House Monitor

The desert is trying to kill me.

A couple days ago I woke up just fine, but while drinking some coffee I noticed that my foot hurt, that I was hobbling around, and that it really hurt to stand or to put any weight on my left foot.

This made me mad.

My body, it seemed, was falling apart, quicker and sooner than I expected, and no matter how frighteningly old and sad that guy who looks back at me in the mirror looks, I like to think I've still got a few good years left. But, no, it looked as if I'd be forever lame and immediately envisioned all sorts of drastic events.

When I took a shower, I felt refreshed and better, and not just because of my squeaky clean skin. I couldn't help but notice that my left foot, the one that was painful, was swollen, all pink and puffed up. Later, I looked more carefully at it and wasn't too surprised to see that on the ball of that foot there was a small circle, about the size of a pea, that was dark and in its center was what looked like a tiny bite mark.

So, there was a reason after all for limping, which was much better than thinking that my body was just failing in general. I was also pretty happy to see that there were no lines, dark or otherwise, leading up from the bite since I'd been told that was a sign of poison heading toward my heart and would severely limit my remaining life to a matter of hours.

A dab of antiseptic and a band-aid later, and I was good to go.

And go I did, outside to look at the desert and more specifically, at my little bit of it. This is a fairly common pastime of mine and not only gives me time to reflect but also lets me check up on the crap that still surrounds my home. Between desert winds, light sprinkles of rain and whatnot, it never hurts to check how things are holding up out there.

While still messy, nothing was out of place, but it did make me a little sad when I saw how overwhelming my future would be if I ever got around to actually starting to do anything.

So I went back to my chair by the front door, sat, and stared. This was better.

Or, it was better until I looked at the Comet cleanser that I'd poured around the entrance to my home, just around the threshold. I was told that was good way to keep ants out and, since that's the sort of thing I want, I'd done it and had been pleased with the results. I'd even seen actual ants approach the blue field, draw back, and walk its length before throwing up their tiny ant arms in frustration and returning to explore the larger, Comet free, desert in search of food.

While it works okay on ants, I couldn't help but notice that something else during the night had pretty much disregarded the repellant properties of household cleanser and had left a series of tracks along its length and width.

I first lied to myself that it must be lizards, but if so, they were left by some rare breed of lizards that don't have any feet since there were no foot prints. Nope, just squiggly lines in the Comet, ones that I immediately assumed to be those of young rattlesnakes since they were only about the width of a pencil.

The Internet told me that rattlesnakes like to live in or under bushes, rocks, and bits of wood. Not surprisingly, I have all three on my property, but between the door and the corner of the house, there's a bush that I never particularly cared for.

Not only does it have stickers and small puffs like a dandelion, but much smaller, but it's growing right alongside the house and, no doubt, undermining the foundation. Also, at the corner of the house is a small pile of rocks whose presence I've not quite figured out. The way I see it, there's two obvious possibilities: they're decorative or they're functional.

Many, if not all, of the homes out here have decorative rocks on the property, perhaps because they're everywhere out here and, at the very least, people move them out of the way so there are smooth places to drive and walk. The bases of the larger bushes on my own property have partial or complete circles of a variety of stones, so it may have just looked pleasing to someone to have some piled up at the corner of the house.

Or, they could be serving some useful purpose and maintaining the integrity of the foundation against wind and rain. In either case, it would be easy enough to move them (carefully, taken care not to be bit if snakes are living there) and get rid of the ugly bush, but I was a little worried about exposing the foundation.

In driving around, most of the places have exposed foundations, so my thinking of learning of how to lay brick may be a tad premature. What I may do is something I learned from the experts who came to repair our computers back in my working days and remove the rocks and then “monitor the system.”

By monitoring the system, of course, the techs meant hanging around, joking and talking and occasionally taking me out for sushi. It was a professionally accepted term for doing nothing and perfectly describes sitting back and watching nothing happen.

So, in addition to keeping an eye on my foot, which is pink like a baby and of a nice size for women if they were as drawn to thickness as they are foot length, I'll move the rocks, cut down the bush, and monitor my house.

At least until I actually have to do something.