Please get off my eighth cranial nerve

I cleared out of Bugville on Monday. On Tuesday morning, I arrived at the neurologist's clinic two hours early for my long-anticipated 8:00 a.m. followup appointment. I made coffee on my camping stove in the parking lot. No way was I going to be late. Or uncaffeinated. 

The Tucson skies were blessedly cloudy. Clouds meant higher than normal humidity; clouds also meant relief from the sun, which turns my car into a stifling hothouse. 

Just as I finished forking over my copay, the doctor's assistant called my name. She led me through a maze of hallways to the doctor's office. I sat in one of the visitor chairs. The doctor was already seated behind her big mahogany desk. She pointed to a young woman in scrubs sitting at a laptop by the window.

"This is Sheena. She'll be our scribe today."

"Hi, Sheena," I said. Old 12-Step habit, hard to break.

I sat in the chair, feeling numb and disconnected. I pulled out the 3-part script I'd prepared at the suggestion of my doctor friend. The remedies you prescribed were ineffective. I would like to try an antiseizure medicine now. Which one would you recommend? That's it. Two statements and a question. 

It didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. The doctor scanned the report from the physical therapist. I could tell by her snippy tone that she wasn't happy with what she was reading. 

"I didn't ask her to diagnose you," she snarled. "I asked her to treat you for BPPV."

"As I understand it, she found nothing to treat," I replied. "She gave me some good balance exercises, though. And she did the hyperventilation test again. You can see her results didn't match yours."

"You don't have vestibular paroxysmia, you have BPPV and vestibular migraine."

"The NIH literature seems to show that the hyperventilation test is not 100% confirmation of the presence or nonpresence of vestibular paroxysmia," I said. "The sample sizes were small, but not all the patients who definitely had vestibular paroxysmia showed evidence of nystagmous."

She looked at me like I had two heads. At least, I think she did. I for some reason was having a hard time making eye contact with anything but the floor. I was kind of on my last nerve.

"Would you be willing to do the hyperventilation test again?" 

I followed her to the exam room. She put the goggles on my head and led me through an abbreviated version of her battery of tests, which consisted of her grabbing my head firmly in both hands and shaking it repeatedly from side to side and up and down. I knew she was watching on her monitor to see how my eyes responded. I'm guessing they didn't. Because I don't have BPPV. Duh. 

"Okay, breathe fast for 40 seconds." She panted to demonstrate proper panting technique. "I'll stand in front of you so you don't fall."

I held onto the exam bench, blinded by the goggles, and panted fast for 40 long seconds. I ignored her warm backside pressing against my knees. 

"Okay, stop." 

She took the goggles off my head. For a few minutes, she didn't say anything. Then she muttered something about a mild left downbeat, and I knew then that she had seen what the physical therapist had seen: possible evidence of vestibular paroxysmia. Yay, I thought. Finally. At last.

"I'll write you a prescription for lamotrigine," she said. "It addresses both vestibular migraine and vestibular paroxysmia. 

"Great. Can you have it sent to a different pharmacy? I'm going to be dogsitting in Scottsdale for a month, starting the day after tomorrow."

Her eyes lit up. For a second she looked human. "You are a dogsitter? It's so hard to find a good dogsitter. I have two big dogs. It's so hard to get away."

"I just dogsit for my friends," I said. I didn't say it: you aren't my friend. 

"We need to look at your most recent bloodwork."

We went back to her office. Her assistant pulled up my labs. 

"January? Where's the WBC number? It's not showing. Can you get this for me? After you get me that number, I'll send the prescription to your pharmacy. Call me when you get it."

I went out to my car, turned on my computer, and found an electronic copy of the January lab report. The WBC value wasn't showing because on the original it was red, indicating an abnormal number. Bummer. Still, it was only one number shy of being in normal range. I still had hope at this point that I would finally get some relief from the freight train going round and round in my head. I called the clinic and left a message with the phone answerer to tell the doctor the WBC number. Then I made my breakfast and ate it. It was 10:30. 

