Chortle! This stuff never stops, does it?
Today, the redoubtable Gerardo (Lawn Dude Par Excellence) herded his crew over here to prune the hateful palm trees. WHY the HELL do gringos plant those damn things in their yards?
The ones some previous owner installed here have got to be 50 or 60 feet high. They continually drop crap into the pool, and when they need to be pruned…well! WHAT a mess!
Just went out back to tidy up a bit, and found piles and piles and PILES of gawdawful trimmings covering the floor of the pool, where Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner was valiantly trying to suck them up…and getting clogged, clogged, and ultra-clogged.
Managed to unclog the pool cleaner. Farted around a bit. Finally thought oooooooooh fukkit! I’ll have to call the Pool Dude and hire him to clean up this incredible mess.
And won’t he be pleased!
Shoveled around and hauled around and got some of the crap out of the way. But Harvey the (expensive dammit!!!) pool cleaner is jammed with palm tree refuse. The bottom of the pool is COVERED with dead palm fronds…so many of them I can’t even begin to fish them out. Jayzuz! What a mess!
So I get out there in the 100-degree heat and start to haul as much stuff as I can reach and as much stuff as I can stand and hoooooBOY am i MAD!
Out of nowhere, Gerardo appears. He and his crew apparently went off for a coffee break (it being around 10 a.m.). He interrupts my debris-shoveling project and says he’ll clean it up.
Meanwhile, though, Harvey is stuck on the bottom of the pool — probably so jammed he’ll need the attention of a professional repair guy.
Sheeeut! This kinda crap makes living in some dumpy apartment look good. It even makes living in Sun City look good!
My thought is, I need to find a place in Fountain Hills (Whiteyville East) or icky Sun City (Whiteyville West) and just GIVE UP trying to live in a centrally located,, moderately normal neighborhood.
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Grrr grrrrrrr
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Gerardo’s boys worked themselves to frazzledom. My GOD the amount and the misery of the work those guys do!!!!! In the frikkin’ HEAT.
Just now it’s 105 in the shade. Those guys were out there, God only knows HOW long, hauling and sawing and shoveling and…godlmighty!
Most of the debris is now picked up, off the bottom of the pool and raked out of the shrubbery. The rest can wait until this evening or (better!) tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, I need some grocery items. My son still has my car — and I don’t expect to get it back. It’s hotter than the HUBs out there, and so I do not want to hike to the Albertson’s, the Sprouts, or the Fry’s…nor do I think it’s safe to do so. So…nothing much here to eat for lunchoid…and it pisseeth me off.
Again, the Common Sense Lobe of the aging brain mutters, “Hey, Stupid! If you lived in that high-rise, you wouldn’t have to dork with a pool. You wouldn’t have to dork with palm trees. And a train would pull up to the door and take you straight to AJ’s.”
Financial Dude calls on the phone He wants to meet with me and M’hijito to talk about inheritance planning.
What IS he tryin’ to say to me???
***
If I’m gonna stay in this house until they tote me off to the graveyard, there’s gonna have to be some changes made.
That pool is an expensive PITA. My next-door neighbor has drained hers.
Big money-saver, but an empty hole in the ground does trash the backyard. It really does trash the whole place, all the way around. Neighbor seems not to care: she’s never out there. One doubts if she even notices the mosquitos she’s breeding in the forgotten puddle. But I do like to sit on the patio and enjoy breakfast and dinner.
So…drain the pool??? Naaahhhhh…don’t think so.
Gerardo wants to chop down the accursed palm trees. WHY the gringos who move into this state think there’s some fantastical charm to accursed palm trees escapes me. But that’s probably because I grew up with accursed palm trees in the garden spot that was Saudi Arabia. Ugh!!!
At any rate, he and his guys did get the palm fronds pruned, But WHAT A MESS they left. And, we might add, that’s after they did the best they could to clean it up. Just now it’s too damn hot and the sun is blasting too damn hard for me to get out there and finish the job. So…ugh.
A box in the sky on Central Avenue begins to look good.
Oh, well: pool. What about the pool?
Could one, I wonder, drain all the water out of the hole-in-the-ground and then set up the main drain so it stays open all the time? In other words, empty the pool and fix it so any rainwater gets drained off?
That sounds pretty iffy to me. Bet it wouldn’t work. Not without some expensive plumbing and replastering, I’ll bet.
It actually might be cheaper to sell the house and move to an expensive Box in the Sky. But…but…
But that’s not actually what I want to do.
In the first place, I love this neighborhood and I like my neighbors. I don’t wanna move away from here! Seriously don’t wanna: if I felt that I wanted to go, I’d be outta here by now: in Sun City, Moon Valley, or Fountain Hills.
In the second place, I’ve lived in a tony high-rise. My mother was delighted to move us into a tower apartment in San Francisco, in an overpriced development called Parkmerced. And…well…
I didn’t NOT like that apartment. But I was just a kid. As just a kid, what did I see that I could do without today, in my dotage?
* Underground parking across the street. PITA to get your car into it, PITA to have to walk down six stories to get to your car, PITA to haul the car out of it…
* Neighbors. The critters make noise. As a kid, I thought the click click click click of the upstairs neighbors’ high-heels tapping across our ceiling was funny. Today that would drive me nuts.
* Neighbors.The serenade from their TV set: not so great.
* Neighbors. The stink of their cooking odors: not so great.
* Neighbors. The music of their brats hollering downstairs: not so great.
* Elevators. Claustrophobia central.
* Fire escapes. If there really were a fire someday, could we actually get out of this building over this tunnel’s stairs?
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Y’know…this, my present neighborhood, is my Sun City. Yes. This is where I wanna live for the rest of my life.
- I don’t wanna be in a fancy high-rise on North Central Avenue. Nope.
- I don’t wanna live in a cute (uninsulated, cheaply built) bungalow in the actual Sun City.
- I don’t wanna move to ritzy-titzy Scottsdale.
- I don’t wanna live in classy, spectacularly overpriced Fountain Hills, under the path of Sky Harbor’s passenger traffic.
- I don’t wanna listen to the superannuated hard-of-hearing neighbor’s TV set BLASTING away at high volume.
- There are not one but TWO major regional hospitals, right around the corner.
- From here, you can WALK to a Fry’s, a Sprouts, an Albertson’s, and two fancy electronics stores.
- Also within walking distance: a gorgeous, wild desert preserve, with hills and arroyos and wide-open spaces to hike.
- I don’t wanna live in a holding pen for the decrepit, teetering on the edge of the next world.
One could go on and on…
My son’s screwing around with my car throws a monkey wrench into that nest of escapist joy. But y’know what? I could easily afford to buy a new car. All I need to do is walk down the street to the nearest dealer’s lot. Or, for that matter: walk across the street and hire the Uber driver who lives two houses to the west of mine….