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The Dog-Walk Jamboree

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Human to Ruby: Y’know: you’re my favorite dog.

Ruby to Human: I’m your only dog, you chucklehead!

The sun is coming up a little later each day, so we’re not getting out to avoid the blast furnace heat at our usual time, around 5:00 a.m.

The trip through Richistan is fraught with other dog-walkers, about 30 percent of whom represent obstacles or risks. There’s this lady who has two golden-retrieverish characters, one of whom looks like it has as much pitbull in the family tree as golden whatever. The one that looks most like a golden, hilariously, likes to carry along a talisman: it trots along holding a neatly folded-up travel umbrella in its mouth, surely one of the funniest (and cutest) things you’ve ever seen in your life. The other dog, resigned to its understanding that its partner in dogdom is a fruitcake, rides shotgun on the crew’s excursion, and that hound is very serious about its job.

Fortunately, their human is a young, alert, and athletic adult female. The last time it lunged for the kill, by way of taking out Ruby, she caught it instantly and brought a stop to that guerilla operation. Every time it sees Ruby, though, it glares and it watches for its chance. And every time we come upon this fine trio, I have to pick up Ruby and carry her to shield her from yet another dog-attack.

So you see why it is that I prefer not to share the streets with the neighbors’ dogs, any more (I’m sure) than they wish to share them with me. Ruby has now been attacked three times, once by some moron’s pit bull off the leash…in the dark. Before Ruby came along, Cassie was almost murdered by an idiot’s loose German shepherd, but…hey…so was Ruby, just a few weeks ago.

I find these encounters with people’s goddamn out-of-control dogs fucking tedious. And that’s why Ruby and I like to get started on the daily two-mile stroll sometime before dawn cracks…that is, before most of my fellow dog fanciers get out on the streets.

Yesterday, when we left the house around 5:30, I counted nine dogs as we made our rounds. You understand: a lot of people like to walk through the shady, sylvan streets of Upper Richistan, and many of these folks have to go to work, so they get started early for their daily doggywalk. This is good. But, if one were adequately hermit-like, one might regard it as a mildly unfortunate fact of life.

This morning I was lazy, and we didn’t get out the door until after 6:00 a.m.

By the time we’d walked all of a half-block and ambled down to the corner, we had dodged around five dogs: the matched pair of black labs (to die for!), the umbrella crew, and a lady with a dog about Ruby’s size. Understand: we haven’t walked more than fifty yards at this point.

So I say to Ruby, dog food! let’s go home and get DOG FOOD! This is usually persuasive. But today: not so much.

Returning to the Funny Farm right that instant was clearly contraindicated. So instead of heading back to the house, we ventured into our part of the ‘Hood. We went up into the older area to the north of us, a district I habitually avoid because it’s somewhat run-down, it’s closer to Gangbanger’s Way, and…well, in the past there have been some fairly disturbing drug houses up there.

No more! HOLY mackerel, has that neighborhood gentrified!!!!!

We walked by only two remaining run-down houses, both of them wrecks but one of them for sale — soon, no doubt, to be fixed and flipped. Wow!

Gangbanger’s is one of the most major of the city’s major east-west thoroughfares. It’s extremely noisy, and I surely wouldn’t want to live that close to it. But hey: if you want to be centrally located, and you want to be able to afford centrally located, you have to make some trade-offs. Apparently noise and sirens and cop helicopters and Hells’s Angels’ unmufflered hogs are things the lovers of central location are willing to trade off.

That area is looking pretty nice these days.

And interestingly…not a SINGLE dog-walker was in evidence.

After perambulating that neighborhood, we wandered back into our tract. Same story: house after house after house has been fixed up, gentrified, painted, relandscaped. Our part of the ‘Hood is about 10 years newer and probably slightly more affluent. But the area to the north of us is definitely catching up. The whole formerly questionable area is beginning to look pretty damn upscale.

But again: NO DOG-WALKERS.

