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Spraying

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At last. Only a year late and a dollah short, I’m finally getting around to spray-painting the beloved wicker chairs that live on the side deck.

These things are now almost 30 years old. I got them shortly after I moved into the last house, and I lived there 15 years. Of course, they had to come with me when I moved…and I’ve now been here around 14 years.

Their particular charm? They’re REAL wicker.

Which is to say, they’re ludicrously comfortable to sit in.

I don’t think they even make “wicker” chairs out of real wicker anymore. They’re all that weather-proof stuff, which is great in terms of lasting power…but which is a) ludicrously expensive and b) ludicrously uncomfortable. I have yet to find a chair made of that stuff that feels good to sit in. As a matter of fact, as we scribble my back is hurting in the backyard weatherproof fake-wicker chairs.

This is probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve refreshed the white paint on those things.

Which brings us to the new-fangled joys of the goddamn paint available on today’s politically correct market. Again.

This fine Rustoleum — same brand I’ve always used, purchased at the same ineffable Home Depot warehouse — does. not. cover.

As in does NOT EFFING COVER AT ALL.

Where Ruby chewed off the ends of a pair of rockers, I’d sanded and fashioned “end caps,” as it were, out of plastic wood. Nice idea except the damn “caps” fall off if you look crooked at them. So this morning I threw them out and just sanded the shortened rockers nice and smooth.

I don’t know what these fine Pier One chairs are made of, but it looks sort of like…oh…cardboard pulp, maybe? It doesn’t have a grain. It’s soft, kind of…mushed-together-looking stuff. The ONLY reason these superb pieces of furniture have survived all these years is that they’ve never been directly exposed to the elements. They’re not only under cover, but every time real weather comes in, I dart outside and drag the things into the house. So they’ve never once been rained on or sprinklered on.

Okay. I’ve sanded off the chewed rockers and also gently rubbed each entire chair down to bat off peeling and chipping paint, which seems to occur as a result of wear and extreme temperature.

Now flip a chair upside down, spray the Rustoleum over the rockers, and then go on about my business covering the backside of the chair and then…and then…and then glance up at the rocker and see I’ve failed to cover the end of the rocker with paint.

Say what?

I just coated that thing.

The paint is SUCH GODDAMN SHIT that it doesn’t even cover enough to stain the toilet-roll-cardboard-that-is-the-rocker white! Not even FAINTLY fuckin’ white.

Well, dayum…

I spray it again. Wait for it to partially dry.

It barely covers. At least it doesn’t look like it’s never even been touched by the effluent of a spray nozzle. But…it’s not white.

I had to spray coat after coat after coat after COAT to even begin to cover the sanded ends OR the tiny spots where the old paint had chipped off the wicker.

Fortunately I foresaw this, now being inured to Life in the Fuckin’ Brave New World, and bought FOUR cans of white spray paint. Normally one can will cover one of the chairs. But instinct told me…better overstocked than mad as a cat…

“EVEN STICKS TO PLASTIC,” Rustoleum crows on its paint can.

Well, yeah.

I usually cover my right hand — the sprayin’ hand — with a latex glove, but since I don’t normally get my left hand in the paint, I left it ungloved.

Error.

So I get into the paint. And now I can’t get the damn stuff off. No amount of scouring with a stiff nail brush will remove the damn paint from the painted paw.

Finally I resort to cooking oil.

You know how duct tape is the Home Handyman’s Secret Weapon? Well…cooking oil is the Home Handywoman’s Secret Weapon. Cooking oil will remove almost anything from any surface that does not absorb oil. Such as, say, your paws.

After soaking in oil and scouring again with Dawn (always get the original blue kind, not the politically correct kind), most (but not all) of the paint came off the sore, angry hands.

Remember how you used to be able to turn a half-empty spray paint can upside down, squirt until only air came out, and then turn it back upright and it would be usable for another spray-painting frenzy?

No more. Nay verily.

When you try that with one of these clever new cans of Rustoleum, the damn thing just KEEPS ON SPRAYING. Thus you cannot save the remnants of a can of paint for a new project, or for a second coat later on. Because of course the spray doodad clogs up, and you are DONE spraying from that can.

Which is the case just now…

Doggy Diagnosis

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So, here we are back from the vet — WonderVet, we might add. He took one look at the dog and said: “abscessed tooth.”

There’s a suspicion I’d have preferred not to have had confirmed. As I mentioned earlier in the day: a look at her big back-of-the-jaw bone-crunching fang shows that it’s not in good shape.

He said it’s not uncommon for a tooth abscess to present this way in a dog.

