Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Pool Dude: MIA

by

hmmmmm…. It’s 9 o’clock in the morning…

Got the right day?

Yep: it is Monday.

Pool dude is usually here and gone long  before this. If he’s been around, I sure haven’t seen him.

And if he had been around while I was here, Ruby would have alerted me. She is hopelessly in love with the man. Not only does she fly into a frenzy of joy when she sees him, but…she knows what day of the week it is.  And in the Canine Calendar, today is definitely Pool Dude Day.

How on earth that’s possible, I cannot imagine. But on Monday mornings, she’s standing by the glass sliding doors watching. And watching. And watching…waiting for the mysteriously beloved Pool Dude.

Most optimistic hope is that he had car trouble, or that some major hassle arose at an earlier customer’s place. But…I tried to call him earlier this week to ask about a question that arose, and got no answer. Left word on his machine: no call-back.

I take these developments as bad signs. Though he’s been reliable all these many weeks that he’s been working for me, at one point in the course of a conversation he did make some remarks that revealed he has a prison record.

That in itself is not enough to put me off. In fact, it explains why he’s trying to make a living in rather low-skill self-employment, since he seems to be a smart and self-sufficient kinda guy.

But the problem is, if he got busted for something — anything, no matter how minor — that will make big, BIG trouble for him. He may be in jail or under some kind of house arrest.

If that’s the case, pretty clearly it’s the end of his pool maintenance business.

And that makes his problem my problem…  Because he’s been doing an awe-inspiring job on the damn pool! The water is crystal clear and the system is running beautifully. That thing has never looked better or been cleaner, not since I’ve lived here.

The remains of three pool tabs were in the chlorine floater. So…well…in this heat, you wouldn’t THINK they’d last a whole week. But that would mean he must have shown up on some other day. I haven’t seen him…but anything’s possible.

I tried to phone him a few days ago: no answer. Left word on his voicemail: no return call.

Not. A. Good. Sign.

Welp. If Pool Dude has flaked out on us — and since nothing lasts forever, that’s surely a possibility — I’ll have to find a new guy ASAP. In this heat, that water can turn green overnight.

So, drat!  The pool is running fine right now, and should continue so for a week or ten days. But I don’t seem to have the required skill to keep it running clear and shiny.

While I’m traipsing around the city, then, I guess I’ll need to go by the Leslie’s Pool store in Sunnyslop — the best branch of that outfit I’ve found so far — and ask if they can recommend any customers who are in the pool maintenance business.

However…I fear Leslie’s itself does that, which means they’re not going to refer the competition to me. So THAT means I’ll have to put out yet another notice on the neighborhood Facebook page, begging for leads.

****

O Gawd! the guy at the credit union couldn’t get me into my bank account. He told me to go home and call thus-and-such an annoying number.

It’s 108 in the shade, with thunderheads building up to the north.

How can I COUNT the ways I don’t feel like getting on the phone to the CU’s representative?

Wait…how can I count the ways I ain’t a-gunna do it?

Stopped at the Sprouts next to the campus on the way home. Snabbed a package of lamb chops, a package of beef steak thingies. Fresh asparagus. Box of fresh bright-green spinach w/ which to make a salad. Fresh corn on the cob. Fresh bottle of cheap wine.

SCREW COMMERCE! By damn. I’m a-gunna eat myself stupid and then fall face-first into the sack.

The heat and the humidity defy belief. This feels like the shore of the endlessly effing Persian Gulf…which is another way to say you feel like you’re swimming through the air.

The last time I can remember this kind of heat, they shut down Sky Harbor because the jet airplanes couldn’t get enough lift from the hot air to take off safely. Or at all.

High as a Kite? Or Crazy as a Loon?

by

In central Arizona’s lovely August heat, Ruby and I have to get out for the daily doggy-walk right at or even shortly before dawn. This stroll takes us around Upper Richistan, about a mile of shaded walking…two if we elect to walk up toward our friend Marge’s house, visit the cow pasture in those parts, and stroll back to the Funny Farm.

This morning was icky hot and humid, so we limited the day’s hike to the Upper Richistan loop. It’s around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. by the time we get to those parts.

