The news of the day

If I weren't a rabid user of the internet, I could almost forget the outside world exists as I sit here in palm-tree infested Scottsdale, watching flickers fight with finches over the peanuts and thinking the hardest thing I've done so far today is skimming leaves off the glistening blue pool. This week has been blessedly critter-free, no drowned geckos, no screaming crickets, no roof rat body parts desiccating in the gravel yard. 

Besides being designated pool boy, one of my daily tasks is walking Maddie before it gets too hot to breathe. Getting her into the little red harness is a production requiring patience and a pungent treat, but eventually we get dressed, we shake off our morning blear, and we head out into the neighborhood. I'm trying out different routes to keep things fresh for both of us. I think Maddie appreciates it. I'm hoping we can both work off a few ounces before the dogsitting gig is over. I don't want the homeowner to come home to a fat dog. 

Like me, Maddie is an avid consumer of the news. I can't detect or interpret the news Maddie reads. Well, if there's a stain on a fire hydrant, I can assume someone, probably many someones, have left their contribution to the news of the day. But there are many news tidbits I'm not able to see or smell. Maddie brings them to my attention, but she doesn't read them aloud to me. I can only guess their contents by how strong she pulls on the leash.

Some articles rate only a cursory sniff. Some spots inspire a comment from Maddie, especially the ones on fake grass lawns. Sometimes she has to do that thing that dogs do with their back legs after they poop. I like to think she's rating the artificial lawn but I don't really know. 

The very best news articles demand quivering attention, a yank on the leash, and if she can get away with it, a roll in the stinky wet grass. That's apparently the right way to really understand what's happening in the world. Roll in it. I catch her up short multiple times per walk: "There will be no rolling!" She shrugs and moves on. She's testing me. I'm a pushover, most of the time, but I don't want to have to figure out how to wash a smelly dog. Ugh.

After we get back from the sniff walk, it's time for a nap. For Maddie, anyway. I go out and skim the pool. Last night we had some wind. I didn't hear a thing, but the evidence now mars the pristine surface. Leaves clump and swirl. The bigger ones have sunk to the bottom and require special effort to capture. Pool water depths are deceiving, and my eyes aren't great to begin with. I jab at them with the long-handled net and discover they are a foot away from where I jabbed. Eventually I lift them into the air and deposit them into the over-sized plastic planter that serves as a receptacle for dead leaves, dried up flowers, and general patio detritus. 

I keep the air conditioner set at 81°F. Sometimes it seems warm in here. When it's over 110°F outside, the AC really gets cranking, and then the house feels cold. Maddie gets cold, too. From time to time, she demands to be let out onto the patio, where she beelines for the hottest patch of sunlit patio she can find and sprawls on the pavement while I pant in the dry hot shade and wonder how anyone can live in this forsaken patch of desert. 

Speaking of forsaken, I've realized there is no place in the entire state of Arizona that would be comfortable for me, with the possible exception of the Verde Valley. All of Arizona is either too hot or too high, or both. This is a state of extremes. Right now, monsoon rains have been hammering both Tucson and Flagstaff. Here in central Arizona, I am in the tenuous eye of the weather storm. I look at the NWS forecasts frequently, and the little photos show nothing but thunderstorms, day after day, north and south of me. I'm really glad I'm here and not living in the undercover parking lot at the Tucson mall. Tucson had some small tornadoes and frequent bouts of torrential rain. Not hospitable for unhoused people, even ones lucky enough to have a little home on wheels. 

I'm lucky that I will soon be free to escape this extreme weather. Being a nomad means you can chase 75 to 80°F, wherever it might be. I could go anywhere, but lately, I've had a hankering to return to Oregon. Some small towns at the southern end of the Willamette Valley have caught my eye. The only way to know if they might someday be home is to go and find out. I'll stay in Arizona through November, I think, so I can vote here, but as soon as I can, I'm gone.

