Coffee heat rising

UN-Be-LIEV-able!

Literally unbelievable, as it happens today.

This afternoon, in came a hustling piece of snail-mail, trying to get me to Send Money Now and HURRY to sign up for that wondrous product. It looked like BS to me…sort of. But..but…sort of NOT.

Actually, it seemed to be trying to say my homeowner’s insurance is expiring and I need to renew a policy…right now!

Fortunately, the WonderAccountants were home. They live right across the street.

So I took the wad of paper over there. They looked at it and shortly decided it was a scam. Out with it!

Actually, it took them a few minutes of studying the thing to come to that conclusion. You can be sure that if they were given pause, I would never have been able to figure out that it was a scam.

Lordie! This stuff just comes avalanching in on us! When you need a professional to assess the validity of a piece of junk mail…ohhhh gawd! What kind of world DO we live in???

What incredible luck that those two wonderful folks moved into the house across the road! They’ve saved my tail feathers more than once!

Hummer Vandals

Okay, so I lost patience with replacing or repairing the stolen/damaged hummingbird feeders in front. Took them down. Refilled them, hung them from eaves in the back yard. Behind an eight-foot concrete wall and a set of locked gates.

What a shame!

You can’t even have a stupid little decorative bird feeder hanging from the front-porch eaves of your house.

Seriously: what IS the matter with people? Stealing every damn bird feeder some idiot homeowner hangs out on her front porch?  Is that REALLY so much fun that you do it over and over?

It begins to make the (hideous) prospect of moving into an old-folkerie look better and better. You can be sure no one is going to steal a bird feeder from a balcony on the sixth floor of The Beatitudes.

Depressing as Hell, ain’t it?

Turned Upside-Down in Space?

Holeeee maquerel! WHAT is going on here?

Just tried to call my son, thinking it’s about dinnertime — around 6:30 in the evening.

But…

No….

No, folks: it’s breakfast-time!

It’s not 6:30 in the evening. It’s 6:30 in the morning!!!! 

Understandably, he was pretty peeved at being rousted from the sack at this hour.

And I’m pretty scared.

Scared that I’m so turned around and so goddamned confused that I don’t know whether it’s morning or night!

****

How terrifying!

Well. I guess this is a signal. And that signal’s meaning is pretty obvious:

Time to sell the house and move into a holding pen for the elderly. 

Guess I’m headed for the Beatitudes, a “life-care community” that stores you during the last months or (God forfend!) years of your life, as you rot away into senility.

Dear Lord! How I would ever so much rather be dead!

Seriously: I just abominate institutional living. Hated hated HATED living in the dorms in college. And now…goddammit! Now I have to end my life that way?

Time to look into alternatives. I simply cannot wind up my life locked into a dormitory for the senile. If I weren’t already crazy when they hauled me off to such a place, I would soon be stark raving insane.

There’s gotta be a better way to go. Let’s find out what it is. And…exit, stage left. 

And I stay here…WHY?

Jeez.

Lift the dawg onto the bed: Happy Dawg!

Turn on the heating pad, get it warmed up. Happy Human!

Climb into the sack, apply hot heating pad to spavined hip. Happy spavined hip!

Fire up the computer, start to explore the Local Gnus, and….RRRRROOOAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

Goddamned cop helicopter blasts over the house.

Presumably in pursuit of an even more goddamned perp…

What a garden spot!

Sick and tired of the unholy racket and crime and nuttiness and shit-headedness here in Lovely Uptown Phoenix.

Truly: if I could move away from here, I’d do it today.

But…but…where on earth would I go? Is there really any place that’s any better, and quieter, any less looney toons than this place?

Frankly, I think not.

One resident, for example, was attacked and apparently kidnapped from one of the most upscale suburban districts in the state. Like the cop said after my own neighbors were grabbed, tied up, and thrown in their bathtub so a pair of home invaders could clean out their house: “They’re everywhere. You can’t get away from them.”

Yeah: I’d remarked to one of the cops that I thought maybe I should sell my house and move to some quieter venue, and that was his response. “Don’t do that! They’re everywhere!”

Ugh.

I need to get Ruby a roommate in the form of a 90-pound German shepherd and me a new toy in the form of a .38enough is enough! 

Morning Has Broken…

Like the first day…
Blackbird has spoken,
Like the first bird…

Actually, we don’t have blackbirds here in the lovely Sonoran desert. We have telephone solicitors.

The ba*tards start calling you as dawn cracks. Ringy-dingy-dingy Ringy dingy dingy ringy…. If you have any fantasy about sleeping in, fuhgeddaboudit!

We’re told phone soliciting is a prison industry. Apparently, a large portion of these nuisance phone calls are coming from convicts, placed from inside local and regional prisons. Makes you wanna just hurry right out and buy whatever they’re peddling, right?

I used to blast a horn into the phone whenever the ba*tards would jangle me up. Now…well..that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And really: if the job is being done by people who are forced to it by their prison guards, I suppose it’s not every nice to try to blow out their eardrums.

I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not very nice to jangle me out of bed by dawn’s early light, either.

I’d disconnect the phone at night, if I felt safe doing so. But…I don’t. I’m here by myself, and if anything happens that I need to call 911, then…yeah: I’ll NEED to call 911. Now, not after fiddling indefinitely with the damn phone.

What a gorgeous morning!! 

Guess Ruby and I had better head out on our morning walk, before the day heats up. And so…

A-WAAAAYYY

Nothin’ Better to Do….

Jeez. Can you imagine? The locals have got nothin’ better to do than to sneak onto my front porch and steal my bird feeders!  They did it again this afternoon.

What bastards!

Welp: after this, the birds will have to repair to the back yard — behind locked, six-foot-high gates — to snack on their birdseed and their hummingbird juice.  Guess I could booby-trap the front patio with cameras…but really…. That does seem like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Literally: even if I catch them in the act, the cops aren’t likely to do much (or anything) about it. Like there weren’t better things to fill a police officer’s time?

It’s stupid and it’s petty. But it sure pisses me off!