Coffee heat rising
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6:50 a.m.

Weirdness of the day: The buzzy peripheral neuropathy has, for unknown reasons, receded by about 90%. Why? I cannot imagine. I’m not doing anything different. Not eating anything different. Not teetotaling. Not exercising more. Not exercising less. Not taking meds, other than an occasional ibuprofen and a daily hit of B12.

Headed out with the dog by way getting the daily stroll out of the way before the day warms up. Let us see what result that brings…

****

8:15 a.m.

Back in the house. GORGEOUS morning! Cool but not cold. High fluffy clouds lurking overhead. Neighbors and their doggies skipping around the park. You couldn’t ask for anything better!

PN continues about the same: significantly reduced over the past few days’ misdventure. Still, no clue why.

But…if it backs off by a proportionate degree over the next couple of days, the pain and buzzing will essentially be gone. Maybe there’s at least some hope that it’ll go away.

Meanwhile, the park is full of our lovely neighbors, most of them out for their daily health-walk. Jet planes flying out of the West Valley’s Luke Air Force Base take off, roar around, head back to the base, land. Great fun to watch those things charging around!

Luke is just west and south of Sun City, a ghetto for the agèd on the road to California.

SC: my mother loved it. My father disliked children, and so SC looked like some kind of nirvana to him. Neither of my paents was fond of kids — not by any means — and so when they learned of Sun City about the time my father was ready to retire, they thought they’d found heaven. They got me in to the University of Arizona (150 miles to the south) at the end of my junior year in high school, and as soon as I was out of their graying hair, my father quit his job and they moved to Old Folks Central.

Yes. So delighted was my mother with this advance move to Retirement that she convinced herself that she LOVED the racket of fighter jets shooting in and out of Luke. She would sit on their screened back porch and sip coffee for two hours while those planes went ROAR…ROAR…ROAR…over the house and the backyard.

😀

Well…whatever makes ya happy, eh?

What makes Ruby the Corgi happy is…POOL DUDE!

BELOVED Pool Dude.

That little dog just dotes on the man. Weirdly. she seems to know when it’s Tuesday, his regular service day. And by golly, she parks herself by the back screen doors and gazes into the backyard, awaiting his Glory’s arrival.

Why she loves the guy so much escapes me. Is there some sort of dog-entrancing cologne??? No idea. He seems like a normal, ordinary sorta fella: polite, down-to-earth, focused on his job. But something about him enchants that dog.

Life in the 21st Century

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Trying again: WyrdPress refused to post this, so I saved it to Wyrd. Let’s copy, paste, and see if it will go online now…

********************

THIS is life????? Who freakin’ needs it???????

Honestly. By the time we got halfway through the day, I was ready to quit. Exit Stage Left. FLEEEEEEE!

Jayzus, what a dystopic world we’ve made for ourselves.

Appears the problem is that I just haven’t been keeping up with the technology…which evolves at the speed of a galloping coyote.

***

Toyota repairman was here, charged with fixing whatever was making it impossible to…figure out how to use the car’s fukkin doors.

By the time he finished, he had spent several hours…and then he presented me with a bill for SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS.

No kidding: to get the damn doors and locks to work on the damn Venza’s damn passenger compartment.

Yep. You need a degree in nuclear engineering to make a car’s doors work these days.

That was only the most annoying of the day’s adventures. Others were similar, but not quite so high-pitched.

Welp, I’ll tellya one thing: I’ll never buy another Toyota again.

Yea verily, I may never buy another car again; at least not one manufactured after about 1967.

If we could just PUHLEEEZE have decent public transportation, I would never buy any car again.

Seriously: when my mother and I lived in San Francisco — late 1950s — it really was NOT necessary to own a car. We did have one, because not to own a Ford have been an offense to my father’s manliness. But while he was off at sea (most of the time), she and I largely rode the public transit: busses, streetcars, and trolleys. We got where we needed to go within a highly reasonable time frame. We did not have to dodge lunatic fellow drivers. We did not have to fight homicidal traffic. We did not have to pay to park or to figure out where to park. And we did not need to get a degree in freakin’ ENGINEERING to make those things happen.

