I saw the bottom of Lake Pleasant. And it was dirty

I am currently wrapped up in a fleece blanket that I stole from the living room, chewing on a KitKat leftover from Halloween, and it's starting to look like my plans to clean the bathroom tonight are going to fall through.

The bad news is: if I have any guests over that need to use the bathroom, I'm going to have to send them to the Chevron down the street.

The good news is: with this new opening in my schedule, I have enough time to tell you all about becoming scuba certified, and the lessons I learned along the way.

I'll start with the most obvious--

1 ~ I should never, under any circumstance, move to Alaska.

Let me explain with a series of statistics--

Day One of pool lessons.

Outside temperature: 96 degrees.

Water temperature: 80 degrees.

Wetsuit type: short - 3 mm

Normal reaction to circumstances: fine

My reaction to circumstances: unstoppable shivering.

Day Two of pool lessons.

Outside temperature: 94 degrees.

Water temperature: 79 degrees

Wetsuit type: long - 8 mm

My reaction to circumstances: mostly controllable shivering.

After day one in the pool, my instructors bumped me up to the thickest wetsuit there is. Because I am apparently the type of person who needs 4 extra mm of neoprene to stay warm in a heated pool.

I have been searching Craig's List for a drysuit ever since. But so far all I've found is a men's extra large. I am happy to report that if I continue to eat leftover KitKats at the rate I am now, I'll fit into that suit in no time.

2 ~ My mom wasn't kidding when she said, "Put on your lifejacket. If you don't, you might drown, and we'll never find you."

I thought she was exaggerating. But I saw the bottom of Lake Pleasant. And it was dirty.

3 ~ 'Tis better to pee in your wetsuit, than to not.

I'll tell you what, if you happen to be suffering from a mild case of OCD and/or germaphobia, you may want to consider diving.

It'll fix you right up.

Because when you're deciding between breathing out of that mostly unsanitary regulator that 5,000,000 other people have put in their probably-mono-infected mouths and taking in a big mouth-full of Lake Pleasant water, you're probably going to put the dirty regulator in your mouth and feel pretty darn good about it.

And... when your swimming in the 68 degree water thinking about how you really could use a bathroom break and a Snuggie right now, you might be faced with some hard decisions...(to pee, or not to pee)... And I'll just say that one option is like pouring a bucket of hot water into a cold bath and the other is like looking for a bathroom in a rainstorm.

And I'm not implying that I chose one thing over the other, I'm just saying that one option was clearly better than the other.

And, when it comes down to it, the most important thing I learned (besides to NEVER hold my breath and to try to avoid decompression chambers) is that "good stuff is good, pick it."

(Thanks to Alex B. for supplying those words of wisdom, which, just for the record, actually had nothing to do with staying warm in wetsuits, and almost everything to do with choosing not to give terrorists pencils.)

Now, I'm going to go see if I can reschedule my cleaning date with the bathroom. Because, like the bottom of Lake Pleasant, I have seen my bathroom. And it is dirty.