Fortunately, this is a vet with common sense and an underdeveloped sense of greed. He said there are two possible courses of action:

• A root canal, which has to be done by a specialist
• Extract the tooth

I asked if there was any real advantage to a root canal and, presumably, a crown (no joke: one friend’s dog was actually given crowns). He said that if I took the dog to the veterinary dental specialist, the guy would give me all sorts of great reasons…but that in fact there really is no advantage. He said the dog’s teeth might migrate over time. I pointed out the dog is over 11 years old…they’d have to gallop to do her much harm between now and the time Gabriel’s horn sounds for her. He allowed as to how that is exactly so. Asked which he recommended, he said extraction is the best strategy: less stressful for the dog and it doesn’t cost $2500.

Root canals on your dog. Dayum! Once again: we are in the wrong business, my friends.

Other vets have thought her teeth were in fine condition; I haven’t had them professionally cleaned (mostly because that way lies fleecing). He said professionally cleaning a dog’s teeth would not stop her from developing an abscess. But he will throw in a tooth cleaning, long as he has her knocked out. They also will do bloodwork and a cardiac test, so she’ll get a very thorough middle-aged dog exam.

So, there we are: that should set me back another thousand bucks. {sigh}

Exeunt Ruby, Stage Left

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Ruby the Corgi is vacationing at my son’s house, keeping Charley the Golden Retriever company and taking a break from Cassie the Corgi. And I feel like a boulder has been lifted from my shoulders.

My poor little Cassie has been totally harassed by this puppy. Really, I think at seven she was probably too old to have a pup come into her doggy life, which was happy and settled. It’s not that she seemed unhappy about the puppy…most of the time. But…

Ruby proved to be the more assertive dog and, after a year or two, displaced Cassie as Queen of the Universe. Cassie moped but seemed to adjust. I guess.

More recently, though, they’ve taken to engaging in what can best be described as sparring matches. You know how little kids play “swordfight” with a couple of sticks? Well, these dogs would have schnozz-fights…just like that. whack whack whack whack whack! Only with their muzzles, not sticks. Teeth would be bared, but they weren’t exactly fighting; not in a serious way. Yet.

But now Cassie shows up with a gouge on her face, just barely missing an eye. I didn’t see this happen, but I believe it to be a dog bite.

If it’s an injury and not a hot spot, it could be one of two and only two things:

  • Dog bite
  • Twig poke, incurred while rummaging under the citrus for the precious mummified oranges

Either is possible. Dog bite seems most likely to me, since Cassie has been rummaging for many a year and never poked herself in the face.

Meanwhile…

I have been sick for six months. Whatever I came down with in March has never gone away! After much consultation, three docs suspect allergies. One is the alarmingly commonsensical Young Dr. Kildare; one is a gastroenterologist who believes it is not a recurrence of GERD, and one runs on high-test fuel at the Mayo. And in all cases, as soon as they hear “…and yes, the dogs sleep on the bed,…” they can be seen visibly restraining themselves from rolling their highly-trained eyes heavenward.

It became more and more clear that one or both dogs were going to have to go.

So I emailed my son, who has conceived the idea that Charley the Golden Retriever is so lonely he needs a companion, and asked if he would like to have Ruby. Otherwise, she was going back to the breeder.

Well, that was like plugging him into an electric outlet.

Forthwith he showed up to pick up the dog, all the while assuring his neurotic mutther that if she had second thoughts, all she had to do was say so.

Hm. I felt a little sad to eject Ruby, who is a cute little puppy as long as you don’t mind being dominated by a dog. But…

But…

Y’know, when the kid went out the door with that dog, I felt like a three-hundred-pound weight was lifted from my shoulders.

§ § §

Spent the entire rest of the day cleaning and dusting and laundering and laundering and laundering.

Under the bed, I found a lake of dog hair and dust, a good two inches deep. You never saw so much dirt and dog hair mixed together in your life! No wonder I’ve been sick!

What can a little corgi or two do? Well…hang onto your hat:

Thats’ just five days’ worth! This shack was cleaned from stem to stern last Tuesday! Now admittedly, it includes the dog dunes under the bed (which should have been eroded by the weekly dust-mopping). I’ve cleaned all the floors, swiffering and vacuuming and then swiffering again. Especially in the bedroom. Pulled all the bedding off, washed the blanket, washed the dog pads (twice), washed the mattress cover, washed the bathroom rugs, changed the sheets, laundered EVERYthing. Pulled out the bed, cleaned behind it, cleaned the wall behind it. Climbed up and cleaned the ceiling fan’s blades, carefully.

