THE DECISION MAKER

This morning I got a computer generated call from Northern Illinois Gas. The male person on the other end of the line said he had an offer fo change the way we pay the gas bill. Since we are currently paying the gas bill for two houses, I was of course interested. Not much, because my experience is that these things generally cause all kinds of upsets and you end up paying more. But a little. So I said, "Yes?" and he said well actually....uh...was John Szaton there because he needed to speak with, and this is a quote: "the DECISION MAKER"!

oh! Well. I see.

I have a bit of a problem with these things. I also sometimes forget that the trigger on my temper is filed down and it often needs only a touch. I said:

"Well, the DECISION MAKER has stepped out! Clearly the only person left here is the lowly and undecided subordinate spouse of the DECISION MAKER. She who is not allowed to make...DECISIONS!!... so perhaps you should call back another time when the DECISION MAKER is in the castle and you can speak to someone equal to you in social standing, OKAY? Bye."

The actual Decision Maker thought this was very funny, and began laughing as soon as I started to relate the story, because he knew perfectly well what the effect of the language was going to have on me.

Years ago I went to buy a car. A Chevvy. In cash. I had my checkbook and I had the money and it was to be MY car. The man who waited on me showed me the roomy trunk, the snazzy upholstery, the gadgets on the dashboard, the big glove box, the pretty hubcaps, the different colors it came in... and I said well how much will you give me for the car I have? And he PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME (now he would lose his testicles just for that, but I was younger) and said "Honey, you bring the Hubby in tonight and he and I can talk money."

I stopped. I pulled out my checkbook. I waved it in his face. I said (loudly-- there were other people in the showroom and I wanted them to hear) "Your sexual condescension just cost your company and you this sale. I was prepared to buy the car now, but I will never buy from this company and EVERY WOMAN I KNOW is going to hear about your rude and inappropriate behavior towards me as a customer." And I stomped out, with him chasing me,saying "wait wait" and I will NEVER EVER buy a Chevrolet.

Sometimes I get it right, instead of sputtering incoherently and sobbing with fury. Not often, but now and then.
Ah! I have to run. The DECISION MAKER needs the salt!!

        The DECISION MAKER and his chief advisor. (Take your pick.)

DIGGING YOUR WAY OUT OF TROUBLE

The first time the washing machine drained and the toilet overflowed and flooded the bathroom and warped the bathroom door here at the rental, we called the Landlord, or the person we had been led to believe was the personal representative of the landlord.
The next time, when we realised that the raw sewage was bubbling (I use the word under advisement) up in the front yard I called again and got the Landlord himself who was horrified.
The next morning a crew of twenty-somethings with lithe, lean bods and tattoos and baseball caps arrived with shovels and began digging up the sewer line.
Watching them dig was not so exciting but come on, I'm old and fat but I remember and I'm not dead so I got kind of a kick out of watching these kids, any one of whom was almost old enough to be my grandson.

So today they came back with a Bobcat. Not, alas, a real one, which would have been VERY exciting if they had tried to dig with it, but a backhoe.
And they began to dig.

I didn't get their names. This one seemed to be in charge altho to be honest they all worked just as hard as the next one and all of them seemed to know exactly what they were doing. This kid did this a thousand times, stuck his head out the front, and each time I expected the Bobcat to buck and snap his neck.

This one had the most interesting tats which I did not get a photo of. They kind of wrapped around his ribs on the other side and were very tribal. The sign on the truck they drove said "Gutters" and I made some crack that it was a long way from gutters to sewers. He said he had started in sewers and felt of the two it was by far the most secure career. He laughed. He was covered with sweat and dirt and clay and god only knows what else, standing in a hole at least 6 feet deep peppered with broken tree roots, cigarette in his mouth, laughing.

They are filling in the hole. They had us run all the water for like a half hour. Now the huge pile of dirt and cement pieces and roots are being shoveled back into the enormous hole. I have no idea what they get paid for this. A lot, I hope. I do not see anyway the dirt is going back in the hole. I know it will sink, but....

