Rain on the 82nd Day

It rained early this morning in Tucson, heavily enough that it woke me up at three-thirty. What a nice sound, lots of heavy drops on the roof! There were frequent flashes of lightning, occasionally close enough to hear the thunder. I ran outside to put mats, pillows, and a mattress under cover.

The vegetation must be happy. Chlorinated tap water from Colorado does not make things grow nearly as well as sweet rainwater. Soon we will be finding frogs in the cement pond.

April 10 was our last rainfall, so Tucson airport went 81 days without rain, tying for the fourth longest dry spell.

Waiting for the Monsoon

Seventy-seven days without rain. The record is a hundred (2002), but today we are already #8 on the all-time list. However, there have been a few whispy clouds the last couple of days, and the humidity has increased noticeably.

Today the clouds are large and we have partial overcast. The monsoon pattern is brewing, the desert heat pulling in moist air from the Gulf of Mexico over the Sierra Madres.

Local weather experts predict a one-third chance of a heavy rain monsoon season, one-third chance of a dryer than usual monsoon season, and about a one-third chance of an average rainy season.

Inshallah, we will have rains on the Fourth of July.

Desert Bounty, Desert People

There is something in the desert that brings out a sense of spirit more than other, temperate areas. Perhaps it's the awe of a land so exposed to the sun, or the many specialized ways in which life has adapted to the dry, sun-drenched heat.

We helped celebrate the desert last night at our neighbor's annual desert bounty pot luck dinner featuring foods harvested from the desert. Saguaro fruit sauces, sauteed palo verde peas, tepary bean humus, mesquite flour flavored flan, cholla buds, and margaritas. Oh, and grilled chicken and filet mignon.

With us was a traditional spiritualist from the Tohono O'odham, the Desert People. The sun having set, our small gathering sat outside by the pool in the warm air. Joseph is what I would call a shaman, an elder with deep Catholic roots. He sang a traditional song for us from the Akimel O'odham (River People) who live by the Gila River. That song and his voice, accompanied by the oscillating sound of a gourd rattle shaken in circles, resonated with the vibrations of every land and every people. Thai Buddhist chanting was there, as were ancestral voices, Tibetan shamans, dream-time spirits, and plain song prayer.

We each spoke something about what the desert means to us, then he sang another traditional chant, this time from the people the Spanish named after the butterfly, Spanish "mariposa", which became Maricopa. The sounds and vibrations coaxed from the rattle were even more varied and provoking. All juxtaposed over a warm evening, bare feet dangling in the swimming pool. It's like stepping away from time and place.

Desert Flowers

If you would like to see some photos of flowers blooming here in the Tucson area, click on the "Desert Flowers" link that's on the very top right of the main blog page, under "pages".

No words, just images.

Want to See a Rattlesnake?

I suspected that a rattlesnake was living somewhere on the other side of the driveway. A couple of years back we noticed a skin sluffed off by the rocks that line the bottom of the swale. Then a few weeks ago I was clearing dead parts of the oleander bushes by the driveway, the effects of this winter's 17 degree freeze. I saw another skin just outside a hole burrowed by some oleander roots. It was that same burrow where this morning's Mr. Rattler retreated.

This morning I was watering the oleander when I saw Mr. Rattler moving through the dead leaves and puddles of water.  I must admit, the snake looked pretty cool. I had to remind myself that the thing could be dangerous, so I ran inside and called Shari, "Hey! You want to see a rattlesnake?" We took photos and video.

Shari wanted to call Rural Metro to have them come out and remove the snake. We pay a fee so we have that service available. I figure it's been there all this time, so why bother? But we'll probably call Rural Metro.

About an hour later, I'm in another area, also on the same east side of the house, clearing undergrowth, pruning dead and odd growth, and pulling off mistletoe that's choking trees. Again I am watering, this time the stressed acacias and palo verdes that screen us from our neighbor's driveway. I see a king snake hustling towards what I had suspected was another legless reptilian hangout.

Hey, at least we have that gate protected. Come on, Mr. King. Go chase Mr. Rattler away.

The Trouble with Outside

Lizard disturbed from the shoe rack.

Outside is not such an issue in Puget Sound. Most of the year you avoid it. And when you do venture outside, what you encounter in the way of fauna and flora is pretty benign.