As for Cassie: can’t tell whether she’s depressed or relieved or what. In the absence of Ruby, she has almost completely stopped the incessant gawdawful  barking. Granted, it’s only been a few hours…but my gosh. It’s so quiet in here my ears hurt from the silence.

Cassie and I went for a doggy-walk this evening, the first we’ve had in several years that wasn’t a mile-long contest and the first enjoyable doggy-walk since the weather has begun to cool. She’s out of shape, so was tired by the time we got back to the Funny Farm. Just now she has resumed her position, at long last, as Queen of the Universe. And she’s sleeping in the direct line of the doctor-ordered steamer. I hope she’s feeling less allergic…

How to Kill a Costco?

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So yesterday I finally did make up my hot little mind to journey easterly and northerly to the Costco at Paradise Valley Mall. As predicted, after Thursday afternoon’s endless journey to the Mayo Clinic — followed by having to go to two pharmacies to get the recommended very ordinary OTC drugs — I was too tired to take on a Costco junket, too.

So I figured that Friday I’d go to the much more conveniently located slum Costco, which occupies a moribund shopping center called Chris-Town.

LOL! When the City and the owners tried to do a half-baked revival, they rechristened it “Spectrum Mall.” The resulting nick-name, “Spectral Mall,” must have been more than its tenants could take: after a few years of that, they brought back the historic name.

Fountains and indoor gardens: lost and gone forever

Chris-Town was once a lovely mall: the second built in the Valley. It was pretty upscale, because it catered to the uspscale North Central district. It had a Bullock’s, a Diamond’s (which became Dillard’s), a Penney’s (the only downscale store at the site), several decent restaurants, and two nice theaters. Over time, though, the districts to the south and the west deteriorated — one of my friends was murdered in an apartment complex directly to the south.  The mall changed hands as the middle-class stores moved out, and the new owners turned it into a discount shopping center. Hence the Walmart and the Costco and a bunch of other lower-end palaces. Really: the Costco is the most upscale store in that shopping center now.

Let us bear in mind that the City, while relieving us of extra tax moneys to fund their white elephant, assured us that the wonderful light rail would jack up property values and bring fine new upscale development all along the line.

That has proven true in areas of the city already populated by young urbanites, who live close enough to work to make commuting on a trolley practical. The exact opposite has happened in further-flung stretches of the line: anyplace north of Camelback and west of Central Avenue, what the light rail does is import drug-addicted transients, making every shopping area and every residential area exponentially less pleasant and more dangerous for the rest of us.

So it has been with Chris-Town. And hence my remark, the other day, about the impulse to pack heat while strolling between the car and the store entrance… The shopping center has been down-at-the-heels for decades, and now it’s at the center of about the highest crime activity in the city. If you follow the route of the lightrail on either of the linked maps, you see that crime rates — especially violent crime rates, which would include mugging and fist-fights — are high all along the thing, from downtown up to Chris-Town and now up to my neighborhood.

Yesterday, though, I had to go to a Costco to pick up something for today’s potluck, plus I needed a bunch of other things. But having set my sights on the Paradise Valley Costco last Thursday, I decided I couldn’t stomach a visit to Chez Pits and made up my mind to drive way to heck and gone up to Tatum and Cactus.

Only my laziness makes that feel like a long way. In reality, the drive took about 20 minutes. Drove into the parking lot and immediately joined the line to top off the gas tank: price was only $2.25, two cents a gallon less than I’d paid at the Chris-Town store.

Inside? Well, let me say: shopping in the Chris-Town store vs. shopping in the Paradise Valley store is as the night the day.

On a fundamental level, the two outlets carry the same basic goods. But…they don’t. The stores in the more upscale parts of town carry the basic goods, all right: and a lot more.

LOL! For example, I came across a seller hawking $1300 bicycles. Yes: that is thirteen hundred dollars (!!!).

Our Costco has two of those wooden bin stands for showing off the store’s proudest selections of wines. The PV Costco has a half dozen!

The meat counter at the PV Costco offers only prime beef steaks. You have to search for the more affordable choice cuts in another cooler, a long way from the meat counter.

The central feature of my daily uniform — Gloria Vanderbilt jeans — is severely limited at the Chris-Town Costco. At Paradise Mall, they come in gay abandon: two counters full of them, in all colors AND in sizes for normal people. At Chris-Town you’ll find lots of weird sizes but hardly any 10s or 12s. When you find Glorias in white, they’re size 18. I ask you: who in her right mind would wear SIZE 18 JEANS in WHITE???????

So naturally I had to buy a pair of these really kewl sort of blue-teal-blue jeans. And how could I turn down a nifty pull-over to go with them?