Not as much expensive shade. Not as many elegant mansions to admire (well, OK: no mansions…). But now that it’s not quite so blazing hot, the area is pleasant enough to walk in.

So I guess, as dawn comes later and we’re more and more likely to start out in the middle of the Doggy Rush Hour, we’ll be roaming the less fashionable boulevards bordered by Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s Way. There’s something to be said for dowdiness.

😉

What ARE you smokin’? And how do I get rid of you?

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Ever ask yourself those questions? Arrrhhhghhh!

Question # 1: Heaven help us, what are you smoking?

So this afternoon I’m  banging around the house as fast as I can bang, trying to catch up with all the chores that didn’t get done while I was traipsing back and forth across the Valley (40 minutes each way, 80 minutes round trip, two endless drives in exactly opposite directions, once to the Mayo and once back to the dermatologist in the wild) and flying through 31 pages of Chinglish academic language on an impossible deadline and on and on and unfuckinbelievably on trying to fix things that broke while all the medico-swimming pool BS was going on and trying to catch up with all the financial and household and… and the phone rings.

It’s Jim the Superannuated Pool Dude, the one who didn’t fix things and who got sent on his way when I called Swimming Pool Service & Repair to come drain the pool, power-wash every part of it inside and out with chlorine, refill it, and recharge the chemicals.

The pool, BTW, is beyond gorgeous today. Like…wow. Like this…

As opposed to this…


So, sez he, how’s the pool?

Great, sez I.

How much stabilizer did they put in?

Huh??? How the Hell would I know? I was batting from pillar to post across the city while the guy was spending his time wrestling with the damn thing.

Well, how much water does the pool hold?

Uhhmmm… 18,000 gallons. I think I’ve told you this only three times.

He should’ve put in 18 pounds. A pound per thousand gallons. Is that how much he put in?

Whaaaat?????? I wouldn’t know, Jim. I had other things to do than stand over the man’s shoulder and watch his every move.

Jim persists: I’ll come by at 6 tomorrow morning to test it. If they didn’t put in enough it’ll turn green again right away.

Uh huh.

Get off the phone, think about this, call Swimming Pool Service & Repair. Get ahold of Ashley, who gets ahold of Aaron, who says he put in four pounds, which is the amount you’re supposed to put in, and if this guy dumps another 14 pounds in there it will trash the chemical balance.

Who do I believe?

Three guesses.

Back on the phone to Jim, telling his answering machine that I believe I’ll wait on the added stabilizer, thankyouverymuch. So tomorrow morning he’d better not show up.

And what is he smoking? According to the people who have a vested interest in selling you the stuff, you should add 4 pounds of stabilizer per 10,000 gallons, so that would be about six or seven pounds for the particular hole in the ground into which to pour money that dwells in my backyard. However, the pool tabs I use to dispense chlorine also contain cyanuric acid (which is what stabilizer is), and so you’re better off to go a little light on dumping the stuff in, because (especially in this heat) if you apply too much, it will tie up the chlorine and you’ll get, yea verily, green water.

Aaron’s four-pound dose was maybe a little light…but 18 pounds is effing crazy!!!!!

So, on to….

Question #2: How do I get rid of you?

Gawdlmighty.

How do I get rid of the superannuated pool dude? Well, I’d like to be kind to him, because he’s been nice to me and seems like a sweet (if eccentric) old fella. Just as soon not tell him to get lost, but I suppose if I have to, I will… Called him, reached his recorded yakathon, told him I would be out at 6:00 tomorrow morning, and there’s no need to add more CYA to the pool.

Will that get rid of him?

Whaddaybet it won’t…

And in the “Get Lost” Department, how do I tell the Mayo Clinic never to let one of their quacks come anywhere near me again?

Holy Sh!t. So I traipse way to hell and gone out there, halfway to Payson from my house, to get a second opinion on the lesion on my left hand, which still hurts and which doesn’t exactly seem to be what you’d call healing up properly.

