Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

Renovations

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The young(ish) couple who bought my neighbor Sally’s house are over there madly renovating. Sounds like a buzz saw — or maybe a floor sander — whirring away.

Hm. While we think of it…let’s go on a li’l doggy walk and poke our nosy schnozz into their business as we stroll by…

****

So we’re ARF! ARF!  out the door. Around the park. through the south side of Lower Richistan. Ruby: beside her canid self with doggy joy.

And it’s ROAR! ROAR!! ROAR!!! from Luke Air Force, off to the southwest side of Our Fair City. Holy mackerel, what a racket!

That racket is one of the several reasons you couldn’t pay me to live in Sun City: the melody of jet fighter planes soaring overhead, taking off from an Air Force Base just down the road from one’s backyard. That’s about as far from what I wanna hear over morning coffee and evening cocktails as you can get.

Hilariously, my mother claimed to love it. She would sit on her screened back porch, swill her coffee, and listen to those blasting jets engines as the sun came up.

ohhhh, she would coo. It’s the sound of freedom!

ahhhh…no, Mom. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way….

WHY are humans so fukkin stupid?????

Ohhh well…

The pair who bought the Beloved Sally’s house behind me: nicest neighbors you could hope to have. A yardful of screaming kids: maybe not so much. But only a  couple of kids in sight just now…and that makes for a reasonably QUIET occupancy.

They may have bought the place on spec, though. We shall see. I hope they last a good long while.  But whatever: for the nonce, they’re about as ideal as you can get.

Secretly, I even enjoy and am happy to have Tony the (Amazing!) Romanian Landlord as a neighbor. Forgodsake don’t tell him, though! Who knows what shenanigans he’ll get up to if he hears that bit of apostasy! 😀

Meanwhile, the young people behind us are  busy fancifying Sally’s shack.

* On the one hand, I hope they spiff it up and extract a nice profit from it.
* On the other hand: I rather like that bunch and would  be pleased if they hung around a few years.
* On the third hand, soon it will be time for me to move into an old-folkerie or some such horror. And I surely would like either to leave this house to my son as a fine investment or to be able to sell it and add the proceeds to the pile of dough I hope to leave to him.

Please, God: let me exit, stage left before that third exigency comes to pass.

ROOOOARRRR!

Is that another F-15? Or is it Cosmic laughter?

Beloved Pool Dude!

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Dogs know.

HOW they know escapes me. Can they read a calendar? It appears not. Do they have Dog Telepathy? That must be it.

Ruby the Corgi loves, adores, and worships Pool Dude. Seriously: she thinks that guy is the best thing that has ever walked across the surface of the planet.

Pool Dude comes around on Tuesday. And I’ll be damned if she does not know when it’s Tuesday.

Can she read a calendar? One would think not: she’s a DOG, after all. Besides which, the only calendar in the house hangs on a wall in my office, halfway to the ceiling. Even if she could read it, she couldn’t see it well enough to parse out the day of the week.

But come any Tuesday morning, that dog is standing at the door waiting for him.

And OH! The joy when she spots him.

My joy, too: the man keeps that pool sparkling clean. He’s amazing…and he does it with just one visit a week. When I tried to keep it clean, I’d be dorking with it every day…and I sure never got it to look like it does now. Not one day a week, to say nothing of seven days a week. But one weekly trip from Pool Dude keeps the thing looking pristine: every day!

Arf!!!

Good {grump!} Morning, Arizona!

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Crack of dawn: out the door with the dog.

The derelict who set up camp outside the backyard wall was gone. And — surprise!! — he picked up after himself!! So there was no mess to shovel out after the sun comes up.

Circumambulate the park: beautiful morning. Hip hurts, but not as much as usual: reflect that the beloved, retired Dr. Tim Daley was no doubt right when he said eventually I’ll need a hip replacement.

Yay. I can hardly wait.

😮

Reflect, while hiking around the neighborhood, on where I might go if I actually did decide to move out of Bum Heaven. Only two places come to mind: the Arcadia district, where my now late stepsister used to live; and Fountain Hills, a Whiteyville on the east side of Scottsdale. Neither has much appeal: they’re just too damn far away from where my son lives.

Where else????

Down into my son’s neighborhood? Those houses were built before there was such a thing as air conditioning. They’re designed for swamp cooling (actually, they’re designed for the residents to spend their summers up north…). Plus the area is even noisier than mine.

Welp. Things could be worse: so far 11 people have been killed in the Kentucky storms…which aren’t over. Arizona can have killer weather, too…but not enough to take out a dozen locals at a time.

***

Too bad none of those 11 were goddam phone solicitors. Another one of them was on the horn just now. I try to have some kind of ear-blaster near the phone, so as to zap the bastards with something that will HURT when they call here. Didn’t have one nearby. SCREAMING into the phone as loud as you can may (or may not) be an effective substitute. This a.m. the SHRIEK was emitted in words:

GET THE F**K OFF MY GODDAM PHONE!!!!!!!

Man! Am sick, of goddam phone solicitors.

{gronk!}

Ruby trots out onto the back porch, picks up some piece of debris off the patio, and eats it!