And naturally I ended up grabbing a lot more stuff — a LOT more — than just the potluck cake. Suddenly everything I looked at was something I needed. Right.

Interestingly, it seems that a more pleasant environment, one in which you do not feel at risk when entering the store and in which the culture is such that people don’t run into you, cut you off in the aisle and then stop, invade your personal space, and steal your cart when your back is turned, predisposes you to impulse buying.

Except for the jeans and the shirt, I can’t say I bought anything that I didn’t need. Well. Except for the lifetime supply of espresso beans. But I was tempted. Ohhhhh the magical electronic doorbell with camera and wireless connection! Ahhhhh the collection of six adorable puck lights with different colored lenses! How can anyone live without these objects?

So there I am, checking out, and I happen to mention to the check-out clerk that her store is SOOO much better than the one near my house.

“Which store is it?” says she.

“The one on Montebello.”

“Oh, yeah! There is a big difference, isn’t there? You know, we’ve been told Costco is not going to renew its lease at Chris-Town.”

Holy shit. “Hm. I’m not surprised. It’s not a very pleasant shopping center.”

“I used to work there. It’s so much better here.”

“It does feel safer in the parking lot.”

“Oh, let me tell you. NEVER go to that store after dark!”

So there you go: how to kill a Costco? Crush the shopping center with trainloads of vagrant drug addicts. While you’re at it, make sure mental health care is as difficult to acquire as possible for the indigent…as mentally ill folks are apt to be. Make shopping at the Costco a chore instead of a recreational event.

Drive out the middle class , and you drive out the middle-class commercial tax base. Drive out the middle-class residential and commercial tax base, and you trash the schools, insuring that the younger generation of middle-class workers will never move back into the area.

Do cities do this on purpose? It’s hard to escape it. The only other explanation would be that city leaders, here and across the nation, are by and large blithering idiots.

I don’t think that’s the case at all.

I think it’s a purposeful strategy to push modestly affluent people into the suburbs, so that the parties who own the city leaders — mostly developers and real estate speculators — can make more money packing the refugees into ticky-tacky houses placed elbow-to-elbow on postage-stamp lots. Car dealers sell more cars that way. Oil companies sell more gas. Tire manufacturers sell more tires. Insurance companies get higher rates. And developers get rich.

Who remains in the city? Only the middling wealthy (the ones who can afford the $2400/month rental rates in the new track-side housing here, or who can afford 3,000 square feet on half an acre within ten minutes of the law offices and hospitals where they work) and the very poor.

And so it goes.

 

Convenience Cost?

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Is there such a thing as a “convenience cost,” or did I just make that term up? By it, I mean the minor cost of avoiding a minor hassle. Or, I suppose, a middling-large hassle.

Here’s a practical question attached to this fine philosophical matter:

Are you willing to spend a few cents a gallon more to avoid trudging several miles to get a better price at a different gas station in a different neighborhood? Do you do that regularly, or only when circumstances make you feel more reluctant than usual to have to drive around to get the best price?

This afternoon I have to traipse to the Mayo Clinic. At that time of day, it will be an hour’s drive each way: Two hours of doing battle on the cutthroat streets of Phoenix for the privilege of spending 15 minutes with my doctor in hopes that she can send me to the right specialist.

My car doesn’t have enough gas to get out to the far side of Scottsdale. And if you think prices at the local QT are exorbitant, you ain’t seen nuttin’ till you see how much a ritzy-titzy market like Scottsdale will bear. So I need to buy gas before heading out there.

Rationality suggests that I should drive down to the slum Costco that I normally habituate, because — given the emptiness of its customers’ pockets — that Costco sells the cheapest gas in town. While there, I could pick up the several items I need from that honored store.

This of course would require me not only to drive several miles in the opposite direction from the Mayo but also to get out of the car and walk across the parking lot, something I’m not fond of doing in that sketchy shopping center. The fewer trips I have to make there, the better: both because staying out of Costco means keeping more money in my own pocket and because it really isn’t the best of all possible shopping experiences.

Between here and the Mayo, only slightly out of my way, resides another Costco: a much more upscale Costco. They have more goods of the sort I covet, and one feels no need to pack heat while strolling from the car to the door. And… I have to get something for this weekend’s potluck. Lately I’ve found the Costco closest to me — the downscale Costco — rarely has anything very appealing. The last time I was there, they didn’t even have the standard Costco quinoa salad, to say nothing of decent bakery. Chances are good — very good, I’ll bet — that the Paradise Valley Costco will have a much better selection of bakery.

