Snapshot Saturday

I've never met Jimbob but he must be very serious about Leah if he'd risk life and limb to scale this dilapidated water tower and declare his love for her in such a public way.

Seen in Greenville, South Carolina, June 25, 2010

High on love.

The hearts are an adorable touch:

Backwards it's Leah Loves Jimbob.

SkyWatch Friday

Sky over Columbia, South Carolina, June 23, 2010

Link up and post your own skypics!

I welcome your comments but please kindly do not post links.

Water in ... money out

The pool fairies mock us.It started a week or so ago when I noticed the swimming pool seemed to be losing ground.

Uh … water. 

There's evaporation and there's splashout, but neither explained the mystifying fact that our water couldn't seem to stay level with the bottom of the topmost row of blue blocks. 

Were hundreds of pool elves slipping tiny straws into the water while we slept and slaking their little elfin thirsts by drinking our swimming water? I wondered.

Presently I mentioned it to TG.

"Huhnnnmmm," he said.

A Deep Discovery

A few days later I was lolling in the shallow end when my foot detected an indentation in the floor of the pool. Upon investigation with my toe, I found a minuscule half-moon shaped hole in the liner. Still using my toe, I teased some grit from the hole.

Uh-oh.

Did you know that if you punch a hole in the liner of your pool with a ballpoint pen, through that little tiny hole you'll lose an inch of water a day?

This according to the man who put a weight belt around his waist and a SCUBA tank on his back this afternoon and "dove" my pool from end to end, looking for holes to go with the one we already knew about.

He didn't find any. 

The pre-identified hole was quickly patched and we were once again in business.

Pay The Pool Piper

Since the heat climbs to 99 each day and the humility is near triple digits too, this is important. When I'm melting in traffic, I'm thinking about my refreshing evening dip.

"How much do I owe you," I asked the dripping pool man. Real nice guy.

"Seventy-five'll do it. I normally get a hundred-fifty but since you pointed out where the hole was, seventy-five'll do fine."

Hydrangea unrelated to story.He was at my house for twenty minutes. Ten minutes of that he was swimming in my pool.

The man is making four-hundred fifty dollars an hour for paddling around with rocks tied to his body, applying bandaids.

I knew guys who went to law school during the Kennedy administration who still can't bill that much per hour ... although come to think of it, some of them are all wet.

More Shocking Circumstances

What's tragic funny is that earlier this week, we had to hire an electrician. 

Because suddenly and for no reason we could figure out, there was no electricity in our bedroom. 

There was power in the master bath and in all the rooms around the master bedroom, but not in our room. 

TG tried very hard to fix it. No expletives were uttered but I fear we came perilously close. 

The nice electrician discovered there's an outlet with a switch on the outside wall of our house. I use the outlet to plug Christmas lights in every year. The rest of the time I forget about it.

But water had gotten into the switch apparatus and shorted it out, taking our bedroom electricity with it.

When all was put back to rights and the dripping electrician (he hadn't been in the pool … that's just how hot it was) was ready to go, I faced the music.

Ivy leave you have a problem."How much do I owe you," I asked.

"One eighty-five'll do it," he said. 

Settle Up And Settle Down

I told him it didn't seem like enough. He'd been there three hours. He'd crawled around underneath my house! He'd gone to Lowe's and bought switch boxes. He didn't get to go swimming.

"If you want to make it two hundred that'll be okay too," he allowed.

I made it two hundred. Why not? I can read in bed again without holding the tiny LED flashlight Andrew gave me. I can watch an old movie from my pillow. I can walk around the room without stubbing my toe. TG is in the clear.

So to sum up … pool guy making $450 an hour. Electrician making a shade under $70 an hour. Both being paid by a court reporter who makes $40 an hour … when she works, and when copy attorneys live up to their designation by actually ordering copies.

Talk about your cash flow.

The pirate said it best: apparently there's a leak.

Haiku for a summer night

Pink stain reaches while

Trees rescind their eager green

Become night's dark arms

Three degrees of Chihuahua separation

Wowa love.The first Chihuahua I ever remember meeting personally was named Consuela.

Consuela was my hairdresser's pet and she looked and acted exactly as I'd always been led to believe Chihuahuas are inclined to appear and behave.

Impossibly tiny. Ridiculously bony. Shaking from head to tail to prehensile paws and back again. Yapping incessantly.