So we’re strolling along the road when along comes this couple, a youngish man and what appears to be his wife or girlfriend. And the woman…well…she’s clearly stoned out of her mind. She’s already kinda raving on, and when she sees Ruby, she goes BONKERS.

She starts carrying on with ohhhh corgi!!! it’s a CORGI. look at her cute little butt! And then on and on and on about the cute little butt.

We’re not going to get away from this nut case, so I end up deciding to make an about-face and take another route, back into our low-rent precincts of the ‘Hood .

***

This is Business as Usual in the ‘Hood. The pair probably came from the slum apartments that stand on the far side of Conduit of Blight Blvd. That place, which once meandered pleasantly through a rambling golf course — now a gigantic weed patch — started out as a compound of upper-middle-class rentals. But over the years they’ve gone steadily downhill, and now the golf greens are dead and the apartments are run-down dumps. A resident once shot a cop through the front door of one of those fine dwellings.

Oh well…. Derailed from our usual route through the sylvan glens of Upper Richistan, we head back into our section of the ‘Hood. Up a cross-street to the north of us…hmmmmm….  Some of the houses there are being rebuilt and upgraded. Evidently somebody thinks that, given the central location and the widespread hallucination that there’s something kewl about the lightrail, they can fancify a house and sell it for quite a bit more than it’s worth.

Oh well, indeed.

We circle back into our part of the ‘Hood, over to where the cop lives with his young family, past the home of our eccentric pal who escaped here from the Darkest West Side. And as we walk, we pass by the Old Lady’s House.

Oh, dear.

This woman, a long-time resident of the ‘Hood — quite possibly an original owner! — was widowed and apparently left with exactly nothing. She simply didn’t have the funds to maintain a house, whether or not she owned it free and clear. And one of the things she skimped on to get by was…oh, yes: homeowner’s insurance.

Sooo… When the wild, hurricane-like storms we had a few years ago came through and tore a hole in her roof, she couldn’t afford to get the roof fixed!

This apparently didn’t much matter most of the time: she couldn’t afford air conditioning, either, so it was gonna be hotter than the hubs in there all summer and colder than a bygod all winter. But the big problem was, whenever it rains, water pours into the house like a cascade.

That’s what the wretched woman was having to live in.

Finally, the house was removed from her possession… Unclear whether she died, whether she moved in with someone and just abandoned the place, or whether it was taken for taxes. Most of us think the latter, but who knows? She was moved out of there, and the place stood vacant for awhile.

Now apparently someone has bought it. Whether as an investment or to live in it is unclear. WhatEVER: they just finished installing a whole new roof! And now they’re over there fixing up the walls and presumably repairing and spiffing up throughout.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the present owners move into it, or whether they’ll sell it for a handsome profit.

A place around the corner that was basically rebuilt from a few surviving walls recently sold for something over a million bucks. To give you an idea: my first house in the ‘Hood was a block up the street: I paid $125,000 for it and felt that was too much….  Zillow thinks my present house — same builder, same model, a block & a half further from Conduit of Blight’s noise and crime — is worth $535,000 and change.

Can you imagine?

I sure can’t!!

When the Gods Are On Your Side….

by

Or playing a practical joke…  That’s possible, too. We’ll know soon enough.

Doorbell rings as I sit here loafing. Ruby goes dog-bonkers. Now what?

I haul myself upright, stumble to the front door, fling open the inside door…and… HOleee mackerel!

There stands THE single most GORGEOUS young man I have ever seen.

No exaggeration. The creature is beyond handsome.

Normally I’d tell a solicitor to walk on, walk on… Not this one, though!

Incredibly, he’s peddling something that I need seriously and soon:  roach and rat treatment.

Lordie! When, dear God, did you decide to be on my side?

Well, let’s hope this is not some kind of cosmic joke.

The monthly service he’s selling is reasonably priced, and he offered a pretend discount, cinching the more-or-less affordable market rate.

The rats and the roaches are not going away. Even though I did catch Rattie in a trap the other day, all the other traps have remained untouched (rats being no fools after all). And as for the sewer roaches…well…there’s not a lot the locals can do unless the city can be prevailed upon to come around and treat the sewers that flow under our sidewalks. We used to get that service, but the city seems to have quit it. Possibly lobbied away by the bug companies that want individual citizens to pay them royally. Kill off the roaches: kill of their business.

