Hot Hot Hot!!!

No doubt you all heard about the “Heat Dome” that brought so much misery and death (I kid you not) to the PNW about a fortnight ago. Well, nothing you read or heard was in any way an exaggeration. It was without doubt the worst heat I’ve ever endured, although that’s not really saying a great deal, considering I lived in Northern England for the first half of my life.

Anyway, when the news of the impending furnace conditions first broke, I was not as sceptical as I would have been in the past, having lived through quite a few hot summers. We endured the first couple of days, sort of, by opening all the windows at night and sleeping under only a sheet and an empty duvet cover and then buttoning up the house mid-morning in order to trap at least some of the cooler air in the house. My wife works at home, and even though the office is the coldest room in the house, even with a fan, the temperature was in the mid-eighties, which is too much when you have brain work to do.

I was somewhat better off in that the store was kept reasonably cool, but not chillingly so, so as not to put too much of a strain on the power supply. My wife, who does even worse in heat than I do complained about the conditions in the house on her Facebook page, as she is won’t to do. One interesting response from a friend of hers in New York was “Well, the Realtor should have noticed that the house doesn’t have air conditioning”, in what seemed like a rather snarky tone, only for my wife to inform her that only about one third of homes in the region even have a/c at all, as it normally isn’t needed. I suppose that if you live in a part of the world where a/c is considered a basic amenity you might be surprised by this, but I guess some people don’t even think about such things.

However, there was a response at the other end of the scale: A friend of hers who lives nearby told her that as she and her family were out of town, she would give us the code and we could stay at her house, which has a/c. Acts like this do a lot to restore my faith in human nature, and we couldn’t have been more grateful. We packed bags and dog into the cars and headed off as soon as we could.

The two nights we spent there were the hottest of the period, and I never imagined I would be grateful for a house cooled to 75F. Yeah, the temperature at which I begin to fade felt like bliss. To be able to sit without creating a puddle was a delight I shall not forget easily. Of course, we departed each morning, as we both had work to do, but at least we were able to get a decent nights’ sleep which wouldn’t have been possible had we stayed at home. To give you some idea of how bad it was, when I arrived home from work on June 29^th, the thermometer in my car read 110F. Insane.

We had talked about getting a/c during last years’ hot spell, but didn’t due to the cost involved, however this summer made up our minds for us. We are determined not to have to put up with the discomfort of living in a sweat box and so are going to have a/c installed as soon as the contractor can fit us in. We got a couple of quotes and as the price is unlikely to go down, decided that waiting until autumn or next spring just isn’t a viable option.

I know this is very much a First World problem, and that burning fuel to mitigate the effects of burning fuel isn’t exactly an ideal solution, but at some point practicality has to win out over principal. I really wish there was another solution, but having a fan blowing in every room for twelve hours a day just isn’t viable either. Thankfully the weather has eased now, and the daytime highs are no worse than the night time lows of two weeks ago. I’m just glad that we can (just about) afford the cost of the new system, but I’m not sure our sanity could have afforded the cost of NOT installing it. No zinger at the end of this one, I just hope you all managed to stay cool and are able to cope with whatever nature is throwing at you.

I’ve Never Met A Nice South African

How do you feel about neighbours? I mean in general as well the people living in the houses or apartments near you? I’ve always been rather indifferent to them, both in theory and in practice. I’m just far enough along the spectrum that even though I’d like to have relationships with those living around me, I just can’t be arsed to put in the effort, hence my disastrous time living in a purposeful community built around the idea of everyone sharing space, etc. that ended up being a bastion of white privilege inside a bastion of white privilege. I had almost no contact with the neighbours in my last home, barely enough to recognise more than a couple of them, but this changed when I move in with my sweetheart, who is now my wife.

