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Pool Refill Day(s)

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Gerardo is running on mañana time this morning. He was supposed to surface at 7 a.m.; it’s after 8. Hope he hasn’t had trouble with his truck or trailer. More likely, the trouble is getting the cousins (his employees) out of the rack and on the road. 😀 WhatEVER, this was not the best of all possible days for him to announce he’s coming to clean up the front-and-back 40: two hoses have been running all night to refill the pool, and will be all day. So his men will have to stumble around hoses stretched from the west side and the south side into the pool, and signs reading “por favor, no aqague el agua“: very likely a cryptic message, since it was disgorged by Google’s translator.

I have to leave in an hour or so. Since I likely won’t be here to direct the show, I decided to pull up the mound of dead Mexican primrose in the backyard. Exactly why this particular bed of plants decided to die just now escapes me. They’re sort of semi-perennial. They do die back….but not usually at this time of year. The whole hill of the things had melted down into a pile of hay.

At any rate, now I won’t have to argue with him — or physically be here — to be sure he doesn’t eradicate the other flowering plants and the bulbs that recently came up in that spot.

As I was pulling up dead plants, a thought occurred to me: Y’know…it’s hard to believe i’ve been here long enough that the pool actually needed to be replastered!

It’s kinda amazing that I’m here at all, after Tony the Romanian Landlord — known in FaM precincts as “the Perp” — terrorized my lawyers and a judge to such an extreme that they urged me to sell this house — like…three weeks after I’d purchased it in cash from the sale of my old house — and flee, brushing my tracks with palm fronds.

Even if I could have afforded to do that — I decidedly could not have — I’m not that easily scared. Truly, it was a matter of make my day, White Dude! If he’d come around while I was here, he wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. And when his poor deluded son-in-law did try to come in the side gate, surprising a large German shepherd…well… Let me put it this way: a workman came by and told me there was a guy sitting in the driveway two houses down rocking himself and weeping.

Yes. Well. Sorry about that.

Later — years later — I learned that the people who sold me this house moved because they were afraid of Tony. Other neighbors nearby remained but have said they were afraid of him, too.  They think he’s some kind of Eastern European mafioso.

LOL! That glorifies the man a bit much. If you were a mafioso, a) you would not be sweeping the airport floors as your day job and b) you would not work anywhere near as hard as Tony works at his rental empire. You have to hand that to him: he’s one helluva hard-working man.

Tony was an air traffic controller in the Old Country. His English wasn’t good enough to get him a similar job here, so he ended up working as a janitor. At the airport. That notwithstanding, he engineered, by dint of some elaborate story-telling to various mortgage lenders, the purchase of half-a-dozen houses in our neighborhood, plus at least a couple more in the more downscale area north of Gangbanger’s Way, all of which he turned into rentals. He bought these before the run-up in real estate prices and then, apparently advised by a savvy investor, sold them at the very height of the Bubble. So he made a nice chunk of dough at the expense of the neighbors, whose property values (as you can imagine) were not helped by having every third house turned into a rental shack.

At any rate, as a result of a quarrel over the maintenance of these properties, Tony vandalized my pool to the tune of about 12 grand. The insurance covered the entire cost of replastering and repairing the pool equipment…so…thankyouverymuch, I got a brand-new plaster job and Tony got a threat of deportation from two of the biggest bruiser cops you’ve ever seen in your life. I don’t know what they really said to him (they claimed they calmly pointed out to him that if they chose to arrest him he would be enjoying early retirement back in Romania), but whatever it was, they put the fear of God into him. And Anna put the fear of Dog into his demented son-in-law, who since has moved out.

The plain white plaster I chose — because that was what the insurance would cover and because I’d been told PebbleTec is hard on your feet and your pool cleaner — was warranteed for 10 years. That was 15 years ago.

So the stuff has lasted a good long time!

This new stuff, a kinder gentler version of PebbleTec called “PebbleSheen,” supposedly lasts upwards of 20 years. By then I’ll either be dead and gone or moved to the old-folkerie, so barring any new squabbles with the local bully, it should be good for the rest of the time I’m in this house. If my son inherits the place, it should last him several years, too.

Water has been running into the pool from both the side and the back faucets since yesterday and it’s not half full. I’ll need to turn one of the spigots off and the other one down while I’m running around the city today (once you start, you can’t stop the water, lest you mark the new plaster with a permanent water line). So it probably will be tomorrow morning before the pool is filled back up to the tile border.

