Everybody in the Pool!

“You’ll get used to it.”

I was mumbling that to myself between curse words as I was wading into a 72-degree swimming pool in the basement of a hotel in Vienna.

The hotel was once a bank, and its spa is in what was the bank’s vault. They had turned the vault’s door into a window overlooking the pool. People in the spa’s reception could look down at me and read my lips as I said, “Holy s-expletive, this pool is cold!”

You might remember, a few columns ago, I coined the word “s-expletive,” because at this family newspaper we don’t tolerate vulgar language. Today, reader, for no extra cost, I give you: “f-expletive.” Because s-expletive isn’t enough to describe how cold that pool was.

F-expletive can be used anywhere in a sentence. Using the bank vault pool as an example, I can say, “F-expletive, the pool was cold.” Or: “The pool was f-expletiving cold.” Or: “Trump won, f-expletive.”

See, f-expletive is flexible. And it can effectively communicate the pool’s temperature, or the depths of my depression, without getting Letters to the Editor about my potty mouth.

So, the bank vault pool wasn’t the temperature of bathwater. Why was I in it?

Reader, I was treading water.

It’s an activity I took up late last August — treading water for an hour a day. I know, I know, I should have gotten into it before August, but it takes me a while to talk myself into things.

I’ve always lived by the mantra “The older I get, the less I like to get wet.” It was my excuse for not swimming. A year or two ago, you would only find me in a pool if it was over 90 degrees outside and the planets had aligned.

I feel the same way about bathing, although it doesn’t take a rare cosmic happenstance to get me into the shower. I do shower daily, but only because I care about the people near me.

And while I’ve lived by this mantra for years, getting wet has never been the real issue. As a child, I could stay in a pool for hours. And these days I take unconscionably long showers. I think about my columns in there. The sage words you are currently reading came to me during last week’s exfoliation.

It’s not the wet that I mind, it’s the drying. I’ve got a lot of nooks and crannies to towel off. Then I moisturize my face, eye area, body, and neck — all with different creams. And I won’t even get into my hair products. We don’t have time for that.

Every year, I have more nooks and crannies to dry, more surface area to moisturize, and more special-needs sites requiring another f-expletiving pricey jar of goo.

Meanwhile, when Mr. Hockey gets out of the shower, he — apparently, given the dampness of the bathmat — shakes his Bernese mountain dog body dry, combs his hair, doesn’t apply any goo, then leaves the bathroom.

Even in skin care, the f-expletiving patriarchy wins.

I’d been considering treading water for a while. I have a friend who listens to audiobooks while she does it. I was intrigued by this new way to exercise but was apprehensive because of the post-read drying and application of goo.

Then, last spring, during the slim window between Mr. Hockey’s hockey season and golf season, we went to the Dominican Republic for a few days so I could lay down my base tan. Do not tell my dermatologist about this.

I spent the whole time in the pool and remembered that I love bobbing in the water. I decided to do it on the regular, which I talked myself into a mere seven weeks later.

I put my phone on the edge of the pool, turn on a podcast, and I don’t touch the bottom for an hour. It’s not as hard as I thought it would be. I’m surprisingly buoyant. Maybe air pockets in my nooks and crannies keep me afloat.

What do I do for an hour? I spin around. I thrust my arms back and forth. I attempt the eggbeater kick that the water polo players use. I “run” in place. I swim doggy paddle laps.

It sounds boring, right? It’s not. In fact, I f-expletiving love it! After I do it, I feel healthy and energized, and then I can hardly wait to get back in the pool.

In the movie “Legally Blonde,” Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elle, famously says, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands …”

Treading water must be giving me endorphins! They must be making me happy, because even though he completely drenches the bathmat, I haven’t shot Mr. Hockey!

Alas, it’s December and the pool is closed. The last time I had an hour-long treading session was in that brief window in between Mr. Hockey’s golf season and hockey season, when we went to Turks and Caicos to top up my tan. Do not tell my dermatologist about this.

Sadly, I don’t get the same number of (or any) endorphins from my daily 20 minutes on the elliptical machine. I’m just not meant to be bound to the land. I’m meant to be free in the water.

Until I can be again, I think Mr. Hockey should shake his Bernese mountain dog body dry inside the shower. For his own safety.