I want to know if this thing has been treated correctly, and if so, how long can I expect it will take before it heals fully, and one way or another what’s with the burning pain that courses from the wrist to the elbow and hurts so much it wakes me out of a sound sleep in the wee hours of the morning, and should I use the fluorouracil the dermatologist in the wild prescribed (which is going to fuck up the skin on my hand and possibly do permanent damage) or can I safely wait a while to see if any more lesions appear there?

So first thing they do is sit me in an examining room and send in a resident. I am to be this kid’s teaching moment. First thing she does is demonstrate that she has no clue how to take an accurate blood pressure measure. Then she asks me a lot of questions, which I answer quietly and patiently.

She goes off and I’m left sitting and staring into space for about 20 minutes, until Her Nibs shows up.

When the actual fully accredited medical doctor enters, I hand over the printout of the biopsy showing the abnormal results, repeat what I’ve already said once about the present state of the ailment, describe what has been done and what has been recommended, explain my reluctance to use the topical drug, and ask if it would be ill-advised to wait a while to see what happens before slathering the stuff on my hand.

Well. This woman beats around the bush and beats around the bush and beats around the bush. She does not answer any of the questions that I’ve asked her.

Finally at one point she says, “You seem anxious. Are you feeling anxious?”

WHAT? What DOES that have to do with the price of beans or the state of the lesion on my sweaty little paw?

I think and almost say (but no, do not: my mother didn’t raise me in a barn, after all) damn right I’m anxious, bitch! I came in here with three specific questions — is this thing healing up properly, why does my arm feel like I dipped it in a vat of sulfuric acid, and can I safely delay using a skin-scorching chemical on my hand until we see whether in fact any more of these things comes up — and you have not answered a one of them!

From the “are you anxious” she goes on to ask me if I’m considering committing suicide!!!!!

No fuckin’ joke!

I’m going to kill myself because I have a 2-millimeter sore on my hand? WTF?

During all of this roundabout, wacko palaver, she parts with one (count it, 1) bit of useful information: about the fluorouracil she remarks (these are her words): “We don’t usually use it unless there are a lot of lesions in an area — like 15.”

Fifteen? I’ve had two in this spot, the back of my hand. All told, over the past four to six months, Dermatologist in the Wild has removed four from distant spots all over my body, none of them clustered together.

“So,” I ask, “you’re saying that it’s not necessary to use this stuff at this time?”

“That’s your decision,” she says.

Yeah. That’s exactly what she said. Helpful, hm?

In awe, I’m thinking how the Hell did you get into medical school? And HOW the Hell did you get hired by the freaking Mayo Clinic????

She was, it must be allowed, an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Indeed, one of the two most beautiful human beings I’ve ever seen. Can you get through medical school by dint of pure, unalloyed gorgeousness?

Possibly so.

By the time I got down to my car in the basement parking garage, I’d gone from annoyed to fuming. And by the time I’d driven my car from the Mayo Clinic on the east side of Scottsdale to my house perched on the tracks, I’d gone from a low simmer to a full boil. What a total waste of my time…and to add insult to injury, this supposed dermatologist tries to do an amateur job of psychoanalysis on me?

This episode occurred 11 days ago.

Yesterday I got in to see Dermatologist in the Wild, almost as far on the west side as the Mayo is on the east side.

By now I’m using a certain magical mystery elixir on this thing — some fine CBD cream a friend brought over as a house gift. She handed it to me and, without even thinking, I slapped a dab on the sore thing, and…holy sh!t, the pain stopped right then!

Yeah. So I’ve kept on slathering it on — happened to have another jar of the stuff in the house. And it is starting to feel much, MUCH better.

Or else I’m just feeling no pain, though we’re told this stuff can’t soak through your hide and make you high.

Westside Dermatologist (a.k.a. Dermatologist in the Wild) looks at the spot on the paw, the one I’ve been slathering with the magical mystery cream, which I have carefully washed off before surfacing in her precincts.

So she gets out her speculum and peers at the damn thing and she says…. “This is AMAZING.”

