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Report from the Hubs of Hades

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Good Gawd! It’s only 105 out there, but it sure feels more like about 110 to 112. Probably because the humidity, sez Wunderground, is 24%.

Meanwhile, inside the shack with the air-conditioning pounding away, the thermometer next to the bed where the dawg and I are loafing reads 84 degrees. Balmy. The AC is laboring to drag the thermostat down to 80.

My power bill is gonna be astronomical…

Incredibly, the pool remains crystal-clear — some kind of miracle in this fine, algae-friendly heat. Thing is, I haven’t seen Pool Dude in the past two weeks.

No way in Hell that water could stay that clean all by its fine self. That says that PD is showing up when I’m not here, since Ruby goes BATSHIT with Corgi Joy whenever she realizes he’s here. So either he’s sneaking in during the night — very, v-e-e-r-r-y quietly, or somehow he’s arriving when I’m out. The latter is unlikely, since these days, between the heat and the plague, I don’t go out much. But then, the former is pretty unlikely, too.

At any rate, I just tested the water. It’s very high on chlorine. That suggests Our Hero has been at work.

The floater is full of tabs, and I haven’t put any in there. In this kind of heat, chlorine tabs dissolve quickly, so even though he’s dropping five or six tabs in there, they wouldn’t be THAT plump if he hadn’t shown up yesterday to refill the thing.

Welp, we can’t complain too much about Arizona’s summer heat and…absent monsoons. Good Lord! A million people back East without power. Power lines trapping the natives. Airports shut down. Tornado in Tennessee.

It’s supposed to warm up a bit next week…115 or so, come mid-week. Chance of the traditional late-summer monsoon rains: about nil.

Pool Dude: MIA

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hmmmmm…. It’s 9 o’clock in the morning…

Got the right day?

Yep: it is Monday.

Pool dude is usually here and gone long  before this. If he’s been around, I sure haven’t seen him.

And if he had been around while I was here, Ruby would have alerted me. She is hopelessly in love with the man. Not only does she fly into a frenzy of joy when she sees him, but…she knows what day of the week it is.  And in the Canine Calendar, today is definitely Pool Dude Day.

How on earth that’s possible, I cannot imagine. But on Monday mornings, she’s standing by the glass sliding doors watching. And watching. And watching…waiting for the mysteriously beloved Pool Dude.

Most optimistic hope is that he had car trouble, or that some major hassle arose at an earlier customer’s place. But…I tried to call him earlier this week to ask about a question that arose, and got no answer. Left word on his machine: no call-back.

I take these developments as bad signs. Though he’s been reliable all these many weeks that he’s been working for me, at one point in the course of a conversation he did make some remarks that revealed he has a prison record.

That in itself is not enough to put me off. In fact, it explains why he’s trying to make a living in rather low-skill self-employment, since he seems to be a smart and self-sufficient kinda guy.

But the problem is, if he got busted for something — anything, no matter how minor — that will make big, BIG trouble for him. He may be in jail or under some kind of house arrest.

If that’s the case, pretty clearly it’s the end of his pool maintenance business.

And that makes his problem my problem…  Because he’s been doing an awe-inspiring job on the damn pool! The water is crystal clear and the system is running beautifully. That thing has never looked better or been cleaner, not since I’ve lived here.

The remains of three pool tabs were in the chlorine floater. So…well…in this heat, you wouldn’t THINK they’d last a whole week. But that would mean he must have shown up on some other day. I haven’t seen him…but anything’s possible.

I tried to phone him a few days ago: no answer. Left word on his voicemail: no return call.

Not. A. Good. Sign.

Welp. If Pool Dude has flaked out on us — and since nothing lasts forever, that’s surely a possibility — I’ll have to find a new guy ASAP. In this heat, that water can turn green overnight.

So, drat!  The pool is running fine right now, and should continue so for a week or ten days. But I don’t seem to have the required skill to keep it running clear and shiny.

While I’m traipsing around the city, then, I guess I’ll need to go by the Leslie’s Pool store in Sunnyslop — the best branch of that outfit I’ve found so far — and ask if they can recommend any customers who are in the pool maintenance business.

However…I fear Leslie’s itself does that, which means they’re not going to refer the competition to me. So THAT means I’ll have to put out yet another notice on the neighborhood Facebook page, begging for leads.

****

O Gawd! the guy at the credit union couldn’t get me into my bank account. He told me to go home and call thus-and-such an annoying number.

It’s 108 in the shade, with thunderheads building up to the north.

How can I COUNT the ways I don’t feel like getting on the phone to the CU’s representative?

Wait…how can I count the ways I ain’t a-gunna do it?

Stopped at the Sprouts next to the campus on the way home. Snabbed a package of lamb chops, a package of beef steak thingies. Fresh asparagus. Box of fresh bright-green spinach w/ which to make a salad. Fresh corn on the cob. Fresh bottle of cheap wine.

