Squawk

Yesterday I ran errands and also bought yet another pair of shoes, at Ann Arbor Running Company, just to demonstrate that there will not be any problem living frugally when I am a retiree. These shoes are Altra Torin 8s: wide toe box, zero drop, but plenty of padding. I have such high hopes for them that yesterday evening I ordered a second pair online in a different color. Super frugal! 

This morning the place that installed our new mini-split (air conditioner + heat pump) sent a technician to investigate the low-frequency hum the system is producing. He kept saying how extremely quiet these systems are—so quiet you can hear the coolant flowing through the pipes. He explained that the various noises, some of them loud enough that I’m worried they are annoying the neighbors, and including the low-frequency hum that is annoying me, are just the normal operation of the system. I guess the idea is that the system is so quiet that you can now hear all its loud sounds? That doesn’t really make any sense. As for today’s visit, I expected that the upshot would be: live with it, which I had already decided to do, so that was fine.

It is quite lovely to have nice, warm air blow out of the ceiling vents that previously only cold air came out of, though, since heat rises, it doesn’t seem like the best place for the vents. They were installed for an air conditioner and have been repurposed for the heat pump. I’m not sure where they would be if they were being installed from scratch, but possibly still the ceiling.

Next! Watering of the new grass. I went out and started the sprinkler and watered the first area without incident. I moved the sprinkler to the next area and fiddled with the hoses. One hose comes from the back of the house and then a splitter, or whatever you call it, attaches to two other hoses, one for the front yard and one for the end of the house. My sister set that up.

Somewhere along in here, I noticed that two carpenter bees had come along. I saw the two very large bees and I also saw the telltale fresh piles of sawdust underneath the sturdy wooden bench in front of the house. I remember my father sitting on that bench on a lovely day in June, a couple of months after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He and I and my mother took a walk in the neighborhood. He was exhausted when we got back, I think. I remember his angry, upset expression as he sat on the bench.

I read today online that it is the lady carpenter bee who makes the holes; she is not aggressive unless she feels threatened. The man bee is aggressive, but lacks the ability to sting.

As for the new grass, I found that no water was coming out of the sprinkler in its new location, so I went and twisted the thingies on the two ball valves this way and that, tromping over our new grass repeatedly: If you have this one this way and that one that way? If you have them both this way? If you have them both that way? I swear I tried every possible thing but could not get the sprinkler to work. I finally had to text my sister and say I had done my best to pretend I’m an orphan, as our parents sometimes advised, but was stuck. (When my sister arrived later, she swaggered in the front door and said, “What seems to be the problem with the sprinkler, little lady?”) (I scarcely need mention that five minutes after she took up the problem, the sprinkler was working fine.)

After wrestling with the sprinkler for however long, it was getting to be time for me to leave for my appointment with the key place. I needed a spare key to the garage to put in the lockbox for the estate sale lady, but neither ACE nor Stadium Hardware had the right blank. They suggested a place that is just a locksmith. I had to leave without brushing my teeth or washing my face, due to all the fruitless fiddling with the sprinkler.

I got in my car and noticed that there seemed to be some people standing in my yard, which I could scarcely make sense of. I called over to them, “Hey!” It was a man and woman who looked at me blankly, like, “Why is that lady yelling at us?” They did not move an inch, as they clearly felt themselves to be on public property. I informed them that they were standing in my yard and they reluctantly began to step toward the sidewalk, not without sneering, “Oh, it’s the end of the world!” (The man did that.)

They were walking a dog who evidently had wanted to inspect my father’s daylilies close up. I said that I had just today picked up a dog turd from that area. The woman said, “It wasn’t us,” as they huffily departed. Perhaps it is that if you own a dog, all property is suddenly, magically public?

I consulted my associates: Was I the asshole here? One said no, people standing in her yard would not be acceptable. Another said that he would have said, “Get off my fucking lawn before I give you a lump on your forehead with my 9-iron.”

I drove over to the locksmiths, noticing that I was less patient with tailgating drivers than usual. They used to gravely irritate me, but now I just say to myself, “That is not a bad person. It’s just that someone taught them to drive in a ridiculous manner.” But today when I noticed someone not more than two inches behind me as I was making ready to turn off Stadium Ave. to go to the hardware store, I came nearly to a dead stop on purpose before I made the turn, while mumbling, “Get off my ass.”

At the hardware store I got a small squirt bottle and a pound of grass seed to try to repair all the damage I did this morning, and next door at Arbor Farms I got some orange essential oil. Back at home, I put a little oil in the new squirt bottle, added water, shook the bottle, took the cover off the wooden bench and sprayed it with orange oil. While I was doing this, I noticed hundreds of small-medium-sized ants trooping into the house, but only one could be spotted inside, so they are disappearing into the bowels of the house for now. 

It was nearly 80 degrees by this time, a gorgeous, sunny day with a pleasant breeze. I took a walk and then it was time for dinner on the deck. Whereas breakfast is eaten mindfully and lunch doesn’t exist, I have taken to familiarizing myself with the events of the day during dinner. The sun was just about in my eyes as I sat down on the deck, so I thought I would see if darkening my iPhone would somehow help. I turned it all the way down to completely black as a starting point—and then could not see the controls to turn the light on again. Nothing I did made it be anything other than completely black. I finally had to try to turn it off and restart it without being able to see anything on the screen, and somewhere along in there, I heard a high-pitched squawk. Eventually the screen became not quite black, and I could turn the light up again, whereupon I saw that I had accidentally made an emergency SOS call; that’s what the squawk was.

If you’ve ever wondered if that actually works, it doesn’t.

Item by item, the proof that my parents were once here is disappearing, including the heated bird bath from the back yard. I therefore also put the sturdy yellow brush used to clean the shallow basin with the things for the sale, but then decided that might make a subtle memento. After my father returned from his three weeks in the hospital and then three weeks in rehab, I cleaned that bird bath with that yellow brush every single day so that when my father sat at the dining room table and looked out the window, he would see a pristine bird bath. One day I came in from that task, and found my father sitting at the table. He made an admiring remark about my zealous bird bath cleaning.

As she left today, my sister said I’m doing a good job of being a homeowner. It certainly does afford an endless supply of things to do that you didn’t think you’d be doing. I am laughing now, remembering how three years ago, give or take, I asked the people doing the fall cleanup of the yard if they would be sure to pick up twigs and branches that had fallen into the yard. They said they would. They didn’t. They said the spring cleanup people would do it for sure. The spring cleanup people didn’t do it, either. I asked this yard guy, that yard guy, and the other yard guy and for some reason, it proved to be impossible to get anyone to pick up a twig.

I would have picked them up myself, except I didn’t know what I would do with a twig once I had picked it up. I have now, with the help of my sister, grasped in what kind of bag you are supposed to place a twig, should you pick one up, and also where you are supposed to place this bag and on what days of the month you may do this. Sheesh. From now on, we will be twig free, unless I don’t buy this house. Then there might be twigs.