I do hope the Landlord is not expecting us to water it every day.....my real yard and garden are a complete disaster, having been left for an entire growing season to go completely wild with weeds, and it has.

They have just cut our lawn mowing down by  a good bit, I guess.

AND

of course, I can flush the toilets again!!!
As a pioneer or explorer I would not have been much of a success, I'm afraid. It's not the bugs and beasties that bother me, but the lack of a loo.

Not a glass of beer: the color of our drinking water at the moment..... some days I feel as if I need Cody Lundin just here in the house.

THE TROUBLE WITH CIVILIZATION

Here we are just finishing the space age and trotting around carrying our Tablets and iPods and Smart Phones and other space age gadgetry: phones that tell you where to park and cars that do it for you and food you heat up in a microwave right in the package and $3000 grills for your outdoor kitchen....

and here is what I know.
When it goes wrong, it really goes wrong.
Like when a simple tarp is not on a roof correctly and it rains and your house drowns and you have to live someplace else for 6 months.
Or when the snazzy thing on your car that keeps the fumes from poisoning the atmosphere blows a hole and you don't HAVE the $500 to fix it.
Or you have to stay in a rental house where the insurance company is paying almost $2000 a month for you (because, remember the roof?) and suddenly you notice that water is pouring out of the sewer pipe two feet from the front door and then you notice it ISNT JUST WATER, that it is RAW SEWAGE...... and you had called about this before and the landlord did, in fact have someone come out and rod the pipe twice....
And here you are in your $2000 a month rental home and you cannot flush the damn toilet because it is going to run out that pipe down the sidewalk.
And you are NOT HAPPY.
And you want to bathe in bleach.
And when you said please get someone here now, you meant an hour ago.
And you went out and poured pure, 100% chlorox bleach all over the lawn to hell with the grass anyway.
Not a good day. Where's the wine.

DOG DAYS OF JULY

As most of us know already this summer the weather has been passing strange. Not to mention horrible. It has been one of the muggiest summers I can remember and I remember a few.

The Basset 500 has been re-invented in the rental house. Inside. The track is on the bare laminate floor so as to get the greatest effect from the sounds of nails hitting the floor and the echo of the ahroos as they circle the dining room table. We are so impressed with the impermeability of the flooring to dog nails that we are going to install it in the real house, if and when we get that far.

Sunning has been adapted to climate change as well, now being no longer than 5 or 10 minutes on the incredibly hot cement before they want back into the air conditioning. This morning, for the first time in a week, the A/C is off. Probably not for long. The dewpoint is creeping up to match the temperature outside and the breeze I had at 5 a.m. has dissipated.

In between, the boys have found ways to express themselves.

                            The Coopster, asleep. (He really was.)

Wait. What was that flash?

YOU! Leave me alone!!

The nose is always at the front and always working whether it appears to be or not.

Less apt to miss something when it is rightside up.

Some of us, of course, assume we will awaken instantly, no matter what:

PIANO

THE PIANO LESSONS

(photo from NYPublic Library/Google


Ok I have had 2 lessons with my teacher. I paid for three. We do not seem to be connecting at all. There is no common ground other than my interest in learning to play again.

The room is very very small. Very small. I am self-conscious about my inability to get things going. The smallness of the room escalates the sound of my mistakes. I am almost 66 years old and in book 1, the same book I was probably in when I was 7 years old and just starting, only I progressed faster. I know two lessons is not enough to make a judgement.

I practice about 30 to 40 minutes at a time, anywhere from once to four times a day depending on my sense of frustration and my level of tolerance for it.
I wear earphones so no one else has to listen to it over and over and over and over. If I get the timing I hit a wrong note. If I get the notes I mess up the timing. Sometimes I look at a note in the middle of something and it appears to be in a foreign tongue: I have never seen it before even though it turns out to be middle D and I have seen it and played it approximately 1000 times that day already. My brain stalls. My timing disintegrates. My fingers tangle on the keys.

