I’m taking the antibiotics and I *am* feeling better. I’ve got a little appetite and the weight free-fall has stabilized. I wouldn’t mind continuing to weigh in the 150s, but I’ll probably gain my weight back now that I’m eating again. In fact, I felt better enough yesterday to tackle a small motorhome project. I had gotten the wrong bay door pistons that hold up a couple of the outside bay doors when I open them. The pistons were way too stiff, and I could hardly get the doors closed. I had ordered new ones, but they didn’t get delivered before we left on our Arizona trip, so they’ve just been sitting here at the house waiting to get installed. All I had to do was figure out how the end-clips worked. I had heard it was easy. It didn’t take long before I was stumped. I could almost see how the clip worked, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it stay open. I’m an analytical guy though, and I don’t stay stumped for long. I knew exactly what to do in a situation like this. I called my brother Tom. Tom knew. He explained how the latch worked. I was trying to figure it out by looking at the new piston that wasn’t already attached to the door, and figure out how to get the latch to stay open, but it turns out that one doesn’t even need to be opened. All a person has to do is get the spring-loaded snap on the old piston to open just enough to allow the end fitting to snap off the ball it’s mounted to. Once the old piston is off, the new piston just pops on, no problem. So, mission accomplished. I did something. Now I’m working on getting all the bugs scrubbed off the front of the bus. If you get them at the end of every day, while they’re still soft, they come right off with a soft brush and a bucket of water. We came back from our last trip, parked the bus, and just collapsed though, so now a couple weeks later the bugs have “matured”, and are immune to the soft brush and water. They come off one at a time with a non-abrasive scrubber and a bucket of water. It’s not one for one; one scrub, one bug either. One bug at a time, and maybe many scrubs for each bug. A significant time investment. Lesson learned. Again. No matter what, scrub the bugs off every day or pay the price. The house is habitable again so we moved back in last night. That whole experience was so terrible. The pest control guy is so enthusiastic that he had to describe every step. When he came out with fifteen pounds of possum in a bag, he announced that as bad as it smelled, he figured the whole possum would be liquefied, but it was only dripping from the anus. AAAGGGHHH. “Did we want to see it?” AAAAGGGHHHH GAG GAG GAG. No thank you, please.
Dead things
In our house in Colorado, sometimes we’d get mice come in, especially in the fall when it started getting cold, and we’d have to trap them. It never seemed like a really big deal. Besides, the occasional mouse in the house gave the cat something to do. Here in this house, we’ve had mice get underneath the house and die. That can be smelly. It’s a cement slab under the house, so if they just die there, no big deal, we can find them and throw them out. But if they get up into the sub-floor, in among the insulation, wiring, and heating/air conditioning ducts it can be a bigger deal. Over the years we’ve had a couple get up there and die. Unable to locate and remove the little mouse carcass, we have to endure a few days of intense smell in that part of the house while the carcass decomposes. It’s not fun, but it passes. This last week was something entirely different though. We knew we had something in the floor. We could hear it scrambling and banging around at night for a couple nights in a row. It was enough to wake us up and keep us awake. It sounded big and it sounded like it had a major construction project going on in there. Must be a big rat. Some advised us to put out poison bait, but we didn’t want it to eat poison then crawl back up inside the house and die. We have a bug guy that sprays around our house for bugs and spiders once every three months, but he doesn’t do rodents. We got a good recommendation for a pest control guy that will go after critters other than just bugs and called him. He said for sure, don’t put out poison; what we don’t want to happen surely will, and we’ll be dealing with something dead up under the house. He said to put out some snap-traps and catch it. He would come by and have a look as soon as he could in a couple days. We found the entry point underneath the air-conditioning ductwork and put out a big rat snap-trap baited with peanut butter. The next morning, the peanut butter was gone and the trap had been triggered, but no varmint. That night however, there was no sound in our floor, so we figured at least we scared it away. Maybe it wouldn’t come