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House & Yard

No Matter What….

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…it’s gotta be a hassle!!!

😮

I swear-ta-gawd! Everything I’ve touched in that damn backyard today has gone SPRROOOOIIIINGGGGG!  And kindly created an interesting new hassle.

Just spent a good half-hour or 40 minutes wrestling with pool equipment, for a chore that should’ve taken 10 minutes…at the outside. I’ll tellya: if I glance at it, it goes SPRRROIIINGGGGG!!! And breaks or creates a mess.

Y’know, my neighbor Josie drained her pool several years ago and has never refilled it. And….I’m beginning to think she’s got something there.

O’course, a maneuver like that wrecks the plaster and the equipment, so the damn thing has to be expensively repaired before it can be turned back on — basically rebuilt. But…honestly. Sooooo what? The savings in Hassle Factor may be altogether worth it.

Godlmighty, though….I do hate the thought of wrecking the pool and leaving it a wreck for years, then having to spend several thousand dollars in repair bills when the house goes on the market, lo! these many years in the future.

But honestly…IS that pool giving me my money’s worth? To say nothing of my hassle’s worth? I hardly ever use it any more. I haven’t been in it today. Or this week, or, come to think of it, this month.

Maybe it just oughta be drained…..

{sigh}

If I were gonna do that, though, I think I’d want to cover it with a plank deck. If that were sturdy enough, it could be part of the patio, and a table and umbrella could sit out there. It would look nice enough (a helluva lot nicer than a plaster hole in the ground!) and could be used for parties and picnic meals.

Now, as a potential seller of this house, I see that plan as a mighty drawback. But….but what if some potential buyer comes along and is enchanted by the idea of an expensive deck that could be used as a party venue? That might not be such a bad thing…

Hm. I may ask a Realtor friend about this idea.

Sheee-ut!!  The temp out there is 107 degrees, with rain y-cumen in!  What a fukkin’ garden spot! Almost as balmy as (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where heat and humidity were linked together with hooks-and-eyes!

August 6 Grinds On…

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Egad! Just stumbled out back…glanced at the back-porch thermometer. A HUNDRED AND SEVEN DEGREES. Yeah, you saw that right: 107º… IN THE SHADE OF THE BACK PORCH ROOF!

Yep: 107 in the shade. 

Almost as balmy as lovely Saudi Arabia, whither my parents and I spent 10 years. Except it was damn humid there…I’ve seen rain start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Here, it really is “a dry heat.”

And the “dry heat” is significantly more tolerable than swamp conditions. Not anything that you’d like to frolic in…but at least it doesn’t suffocate you.

I see we’ve got a dead shrub out back. Looks like it’s not getting watered. Drag the hose over to it. Remember to ask the Yard Dudes to be sure the system reaches that part of the hedge. And have them take out the dead thing.

Yard Dude: there’s another of those fine jobs one is mighty glad not to have. Gerardo and the boys get started as dawn cracks: that’s so. But they’re sure not done before the heat comes up. I don’t see how they do it!!

We’re told we have a 15% chance of rain. Why do I doubt it? Maybe later tonight: like, well after dark. But not any time soon.

After dark…it’ll still be too hot for Ruby’s feet. So that’s another daily doggy-walk we’ll miss today. We did get out, as usual, along about dawn…even then, it was nigh unto too hot for her. I’m afraid this evening will be well beyond the pale for little bare doggy feet.

Yech!!  What a place!

Re-Watering Project, continued

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Don’t get old: Ya can’t remember yer name!!

Much less that you needed to get out in the 110-degree heat and turn the hoses on the backyard plants.

This, to make up for some A**-hole TURNING OFF the irrigation in my yard, thereby killing everything in sight. 

Sheeee-ut!

Fortunately, I noticed before all the backyard trees were dead. These, mostly citrus, need to be watered regularly and deeply.

So…now I’m running around in 110-degree heat, dragging hoses and trying to deep-water the trees and plants back there.

As infuriating as this is…amazingly I failed to remember this fiasco until about 5:00 this afternoon. God. DAM. It. 