Here in the Sonora Desert, there are lots of critters that can be or appear a little unpleasant. Lizards, snakes, coyotes and javalina are benign to humans, unless you provoke them. One needs to pay attention.

I almost stepped on a rattlesnake on one hike in the hills around here. Fortunately, hiking time here is early in the morning when it's still cool. And rattlesnakes are still lethargic. The one I almost stepped on never bothered to stir. But boy, were my eyes ever keenly looking ahead after that.

The rattler I almost stepped on.

So the trouble here with outside the house is that little animals live outside, and most like the shade and protection of anything you put outside. You have to bear in mind what might crawl under or behind. Take the little shoe rack I made for the front door. Sure enough, Mr. Lizard, some eight inches of him (her?) thinks that's a wonderful place to hang out and wait for bugs, reptilian lunch. Reach in for my flip-flops and out scampers Mr. Lizard. Would a slimy, slow moving slug be worse?

Medium sized king snake in our backyard, about four or
five feet long. "Nice snakey, snakey."
We had a much larger king snake living by our goldfish pond.

Some guests, while a little frightening, are actually honored guests around our home. Chief among them is any king snake. They don't bother people. They like to eat rattlers even longer than themselves. So where there is a king snake, a rattler will not want to be. Now that's okay.

Big Is Good, Except the People

I don't get it. We think bigger is better except when it comes to what we do as a community.

We like big stores like China-Mart (a/k/a Wal-Mart) and Costco. We like big servings of food and giant gulps of drink. We like big armies and we collect many things. We like fat bank accounts, big breasts and big, you know, appendages. Huge ball players are great on our teams. Big insurance companies are better because they are safer. Wider and more roads, bigger and more cars, like Hummers, are great. Large hospitals have more resources to heal us. We admire big parks, big movies, big stars, big screens and big houses. We love the fat egos who are the closely followed subjects of tabloids, Huffington Post, and the evening news. We even like big businesses because we like the products they make.

But big government is bad. Like, big business isn't?

Government is how a society organizes and manages itself so it can provide what individuals acting alone or in small groups cannot. Like roads, currency, armies, free trade and corporations. Some societies provide its members with electricity, health care and a certain level of security in old age. But in the country without a name, the country that glorifies big as better in virtually everything, taxes are the work of the devil.

It is a matter of religious faith that businessmen work better than public servants. So instead of government by the people for the people, we want government by business. Like Ayn Rand exhorts, we place our trust in the selfish. We the people fear anything our government does. Somewhere along the way, we decided that our government is not really ours. It's the enemy. We want to privatize everything and make ourselves as little as possible. We become small in the face of those who are powerful without government.

The Cement Pond

We lost another four last night. Where do they go? I counted eighty-two last night. This morning there are only seventy-eight. Do the desert rodents take them in the dark? Or the bats? Perhaps the bunny rabbits get up before dawn to forage. The small ones can easily slip through the openings by the five yard gates.

But no matter, sunshine and heat bring another four or five, and the water in the cement pond is again over eighty degrees. The magic of Mother Nature who provides all for all.

Blue Agave Bloom

A blooming blue agave makes up the logo for Pima County Parks. It's emblematic of the local Sonoran desert. The elegant, architectural shapes of their huge, dried stalks are scattered throughout the hillsides around Tucson. These agaves bloom only once, then they die. Hence their other name, the century plant. We have lots of blue agaves in our yard.

One morning, I looked out my office window and noticed a growth from one of the large agaves. It was the beginning of a flower stalk. That was Tuesday, and judging by the rapid growth over the next few days, it was only a day or two old. By Friday, it was already higher than I could reach. Within three weeks, it was taller than the decades old saguaro cactus next to it. It began branching at the top after about a month, and by six weeks the flower stalks were developed. Buds began to appear everywhere, then after ten weeks, the first blooms.

L to R: Day 1, Day 2, Day 4, Day 6, Day 15, Day 25

Last year's century plant stalk,
leaning over the driveway.
Left: its top section planted.

It's difficult to appreciate the amount of energy and mass that go into this sudden, huge growth. Last year we had another giant stalk that leaned dangerously over the driveway. After it finished blooming and the flowers died, I decided to cut it down before it fell over. That was an education. It must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. I had leaned an extension ladder against it to try to hold some of the weight. Nothing doing. It came crashing down, smashing a large palo verde branch on its way.

