Coffee heat rising

Angst

A-r-r-g-h! Not to say OUCH!!!

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Wow! That really hurts!!! What exactly I did to bring this on escapes me: but just now, the right hip is SO SPAVINED I can barely hobble across a room.

Don’t recall doing anything to create any damage. So I imagine I must have slept crooked, and in doing so, sprained something in the groin area. WhatEVER: it does hurt colorfully.

Very tired of the never a dull moment phenomenon. Have you noticed that? All the damnfool things happen in a row: one headache after another after another…. That’s how things have gone hereabouts, over the past couple of days.

And now I’m so crippled I can barely hobble across the room.

What I oughta do is go back to bed. But…it hurts too much to limp to the back room where I can check the calendar, to see what I’m supposed to be doing today — other than loafing.

I have the worst feeling I’m supposed to traipse to the Mayo Clinic, on the far side of the galaxy. Ugh! How can I count the ways I don’t wanna?

If that’s the case — the traipsing, not the counting — my son will show up here shortly, all primed to drag me across the city.

And how CAN I count the ways that I am all doctored out? How happy would I be never to see another doctor again??? 

***

Welp! It’s quarter to noon. No kid. Hot diggety! That has GOT to mean the Mayo Clinic premonition was more like a hallucination. Surely do hope so.

Jet warplanes are zooming back and forth over the city’s northerly precincts: ZOOM ZOOM ROAR ZOOM!  What. A. Racket!!

When my parents lived in Sun City, a few miles to the east of Luke Air Force Base, my mother used to love to sit on her back patio, sip coffee, and listen to the early-morning commotion from those damn planes.

LOL! I remember remarking to her, one morning, how much I hated swilling coffee to that symphony. She corrected my socialistic error: “That’s the sound of Freedom,” quoth she.

Quoth I: Uhm…nooo, Mother. That’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Never seemed to register with her.

Ohhhhh well….

And the Beat(ing) Goes On…

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The news is full of anguished reports about the disappearance of a woman from her home outside of Tucson. The cops don’t seem to be tracking any credible leads: every report we’ve seen in the news has described yet another dead end.

This, my friends, is why you have a German shepherd. Or a doberman pinscher. And a working pistol. And a phone in your pocket.

Honestly. What a society we live in. Yesterday as Ruby and I strolled around the park, we passed the former home of some neighbors who enjoyed a fine home invasion several years ago. The perps rang the doorbell; then barged in when the residents opened the door. The homeowners were bound up and thrown in an upstairs bathtub, there to wait until their home was searched and any place that might hold valuables was tossed.

As I recall, it took the victims a couple hours to work their way out of their bonds and call the police. By then, the perps were long gone. Never have been caught.

And what am I doing as we converse here on our computer? Yeah: sitting in an easy chair with the back door wide open, so Ruby can stroll in and out as she pleases.

At least I should get her a doggy roommate: one that weighs around 90 pounds. But…I just don’t feel like dealing with a big powerhouse of a beast like a Ger-shep.

Seriously, though: every time I walk past that house I do think I should sell out and move to some other, stodgier part of the city. But where? 

Truth to tell, no place is any safer.

And I think that’s probably true of just about every corner of our country. The criminal set is everywhere: in Upper Richistan, in the center of your city, out in the country…you name it and there’s another bad guy.

After the Great Home Invasion, I remarked to one of the cops in attendance that I thought maybe I should move to some other part of town.

“Don’t bother,” said he. “This kind of stuff goes on everywhere. We get called for these things all the time, and it’s the same all over the Valley.”  Message being: you can’t get away from the Bad Guys and you can’t get away from their Depredations.

{sigh} Really, though, I probably ought to have a German shepherd or a Doberman, rather than a cute little, adorable little, harmless little pint-sized corgi. My mother and I had a dobe…and I’ve surely had my share of GerSheps.

It’s just that I don’t wanna. Dammit! I’ve put in my time training and wrangling 90-pound dogs. Enough is e-freaking-nough!

My mother used to have a gun at hand, there in the sweet little, conservative little, bourgeois little house in Sun City. No kidding: she’d take it out and set it on the nightstand each time she went to bed.

