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?