Welcome to Critterville

In my current dogsit, I sleep on my own mattress, hauled in from my minivan, spread out on the carpeted floor of the family room in front of the fireplace. I have found it is better for my character to sleep on a hard unforgiving slab of maximum density concrete-level foam rubber. A 1-inch layer of memory foam on top of the 3-inch foam is my only concession to comfort. And my binky, of course. A few feet away, my 4-legged charge snores on an 8-inch thick round of polyester batting held in place by a zippered cover of plush beige fleece. When she's curled up in the middle, you can hardly see her. To each her own.

A few nights ago, I heard something buzzing. I wasn't sure if it was my ear, which produces a shrill chatter once a minute for about fifteen seconds or some fresh hell descending on my already mildly hellish life. Then the buzzing stopped, but my ear kept on going, and that's when I knew we had a problem in paradise.

"Is that a cicada in the house?" I mused to the dog as I turned in circles in the middle of the room. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. I don't trust my hearing for obvious reasons. The noise echoed from the mantel. I poked around with my flashlight but saw nothing moving. See previous post about my eyes being tuned to spot small critter movements behind decorative objects. I bent down and shined the light up the chimney. The noise stopped.

"A-ha," I said to the dog. "We've found the intruder."

As soon as I turned off the light, the noise resumed. Yelling up the chimney did nothing. Banging my hand on the marble hearth was futile. I didn't sleep well that night, dreaming of giant bugs coming down the chimney and swarming my bed. 

The next morning I Googled "crickets in the house." During the night I'd had plenty of time to reflect on the nature of the annoying noise, and I realized it didn't sound like a cicada. It sounded like a manic cricket, not the peaceful Jiminy Cricket kind of cricket, who sings pleasant songs outside your window to lull you to sleep. This was Jiminy on steroids, a dude with a lot to say and a sense of urgency about saying it. Spotted ground cricket, Google AI suggested. 

The next night, the cricket was back, but I had moved on to my next critter nightmare.

That afternoon, Maddie indicated something was amiss on the patio. I saw a young mouse-shaped thing cowering under a plastic stool in the corner by the round patio table. If it had been a cockroach, you can bet I would have been screaming (inside, don't want to upset the neighbors). However, having grown up with pet gerbils and a white rat, I wasn't particularly grossed out. It was just a tiny gray fuzzy thing with a very long tail. 

"Looks like his eye is messed up," I said to Maddie. She edged closer. "No, I don't think so, there will be no  mouse chomping on this patio." 

We both watched as the mouse ran along the wall. 

"You better not," I warned the dog. I opened the sliding patio door and stepped back to let the dog into the house. 

What happened next happened fast. The mouse scampered along the bottom of the sliding door and slipped between my feet into the house.

"No, no, no, not happening! Maddie, homeland security! Get that mouse!"

Maddie stood and watched as I got my dustpan and whisk broom (recently purchased at Walmart but not for mouse-catching purposes). 

"Good thing it can't see very well," I muttered as I cornered the mouse by Maddie's plush round bed, thinking what the heck? I'll never dogsit again. My dogsitting career is ruined. How will I explain to the homeowner that there is a mouse in the house?

"Come on, Maddie, a little help here?"

The mouse ran under the couch, came out the other side, and ran straight into my foam mattress. Clearly, it wasn't tracking very well. I chased it around the perimeter of the mattress with my whisk broom, wondering what rodent god would inspire that mouse to get on the dustpan. It occured to me it would probably not stay on the dustpan for long. Plan B! I hurried across the room to the side table that held my laundry basket, dumped my dirty laundry on the recliner, and went after the mouse with the broom again. 

Failure was not an option. After some scuffling, the mouse ran into the basket. 

I held up my prisoner in triumph, dizzy and breathing hard. I took it outside and set it on the patio table, leaving Maddie to sniff around the family room floor with a perplexed expression, like, what just happened here? 