To be safe, I need to buy gas now; not drive all the way to the Mayo, halfway back, and another ten miles up to the fancy Costco and back.

There is a QT right around the corner. They extort stupefying amounts of money from their customers, because the station is on the only road that passes through the Dreamy Draw, carrying commuters from Moon Valley and points north down to their jobs in central and downtown Phoenix.

The Costco at Paradise Valley Mall also charges more for gas, because it’s conveniently close to Tatum Blvd, which bears commuters from North Phoenix and Scottsdale. But by the end of the day — around 5 p.m. — the lines will be out to the main drag, I will be tired and unhappy, and I surely will not feel like standing in line and pumping gas. And it’s questionable whether I can get all the way out to the Mayo and then up to that Costco on a quarter-tank of gas.

I’m thinking it may be worth the cost (four to eight cents a gallon) to fill up — or maybe partially fill up — at the nearby QT, so that I don’t have to drive down south to get gas now, nor take a chance that the amount in the tank will take me halfway to Payson and back with enough left over to get down to the cheaper Costco.

That way, I would have the option of not going to the nicer Costco on the way home from the doctor’s office (should one not happen to feel like shopping for anything by then), and I could be certain that the car wouldn’t run out of gas. And I wouldn’t have to pump gas late in the afternoon, when I will hate it even more than I normally hate it. Which is a lot.

So we have two choices:

  1. Drive to the dumpy Costco now, some miles south of the ‘hood and get gas for as much as eight cents a gallon less than it costs anywhere else.
  2. Whip around the corner to the overpriced QT, eat the gouge, and acquire at least enough gas to get to east Scottsdale and back…for a whole lot more than a fair price

I’m leaning toward the QT. The savings in time and aggravation would be worth paying a couple dollars more.

And that would be “convenience cost.”

Fall Is Springing in Arizona

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Lhudly sing huzzah! It’s 8:30 in the morning and around 80 degrees out here on the deck. The worst of the summer is gone, thank God.

But…of course there’s no rest for the wicked.

The watering system crapped out a few days ago. That means everything on almost a quarter-acre has to be watered by hand. That is a whole lotta watering, since most of my posies live in pots. By 5 p.m., it’s still a hundred degrees out here. Potted plants will die in one day — flat — when temps reach 100.

Gerardo knows how to fix the thing — I think the control panel needs to be replaced. He does understand irrigation systems. But he’s busy. And I doubt if he realizes that if somethig is in a pot, it has to be watered every day.

On the other hand…how much, really, does it harm me to get off my duff every few minutes for an hour or two to move hoses around? It’s actually probably good for me.

The handyman recommended by the Home Depot lady for the job of re-installing the fiberglass cover over the shade structure wants nine hundred bucks.

Well. I don’t know if that’s reasonable or not. But you may be sure I am not paying $900 to some guy who says he’ll be here at 9 a.m. and shows up at 11.

Gerardo doesn’t want to do the job. He says he will if I can’t get anyone else, but clearly he hopes I can.

I’d called the guy who built it, Richard, a week or so ago and got no answer. He’s the one who fell off the roof and busted up his back in a dozen places. So I figured he probably had retired from the slamming-around business.

Called the handyman: no response.

So this morning I was going to post a query on NextDoor, which is like tossing bread crumbs in a duck pond. But first decided to call Richard one more time, since I know he knows how to do the job — his first effort lasted 14 years.

And lo! His wife picked up the phone…just as it went dead. She called right back. She said their office had flooded a week ago, ruining their almost-new computer and butching up all things electrical and electronic. They’re just getting back in gear.

So she’s going to have him call to make an appointment. That’s good. If I have to pay $900 to get that thing fixed, I’d rather give it to Richard than just about anybody else. He can fix the watering system, too, I suppose.

Meanwhile there are a jillion other things I need to do, now that the weather’s cooling. First on the list: repaint the outdoor chairs. The cans of spray paint have been sitting in the back room since I bought them last spring, imagining that I’d get around to doing the job before it got hot. I underestimate my own laziness…

Then I would like to plant some vegetables…probably in pots, because I’d just as soon not dig up the landscaping.

Meanwhile, today I’ve gotta finish the current elaborate business management study from China. It’s almost 10,000 editable words, which I expected to require a lot more time than it has. But in fact, yesterday, with relatively few interruptions hammering at me, I managed to get through most of it. All that remains are the discussion and the conclusion, which I should be able to power through fairly quickly.

After that, it’ll be time to finish preparing another week’s worth of dog food — the pork is already cooked and cooling, preparatory to grinding it and mixing it with veggies & starch.

And so, away…