Ugly. Rat-doggish. Bug-eyed. Shrill.

And I'm a dog lover.

And dogs love me! Across the board.

Chihuahuas With Cold Shoulders

But Consuela had ignored that memo. When I indicated that I wanted to hold and pet her while her owner groomed me, she was vehemently disinclined to acquiesce to my request.

Vexing. Perplexing.

I promptly forgot all about Chihuahuas. For years we'd been Beagle people anyway. I've loved many a Beagle and, when it came to dogs, always thought of myself as a hound and spaniel sort of person.

The toy canine varieties didn't seem like "real" dogs to me.

I'm almost ashamed to tell you this because it's humiliatingly bourgeois, but all of that changed with the Taco Bell TV commercials in the late '90s.

The Taco Bell dog's name wasn't Gordita but that's what we called her at our house. My kids were constantly saying "Yo quiero Taco Bell" and "Drop the chalupa" whereupon we'd all laugh hysterically.

We were living in central Ohio (which perhaps explains why we were so easily amused). I commuted to Columbus each weekday, where I worked at a law firm.

A Chihuahua Calls My Name

One day in July of 1999 I was in the lobby of our building when I saw Shelly, a paralegal, walking toward me. Shelly had something small and white in her arms.

When I got up to Shelly I realized the small white something was a dog. A Chihuahua.

Name of Sparky.

Sparky was less than three months old. Shelly had bought him -- and his brother -- from a reputable breeder in Zanesville, Ohio.

Sparky was perhaps one of the top three cutest dogs I'd ever seen. Up till then I didn't even know Chihuahuas came in white and melted your heart like that, on contact.

I wanted one.

We owned a Beagle (RIP Buckley, 1997-2005) at the time and the last thing we needed was a Chihuahua.

But I wanted one.

Our daughter Audrey wanted one too. A teenager with her first job, and uber-enamored of the Taco Bell dog, she had already announced her intention to acquire a Chihuahua.

Adios, Pesos ... Hola, Chihuahua

In the spirit of striking while the burrito was hot, I went home and told the kids about meeting Sparky.

Audrey and I reached an agreement: if it all worked out, we'd go halvsies on the new dog. (I often tell her she bought Javier's back half and I bought his front half.)

I got clearance from TG to spend a portion of our hard-earned income on a dog that would not exceed six pounds fully grown, soaking wet, and stuffed with table scraps.

I called the reputable Chihuahua breeder the next day.

Turned out there was a very young litter for sale, but only two of the pups remained un-spoken for. If I drove out to Zanesville after work I'd be able to pick out a puppy and meet its parents (which, I'd been led to believe, was important).

That's how I met and called dibs (via cash deposit) on Javier. He was so small he fit in the palm of my hand. His eyes were not yet open. It would be several weeks before we could bring him home.

The ensuing days crawled by like when a kid waits for Christmas. I don't know how my children handled it; that was just me.

The early September afternoon I drove back to Zanesville to finish paying for Javier was a typical Midwestern stormy Indian summer day. All the way home Javier lay in my lap, his head propped on my arm. 

His little teal crate sat empty on the seat beside us. His huge brown eyes never left my face.

Chihuahuas Equal Devotion

Speaking of eyes, Javier's are slightly buggy. He does tremble now and then, and he's a superior watchdog but only growls and barks when necessary. Squirrels in the yard elevate his hackles as much as anything.

He never yips or yaps.

The place he wants to be is in a lap or glommed onto the side of a sleeping person, being stroked and petted and massaged or simply absorbing any human warmth available for dog consumption.

He's lazy but not aimless. His aim is to make his humans happy by providing comfort and understanding like only a dog can do. If you cry a tear, he immediately shows up to lick your face. It's like he knows the very moment you need sloppy kisses and unconditional love.

Javier is very intelligent and may be gifted; he knows lots of words besides his name (and variations on his name, including "Harvey").

Included in his impressive vocabulary are "Mom" and "Dad" and "Erica" and "crate" and "bed" and "outside" and "eat" and "walk" and the questions "Go bye-bye?" and "Bath?" and "Trim your nails?" 

Those last two querys cause him to tremble in a way that reminds me of Consuela.

And the way he is adored reminds me of how I knew I could love a Chihuahua when I met Sparky.

I like the way one dog leads to another. 

I love my precious and comical -- and very real -- little dog.