Muchacho Polaco

Abe and family visited us last Sunday.

The weekends have become more laborious than the work week. It’s nice we’re getting caught up on some work at home. But it rules out the opportunity for any rest.

We redid the pool deck. This included drilling out the cracks and filling them. This took an extraordinary amount of time. But now we have completed the pool deck and the pool which saved us over $20k in estimated labor.

Then we changed the pool light. Later we found the control box for the new pool light was defective. That’s fun. So I ordered a new one which should arrive tomorrow. And then perhaps we can install the new control box and send the defective one back.

We then did oil changes on all three vehicles. Our fourth vehicle is up in Phoenix hoping to be sold soon. We had someone fly in from Utah this last weekend, but they decided to go with a different vehicle. We are selling it for $4000 more than we bought it 5 years ago. We could lower the price to sell it faster, but we are in no hurry.

On Saturday I picked up a half ton of mortar sand. We will need that while we raise our wall. I still need to pick up eleven bags of mortar cement which will weigh nearly a thousand pounds.

Another tax class this week. Chad joined us.

Jorge and Garrett joined me for a class I did on taxes last night.

Last weekend Gabby was up to work for us. We got a lot accomolished.

Repaired the valve on the right and fixed the return line on the left.

Connecting PVC is hard, so we did the 90 degree bridge.

We then painted the pool again. This time we did a better job with 4 coats, so there’s hope.

We also cleaned the DE filter.

And then we trimmed the Oleanders.

And then we added solar panels to two front cameras and then weeded the front entrance.

This was a maximally productive weekend.

We called the sheriff’s department again on Sunday. Out mentally ill neighbour was threatening to kill us with an axe. She felt she was entitled to that. The sheriff’s department felt differently. She was arreated shortly after. We were advised that she had taken a swing at them. Probably not a smart strategy. It was nice to see her go.

Sadly, she returned a day later. So excited for that wall to be raised to 7 feet.

I trained them on how to get into the pool this evening. I feel like this will be a good skill set for the future when they happen to fall into the pool.

I cut down maybe 10 to 15 trees a couple weeks ago. And then I let them just sit in the back portion of our property and it looked terrible. So I knew I needed to remove those, and my neighbor’s question about them sort of inspired me to get those out of there today.

I had Yun’s brother and her dad helping me today.We were able to get about eight hundred pounds into the trailer. No small thing. It’s exhausting work but it’s a nice distraction from a fairly stressful week.

Of course what doesn’t help is that our neighbor began screaming at us around 8am. She’s clearly mentally ill. And we try to be patient with her. But it gets tiring very quickly. So we called the police out and they responded promptly. They’ve been out numerous times in the past. Nothing much accomplished but we hope that it will deter her from continued behavior. It probably won’t.

The sheriff’s department is always very kind and understanding. There’s not much they can do but they do talk to her. These are interesting times. Who knows how long this will last.

But on the positive note we do have our block to raise the wall seven feet tall on her side of the property. Which means in the next few weeks her existence will no longer be apparent to us. That’s the hope at least.

In preparation of pavers around the pool deck, I had to remove a tree trunk fron a tree I removed last year. Why do people plant trees near structures?

The challenge was not only the wall, but the roots were near the pool return lines.

It was going well until I jack hammered into one of the three return lines causing a flood and total disaster.

I spent a weekend digging around the trunk to expose the roots and then Matt came over yesterday and we spent the day getting that thing out. What a nightmare, but after a few hours with a sawzall, chainsaw, jack hammer, axes, and pry bar, we got it out.

The damaged pipe caused a major loss of water, so I just drained the pool as we intend to repaint it again this year. We used 7 gallons last year and it looked spectacular for a few months.

I just finished power spraying it and this is what it looks like a year later.