Coffee heat rising

Riding the Wagon

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Decided to climb on the wagon for a few days…horrors!  😀

Seriously: I no longer sit around tippling half the afternoon, as DXH and I used to do — and later, SDXB and I did. This grating abstinence cuts the wine consumption to about a bottle a week. Which for us…ain’t much.

Still…of late, even that seems rather more than necessary.

For one thing, recently I’ve noticed that I spend an awful lot on booze — mostly wine. But realized…uhm….hey! I ain’t drinking any more than I have in the past.

This suggests either that the cost of booze has gone up hugely in recent weeks or months, OR that my booze-lapping has gone up.

Truth to tell, I can’t tell that I’m drinking a whole lot more than I ever have: a glass or two a day. Matter of fact: if anything, I seem to be drinking less than the usual guzzle-fest. So...hmmm…. that suggests the cost of wine and beer has headed for the stratosphere.

Well! What better excuse to get off the sauce than to launch into Full Cheapskate Mode? 😀

As of this week, we are not diddling away any cash on wine, beer, or whiskey. And you wanna know what? for unknown reasons, I find I don’t miss it!

And THAT is weird. In the past, when I’ve resolved to climb on the wagon, I’ve truly hated it: am so accustomed to a glass or two of wine or a cocktail late in th4 afternoon, that I have a booze insufficiency fit before dinnertime! 😀

That’s not happening this time around, though. Dunno why, but I’m finding I don’t especially want a drink during the usual cocktail hour, and I don’t miss it. 

And that is weird.

Well: I ain’t fighting it! If I can get off the sauce and stay off for several weeks, I would be able to reset my cocktail habits to a much more conservative level. Or maybe even eliminate them.

The House on the Park

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Every time Ruby and I head out into the’ Hood and circumnavigate the park, we pass a house that makes me think We need to move out of this place! 

It’s a beautiful house: two stories, facing right on the park. About as upscale as you can get.

But…

A friend of mine was living there with her husband. They were high-school teachers: quiet, conservative types. One day they answered the door when somebody jangled the doorbell.

Two guys were out on the front stoop. They shoved their way into the house, grabbed my friends, tied them up, dragged them upstairs, and threw them into a bathtub. There the two resided, in terror, while the home invaders ransacked their house.

Eventually the thugs exited and my friends managed to work themselves free of their bonds.

Not surprisingly, said friends promptly sold that house and moved as far away as they could get while still remaining in the Valley.

And THAT is why I think I should follow them out of these parts.

Yeah. I mentioned that thought to a cop who was working the crime scene that day. And he said, “Don’t do that! We come to these things all the time: almost every day, all over the Valley. You can’t move away from it.”

Jayzuz!

Well, I figure he should know what he’s talking about, and so I did follow his advice and stayed put.

Still: it gives me the willies.

What a critter the human is! What a society we live in!

Speaking of the which: here we have R-O-O-O-O-A-R! ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!! 

Cop helicopter blasts in. Takes up his position over the neighborhood just to the north of us. And charges back and forth, forth and back, back and forth…roar roar roar! 

Get up. Close and double-lock all the doors.

keeerap! Am I tired of this!!!!! 

Trouble is…like the cop said: You can’t get away from it. 

Eeeeek! What NEXT, Lord?

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So here’s the Human: loafing in its easy chair, swilling coffee, and munching chocolate. And there’s the Dawg: squirreling around with something on the floor.

Human takes a swiggle of coffee and a closer look, and…and…

HOOOLEEE maquerel! That something is a SCORPION. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Scorpion_Photograph_By_Shantanu_Kuveskar.jpgIncredibly, it hasn’t yet launched its defenses against the Dawg.

IS there REALLY never a dull goddam moment?
And why th’Hell NOT????

Human leaps up, chases the dog off, grabs an old jar and a piece of stiff paper.

Into the glassware with the little guy, lidded in with the paper slab.

What an amazing and wonderful creature!  Looks like something that came straight from some Age Before the Dinosaurs.

So we carry the little guy through the garage and out the door, way into the front yard. Down by the street, as far from the Shack as possible. Gently, carefully let him out into the gravel beneath one of the trees.

Now, if you were God, what on earth (or in Heaven) would persuade you to create such a strange little beast?

Kinda mystifies me: I could never imagine how to put such an animal together.

Presumably, that’s why I’m not God, eh? 😉

Life in the Desert: Hazards Thereof

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The heavy-duty steel screen door is closed and locked…interior door open to let in some fresh air and let Ruby peer out.

WHAT a goddam place we live in, where you dare not leave the kitchen door open while you putter around the house! Ruby the Corgi, of course, would make a ruckus if someone tried to enter…but by then it would be too late for the human.