My phone rang. The neurologist said, "You had an irregular heartbeat the first time I saw you. Did you ever contact your cardiologist?"

"No," I said.

"This drug can negatively affect your heart. We need to talk to your cardiologist first. And you need to get more recent labs."

"Okay. Do they need to be fasting labs?"

"Yes."

I searched for Scottsdale appointments at the preferred chain of labs. The earliest I could get was a week away. While I was pondering what to do next, my phone rang. It was the neurologist's medical assistant, asking for some more information. In the course of our conversation, I found out I could get my labs done at the lab on the premises. She also told me that the prescription for lamotrigine had been sent to my pharmacy. Hallelujah!

First thing the next morning, I was sitting in a chair outside the lab at the neurology clinic, head in hands, starving and uncaffeinated, waiting for the phlebotomist to arrive. She was a few minutes late. When you want coffee, even a minute can seem like an eternity. I left bandaged and bruised but feeling so hopeful I went to Denny's for breakfast. It was either Denny's or IHOP. I chose the closest one.

Somewhere during that day I called the cardiologist's office and left a message. Sometime later someone (not my cardiologist) called me back to ask me what the heck was going on. Apparently they had received multiple messages from my neurologist. 

"Sorry for the confusion," I said. "Basically I want to know, will this drug kill me?"

"I'll leave a message for your doctor."

Later I visited the pharmacy. The pharmacist looked up the new prescription. "I have to call your doctor. This makes no sense," she said. "The instructions aren't clear. And I can't put all that on a bottle." After that, I went to the mall and sat in the air conditioning, surrounded by the din of screaming kids riding tiny motorized cars around the food court. When the sun went down, I chose a parking lot to swelter in for the night, and the next morning I left for the air-conditioned haven in Scottsdale. 

Yesterday I was interrupted three times during a Zoom call by a persistent caller whose number didn't appear in caller ID. Finally, I put my Zoom call on hold and answered it. 

"I never heard back from your cardiologist," the neurologist said. "I can't prescribe anything. Your WBC, hemaglobin, and hematocrit numbers are too low."

So here I am, back where I started. Again. I'm trying to feel grateful that the neurologist cared enough not to prescribe a drug that might kill me. I wonder if she realizes how tempting it is to . . .  nevermind. Not going down that road yet. 

Here I am, back in the present moment, bludgeoned by textbook vestibular paroxysmia symptoms in my head and 110°F heat outside the house. The washing machine in my head revs up for its 15-second cycle once per minute, day and night. For about 45 seconds I'm merely dizzy rather than falling over. I lean to the right if I'm not watching where I put my feet (yikes!). Monsoon is coming. I can feel it in my bones and in my head. I will sit it out in Scottsdale, try to stay hydrated, and let you know how it goes. 

Sleeping with the light on

Update on my housing requirements: I was wrong: Cockroaches are a deal breaker. In last week's post, I waffled a bit. Apparently I wasn't sure. Today, I no longer have any doubts. I can abide cockroaches temporarily (while I actively try to kill them), but I will not knowingly choose lodging that is infested. How did I suddenly become so certain? It's not hard to figure out. I've spent the last week fighting cockroaches.

I'm sorry to say, my friend's happy little house in the suburb has a problem. I discovered it the same way I discovered the problem at the Bat Cave, my former abode in an apartment complex in Tucson. The first morning I found a dying cockroach on its back in the den and a lethargic cockroach that had found its way into my shopping bag and marooned itself in my big green coffee cup. Neither one of these bugs was in good shape. My first thought, as I altruistically rescued them and dumped them in the backyard, was that the extermination fumes were working, and that I was seeing only the dregs of something, which I hoped was that these near-dead vermin were in the throes of succumbing to the work of a competent and thorough pest exterminator. 

My first thought, as is often the case, was wildly incorrect. 

During the second night of my stay, I got up to use the bathroom and interrupted a cockroach family hoedown. The scattering of roach babies on the floor in front of the toilet was my first clue, but it took my bleary eyes a moment to process what I was seeing. Then I saw four large adults—when I say large, I mean about one inch long, not counting antennae—hustling to escape under or behind something. 

