Coffee heat rising

Angst

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

by

Seven in the frikkin’ morning. Gotta be outta here in less than an hour, on the road through wicked rush-hour traffic, headed for the dentist. Big lump on a gum. Cancer???? The way things have been going, I sure won’t be surprised.

So, soooooo tired! I’ve been up since two a.m.: never did get back to sleep.  All I wanna do is crawl back in bed and be miserable in peace. Instead, I’ve gotta put my life on the line to traipse to the dentist.

Gotta marshal some strength to fight back. I’m totally under siege here, between the busted arm and my son’s concern.

I forget things. This is not surprising, at the age of 78. But M’jito is all worried: he thinks I’m getting senile. From what I can tell, as you round on your 80th year, you forget stuff…and that is normal. It’s easy enough to compensate with a notebook and a spreadsheet.

***

Ohhhh…kayyyy…  Now I’m dressed…after a (non) fashion. The busted arm: still in a sling, still hurts. Almost all my shirts are pullovers — and o’course I can’t get one of those over my head, not in this condition. I have some three shirts that button up the front. And they’re not exactly gorgeous with a Velcro strap slung over my shoulder. In another 10 minutes, it’s off to the dentist to find out (I hope) what the lump on my gum is. It popped up a few days ago. From what I can tell in the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest, it’s unlikely to be cancer. Just hope it can be left to go away (or not) on its own. I’ve had enough with the slicing and dicing!

*******

And speaking of senility…

I get all the way over to 16th and Maryland — through cut-throat rush-hour traffic — go to turn in to the garden office complex’s parking lot…and…and…and I can’t find it!!!!!

WTF!?!?!????

It’s my regular dentist’s place…why isn’t it here?

Drove all around over there and STILL couldn’t find it!

Schlepped home through the hideous rush-hour traffic. On the way I stopped at the orthodontist’s…any chance that I mistook, in my senility, the place where I was supposed to go?

Nope.

So I missed an important appointment, put my life on the line to do it by venturing out in Lovely Phoenix’s homicidal rush-hour traffic, got myself all worked up, missed taking Ruby for her beloved doggy-walk..all for NOTHING.

*****

Something is to be said about living in a given city for several decades: You get very skilled at navigating rush-hour traffic.

One comes to know all the most-traveled and least-traveled routes. All the impossible traffic signals to avoid. And the most discreet parking lots to cut through to avoid a traffic jam…without attracting acop’s attention (it’s agin’ the law to do that).

***

10 a.m.

Yep. Just ten o’clock and it’s already  been an awful morning.

I should take the little dog for a walk. Really, despite the personal awfulness, it’s a beautiful morning. The rain has cooled things down. The before-work dog walkers have done their duty and cleared off the sidewalks.

So yeah…this is the time.

On the other hand…will venturing out just make things worse for the Walking Wounded? Maybe I should think twice.

On the other other hand…I’m in no shape to think at all..much less to do it twice.

WORSER & WORSER

by

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!  Want pain? Lemme tellya PAIN!

Spent the better part of y’day and this morning at the Mayo Clinic’s ER.

I fell face-forward on the tiled floor. Reflexively stuck out my left hand as I was going down. Whacked the Hell out of my hand. Busted the humerus, one of the long bones of the upper arm. Apparently didn’t break anything else (to my surprise). But oh!

Hurt?  Lemme tella HURT! 

And hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt… Holy mackerel, it hurts!

The little dog is accustomed to sleeping on the bed. But she’s too small to jump up here by herself: she has to be lifted.

They told me not to lift her onto the bed. (They who have no clue to what a corgi is…) So of course I’ve been lifting her onto the bed.

Just now: Slipped. Lost my footing. Dropped the dog. Wrenched the arm, And HURT!!!!!

Oh Dear GOD did that hurt.

This elicited a sky-splitting shriek of agony. Terrorized the little dog. She now refuses to come out from under the toilet.

That may be just as well. At least she won’t be out here banging on the bed trying to get up.

I don’t think Ruby got hurt. But I sure as hell did.

Ohhhhh well…  The worst of the screaming pain has about subsided

And hallelujah, brothers & sisters, Amazon carries little staircases to help a small dog climb on the bed!

heee! Have you ever seen such a thang?!?

I’m thinking that tomorrow, if I can drive (highly questionable), I’ll run over to the nearest Petsmart and grab one of these for Ruby. Failing that: order it up from Amazon.