The teacher and I do not connect. I said that but to me it makes a difference since I work harder for people I like and want to please. I don't dislike her at all but I get no sense of accomplishment from her. She writes "Good Job!!!" in big loopy script in my book. I am not twelve. A check-mark would be fine.

And there is her perfume. Whatever it is she uses lots of it and by the time my half hour is up I have a raging headache. It takes about 45 minutes to dampen it down to tolerable levels.  Luckily the headache doesn't start until right near the end. During the lesson I spend maybe 15 minutes actually playing.

The teacher is very nice and accomplished plus of course she has a beautiful voice and a serene manner. Her fingers are very long and thin, like spiders on the keys, beautiful to watch: mesmerizing. I look at my bumpy-with-arthritis, white, comparitively stubbly fingers (altho they are not stubbly) and despair.

This inability to do several things successfully at one time has always plagued me. I cannot get a multi-dish meal on the table all at one time. Something is always late-- the rolls, the corn, the gravey for the dressing and potatoes... I do usually manage to get the wine served.....

Anyway John and I discussed all this and he thinks I should bail and look for another teacher, one I can relax and relate to.Convenience is what led to me this place. I will have to look around. Meanwhile, does anyone have page 1 to the JSBach Minuet?

THE THINGS WE SHOULD HAVE CARRIED

(With apologies to Tim O'Brien for co-opting his title)

When the rains hit, when the house flooded, when we had to get out that day, and in the week following that, John and I were in deer-in-the-headlight mode. Whatever we were told to do we did. The push was to get our "things" out of the house so it could be torn to shreds and dried out. It seemed-- and probably was-- urgent that we work fast.

But John and I have more "things" than I think the company had expected. They thought we were normal. Never suspecting, until they were committed, that we are borderline Hoarders. Which meant there were many, many more "things" to pack than they had imagined. Cow skulls, sea shells, bird's nests, boxes of geneaology stuff, cameras, gadgets, paintings, dolls from my childhood that I never played with anyway, Stacey's clothes from HS, Christopher's first glass pieces, empty boxes with the Marshall Field's logo, empty Frango Mint boxes (after all, you can't get those any more.) well anyway, the list is endless. They were stunned: we were stunned.

They told me that they would pack everything out, if I wanted, and so in my room I packed up some fragile things ( 6 tubs as I recall marked "fragile" to "Ultra Fragile" I consigned to their care but I packed them.) and then it got to me, the amount of work left and I said you know, just take it.

And they did. Oh, they did. Lock, stock and barrel. Well no--we learned they cannot transport liquids or guns but I drank the liquids. (Just kidding. They meant even hand lotion.) And they put it in a truck and took it to Batavia, Illinois. Which is a long ways from my house.

Thinking it would be several weeks.

And it has been. That was May 26th. And it will still be "several weeks"-- they say 8. They have started work on repairs, so that is a great and wonderful thing but in the meantime, some things we should have kept are gone.
My radio-- John thought to set his aside because it is a gadget.
Wine bottle stopper: I currently cut the corks down to use.
(Actually I looked for it and could not find it. I thought I had it at the motel but couldn't find it there, either.)
The dog's records.
My wire whisks, my good set of knives, the potato masher.
More clothes.
The grooming table.
My stereo/CD player with speakers
More dog towels

Mostly I miss my radio since I do not like TV news and would rather listen to WBBM without the visuals.

And at the risk of offending, I loathe Nancy Grace. She is almost as annoying as the young woman she is currently vilifying.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

Well first of all it is Sunday. So there's not a lot going on anyway. Yesterday my daughter and her husband, John Arguello, came down for lunch and to see the rental and go look at the real house.
The real house has a new building permit in the window and the very best news is they are actually starting to do some work. We still have a long haul ahead, but maybe we'll be back home in time for Christmas.

Other than that, not much is happening.