I hurried to the laundry room and grabbed the first useful weapon I could find: a spray bottle of Clorox. By now the adults had disappeared, but I mowed down the babies. They are easy prey. First they freeze, trying to look like any other inocuous piece of detritus on the floor, and then when they know the jig is up, they run for it. But they are slow and stupid, no match for me with a bottle of Clorox. I cleaned up the mess with baby wipes and hunted around for anything else that was stupid enough to move, but saw nothing.

My heart rate was nicely elevated at this point. I turned on the kitchen light and tiptoed into the kitchen, Clorox poised. I saw nothing skittering at my approach. I moved my food bag off the floor to the stove. As I turned back, my heart fluttered. An enormous cockroach lounged on the kitchen counter, paying no attention to me. When I say enormous, I mean its body was fully two inches long, not counting the antennae that it finally swiveled in my direction. 

"No, no, no, not happening," I said and shot it with Clorox. 

That got its attention. I am not proud to say, I continued to shoot that poor creature with bleach (gets out stains!) as it attempted to make itself scarce under various appliances on the counter. It was like trying to hide a dumptruck behind a bar of soap. Ater a year in the Bat Cave, my eyes are trained to spot minute movement in, under, and behind things. All it takes is one waving antenna to get my radar twitching. This guy was too big to hide. I soaked it in Clorox until it finally ran blindly off the counter and fell, flailing, onto the floor. I sprayed it until it was on its back, legs futilely scurrying in the air, and when it finally seemed dead, I entombed it under a small tupperware container. I peered at it through the hazy plastic and eventually deemed the fight over, battle won, chalk one up to me. Then I turned off my video camera. Yes, I got the whole sordid episode on video. At that point, I was thinking, I need evidence to show my friend, in case she didn't know already, that all was not right in the happy house.

Since then, the battle has raged, mostly in the bathroom. I pinpointed the infestation to the wall behind the vanity. On Monday, I got two kinds of nontoxic bug spray and proceeded to nuke the baseboards all around the bathroom. Nontoxic apparently doesn't mean without stench: essential oils will scrape your eyeballs out of your head if you don't have some ventilation, I discovered. Still, inhaling pungent lemongrass was worth it if I could get the bugs to stop bugging me.

The next day I acquired a can of Raid and went to town all along the bathroom baseboards. I did the kitchen for good measure, even though I hadn't seen any more action there since the godawful fight with the monster. As the body count mounted, I realized I could not leave the carcasses lying there as evidence. Evidence of what? If my friend wasn't aware the house was infested, then leaving a bunch of dead bugs for her to find would be mean and purposeless. I found a whisk broom and dustpan and did what had to be done.

It's been a week now since I first discovered I am not alone in this house. The stench of lemongrass lingers. I sleep with the bedroom light on. When I venture out to use the bathroom at night, I arm myself with the Zevo bottle. I turn on the hall light and scan the floor. If I see an enemy, I chase it down and spray it until it dies. I leave the body as a warning to others. Then I turn on the kitchen light, just to be sure there are no meandering intruders. Finally, I turn on the bathroom light. Every night so far, I have seen one or two adults recreating on the floor by the vanity. With the bottle of Zevo, I am merciless. 

This morning I gingerly entered the bathroom and found a dead cockroach on the floor, one I did not kill. Unless I have been befriended by an anonymous vigilante superhero, I can now have hope that the Raid is doing its magic behind the vanity. I will not let my guard down, though, because I know what I've seen is probably just the tip of the cockroach iceberg. A few nocturnal wanderers means there are lots of babies and grandpas lounging around in the nest. The babies will grow up to be jihadists.

If God is a cockroach, I'm going to hell for sure. I don't get pleasure out of killing God's creatures. If I have to live with pests, I'd prefer spiders, small ones, please, and preferably not venomous. I don't like spiders either, but they do good, and they don't have an attitude. You know what I mean? If you have been around cockroaches, you understand. Cockroaches are arrogant. They know they own the world and will inherit the earth when humans self-annihilate, which will probably happen in my lifetime. Cockroaches can afford to be cocky. 