I couldn't lift it, so I cut it in half. Most of the bottom half, about eight feet, serves as stop in the side driveway. What wasn't broken at the top got planted in back, outside and towering over eight-foot high walls. Thing is, after about a year of drying out, you can lift it with two fingers.


Where does all that water come from? Especially this year when it has rained only twice. It can only be that water and energy, stored in the plant, are diverted to the flower stalk leaving once thick leaves thin and shriveled.

We have several old blue agave stalks decorating our backyard. Our most famous stalk was obtained surreptitiously one moonless evening from Finger Rock wash near our house. I had spied it many months earlier, and when my sister Irene visited in April, she helped talk the three of us into the adventure. I parked a discrete distance away and turned off the headlights. Irene wore a flashlight on her forehead and we located the stalk. A few all-too noisy strokes with the handsaw (lights didn't go on at the nearby house) and the dead but still heavy plant was severed. Like primitive hunters carrying a deer on a pole, we marched that stalk to the car and let it rest on the roof. Exhilarated by our bravery and success, we drove home slowly. Next morning the stalk was trimmed and planted in a large Oaxacan pot.

I'd like to leave this year's stalk where it is as long as we can. I have a little solar powered spotlight shining up the stalk, and we sit in front of the house in the warm evenings, looking for bats that feed on the flowers' nectar.

Bhajans & Camels

Adivarapupeta, 1987

I have been known to lead bhajans, lively Indian spiritual songs. The practice came to me in 1989 when we in Seattle invited Shivabalayogi to return and conduct more public meditation and bhajan programs. He took care of the meditation, but we had to have people leading the bhajans. That was the beginning of almost two decades of weekly spiritual chanting, kirtan as they call it in North India.

I spent about a year in India over nine trips in the 90's.  Most every one of those nights, we sang bhajans. My voice became hoarse, but each night as we started singing, something kicked in and sound came out through me far better than anything I could contrive.

Since moving to Tucson, that part of my life has taken a back seat. There is a wonderful weekly group called Global Chant that sings songs from every imaginable spiritual tradition, but for me, the effect is different.  Sweet, but not as intense. Shari and I have played and sung together with and for friends, but it had been a while since we led a concert of sorts.

A good and inspiring friend asked us to do an hour or two of bhajans at her house. We scheduled chanting for late morning, Father's Day, followed by a potluck lunch. She invited friends and acquaintances and we had a nice group of some fifteen or so gathered in her spacious living room. (This is the camel connection.  Our host has two as pets.)

Shari played the dholak, double-sided Indian drum, and I played the harmonium as we took turns leading. It was wonderful. The sounds flowed out of Shari and me as if inspired -- well, they were. People told us they enjoyed the experience.  Smiles on faces and animated conversation afterwards suggested the same. I get so livened by spiritual chanting that I have to remind myself to keep calm or I will end up floating on the ceiling.

We hope we do it again, and soon.

Haulin' U-Haul, or, the Laughlin Ride

Loading our first U-Haul trailer.

We first drove from Whidbey Island to Tucson in November of 2006. We took the obvious route. Head south to Los Angeles then make a left. We bought the San Simeon house, then did another trip in January pulling a U-Haul trailer. We were snowbirds, hauling stuff south and north seasonally, mostly south, until we realized that it wasn't fun owning and living in two homes. We graduated from U-Haul trailers to U-Haul trucks.

Over many migrations, we explored most every route between Whidbey and Tucson. I-5 variations included McKenzie Highway in Oregon to I-84 then I-15; Los Angeles; Bakersfield-Tehachapi-Needles, and even Yosemite.  I-15 routes pass through Pendleton and nasty traffic Boise and nasty traffic Salt Lake City, or south through Nevada on the Great Basin Highway.  Once you get towards Arizona, there are a variety of routes to get by nasty traffic and Tea Party Peenix: Cedar City or nasty traffic Las Vegas, Kenab or Kaibob, Parker or Blythe, Flagstaff or Wickenburg.  One time we even went via Denver and Santa Fe, but that's another story.

Our favorite route, winter weather permitting, is through the Great Basin Highway, Highway 93 in Nevada.  It's a good, two-lane (one each way) road with hardly any traffic.  Just head east from Bellevue on I-90, then to Yakima, Pendleton, nasty traffic Boise and turn south at Twin Falls, Idaho.  Highway 93 goes through Wells and Ely.  South of Ely, you can turn east to Cedar City, then further east to catch US 89 south.  If you haven't driven US 89 in Utah, you need to.