So I missed today’s project to try to re-irrigate the vegetation back there.

Just darted back in the house — at 5:00 p.m. — having started to lay out hoses and run sprinklers.

Dammit. Now this will take until about 9:00 tonight. Just what I wanted to do with a roasting-hot evening!

Jayzuz! What the HELL would possess some clown to turn off all the water in my yard? We’re talking a full-fledged irrigation system that drenches the trees and soaks the ornamental vines: front, side, and back.

Because, in my dotage, I forgot about this as the cleaning lady was charging around in the house, now it will be well into the night-time hours before all the hose-dragging is done.

Matter of fact, it probably won’t get done tonight. I’ll have to go out there tomorrow and wrestle with hoses in the morning.

WHO would do such a thing??????

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Holeeee GAWD!  I just went out in back and discovered that ALL of the watering system has been turned off.

When, I do not know. It sure as hell wasn’t turned off by me. Not in 110-degree heat, of that  you may be sure.

So either one of the yard dudes did it (not bloody likely) or some visiting workman vandalized my yard.

Think I caught it (I hope) in time to save at least some of the plantings. Just now, water is POURING to the citrus trees. They’re bone-dry…normally get water a couple times a week. But forgodsake: the hedges? The citrus trees — ALL of them? The climbing roses? The cat’s-claw vines in gay abandon….

WHAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD DO A THING LIKE THAT???

They had to have known what they were doing…because they turned off ALL the watering zones!  There’s half a dozen of them!!

And it has to have been someone who had a key, because the back gate is kept locked.

Holeeee shee-ut!

Well…I guess I’ll need to have all the locks on the exterior gates changed….how many is that?  Let’s see…

1…1…1…in back…plus the garage side door. That’s four. Oh, shee-ut! What d’you suppose it’ll cost to have a locksmith come in and do that?

More than I want to pay, you can bet. About four times more than I want to pay. 😮

Godlmighty. I hope they didn’t put any kind of poison on the trees and vines.

The plants look OK just now… Maybe the jerk figured just turning off the water to them would do the trick, in 110-degree heat.

Ohhhh man!  The hoses are POURING the water to them right now. It’s getting dark out, so I’m gonna have to turn off the faucets pretty soon. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll have to get back out there and turn the water back on.

This defies belief!

Why would anybody do such a thing????

Another Soggy Doggy Day in Arizona

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LOL! What was I was mooning on about yesterday, how even though it’s hotter than Hell here, at least the air is dry and the humidity is low?

Har har!!!!

Today we’re looking at a high of 114º, with humidity of 27%.  If that ain’t Rasty Nasty, the lovely American oil compound where we resided on the shore of the Persian Gulf, I’d like to know what it is!

Twenty. Seven. Percent of the air will be water!  Ugh!

Welp! The dawg and the human are back from this morning’s trek around the ‘Hood. The human is drenched with sweat. What a horrid morning!

We passed our friend Josie’s house: she who inherited the place from the City of Phoenix after her place was bulldozed to build an airport runway.

Pore folks live on airport property, ya know. So there she was, minding her own business as she dodged jet airplanes, and along came the City, grabbed her house, and gave her SDXB’s place. He had moved to Sun City — and so anxious was he to get away from his bosom enemy, Tony the Romanian Landlord, that he handed the house over to the City for a song.

Little did anyone (other than SDXB) know that the plumbing under the kitchen sink had been the target — several times — of SDXB’s amateur repair jobs. It had sprung a series of leaks, and each time he, being too parsimonious to hire a qualified craftsman, did the fix-it job himself.

Well…this time when it sprang another leak, the water flooded the entire damn house! Especially the kitchen, the laundry room, the dining room, the living room, and up the hallway into the bedrooms.

Good…
Lord…

So Josie came home to a deluge. All the carpeting had to be removed. Plumbing changed out. Cabinetry repaired. CAN you imagine?