I might think I have won the battle to save the happy house (delusion), but I know I will lose the war. Yes, before I leave I will check my bags carefully for stowaways. I prefer to travel alone.

The chronic malcontent lacks the energy to dramatize

I left Flagstaff on Thursday. Now I'm plant-sitting for a week for a friend who lives in a small house in a housing development in the City of Marana, about 30 minutes north of Tucson. Outside of this housing development is raw, rough, scrubby desert, where riffraff like me would belong. I know this because I got lost finding my way here. 

The contrast between have and havenots is stark when I contrast the two neighborhoods. Inside the housing development, residents walk their dogs along manicured sidewalks past tidy gravel lawns. The houses are crammed wall to wall with the barest minimum between them, so I can hear the neighbor's AC unit roaring outside my bedroom window, and they no doubt can hear ours. In contrast, outside this enclave the roads are gravel, the dirt lawns are decorated with dented cars and RVs, and the houses are mostly mobile homes that look like they fetched up on the land in the great flood and have been sheltering generations ever since.

However, no matter where you live in the desert, the odds of living with pests and critters are 100%. Case in point, I'm sharing the kitchen with some American cockroaches. Judging by their condition, the extermination chemicals are still working, but it might be time for another application. I don't care. I had hoped never to have to share living space with cockroaches again, but I'm a transient. I'll be on my way in a week. Meanwhile, I'm keeping my food bag up off the floor. 

After driving over hill and dale last week, I was relieved to finally find free camping in the national forest just north of Flagstaff. It was a dusty campsite, but I relished the shade among the Ponderosas, happy as an impostor camper can be to have cell signal, which means I had internet and could watch my late night talk shows. Yes, I'm an impostor camper. After four days of isolation, I find I get hungry for civilization. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to socialize. But I find it reasuring somehow to rub shoulders with the hoi poloi in some small-town Walmart Supercenter. It feels like affirmation that I'm still part of the human species. Not that I'm proud of that fact (any species that invented big box stores should be exterminated), but now I get it: You can take the girl out of the city, but the city is still in the girl, no matter where she roams. 

Speaking of roaming, I'm pretending to enjoy my freedom, just like I pretend to be a camper. Just like I pretended to enjoy golfing when I had a boyfriend who golfed. Like I pretended to like jazz when I had a boyfriend who played jazz. The truth is, I'm just an unhoused person who is seeking accommodation on my own terms. My terms are not unreasonable: I want a city that is not too hot, not too cold, not too big, not too small, and I want a space with no roommates. It has to be affordable. And preferably have no cockroaches. I'm not sure cockroaches are a dealbreaker, to be honest. In addition, as long as I'm making my wish list, I'd like a place that isn't prone to tornadoes or tsunamis. Or wildfires or earthquakes. Hm. That pretty much excludes every place except Corvallis, Oregon.  

I don't want to live in my car, but I'm glad I have this car so I can live in it while I drive around and try to find a home. Considering the lack of affordable housing in this country right now, I could be driving for a while. I'm predicting I will find something before I turn seventy. 

I was supposed to arrive at my friend's house on Friday evening. We were going to have dinner. I drove four hours, descending from the cool northern climes into the hell of Tucson heat. 

She sent a text: Too busy with work, can we meet Saturday morning instead? 

I texted back:  Sure, no problem (heart emoji). 

We agreed I would come over at 7:00 a.m. That left me to find shelter from the heat for rest of the day and night. I activated my survival plan: I took my laptop to the mall to sit in the frigid AC until the sun went down. (The sun, once my beloved friend, is now my arch enemy.) After sunset, I went to the gym for a little while, pretended to work out, and then drove to the Home Depot up the street. I chose a parking spot away from the store, near some bushes, where I've parked before, and proceeded to put up my window covers. Immediately my car interior became stifling. I busted out my little fan. It's an amazing gizmo: You put water in the top and it pretends to blow cool air on you. Don't underestimate the power of the placebo, people. 