This was the route I chose for my solo drive in our first U-Haul truck rental, stuffed to the roof, pulling a trailer loaded with Agamemnon Jetson, our bronze-colored Honda Fit. Except instead of the scenic routes though Cedar City, I elected the more straightforward freeway route through nasty Las Vegas.

Funny thing about U-Haul trucks. You can't see anything backing up. Funny thing about hauling trailers. they don't back up straight. Funny thing about driving a U-Haul truck pulling a car on a trailer. You never see the trailer. You simply assume it's still following, car still on it.  Shari's back didn't need the jostling, and the plan was to drive the one way then fly back. So I was alone. No shotgun rider to tell me if it's safe to go in reverse.

Reverse was not an option. How to drive over 1600 miles without using the reverse gear was the challenge. Let's just say the fear of having to back up gave the drive a foundation of stress bordering on terror.

It started in Freeland at sunrise with a vain attempt to catch an early ferry and beat the nasty Lynwood-Bellevue rush hour traffic. Vain because as I was getting used to the feel of the truck, down and up the hill before Maxwelton Road, the car behind me flashed its headlights.  Had something fallen off?  No.  She said that she saw sparks flying from the trailer's wheels. A tire had blown and it was running on the rims.

And, as most South Whidbey residents well know, wireless phone reception is often non-existent.  I had to drive the rig on the shoulder and the trailer wheel rim down Maxwelton, Sandy Point, Wilkinson and Surface Roads, periodically stopping to telephone Shari ("Can you hear me now?") so she could call U-Haul. I ended up Les Schwab's at Ken's Corner where I waited some 45 minutes for opening time.  They replaced the tire, but I lost some two hours.

Ah, the open road.  No music.  Road and engine noise were deafening. Window rolled down.  Overnight and food bags falling forward from the passenger seat. Double Starbucks in tall cans.

Then there was nasty traffic Las Vegas.  City traffic darting in and out of lanes. Lanes merging, splitting, must-exit turning. Tommy on high alert, acid building in his stomach and, like "Radar Love", "Hands wet on the wheel." I found a slow driving Mexican in a beat-up pick-up truck driving in the right lane. I followed him religiously. But then he took an exit, and the elevated freeway turned into a roller coaster.

Have you ever driven the freeway in nasty traffic Las Vegas? Over the course of desert heat, it's become undulated, which can be soothing in a passenger car. But I'm in a truck loaded with tables, chairs, bedroom sets, washer, dryer, china, lamps, a 200 lb. mosaic, and all kinds of heavy and light miscellaneous furniture projectiles. The bumps were deep and relentless. I had images of opening the roll-up door and seeing domestic debris evenly spread over the insides. I had images of Agamemnon Jetson sitting alone somewhere in a right side freeway lane, puzzled commuters swerving to avoid it.  Oh well.  I had to keep going.  I didn't dare look.  The damage was already done.

Only one wrong turn onto another freeway, cured by a suburban off ramp with overpass and on ramp, then I'm on US 95 south of Las Vegas, headed towards Searchlight. Running on fumes. My plan had been to gas up at a truck stop before Vegas, but it was so crowded I gave up in disgust. After Vegas, the gas gauge creeped dangerously close to empty, and I still had some fifty miles to get to Searchlight. (This is Nevada. Ain't nuttin' in between.)

The Great Basin Highway

Does anyone know how much gas a U-Haul truck pulling a vehicle trailer burns?  A lot.  Something like five to six miles to the gallon.  Stopping at gas stations was an every two hundred mile chore.  And the gas stations had to have good pull-through access.  Which brings me to the next horror.

The clues were on the other side of the freeway, headed towards Vegas. Motor bike after motor bike, all of them Harley choppers.  Small groups and trains of scores of them. Motorcycle touring is popular in the Southwest. We have sunshine. And it was Friday afternoon. Onward I drove, slowly up hills, coasting down the other side, cursing at the empty distances, tapping the gas gauge. By the time I got to the top of the hill that's Searchlight, the road was infested with motorcycles, as was the only gas station. I didn't have a choice. I had to drive into the two-wheeler traffic jam.

