Coffee heat rising

Coyotes

Several posts showing coyotes in our neighborhood yards.

And parks…this one is entertaining:  https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/comments/1kryhmi/made_some_friend_with_coyotes_at_the_park_near/

Made some friend with COYOTES at the park NEAR SUNNYSLOPE
byu/Wyden_long inphoenix

And thither: they’re all over town.

They’ll wander into our ‘Hood now and again. Coyotes aren’t real fond of humans, so if they spot you or hear you coming, they’ll usually take off. Or hide. But still…one would just as soon not have an encounter between Wile E. and one’s pet dog.

The sky this evening defies belief.  WHAT a moon!!!!! Just gorgeous…maybe even beyond gorgeous. And the present spectacle follows a truly handsome sunset.

Here we are in Coyote Hell again. 

Actually…I get a kick out of the coyotes and do not consider their presence to be Hell-making. But ooooh my, how they terrorize the local gringos. Get on the neighborhood Facebook Page and it’s oooohhhh eeeeeek aaaaawkkkk eeeeek ohhhhhh!!@!!! Squalls of terror from all directions.

Humans sure are stupid, aren’t they? Especially the ones that live in cities…  😀 Nary a one of our FB correspondents seems to register that a coyote is more scared of you than you are of it.

Just now — the loveliest cool of the day, when Mr. Coyote is likely to be out taking the morning air, I would not leave Ruby to roam the backyard alone. She is, after all, a tempting little morsel.

But let the heat come up, and Mr. Coyote will repair to the shade of the shrubbery and the trees. And he will not bestir himself to chase after a ludicrous thing like a corgi.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is here. She likes to have the back door open while she’s working. So Ruby is out on the patio, loafing in the shade. For the nonce, none of her wild cousins are visiting, and so I reckon she’s safe enough. Hope so, because just now I’m altogether too lazy to get up and establish myself out there.

Mmmmm…. I figure the best thing about pain is that it reminds you that you’re alive. And just now, by damn, I am SOOOO ALIVE! 

The spavined right hip joint is particularly lively… HOleee shit, does that hurt!

***

Just now, if I were a responsible human bean, I’d get off my duff and stroll over to one of the three(!!!) grocery stores within reasonable walking distance. But really, I do suspect that I’d find myself crippled by the time I got halfway to the nearest one.

{heh} Good excuse, ain’t it? 😀

I may ask WC-L to drive me over to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s.

Or maybe not.

***

What a weird thing it is, to realize that now — today, here in Two Thousand and Aught-Twenty-Six — I cannot remember off-hand what I wanted to buy at the grocer’s. Am I that superannuated, that worn-out that I can’t remember a grocery list of two or three items????  AUGH!

😀

When I first moved into the “Hood,” lo! these decades ago, I was a young pup surrounded by aging, long-time North Central Avenue residents. Now I’m the Old Bat — the historical relic — and all the neighbors look like they were born about ten days ago.

And oh! How can you not love them! Our beautiful young people: the handsome young marrieds, their adorable children…gosh, what a joy!

I wonder if the old ladies who lived here when I moved in — the dignified and historically experienced Mrs. Wilson, the lively and eccentric Fran, the great old gals on the street behind us — enjoyed us as much, when we moved in here as a wave of Yuppies.

Oh, well. I’m old now. Tomorrow they will be. So it goes.

Spavined!!

Actually, the spavined hip is beginning to feel noticeably better. Doesn’t mean it’s healed…matter of facts it still hurts. And hurts. And hurts…hurts…hurts…hurts.  But: doesn’t hurt as much as it did.

Whatever our grand physical therapist tried to do the other day, that didn’t help.  If anything, it made it hurt WORSE.

By this evening, the pain is back to normal: hurts, hurts, hurts…. 

Maybe, with any luck, in a few days it will recede back to something in the vague vicinity of normal. Not holding my breath…but hope springs eternal, eh?

Ain’t this nice? Our fine city leaders plan to jack the garbage collection rates by nigh unto 50%. Then to keep raising them every time we turn around. Makes life on a ranch in the middle of nowhere look better and better.

