Racing around frantically since six o’clock this morning. My friend KJG will surface here around 11:00, for what I hope will be a relaxing day of hanging out. Whenever she gets here, things should slow down.
Meanwhile…
Gerardo the Lawn Dude Supreme left word on m[get up! fly to the kitchen, close the back door to block dust and fumes from Gerardo’s flunky’s blower]y voicemail while I was out last night, saying he wanted to come around to clean up the unholy disaster area that is my yard…like, this morning. Not knowing when he’s likely to show up or if, shortly after dawn blower the leaves off the patio and deck, roll up and stow the hoses. Scrub the dirt off the patio table.
Haul in the feather comforter I left up overnight on the clothesline; put it into the crippled dryer to bang around on air fluff. Fold and put away the cotton blanket left out to dry. Pull down the makeshift clotheslines and stow them. Try to clean the kitchen and fix breakfast and feed the dog at once.
Reach Gerardo on the phone around 7:00. Can you get in here and out before KJG shows up? We want to have a nice lunch outside. No problem!
Race to pull in the bathroom and dog rugs I left on the lines and draped over the hammock last night. Three of them are still wet. Put the two dry ones in the fluffer (we can no longer call it a “dryer”) to plump them up. Figure out where the hell to put the soggy shag rugs out of the men’s way. Continue trying to clean the kitchen and jump in and out of the shower and clean the shower and scrub the dirty pan left to soak overnight in the utility sink and dodge the dog’s ball game and scour the tired stained kitchen sink and polish the brightwork and talk Gerardo into pulling the dead fronds off the moribund 30-foot-high queen palm and persuade him to dig up the endlessly annoying frozen cape honeysuckle by the pool equipment so I can replace them with some frost-resistant Lady Banks roses and keep an eye out for the locksmith and pay Gerardo an extra $75 for the bone-crushing extra work he did and [get up! answer the door for the locksmith] finish writing Gerardo a check and wave goodbye to him. Show the locksmith what needs to be done [stop! answer the phone, accept a new assignment from the client], ask about reinforcing locks on sliding doors, discuss (stop! answer the phone, discuss plan with KJG)] recommendations for security doors and locks.
Sit down and start blogging again (drop that! With Gerardo out, drag wet rugs back out to hammock to dry in sun] and [on the way back in put away the irrigation gear Gerardo needed to fix the line his flunky cut] and zap [rattle the canful of rocks at Cassie to interrupt her barking frenzy at the locksmith] the dregs of this morning’s coffee in the microwave. Stagger back to the computer and…
…and I forget what I was going to write about this morning.
Thank you, God, for the beautiful days and nights of an Arizona springtime.
.
The water in the pool is almost warm enough for a brave soul to take the plunge.
When I was 12, my mother used to take me to a “Rod and Gun Club” operated by my father’s employer, Standard Oil. It was somewhere in the East Bay, how far on the ’tother side of the Golden Gate Bridge I do not recall. What I do recall is that they had a pool whose waters were, on the warmest day of a Bay Area summer, about the temperature of the water in my backyard today.
That I would blithely dive into that refrigerator-chilly water, I’m sure, helped to convince my mother that her daughter was none too bright.
It was cold. The trick was never to just put your toe in. The trick was to throw yourself in off the side, in one bold, brave splash, a dive that could not be taken back. About two seconds later, the water felt like a cool spring breeze against your skin. It was so fun you just lost track of whether it was cold or not, and you felt sorry for your poor, fat, benighted mother that she didn’t have the nerve to follow you into the drink.
Now the question that crosses my mind, as I stand on the step with the waterline lapping up against a belly about three times the circumference of that twelve-year-old waist, is this: “If I dive into this pool, will it freeze my titties off?”
So I trot over to Home Depot last weekend, there to peruse that august box’s limited selection of security doors. As expected, every single one of them looks like prison bars, except for the pressed-metal kitsch with the cut-out silhouettes of hummingbirds, coyotes, and sombreroed campesinos snoozing against saguaros. Good god.