Dunno, tho… Amazon shows several models that are cheaper. Oh, well. There’s plenty of time to think about that.

NOT a nice person…

by

Nope. Nooo, I’m surely not a nice lady. Not if you judge by this afternoon’s antic.

Need to go to the credit union. Actually, this visit is overdue, and I really, really need to schlep way to Hell and gone across the west side to the CU’s office;

bang around bang around bang around bang around, collect all the junk to take over there, pile it in the car, lock up the dawg, back out of the garage, back out back out ba…waitaminit…

Whozzat guy?

Yeah. Some guy is out in front. He’s not a neighbor that I recognize. That doesn’t mean he’s not a neighbor. Only that I haven’t seen him before.

He walks eastward from the westerly corner toward our easterly end of the block. Turns around, walks back westerly again. He goes up to the front door of a house in that direction. But he doesn’t do anything: doesn’t knock on the door, doesn’t ring the doorbell, doesn’t pull out a key and stick it a lock. Huh uh.

He just stands there for a minute, then turns around and continues to walk up in our direction.

In the department of huh uh!, I don’t want this guy to see me pull out of the garage and cruise off down the road.

But DAMMIT, do I ever need to get to that credit union! Cruise toward the intersection with Conduit of Blight.

Think…nope.

nope nope nope… 

Pull a U-ie, come on back to the Funny Farm. He makes a half-hearted sally toward another front door, then, as I cruise back to my house and back into my driveway, turns around and heads in the direction that he came from.

Park in the garage. Close the door. Stalk inside and pour half a glass of wine. Take up a position in the front courtyard, with the Killer Corgi at hand. Think ohhhh sheee-ut how paranoid CAN a city-dweller get? 

Ruby barks at the kids in Tony’s institution.

The kids across the other street take up a game of basketball-tossing, always a delight.

Ruby ambles indoors.

Tom — Mr. WonderAccountant — comes home and parks his truck in his driveway, across the street.

My wine-glass is still half-full.

Should I ask Mr. WA to keep an eye on the Funny Farm whilst I make a run on the credit union?

How can I count the ways…not?

It’s a gorgeous afternoon.

I decide to avail myself of a beautiful day and a grand kid with a basketball and a fierce little dog and — especially — a glass of wine and a few slices of fancy cheese.

Why does this make me feel like a sh!t?

Well…

Because… Zat guy is a black man. Yea verily, a handsome black man. Yea verily, a radically middle-class-looking black man. But nay verily, not a gent of any color or ethnic persuasion that I’ve seen anywhere near that neighbor’s house.

Yep. He’s prob’ly harmless.

Ayup;. He’s probably a brother-in-law of one of the residents.

But…{sigh} Nope: I absolutely positively do NOT want this guy to see me drive off down the street leaving the garage empty. Nope.

Arrrrrghhhhh!

Would I have felt that way if he were white or Latino?

Possibly not. Surely not if he were white: I would have recognized him as not a neighbor. If he were Latino: I would have regarded him as possibly a neighbor but I don’t think so because I happen to enjoy Latinos and Latino culture and so I would have come to know him, at least to some degree, by now.

Friday: SO MUCH stuff I needed to get done while banging around this afternoon. Dayum!

At least half of it won’t get done. The other half — computer PITAs — can get done tomorrow, on top of a cruise toward the other side of town.

Next Monday: today’s PITA will remain to be addressed.

Life in the 21st century….

One “NOW WHAT” after another…

by

Dawn cracks. Ruby is delighted: she dearly loves the break of day. Human is less thrilled. Ohhh well.

We stumble outside, Ruby to patrol the yard and pee on everything, the human to…uhm…stand around. And…

LO! A set of wet tracks has been laid down on the Kool-Deck…like someone or something climbed out of the drink. Impossible to tell whether the tracks are human or animal…

Did Pool Dude show up before the crack of dawn and maybe fell into the water?  Seems like Ruby would have alerted to that. Pool Dude is her hero…paws-down the very finest hero in the history of human-canine contact. If he’d been out there, she would have been hot to shoot out there and love him up.

Besides, if he’d fallen in the drink he would have made a lot of noise, enough to set off Ruby like a four-legged burglar alarm.

Hmmm…

Tony’s Home for Juvenile Delinquents has been a little more restive than normal. Maybe one of the pistols over there snuck out and frolicked around the neighborhood last night. But…why would they climb through the thorny vines over the alley wall to do…effectively nothing?