Early the next morning, I was trying to follow the GPS Lady's instructions to get to my friend's house. She got me there, even though I didn't believe her, and thus caused myself to get lost. I'm used to it. Getting lost is how I roll. Anyway, I finally parked outside my friend's house. 

As I was about to text her, she texted me: Can you come at 10:00 instead? (head exploding emoji)

I texted back:  Of course, no problem (heart emoji). 

She texted: Maybe you can get some more sleep (heart, sleep emoji)

The strangeness of my living situation swept over me. I tried to picture it. Go back to the Home Depot parking lot and try to sleep with cars, trucks, and pallet moving equipment coming and going around me? Pee in a jar, hunkered below window level, in broad daylight? Not impossible, but not wise for a stealth camping impostor. 

What do you think I did? Yep. I went to Walmart. After that soothing injection of humanity, I got gas, dumped trash, and refilled my water jugs. I ate breakfast in my car, parked in some parking lot, can't recall now. Walmart adjacent, I think. 

I try not to think too much. It's easy to overdramatize my situation. Lots of people have it much worse than me. I'm lucky to have good friends. And internet. Don't ask me to choose between friends and internet. I know I'm an internet addict, which means I might be an impostor friend. 

Death by mountain

I survived. Obviously, because I'm writing this blogpost. I survived. Seems like I've typed that phrase before. I survived. This is what my life has come to, measuring my success by how close to death I have come. I'm starting to find living on the edge of destruction kind of tedious. Okay, tedious might not express the full range of emotion. Truth: I'm terrified.

This week, I climbed toward higher climes, as I mentioned in the most recent post, which right now means the Flagstaff area. I knew exactly where I was going, the same forest road I visited last fall to escape the Phoenix heat. I found the place easily. I had to go a long ways into the forest before I found an open campsite. I spent one night. I would have stayed longer but I didn't have any bars on my internet phone. No bars meant no unlimited data internet. 

So after one peaceful night, I packed up, consulted the forest service map, and retraced my route south a bit, aiming for a place called Kelly Canyon. I hoped that because it was close to the highway, I might have more luck getting online. The GPS goddess led me there with no mishaps. I steered my car through the trees along a nicely graded gravel road. The few campsites I could see were already occupied. I passed a square pond in a depression in the land and headed up the hill, hoping for more options. Around a sharp bend the road suddenly veered steeply downward toward a gravel pit. A pickup truck was parked in the middle of the pit, a long ways below. I looked at the steep road down and remembered a time in my adolescence when I rode my bicycle down a similarly steep rocky road, holding on for dear life. Letting go of the handlebars would have meant total annhilation. I didn't let go. I survived. 

This time, I wasn't riding a bike. However, a Dodge Grand Caravan is not an off-road four-wheel drive monster. I wasn't about to chance it. Across the pit, a little higher elevation from where I was idling on the cliff edge was the road I had not taken. A smooth, steep wall of gravel led from that road to the bottom of the pit. It looked like gravel was being dumped there to . . . extend the road? Fill in the pit? I didn't know, and I wasn't about to go down there and find out. I carefully backed my car into a 3-point turn and hightailed it back down to less scary ground. 

I parked in a spot I had disdained on the way in, a very small, not quite level clearing much too close to the gravel road. Beggars, choosers. I checked my phones. Still no internet bars. Argh. Oh well. 

Just after I parked, a pickup truck pulling a trailer came by. We waved. He pulled into a clearing near the pond but didn't set up camp. A few minutes later, he came by the other way. As he passed my camp, he paused and smiled, before continuing onward. I thought, that was weird, that smile. A moment later, a large brown cow came around the front of my car. I gasped and closed my side door a bit as the creature lumbered by, heading toward the pond. That's what the driver had been smiling at. He could see I was about to be invaded by cows. 

Another cow rambled past on the back end of my car, avoiding my deployed solar panel. I reopened my door and looked out. A herd of cows was assembling at the pond. The correct term would probably be tank, because it was clearly a rancher-made watering hole. 