I think “uh oh…amazing that it’s already progressed to terminal cancer?????”

“I can’t believe this!” she enthuses. “It’s perfectly healed up! It looks great!”

Uhmmm…who’d’ve thunk it…. 😀

Heh heh heh…naturally I failed to mention the presence of the quack nostrum to her.  But the instant I got home, I ordered up a four-ounce jar of the cream from some outfit called Eden’s Herbals.  Amazon doesn’t seem to carry it, but this place does, & the sales pitch looks almost credible.

Oh, effing em gee. Can you imagine?

At Amazon I found the heavy-duty sunscreen the dermatologist’s office recommends, at significantly less than said derm is peddling it for. Ordered up a bottle of that stuff, too.

Derm in the Wild said, when asked, that the burning pain up the right arm was not related to the lesion, but is probably some kind of neuritis. She suggested I ask my GP about it. I said well I have a checkup scheduled in October. She said fine. I asked if it would be reasonable to hold off applying the flesh-eating fluorouracil until we see if any more lesions appear on the back of the hand. Good plan, said she. She sprayed freezing nitrogen on two new lesions that have surfaced in other widely separated spots and explained, when asked, that all these things are popping up seemingly at once because I’m getting old and 74 years of sun exposure are catching up with me.

Little does she know I probably won’t ask her about a mosquito bite after this. But when I see Young Dr. Kildare, who’s scheduled in the near future, I’ll specifically  ask him about the arm pain. And…mercifully…YDK’s most sterling quality (besides his spectacular cuteness) is…are you ready? Common Sense.

I’m dead certain the pain has to do with our little surgical procedure, because placing an ice pack on the (ex-) lesion quickly makes the burning sensation go away. And because the lesion was located almost on top of where a nerve proceeds from your index & second finger, across the back of your hand, and up your arm…right where the pain goes. My guess is that while we were shaving off flesh to biopsy or while we were freezing off the lesion, we must have dinged a nerve or two. Whether it will ever heal remains to be seen.

So I’d better get used to going to bed early, in order to get in seven hours of sleep before this thing’s alarm clock goes off at 3:00 a.m.

Either that or commit suicide, hm? Take a flying leap off the North Rim…with an ice pack tied to my paw?

The Strangeness of Everyday Life

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Ever think that life gets hilariouser and hilariouser by the day?

Hilariouser: I use that term ironically….

A couple weeks ago, the Mayo sent a snail-mail letter — on a piece of paper, can you imagine? — saying that the address to which the credit union was sending my online bill payments was wrong, and asking if I would please change it.

Well, you can’t get into that feature from your computer. So yesterday morning I drive over to the credit union to ask if one of their tellers would please get into the system and correct the address. Understand: the Mayo’s address is something the CU has in its system; in theory I shouldn’t have to enter it at all. What this seems to suggest is that the CU itself has the wrong address, rather than that somehow five or six years ago I entered the wrong address.

My trusty banker dude, Justin, was promoted two or three months ago, leaving his station empty. So if a teller can’t deal with something, the only staff there who can has been the manager. But when I walked in, lo! There was a NEW LADY sitting at Justin’s desk. And wouldn’tcha know, the teller fobs me off on her.

I explain the situation…and as I’m doing so, realize that this dear soul is as dumb as the day is long. She just barely understands what I’m talking about.

Okay, she’s new on the job….but thank goodness she wasn’t on the job earlier this year, when I was dodging around the PayPal/BofA hassle. She gets on the phone, calls someone, and asks what to do. They tell her to get into my account and then they’ll show her how to change the address. So…instead of calling up my account on her computer the way Justin always did, she goes to the CU’s homepage and asks me to sign in on her computer with my username and password. She hands the keyboard across her desk and asks me to sign in.

What?????? I don’t have my password with me. My computer automatically signs me in, using one of the EIGHTEEN SINGLE-SPACED PAGES OF UNIQUE PASSWORDS that my web adventures have generated over the years. I haven’t the faintest idea what my password is.

