Coffee heat rising

Month: May 2019

Conundrum of the Day: To Drive or Not to Drive?

by

So today’s conundrum — it’s huge, hyuuuge, I tellya! — is whether to dork around with scanning and uploading checks to the credit union or just to schlep them up there.

I need to pick up some groceries, too. The credit union is way over on the west side and the grocery stores where I would look for quality produce are way to the east or down to the south. And…few things do I hate more than driving around in Phoenix’s noxious traffic.

However…the other day I discovered a Fry’s (Kroger’s, for those in more civilized venues) over on West Peoria, conveniently on the way (more or less) to the credit union. The neighborhood is sketchy. But probably only a little more so than mine. It doesn’t look, at a glance, like the parking lot is too dangerous to walk across — and now that I no longer carry a purse slung over my shoulder, there’s relatively less risk of mugging.

So much do I dislike the scan/scan/crop/crop/upload/upload hoo-hah (x however many checks you have to deposit) that really…sometimes I’d actually rather drive all the way up to the CU and just fork the money over to a teller.

This is do-able when I have to go to a Costco, too — a decent Costco resides on that side of town, only about six or eight miles from the credit union. (Yeah…jolly, eh?) It’s also relatively safer than the one closest to where I live — although you’ll see a fake crippled vet sitting in a lawn chair holding up his sign at one of the entrances to the parking lot, you never run into anyone in the lot actively accosting you to panhandle.

Don’t need to make a Costco run, though. All that’s really needed is just enough produce to tide me over until next month’s Costco junket. Which, we might add, I would like to put off as long as possible.

Meanwhile, I need to meet people.

Do I want to meet people? Not especially. I’m happy enough here in my cave. Indeed, I’d be just as happy if the cave were in the side of a slab of southern Utah sandstone. But…I suppose, for one’s mental health, one needs to meet people.

Also, conveniently, I’ve discovered that folks who crave to be published writers will pay The Copyeditor’s Desk’s going rate of 4 cents a word, just to get me to read their golden copy and advise.

For the current client, what I’m doing, really, is instructing: essentially teaching the guy creative writing techniques at about the university sophomore of junior level. This is pretty easy for me…because of course it’s what I spent 15 years doing at the Great Desert University. It crossed my mind, as I was contemplating that project, that I could actually offer to teach people creative writing, along with editing their copy. And that would be worth paying 4 cents a word for.

Or more. Whatever the market would bear.

The problem is, I’d need to find folks who crave so much to give their golden words to the dark and the waiting sky that they’re willing to pay for the privilege.

Well, here in Amazon’s Self-Publishing Dystopia, the woodwork is crawling with writer’s groups, some small and some large. This weekend one meets downtown, at a coffeeshop associated with the Episcopal Cathedral — and one can (usually) park for free in the Cathedral’s lot.

To engage oneself with this group, one has to send in 1500 of one’s golden words for members to read and critique, and then print out a half-dozen copies for the purpose.

Do I want to do this?

Hm. The cave beckons (don’t leave me, humann!)

Well, I could send them the current chapter of Ella’s story, which no, I have not updated since I sank into the current slough of despond. It’s actually about 1800 words, if you count the blurb at the top. Close enough, I reckon.

How much explaining do I want to do, though? Do I seriously want to tell a passel of wannabe writers that I consider publishing stuff on Amazon to be a colossal waste of time and effort, and that I publish my stuff for free at my website, where it probably garners more readers than books on Amazon get? Do I really want to tell them that if you want to succeed as a writer you have to succeed as a marketer, and that if I wanted to spend my time marketing, I’d be making a decent living selling ad space for magazines, peddling cars for Toyota, or hawking refrigerators and stoves?

Not. so. much.

Well, I really don’t know. As you can see by the length of this squib, I’m having quite enough trouble bestirring myself to get off my duff and drive to a credit union & a grocery store.

 

Household Laziness

by

Dog-hair-in-vacuumSo…what with the dental surgery coming along just as two large paying projects landed on my desk, I’ve allowed my laziness about household chores to get completely out of hand. The chore-a-day scheme worked exceptionally well until I let it go, not feeling well enough to be bothered with scrubbing bathrooms and mopping floors.

Beloved Cleaning Lady stopped coming regularly quite some time ago, which was fine by me, first because spreading the chores out over seven days a week makes the housecleaning plenty manageable and second because I can’t afford to have her show up here very often. She proposed to come by once a month, but as a practical matter, she’s not getting here that often.