The mouse hunkered in the corner of the basket while I gave it a jar lid of water and a few peanuts. I poked half a dozen blueberries through the holes in the laundry basket and covered the basket with a kitchen towel. Now what? 

I Google wildlife rescue near me, called some numbers, left some messages, sent a photo with a text. I texted the homeowner and received a phone call immediately. I explained the situation: found an injured mouse, looking for a rehab outfit, yada yada, more to be revealed. The homeowner suggested I should let it go in the fenced area behind the orange tree.

"I want that thing as far away from the house as possible," I declared. This was before I knew that I'd have to drive that mouse many miles away, otherwise it would find its way back, and not only that, abandoning a mouse outside its territory would be a cruel act that would inevitably result in suffering and death. 

"You should just kill it," the homeowner said. 

"I am not a murderer!"

The next morning the mouse was still alive. I received a text from a critter rescue: "Ah, poor little roof rat. Sorry, can't take it, I'm all full up. Thanks for caring."

More Googling informed me the best course of action was to humanely kill the baby rat by bashing its head in. 

I made a little house out of a cardboard box, furnished it with a dish of water and some paper towel bedding. I set it behind the orange tree in the protected area fenced off from marauding chihuahuas. Then I took the laundry basket over there, tilted it on its side, and watched with satisfaction as the mouse scurried into its new abode. 

"Nothing fancy, but it's home," I said. "Good luck to you."

Two days later I checked the box. The mouse was gone. I had some moments of altruistic self-satisfaction. Yay me, I saved one of god's less offensive creatures. 

Yesterday I was sweeping the gravel off the walkway by the gate and saw some bits of gray fur by the fence. 

"Oh, darn," I said, taking a closer look. The head was quite a few inches away from the tail, smashed in and covered with dust. I couldn't be sure the remains belonged to my former rescue, but it seems likely. 

"Ew," I said and shoved the leftover bits of baby rat under the bushes. 

I skimmed a tiny drowned lizard out of the pool. On the bright side, the cricket has moved on. Silence prevails once again in paradise.

Is the grand experiment really over?

I'm blogging to you once again from beautiful Scottsdale, where the sun almost always shines, and when it isn't, the wind is howling, the dust is blowing, and pools are filling up with scummy dead leaves. It's as close to paradise as you can get in the desert. I'm sure it will be lovely for a long time, right up until the moment when the acquifer under our feet runs dry. Until then, water that lawn! Green is the new black. 

I think I have mastered the fine art of pool maintenance. Maybe I can turn my skills into my next career, if my dizziness ever lets up. Every time I skim dead flower husks and desiccated leaves, I lean over the blue depths and wonder if I fell in, would I ever find my way back to the surface? Maybe I would choose to stay down there, in the cool deep. Two days ago, it was 115°F, so you can see how I might be tempted. 

Around the corner is a store we call "Blue Collar Fry's" to differentiate it from the "White Collar Fry's," which is located about half a mile up the street. Don't ask me why they have two stores of the same brand so close together, unless it truly is to cater to a different target audience. To me, the Blue Collar Fry's is a gorgeous store, with wide, bright aisles well stocked with home goods, clothing, pet supplies, even some furniture . . . anything you want, they've got it. Compared to the pithole ghetto Tucson Fry's I shop at, the Scottsdale Fry's is the height of upscale luxury. 

I don't have much space for backstock, so I pay more per ounce for everything than I would if I had a house with cupboards and shelves. I can't stock up on anything. It's cheaper per roll to buy twelve rolls of paper towels than it is per roll to buy two. But where would I put twelve rolls of paper towels? In the passenger seat, maybe, along with the twelve rolls of toilet paper and the giant box of Tide. Ha, just kidding. 