Though I surely would prefer not to have to spend 10 grand on the plastering job plus God Only Knows how much on the water to refill the thing, nevertheless I’m feeling pretty pleased with it. The blue stony stuff is going to look really nice. Plus the guys revamped the plumbing system so that Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner can be plugged into a pipe on the north wall, rather than having to be stuck into the strainer inlet. This means the strainer basket will be in place at all times, allowing the flowing water to direct floating debris into it, meaning I don’t have to take the filter basket apart every couple of days to clean it out. And rather little blown debris sinks to the bottom when Harvey isn’t occupying the strainer-basket inlet. It’ll be a lot easier to take care of — mostly just a matter of keeping the chemicals balanced, which is ludicrously easy.

Cassie is feeling well enough to bark(!!), probably signalling the arrival, in the distance, of Gerardo’s truck. And so, away!

Hallowe’en Doggy Update

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Welp, Cassie the Corgi is not yet among the Undead. She had a pretty good time last night greeting young trick-or-treaters, though she fell asleep before the flood of kiddies subsided. This was OK: Ruby took over the job of loving up each and every kid and their parents, aunts, uncles, and friends.

Is she better? Quite a lot. She rarely coughs now, and when she does it’s very mild, a single huff or two. She’s a little livelier. She’s come out of the bathroom nest and usually parks herself near the human. The urinary incontinence is gone, the tragic look is gone. She’s gained back the weight she lost. She’s sleeping through the night, and she’s taken up barking again.

Is she well? Nope, not by a long shot. Though she’s back to her normal 21 pounds or so, she does look misshapen and strange. This can be a symptom of Cushing’s disease, which could be brought on either by the alleged tumor in her adrenal gland or simply by the prednisone she was given. If it were a side effect of the prednisone, though, you’d expect it to start clearing up by now. I wish I’d known the potential side effects were as extreme as they are; I would never have given it to her. And I do wish the vet had clued me that her cough might have been managed with over-the-counter human cough medicine. She probably has recovered from the fluconazole side effects, at least to the degree that she’s going to. And she seems to have thrown off the side effects of the doxycycline, although she’s releases a Great Flood every time she goes outside to pee. On the other hand, she drinks a lot more water than normal. She’s still weak and indolent — doesn’t want to get up and walk around the house, and most certainly can’t be taken on a doggy-walk.

Do I think she’s long for this world? Probably not. The median life span for a dog her size is 12.2 years. She’s right there. In fact, she may be older than that. Under the best of circumstances, no matter how much longer she lives, she’ll be living as an “old” dog.

I can’t afford a lot of expensive treatment for a dog. When I got Cassie, I had a job…and yes, I could afford vet bills, within reason. No longer! At this point, I certainly can’t afford the bills that already, pointlessly, indeed harmfully have run up in excess of a thousand dollars. So…no, she’s not getting surgery for the supposed tumor on her adrenal gland. I don’t have another thousand dollars (plus, plus, plus, plus….) to throw into keeping a dog alive indefinitely at the end of its normal allotted lifespan. Not that I don’t love my dog and I don’t want her to live forever. But that I think it’s as cruel to keep a sick and aged dog alive, just as it is cruel to keep a hopelessly sick and aged human alive.

And honi soit qui mal y pense.

Every time I think about this, I get angrier at the first vet, who foisted the prednisone on her, delivered a dire diagnosis based on a guess (without considering whether the symptoms in question could have been side effects of the prednisone), and then put her on a drug that damn near killed her.

This guy used to be one of the finest vets in the Valley. Then one day when I called his office, I got put on hold and serenaded with one of those endless blab-a-thon advertising tapes typical of chain veterinaries. You know: first the list of scary-sounding things that can happen to your pet and then the pitch for all the services the veterinary offers and then the hustle for this, that, and the other unnecessary extra treatment and service and then the “did you know?” insulting Q&A time-waster, yakity yakity yakity yakity…. These are typical of the veterinary chain operations, so I surmised that he must have bought into one of those.

And yeah: he’s not so young anymore. He needs to save up for retirement (no, believe it or not veterinarians do not earn all that much). So it makes sense that he’d up the amplitude and sell out to a chain that might pay him a guaranteed salary or percentage. Personally, I really dislike those chain clinics and avoid doing business with them. But this was my favorite dog doc, and it would take a lot to dislodge me from him.

But in the past I’ve not had him hustle me for unnecessary treatments, emit incorrect diagnoses whose purpose seem to be to put the animal on expensive and inappropriate medications, or try to persuade me of things that are overtly, obviously incorrect.

Whatever.