However, in the absence of Cassie the (Long-Haired!) Corgi, cleaning help is scarcely needed. Cassie shed a lot of hair. Ruby hardly sheds at all. The dog dunes have disappeared, and if it’s not raining the floors actually can be maintained simply by swiffering and light mopping, since the house is completely tiled. Two dogs track in a lot more dirt than one: Ruby hardly makes any mess on the floors. And since I do most of my cooking on the barbecue these days, the kitchen doesn’t get very dirty, either.

This means each of the proposed daily chores is pretty lightweight.

That notwithstanding…letting it go does pose a problem. After two weeks of loafing, the place needed to be cleaned, even if not very desperately.

Conveniently and out of the blue, though, Beloved Cleaning Lady emailed and said she wanted to come tomorrow for a major housecleaning frenzy. Great! said I. She does a lot better job with these chores than I do, and so if she comes in and gets the place shoveled out, I’ll be able to keep the mess at bay for another month or two.

But then yesterday she emailed to say she’s not feeling well and isn’t coming in as scheduled.

Alas.

Meanwhile, though, I had weaseled out of SDXB’s planned day-waster, so — with the exception of needing to finish a chapter in one of the current client’s books — that left today and tomorrow to do the work myself.

😀

And then some…

The pool is hazing up again. This, it develops, is symptomatic of algae growth…and yup…a test this afternoon showed the chlorine level was again down to nil. This, even though I’ve returned to using the big tablets in the floater.

With this new surface, I guess, I’m going to have to test the water every day. That is what we call a nuisance. Of (heh!) the first water. The pool seems to run out of chlorine very quickly.

As soon as the sun is low enough this evening, I’ll add a couple gallons of liquid chlorine. That seems to do the trick, where the granulated chlorine and the tabs fail. Have to wait until the sun is no longer shining on the surface — sunlight quickly degrades chlorine. And of course, I’ll have to let the pump run overnight, jacking up the power bill again. pbhthpbhthpbhthph

The weather has been so bizarrely cool this spring, the water is still too cold to swim in — and it’s the end of May! That is weird!

Did get into it for a few minutes this afternoon, but it’s pretty bracing. And of course now I won’t be able to go in again until the chlorine levels drop to a more or less safe level.

At any rate, the problem pretty surely is that I’ve been letting it go. I need to set a time each day to go out there and check and adjust the chemicals. That — can you imagine? — would resolve the problem.

But in the meantime: today in BCL’s absence I changed the sheets and ran the laundry, so now will get to spend the evening ironing in front of streaming Amazon shows. Wheee!

 

 

Weaseled Out!

by

Ohhh naughty human! SDXB has been trying to wrangle me into a day trip. The poor guy has been working at it literally for weeks. Nay, even months. He wants to drive up to the newly revived Castle Hot Springs, a historic resort that has been massively and expensively renovated. Every time he’s made a plan, though, something has come up to dash his hopes — usually rain.

Well. Entre nous, I’ve been to Castle Hot Springs, and I’ve been to expensive fancified historic resorts, most notably the Greenbrier. And I kinda think once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Simply haven’t been able to work myself up to much enthusiasm for this proposed junket.

He put up another lady friend of his to come along on the trip…which is good…because… Along about 5 p.m. I realized said journey was going to occupy the entire damn day tomorrow. And…there’s no way I’m going to go off and leave a dog door big enough to admit a 200-pound man standing open with only a 25-pound pooch between some sh!thead and a houseful of possessions. Including the cute, highly stealable pooch herself.

In a desultory way, I e-mailed M’hijito and asked if he could come by during the noon hour and let her out. He said he would be working at home tomorrow and I could leave her at his place. To do that and then get out to Sun City by the appointed hour — 8:30 in the freaking morning — I’d have to feed her; feed me; get myself washed painted combed, and dressed; and leave the house by no later than 7:3o. Matter of fact, 7:15 would be more like it. Then after dropping off the dog, brave the unholy rush-hour traffic on the 17 and the 101. Then along about 5 p.m., repeat the process in reverse.

Whee. What fun.

When I hadn’t heard back from the kid — after all of about 15 minutes — I told SDXB that I felt it would be cruel and irresponsible to leave the dog here with no way to get out and relieve herself all day. He seemed…unsurprised.

Oh, well.