Our immediate neighbours are something of a Curates’ egg, so I’ll start with the excellent part first. On one side of our townhouse is a truly wonderful woman. She has three, (now four) dogs and a couple of cats, although we never see the cats. She and my wife bonded over their mutual love of canines and quickly developed a friendship. As well as being a great neighbour, she is incredibly generous. Being from the south, she makes the most outrageously wonderful gumbo I have ever tasted. Her mother lives with her, but she is unable to make half a batch, so on a number of occasions we  have been on the receiving end of a huge container of gumbo so stuffed with Andouille, crab legs and shrimp that it really doesn’t qualify as  a liquid.

After we bought a new T.V, she asked us if we had a sound bar. Of course we didn’t, as we never considered it, so she gave us hers! Her rationale was that the dogs kept tripping over the cables, so she bought a wireless one. Naturally, we insisted that we pay her for it, but she downright refused, even though it would have cost us $400 or more to buy it new. She has been equally generous in other ways too numerous to mention, but especially when it comes to having our dog stay with her overnight or when we are going to be out of the house for a while. Her medicines mean she has to go to the bathroom very frequently, and it wouldn’t be fair to leave a dog alone in that condition for any length of time.

Lest you think us a couple of moochers, we reciprocate at any opportunity. Our neighbour doesn’t leave the house, so if she needs something picking up at short notice, we are more than happy to do so for her and drop it off. I’ve also installed a video doorbell for her and helped assemble a dog cage, and I’m always willing to help out with any task that she feels is beyond her.

So far, so wonderful. Now we come to the subject of this post. The neighbours on the other side are a completely different proposition, or rather, the husband is. They consist of a Japanese woman and her white South African husband, their son and daughter. When I say Japanese, I mean born in Japan Japanese, not fifth generation, as many people are around here. She is a lovely woman who is very friendly, but generally keeps herself to herself.  Now before I go any further, I’m not saying there’s a power dynamic there, but there’s a power dynamic there.

When my wife moved in, the husband was very helpful, offering help if needed and giving her his cell number should she need it, being a (white) woman living alone. I’ve never had much conversation with him, but he has some strong opinions, especially when it comes to the Homeowners Association and things to do with property rights, which brings me to the main event.

A couple of months ago we had a contractor do some work on our yard. While using the wheelbarrow, one of his employees put a couple of small scratches on our neighbours’ concrete path. Not deep gouges, not feet long, just a couple of scratches about two inches long that would fade if left to be. Our neighbour was not a happy man. He went off on a rant that led to my wife giving him the contractors’ details so they could take care of it between themselves. There was no malice involved, the scratches were accidental and to accuse the employee of “Trespassing without my permission” (sic) was just plain ridiculous. To cut a long story short, our neighbour presented the contractor with a bill for $100 to cover the materials and time involved in repairing the “damage”. Seriously!

The contractor is a nice chap just trying to make a living, and I’m sure he didn’t need the grief or expense of dealing with the jerk next door over something so minor that most sane people would have just let go.

But wait, there’s more! A couple of weeks later, he decided to remove a couple of small trees from his back garden. Rather than take them to be recycled, he dumped them on the other side of the street where sits a plot of land ready for two new town homes at some point. He tried to cover his arse by offering them to anyone who wanted them, but of course, no one did, so they proceeded to die over the course of the next week. The plot across the road is somewhat overgrown and has quite a bit of Scotch Broom on it, but even so, that’s no excuse, although when it was pointed out to him that the trees were an eyesore his response was “Well, we’ve got plenty of eyesores here already”. Can someone tell me, if two wrongs don’t make a right, how many wrongs do? Because I’m not sure.

He eventually cut the trees up and disposed of them after some gentle nudging from my wife, but you can see what an arsehole this guy is. I really can’t stand him, and I have to admit that I wouldn’t put myself out for him. It’s a shame when the people who live close by don’t understand how to behave in a civilised manner, but I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Oh, and just in case the title of this post needs some explanation, Spitting Image was a bitingly satirical comedy show on British T.V. in the 1980’s, so some of the refences in the video might not translate.https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2urkuf