So I walk out, having wasted a fair amount of my time driving up there. I’m so flabbergasted by how stupid she is — truly, an amoeba would have more power under the hood — that I’m not even mad as the proverbial cat. She’s so stupid she comes out as funny.

WHY, for godsake, would you put someone as dumb as a cow into a job like that?

So now, I guess, after this I’ll have to pay the Mayo by charging their bills on AMEX. That’s fine, actually…tho’ it’s a little extra hassle, I get a nice kickback from everything I charge on that card.

Onward to Costco…

Speaking of herds of cows… HOLY cow! 😀

Waited until yesterday to make this run, because usually Costco is not very crowded on Wednesday.

I guess that was more or less true, except…the people who were in the store were just freaking weird. I would be walking along in a straight line, obviously headed to a destination, and a ninny would drift into my path and then just stop there, blocking the way. You could see that they could see me…they just didn’t give a shit. Once…okay, I could deal with that. Twice…all right, something’s in the air. But this happened repeatedly! Everyplace I tried to go, there was some chucklehead blocking my way.

Don’t think I’ve ever had that experience there…or anywhere. It was just strange behavior. I was in no hurry, so it wasn’t like I was feeling touchy because I wanted to get going, or like I was setting people off by obviously being anxious to “get there first.”

Swimming Pool Service & Repair sent their guy over to set a pump in the pool and drain the water into the sewer connection. He was the chatty type…I learned a great deal about his life. That was fine: I had nothing else to do, and it was nice to chat with a human for a change.

As the water level dropped, it became ever more evident that the walls are festooned with algae. Honestly, I do NOT know how they’re going to beat that stuff. The problem is the heat in the water resulting from the stupid blue surface, which this guy acknowledged. I suggested we should paint it white (turns out you can paint that stuff). He was horrified. I told him my plan, if we can’t resolve the problem, is to fill in the pool and plant a tree there. Horrified some more. 😀 He believes the problem is chemical balance. I believe the problem is the PebbleSheen surface.

Heh…we’ll soon see who’s right!

Pool (still…literally)/Home Depot Rescue/Doggy Miracle

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So tomorrow the Swimming Pool Service & Repair crew is supposed to come over to drain the pool and start a massive cleanup. Nothing that I’ve done has halted the steady swampification of the water, which now looks like something that should harbor a Creature from the Black Lagoon. You can barely see the drain covers in the deep end.

Frankly, I’ll be surprised if this Great Deswamping works, because I believe the problem is the heat evinced by dark color of the unfortunate PebbleSheen surface, whose application was one of the great errors of my home-owning career.

My son came over yesterday and tried to persuade me to cancel this project. He’s convinced the problem can be solved by the application of a few bottles of Clorox. I explained that Clorox IS liquid chlorine, which I have applied to the tune of several dozen gallons. Yesterday I ran out of liquid chlorine and out of money, so started using the granulated chlorine remaining in the shed. This, I applied along about 2 in the afternoon, after having poured in my last gallon about 7 this morning. By the time M’hijito arrived, around 6:30 the chlorine level was down to nil — meaning enough to last 2 1/2 days was gone in 4 1/2 hours.

Mr. Johnson, the former health inspector and pool chemical guru, says that kind of chlorine consumption is the result of the chlorine interacting with organic matter in the water — meaning algae, leaves, dead insects, sweat, pee, whatever. When Cl disappears that fast, it means organic matter is high — which we know from testing the water, too.

So, hope springing eternal, I had dropped Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner in there and along with the nuclear blast of chlorine. He did at least vacuum up the algae clinging to the floors and walls, but that decidedly does not mean they’re gone. They’re just in the filter, inside Harvey, and floating in the water.

Just now the pump is off, the motionless emerald-green water is opaque as fog, and we await a miracle.