 

Joys of the Day

by

Today has been a day of small joys. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Just imagine…

1. The phone stopped jangling

Yes! The minute the new CPR v5000 Call Blocker was plugged in, the nonstop robo-harassment came to a proverbial screeching halt. The nuisance call rate is down from upwards of a dozen a day to one. That’s right. And none of those once-a-day nuisances have come at some wacky hour like 7:30 or 8 in the morning or 8 or 9 at night.

2. The clindamycin pills ran out.

Woo hoo! I got through the whole ten-day prescription without any noticeable side effects!

Yet.

You can enjoy a C. difficile infection as much as six months after a course of this stuff. That’s the worst of a raft of potential unpleasant outcomes.

Really unpleasant. SDXB’s former wife died of a C. diff infection. On her living-room floor. She lay dead for two days, before a neighbor and friend came over to check on her, looked in a window, and saw her corpse there.

Wonder-Endodontist recommended scarfing down probiotics whilst taking this fine drug, so I went out and bought a box of that stuff at Sprouts. Look it up on NNT: as a prophylactic to head off C. diff-related to antibiotic treatment, 42 people have to be treated for 1 person to be helped. Among high-risk patients, 1 in 12 is helped.

Yeah.

Well. It’s better than none. “C. difficile infection is the leading cause of gastroenteritis-associated death,” says NNT, “and was estimated to cause 14,000 deaths in 2007.Although almost half of infections occur in people younger than 65, more than 90% of deaths occur in those 65 and older.” Since “65 and older” appears to equate to “high-risk,” it looks a lot like swallowing this stuff is worthwhile.

But swallowing it is a challenge. You have to take three a day on top of the four clindamyacin horse pills, and the probiotic pills are also horse pills, about the same as the Big Gulps of the antibiotics.

My plan is to finish the entire box, which included enough pills for another five days. Then for the next six months or so, eat plenty of foods allegedly rich in the magical probiotics. I already do that, because I eat a slice or two of cheddar cheese almost every day. I hate yogurt, but can tolerate it mixed with other foodoids, such as soups and sauces. And I’m very fond of fresh (unpasteurized) sauerkraut and kimchi. Love olives — this house has two trees full of them, and I happen to know how to brine them in the Greek manner. One site claims chocolate contains probiotics…that, too, I eat in modest amounts every day.

3. Amazing weather lingers

It’s the end of May — by now summer should be y-cumen in. But no! It’s 60 degrees in the morning, and the days are still cool enough to loaf around outdoors all day long. That is weird.

The place is overrun with doves and tweety-birds. This afternoon I bought another gigantic bag of birdseed from the WalMart, since the little dinosaurs have gone through the existing supply.

Also cleaned and refilled the hummingbird feeders; relocated one to the newly pruned paloverde tree.

4. Finally deposited about $2,000 worth of checks. I hate the credit union’s at-home deposit function. Sometimes it’s so time-consuming, especially if you have several checks, that it’s less annoying to drive up there and drop the checks off in person.

5. Pleased to recall that I put two grand aside in emergency savings: covered Luis, thank God. Luis and a sidekick cleaned out the front porch, thinned the giant mesquite tree, cleaned up the shaggy desert willow, trimmed the yellow oleander, pruned the paloverde branches off the roof, and cut about a third of the looming goddamned Australian weeping acacia out, thereby eliminating most of the risk of the damn thing falling on my house or my neighbor’s during this summer’s monsoon winds. For two day’s heavy labor by two men, he charged $940. A bargain, I’d say.

6. Remembered that I needed to download all the checking account transactions since the first of the year. The credit union has upgraded its system so it took all of 5 minutes to download 6 months’ worth of data for 3 accounts!

7. When I put off a chore because I hate doing it, I tend not to do the other chores I’m supposed to do that day. Then I put everything off and get nothing done. The ditzy bookkeeping tasks done, I went so far as to clean the bathrooms and pick up most of the litter and run a load through the clothes washer.

Woot!

8. Then it was off to Walmart, Walgreen’s, and Costco, what fun. Got an external hard drive, needed for Time Machine backups, for $10 off, it being the last one on the shelf. Whilst ambling around Costco, remembered that the barbecue repairman was supposed to have shown up at 1 p.m. At this point, it was after that.

Luckily, the lines were short. Flew out of the store and raced home, but by the time I got here it was 2:00 p.m. However…

9. The BBQ guy had let himself in. By the time I got here, he had about fixed the broken igniter switch. Then he cleaned the entire, very dirty unit. Thing looks like new and works as well.

All in all, it was a productive and pleasant day.