It is also very very very hot. My thermometer says the actual temp is 94. The dewpoint is 73 which makes it quite uncomfortable outside. It is supposed to get hotter for the rest of the week. Getting Cooper to go outside, even when he has not been out all day is becoming a problem. Several times I have had to take him out front on a leash, to get him to go at all. Not peeing cannot be good for his kidneys.

Here is how Nigel spends his time. And then I wonder why my pillows smell funny at night.

It's a familiar smell, but not always conducive to falling asleep quickly.

The rest of the time, or a lot of the rest of the time, the Boys spend guarding the house. Against all possible intruders. This includes little children and dogs across the street, car doors slamming two blocks away, squirrels in the front yard and flies. Conley has become a fly killer.

Wow what is dat? S'dat a squrrl? KILL IT KILL IT KILLIT mebbe da noise will kill it.....

An Lookit dere dat liddel black dog Angel whut awways gettin loose so much dat MomPerson leff a leesh on the bannystair (thet youse can see iffn youse look careful) to run out an greb she an teke she home.

Whut? Whutchu meen be quite? Whut iffen dat dog wanna come in where it cool or sumfin? Oh all rite. We be quite. Humf youse no fun a tall.

GONNA BE ONE A THOSE DAYS

It is very early--oh, not so--not quite six. The beagle next door is outside and wants in and is wailing piteously. Sometimes they let her in, other times they dont. The dog across the street, a black, super friendly basset-spaniel mix named Angel has been out, discovered her fence is down (they are re-building the fence) and started off but her Mom caught her at it and called her back.

(I have returned her twice to her yard when the fence was still up . She figured out how to bypass the "gate". Hopefully, they will put in a real gate this time.)

The boys have been out twice: once at 3 and again after they ate just now, but the presence and distress of Maddie the Beagle makes them bark AND, Maddie and the boys fence fight, and I mean that in the very literal sense.

With all those long ears and loose lips I am afraid someone will get grabbed through the fence and really hurt, so when Maddie is out and about I try to either go out with them or keep them in.I have no photos of Maddie but imagine a hot dog bun with feet. A very stout hot dog bun. But small. She has liquid amber eyes and an expression that suggests she is very street-wise.

Angel actually waddles, but quickly. Her eyes reflect her total confidence that you are her next best friend in the whole world especially if you happen to have a treat. Her tail wags almost all the time, taking most of the rear end with it. If you put a little hat with flowers on her and an apron, she could easily pass for Aunt Tilly, just through whipping up lobster rolls, chips, iced tea and a praline tart (Angel strikes me as a Southern Gal. Sort of Paula Deen.).

I have been watching a starling. It found something "large"--thumb sized-- in the grass, carried it to the sidewalk and began pounding it repeatedly on the sidewalk. I do not know what it was but it seemed to be trying to get away. I suspect it was a wasp. This went on for about one minute, the object slammed onto the sidewalk,pecked, slammed again. Finally satisfied the bird ate a little of it and then flew off with it. Does this qualify as tool use?

photo from Google




It is going to be hot and humid; the humidity is holding sounds very close to the ground. People are getting up now. Maybe I'll take nap.

MOMPERSON PLAYS THE MUSIK THINGIE

BY NIGEL, LLEWIS, CONLEY & COOPER:

MomPerson gots dis biiiiiiiig pakitch. Two of em. Really akshually.
She very scited. We too stannin onna couch barkin at da brown truk. BRAINS BRAINS!!
But noooo.
She opent it an it dat musik fing she ordert. What she say when she seen it in reel life was

"Oh my god whut have i done?"

It sumfin callt a KEEBORT.
It bin 3 daze now an she kin turn it on an off ok.

Sometime she sit an go plink plinkplink.

We gotta say she uh......she.....deetermint. Not good, mind youse, but determint.
plink plinky plinky plink. plonk. oops. (Lotsa dem "oops")

She got it plugged inna wall. We finking mebbe it time to hep mail da bills. Hep DadPerson put da nvelops in da mailthings. Or sumfin.
Livin ousside lookin possibull.