We shall see if SPS&R’s scheme works. I’ll be very surprised if it does. I think we need to apply an algaecide such as YellowOut, which entails a cleaning the filter ($150), then dumping chlorine and the algae-killing chemical in a carefully calibrated ratio, running the pump 24 hours (again) for another couple of days, then cleaning the filter again ($150, again).

In other fields of minor catastrophes…

The back door’s latch set fell apart — its handle came off. Appeared that a set screw had fallen out and probably gotten vacuumed up and then tossed in the trash. Sooo… I drove over to my favored locksmith, a venerable operation in these parts, where I figured I could buy a set screw to fit a Kwikset door handle.

Guy sez, “Wellllll….. We can’t know what size set screw without seeing the cylinder that it fits in.” So, since (obviously) I can’t take the whole damn thing out of the door to traipse it over to their shop, I arrange to have a locksmith come over and fix it.

That would be, we might conclude, exactly what he had in mind.

On the way home, I think… “I’ll bet Home Depot has a set screw that will fit Kwikset hardware.” So drive up there. Find exactly the same door handle set on the shelf. Ask if they can sell me a set screw.

HD guy sez, “Chances are you don’t need a screw. These things are known to work themselves up into the cylinder, not out. All you have to do is put the handle back in place and rotate the screw back outward.”

“What size screwdriver will I need?” I ask, thinking I may or may not have one that’s small enough.

“You need a hex wrench. Here: take this. Bring it back the next time you come in.”

Jaw drops.

“Thanks!” say I, fleeing before anyone can catch me.

And…darned if it didn’t work! The handle is now FIXED! For free. Not for a $100+ service call…

Think o’ that….

It was this lock & safe outfit’s guy who, I remain convinced, lifted my cardholder full of credit and Medicare cards when he was here rescuing the office deadbolt from the key I broke off inside it. Thank goodness at least I didn’t have my driver’s license in there. But…it never resurfaced, and the last time I had it was when I was standing in the living room forking an AMEX card over to that guy. I’m dead sure he took it, because if he hadn’t, sooner or later it would have surfaced.

The dog and I set out at quarter after five this morning. It was gorgeous outside. The heat seems to have broken a little, at least for the time being, so that early morning is a lovely time to walk two miles. And because the sun is coming up a bit later now, too, you don’t get the glare in your eyes as you’re strolling eastward.

A-n-n-n-d…in the small miracles department, Ruby the Corgi has lost a pound or two during all these early-morning walks through 90-degree heat, the result being that her little harness no longer fits her. She’s figured out how to wiggle free of it, and now does so regularly. So yesterday after she’d weaseled loose, I hooked her leash to her collar…expecting about 3/4 of a mile of mighty fight. But…but NAY! she trotted right along like she was a normal, leash-trained dawg!

Whaaaa???? We have that harness because she has, in the past, put up such a fight that she would hurt her neck and throat and bring on violent episodes of reverse-sneezing…which is really just a symptom of collapsed trachea. (“Just”…holeee gawd…)

Well. This was a switch.

Snapping the leash to her collar is a far cry from having to wrestle a squirming dog into a harness, secure it, and attach a leash. So I tried the collar-snap-on again this morning, and lo! The whole two-mile junket was accomplished as though she were a normal, sane dog. She did not try to trap the matched pair of labs. She didn’t try to pounce the Gay Guy’s miniature mutts. She didn’t even indulge a lunging frenzy at the Shi-Tzu Lady’s annoying fluff-ball. Nothing!

Admittedly, we didn’t come across her pal Sammy (the world’s silliest-looking pound puppy). But Sammy is benign and will not hurt her if she annoys him. Soooo…. It looks like wonders really DO never cease.

The Big Pool Decision: Stay or Go?

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Am I crazy? This idea is beginning to make more and more sense to me: Get rid of the backyard swimming pool. Tear it out and replace it with a nice xeriscapic garden.

You’ll recall that I drew out about 10 grand to resurface the pool, since its 16-year-old plaster was coming off in divots. I elected to have Swimming Pool Service & Repair, my favorite pool dudes, apply PebbleSheen in a dark blue color.