I was settling in for a nice lunch when I heard the noise of a growling engine coming along the road. I thought, great, what maniac motorhome owner was coming my way. It was not a motorhome. It was a large dumptruck loaded with gravel. Just my luck.

The driver waved. I waved back. I thought, okay, one truck, a bit of noise and dust, no problem. Within minutes, four other dumptrucks came by. I assume they unloaded at the gravel pit, because minutes later, they all came by again, going back toward the highway. This happened multiple times over the early afternoon, a parade, a grumble, a rumble of dumptrucks, going by fully loaded, returning empty. Eventually they called it a day, and I spent an okay night there, but I knew I had to move on the next day. I needed bars. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I don't drink any more. 

The next day was a day from hell. GPS, iOverland reviewers, the forest road map, and Google Maps all let me down. At one point my sister texted me directions to a place (4 stars! Easy to get to!). Not. No open spaces. I never made it to the supposedly 4-star camping area. I stopped at the sign that said no camping beyond this point, no turn around. I turned around while I still could. 

A little later, I got stuck in construction traffic, trying to find a place to camp along Marshall Lake. No open spots, no bars. Next, I went south on 260 though Strawberry and Pine, after hearing positive things about the Mogollon Rim Road (FR 300). Not three minutes in, the road hairpinned straight to the moon. I almost got run down by loaded log trucks. I headed back south on 260. At a promising turnoff, I almost got stuck in a ditch when I backed up, trying to avoid going down a steep rocky road that would have probably broken one or both of my axles. 

It was close to 100F outside. Every time I turned off the AC, I felt a few more brain cells evaporate into dust. Desperate, I parked under a shade canopy at a community college in Payson to text my Scottsdale friends who have a cabin outside of Payson, begging to park in their driveway. They had invited me to visit in a few days, so it seemed to make sense to ask if I could go there early. Lucky for me, my friend gave me directions to the place. 

Even though I had hit my quota of driving on gravel mountain roads for one day, I dutifully obeyed the GPS lady as she led me up a long mountainous gravel road. I found their chalet without driving into a ditch or off a cliff, parked out front, and opened my car door into shocking silence. The absence of sound was stunning for a moment. Then I heard birds, neighbors doing stuff, a car engine across the road, a door slam, and birds . . . lots and lots of birds. 

The homeowner told me where to find the spare key and walked me through the steps to turn on the water and power. I shucked my shoes and cautiously entered the mountain eyrie, which is where I am blogging to you from, in a lightfilled room, sitting at a kitchen table with room for six, and listening to the soothing rumble of a working refrigerator. (Did I mention I have a portable fridge in my car on this trip? Sadly, I can't find the power cord.)

What have I learned? Flat gravel and dirt roads are doable in a minivan if they aren't too washed out. Mountainous gravel and dirt roads shared with dumptrucks and log trucks are not doable, especially when you have no way of knowing if there will be a place you can turn around when you inevitably encouter a section that seems impassable. It's like sending a blind person out into traffic. Ascending or descending narrow mountain gravel roads is not a good idea; doing it with no cell signal is a an admission of defeat, a nose-thumb at the universe, a behavior just this side of intentional self-destruction. Only a fool would take a minivan on a road dominated by log trucks. Only someone who doesn't care if they live or die would do it without cell service. 

So, now here I am, perched in this mountain chateau. My friends arrived last night, laden with food, accompanied by the little dog Maddie. Right now, they are out hiking while I sit in the comfort of their kitchen, writing this post and trying to process my feelings of surreality and dissociation. So much learning going on. I'm overwhelmed with the immensity of survival. And I live in America! It could be so much worse. If you have to be old and homeless, this is the place to be. Time to take a big bite of that steaming stinky humble pie. 

In over my head

One of my jobs as dogsitter the past two weeks was to be the keeper of the swimming pool. Until this season, the pool had been inoperational, covered with a heavy canvas tarp. Over the winter, the homeowner replastered, and now the pool is a sapphire gem, glistening in the blazing desert sun. However, like little dogs, pools apparently don't maintain themselves. When the homeowner described the job, I readily agreed. I hadn't killed the dog yet. What damage could I do to a pool? 