back. The next night it started to stink from underneath the bathroom, next to the bedroom at the back of the house. Uh oh. Maybe that big trap wounded him and we got what we didn’t want; a dead rodent hidden in the underbelly of our house. By the next morning the whole back of the house smelled so bad it was uninhabitable. This was not some little dead mouse starting to smell. We opened up all the windows in the back of the house, closed off the doors to it, and stayed in the front. We needed our pest guy. That night we slept on the couch and recliner. By morning, the front of the house was uninhabitable as well. Now we were desperate. We moved into the bus. The pest guy came on Friday, and boy did we get the right guy for the job. Most people, even people who are supposed to want to do this sort of thing, don’t want to. This guy, he takes great pride in his work. It was like hiring GhostBusters. He’ll tackle anything, but he too was overwhelmed by the smell. He geared up to go under the house and find this thing. He had on an entire white haz-mat suit with a hood and a respirator. He located an opening in the subfloor at the rear of the house, cut into it, dug around, and pulled out our problem. He emerged from under the house gagging and holding a fifteen pound possum that had got stuck and died up there! OMG was that thing awful, and it had only just begun. As bad as this was, it was only going to get so much worse before it ever got any better. He found the carcass and removed it on Friday. We left everything open back there to air out. He said he’ll come back Monday or Tuesday to spray bleach and finish the clean-up, then put everything back together. He says he can seal off any entry points so nothing else can get up in there. We shouldn’t have to do this again. Possums. Who knew a giant possum could get in a little hole like that and jam itself up under the flooring? Who knew a possum could smell that bad?
Reports of my recovery may have been premature
I’m seriously off my feed. The “sick” part went away after the first week, but I can’t seem to work up any energy or appetite. Gave up and went to the doctor yesterday. She said I’d feel better if I took antibiotics….
Rainbow Pier
Maybe my favorite feature of Long Beach that’s no longer there. Built in the late twenties it was unique; a pier in the shape of a rainbow, framing the municipal auditorium downtown. I remember it well as a favorite diversion on the way home from Downtown. “Dad. Drive around Rainbow Pier!” It got filled in in the sixties. Remember Crumb doughnuts from Van de Camps?
Or the Pike, the Cyclone Racer, Rainbow Pier, The Plunge, Pacific Ocean Park, the Whistle Stop on 4th Street, or Marineland of the Pacific?
(Not my photo.) Marineland of the Pacific was a great tourist attraction; a destination theme park in Palos Verdes, built even before Disneyland. We went there from Long Beach as a family in the fifties. It was the world’s largest oceanarium; a grand project. It operated until the late eighties, but I had forgotten about it by then. They had two killer whales, Orky and Corky, that Sea World, who came along later, coveted. Sea World wanted to buy them but Marineland wouldn’t sell. In the eighties, when Marineland encountered some financial difficulty, Sea World stepped in with money, promising to preserve the park. The park was now an important part of the community and local economy. Within six weeks of the sale, Sea World had moved Orky and Corky to San Diego, renamed Corky “Shamu”, and closed the park forever. They got the whales they wanted by buying the whole park, throwing everything else away, and keeping the whales. Marineland sat abandoned for 20 years before being recently redeveloped as a golf-themed resort.
(Not my photo.) Marineland of the Pacific was a great tourist attraction; a destination theme park in Palos Verdes, built even before Disneyland. We went there from Long Beach as a family in the fifties. It was the world’s largest oceanarium; a grand project. It operated until the late eighties, but I had forgotten about it by then. They had two killer whales, Orky and Corky, that Sea World, who came along later, coveted. Sea World wanted to buy them but Marineland wouldn’t sell. In the eighties, when Marineland encountered some financial difficulty, Sea World stepped in with money, promising to preserve the park. The park was now an important part of the community and local economy. Within six weeks of the sale, Sea World had moved Orky and Corky to San Diego, renamed Corky “Shamu”, and closed the park forever. They got the whales they wanted by buying the whole park, throwing everything else away, and keeping the whales. Marineland sat abandoned for 20 years before being recently redeveloped as a golf-themed resort.