Anyhoo, the Toyota guy showed up to do some minor repairs. And it was SOOO complicated that I’m not even gonna be able to use the windows and doors on that car. What an involved rigaramole!!!!!!

Oh yes: before he left, he took a good half hour (or more) to give me LESSONS on how to operate the damn car’s doors and windows.

No kidding: you need a degree in engineering to open and close a modern Toyota’s windows!!!!!

Sumbiche.

****

Can you imagine? SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS for minor puttering that did not even require me to drive the car to their garage.

***

hmmmmmm…. Whaddaya bet I can’t get that fukkin car to start?

Let’s try it out…

****

Whew!  Well, yes: it took a minute of panic, but I finally DID get the damn engine to start up.

Yea, verily: it did allow itself to be persuaded to start. But since I didn’t have a pair of shoes on, I decided to opt the test drive.

Hm.

That was stupid, wasn’t it?

Okay…let’s go track down the damn shoes…

****

Well-shod test drive.

Okay okay…I can’t bitch about the quality of the ride. Very good. Engine runs awesomely. Ride is smooth. And…but..i don’t wanna ride much of anywhere.  And…and..for the luvva gawd, I spent SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS to get a car ride strangely reminiscent of my 1962 Ford Fairlane’s?

SERIOUSLY???????????????

I’ll tellya, folks: If I lived in San Francisco or New York, I would not own a car. This is fukkin ridiculous.

 

Loafifariousness…

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The Human and the Dog should get off their respective duffs and trot around the neighborhood.

Really: there’s no excuse for evading it. Except…

except…

except…

Well…I don’t wanna!

Yeah. the Human is toooooo freakin’ lazy to get off her duff and stroll a mile or two around our (truly) garden spot.

It is a GORGEOUS morning, balmy with a light breeze, high patches of filmy cloud, no appreciable smog. Saturday rush-hour traffic is about over, so it’s quiet and lovely.

That notwithstanding: mostly what the human wants to do is crawl back in the sack and sleep for another hour or two. 😀 Talk about lazy!

If we wait much longer, it’ll be too hot for walking on concrete and asphalt.

But…but…do I care?

*********

This post crashed. Came back up a few minutes ago…just having crashed the current post I was working on.

WTF???????????

And speaking of “crashed,” a Toyota repairman is out there in the garage wrestling with the tank.

Speaking of “jobs we’re glad we don’t have…”

So far, this is been a pretty dreadful day.

If it can break, it breaks.

If it can bankrupt me, it runs up a gigantic bill.

 

Ohhh How I Wanna Go Home!

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Lookee here!  This — yea, verily: this very property — IS the Ranch. The beloved, endlessly missed Gold Bar.

Rustic, eh?

But oh, my… So pretty. So quiet. The air so clean. The cows so mellow. The little ranch house so sweet.

No, it wasn’t really “home,” at least not for us. Maybe for our ranch manager and his wife. But we were city slickers, up in Yarnell for the occasional weekend.

Still, I would’ve loved for it to be “home.” Not a chance, though. We didn’t have enough net worth to buy the property — neither did any of the law partners. And what on earth would we, a pair of city kids, do with umpty-thousand acres in the middle of nowhere?

Just wanna go back, though.

Day from Hell…on Steroids!

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Jayzuz, what a day!!!!!

Fought with my son all afternoon. Car crapped out. Should take it to the Toyota place tomorrow and waste half the day sitting around there.

But squabbling notwithstanding, His Princeliness mounted his white charger and galloped into battle with the Toyota dealership, bless him! So he’s going over there tomorrow morning to extract the doodad from them.

hoooboy! No doubt just how he wants to spend half the day! 😀

A day or so ago, we got a WONDERFUL HANDSOME BEAUTIFUL HIGH-POWERED PICKUP from the Toyota guys, as a loaner while they worked on my car.