SCREW COMMERCE! By damn. I’m a-gunna eat myself stupid and then fall face-first into the sack.

The heat and the humidity defy belief. This feels like the shore of the endlessly effing Persian Gulf…which is another way to say you feel like you’re swimming through the air.

The last time I can remember this kind of heat, they shut down Sky Harbor because the jet airplanes couldn’t get enough lift from the hot air to take off safely. Or at all.

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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When we say “hotter than the hubs of Hades,” we ain’t kidding. It’s 9:00 at night, and the thermometer on the back porch — in the shade all day, nestled among the leaves of an overgrown ficus plant — reads 110 degrees.

Yeah. That’s right: ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DEGREES.

In the shade. All day.

The Wunderground site, my favorite weather predictor, is hung. But the last I looked, it seemed to be saying we could expect three-digit heat all night. The Accuweather site is more optimistic, predicting a balmy 89 degrees as a low, with 103 as the present temp, at 9:00 p.m.

People are dropping dead left and right. Here’s some poor fellow who fell over dead in the parking lot where I leave my car when I walk in the desert mountain park just to the north of the ‘Hood. I actually could walk to that place, but I’m too lazy.

Walking around the neighborhood suffices, especially when it’s 110 degrees out there. And…well, 110 degrees itself suffices to kill you.

This pretty young woman did herself in last Friday, walking on trails I go on several times a week during the winter.

And {ahem!} zero times a week during the summer.

Ruby and I did get out to perambulate the higher reaches of Upper Richistan, along about 5:30 this morning. Can’t leave much later than that: a two-mile stroll would occupy an hour, and that would get us back here around 6:30, way too late for comfort.

At this time of night — pushing 10 p.m. now — the pavement is still way too hot for Ruby to walk on. Early in the morning, the streets are still warm, but safe enough for us to walk around, at least for an hour or so.

Right now, I reckon, about all we can do is go to bed!

Colonel, the Great Dane, and the Little Boy

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Did I ever tell this story here? Don’t recall…so am gonna self-plagiarize from today’s Quora post:

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Q: Do German shepherds make good guard dogs for homes and families with children?

Ohhhhh my goodness. If you have to ask this question, you’ve never known a GerShep. Lemme tellya:

First off, Greta the German shepherd, a mellow and laid-back beast who came to live with us after her humans divorced, saved my son from serious injury and probably permanent disability or even death. Long story short, we were ambling up the sidewalk with a neighbor’s 90-pound pooch, the not-very-redoubtable Colonel.

Colonel was leading the way, about 15 or 20 feet ahead of me, with my two-year-old son toddling along after him holding onto his tail. (Yes: Colonel was extremely mellow.) I was ambling along after Colonel, and Greta was bringing up the rear, sniffing the flowers as she ambled even more slowly.

The house on the corner had a wall around the backyard that extended up the side of the lot, running parallel to the sidewalk along the street, approaching us at right angles. In other words, our party is coming up a corner: a house and a wall are blocking our view of anything or anyone approaching us from our left.

All of a sudden, out from behind this wall comes a nubile young woman jogging up the street behind a great Dane, which she has on a leash.

When the kid sees the Dane, the likes of which he has never gazed upon in his short lifetime, he explodes in joy and excitement. He goes QUEEEEKEEEE QUEEEEKEEE QUEEEEKEEE!! at the top of his little-kid voice, drops Colonel’s tail, and runs straight at the enormous dog.

The Dane — quite reasonably, in the doggish context — sees this as an attack on its human. It lunges to her defense and RIGHT NOW has his head inside its maw.

I run after him — I’m a good 20 feet behind him and Colonel.

Colonel runs off in terror.

I lunge to try to catch him. Get my fingers on his little shirt, but he manages to jerk away before I get a good grip and continues to charge the Dane…right into the dog’s fangs.

Holeee ess-aitch-ai!!! At this point I think my baby is dead! if he isn’t killed, he might as well be!

And then a streak appears at my right side, about waist-high.

It’s Greta. And she’s airborne!

She literally flies up the sidewalk beside me and launches herself straight onto the Dane, which is half-again as big as she is.

The Dane’s human struggles and then dodges out of way as the two beasts tumble to the ground, fighting.

I grab my kid and pull him out from under the two falling dogs.

Now the Dane has Greta down, and I think omigod, this is IT for Greta.

All of a sudden, just as the animal is going for Greta’s throat, if collapses.

No kidding: it falls to the pavement, unconscious.

WTF?

The young woman has hauled on its leash so hard, it choked off the dog’s air and the beast passed out, falling right on top of Greta.

Greta gets up and repairs to my side. Colonel is nowhere to be seen. My son is still on his feet, incredibly enough.

