IIIIII've got another one!

I loved growing up in Calexico but, let's be honest, as a kid there was not a whole heckuva lot to get excited about.  We were a long way from everywhere except Mexico, and until I was old enough to "club", that wasn't much of a draw.  The nearest "real" mall was in San Diego, a good two and a half hours away.  There were two movie theaters in the Imperial Valley, the Crest and the Fox but, though you could still catch a matinee for under five bucks, they were more vintage than modern.  True, we made our own fun, riding our bikes into the surrounding fields to shoot things with our BB guns, or to make the Border Patrol chase us, but when it came to marquee fun it was slim pickings.  There were two main events, though.

The first was the Mid-Winter Fair, when the fairgrounds turned into a smorgasborg of carnival rides, cotton candy and stalls selling cheap crap we bought just so we wouldn't go home empty handed.  My older brother and I waited all year long to ride the Gravitron and the Zipper, spinning perilously close to nausea while the carnies blasted White Snake and Def Leppard.    Some of my fondest childhood memories have the barkers' impassioned pleas to come see the Wild Woman, and other oddities, as the soundtrack.  To small town boys, it was like Disneyland had come to us for a couple weeks, and it came regular as Christmas.

Not so regular, was the circus.  I couldn't honestly tell you how often Circus Vargas came to town, but I vividly remember going.  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my God does that woman have a beard?  I have vibrant memories of the big top, the elephants doing tricks, the trapeze artists.  And the clowns.  Now I hate pictures of clowns as much as the next guy.  There's something creepy about clowns in photos, I don't care how good they are.  But at the circus they were different.  They were all OVER the place, piling out of cars, chasing each other around and throwing buckets of confetti into the audience.  I loved them.  But there was one clown routine, in particular, that made its way into the Tittle family Lexicon.  Two clowns.  One with a a squirt gun, relentlessly chasing one without.  Over and over, the victim would wrest the aggressor's weapon away from him.  Game over.  And over and over, after a brief crestfallen pause, the squirt gun clown would suddenly say, "IIIII've got another one!" in a high pitched voice and, impossibly, pull a new squirt gun from some different hiding place in his costume.  The routine was hilarious, but the punchline never died.

To this day, my mother still whips it out whenever she thinks the situation calls for it.

Mom, I got another dog.

IIIIIII've got another one!

Mom, I have another kidney stone.

IIIIIII've got another one!

You get the point.  It has never been as funny as it was when the clowns did it, but we put up with it.  I've even said it a few times myself.

My creek has been saying it to me for months.  I've emptied cans and cans of water feature foam into various holes.  IIIIII've got another one!  I re-lined the upper pool beneath the fountain.  IIIII've got another one!  I've emptied all of the rocks out of the lower pool.  Twice.  IIIII've got another one!  Yesterday, like a good boy, I spent my afternoon tearing up the section of the creek I suspected was the newest culprit.  I pulled up lining.  Laid down sealant.  Waited 24 hours for it to dry.  Filled it up and ran the pump.  Do I even need to say it?

I'm keeping a good attitude about it, I think.  I even found the new problem spot and plugged it with foam.  But I'm pretty sure that meddling creek has another leak tucked away somewhere I can't see it. 

Sharon has watched me through this whole process.  Today she offered her opinion as to why it hasn't worked.  God, she said, told you to landscape the yard, not build a creek.  When you started, He was probably thinking "that's gonna be nothing but fuckin' trouble, that. (God always has a Scottish accent when He talks to Sharon) I tried that once and ended up with Grand Canyon!" 

We had a good laugh at that.  God probably had a good laugh, too.  He's cool like that.  Now if He would just make sure this last fix does the trick, we'd be all good. 

Comments

[Sharon]

Water is an incredible force. Really, if you think about it, our issue is not with your leaky creak(y)...it's actually because the DWP charges us so much for water that we can't bear to watch it drain into the dirt.
Oh. And the perfectionist thing. There's that too, I suppose.

[Sharon]

Leeky Creeky? ;o)

[Sharon]

Don't let it beat you! You Are He-Man, Master of Rocks and Sealant Foam!
Ps.If you need more motivation, the Gnomes have a betting pool going. Bob's hand is out collecting all that cash,and everyone bet against you except Dimitri - because he knows about success under duress. Show them what you are made of, Tittle!