Ohhhhhhh Emmmm Geeeeee!

I want it!

Besides being kewl beyond kewlhood and blessed with a killer souped-up engine, it would be awesome for camping…but more to the point: all-around awesome just to drive the streets.
Seriously: it’s so much fun to drive, it might be worth considering for a future vehicular purchase.
Hmmmm…. S’ppose I could buy a new car like…tomorrow, maybe?
😀

Still Kickin’…

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…after a fashion.

Nine in the morning:

I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up.

My (elegant! spiffy! beloved!!) walking stick is lost. Must have carelessly left it in the park. Wasn’t there this a.m., so presumably some dear soul found it and made off with it.

Bought that at a crafts fair and have dearly loved it for years. Heartbroken at losing it.

Lo! though… Turns out you can get one like it on Amazon! So…whenever I shake free of my present daze, I’ll order one up.

In other Departments:  They’re jacking up our car insurance. As if it weren’t already stratospheric enough.

If we had decent public transport here, I’d just get rid of the car. But…this ain’t San Francisco, and so no, we don’t have decent public transportation. So I’ll have to draw down money from retirement savings to pay for effing car insurance.

And no: one can’t do without the stratospheric insurance, even if one were foolhardy enough to try that: it’s against the law to drive around uninsured here.

In still other sylvan fields… How glad am I that I passed on buying a fancy new condo in fast-Yuppifying downtown Phoenix? You, too, can live across the street from a pile of po’ folks!

Nothin’ basically wrong with po’ folks, o’course. The problem is, a lot of them are po’ because they’re freshly out of the slam. (Phone soliciting is a prison industry.) Or because they’re too mentally ill to hold a job (and so impose on you for handouts…every time you stick your nose out your door).

***

Today is the Day of Woden, which means we’re comin’ up on Cleaning Lady Day.

And how can I say how much I do not feel like getting off my lazy butt to clean house for the cleaning lady?

Yes: Cleaning Lady Day means you get to clean house:

  • Pick up the litter
  • Clean up after the dog
  • Put said dog’s toys away
  • Find some clean sheets
  • Iron pillowcases
  • Put away make-up, hair stuff, bubble bath, whatnot whatnot and more whatnot
  • Straighten up the office desk
  • Put away the kitchen clutter
  • Move the car
  • Unlock the back gate’s padlock, so she can get in and out with the trash

……gaaahhhhhh!  On and on in that vein….

Hmmm…. Unclear whether she’s over at WonderAccountant’s already. She goes to two or three houses a day, arriving last at my place…the poor creature must be dead exhausted at the end of every workday.

Car in WA’s driveway…but it doesn’t look like the Cleaning Lady from Heaven’s vehicle. It may belong to one of WA’s clients…in which case, I’ll have an extra hour or two to loaf before WCL shows up at my door.

ringy dingy ringy dingy ringy dingy…

Another goddamn phone solicitor. The damn phone jangles with phone pitches ALLLLLL DAYYYY LONG! That’s with the number unlisted, with Caller ID, with Call-Blocking.

I use the Call-Blocking feature to sidetrack calls from California, the East Valley, and various towns around Arizona. This actually helps a lot. But apparently nothing a phone customer can do — short of unplugging the goddamn phone — will block all the nuisance calls.

Apparently the nuisances can communicate with each other, though. I’ve cut a fair percentage of nuisance calls by

SCREEEEEAAAMMMIIIIIING

into the goddamn phone when one of the ba*tards calls. Because they wear headphones to do their job, a whistle or an air horn or even a good long LOUD scream hurts their bastardly ears. They do have lists warning their colleagues off. So if you make it hurt enough to pester you, you’ll get on their do-not-call list.

Unfortunately, there are dozens of those, just as their are dozens of phone solicitors. You have to keep up your blast-the-ears campaign to cut the pestering calls to any degree.

Life in the Time of Nuisancing…