Coffee heat rising

Colonel, the Great Dane, and the Little Boy

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Did I ever tell this story here? Don’t recall…so am gonna self-plagiarize from today’s Quora post:

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Q: Do German shepherds make good guard dogs for homes and families with children?

Ohhhhh my goodness. If you have to ask this question, you’ve never known a GerShep. Lemme tellya:

First off, Greta the German shepherd, a mellow and laid-back beast who came to live with us after her humans divorced, saved my son from serious injury and probably permanent disability or even death. Long story short, we were ambling up the sidewalk with a neighbor’s 90-pound pooch, the not-very-redoubtable Colonel.

Colonel was leading the way, about 15 or 20 feet ahead of me, with my two-year-old son toddling along after him holding onto his tail. (Yes: Colonel was extremely mellow.) I was ambling along after Colonel, and Greta was bringing up the rear, sniffing the flowers as she ambled even more slowly.

The house on the corner had a wall around the backyard that extended up the side of the lot, running parallel to the sidewalk along the street, approaching us at right angles. In other words, our party is coming up a corner: a house and a wall are blocking our view of anything or anyone approaching us from our left.

All of a sudden, out from behind this wall comes a nubile young woman jogging up the street behind a great Dane, which she has on a leash.

When the kid sees the Dane, the likes of which he has never gazed upon in his short lifetime, he explodes in joy and excitement. He goes QUEEEEKEEEE QUEEEEKEEE QUEEEEKEEE!! at the top of his little-kid voice, drops Colonel’s tail, and runs straight at the enormous dog.

The Dane — quite reasonably, in the doggish context — sees this as an attack on its human. It lunges to her defense and RIGHT NOW has his head inside its maw.

I run after him — I’m a good 20 feet behind him and Colonel.

Colonel runs off in terror.

I lunge to try to catch him. Get my fingers on his little shirt, but he manages to jerk away before I get a good grip and continues to charge the Dane…right into the dog’s fangs.

Holeee ess-aitch-ai!!! At this point I think my baby is dead! if he isn’t killed, he might as well be!

And then a streak appears at my right side, about waist-high.

It’s Greta. And she’s airborne!

She literally flies up the sidewalk beside me and launches herself straight onto the Dane, which is half-again as big as she is.

The Dane’s human struggles and then dodges out of way as the two beasts tumble to the ground, fighting.

I grab my kid and pull him out from under the two falling dogs.

Now the Dane has Greta down, and I think omigod, this is IT for Greta.

All of a sudden, just as the animal is going for Greta’s throat, if collapses.

No kidding: it falls to the pavement, unconscious.

WTF?

The young woman has hauled on its leash so hard, it choked off the dog’s air and the beast passed out, falling right on top of Greta.

Greta gets up and repairs to my side. Colonel is nowhere to be seen. My son is still on his feet, incredibly enough.

Just about speechless, I choke out “I’m so sorry!!!”

She says — no kidding, these ARE her words:  “That’s all right. It happens all the time.”

{gasp!}

Greta put her life on the line for that little boy. And it wasn’t the last time she put herself between her humans and very serious harm.

 

High as a Kite? Or Crazy as a Loon?

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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!!

Long Hot Day….

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“Hot” in more ways than one.

This afternoon as I was idly cruising a neighborhood here looking for someplace to move away from the Romanian Landlord’s antics, what should appear to the south but a HUGE plume of  black smoke. It rose hundreds of feet into the air.

You could see it was a distance off: down by the riverbottom, probably, or at least in the industrial area of South Phoenix. So one hoped…not an apartment building full of poor folks.

Yea verily: it was in some kind of industrial yard. Apparently started as a grass fire and then spread to a warehouse. A half-dozen people were displaced from their mobile homes…unclear whether those vehicles were damaged, or whether people were evacuated for caution’s sake. Depending on what source you access, three or four firefighters ended up in the hospital (more photos!) with smoke inhalation….not too awful, considering that the city had 100 of them on the scene.