Ohhhh gooodie. There’s another fine vet bill, comin’ up the trail. Assuming she lives long enough to get her to the vet…

***

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is still at the neighbor’s house. It’s three in the afternoon, and the woman has been there all day! I don’t understand how she does what she does.

Normally, she cleans WonderAccountant’s place and then comes over here. But typically, she’s done over there by about 11 a.m. or noon. She must be knocking herself out!!

***

Gaaaahhh! 4:30 in the afterno0n and the poor woman is still laboring away!! HOW does she do that.

I’ve been laboring away all afternoon watching the bubblers water the citrus trees, and I’m exhausted. ;-

The woman is amazing!

 

STOP THE WORLD!

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I wanna get off!

LOL! It’s 8:30 in the morning; breakfast is not made, coffee is not made, California is burning down, and the world is going to Hell on a proverbial handcart.

SOMETHING is wrong with the pool, but I’ll be dayumed if I can figure out what it is. Calling Pool Dude has involved not one, not two, but three telephone runarounds. And now the damn thing seems to be working all right, so when he shows up here, having made a special trip in response to my squawking, he will find exactly NOTHING wrong with it.

The phone company has dorked up its service, so trying to find a phone number through Directory Assistance entails a hair-tearing runaround. When you do reach a person, either they don’t speak English well enough to understand what you’re asking or they’re so plug-stupid you can’t MAKE them understand.

Well…Pool Dude shouldn’t be too infuriated. He forgot to pick up his check last time he dropped by. So even if nothing gets done or fixed, at least he’ll walk away with a hundred-and-a-quarter in his hand.

But now I can’t take poor l’il Ruby the Corgi for a walk, because we’ve gotta wait around all morning for Pool Dude to show up. If he ever does.

huh!  Y’know…you don’t think (well, at least I don’t think) about how much of your day’s organization depends on the stack of chores you have to do first thing in the morning. Dork up even one of those, and your whole darned day is likely to be dorked!

Hmmm… Ever think you went into the WRONG BUSINESS?

Pool Dude gets $125 to come once a month and maintain the Hole in the Ground Into Which to Pour Money. He’s here…oh…maybe half an hour.

Consider that. If he has a half-dozen customers a day, AND he only works five days a week, then…hmmmmm…. 6 customers x 5 days/week = 30 customers a week.

So… 30 x 125 = $3750 a week.

LOL! Can that be right?

Naaaahhh…couldn’t be. It’s English-Major Math.

First off, snabbing six customers a day would be quite a marketing trick, especially since the woods are full of pool dudes AND cleaning your pool is not very difficult — a large proportion of pool owners take care of their holes-in-the-ground themselves.

But…but…even if he had only half that many customers, he’d still be making over $1800 a month. That would put a few McDonalds’s on your table. Especially since you could get away with not reporting whatever was forked over to you in cash. Hmmm…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…  The deadbolt on the east side gate is busted.

Hooo-raayyyy! Now I get to sit around all day waiting for the locksmith to show up and fix that.  He’ll prob’ly show up around 4:40 this afternoon. Right?

Jeez. Makes living in a Box in the Sky look good.

****

Trash hauled to alley.

Deadbolt dorked with: still busted. So yeah: sit around all day waiting for the locksmith.

Colder’n’aBygawd out there.

Well. No: not really. Surely Bygawds make frost and snow. Cars on the street are not even slightly frosted. But…presumably for arcane reasons, it SEEMS preternaturally chilly outside this morning.

Hm. We’re told, via Google Gnus, that Southern California’s wind is expected to come up again today. That usually means we get some wind, too…but just now the air is still as Death. Dunno what’s up…and probably don’t wanna know what’s up.

The side gate to the backyard is busted. Well: its lock is busted. That means somehow I’ve gotta get Lock Dude over here to fix it. Which means I can’t go to the grocery store at my convenience.

LOL! Ain’t life rough?

Two careers I’m secretly glad I couldn’t even begin to qualify for: Pool maintenance dudette and locksmith.

****************

Gadzooks! It just goes on and on!

Stupidly, I got it into my little pea brain to toss the pooch in the car and take a li’l sight-seeing drive. Maybe go down to Encanto park…get out, explore around, chase a few ducks…i dunno. Just pass some time with relatively little annoyance and hassle.

Dumb, huh?

The result of this little fugue was that we spent the whole damn afternoon piddling around.

If Pool Dude showed up, I missed him (he seems not to have left a bill).

Deadbolt never got fixed or even looked at.

Wonder-Cleaning-Lady showed up at the door along about 4:30, just as I was about to plop my exhausted a$$ in an easy chair.

Well, I sure as heck can’t complain about this wonderful woman. All I can say is i can’t believe that woman cleans not one, not two, but THREE houses in one day!

Augh, is all I can say to that.

 

 

 

What the Dickens?

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It’s just NOT THAT COLD outside: 45 degrees on the back porch. But for some inscrutable reason, it seems a whole lot colder than that. Don’t know why it seems so chilly: no overcast, no wind; But colder ‘n’ a by-gawd.

