Yipe! The Month of (not-so-)Extreme Frugality has not gotten off to the best of all possible starts. THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLAH to the vet yesterday! That’s after the $52 hit for thirty-five bucks’ worth of gasoline, followed by not one but two expensive senior moments.

The reason the dog stinks, as it develops, is that she has a fulminating vaginal infection. Yes. Dogs, too, can get yeast infections, in this case enhanced with staphylococci. She now has 14 days’ worth of horse pills to ingest, plus some sort of multi-antibiotic cream that the vet imagines I’m going to smear on her―if and when she reaches the point where she will allow anyone to touch her. We are not at that point now and, knowing that animal, I’d guess not likely to get there soon. I will have to muzzle the dog to medicate her, and that will be a fine twice-daily adventure.

This, it develops, will be another chronic ailment, on top of the expensive pannus and the constantly draining hypothyroidism. The vet says it can be treated but not cured. So I’ll be rubbing expensive salve, now and forever, on a 90-pound near-wolf that lays back its ears, bares its worn-down fangs, and growls if I try to come anywhere near the sensitive area. Budget-wise, it represents a new recurring expense to add to the ballistic gasoline costs, the amazing grocery costs, and the fast-growing utility bills.

Nor does my senility help things. Friday I discovered that after I cleaned out the pump pot strainer, I failed to put it back in place when I tamped the lid back on and turned on the system. Well...that explains the strange sound coming out of the motor.

So in an attempt to rescue the system, I decided to backwash. Again. I just backwashed a week or ten days ago. By way of explanation for those of you who do not have the privilege of operating a swimming pool, mine is a diatomaceous-earth (DE) system, which shouldn’t have to be backwashed more than about once every three months. Backwashing dumps several hundred gallons of water onto the ground (my pool contains 18,000 gallons), which you then get to replace with tap water, merrily racking up your water bill. You also refill the filter with eight pounds of DE, which doesn’t come free, either.

Backwashing didn’t do the trick. Leaves were caught up in the pump motor’s impeller―rinsing all the DE out of the filter did nothing to fix that. Incredibly, when I phoned the pool company I ran across a service rep who so hates his employer that he volunteered to come by my house after hours and check it for free. He fixed it and charged me nothing. That was lucky. But it doesn’t change the facts that this month’s water bill is now through the roof and that a third of a box of DE was also consumed in the dumb tax.

Moving right along, I invited friends over for dinner on Saturday. One friend is sensitive to the heat.

I ordinarily leave the air conditioning off until outside temperatures reach about 100 degrees. Saturday we were pushing 95, and so I turned on the AC an hour or so before they were due. Thought it was set at 78, which is about as high as I can set it without causing my friend to expire of heat exhaustion.

Wrong. My “78” was actually 68. That’s because the aged eyes can’t see the ditzy little figures on the thermostat.

So the system labored away for an hour and a half, until I noticed it was getting mighty chilly in the house. Ohhhh well. At least we were nice and cool.

God only knows what the dumb tax for that antic will be. The power bill will probably come in at around $170. Don’t even ask about the water bill. Argh!!!!!

categories: budget, frugality, pets