There must have been two or three hundred. Some were lined up three or four deep at the pumps. Most were parked in deep, long lines that blocked a straight return to the highway. Bikers were gathered and chatting with each other and several police officers. Scores were inside the convenience eating fast food, or lined up to buy something or the other. This was something organized, and although I wanted to scream bloody murder, I realized I would be in deep kimchee if I started yelling at hundreds of bikers and two squad cars full of police.

Unloading at San Simeon

I waited in line as motorcyclists ever so slowly topped off. None was in a rush. They were having fun. But how long can it take to fill a motorcycle gas tank? Plenty long if the machine doesn't accept your credit card. Which is what happened to me. So another line inside to get approval. "How much?" she asked. I said fifty dollars, but when the pump stopped at five, I realized she heard five dollars. The number fifty was too inconceivable when everyone else was topping motorcycle gas tanks.

Rather than go through the cashier line a second time, I saw a break, a sort of clear path to drive around in back. Inshallah, God willing, I could turn sharply enough to avoid knocking over motorbikes and get back on the highway. God was willing. I found more gas in Bullhead City.

Ever heard of the Laughlin Ride? It's one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the West, some 35,000 choppers. That's what I drove through in Searchlight.

Mercifully, I made it to our dead-end street in Tucson without ever going backwards. First I unloaded Agamemnon, then I dropped the trailer off at U-Haul. Only after returning to the house did I open up the roll-up door to see what the Vegas roller coaster had wrought. Stunningly, everything was still stacked and tied down the way it was when I shut it in Freeland a couple of mornings earlier.

Which just goes to show. There's no value in worrying.

A Wood Floor for the Living Room

By the time we saw and bought our San Simeon house, the selling broker had neutralized it, covering up garish paint and mildewed grout.  The entire outside, previously red-brown, powder blue, with some canary yellow and olive green accents, was painted the same color, a sand brown. Everything inside that had paint on it was covered in the same color, a little lighter than the one outside. Living room, dining room, hallway and all bedrooms were freshly carpeted with cheap, abrasive, petroleum-based carpeting, also a light shade of sand brown, that wrinkled even in its youth. Lord knows what had been there before, but the new carpeting never fooled Jasmine. She could smell the previous owners' dogs throughout the house. We don't know who plastered over the zebra skin wallpaper in the guest bath, or what the wallpaper was in the master bath before it got plastered, but we are grateful for the plaster.

Listing photos from 2005 (left two), and 2006 after neutralization

The first three months in the house, kitchen was gutted and tiles replaced or laid in the dining room, family room and guest bath, which is another story. This story is about Shari's victory over the blue-grey tiled banco, painted cedar-slatted walls, and wrinkled acrylic carpet in the six-sided living room.

When the house was built in the 1980's, the living room had a cedar ceiling, the cedar planks continuing down the fireplace and picture window. Long before we saw it, the cedar got painted. Pity. Shari never liked the painted, stapled, wood slat effect on those two walls (who stares upwards?), and we were both disgusted with the blue-grey tiles. As is our modus operandi on most remodeling projects, Shari led the way.

First she painted the tiles with a dark brown oil paint. That eliminated the wretched blue-gray in an otherwise earth-toned house. That also inspired her with additional shades of browns on the walls. Soon she had talked me into the job I had been resisting: cutting and screwing wallboard over the two painted wood walls, and Shari plastered them. That was last year.

The carpet continued to sag and wrinkle. While not pronounced enough to trip a drunk in the dark, an obvious twenty foot ripple down the middle of the living room carpet is nothing to show off. Being a typical male in this regard -- particularly in this economy where we as a society abandon poor and middle class in order to make the wealthy even more obscenely rich -- I was happy to leave the carpet alone, muttering something about ten to fifteen dollars a square foot times a large area. Shari sold some Turkish carpets and kilims that had become surplus in our down-sizing to get here in Tucson, we got an income tax refund, and Shari found the wood floor that would make her happy.

I'd installed wood floor myself, but a lot of what I taught myself about remodeling in Puget Sound (wood construction) doesn't apply in Tucson (concrete slab). I had floated floor on Whidbey. Here they recommend gluing it to the slab. The living room is an irregular hexagon. That's a lot of odd angle cuts to be playing around with while the glue is hardening on floor, plank bottoms and inevitably tops, and my hands and everything they touch. We had the installation done, which was one of the smartest decisions I have made. Scheduled for a day, it took them two to finish.

