Soggy, cranky day

Bleyach! Wet. Hot. Miserable.

Air: it’s a gaseous sponge.

Students: they’re a bit gaseous, too.

Puppies: gaseous but cute.

Middle-aged corgis: cranky as cats.

I’ve already learned to stand at the end of the counter that divides the kitchen from the dining/family room with a puppy toy in one hand and Ball in the other to perform the Two-Handed Toss: throw Cassie’s ball down one side and Jack’s toy down the other. This causes each canid to go after his/her own toy and keeps the corgi’s dogicidal tendencies at a low ebb.

Saturday, when Cassie first met Jack the Infant Golden Retriever (we might call him L’Infante), she gave him a jaundiced look that said, clear as English, Chinese or Athabascan: This one is going to take some training.

Today being Jack’s first day of doggie day care, the training has begun:

• Grab the Ball: you die.
• Come anywhere near the food: you die.
• Mess with the human at any time when the human can’t stare me down: you die.
• Mess with the human at any time when the human can stare me down: watch your back.
• If you’re a human, don’t even think it, whatever you take into your addled cranium.

Pup is asleep on the kitchen floor. Cassie is lobbying for Ball tosses. I had a supremely bad night’s sleep and think it would be good to lie on the floor, too, on those cool, cool tiles, and take a brief snooze, battle having been done with not one but two useless vendors.

Friday the Leslie’s guy cleaned out the pool filter, heavily laden with mud from the late great Dust Bowl storms.

Yesterday (Sunday) the pool filter quit working, its pressure down to zero.

This afternoon when I got home I called Leslie’s and said someone needs to come over and fix whatever the guy who was anxious to leave on vacation didn’t fix (he was a bit of a turkey). She said they could get someone over here a week from today. I said waiting a week while my pool turns green in the hottest month of the year because Leslie’s broke the system is not acceptable. She hung up on me. I called back and complained some more. She said they’d send someone over tomorrow afternoon (right! We’ll believe that when we see it).

Around 10:30 last night I discovered the moron roofers, the very ones who trashed not one but two of my trees for no discernible reason, had disconnected the vent that runs from the water heater through the attic to vent through the roof. Last night rain poured in through the loose, hanging duct, seeping down through the garage ceiling, drizzling down the heater, and puddling on the garage floor, ruining several slabs of drywall (plus god knows WHAT inside the attic) in the process.

Before I left for campus this morning—6:00 a.m., to be specific—I called the roofer. He said he’d send someone over this afternoon. Right. We’ll believe that when we see it.

The overseer at the Costco gas pumps, where I was forced to buy gas after class this noon, is a big hulking small town boy, the kind of guy who OUGHTA BE LIVING IN YARNELL WHERE I IOUGHTA BE LIVING. He likes to chew the fat. I told him I need a resident male voice and why, and then said I’m thinking of having my plumber, who I actually do trust, come fix the thing and then trying to get the roofer to pay the cost.

He uttered the golden words: small claims court.

Ah.

Said he: Don’t let any other workman or contractor anywhere near the mess until the roofer does whatever he’s going to do. Then if he hasn’t fixed it or won’t repair the water damage, then take him to small claims court. But if anyone else even so much as exerts the pressure of his eyeballs looking upon it, he can claim someone else did the damage and he had nothing to do with it.

Got it.

So. That looks like it could have the potential for a protracted headache. I hope not. But could be. Anyway, there’s nothing like a small town good-ole-boy transplanted into the fumes of a nasty inner-city gas station to reset your view of reality.

Students, wrapping up the semester, are chaotic. Several having fucked up magnificently are begging indulgences. It’s as hard to turn them down as it is to turn up your nose at an adorable little puppy. They are so earnest, they are so sweet, they are so young and fresh. We do love them as we love our own babies.

God, but i’m tired!