasn’t like Moon Phase Man/Woman had phrased his/her observation in a jeopardy question: What is the ________ phase?”

Laughing, CG jumps right in, “It’s waxing, not waning, right?”

PP doesn’t know. Always gets these two mixed up. Waxing reminds her of surfboards
and waning reminds her of nothing in particular.

Moon Man/Woman likes this answer though, “Yeah, it’s the Waxing Phase.”
“It’s a quarter moon,” PP offers, still perplexed but following CG’s lead.
“Yeah, it’s a Waxing Quarter Moon,” CG announces to everyone’s approval.

“It’s Moon Math,” PP suggests for no particular reason. Non-sequitors abound in the moonlight world of Alex Trebeck.

“I can’t even keep track of the laps I swim,” Moon Man/Woman announces.
“That’s not important,” PP asserts. “You’re swimming, that’s all that matters!”
They all laugh at this one and it’s true.

MMW leaves them. Gets into his/her car and slams the door as PP and CG head over to the Toyota and climb in.



“Did you understand that Alex Trebeck reference?” PP asks CG.
“Not at all. I just went with it.”

And she did. PP so admires this about CG. She’s got the question to the answer.

Even when she doesn’t!