Just about speechless, I choke out “I’m so sorry!!!”

She says — no kidding, these ARE her words:  “That’s all right. It happens all the time.”

{gasp!}

Greta put her life on the line for that little boy. And it wasn’t the last time she put herself between her humans and very serious harm.

 

High as a Kite? Or Crazy as a Loon?

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In central Arizona’s lovely August heat, Ruby and I have to get out for the daily doggy-walk right at or even shortly before dawn. This stroll takes us around Upper Richistan, about a mile of shaded walking…two if we elect to walk up toward our friend Marge’s house, visit the cow pasture in those parts, and stroll back to the Funny Farm.

This morning was icky hot and humid, so we limited the day’s hike to the Upper Richistan loop. It’s around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. by the time we get to those parts.

So we’re strolling along the road when along comes this couple, a youngish man and what appears to be his wife or girlfriend. And the woman…well…she’s clearly stoned out of her mind. She’s already kinda raving on, and when she sees Ruby, she goes BONKERS.

She starts carrying on with ohhhh corgi!!! it’s a CORGI. look at her cute little butt! And then on and on and on about the cute little butt.

We’re not going to get away from this nut case, so I end up deciding to make an about-face and take another route, back into our low-rent precincts of the ‘Hood .

***

This is Business as Usual in the ‘Hood. The pair probably came from the slum apartments that stand on the far side of Conduit of Blight Blvd. That place, which once meandered pleasantly through a rambling golf course — now a gigantic weed patch — started out as a compound of upper-middle-class rentals. But over the years they’ve gone steadily downhill, and now the golf greens are dead and the apartments are run-down dumps. A resident once shot a cop through the front door of one of those fine dwellings.

Oh well…. Derailed from our usual route through the sylvan glens of Upper Richistan, we head back into our section of the ‘Hood. Up a cross-street to the north of us…hmmmmm….  Some of the houses there are being rebuilt and upgraded. Evidently somebody thinks that, given the central location and the widespread hallucination that there’s something kewl about the lightrail, they can fancify a house and sell it for quite a bit more than it’s worth.

Oh well, indeed.

We circle back into our part of the ‘Hood, over to where the cop lives with his young family, past the home of our eccentric pal who escaped here from the Darkest West Side. And as we walk, we pass by the Old Lady’s House.

Oh, dear.

This woman, a long-time resident of the ‘Hood — quite possibly an original owner! — was widowed and apparently left with exactly nothing. She simply didn’t have the funds to maintain a house, whether or not she owned it free and clear. And one of the things she skimped on to get by was…oh, yes: homeowner’s insurance.

Sooo… When the wild, hurricane-like storms we had a few years ago came through and tore a hole in her roof, she couldn’t afford to get the roof fixed!

This apparently didn’t much matter most of the time: she couldn’t afford air conditioning, either, so it was gonna be hotter than the hubs in there all summer and colder than a bygod all winter. But the big problem was, whenever it rains, water pours into the house like a cascade.

That’s what the wretched woman was having to live in.

Finally, the house was removed from her possession… Unclear whether she died, whether she moved in with someone and just abandoned the place, or whether it was taken for taxes. Most of us think the latter, but who knows? She was moved out of there, and the place stood vacant for awhile.

Now apparently someone has bought it. Whether as an investment or to live in it is unclear. WhatEVER: they just finished installing a whole new roof! And now they’re over there fixing up the walls and presumably repairing and spiffing up throughout.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the present owners move into it, or whether they’ll sell it for a handsome profit.

A place around the corner that was basically rebuilt from a few surviving walls recently sold for something over a million bucks. To give you an idea: my first house in the ‘Hood was a block up the street: I paid $125,000 for it and felt that was too much….  Zillow thinks my present house — same builder, same model, a block & a half further from Conduit of Blight’s noise and crime — is worth $535,000 and change.

Can you imagine?

I sure can’t!!

Long Hot Day….

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“Hot” in more ways than one.

This afternoon as I was idly cruising a neighborhood here looking for someplace to move away from the Romanian Landlord’s antics, what should appear to the south but a HUGE plume of  black smoke. It rose hundreds of feet into the air.

You could see it was a distance off: down by the riverbottom, probably, or at least in the industrial area of South Phoenix. So one hoped…not an apartment building full of poor folks.

Yea verily: it was in some kind of industrial yard. Apparently started as a grass fire and then spread to a warehouse. A half-dozen people were displaced from their mobile homes…unclear whether those vehicles were damaged, or whether people were evacuated for caution’s sake. Depending on what source you access, three or four firefighters ended up in the hospital (more photos!) with smoke inhalation….not too awful, considering that the city had 100 of them on the scene.

Meanwhile, the rest of the city is still cooking. Looks like we reached 111° this afternoon. Balmy!

As in “you have to be balmy to live here…”