Coffee heat rising

funny

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RELIEVED…

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…of running around in the sun!  Whew!!!

WonderAccountant and I planned to get together this afternoon: meeting at her place. This would entail my having to walk over there…through 108-degree heat, according to the back porch thermometer.

Well. Ruby the Corgi and I have already traipsed through the heat, thankyouverymuch, and I can tellya: assuredly I don’t want to walk across even the one blacktop road between here and the WonderAccountants’ place!

Mercifully, when I called to arrange this forthwith, she suggested we put it off to another day.

YES!!!!!

Not to say HOOOOORAAAHHHH!

Yah: this was a chore that I absolutely positively was NOT in the mood for today. Any task that involves anything even remotely resembling math (of any variety) is over my furry little head. That’s why I hire WonderAccountant to handle my books, and it’s why M’hijito rides his stallion behind her to check on it and keep himself aware of what’s going on.

So: that was escaped.

And so was the (very short) trip across the broiling asphalt between our houses. Ugh!

Honestly, I’m coming to dislike living in Arizona more and more as the seasons turn. Spring and summer here, taken together, form a variety of Hell, so unholy is the heat. Just walking across the street entails armoring your feet with thick-soled shoes.

Where would I go, if I could escape this place?

Well. The San Francisco Bay Area would be my first choice. Either Parkmerced, where my mother and I lived when we first came back from Arabia and my father (a Merchant Marine deck officer) shipped out of the East Bay, or Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

Of course, I couldn’t afford to live in either of those places…but it’s something to daydream about. 😀

Failing that? Well…here in Arizona: we have Prescott, an upscale college town to the north of us. Or the Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson.

Otherwise? In general: meh! There aren’t many venues that are better than this place. Summers here suck, but the rest of the year, the climate is lovely. The district where I live is solidly middle-class, ringed with pleasing stores in easy walking distance of my house.

Truth to tell, I’d just as soon live out the rest of my life right here!

Balmy Arizona Day!

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Yeah: if you think this place is livable, you ARE balmy! 😀

No kidding: as we scribble — at quarter to 11 in the morning — the back porch thermometer reads 111 degrees. 

Sheeee-ut!!!!! This place is almost as hellish as Saudi Arabia…a venue whose weather defined Hell.

Just back from a stroll around the ‘Hood with Ruby. 

Nooooo….of course I wouldn’t have taken her out if I’d realized we were headed into an oven.

But by the time that reality dawned on me, we were halfway around our course. So we had to keep going: turning back would have been six of one, half-a-dozen of the ‘tother.

We did make it back to the Funny Farm. But…now my hair is drenched, crown to collar. Shirt is wet with sweat, too. But…I ain’t changing clothes or washing hair until the fans here in the family room get the body cooled down.

Today’s balmy climate is reminiscent of what we endured — for ten endless years — in Saudi Arabia. Soggy, brain-banging heat IS summer on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

At least here, the phenomenon will disappear after a few days. It’ll still be hot, but it won’t be steam-room hot. 😀

Gawd, but I hate this kind of Saudi weather.

Seriously: HOT and WET was what we endured for nine seemingly endless years on that shore of the Persian Gulf.

How my mother, an Upstate New York girl, survived that monstrous interlude puzzles me to this day. She didn’t, really: by the time we left that garden spot, she was hideously sick. Amoebic dysentery, as it developed. She spent weeks in a hospital back in San Francisco and…really…never fully recovered from it.

Passed a small crew of lawn dudes, sitting in the shade of a tree partaking of liquids and food. Stopped to chat.

How the HELL do those guys survive working in this unholy heat and humidity? They must be made of asbestos!

At any rate, if I didn’t have Gerardo on the string already, I might have inquired as to whether they wanted a job.

WonderAccountant wants me to go over to her office this afternoon. Why? That escapes me. Seriously: after that stroll, my brain is SO FRIED that I can’t remember why we’re getting together.

Really, it’s just not that hot: high clouds have now cooled us down to only 100 degrees on the back porch. But it’s so humid out there that it feels like lovely Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Humidity is 32% just now. Chance of rain: 34%.

Ugh! WHY do I stay in this unholy place?

Pleeeze, God! Take me back to San Francisco, where I belong!

Weirdness of Widespread Ignorance

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{Chortle!} After I went on and on yesterday about the silliness of my own stupidity, now it’s my turn to bellyache about others. To wit:

Have you noticed that people no longer can follow directions that include words like “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west”?

No kidding. Many, if not most, people do not know which way those are. If you tell someone to “turn north” at a four-way intersection, they really and sincerely do not know which way to go.

Once again, I explained to some babysitter whom my son had hired to ride herd on me that to get here she needs to come west across Neighborhood Lane, turn south on Innumerable Road, and then come one block down to Erewhon Alley. And by golly…once again the person could not find Erewhon Alley. BECAUSE she did not understand which way is west and which way is south.

Substituting “left” and “right” presupposes that the errant driver is going in a given direction as she approaches the ‘Hood. But…after she gets on the desired entry street, she could be coming our way from any of three directions!

So…once again, yesterday’s babysitter ended up in NeverNever Land. And I never ever did see her.

It can’t be THAT hard to figure out which way is left and which way is right; which way is north and which way is south. Almost all the repairmen find the place with no problem. Then I realized: these women are driving their own private cars. A guy whose job is to drive all over the city, going to addresses where he has to fix air conditioners or barbecues or plumbing, probably has a GPS in his truck.