Can you imagine being SO SCARED that you have to have a pistol next to your bed?

On the one hand, that fear seems so exaggerated as to be neurotic. But on the other…so many things happen around here that you come to sense it’s no exaggeration…

****

Oh Hell. Here’s my son, to drag me off to the damn Mayo.

And he’s having 15 shit-fits…JAYZUZ! 

Now I see why my father locked himself up in an old-folkerie after my mother died. If I’d spoken to him (or didn’t speak at all) the way my kid does to me, I’d go into hiding, too. Maybe I need to do the same. Or…move out of the city.

But…where?

* Back to Long Beach? 

Too damn smoggy.

* Santa Barbara?

Too expensive. No longer know anyone there.

* Tucson?

That has its appeals, but…it’s too cold in the winter. And I no longer know anyone there, either.

Sooo….guess I’ll be staying put for the duration. One begins to hope that won’t endure too damn long….

Scared in Your Living Room…

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door!  

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room…while the kitchen door hangs open.

And while the news is full of reports about the guy who walked in a woman’s door as she was enjoying the beautiful weather around her house, out in a tony suburb…. LUV-leeee!

We live in an upper-middle-class slab of north central Phoenix, where you ought to feel safe and smug and snug. But truth to tell, it’s NOT safe. No part of the Valley of the Sun is safe. Wherever you are, you run a risk of some sh!thead breaking into your home or your car and coming after you.

This, of course, is why we have big dogs and guns.

But y’know…. Doesn’t it strike you that you shouldn’t have to be armed to the teeth to be safe in your own home? You shouldn’t have to board and feed a four-legged alarm system?

Gosh, but I’m tired of this.

Don’t know what can be done about it, other than sealing my house and yard inside an impermeable plastic dome.

But y’know…I don’t recall feeling antsy like this all the time when I was a kid and a teenager. My mother was scared — but she had good reason, having enjoyed the unwelcome attention of some guy who found her alone out on her grandparents’ upstate New York farm. But I’ve never had any such misadventure. So why am I…scared? 

Ohhhh well…

Make

My 

Day!

Ruminations on Ruination

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door…NOW!

Seriously: the Dawg and the Human just sat down to take in the morning slack — coffee mug in hand, computer atop lap — and it dawns on the Human: Do not sit there with the back door hanging open, dammit!!!  Nay verily, not even if the screen door is closed and locked.

‘Cause, as we know, any clown and his/her little brother can kick or yank that screen open.

Sounds paranoid, eh? But I do hafta say: it feels more and more unsafe to me, living here in lovely Arizona. Especially in its (un)lovely cities.

Day or two ago, a Tucson woman was murdered at her home, apparently by a nut case. So…sitting around your house or patio taking in the morning air is decidedly NOT advised. Surely not around here.

So many of our fellow citizens are off the rails here in this crazy-making 21st Century — and it’s so easy for them (and us) to stock up on firearms — that really: You’d be nuts to loaf in your family room with the back door hanging open.

I never used to feel especially unsafe in my home, certainly not in the daylight hours. But lately that has changed…and I don’t think the change is a function of age.

No. It’s a function of the steadily growing insanity and violence around us. Not that humans haven’t always been crazy…but really, it does seem a lot more pronounced than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Sometimes I think I should move out of uptown Phoenix — surely the suburbs would be safer. When I mentioned that to a cop during the great home invasion adventure, he remarked that there aren’t any places in the Phoenix metropolitan area that can be regarded as safe.

Really…when you re-read the post I put up at Funny after that little adventure, you hafta ask yourself: Why am I still living here???

What the HELL is the matter with me that I haven’t moved somewhere else? Somewhere far, far from here! Really: this house should have been on the market the next day after that episode…

But…but…WHERE would I go that’s any better?

Sun City, that fine mausoleum on the west side? 

Well, no: this kind of stuff happens out there. My mother lived in white-lipped terror all the time she and my father owned their Sun City manse. And I’m not interested in living in a ghetto for the aged and the cranky. No, thanks.