There were multiple facets to the pool gig. I quickly mastered the task of adding chlorine tabs to the floating dispenser. Every other day, I swept the detritus of leaves and desiccated flowers off the pool deck. Then I skimmed the scum of leaves and palm tree pollen off the pool surface with a long-handled net. Next, I emptied the strainer basket that received the leaves that got sucked in through the vent in the pool wall. The strained stuff got dumped into a large plastic flower pot, whose sole purpose apparently was to receive the pool garbage. 

In addition, I had been told to unkink the vacuum hose when it twisted itself into knots from wandering in aimless circles across the bottom of the pool. The vacuum itself, a breadbox-sized plastic canister, attached to a hole in the side of the wall with a short blue hose. This contraption was supposed to hang just below the surface. Unfortunately, it had a tendency to float and suck air, making it ineffectual. The homeowner proudly pointed out his ingenious hack for keeping the canister submerged: He'd hung a flat, round five-pound weight on a hook on the canister.

"Wait until the pump stops and then gently untwist the hose," he said. 

"No problem," I said. 

The first few days of my pool-sitting gig were easy. The pump woke and slept according to a timer, the vacuum cleaner roamed the pool bottom, and the hose remained unkinked. Then one morning I came out to find the hose had pretzeled. The Roomba at the end of the hose was stuck where it had been grinding in tiny angry circles on the side of the pool wall, now frozen in place when the pump timer shut off. I hurried to untangle the hose, knowing the pump would come on around 9:00 a.m. 

I leaned out over the blue abyss and grabbed the floating vacuum hose. A couple twists ought to do it, I thought. What happened next happened in slow motion, but not slow enough for me to do anything to stop it. The blue hose fell out of the slot in the wall. Untethered, the canister sank. As it sank, it turned over like a breaching whale. The weight slipped off the hook and plunged down the side of the pool wall to the bottom of the deep end.

I stood there looking at the canister, now bobbing on the surface, wondering what fresh hell is this? I knew I needed to get that weight back on the canister, pronto. Wait, the net. I got the long-handled scoop net and reached down through the rippling water. I poked at the weight and after some tries, managed to get it partway up the side of the pool toward the surface, before it slipped back down to the depths. Damn. 

I ruminated on my options. 

1. I could wait two weeks for the homeowner to return to find a scummy infected pool. 
2. I could dive down to the deep end to rescue the weight and risk drowning, thereby leaving the little dog Maddie without care for two weeks, whereupon the homeowner would return to find a hangry dog gazing longingly at my dead body (meat) floating in the pool just out of reach.
3. I could try shoving the weight across the bottom of the pool, like I was practicing for a curling competition. 

Because I'm alive to write this blogpost, I think you can tell I didn't choose option #2. As it turned out, the long-handled net wasn't a bad curling broom. After some long hot tense minutes, I was able to shove the weight bit by bit across the bottom of the pool to the shallow end. 

I did a victory dance, shucked my shoes, and stepped fully clothed into the water. Cold! I carefully descended the steps. I wasn't going to put my head underwater (dizzy!). But I was able to hook the weight with my big toe and hoist it to the surface. 

The weight was gooey, a bit sticky, as if the coating was coming off. I figured the chlorine was doing a number on the rubberized surface. Ick. That's when I realized the goo had come off on the pool plaster. I waited for the water to calm and saw with dismay the weight had left a trail of black marks from deep end to shallow, marring the freshly plastered pool surface. 

Oh, no, I said, seeing the end of my life fast approaching. 

Maybe I could rub the marks off. I clambered out of the pool, heavy with dripping water, and put on one sock. I went back down the steps and rubbed my foot against the marks in the shallow end. There were many. I was able to reduce them, but not remove them completely. 