Moving on, this afternoon it was over to Lowe’s on the way home from the credit union. The nearest Lowe’s is out by the West campus, where the nearest branch of the credit union resides, placing both of these institutions in a locale that cannot be called, with a straight face, “near.”
Situation at Lowe’s: even more ridiculous. The only door they had that didn’t look like prison bars with a slot through which the guard passes your plate of slop is a Titan: twelve hundred bucks!
Give me a proverbial BREAK!
At least the cheaper doors at the Depot come with insect screen. You can’t get that with the low-end models at Lowe’s. The hideous metal mesh, which lets mosquitoes in, is sorta OK in front, because the random door-to-door nuisance can’t see you through it and so can’t easily tell you’re alone. But in back, where one would like to gaze out upon one’s expensively appointed landscaping, steel mesh is just not gonna make it.
Sooo… It looks like it’s prison bars with insect screen and a double-cylinder deadbolt or nothing. Just now I’m leaning toward a .38 special.
Ohhhh well. While at Lowe’s, I did pick up a replacement for the impossible motion-sensitive spotlight in back, the one to which you have to take a screwdriver powered by male muscle to change the light bulb. When you get it open, you find it takes an exotic size and shape bulb that requires a special trip to HD or the electric supplier to track it down. Really. I wish to be able to change my light bulbs all by my pretty little self, thank you!
Also got a rather nice, not very pricey motion-sensitive coach light, which will go on the back porch. The little cheapie I installed when I moved in is looking pretty ragged already—it really was junk of the best you-get-what-you-pay-for variety. This looks sturdier, and I’ve come to really love the motion-sensitive coach lights I installed last year in front. They’re reasonably attractive, and what a luxury, to have them pop on when you walk up to them!
I tend to wander off and leave that back porch light on. Then when I go out there by daylight, I’m peeved to see it was burning all night and half the morning. This thing will come on when Cassie goes out to pee during the pre-dawn hours but not burn kilowatts when it’s forgotten.
One sterling quality of the motion-sensitive light is that it clues you if someone’s outside in the yard. Or…if a moth flew by or the wind is blowing…
New sliding or French doors to replace the three rather sketchy sliders (like…maybe one that has an actual latch on it?) also appear to be prohibitively expensive.
Really, though: unclear whether functional doors are really necessary. After all, the door squealer and the stick in the slider’s track worked: the guy ran off without getting inside. The whole point was to alert me if someone tried to get in the house while I was here, and that was exactly what happened. Probably newer doors wouldn’t be a whole lot more secure than what I’ve got. They might save a few pennies on power, but how many years will it take to recover the costs from the power bills?
Well, not much: student papers will come in on Thursday, needing to be turned around by the following Tuesday. But all things said and done, reading 50 comp papers is one heckuva lot better than hauling back and forth across the freeways to Tempe ten times in the cheery company of my fellow homicidal drivers.
Spent the better part of the weekend in the company of my friend KJG, now also a certified escapee from the Great Desert University. She went over the wall a few months ago, and like me is only just beginning to fully unwind from the stress of working in a psychologically crushing environment. It truly takes a good year to recover from the effects of spending eight or ten hours a day in a place where management works at making everyone miserable.
You realize…? There are therapists in this city who specialize in counseling GDU employees. Is that or is that not amazing?
Saturday I drove out to her house, way on the far west side (halfway to California). She and her husband, a firefighter, have built a lovely home on an acre of land out there. She’s very, very good at gardening and housekeeping; now that she’s home all the time, the place looks gorgeous.
KJG worried, as the opportunity for her to retire approached, about no longer contributing to the household income. She actually felt guilty about the prospect. Yesterday, though, she remarked that she no longer feels that way: “We have plenty,” she observed.
Indeed. And as a matter of fact, to pay for the gardening, housekeeping, cooking, and homemaking services she does could cost them more than she was earning at GDU. Sometimes having one member of a couple not work costs the household a great deal less than it would appear at first glance.
We took the dogs for a hike in the White Tank Mountains, which was quite an adventure for Cassie the Short-legged Little Corgi. KJG has a well trained and mellow doberman, one of whose steps equals about ten of a corgi’s.