I do have to say that combined, the roach issue and the rat issue are getting a bit beyond the pale. I’d already decided to hire an exterminator…but when this spectacular being showed up at the door, it was ACCOUNT SOLD!

Seriously, I’ve been thinking I need to give up and hire a service. We used to have a bug service in our first house in downtown Phoenix. There — the Encanto district — the stately 50-year-old houses tended to be infested with termites. And really, everybody had a termite service. We eventually canceled because the bug spray made the cats sick…and it was beginning to make me sick, too. And yeah…when we went to sell the shack, lo and behold! Termite damage.

The Funny Farm, at least, is built on a concrete foundation. Our house downtown had a wooden crawl space…deeee-lishus! But nevertheless, the attic is framed in wood, and I believe the plasterboard walls have wood framing inside. And as for the roaches…Helle’s belles! They don’t care what your house is made of.

Anyway…dunno where the termite company found that spectacular young man. But they couldn’t have picked a better representative!

😀

An Untitled Blog Post!

by

Lookee here! Y’day I hit “Publish” for this thing. Never noticed before this morning — 6:53 a.m.! — that it had no title.

Aaaah senility! Ever entertaining!

***July 30, 2023***

Six p.m. and Wunderground tells us the balmy summer afternoon has cooled to 109 degrees.

Hmmm…oh yah? Let’s see what the real-world thermometer says on the real-world back porch: a balmy 111.

Well. That’s not so far off.

It’s enough that the back bedroom — what we might call the “master” bedroom, where the queen-sized bed resides — is down to 80, which is about the same as we’re getting for the “guest” bedroom, where Ruby and I have hunkered down on the twin bed. Until this evening, it’s been running at about 82 back here. Yes. At night.

A twin bed is hardly enough room for a human and a bossy dog. One of us is always at risk of being tossed on the floor. That room has been a little cooler than the back bedroom, partly because it’s smaller and partly because it’s right under the AC duct as it comes direct out of the rooftop unit. By the time the AC blast gets to the back bedroom, it’s gone another 16 feet through the superheated attic, meaning that the “breeze” coming out of it is noticeably warmer than the air that reaches the guest bedroom. Until this evening, actually, there’s been about a two-degree differential between the rooms. And trust me: when you’re feeling baked, 82 degrees is noticeably warmer than 80!

This evening, though, it seems a little cooler: I’d say the two rooms are about the same. So the hound and I are repairing to the “master,” where at least there’s a little more elbow room on the bed.

Jumping in the pool presents no solution to the fricaseeing issue. That water is  seriously as hot as bathwater. No kidding. And yes, I do like my bathwater hot.

The weather service has been promising rain all day.

Har har hardy har-har! 😀

We did have some light cumulus clouds late in the morning and for a short while this afternoon. They’re gone now, though. Now what’s up there are high, thin stratospheric clouds, the type that do NOT speak of rain.

That’s another way of saying it’s humid on top of the 110-degree-plus heat.

With any luck, it’ll be cool enough back here that I won’t have to position a table fan to blow directly on us. Turns out that when Ruby is loafing in front of a blasting fan, the wind dries her eyes out!

Ouch!

So the poor little dog has dry, red eyes that look awful and could not possibly feel much different. I’ve been dosing her, at the vet’s suggestion, with my own eye doctor’s expensively recommended eyedrops, stuff called iVizia.

It’s pretty good stuff. It helped my eyes significantly and quickly, and it seems to be doing the same for the pooch.

Weather service says that tomorrow we have a 47% chance of rain. Yeah: we’ll believe that when we see it, too. Temp is supposed to reach 106.

What. A. Place!

by

A-n-n-d…it’s 7:30 in the morning. Ruby and I are back from our regular one- to two-mile peregrination. Temp on the back porch has chilled down to a crisp 89 degrees. Brrr!