BIG mistake. Actually, it’s the biggest mistake I’ve made in 40 years of homeownership. The dark color absorbs so much solar heat that the water temp is about at bathtub level, which cultivates algae and bacteria in vast legions. The water is hazy with microorganisms, the walls — whose surface is now too coarse to brush effectively — grow coats of mustard algae, and the only way to control that seems to be to apply several gallons of liquid chlorine every day and to run the circulation through the main drain 24/7.

Well, running that pump 24 hours a day jacked up the power bill by $100, and that doesn’t reflect what it will cost to run it like that for 30 days — we’ve only been doing this for a little over two weeks. The Depot charges $6.87 for two gallons of liquid chlorine, and the soda ash runs…I don’t recall offhand, but I think I paid $50 for the last bucket of it from Leslie’s. None of these efforts works for more than a few hours.

I can’t afford to pay some $215 a month for chlorine ($6.87 x 31 days) plus maybe $200 extra a month on the power bill plus God only knows how much more for other chemicals and $50 per visit from the only pool guy who seems to have anything like a clue. I can’t swim in the pool — can’t go in it with the chlorine levels through the stratosphere, nor do I care to jump into water that looks like someone poured Starlac into it. And trying to deal with this stuff has me out there about once an hour from dawn to dusk, struggling with the thing. I’m pouring stupid amounts of money and annoying amounts of unavailing work into a hole in the ground that I can’t even use.

By the way: Yes, I do know how to maintain a swimming pool. I’ve been doing it for 16 years in this house and did it for 10 years in another house. NEVER did I have problems that even vaguely approach this fiasco.

So…I’m now seriously thinking that the time has come to have the pool demolished and filled in. Jackhammering out the KoolDeck, replacing it with desert landscaping, and planting a specimen Desert Museum paloverde in dirt dumped into the hole would make a nice garden out there, and it would require almost zero maintenance. I figure the project would cost about 10 grand. This, since I just spent that much to have the goddamn thing resurfaced, is in the “holy sh!t” category.

However…assuming the current expenses continue, on average, then the job would pay for itself in about two years. Videlicet: assuming an average electric bill increase of $150/month (if the issue subsides enough that it’s unnecessary to run the pump 24 hours a day in the winter), the annual cost of chlorine, power, soda ash, and service from the pool guys would come to $5556. If it “only” costs $10,000 to fill in the pool, the savings on the present out-of-control costs would be made up in one year and nine months (1.79 years).

Since the pump is unlikely to hold up very much longer under the current abuse, this figure is no doubt conservative. It doesn’t count the cost of water to keep the thing topped up, or the $150 every three or four months to have someone come and clean the filter. Or the cost of draining it and refilling with clean water every few years.

Am I crazy? Yes, no, maybe??

I realize that removing the pool will damage the property value of the house. However…

  • With any luck at all, I intend to live in this house until I die. I figure that will be another 10 to 12 years.
  • Lowering the property value will also lower the property taxes, which are pushing the limit of what I can afford to pay, especially with the mad gentrification going on in the neighborhood now.
  • Some buyers don’t want a pool, and so the proposition that no pool = lower sale price is questionable.
  • If I do manage to stay in the house until I croak over, then what do I care how much it will sell for?
  • Less property management labor will mean I can afford to stay in the house longer, which will keep living expenses down.

Is that a sane calculation?

And where will the ten thousand dollars come from? Well, I can either draw it down out of investments (which I’d prefer not to do) or I could take out a loan against the house. I already have a $3,000 line of credit at the beloved credit union. I’m sure they’d lend me ten grand without a blink. Right now the interest rate on a home equity loan is 5%; they’re too cagey to post the rates for personal loans. For that matter, the Copyeditor’s Desk has ten grand just sitting right there in its little bank account.

I don’t want to do something stupid and self-destructive out of frustration. What do you think about the advisability of this scheme?