The day was so gorgeous, there were quite a few people out, although not so many that the trail seemed as crowded as those in town. We did run into one chucklehead with a gigantic bulldoggy looking critter, probably a mastiff mix. He stood aside and cooed, “Don’t worry, he’s fine!” Of course the instant KJG approached to pass them, his huge dog lunged for the dobe, who, though generally a laid-back sort, wasn’t inclined to take any guff. Fortunately, Kathy is a good dog handler and managed to get by without contact. As she and her dog reached the other side of this obstacle, the doberman turned around, glared back at the guy and his mutt, and emitted a deep, alarming growl: Make my day!
And so we see again the uses of a small dog that can be picked up. Because Cassie only weighs 25 pounds, I could pick her up, climb off the trail, and wait for the guy and He’s Just Fine to go on their way.
Why do people take animals like that on narrow public paths?
That notwithstanding, it really was a beautiful morning and a nice hike.
Later we junketed around to several big nurseries on the westside—the area still has surviving pockets of agricultural land, some of which are occupied by wholesale nurseries whose proprietors will allow the general public to wander around. Then we took it into our heads to look at model homes in the very few surviving new-home developments.
And that was something to see. If you’re in the market for a new home in the Southwest, now is the time to buy! They’re practically giving the things away. We went into a set of Shea Homes models—Shea is reputed to be one of the better tract builders in Arizona—where we found several very attractive designs in what appeared to be pretty decent construction. Interestingly, the lots in this tract were sized for human beings living in single-family homes, with enough space between the houses to allow air to circulate. For $177,000, you can buy a large, intelligently laid out house with lots of big, bright, airy rooms, a kitchen to die for, and a master bathroom best described as “sybaritic.” Of course, by the time you added the amenities that made the models desirable, you’d be pushing three hundred grand… But it was clear that for about what my house would sell for, you could get the basic floor plan plus a few upgrades that would be hard to retrofit—the top-quality cabinetry, for example—and then over the next few years make the improvements you’d like as you could afford them.
For me, the disadvantage (besides the noise from the F-16s flying out of the nearby Air Force base) is the enormous distance from everything I like to do. It’s almost an hour’s drive from the central city. Moving out there would mean the end of choir participation, the end of the regular jaunts to AJs and Whole Foods, and the beginning of impossible drives to the nearest community college.
But it was fun to look at the houses. It really would be perfect if you could get Shea to build one of those places on an infill lot.
Sunday KJG drove into town, because we wanted to go on the Willo Historic District tour. This has become quite a shindig! They’d blocked off the feeder streets one street south of where I used to live, and the street where my son’s two babysitters used to live was filled with vendors’ booths. We came across one of my choir coconspirators, a lovely alto who owns Ecocentricity, an environmentally conscious shop right in the middle of the Willo commercial fringe.
She was selling a big purple purse one of her suppliers had made from a 1970s leather skirt. It was incredibly cute, and the leather was so soft and light the thing hardly seemed to weigh anything. The price was a bit stiff, though—ninety bucks. Coveting it, I set it aside to think it over while we were walking.
The day grew warm, though, and before we could get back to the Ecocentricity booth, we faded. Ended up going to lunch at our favorite uptown restaurant instead of wandering back whence we’d come.
In the real estate department, I really do miss my beautiful old house in Willo. Occasionally, I think I’d like to move back there. However, the historic district designation and the huge demand from affluent DINKs has pushed the prices out of my range. Oh well. It’s a lot of work to keep those old places up, anyway.
At Evensong my choir friend told me that the purse had almost sold three times, but she still has it! So I’ll probably drive down to Ecocentricity today, after I call the arborist to see what he can do about the trees damaged by the idiot roofers.
I intend to bill Crown Roofing for the cost, and also to post a report about the tree assault on Angie’s List. Every time I look at my poor tree in front, I could just cry.
The afternoon rising to the high 70s, had a nice snooze on the hammock before heading out to Evensong, where we listened to another of our music director’s awe-inspiring organ recitals and then sang a couple of really nice pieces for the service. That was fun.
