Friday, September 14, 2012

Abbey is Pregnant!

I've been living in the valley of the sun for almost 40 years now. Just about that entire time, I've been responsible for the maintenance of one pool or another, with the exception of when I lived with LJ. At that point she took pride in maintaining her own pool, but I feel I was extremely instrumental in showing her how. Where I currently live, the woman that I live with was paying some creep $100 a month to put chemicals in and that mindless job takes about 3 minutes a week. I made the mistake of telling her that I could do that job and save her the money. She never told me she fired the service, instead we just watched the pool turn green. Naturally I inquired and she reiterated that she fired them about 10 days prior. Liquid chlorine was to be purchased and administered immediately to bring the chlorine levels up to where they needed to be. That was done and the pool turned a beautiful crystal blue color overnight. Everyone was happy. However the pool cleaner took a crap and required a guy named Charlie to come to get it going again. Charlie also owned the pool service she had used. When he came, he did the job and left and never told anyone what was wrong, but it was fixed. I think he sabotaged the Barracuda, but that's just me. I asked her to find out what Charlie did to get it running, but that never happened. 

Now I'm using the old outdated chlorine that was already in the garage and for some reason the pool, even though the chlorine levels are high enough, has turned green again. Scratching my head, I went to Home Depot and purchased 6 gallons of liquid chlorine and administered it. I seemed to hear a faint laughter as it didn't do a thing to change the color of the green water and I think the pool was laughing at me, but again, that's just me. 

When the roommate got home, she took one look at the pool and said, "I'll call Charlie" and all that did was piss me off! I almost gagged on my Costco potato salad and demanded a few more days to get this bastard in order. It was agreed upon, because frankly no one really cares but me. Saving a plastic water bottle, I called around to find a place that would analyse my sample of pool water. Finding a place just a few blocks away and in the desert that's amazing, I drove over making sure not drink any of the pool water by mistake. I generally carry around a water bottle when I'm away from home and I could just imagine swallowing some of this sludge. 

When I arrived at the pool place, it had it's usual assortment of employees smoking in front of the place, that seemed to be on break. I waited my turn and was finally waited on by a guy that looked like he'd been dragged in by the cat, an expression my mother used to use. I had no idea the testing system had become so sophisticated. He carefully poured my sample into a beaker for analysis and a bunch of lights and bells flashed and rang when finally a computer sheet rolled out of the top and he tore it off, like one of the old fax machines. The dirty tech then put on his glasses and read silently to himself making hmmm........... noises.

He took off his glasses and said to me, "I have some bad news. Someone has been urinating in your pool!" WHAT, I asked. Completely shocked and appalled. There is a guest house attached to the 7 car garage and it was recently rented by a young woman named Abbey. Abbey is a quiet girl and was very timid to say the least. I slowly got to know her a little while grilling burgers, I'd offer her one occasionally. She'd quietly smile and say, thank you and that was about the extent of our communication. Lately, a young man has been coming by and I noticed that one morning his car was still parked by her door.

Getting back to my water analysis, the grubby guy said, "Not only is  it a female urinating in your pool, but she's about 6 weeks pregnant"! I couldn't believe that he was able to determine all of this from a water sample. Another thing that was pretty relevant was the PH level was way off needing additional acid. With the acid level that low, the chlorine was not allowed to work it's magic and if I can only bring up the PH level, my pool will clear up.

Now my question is, should I tell Abbey to stop peeing in the pool and let her know that she's pregnant, or just let nature take it's course?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is funny, hope everyone will be happy! NMS

randinthecity said...

hilarious