Whether Cassie will ever fully recover is doubtful. I think she’ll die of old age before that happens. Or of Cushing’s disease, assuming the diagnosis of an adrenal tumor is correct. But at least for the moment she doesn’t seem to be unduly uncomfortable.

Skeeters! How to keep mosquitoes out of your potted plants

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The ’Hood is overrun with mosquitoes after the recent rains. Despite harangues from the County Health Department about cleaning up standing water in the backyard, it seems like we’re enjoying a LOT more skeeters than usual. The City’s clever alley-paving project contributes handsomely to the problem: wherever the workers left low spots, rainwater collects into long-lasting puddles…and in Arizona mosquito eggs can hatch and the babes fly off to chew on their victims in just two or three days. Nor is the situation helped by the guy who lives catty-corner across the alley: not the type to run around dumping water out of standing containers and old tires. Inside the house, though, a less obvious hatchery lurks: the drip dishes under your potted plants.

When you water the plant, of course, excess moisture drains into the dish…and conveniently not onto your floor or tabletop. If the bottom of the pot pretty well covers the bottom of the dish, you may not notice that water can collect there for quite some time — plenty of time for the little ladies to spawn a few dozen flying, biting babes. The other day a friend remarked that there seemed to be more skeeters in the family room than anywhere else in the Funny Farm. Hmmm…we have four potted plants in here, two of them too heavy for me to budge.

With her helping out, the two of us lifted the larger ones out of their pottery nests and LO! there were icky, stagnant puddles beneath both of them. Even though I’d salted the plants’ soil with crumbled-up Bacillus thuringiensis dunk, it seems not to have done the trick.

So: here’s the not-so-very-damned-uselessly-PC trick:

• First, clean out the drip dishes. Wash well, removing any mold and algae growing in there. Dry them well.

• Next: sprinkle in a layer of coarse gravel. I happen to have a whole front yard full of this stuff, thanks to the xeric landscaping. But you can buy some, if need be, at an aquarium supply store, a big box store, or the ever-present Amazon. (Wouldn’cha know? Amazon has 35 pages of the stuff!) Pat the gravel down to make it level.

• Now: you want to saturate these stones with non-organic, non-environmentally friendly dish detergent. Dawn is a sure bet. Dawn detergent kills bugs on contact. Dilute it well with water in a spray bottle, and squirt the diluted detergent onto the gravel layer. This  strategy makes the stuff easy to apply to the gravel and unlikely to harm most houseplants.

• And finally: set the plants back in the clean dishes, on top of the layer of soapy gravel.

Et voilà! This accomplishes two purposes with…heh…one stone. First, the Dawn in there will kill any baby mosquitoes that get deposited in the drip water. And second, by lifting the pot up a fraction of an inch, the gravel allows more air to circulate so that drip water evaporates faster and is less given to lingering long enough for mosquito eggs to hatch.

Exit the woodpile!

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Or part of it, anyway. One of my choir friends, a feisty Minnesotan for whom winter would be nothing without some wood snapping and crackling in the fireplace, has had her eye on the piles of firewood SDXB left in my backyard. It has sat out here for the 14 years since he moved to Sun City (sorry, no: no fireplaces in Sun City!), and I have wished it gone most of that time. So I was delighted when she came over yesterday and loaded almost half of it into her vehicle and carted it off.

Even more delighted were we both to find no sign of termites in the stuff! It’s just been sitting out here on the ground, and frankly since Arizona is the Home of the Termite, I just assumed it was full of the little gals. But no! Nary a bug. My neighbor Terri lives in fear of bugs in general, so I imagine her exterminator has been laying down a strip of spray along her side of the wall where the wood has been stacked. It probably seeped under the wood by capillary action.

I’d dearly love to give her the rest of it, and indeed would cheerfully pay Gerardo to haul it over to her place. But she seemed to think she was carrying away enough to fill the space available.

😉 A wood-burning fireplace or stove is dandy…when it’s in someone else’s house. My shack does have a fireplace, and when I moved in I thought hot diggety. SDXB used to fire up his and keep it fired up all winter — he dearly loves sitting in front of a fireplace. And yes, I know: no-burn days. Right. People who are determined will use their fireplaces anyway…and really, last I heard there were only two fireplace cops in the entire county (which is larger than Los Angeles County). The only way they’re going to catch you is if some neighbor complains, which would require the county employee to show up at night or on a weekend. Fat chance!

But personally, I do not at all care for the way the fireplace stinks up the entire house. Le parfum de combustion really isn’t to my taste. And even more not to my taste? The chore of having to clean out the damn fireplace. What a job!