After Evensong I went to the wine and cheese reception, where whom should I meet but a fellow who works for Pearson Publishing. This outfit contracts to my partner in business crime, Tina, who does project management for them. Turns out this guy writes science and tech textbooks for Pearson—he’s got a fulltime job with them, but because they allow him to work from home three days a week, he’s able to live in town, instead of out in the sea of houses that is Chandler, where the megapublisher’s Arizona quarters are located.
The guy started as a high-school teacher in one of the top science and technical high-schools in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. He says the school was outperforming most other schools and had a nationally top-ranking science program. When the No Child Left Behind legislation kicked in, the faculty were informed that they had to stand down from what they were doing and instead focus on getting their kids to pass the standardized exams—whose standards were lower than what the kids were already achieving.
This lock-step dumbing-down degraded the school’s quality—it no longer ranks at all in science and technology—and so demoralized staff that many people quit. He said that the year he left, 25 other teachers also departed.
Pearson pays quite nicely…given the cost of textbooks, they can afford it. You can be sure this guy is earning more than he did at teaching, and pretty clearly America’s school system lost some talent. Ohh well.
Anyway, the guy has a fair amount of music background. Maybe he can be persuaded to join the choir. He seemed like a nice man who’d fit in well.
Then it was back to the Funny Farm for a 9:00 p.m. stroll through the neighborhood with Cassie, a nice wrap-up for a fun weekend.
Oh, God, I don’t know when I’ve ever been so tired.
Up at 3:00 a.m. Work until 4:30 or 5:00, wrestling with Excel: check and check and double-check to be sure my English-major arithmetic is right before transferring a ton of money to joint checking to cover about half of my share of the 2011 PITI for the Black Hole of Money in downtown Phoenix. Figure out a way to get the tax covered as well as the other fun parts of this bill for the entire freaking year (assuming I don’t drop dead between now and next December), and still have a little to spare.
Not bad, for a bleary-eyed predawn foray into personal finance.
Stagger back to bed, shivering…it is sooo cold in a 59-degree house. Well, not really; but sometimes it gives the distinct illusion of chill. Fall asleep.
Wake again at 9:00, when I’m supposed to be at Financial Advisor Dude’s office, thereinat to get the new will signed, witnessed, and notarized. Cope with a flood of e-mails demanding immediate response. Fly around to feed the dog, wash the stink off myself, throw on some clothes, and dart out the door. Streak across the city, not arriving too obscenely late. Complete this little piece of business. Stop by the grocer’s to pick up some bacon; it’s close to M’hijito’s house and sort of on my way home. Figure to drop off the package with the updated will, new powers of attorney, new living will, freshly recorded…uh oh!
Forgot to bring the beneficiary deed for the house. Sumbiche.
Schlep uptown to my shack. Have NO clue where the beneficiary deed is, in the piles of paper scattered all over my desk. Have to clean out the office to find the thing, if I can find it.
Shovel, shovel, shovel, shovel, and shovel. Push papers around, pull papers around, organize papers, toss papers, shred papers, file papers, God how I hate paper! Find the recorded beneficiary deed. Lawyer only sent one copy. Photocopy it with my printer. Stick original in packet. Send e-mail to M’hijito explaining the importance of storing the originals of these documents carefully and not losing them, and also explaining why he needs the copies.
Phone rings: insurance adjuster. He’s sending an extra $550 to cover the cost overrun for the roof and AC. Says he might send more if I come up with an invoice for repainting the fascias. I hang up, kiss the ground upon which he adjusts claims, and call the painter.
Climb in the car and drive back down to M’hijito’s place, enormous waste of $3.15/gallon gasoline. Deposit fat packet of paper on his dining room table. Burn more gas driving home.
By now the dog resembles an overstuffed bratwurst.
Take the dog for a long walk in the park. Poor beast has to relieve herself not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Good thing we brought plenty of blue New York Times plastic newspaper wrappers.
Unbelievably beautiful day. This is why we live in Arizona, why we tolerate intermittently being made the nation’s class clowns. Gorgeous. Dog finds a ball left behind in the park by some other, careless dog. Exhausts herself playing with it. An hour later we drag back in the front door.