Seriously: if I were 10 or 15 years younger, that’s exactly where I’d be headed: back to the Gold Bar Ranch, out on the far end of the freakin’ Mogollon Rim.

I’m coming to hate this Los-Angelized city.

Seriously: I loathed living in L.A. Was sooooo relieved, all those years ago when my father retired and dragged us to Arizona. But now: WTF. Might as well be back in Southern California.

At any rate: what else is new?  

Our honored City Parents are getting set to gouge the bejayzus out of us again: a FORTY-SIX PERCENT INCREASE in garbage pickup rates!!!!!

Bastards.

Well. It makes moving to some other city look better and better. The only reason I haven’t done so is that M’Hijito is here.

And it’s safe to assume that will continue to be the case. As long as he lives in Phoenix, I’ll be here, too.

One of my friends installed a little house in her back yard for her parent. So…thereby they each had their own place and their privacy, but all the costs for utilities and trash pickup and yard care were shared.

Can’t imagine M’Hijito would put up with that. Too bad: it’s definitely a Thought!!

NEVER Stops…

cripes. Come along about noon…I just get my spavined body settled onto the bed with the heating pad cooking the sprained groin muscles, and…

!!!!!BING BONGGGGG!!!!!

God DAMN it. 

Drag out of the sack, limp through the house…limp through the house…limp through the house: Gerardo and his boys at the door: all set to rake and blower and trim and blower and rake and, forGODsake fix the goddamn busted plumbing in the front yard and….

…and who the hell knows how much that’s gonna cost. 

All I wanna do is try to cook the pain out of my leg. Guess that ain’t gonna happen today!

God only can imagine how much he’s gonna gouge me for today’s antics. My guess is around a couple hundred bucks. DAYUM!

Can’t complain, because it’s work that…

a) I don’t really know how to do; and
b) I absolutely positively don’t WANT to do.

But…hafta say, today I’d ever so much druther NOT have anyone do it. DAYUM! Let me lay on the sack under the damn heating pad and freakin’ leave me alone!

My gawd, this stupid thing hurts. Why escapes me. I must have twisted the joint and then laid on it crooked during the night, while I was sleeping.

Wouldn’cha think that would wake you up? If it did, I sure don’t remember. All I know is, I came to this morning with my hip hurting so bad I can barely waddle around the house. And now it hurts and hurts and hurts and HURTS.

*****

GEEEZ! Talk about hurts! Gerardo the Wonder Yard Dude just charged me some staggering around of money to repair the irrigation system. Just what I wanted to do: spend the afternoon bankrupting myself.

And now I’ll get a blast of RAGE from my son, who will be totally NOT happy when he sees how much I paid for this project.

Daaayyy–yuuummm!

MAKE IT STOP, LORD!

{Cosmic laughter echoes out of the heavens…}

Securing the Security…

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.

Are We Still Online?

Looks like once again I’m back in to Funny about Money, despite the last week’s hijinks.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! That’s surely some kind of little miracle.

It’s a gray, drab morning: 8:30 and no brighter than about 7 a.m.

Harvey the Beloved Pool Cleaner appears to be on the fritz. Looks like he’s stuck on on the bottom of the Hole in the Ground Into Which To Pour Money. I’m not sure whether this is Pool Dude Day — he comes around every week or so. But I’m unstuck in time and so have no clue whether this is one of his days.

If I stay here waiting for him, that will put the eefus on Ruby the Corgi’s doggy-walk.

****

Ah HAH!  His glorious convict-like Cuteness arrived! Pool Dude is here! Out back and puttering away with the dratted…uhm, beloved swimming pool. And when we say DOG JOY, we do mean dog joy. 

Yes: many of these guys are convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the trades for which prisons in Arizona train inmates. So, chances are pretty good that our beloved Pool Dude has seen the inside of a concrete cell.

That notwithstanding, he is a sweetie-pie. Just a very nice, very personable man. And he does a great job! So whatever he did in his previous career…I don’t much care.

As for Ruby: he could be Jack the Ripper and she’d still adore him.