A box in the sky? One of the high-rise apartments along Central Avenue or in Scottsdale?

Well…I’ve lived in such a place. And…no thanks. Don’t wanna do that again. I’m just not in to communal living.

No communal living, eh? Well, then: how about back out to the ranch, just outside the wide spot in the road called Yarnell? Right up on the Rim…cool weather, lots of cows and sheep, plenty of room for the burglars to spread out comfortably?

Hm. Yeah, I did love the ranch. BUT: we didn’t live there 24/7. It was more of a weekend retreat for us. And y’know: I don’t think I would want to live out in the middle of nowhere 24/7. Besides, if a burglar/rapist/murderer can visit you in your city subdivision, what’s to keep him from visiting you on your remote ranch?

Basically…where there be humans, you be not safe.

Yeah: I’m afraid that’s a fact.

Or, alternatively:  I’m afraid. That’s a fact.

😀

 

 

The nightmares never stop

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O Gawd!  There really IS a point when it’s time to hop off from the merry-go-round that is life!  WHAT a flickin’ nightmare just living has become.

My poor son — make that my HEROIC son — has been dragging me from pillar to post: doctors, therapists, thisses, thats, and whatnots. Seems to be no end to it: we just go on and on and ON.

This evening we’re back from the physical therapist,  where what I accomplished was to spavin the hip even worse than it was already spavined. Ohhh my GAWD does this stuff hurt. 

No kidding: I hurt; I hurt; I hurt; and then I hurt some more. And frankly: I ain’t gonna be able to handle a helluva lot more of this!

JAYZUZ!  Just get sat down, and ringie dingie dingie ringie dingie dingie… a clear and present phone solicitor.

But with all the sh!t that we’re going thru just now, there IS an outside chance that this could be a real call from a real person.

Human Answers: Hullo. How may I help you?

Scam Artist Answers: Hullo. May I speak to Mr. or Ms. Human.?

Human replies: GET THE F*** OFF MY PHONE, GODDAMN IT!!!! Shrieked as loud as humanly possible into the phone.

Dammit. 

Need to get an airhorn to blast at the bastard phone solicitors. Hmmm…wonder if those things can be had from Amazon?

****

Mwa ha hah!  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. There’s a whole collection of “air horns loud” 😀

Ohhhh yeah! Gotta order up one of these.

Hmmmm… Wonder if there’s a way to blast the phone solicitor without deafening oneself…  Yeah…

Suppose you got a sturdy wooden or steel box, set the phone receiver down in that along with the air horn, closed the box, and then let the air horn have at the ba*tard.

Hmmmm…that doesn’t look very promising. There’s gotta be a way, though.

Let us think on this…

Securing the Security…

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Lookit this hair-raising tale! 

This charming incident happened just down the road, in Tucson. Holeee shee-ut!

The victim is a famous person — or near famous, connected with the Today show. But y’know…it could be any of us. You or me or…who knows?

It’s a good reason to be sure you secure your exterior doors. And I do mean seriously secure them. Make it damn hard for anyone to push their way inside when you go to answer the doorbell.

One way to do this is to install heavy-duty security screens with similarly heavy-duty deadbolts. This is what I’ve done at the Funny Farm.  Mine are of this ilk, easy to get at Home Depot and to hire someone who knows what he’s doing to install them.

There’s a lot of choice out there, though. Look around for one that suits your taste, if you have nothing better to do. For me, the trick was to find something simple and clean-looking, reasonably priced to install, and as close to impregnable as possible.

Perps, I figure, don’t want to spend a lot of energy and effort on breaking in; so, when they see something like this, they’ll move on to the next house.

Annoying as Hell, in my not-so-humble opinion, to have to fortify your doors like they belonged at Fort Knox. But…better that than letting some jerk break his way in.

One of this thing’s benefits, too, is that on a  nice day it lets me leave the front door open (with the security screen closed and locked, of course). Fresh air flows in: perps stay out.

I have one on every exterior door to the house, plus one on the side door to the garage. Nothing, of course, is absolutely perfect…but these things do go a long way to make you feel safer and more secure, here in the Big and Ugly City.