Some bastards nabbed a woman out of her home near Tucson the other day. She’s been gone the better part of a month. No knows what happened to her…though presumably the puddle of blood outside her door is not a good sign.

I really should keep a pistol at hand. But…ugh! That is just NOT my style. I don’t want a gun laying around, thankyouverymuch! No, not even in a house where no kids hang out.

Really, though…I suppose it isn’t safe to be loafing in your family room totally unarmed. Bad idea.

Well, it’s something to think about. Something tiresome to think about….

Because we live in a hectic part of the city, one thing we don’t have to fret about here is rattlesnakes. In some precincts, that is an issue.

Oh well… In other sylvan precincts: it’s off to the physical therapists tonight. Ugh! Another feature of life in the big city that I could do without.

Oh, well. This evening the hip HURTS with a vengeance. So that means I’ll be able to point the therapist right to the vicinity where it hurts. Then with that detail in mind, maybe they’ll be able to show me how to beat it back.

Very, very tired of hurting….

***

YIPE!  Cop copter just roared over. Goodie… 

Mercifully, he roared on up the way…by now is several miles distant. That, presumably, means the perp is not outside the back door.

Ruby the Corgi is in full loaf mode, which presumably signals that she doesn’t hear or sense anyone around. A dog, unfortunately, is not a 100% burglar alarm. But she’s better than the human, anyway. About 2/3 to 3/4 of the time, she’ll alert me if anything is up.

***

Ah! Here’s my Hero on the phone: calling to say he’s on his way over here to pick me up and tote me to the physical therapists.

Isn’t that nice! Really, there’s no way I could get there other than in a cab, if he weren’t hauling me around. <3

I do hurt too much to drive a car just now.

Uh oh… Here he is!!

 

 

Ear Whistle? Or Limp?

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{Chortle!} So a few days ago I held forth about gulping down ibuprofen…which I had to do to beat back the pretty startling pain in a spavined hip.

Ibuprofen, it develops, makes your ears whistle. So, as we scribble, my head is singing SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE……  

Yeah: one gets one’s choice: a giant pain in the a$$, or invisible screamers in your ears!

Argh! How could I do without this ess-aitch-ai? Let me count the ways…

Jet planes are roaring around to the north of us. “To the north” would suggest they’re not the Air Force numbers that charge back and forth over Sun City as dawn cracks — it’s to the west of us. But…why anyone would have jets blasting back and forth over a residential subdivision escapes me.

Sure could do without it, though WHAT a racket!

Meanwhile, ibuprofen or no ibuprofen — ear-whistle or no ear-whistle — the damn hip hurts like the dickens. That will obviate today’s doggy-walk.

Now we’ve got some moron out there on the street, just on the other side of my backyard wall, SHRIEKING AT HIS DOG at the top of his voice: YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW…

I holler back, without getting up from my easy chair, KNOCK IT OFF, STUPID!

😀 He must have heard me: he shut up.

God, but I’m tired of stupid. 

Seriously: it seems — all the time! — like we have Stupid to the left of us and Stupid to the right of us, Stupid to the front of us and Stupid to the back of us. WE’RE SURROUNDED BY MORONS!

Oh man! What a racket from those damn jets. And y’know: they’re a good 20 miles away!

The air is dead still — not a leaf on the trees jiggling. That must be why the uproar carries so far this morning. You rarely hear the Luke AFB racket all the way into town.

Should get up and walk Ruby around the ‘Hood.

But…kinda doubt that I can, actually. This hip hurts so much I can barely wriggle. Just walking over to the kitchen to add some hot water to a cup of tea hurts like the dickens. Probably I should just limp back to bed!

Oh well. Old Dawg-Yeller seems to have waddled on down the street. The fighter jets have gone on their way. The ears are still doing their air-raid siren thing. Nothing’s gonna get any better. And likely nothing’s gonna get any worse. Think I’ll go back to bed!

Hah! I’m IN!!!

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Click on “Firefox” to open Funny about Money, and get an aggravating pop-up: “Choose a Firefox profile to log in.”

I don’t WANT a Firefox profile, goddammit!!!!!  I just want to get into my silly little blog!

Arrrrrrrggggghhhh!  Life in the 21st Century: one goddamn aggravation after another!

Oh, well. For reasons unknown, the system has let me in. We’ll soon see whether it’ll let me load a post to FaM.

I wonder if life in, say, the 1960s seemed as aggravating to my parents, who came to majority in the 1930s and ’40s. Can’t remember them grousing ALL the time about this modern inconvenience and that unnecessary hassle. But…hmmm… Surely, it must have seemed just as alien to them as the accursed 2020s seem to me.

{sigh} I don’t recall my mother grousing as much as I do about this hassle and that headache. But come to think of it, she did encounter hassles and headaches incident upon modernization.