I use white vinegar to clean my dish and spoon. I put it in a little Walmart spray bottle. So cute. The pink spray bottle is for vinegar. I have a blue one for water, a purple one for alcohol, and a turquoise one for soap. It's so festive. I store small bottles of vinegar, alcohol, and soap under the floorboard where the stow-and-go seat used to be. It would be cheaper to buy a gallon of white vinegar at a time, but it won't fit down there in the hole. 

Same for clothes, food, you name it. You can get discounts when you buy in bulk, if you have a place to put the stuff. Got a big fridge? Fill it with cheese, go on, why not? 

Speaking of cheese, I visited a dietician last week. She was supposed to give me a vestibular migraine diet, but given that my dizziness probably isn't triggered by food, we ended up discussing my protein deficiency. 

"You only eat twice a day?" she said, shaking her head. "That's not good. You are starving yourself. You need to eat more often, small meals three times a day, plus three snacks. Six times a day. With protein at each meal." 

I pondered that news. On one hand, yay! Unlimited feeding! On the other hand, ugh, fat city, here I come.

"You don't need to lose weight," she said. She obviously couldn't see my bulging belly through my giant fanny pack. "You are going to need those reserves for when you get sick."

Uh-oh, I thought, what does she know that I don't? Is that why she's wearing a mask, is Covid making the rounds of the hospital? Why didn't they tell me at the door? Or has everyone just given up?

"I hear what you are saying," I said. "I don't have an off-switch for certain foods. Crackers, for example."

"No problem! Crackers are okay. You need the salt. Just put some peanutbutter on them so you get some protein."

In the week since my appointment, I've been pretending I can eat like normal people. I got yogurt, I got soymilk, I got peanutbutter, I even got cheese. Why not? She said it was okay. It's been fun. I knew it wouldn't last. My body rose up and rebelled yesterday, as I knew it would eventually. I have learned certain foods just don't sit right. I usually can't remember what effect they have had on me after I eat them, but I carry a residual memory of bad times. Cheese, no good. Soymilk, bad. Yogurt, yum, but not pleasant. However, I have special vacation dispensation, which means when you are not in your normal environment, that is, when you are on vacation, you are allowed to eat whatever and whenever you want. It's a well-known fact that vacation food has fewer calories than home food. 

I'm using my time here on my dogsitting retreat to finish writing a book I've been working on for a year. It's nothing great, just a shameless ploy to earn money from the experience I've gained mentoring artists who have deluded themselves into believing that the world wants to buy their art. They are a unique breed that I understand well, seeing as how I am one of them. I speak their language of martyrdom and longing. I never say your art is no good, go get a day job, even if I am thinking it. There's a market for anything, even a stupid rock in a box, if you can just reach enough gullible people and convince them this thing has value. Yes, it's a rock in a box, but for the low low price of $4.99, it can be your loving no-maintenance pet for life. 

In addition to writing (and eating, pooping, and napping), I started another car-home renovation project. I'm restructuring the shelves in the back. The quality of work is questionable (I'm using 5/8-inch mdf) but so far, it's sturdy enough, once I got the screws in the right places. Heavy as a mahogany desk but not quite so handsome. Once I anchor it down, it should outlast the car (and me), should the car roll down a prickly embankment. I might go flying, but my campstove, T-shirts, and soup cans will survive the trip intact, no problem. 

It's not a bad thing to hunker down in the wild for a while. Tis the season for laying low. I'll emerge from hiding to cast my tiny vote and then fade back into the safety of the forest.  As long as some doofus with firecrackers and guns doesn't set the place on fire, I can ride out the turmoil. I hope by the end of the year, any uneasy ripples in the American zeitgeist will be subsiding. I'll be like a packrat in a burrow. I will stick my nose out and sniff the air. If the coast seems clear, I'll mingle with the hoi poloi at fancy Frys or plebeian Walmarts. However, I'm aware half this country would like to kill me. If the grand experiment seems to be headed for the rocks, well, I'll put on my old white lady invisibility cloak, lurk in the background, and do whatever small things I can do to right the ship. 

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.