Dodging the Bullets?

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Once again, an outbreak of our nation’s public mental illness: madmen shooting everybody in sight. And as we know from experience, whenever one  nutcase picks up his fake AK-47 and blows away a bunch of innocents, every other crazy in the country thinks that’s a grand idea, so we can be pretty sure one incident will be followed by at least one more. That’s what happened this time…so far it’s only one copycat shooting. But the night is young…

Do you find yourself taking steps to avoid the line of fire when these outbreaks of lunacy occur? I sure do.

During the time we were living in London so I could do research for a book, the IRA was holding forth. They were extremely violent, and they favored bombs. They liked to make their point, such as it was, by killing not just British soldiers but British civilians. One of their favorite tricks was to drop a time bomb into a post box. The perp would be long gone by the time the thing went off, sending metal shrapnel as well as flaming mail in all directions. Many people I knew would not walk on the same side of the street where a post box was located, or if they saw one down the block, would cross the road before they got to it.

This was just one the various strategies the citizenry used to avoid being blown to kingdom come. People would avoid going to pubs known to be frequented by soldiers and stay away from various public events.

So the question is, what steps do Americans take to stay out of the lunatics’ crosshairs?

The day after the Dayton massacre, I needed to go to Home Depot. And I’ll tellya: I really was given pause. Unfortunately the need was pressing: I really didn’t have time to order online and wait several days for the product to be delivered. One of the things I tend to do, when these spates of madness are in progress, is stay out of big box stores, but I reluctantly drove up there — on a Monday, when I expected any perps would figure fewer targets would be around.

So what, if anything, can you do to protect yourself?

  • Stay out of big-box stores, especially Costco, Target, Home Depot, and Lowe’s
  • Whenever possible, order necessaries from Amazon
  • Avoid sporting events
  • Stay out of shopping malls
  • Avoid crowded popular venues such as nightclub districts, beaches, county fairs, and boardwalks
  • Avoid public transit, especially during rush hours
  • Be observant; watch for any behavior that looks out of whack and leave or take cover before the person can launch into action
  • Know your surroundings well enough to identify obstacles or hiding places that could provide cover.

No, I do not carry a pistol with me, even though Arizona is a concealed-carry state. Nor do I carry pepper spray. Too unlikely that, under stress, I could deploy these in time to do any good. Unless you have nerves of steel and a steady aim, discretion is no doubt the better part of valor, when it comes to toting your own weapons around with you.

Thank God I don’t have a child today. It’s hard to imagine why any young person would deliberately choose to bring children into this fine world of ours. And apparently many of them can’t imagine it: US birth rates continue to drop.

If I did have a child, I would seriously consider home-schooling. I’m quite sure I would not like sending a kid into a school that looks like a federal penitentiary, where classmates are trained in the skill of avoiding bullets and parents are now buying “bullet-proof” back packs in the forlorn hope that such silliness will protect their children.

When I was a kid in San Francisco and in Southern California, our schools had regular air-raid drills. Everyone knew how farcical these were: the high school I attended had entire walls made of glass: windows that extended three stories high, on each end of the building. “Duck and cover” meant “bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass good-bye.” My San Francisco junior high school had a plan to evacuate kids by bus down the peninsula, where in the event of a miracle they would be reunited (maybe) with any surviving family members who managed to find them. You could opt to have your kids sent home — on foot — which my mother chose to do. This involved having to cross Junipera Serra Boulevard, which as everyone knew would be bumper to bumper with panicked drivers, none of whom would be about to stop long enough to let a little kid run across eight lanes of traffic and a streetcar track.

These exercises were utterly terrifying. I used to have nightmares about air raids. Regularly. They were horrifying and kept me scared most of the time.

And that was for a hypothetical: Maybe, maybe someday Russia would act on a suicidal impulse and start World War III.

Right.

What we have now is not a hypothetical: it’s real and it’s immediate.

So how are you coping? What strategies do you use to help keep yourself safe? Or do you?