Questionable whether a woman whose job is to sit in a chair all day and watch you sit in a chair all day is bright enough to learn how to use a GPS. But measurable IQ or no measurable IQ, without a doubt the problem is that most of them don’t have a GPS in their car. 

Geez! Problems of the 21st Century, eh?

Argh! What next, Lord?

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Why does everything crash on your head at once?  Ever notice that? Let one thing go wrong, and EVERYTHING ELSE goes haywire!

Just now I’m trying to cook a piece of salmon on the grill…and not having much luck. Appears the gas burners are on the fritz.

They seem to be burning..but…on “low as low can go.” Can’t fire the thing up enough to actually COOK the meat.

This, …

  • While my son has purloined my car, so I can’t get to a repair shop
  • While it’s so hot you can hardly breathe out there
  • While the babysitter my son hired to supervise my every moment (and prevent me from sipping a glass of wine…) hasn’t shown up — and probably went to the home of a neighbor whose street number is the same as mine (just one block north)
  • While I don’t have anything else in the fridge and so need that grill to work…or else will have to cope with a giant mess in the kitchen

Yep: the grill is definitely busted. I’m probably gonna have to buy a new one. And that’ll set me back a couple hundred bucks. Or more.

Uhhhhh….

Waaait-a-minute… The damn thing is set on “Low”!  Whaaa????  No wonder it won’t cook the fish!

That’s a mistake I’ve never made before…not in a good 50 years of outdoor grilling!!!  Senility: it’s sneakin’ up!

Or maybe it’s galloping up….

 

What is WITH people??????

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G*ddammit! I just went out in back to tidy things up, and there I discover some moron has dragged my gas barbecue OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE GRAVEL-COVERED YARD and effin’ LEFT IT THERE!

It’s out of reach of the gas canister, so I can’t even turn it on to grill a piece of hamburger.

And it’s way, way, WAY too heavy for me to heave around!

What the F*CK is the goddam MATTER with people?

Seriously: WHY would a person do anything so stupid?

The only thing you can figure is deliberate maliciousness. Haul the thing away from where it belongs and make the Bitch Homeowner drag it back all by her birdbrained little self.

Goddammit. Now I’ve got to find a male neighbor or worker to come over here and haul the thing back into place.

If I knew which yard worker or pool worker pulled this stunt, I’d call them on the phone and FIRE them. RIGHT NOW.

But of course, I have no idea. We have…

  • Pool Dude
  • Three or four landscape maintenance guys
  • Possibly some guy I called to work on the Que (don’t recall just now)

Goddammit!!!
And further goddammit: the link to the ‘Cue image suddenly doesn’t work!

******trying again*******

Okay….I shanghaied the neighbor —  who works out of his home — to come over and drag the grill back into place. Being male and pale — and about 100 pounds bigger than me — he was able to do this without too much trouble. Other, of course, than the interruption in his day.

Anyway, he was kind enough to traipse over here with me, reposition the BBQ, and make sure it works. It does seem to be operating the way it’s supposed to (…i hope), and so in a few minutes — after my rage settles down — I’ll go out and grill a piece of salmon and some frozen French fries.

Wish I knew which worker caused this little snafu. He’d be looking for another customer… But I haven’t a clue. 

“Hotter Than a By-Gawd!”

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LOL! That was one of my father’s favorite turns of phrase:

  • Hotter than a by-gawd
  • Hotter than a two-dollar cookstove
  • Hotter than a three-dollar pistol
  • Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk

On and on…. He was a good Texas boy, a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, and he had a suitcase full of little sayings like that.

😀

Who knows what he’d pull out today, if he were still among us! Thermometer in the shade of the back porch reads 103.  And yeah: he’d regard that as passing warm. Wunderground says we’re supposed to reach 109 today, though.

Me: just back from a dog-free stroll around the ‘Hood. No doubt not my wisest move of the day…. 😮

Probably ought to take a shower to cool down. But…well…I’m too lazy just now to regard cleaning the bathtub afterward as a lovely way to spend time this morning. And o’course, you fail to wipe down the plastic walls after a shower…at your peril. A giant scrubbing job is NOT what I want to tuck into the cards.

Meandering up the sidewalk, I passed workmen at a couple of houses — guys who looked like they were engaged in carpentry or painting. LORDIE! Can you imagine doing that kind of physical work in 110-degree heat?

And yes, it soon will be 110°…at least. Just now, it’s only 10:30 in the morning!

WhatEVER possessed my parents to drag us to Arizona???

Well, they thought Sun City was about the greatest innovation the human race ever devised: “No kids screaming outside my window when I’m trying to take a nap,” my father intoned, with pleased awe.

Adding to that bit of charm, Sun City was then and is now as whitey-white as  you can get. To my parents, that was a positive trait of the first rank.

That was in 1962: sixty-four years ago! 

Even today: an African-American friend of mine — a business professional — had the brazen nerve to buy a house out there. He was literally HOUNDED out of the place. Within six months, he sold up and moved out.

I suggested he buy the house for sale across the street from the Funny Farm. He declined. Apparently felt moving his blackness into our neighborhood was not a kind thing to do. Or maybe he didn’t care to dodge bullets flying down from the slum to the north of us…  😀

We are, after all, parked in lovely Sunnyslope: a crime-ridden slum of the first water.

No kidding. