I kicked off the work day before six, to get the digging finished and the footers poured for the new solar panel rack. Went to town to get water and chicken pellets, ate lunch and grabbed Little Bear, went to Landlady’s.
I had become convinced that there was a serious problem with the well pump, which hasn’t run since June when it shut down the electrical system while I was trying to water the trees. Cistern was only about half full, and with the electrical system fixed it was really time to fill that puppy. I plugged in the pump in the powershed and it seemed to me all hell broke loose. I don’t know how much amperage the pump is supposed to pull but I’m pretty sure 26 amps is too much. I thought the pump was seized, and wasn’t looking forward to sharing that news with Landlady the very week she dropped megabux on rebuilding the electrical.
Turns out I was all wet, I was reading the new display wrong, the pump was only pulling 10 amps and was actually working fine. But I wanted to put off running the pump until I could spend some time there and actually see that all was well. Today was the day; with juice re-established it was time to get those poor chicks out of the too-small cage and back in their room, plus there were other things to move around.
In fact it turned into one thing after another with the sort of back-and-forth that always leaves me in pain. I was getting tired and hot and sore and grumpy, but gratified to see that even though that stupid well pump still overwhelms the input from the solar panels it does at least work as well as it ever did. The cistern was filling, even though it was pulling from the batteries to do it.
Got back to the Lair intending to knock off, to find a voicemail from Neighbor D about a ‘suspicious noise’ – I swear that was the actual phrase – around a neighbor’s place. Sigh – Okay, look – Yes, I get paid monthly stipends to act as caretaker for certain untenanted properties here and there. That doesn’t make me the neighborhood cop. If you hear a noise you find suspicious, jump in your wheels and go investigate it. Don’t leave me a voicemail about it.
I suppose I’m only encouraging that sort of thing by acting on the voicemail. But having been informed, my conscience would have bothered me if I hadn’t loaded LB and a rifle into the Jeep and gone for yet another ride. Finding nothing to report, I reported it anyway and then went home to feed dog and chickens and take a nice cool bath in the front yard. (Brain bleach alert.)
I know I often kid about my age. You’ve seen pix and a short video and you know I’m not a spring chicken. It’s a demographic oddity, though, that the only full-time residents in our neighborhood are retirees, all substantially older than me. Sad to say, I’m the young buck.
So yeah, sometimes I get the phone call and when it’s “Can you come help me with…” I’m happy to go. Really not interested in being the neighborhood cop, though, and I need to find polite ways to say so. Or maybe I need to relax to the fact that sometimes the neighborhood needs a cop and I’m it.
And you don’ need no steenkin’ batches!
Nothing wrong with a bath in the front yard. When I was a teen, a good friend’s stepdad had a hose slung over a tree in the side yard. The house had a bath, but no shower. Being a former sailor, he wasn’t content with a hand-held shower; the USN quickly sours you on those. On hot days, of which we have a plentiful abundance in TN, he could go out in his something-like-a-Speedo & enjoy a cool shower. He was a machinist, which I have since been for awhile, so I can now understand how much he liked it.
Can’t say I enjoyed the sight of a near-naked, fat, old, pale man showering just outside the window, but I was a guest, so you deal with it. He was old, too–had to have been 35 then, & that’s old when you’re 17 or so. He was genuinely fat–a lot like me now, unfortunately, & now is all my fault. Same reason, too–bread in a bottle.
“Hey, hey, hey . . . let’s be careful out there.” — Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, HSB
If you’re the neighborhood cop, Joel, would LB at least present the appearance of being your ferocious trained K-9 sidekick? I’d be leery of LB unless he rushed up to lick me to death, tail wagging.
Little Bear’s more the shy type around strangers, though he’ll kill a friend with excess enthusiasm.
Y’ought to see what he’s like when he meets somebody he doesn’t like, though. He tends to be instantly hostile toward large burly men for some reason, and leaves them in no doubt. He almost always approves of women on sight – though one time out of the blue he made an exception for Ian’s little old Grandmother. I still think it was the big floppy hat that unnerved him.