Start to clean. Oh, this house gets filthy! Oh well, at least the office is picked up. Dust and dust and dust, scrub bathrooms, clean stove. Stop long enough—very hungry—to grab some cheese, fruit, crackers and wine.
Client e-mails to say he’s written another book; will we edit it? Will we edit it! Hell, yes we’ll edit it. Tina and I are both running low on editorial work; mighty glad to get this guy’s business. Back & forth with Tina, figuring out what we charged him before and how much time this is likely to take. Highly technical stuff, but the last book was generally coherent and easy to copyedit. Yes, she said. Yes.
Vacuum and vacuum and vacuum, climb under the bed to vacuum. Dustmop the rest of the dirt off all the floors, 1,860 square feet of tile. Steam-mop the grime off the floors. Climb on a ladder to reach the top of the refrigerator; Windex the grime off that and off the front of the fridge and off the fronts and trim of all the other kitchen appliances and the glass tabletops outside and…and…
Realize, really and fully, what an unholy mess the damn roofers made of my two most beautiful trees. The idiots hacked whole limbs off them…and they were NOT over the roof. What the hell got into those fools? They chopped a limb off the spectacular desert willow in front, leaving it sticking out like an amputated leg and yanking out a quarter of the canopy. That tree shaded the (very hot in summer!) front courtyard, and now it’s wrecked. The beautiful paloverde on the west side, which also provided enough shade to make a different sitting area tolerable, was not helped by their butchery, either. Lay a curse on them. Remind self to write a post on the hazards of relying on Angie’s List.
Throw the area rugs into the barely functional dryer, one at a time, along with rags laden with home-made fabric softener. This beats great wads of dog hair out of them, which collects in mats on the dryer’s filter. This, I reflect, may explain why the dryer threatens to burn the house down if it’s run on anything other than “air dry.”
Water plants. Feed the dog.
Finally finish cleaning. Just freaking beat.
Take the dog for a walk, bearing a mug full of iced tea. Glorious evening, Orion flying overhead, a brilliant half-moon silvering the yards, sidewalk and street. Enjoy the spectacular night through a haze of exhaustion. Stumble back in the house and, as I step over the threshold, watch the hard-fired ceramic mug slip out of my fingers and fly into the air.
Grab it! Just get my fingers onto it, only to see it slip free again, cartwheel across the room, crash onto the floor, and explode into a cascade of shrapnel.
God freaking dammit!
Get the dog safely around the sharp, broken pottery, lock her into the back room. Sherds of glass-like ceramic are all over the floor, under the sofa, on the sofa, between the cushions…what an unholy mess.
Haul out the broom, the dustpan and the vacuum (again!). Move the furniture, haul the gigantic sofa across the room, pick up sharp broken stuff, sweep vacuum vacuum sweep, vacuum the shattered pieces out of the sofa cushions. Haul all the furniture back into place, haul the cleaning gear back to the garage and the hall closet. Curse like a sailor all the while. Hate cleaning. Hate having to re-clean what I just finished cleaning even more than I hated having to clean it in the first place.
Have to be at KJG’s house, halfway to Yuma, by 8 tomorrow a.m., with the dog in tow. Great wads of dog hair are peeling out of her fur. Can’t take this animal over to her place, there to deposit fleece all over K’s house, always much cleaner than mine.
Take the dog out to the driveway and brush the bejayzus out of her. Friend suggested you can clean a dog’s coat a bit with a damp microfiber rag. Try that out. Dog doesn’t seem to mind. Concrete is hard, back hurts, feet hurt, eyes ache with exhaustion. But dog is de-fleeced, at least some of the gray grime wiped off her erstwhile white little paws.
Phone rings. Fly in the house, being sure the dog gets in, too. Miss the caller. Go back outdoors to collect the dog defuzzing tools. Phone rings. Race back indoors, grab the phone. Crate & Barrel lady. They just noticed that they ordered up the cushion for the ottoman I’m trying to buy from them, but not the ottoman itself.
What?
Why would they think I’d buy an ottoman cushion but not an ottoman? She says it’ll be another couple of weeks before the rest of the piece is delivered to the store. Since I’ve been waiting three months for this thing already, what’s another two weeks or so?