No sign of the Beloved Pool Dude this morning, but the pool is totally, utterly, completely spotless. This suggests he showed up before dawn, before the dawg and I rolled out of the sack.

If he did…well, getting into the yard, wrestling with the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money, and then slipping away without alerting Ruby the Corgi was quite a trick.

That dog adores the man. She knows which day he shows up (how???) and lurks, watching for him so she can fling herself at him and try to love him into submission.

Truth to tell: if that pool were covered up and set to drain off any rain, the house and yard would pose no more trouble than living in an apartment. The desert landscaping just sits there — at this time of year, Yard Dude drops by once a month or so and pizzens a few weeds, and that is…IT. Even in the summer, when the weeds do grow, keeping them under control is no more than a monthly chore.

My next-door neighbor has done exactly that: drained the pool and left it empty. That thing has been an empty hole in the ground since before I moved in here, some years ago.

Problem is, the plaster dries out if the pool is allowed to drain. Then if you ever want to use the pool for swimming, you have to replaster the pool. No, Thank$.

But…but…on second and third and fourth thought… I can imagine installing a deck over that thing. Set up the drain so it’s somehow “open” permanently, meaning you’d never have mosquitoes to worry about and never have to fiddle with emptying out rainwater.

Still…people don’t buy houses with pools in these parts just so they can have a deck over a hole in the ground. Any such maneuver would surely harm the property value. At best, before you could put the shack on the market, you’d have to revive the pool and repair a sh!tload of damage.

Hm. Leaving it empty would be a convenience, all right: an expensive convenience.

AND FURTHERMORE….

Augh! Just as the human sets foot out the door to go down to AJ’s for some serious loafing (and grocery purchasing), WWWHHHHZZZZZZZZZ!!!  There’s Gerardo and his guys. Blasting away with their weed-whackers and their blowers and...arrrghhhhhh!

Sheee-ut. So much for lunch. Or dinner…or whatever I imagined it would be.

Now I’ll have to wait till those guys exit, stage left, before I can even turn on the grill and throw a chunk of fish on it.

Dayum! Better get off my duff and write them a check.  {sigh}

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a…NUT CASE!

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LOL! Yes, I do believe we’ve ascertained that it’s a nut case, abetted by an industrious bird.

Or…who knows?…maybe  by a space alien.

Just now I’m perched on a kitchen chair in the garage, trying to ascertain whether a persistent beep!… beep!… beep!… is coming from the house-wide smoke alarm system, from something gone on the fritz in the car, or from the resident fruitcake’s imagination.

😀

And lo! It begins to appear that the perp is actually a bird. WHAT bird remains unknown: this is not a call I’ve ever heard from the local avian set…and I’ve lived here since 19 and aught-62. I think I would have learned to recognize a fire-alarmish beep coming from a bird.

****

Well… Yeah. And No.

It IS the flickin’ smoke alarm. Not the giant garage-based house-wide fire alarm system, but one of the cute little portable smoke alarms that you attach to your ceiling with a Velcro strip.

It’s sitting out there chirping to itself as we sit here, type, and guzzle coffee.

😀

So in a couple of hours — whenever I get off my duff, whenever the Ace Hardware store is open, I’ll have to traipse out and buy a new smoke alarm. Then figure out how to get it back up in the garage.

If that one is crapping out, it means all the rest of them are on the verge of crapping out, too. Hmmm…let’s see…. Hmmmmmm….

Not to say Uh oh….

Come to get up off my duff and check, and what do I see but that most of the li’l cheapo fire alarms have long been retired from service. FIVE of them have been removed from their stations.

WTF?

Welp. That’ll be a li’l chore for Bila the Handyman. He can climb up on a ladder and replace the darn things. Won’t he be pleased!

They must have crapped out one at a time, with lengthy periods in between. Otherwise I would’ve noticed that we…uhhhh….no longer have a functioning smoke alarm in most of the rooms.

/eyeroll/

Ohhhh well. I’ve got a bunch of other chores for him to do. So this will enrich his month’s income nicely.

*****

Along comes, of all things, a stray German shepherd!

She comes trotting up the street to the front patio and peers in the gates.

Ruby is beside herself with fascination. Neither dog makes a move to eat the other one.

Hmmmmm…. She has no collar. No ID. oboyoboy would i like to have THAT dawg!

uh oh… That’s not nice, is it?

Oh well. Before I can engage a plan to steal her, she trots off down the street.

The damn smoke alarms continue to beep. I begin to suspect it’s not the little portable alarms, but the ancient house-wide alarm that some previous owner installed, lo these many years ago.

I have NO idea how to turn it off or even if it can be turned off (thought it was turned off at the time I moved in here).

Seems like if you could shut it off, it would’ve been turned off by a prior owner, since it was nonfunctional when I appeared on the scene.

Cripes. The wandering pooch is after the neighbor’s stray cat. Oh well…it gets them both outta my yard, anyway.

The beeping continues. Could it be a bird, cheeping outside?

Hm. Anything’s possible. I guess.

If so, it’s a bird with an alto cheep. That’s kinda weird.

One of those days…