Or would be, if I could count… 😉

 

Attacked!

by

Yesterday evening Ruby and I were trotting through lower Richistan, past a house that a young couple with kids is renovating, when the morons’ 80-pound German shepherd roared out of their front yard and attacked my little 25-pound corgi. I tried to grab her and pick her up off the ground, but every time I’d reach for her, the dog came after me. Ruby, meanwhile, being a shepherd dog herself, after a second of terrified shrieking, shifted into full defensive mode and launched herself at the attacker.

Fortunately, the pooch’s humans heard me screaming and came running to call off their dog. But not before the animal had harassed and terrified me and my dog.

One of their cute little kids hollered after me, as I was stalking off down the street having delivered to the parents a volley of…uhm, shall we say “vulgar criticism” at high volume, I’m sowwy!

{sigh}

God, but I am tired of stupid. What IS it about people that they think neither common sense nor the leash laws apply to them and they can do as they please as long as a cop isn’t standing there watching?

Our house. Can you believe this place went on the market recently at over a million dollars?

True: it’s scary living here. I was among the cohort who gentrified Phoenix’s historic (and now spectacularly overpriced)  Encanto district. The ’Hood is effectively the New Encanto. And we have similar problems with transients, crime, and endless assaults on our quality of living by moneyed interests that own the city government. Encanto had (and still does have) many more transients than we see up here. Its Zip code had the highest per-capita drug use rate in the city, and the crazy (sometimes horrifying) incidents occurred so often that our office manager used to ask me, come Monday mornings, what new tale I had to tell. And I usually had one.

What were those tales? Ohhh…the day a burglar murdered an elderly neighbor by chopping her to death with an axe he found in her garage. The night a man tried to bump a lock in the exterior door of a room next to where I was sitting in front of the television (and was within about a second of succeeding when I realized what the noise was, ran to the front door, and screamed FIRE!!!!!!! at the top of my lungs). The cat burglar/rapist on the roof. The guy who watched a neighbor until he knew when her husband was out of town (which was fairly frequently), cased the house until he found the only window that wasn’t wired for a burglar alarm, climbed through it, and spent the night beating and raping her. Little things like that…

Consequently, I’ve had German shepherds all of my adult life. And I’ve had them explicitly as protection dogs. Only now that I no longer have the physical strength to handle a large, high-drive dog have I switched to smaller breeds. Here’s what I’ve observed about the breed, after several decades of handling its representatives.

First lemme tell you somethin’: if you bought yourself a GerShep to protect your kids and their buxom mother, you need to know about German shepherds. And you need to have better sense than to leave your dog out in an unfenced front yard.

The German shepherd has been harmed in many ways by overbreeding to develop “guard” tendencies. The result is often an unstable disposition, which can make for a very dangerous dog. Consequently, if you choose to own a German shepherd, you need to keep it under control at all times, and you need to be aware of its power and its potential to do harm. Yes: my shepherds have chased off home invaders (one poor guy is still running…said to be approaching Siberia about now).

Yes: my shepherds made it possible for me to walk around Encanto Park as a nicely endowed young woman without harassment. But I’ve also had a shepherd that tried to attack my mother-in-law and then me and then a veterinarian – the vet explained that some breeds are prone to a kind of mental illness that causes this behavior, and that once such a dog launches into an attack, it cannot be called off. This, he added, is the direct result of ill-advised breeding practices. If, like me, you’re a German shepherd fan, you should be aware that these conditions exist.

A German shepherd is like a .38. You don’t leave your revolver sitting on the coffee table. Similarly, don’t leave your German shepherd sitting around an unfenced yard and don’t let it off the leash in public. It’s a good thing to protect yourself – but not if you put innocent people’s safety at risk.

Harmless as the new-blown snow…

Life as a Cascade of Chores, Punctuated by Weirdness

by

This morning I planned to do one (count it: 1) stupid little chore in the yard: Pull out the woody, four-year-old chard plants, add fresh soil to their pots, and reseed them with new chard.

How hard is this, I ask you? Does this not seem like a straightforward little task?

Well. No.

Nothing is straightforward around this place.

First off, when I went to pull out the superannuated chard plants, I discovered the reason they seem to be fading from this earth is not so much senility as that the dirt in their pots is bone dry.

Lovely. Of course, the truth is, I’ve been lazy in the weirdly cool weather we’ve been having. It’s almost the end of May — summertime in these parts — and I have to put on a jacket to take the dog for a walk at seven in the morning. At 7 a.m., the porch thermometer says the temp is in the 50s.