These houses were cheaply built to begin with — though they’re far better constructed than today’s junk out in the suburbs. You don’t even want to know what resulted from SDXB’s amateur plumbing job.

😀  You don’t have to know: all you have to do is glance at the ripped-out carpeting piled in Josie’s front yard!

Anyway, just now it’s as wet outside in the open air as it is inside Josie’s house! High, ineffectual-looking clouds lurk off to the east and the north. Not a great day for hiking a mile or two around the neighborhood.

Ugh! I could brain my father for dragging me to Arizona. Too late: his brain resides inside an urn, as part of a pile of ashes.

But seriously: whatever could he have been thinking? Didn’t care, I guess, what hauling me to the middle of the desert and plopping me in a third-rate university would do to my optimistically planned academic career. Hey! Why does a woman need a Ph.D. from Berkeley, anyhow?

Day Is (Barely!!!) Dawning….

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Yep. Barely dawn and all Hell is already breaking loose. Jeez!  WHY does all the sh!t happen at once?

Latest antic: I go to flush the toilet and the thing goes SSSWWWWSHHHHHHHHHHHH and sprays water all over the goddam bathroom!

Sheee-ut!  and oh well: now all the fixtures and counters are nice and clean in there.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotta get someone over here to fix Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner, so thoughtfully trashed by yesterday’s workman.

This means, presumably, I have to approach some other pool company, since I suspect that “trashing” was a deliberate act. Because…it appears the pool dude stole several lengths of hose.

Dammit!!!!!!! 

Now I’ll have to call a bunch of neighbors to find out who they’re hiring, and then call around and call around and call around until I find someone to come fix this stuff.

*********

Grrr grrr grrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

Okay, I capitulated and called my regular pool company. Told them “someone” (har har) made off with several lengths of pool hose…and blah blah blah.

They’re supposedly gonna send someone over to try to fix that. Which means I get to sit here and sit here and sit here and sit here until the guy shows up. If he ever does. Then try to explain what’s happened….and good luck with that.

Dammmit!!!!!!!!!

I’m beginning to understand why my neighbor drained her pool several years ago and leaves it dry.

There surely is something to be said for that.

Problem is, when  you go to sell the house after leaving a pool empty for Gawd only knows how long, you’re looking at a WAD of EXPENSIVE repair bills.

Plus your back yard is graced by an ugly hole in the ground.

Better to keep the thing up from day to day, than to have hundreds or thousands in bills just as you’re ready to move out.

****

Ugh!! This deluge of crapola is beginning to make the prospect of moving into a old-folkerie like the Beatitudes almost look good. At least there, someone else has to ride herd on the repairs.

But…sheee-ut.  Just look at the joys promised by that link. Ain’t that just ducky?  You, too, can shed your household headaches by locking yourself up in a prison for old duffers.

You get to shed your cash, too. Those places grab every penny you’ve got in exchange for shepherding you into the next world. Such was the case with my father. Seriously: his old-folkerie glommed virtually all of his life savings. AND….he made a good living as a sea captain, plus he was one of the great tightwads of the Western World. So he had a sh!tload of money for them to snatch away from him.

*****

Dayum! But I’m MAD AS A CAT over that stolen pool equipment.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I guess if I’m gonna drain the damn pool, I’ll need to have some sort of platform built over it.

The next-door neighbor hasn’t done that. She just has an empty hole in the ground back there. Looks like HELL, and for my taste renders the back porch/yard essentially unusable.

You can bet she hasn’t covered it with a platform because any such thing will cost a goddam arm and a leg.  So I should spend hundreds or more likely thousands of dollars to cover the hole in ground with a wooden deck?

goddammit i don’t wanna do that.

Helle’s belles. Maybe I’d do better to jury-rig repairs to the dam thing now, then put the house on the market, sell up, and move into the horrifying Beatitudes.

But..to coin a phrase:

goddammit i don’t wanna do that.

I just LOATHE congregate living. And I do NOT want to live in a dormitory for old buzzards.

GAAAAAAAHHH!  STOP THE WORLD! I WANNA GET OFF!!!!!