I climbed out of the pool and walked along the edge, peering down into the water. Sure enough, the trail of marks zig-zagged back across the pool bottom to the spot where the weight had fallen. A set of black skid marks down the side of the pool wall showed where the weight had originally fallen. A second set of marks showed where I'd tried and failed to raise the weight with the net. I paced the pool deck, wishing my eyes deceived me. Nope. The trail led all the way to the shallow end, where a flurry of marks showed how I'd tried to maneuver the weight into a position I could reach.

The evidence of my poor pool caretaking was impossible to hide. My mind churned in desperate circles. Maybe the chlorine would eat away the marks. Maybe the stupid Roomba would brush them off. Maybe they would fade in the sun. Right. Maybe I would have to pay for pool replastering. Maybe the homeowner would murder me when he got home. 

I went about the rest of my pool chores like a zombie, until I went to lift the strainer basket and saw a drowned lizard resting in peace at the bottom. I stared down at the speckled body. Could it be alive, still? Did these things live underwater? (Hey, I'm a city kid, what do I know?) I shook the basket. Nope, clearly deceased. Now what? I couldn't put the dead lizard in the big flower pot with the dead flowers. Best option would have been to scoop it up with a doggy poop bag and put it in the trash bin with all the dog poop but I wasn't about to touch the little waterlogged rubbery creature. Ew. 

I carried the strainer basket over to a tall hedge of flowered bushes and dumped the dead lizard in there, thinking it would fall through the branches to the ground and be eaten by its brethren. I didn't care what ate it, actually, as long as it wasn't Maddie. The dead lizard did not fall through the bushes. It fell belly up, arms and legs splayed, and stayed there for the next few days, gradually evaporating. I checked it daily.

I felt bad for the lizard but I felt worse for me. Those marks on the pool plaster were not going away. I got into the pool forums and started reading advice from experts. Don't drain the pool, they said. Try 400-grit wet dry sandpaper, they said. I hadn't slept well, ridden by vague anxiety dreams, fretting about the wrath I feared I would soon be facing. I began preparing my story. Well, you see, when I was unkinking the hose . . . Each time I rehearsed my story, I would get to the part about me shoving the weight across the bottom of the pool and start to giggle. 

This is serious, I kept telling myself. The homeowner is going to be pissed! You might not get your dogsitting payment! You might have to pay for replastering! He might sue you!

I thought about that. Blood from a stone, is what came to mind. The next day I tried and failed to take a nap. After a few minutes, I bolted upright, told Maddie I would be back soon, and drove down the road to Autozone to get some fine-grit wet-dry sandpaper. 

Back at the pool, I shucked my clothes, oblivious to the harsh sun, wrapped a piece of sandpaper around my foot and sunk to my waist into the shallow end, holding onto the steps so I wouldn't lose my balance and forget which way was up. I got busy rubbing the marks at the foot of the steps. Hallelujah! They disappeared! 

I rubbed at the marks I could reach, moving along the path the weight had taken, until my foot could no longer touch the bottom of the pool. At that point, with proof of concept, I was starting to feel as if I might survive the return of the homeowner. I left the rest of the sandpaper in the package on the kitchen counter and proceeded to enjoy my pool-sitting gig. 

Last night the homeowner returned. As he sifted through the mail, he indicated he might be playing pickleball early the next morning. 

"Before you rush off, there's something I need to show you about the pool," I said.

"What is it?" he said in alarm.

"I can't show you in the dark."

"Can't you just tell me? Now I won't sleep," he complained. 

"It's really best to show you in daylight," I said.

"Did something happen?"

"Well . . . "

"Did the weight fall off?"

After that, the story came out. Judging by the homeowner's response, this was not the first time the weight had fallen off the canister. I didn't get to tell the story the way I'd carefully rehearsed it, but at least I wasn't dragging my guilt and fear around with me any longer.  

I still don't think he realizes how bad the marks are. But it seems he will not be killing me or sueing me right away. I'm typing this at his kitchen table. Tomorrow I will brave the Tucson heat to visit my mailbox, my storage unit, and the pharmacy. Then I'm away to higher climes, lest I desiccate like that lizard in the desert sun.