Tony himself has targeted the pool in the past. Indeed, that’s how we ended up in court with him, where he scared my lawyers so much they urged me not to come back to the house. And that was the immediate reason that SDXB sold his house and moved to Sun City. He who swaggers first runs first, hm?

Maybe I’d better put up a camera or two out there. If the delinquent charges of the Delinquent-Master have decided to launch a new campaign, it would be good to have a video of them. Right?

But…I Want It NOW…

by

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not whenever I can find it (if I can) on the local market.

NOW.

It’s spectacularly convenient to be able to order up this little thingy and that little doo-dad and have it delivered right to your door. Yes. That much must be admitted. That much must be admired.

But the other day, I wanted one silly little, minor little, once always-available-about-everywhere little thing, and I wanted it now. Today. Ideally, within the hour.

It was the sort of thing you used to be able to find in a type of store called a “dime store,” such as a TG&Y: chain stores that sold inexpensive handy-dandy gadgetry that people use around the house and the car and the yard.

No more! Far as I can tell, dime stores no longer exist.

I drove from pillar to post searching…

  • Albertson’s does not carry it.
  • Safeway does not carry it.
  • Target does not carry it.
  • Bed Bath & Beyond no longer exists.
  • Walmart does not carry it.
  • Lowe’s does not carry it.
  • AJ’s does not carry it…

On and on and gas-guzzlingly on. NO ONE carries it.

What is “it”?

It’s this: an old-fashioned purse-sized, pocket-sized spiral-bound notepad.

Apparently they still make them. Although of late retailers will not let you copy an image and paste it into your effing blog post….

You just can’t find them. At least not in brick-and-mortar retail stores. I searched all over the effing city, and nobody had these things.

Upshot: It’s not that you can order it from Amazon. It’s that you HAVE TO order it from Amazon. And if you need it now? Well, screw you, m’dear.

Ugh! I am sooo unstuck in time! My God, sometimes I feel like I live not in a different era but on a different planet from the one I grew up on.

And while we have many, many blandishments that are wonderful and amazing…well… Are they?

We have these awesome phones we can carry around! Whoop-de-doo!

  • Now anyone who takes a whim to do so can pester us on the phone as we drive around or hike or bicycle ride or sit in a meeting or…whatEVER.
  • Now advertisers can track us around the city and harass us at will.
  • Now if our car craps out and we don’t have one of these gadgets with us — or, Gawd forfend if it’s not charged up — we are in deep, deep trouble.
  • Now if we’re on the lam from the cops, the authorities can track us down, intercept us, and bust us…

Hmmmmm…. THIS is a good thing?

We have delivery services that bring everything from a cheap notebook to a filet mignon to our doorstep. But what if we want to shop for it in person? What if want to see what we’re getting before we plop down our credit card?

What if, f’r hevvinsake, we want it NOW?

Ugh. What a brave new world!

Where were we…about stopping the world?

by

Gawdalmighty, “STOP THE WORLD” seems to be the byword of the day.

It’s after dark. The dawg and I are fed. It’s too crazy out there to go for an evening doggy-walk, so we’re hunkered down.

And hunkered in full stop the world mode.

A cop helicopter is buzzing the ‘Hood. Lemme tellya: these guys don’t burn pricey aviation fuel for nothin’. They’ve been overhead for a half-hour or 45 minutes: searching, searching, searching. Rattling the windowpanes. Disturbing the dawg. Disturbing the human.  Now they’re cruising above the streets just to the north of us.

Have I said how much I hate living here?

But…

But….

But……

Is there anyplace better to live?

Truth to tell, what that cop said right after the Great Home Invasion Episode appears to be true: “It’s the same all over the Valley.” From the Richistans to the blue-collar slums to the ghettos, it really DOES appear to be “the same all over the Valley.”

Okay, wtf is going on now? Over to the neighborhood Facebook page, usually the fastest source of fact and gossip…

H. Acken

Was anyone else asked to stay inside?

Loren Rohrer

Helicopter is saying to surrender now….that can’t be good….

Morgan Hoaglin

I am betting on the K9 here
Sonja Marie Clarke Yurkiw
What’s happening with the helicopter?

Megan Tranter
          A truck was pulled over on Drey Drive. One of the occupants fled the scene. There’s where it stands just now. But…Ughhhhhhh am I ever tired of it.

You ‘n’ me both, sister!!!