So one day I had a chimney sweep come over, clean out the chimney thoroughly, put a bird screen over the top, and then closed up the damper and have never used it again. Never missed it, either.

It’s never cold enough here for one to feel that nothing will do but an open fireplace. A space heater works a lot better for the purpose, anyway. The smoke from hundreds and thousands of (illegal) fireplaces does pour the smog into the air — the Valley sits under a temperature inversion during most of the winter. And so it’s kinda nice to feel politically correct while freeing oneself from a lot of hauling, chopping, and cleaning hassle.

Corgi: The Saga Continues!

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Well…this is pretty amazing. I’ll tellya…even though I hoped for SOMETHING good, I sure wouldn’t have expected this.

  • Cassie the Corgi, after about 40 hours off the UTI meds, is almost 100% back to her old doggy self. I’d put her at about 95% improved.
  • The cough is gone. As in GONE gone, not “gone under most circumstances.”
  • The UTI (urinary tract infection) cleared up within three days after I started giving her the doxycycline.
  • Within 24 hours of quitting the doxycycline, the malign side effects began to fade. And 36 hours later: unnoticeable by the human.
  • The labored breathing: absent. She’s breathing normally: no straining, no hyperventilating, no apparent pain. (Difficulty breathing is a side effect of doxycycline in dogs.)
  • The corgi bark: BACK IN BUSINESS. Never thought the sound of a yapping dog could be music to one’s ears… But yea verily: not only is she barking as usual, she is not plunging into a coughing fit every time she has a yip to yap.
  • Stoned lethargy: pretty much gone.
  • Suspected pain: well hidden, if not disappeared.
  • Interest in Life, the Universe, and All That: very close to normal.

Does she have adrenal cancer? Could be. Couldn’t we all? This is an elderly dog. When you get to be an elderly anything, you do not deny the possibility that something will carry you away. Any day now. And we are not afraid of that, because we know nothing lasts forever and that does not scare us.

That notwithstanding, one bears in mind that 50% of mysterious growths on the mammalian renal gland are benign. So: it could be nothing. If it’s “something,” then that is not surprising and because we are not surprised, we can cope.

So I have a call in to 2ndOvet — second opinion vet, the one who does not altogether buy the Valley fever theory and who said the dog needed to be treated for a urinary tract infection when 1stOvet claimed the test results said otherwise, yes the very 2ndOvet who begged to differ by remarking that the UTI lab numbers came back as high as they can get.

Virtually every drug I’ve given this dog has made the dog sick, including a drug for something that was real (i.e., the observable, testable, provable UTI). Let us recall all that I and many others have had to say about the pernicious influence of Big Pharma on the practice of medicine, and consider the fact that said influence extends to veterinary practice. And then let us consider the effect of inflicting two or three drugs on the pooch.

Of interest, isn’t it?

Begins to make Christian Science (yea verily, the faith of my — very long-lived — ancestors) look almost sane.

{sigh}

So. Cassie did not, after all, get driven to the vet’s office to be dispatched to her Maker this morning. As things stand, as of 12:28 in the afternoon of Monday, October 29, it does not appear that she will make any such journey. Indeed, it looks a great deal like she will be helping to stuff small children with candy from the neighbor’s driveway, come the day after tomorrow.

Happy (Amazing!) Hallowe’en!
y
Dia de los Muertos!

Doggy Update

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Cassie lives.

I’d put an exclamation point after that, except that she doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about that development.

When I got home from choir around 12:30, she was…uhm…ambulatory. She looked a little perkier. She’d lost the Tragic expression… Now she has the “This Is All Your Goddamn Fault” expression. No kidding: she’s giving me a Look that would curl your toes.

On the other hand, at least “All Your Fault” is better than “Go Dig My Grave.”

So…okay. She’s still alive. She’s still lethargic. But she is moving around to a degree, which is better than she was doing before. Clearly she’s not well. But she seems possibly, perhaps slightly LESS not well than she was some hours ago.

We shall see what happens as the effects of the doxycycline and the Benadryl wear off — if they wear off.

So I have to go sing at Compline this evening, and before then the dogs and I are climbing onto the bed for a little nap, since the human cannot be accused of having collected much sleep last night. Cassie will get fed again before the human exits and will NOT be dosed with any drugs. That will give us 24 hours without dope. If we’re no less miserable then than we are now, the human will take that as a moderately good sign. Then, if we live through the night, it will be interesting to see what state (if any) she’s in tomorrow morning, after 36 drug-free hours…

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments, emails, and phone calls! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