Coffee heat rising

Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…

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As a long-ago radio announcer — still fondly remembered — used to intone each morning: “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona…leave us all enjoy it!”

😀  Nothing like a little illiteracy to give your talk show some zing, eh?

Seriously, it was a much-loved maxim that he invented and used for years.

Ruby and the Human have marched around the ‘Hood, at least to some degree. The Human is feeling sick, and so not at all in the mood to gallop from pillar to post.

Back in the house, fed,  and ensconced on the bed, I hope to sleep off whatever this is.

Missing a dear friend from long ago. She and her husband lived in a later-built tract to the north of the Central Avenue area. Ticky-tacky little house, cheaply built in the mode of later architecture. He fell ill — very ill, indeed — and died after a long haul in that house. She moved to Scottsdale briefly; then decamped to the Midwest, whence she came and where her family was still living. Forthwith, we lost track of each other.

I seem to have  lost track of most of my friends.

Maybe I should try to get another adjunct position at the Great Desert University. That, at least, would give me something to do and bring me into contact with new people,

But…without a car — my son purloined mine and sold it — there’s no way I can get out to the campus. I’m trapped here in the Funny Farm, really.

I probably could get down to the church. It would require a hike through the North Central district and then a bus ride — often an annoying experience in these parts, what with the stoners and the panhandlers. More hassle than I’m up for.

And so…what will I do? Sit here and rot away?

Very possibly, as we don’t appear to have many alternatives. Make that “any” alternatives.

  • No job.
  • No freelance opportunities.
  • No volunteer gigs.
  • No friends left.
  • No car in which to venture forth…

Really, when you come down to it, I’m doomed. It really IS time to go, isn’t it?

Yeah. “Sit here and rot away” about defines my future. Hope it comes quickly….

Beautiful Kid Afternoon

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Oh, my! Dear Reader, I do wish you could be here to watch the goings-on here in the ‘Hood.

Actually, the performers are gathering to go in for dinner now…the hour coming on to 4:00 p.m. But up til now: all this cool, sunny afternoon we’ve had kids and teenagers cavorting up and down our little neighborhood lane… So much fun! So adorable!

Hope they’ll come back out after dinnertime.

The kids and the teenagers (and their parents) are what makes the ’Hood a lovely place to  live. Why, you wonder as you watch the goings-on, would anyone ever want to live in a mausoleum like Sun City?

😀    :-0   😀

Well. My parents did. Particularly my father.

He didn’t seem to care for children at all. He actually disliked the sound of kids playing. From what I could tell, my mother had to bamboozle him into letting her bear the pregnancy that produced me. And I was — quite deliberately –the only child they had.

He must have been disappointed when they spawned a girl. He didn’t seem to mind Boy Scout types. But girls didn’t much interest him.

That notwithstanding: He did his duty in supporting me and providing a safe home. Sent me through four years of college. So…I guess I can only be mystified at what made those two tick.

Meanwhile, here in the ‘Hood we do have kids. A lovely, funny, rowdy passel of them.

😀

NOW what???

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Is there, seriously, NEVER a dull moment?

Why th’hell not???

Six p.m., Friday evening, October 23. Now I find a weird, itchy rash all over my chest.

WTF???  Chicken pox???

Believe I had chicken pox as a kid. Can you get it again as an old bat?

Hmmmm….  Saith the Mayo Clinic:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chickenpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20351282

Doesn’t look strikingly like that.

Temperature: a little over 100 degrees. That’s high for me: I’m a cold potato. Normal for me is 97. Mayo clinic regards 97 to 99 degrees as “normal.”

Feeling ever so slightly on the awful side. Believe I’ll shut off the lights and try to get some sleep!

Where I Came From

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Well…ultimately, I came from Western Europe. My predecessors were Anglo-French with a dose of Native American.

But where, if you were to ask me, did my family (and I) come from?

I was born in Southern California and raised in Saudi Arabia, while my closest relatives lived in Northern California, Texas, and Upstate New York. So…hmmm…  I suppose you could say I came from wherever I happened to be standing at any given moment. 😀

My mother was Anglo-French. My father was Choctaw Indian with a dose of Gringo. So…where did I come from?  Ohhh….round and round and about. 

It’s a little hard to say, then, “where I came from.” Basically, I’d say we came from wherever in the United States a given predecessor happened to be standing at a given time.

That, I suppose, is the American way.

Did She Know?

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Yeah, I believe she did. 

She knew exactly what she did, as she quietly and pleasurably and quite deliberately smoked herself into the grave.

She knew her stinking habit would kill her.

And she knew (quite correctly) that it would make her little girl sick.

The connection between tobacco smoking and lung cancer became known in the 1950s.

Forgodsake, I was born in 1945.

So…yeah: when I was five years old, she knew she was making me sick.

And make me sick, she did: one gawdawful respiratory ailment after another after another. 

Yeah. I remember her simpering, one day, “Poor Dee! You’re so susceptible!” (Her nickname for me was Dee Dee. As a toddler, I couldn’t begin to pronounce the wacksh!t name she and my father inflicted on me, so baby-babble became the source of my day-to-day name.)

Gawdlmighty. If you believed your child was “susceptible” to every respiratory infection that came along and then some, WHY in the  name of God would you sit there and puff toxic fumes into her face?

Makes her sound stupid as a post, doesn’t it?

She wasn’t, though. She actually was a surprisingly smart woman — if hugely uneducated. What she was? Addicted, that’s what she was.

She was addicted to nicotine.

Even if she’d tried to stop smoking, she probably couldn’t.

Understand: She was never awake when she didn’t have a cigarette in her mouth or her hands.

You knew when she woke up in the night because as you lay in your bedroom,  you could smell the f**king stink from her cancer stick: she wouldn’t lift her head from the pillow before lighting up.

She even took the damn things into the shower with her.

And — surprise! — they killed her. 

Pretty horribly, we might add. You don’t wanna die that way.

Evil, on an astronomical level: That describes the tobacco industry.  No one who is associated with it can be regarded as anything other than evil. It is an entire, huge industry based on murder.

That’s what tobacco products do: they murder you. In pain and agony and stinking horror.

Don’t let the ba*tards do that to you.

Wow! Quite the Freshet

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HOOOleeee maquerel! Just had a little freshet blow through that…well…it was impressive. That’s for sure.

It dumped enough rain to fill the pool’s water level up to the coping. FAST! In less than half an hour.

Well….the water level wasn’t high. But neither was it low. About average, I’d say. Probably would have taken the hose 45 minutes or so to add that much volume.

Looks like the clouds may be breaking up. Hope so. If this keeps on much longer, we are gonna have a problem: it’ll overflow the pool. Right now, the water is up to the coping…which means this little freshet added about two inches to the water level.

And that, folks, when you’re talking thousands of gallons, is a whole lotta water.