One nice thing about the present heat wave: we didn’t have to navigate around many other dogs. Usually it’s a zoo out there: everybody and her little brother, sister, and mother-in-law are out walking their livestock before time to leave for work. We encountered just one dog-wrangler…and that was just as we hit the road: one of the gay guys down the street, walking their two cute little pooches.

It’s overcast and extremely muggy. Surely we’ll get rain today…maybe even this morning. That is much to be hoped.

Wildfires are still raging around Rio Verde, a sub-suburb next to Fountain Hills. Back when I was working on the ASU Main campus, I seriously considered buying a place out there. It’s remote and very quiet (uh…well…except they don’t tell you that it’s right under the path of commercial flights coming in to Sky Harbor…), and yet despite the apparent countrified remoteness, it’s a straight shot down to Tempe.

Heh! Sure am glad I’m not out there now. Neither is anybody else: they’ve evacuated the area that I coveted…if I’d bought the house I admired at the time, I’d be writing this post from some motel room!

If we get rain this weekend — as it appears we will — that should break the heat wave, at least for awhile. August is always a bear in Arizona’s low desert, and we’re not even there yet. But even a few days’ relief will make the rest the summer more tolerable.

***

Half-past noon.

A noise emits from…where? A whack or a clonk.

Ruby goes on alert.

Understand: a corgi is basically a short German shepherd. Always on the lookout for threats to its flock: to wit, its humans.

She’s off the bed and headed for the back door like a furry rocket.

I grab the phone and a kitchen knife (GOT to get a functioning pistol!) and let her out.

She flies around the back yard, completing a circuit in a matter of seconds. Whatever or Whoever made the noise seems not to be out there. I call her into the house. Lock the door. Figure the most likely culprit is the endlessly noisy refrigerator.

Though I thought the damn thing had quieted down. WhatEVER. Don’t know who or what went clunk in the afternoon. But do wish Ruby weighed about 50 pounds more than she does.

*****

Holy God!

Sometimes reading the news is counterproductive. It’s SO horrifying that it leaves you wanting not to be more informed but less informed.

This poor woman…she’s got her family up at Lake Pleasant, a local artificial pond and recreational attraction. They’re wake-boarding and swimming, great fun in this heat.

At one point, the family was partying around. These people were experienced boat operators. The mom fires up the boat to pull one of the kids up on a wakeboard…and, God help her, she runs over her other child, a six-year-old. The kid was in the water because she had just been wakeboarding.

No emergency services responded to phone calls. Nearby witnesses helped get the child out of the drink, but she died before they could get her to a hospital.

What a horror! Poor baby…poor mother!

In less exotic realms, a bit after midnight this morning, one of our fellow homicidal drivers (you think that’s a joke, don’t you?) crashed head-on into a city bus, driving the wrong way up the road. Needless to say, he was despatched to his Maker.

The I-17 freeway northbound out of the Valley was closed for hours, thanks to not one, not two, but three wrecks. Lovely. That was part of a series of crashes that occurred within a few hours.

Once you’re on the 17, you’re pretty much stuck: you can’t get away until you come to an off-ramp, and those are pretty far-between. So a whole lot of people spent a whole lot of time twiddling their thumbs and grinding their teeth.

In another fairly routine road-rage episode, not one but two women got into it with a motorcycle rider; one of the women shot the guy and killed him.

Even in staid and boring Sun City: a golf cart collided with an SUV and shut down a major thoroughfare serving that normally motionless berg.

What a place!!

EEEK!

by

Here we are at 7:30 p.m.  The sun has been down for awhile.

Just let Ruby outside to wring her out after her evening feast. Glanced at the thermometer.

Holeee shee-ut! It’s 110 out there!

Yes. That’s 110 in a spot where no direct sunlight ever hits, sheltered by fronds of ficus leaves. At 7:30 at night. Sunset was officially at 7:31, but it’s been dusky out there for awhile.

The hound and I have been hunkered indoors since we got back from the dawn doggy-walk. She can’t walk around on the pavement — especially not asphalt — in this kind of heat. I stepped out on the back porch barefooted just now…and the soles of my feet hurt! Because I go barefoot a lot — all the time that I’m not out in public — my feet are seriously calloused. Imagine if I were a nice girlie-girl who wore proper shoes most of the time!

Eeek, I say…