Just that much longer I won’t have to pay their bill.
Realize Funny didn’t post anything today; if a post is to go live tomorrow it’ll have to be written before I go to bed. Submit four posts to carnivals. Research Delta Dental: does it do business in Canada? Probably not, rendering the AARP Delta Dental rant ineligible for the Canadian Finance Blog Festival. {grump}
Write post.
Schedule post.
Go to bed.
Hypnos, the God of Sleep, and His Half-brother Death
{moan} The wind whipped at about 30 to 40 mph all day yesterday and all night long. It was supposed to freeze last night but did not—fortunately. I couldn’t keep the covers on any of the plants; everything blew off in the wind no matter what I did to try to weight them down with rocks and bricks or to clip them with clothespins. But today an arctic air mass is riding in on that cold wind, and temps are supposed to drop into the 20s tonight and tomorrow and maybe Friday, too.
Whenever the headache subsides, which it will after breakfast and a long stand under a hot shower, I’ll have to go out there, saw up some sticks from the defunct trellises, pound them into the ground, sew lengths of twine onto the cloths with an upholstery needle, and tie everything down. Boy. That sure sounds like fun.
The roofing guys are back, tromping and banging overhead again. What a rough bunch that crew is! Holy mackerel.
Yesterday they scraped the old roof off and started hammering the new shingles down. Cassie the Corgi went ballistic. I ended up leaving her at La Maya’s house when I went to campus, for fear that she would make herself sick if she were left here alone in such a frantic state.
These guys lack the tradesmanlike skill of my old roofer. They’re just rough-and-tumble laborers. They yanked off the flashing around the deck, which the last guy didn’t do. Bila had painted the flashing to match the house, so now that will have to be redone, by guess who. Then there’s the shingles, which are darker than I realized they would be. I asked for a deep brown, which these are…but very deep. From a distance, they look black. And they’re pretty ugly against the light brown slump block on the house.
I’m not 100 percent pleased with the new heat pump, either. When the weather is mild (i.e., when you don’t really need the heat on), it works just fine. But when it gets cold, a heat pump loses efficiency and struggles almost nonstop to deliver warm air. In fact, at times it will blow icy-cold air into the house. I finally got tired of listening to it run last night—even set at 63 degrees the unit wasn’t shutting off, and it never fell much below 40 outside—so around 3 a.m. got up and turned the damn thing off.
As a result, it’s might’ crisp in here. Cassie’s little feet, the only part on her that’s not swathed in a three-inch-thick fur coat, have turned into small blocks of ice. I huddle in front of the computer wrapped in a fleece jacket and dread the prospect of having to step out of the shower later this morning. Sure am glad I don’t live back east, though!
More crap than Carter has oats has blown into the pool, there to join the debris tossed off the roof by the workmen. What a mess to clean up! No one expects roofing to be a tidy job, but really, it’s not necessary to throw your pop bottles and your garbage into the customer’s yard.
Spent a couple of hours with the new tax accountant last night, figuring out my taxes. She appears to be very good. Clued me to a lot of things about the way an S-corp works that the retired tax lawyer never bothered to explain. As it develops, the Copyeditor’s Desk can pay for some things directly related to its business activities that I’ve been paying out of my personal account, one of them being the Internet connection and another being subscriptions to publications directly related to and supporting Funny about Money. It’s not very much, but relief of even a few dollars in the monthly nondiscretionary budget will help a lot.
Looks like I may be about to pick up a new client. The executive director of a trade group I belong to referred the University of Arizona’s agricultural college to me; they’re looking for someone to freelance some stories, all of which look entertaining and interesting. So that will be a nice break from the freshman comp grind and will help to fund CE Desk so it can cover these proposed extra expenses.
At any rate, after talking with the CPA, I now can see that setting up the S-corp was quite a good idea, much better than I’d realized. It would’ve helped if someone had explained its benefits to me in detail, rather than dismissing my questions with a short answer of the “you must be a moron” variety. {sigh} I thought my ex-husband’s ex-law partner was doing a good job on the taxes, but apparently she could’ve been doing better.
