Okay, well, the Y might be a wonderful institution, but it's got its quirks. Just one or two. Or so.

Today's quirk happened when I promised to take the kids swimming after their naptime. (No - Emily doesn't sleep anymore. But I need her to have quiet time, or at least, not talking to ME time, once a day. She lives longer that way.) So we headed over this afternoon, and arrived around 4:00. You can see the pool from the lobby, so I immediately sensed trouble - all of the lanes were in use by swim capped 14-year-olds and the door was cracked open a little to prevent hormone overload in the pool area.

But I asked the Guardian of the Desk - twice - and she insisted that it was both Open Swim and Swim Team Practice and they would move if I showed up in all of my fleshy white splendor and threatened to impinge upon their swimming happiness. Well, she didn't word it in quite that way, but it was the jist.

So we all got into our swimming finery, and headed to the pool door. Throughout the lobby, the locker room and the pool door, mind you, there were NO signs about schedule changes. But the Large Head Small Brain Swim Coach scuttled right over to meet me at the door and explain, "You can't swim now. It's swim team practice."

"Oh," I said. "But my schedule says it's both this and open swim."

"No, it doesn't," he said.

"Yes, actually, it does," I said. I did not puncutate that with, "you putz." "I just picked the schedule up from the front desk yesterday and it said open swim from 2:00 - 5:00."

"No, it doesn't," he said. Clearly not the captain of any debate team. Although, this WAS in Maine, so maybe something with moose.

So I headed back to the front desk for a new schedule. On my way there, I was waylaid by some random and apparently overchlorinated woman in the locker room (which, by the way, I find it very difficult to hold a conversation with a naked person), who said, "What color is your schedule?"

"I don't know."

"Is it purple?"

"I. Don't. Know."

"Is it blue?"

"I. DON'T." You know what? Never mind. This conversation is clearly some twisted game of 20 Questions and I'm not in the mood. So I continued out to the front desk, and sure enough, from yesterday to today, there is a new schedule. The OLD one was purple, and the NEW one is blue.

Well, duh.

So, we'll swim tomorrow. Maybe.