Normally by this time the potted plants have to be watered every day; otherwise they’ll keel over dead. That is literally true: once the heat comes up, an outdoor potted plant will die in one day if it’s not watered. Daily. No exceptions.

But it just isn’t getting that hot here. Or hot at all. Ergo and alas, I’ve neglected to accelerate the watering chore from once every few days to every single morning.

A little exploration revealed that every pot in the yard is bone dry.

Sooo… “Seed the chard” turned into “rescue the plants”…

Thus one chore morphed…and morphed…and remorphed:

• pull out the senile chard plants >
• add dirt to other pots >
• soak the amaryllis bulbs in the garage work sink >
• pull out the (now tired) Mexican primrose that volunteered in gay profusion between the flagstones >
• reprogram the watering system >
• pull an overgrown Easter lily cactus out of the Mexican frog pot >
• repot the cactus >
• find a place for the cactus to live (maybe) >
• fish palm tree debris out of the pool >
• Add more chlorine to pool >
• Brush pool steps and walls >
• fertilize the potted rose plant >
• fertilize the potted ficus >
• fertilize the potted palm >
• reset the irrigation drippers and sprayers in effort to get water on all or most of the potted plants >
• set manual hose sprinklers to deep water the parched pots, back and side yards >
• pull half a dozen palm seedlings out of the potted rose’s pot >
• haul the yard trash and household trash out into the alley >
• refill the bird feeders…

Not bad for one simple chore, eh? You’ve heard the fable of the tailor who killed three with one blow? Welp, I killed twenty, thankyouverymuch.

Sooo… By the time I finished slamming around, all I wanted to do (tell me: IS this unreasonable?) was to sit down in my newly tidied little garden, put my feet up, and have a bourbon and water whilst writing this blog post.

Seriously. How unreasonable is this?

So I’m in the kitchen washing up a bit preparatory to pouring said bourbon and water and slicing a few pieces of cheese for a snack, when ker-YOWLLLLLL! YAPITTY YAPITTY YAP YAP YAP GODDAMN YAPPPPPP!!!!

Ruby goes off like a freaking air-raid siren.

She is on point at the garden gate and she is clearly very, extremely alarmed.

Well, by now I personally am too tired to be alarmed, but…I heard what set her off, too. It sounded like someone trying to open the side gate. Which, conveniently enough, is locked.

Numb with chore-exhaustion, I walk out, climb up on a rock, and peer over the fence. And see neighbor Terri’s yard dude standing next to his truck. He’s peering back at me.

Evidently he tried to get in the gate. He makes no move, and I assess the situation as harmless.

Though it must be said that Terri is capable of hiring some very serious flakes.

Did I tell you about her pool guy?

Yeah. She had this pool dude — she being one of those girly-girls who’s too damn helpless to clean the damn pool herself — who stole her brand-new Hayward pool cleaner AND tried to trick her by replacing it with an old, worn-out piece of junk.

Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner and his many identical siblings cost about $350. Got that? He seriously thought he was gonna get away with foisting a used pool cleaner on her.

She raised proverbial hell with a proverbial block and scared him into bringing her equipment back. But…you see her taste in household and yard help, eh?

Reflecting briefly on the pool cleaner episode, I wonder if I should get the gun.

But, I decide not. He knows I know he knows I know he’s out there, so he’s probably rendered harmless enough for the nonce.

I go back in the house to pour the proposed, long-deferred bourbon and water…but…of course… Yard Dude fires up his weed-whacker edger.

Sumbiche. What a fuckin’ racket!

So much for sitting outside to unwind and enjoy the (cool!!!!) (breezy!!!!) afternoon.

Give it up. Draw about 50 gallons of hot water into the bathtub, soak my aching body, wash my hair, listen to Terri’s chucklehead weed-whack and then mow the front and the back.

By the time I get out of the tub, he’s loading his gear back in his truck. And I’m thinking one thought: what the f*ck did you think you were doing, dude, trying to come in my gate?

Well, it’s easy enough to guess: he needed some piece of equipment, like a hose spray attachment or maybe a whole hose and he proposed to steal it from my yard.

Oh well. By the time I get out of the bathtub, Yard Dude is loading his gear back into his truck. And good riddance to ye, brother!

I pour the b&w after all. Break out the fancy walnut cheese purchased at outrageous cost down at the AJ’s.

So far, nothing else has happened.

Yet.