The End for Now.

I HAVE BEEN REMISS

I have not kept up with the blog or actually, it has not kept up with me. Not that I am so busy you understand, but that there has been nothing except 4th of July Terrified Dogs to report upon anyway.

So.
We have another meeting today with another person who is supposedly going to be doing something to the House. We are working on many decisions, which range from what to do with the floor to what to do about a furnace. Nevermind, it's boring, really it is unless it is your floor and your furnace.

Yesterday my new Yamaha Keyboard arrived. I say that as though it is in addition to the others but noooo, I have only the one, and what a monster it is! I expected something about 2.5 feet long but this!! Four feet, I would estimate with more buttons than a rocket launcher with foreign codes on them such as "database" and "split" and "p.a.t. on/off"------???? Never having even learned everything there is about my computer, I must admit when I opened it and looked at it my mind did a little "poof!" and a mushroom shaped cloud appeared above my brain.

And then the real crusher hit: as a kid, I could never read the bass, nothing below middle C made any sense to me at all. Guess what? Nothing has changed! Every Good Boy Does Fine may work above middle C but below it I am lost in a swamp of strange symbols and peculiar notes.
Time for lessons. Well in truth I had planned on that anyway.
I wanted to learn piano again, and knew even if I took lessons, not being able to practice was going to be a problem. This seemed like a nice way to replace a piano with buying into a Baby Grand and having to sell both the cars in order to get one. (Not to mention building an addition to the house in which to place it. Yes, I know how big they are: we had one.) (At 10 yrs old, struggling to play a highly diluted Dvorak, the Baby Grand seemed huge. I cannot imagine sitting down to a real Grand Piano and being expected to do anything besides whine "I caaaaaaaan't" which is what I said to Miss Smith, the ever-patient teacher every week.)

(Llewis shows his appreciation for Great Music. I had finally put the headphones on to reduce the irritation shown by other members of the family for "plink plink plink" repeated ad nauseum with slight variations in tempo and long pauses while I attempted to decipher the notes.)

Anyway Life moves on and here we are, nearly 6 weeks into living someplace other than our real home. The Garden is a shambles: I will have to start over next year, assuming we are back by then. We have made acquaintances with several neighbors and their dogs and gradually this house is acquiring the piled-up, lived in look of the other, pre-flood. And I know when we go back, nothing will really change. It'll be clean, and painted, and full of the same junk that we already have.
BUT that way lies madness.

         My totally ignored roses at the house, on the edge of the crumbling summerhouse

                   The baby Blue Jay we found in the bushes out back of the rental house.

                             One of my paintings I brough to liven up the naked walls.

                                                 One of the other paintings.

                              Waiting for DadPerson to come out of the bedroom in the morning.

HOUSE JULY 4

This will be short.
Walked over to the real house to take pics of the garden. It is solid weed. We hired a guy to mow the yard while we were gone and the back looks as if he did it with weedwhacker. Of course, it WAS rather long.

The house is totally depressing to be in. Empty and raw. No movement.
The yard was depressing.
The garden was extremely depressing.

I did find a replacement crate tray for Conley-- the one in the crate he is using is cracked and I was afraid he would catch his pads in the cracks and cut his feet to pieces.

Anyway it is a beautiful day and now I just want to sit and cry.
I miss my house. My garden. My neighbors. I miss my kids. (Like that's new.)

I guess what this says about me is that instead, I should be saying-- the house looks great, it's finally dry and ready to be rebuilt. The garden sucks but I can fix that with several days of work. The grass needs to be remown but by the time we move back in, the dogs will have been gone long enough that we will HAVE grass. And the neighbors say they miss us except for the one who doesn't speak to me.
And of course the most important thing of all: I don't have to worry about Conley catching his pads in the cracks under the crate pads.

Happy Fourth, I suppose.