We kept plenty of work for ourselves, so we weren't jealous. I added 2x4's to make the banco by the window deeper. Hardibacker was cut to fit, then the entire banco was slathered with two kinds of glue. The first kind I used was made to stick tile. Shucks. All those plastic gallon containers with fancy names and instructions printed in minute-sized, compressed fonts look alike when you are grabbing. Hardibacker glued and screwed over the tiles, then a layer of a special base cement, then slathered with a special plaster base cement, then plastered. Shari, whose plastering and texturing are some of the many skills in which she excels over me, said the final plaster coat was the hardest job she had ever done. Plaster dried and got two coast of dark brown.

Meanwhile, I pulled carpet and laid two inch pieces of tumbled travertine on the two sets of two concrete slab steps, each ten feet wide, leading into the living room. The humps and gaps of the little tiles, fast hardening to the concrete, proved that the slab wasn't level. Shari and I shared some differences of opinion on the significance of the geometrical oddities. To me, the imperfections were a part of the natural beauty. But Shari criticized my haste in setting the tile without measuring and leveling the surface. After the wood floor was laid, the huge, undulating gaps between floor and tiles that should almost have reached the floor (5/8" gap for the planks) could have made a sailor seasick. We covered them with quarter-round molding.

We love the results, complimented with a new leather sofa, our large Turkoman carpet, and our desert spoon agave spike collection nestled in a Mexican urn.

And Shari and I are still friends.

June in Tucson

Temperature highs top three figures for the foreseeable future. Humidity is almost non-existent. No rain is expected until July, and we've had only two rainfalls all year. That's an average of one rain a season. Life is good.

I've been watering mesquite and acacia trees, and even an occasional palo verde that is strategically placed to afford some privacy. Geraniums get water each day, sometimes twice, as do our two gardenias and four Mexican heathers. Salvia, Spanish lavender, queen palms, Mexican palms, our one petunia and the cactus in planting strip on the south side get water twice or thrice a week. Eucalyptus trees on the west need water, but the large one on the east happily draws water from the septic drain field. It's a very lush gum tree.

Shari's vegetable garden is doing well. Last summer we underestimated the stunting power of the Southwest sun. This summer, garden umbrellas gave shade until repeated rodent and lizard trips to the salad bar forced us to construct a metal-cloth cage covered with shade fabric. Basil is happy (Shari's pesto is great), plenty of tomatoes are turning red, and we've been enjoying the various salad greens that she likes to plant, grow, pluck, wash and mix with romaine. We eat lots of salads.

Fortunately, the snow pack in Colorado -- a major source of Tucson water -- is plentiful, so I don't hesitate to keep the swimming pool topped. It's up to 82 degrees, water that is refreshing in the late afternoons and evenings when the sun is less fierce.

The cool mornings are precious. Up by five, fling doors open, make coffee, and out by six or earlier to attack overgrown vegetation.  Cut, chop into trash-can sized pieces, and smash down with a large piece of mesquite firewood. That's my favorite kind of morning.  They don't recycle yard waste in Tucson, so oleander, agave, mesquite, palo verde, cholla and prickly pear cactus -- all of it quite dense and heavy -- get stuffed in two trash cans, 96 gallons and 250 pounds each. I think I've stuffed over 250 lbs. per can many time. The big green plastic cans come with two wheels, and you should see their ruts left in the hard gravel when I pull them to the end of the driveway.

By nine o'clock, maybe ten, I'm so thirsty I can't swallow. It's time to go inside and enjoy the evaporative cooler. I usually stay inside the house from late morning to mid afternoon, where and when I dress like trailer-trash: underwear, maybe shorts and still wearing the T-shirt from last night. But if I have professional work to do, I need my shower and fresh clothes.

Dogs get fed at four, which is about the time the desire to swim overpowers the fear of sunburn.  Pool dress is extreme casual. Absent guests, it's beyond trailer-trash, not even a bare minimum.

Set up the i-pod and the little, battery powered mono-speaker, dial up some Hawaiian, Turkish folk, Persian classical, mellow African, lively Andalus or folk Hungarian playlist, and trawl the pool surface to skim debris.

 Peel, plunge and breaststroke. All refreshed and ready for dinner and a movie.