Meanwhile, the rest of the city is still cooking. Looks like we reached 111° this afternoon. Balmy!

As in “you have to be balmy to live here…”

 

When the Gods Are On Your Side….

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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!

😀

Report from the Hubs of Hades: Last Day of July

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Sleep. All I want is sleep.

Whatever that is, it’s in short supply. For sure!

Pool Dude is supposed to turn up about now. Ruby, who’s in love with him, has been standing guard at the windows, watching…watching…watching…  No sign of the guy.

Given the way things have been tooling along — “whatever can go wrong will go wrong” — this tardiness has several possible explanations…

* His truck is on the fritz
* Some other customer has a gigantic headache in their pool, slowing him down
* He’s been arrested and carted (back?) to the slam
* He’s sick or injured

It’s pretty clear that Pool Dude is an ex-con. A couple things he’s said indicated…shall we say, wisdom born of experience. And one of my friends has a son who (unjustly, IMHO) ran afoul of a (ridiculous!) law and spent several years at the prison in Florence. There’s a kind of style one develops that’s not hard to recognize. Plus of course, once you’ve enjoyed the state’s hospitality, it’s damn near impossible to get a decent job; so, you end up trying to build a business out of incidental, catch-as-catch-can work. That would be tree trimming…yardwork…pool cleaning…  Yeah.

If that’s the case with Pool Dude, it offers one potential explanation for his absence (if absence it is; not lateness): he may be back in the slam. {sigh}

Heh. In theory, you might make a pretty good living at pool cleaning. I pay him $80 a month for the basic routine clean-up & maintenance. He comes once every two weeks; that would yield $960/year per pool. Let’s say he does four pools a day, which could reasonably be as many as he could handle, when you add in the driving time. Working one day a week for four clients would give him $3840/year. Say he actually does this as a full-time business and so works five days a week: $3840 x 5 = $19,200/year.

That’s not very much, given that he supplies the chemicals — which ain’t cheap! — and has to deal with fuel and maintenance for his truck. Subtract those costs, and you get seriously not very much.

Hmmmm….  Well, I’ll give him til 10:00 a.m.  If he hasn’t shown up by then and he still isn’t answering the phone, I’ll drive over to Leslie’s and ask for a referral to one of their customers. Also put out a query on the neighborhood Facebook page.

The guy has been doing an incredible job.

a-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-d….

True to today’s Pattern of Frustration, OF COURSE… I go to look up  how much I’ve been paying him and see normally I pay him $110 a month. (Where did I get $80????? Ain’t senility grand? ) But the last time I gave him a check, it was for $40.

Huh??????  Why?

Jayzus! If I shorted him that much, no wonder he hasn’t shown up today!

Oh gawd what a mess!!!!!!!!!

The credit union’s website won’t let me into my online account. Apparently the password I have in my records is wrong. So I can’t get in to see whether I actually paid him a third of what was owed, or or whether I entered an error in my checkbook register.

Now I’ll have to wait till the credit union opens — 10 a.m. Schlep across town to get ahold of a live human being. Explain the predicament. Find out if I really DID pay him a measly forty bucks.

If so, I’ll have to grovel like mad. But if I did pay him his usual $110, then I’ll have to demand to know where the hell he is.

If he’s quit because I shorted him obscenely, then I’ll have to find a new pool dude.

Ohhhhh gawdlmighty! Just what I needed to make my day!

******

Hallelujah! It’s a miracle! For a change the mistake I made was in Sanity’s favor, not Satan’s.

Stan the Pool Dude on the phone: yes, I did pay him $110, not cleaning-lady wages. In fact, the $40 probably was for Luz, not for Stan.

Maybe the CU will tell me who that check was written to. If not…no huge hurry. I won’t have to fly over there like a rocket and arrive at their door the instant they open. That’s something. I guess.

Heh!

It’s only 8:00 in the morning. Whaddaya suppose is gonna happen NEXT?

An Untitled Blog Post!

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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.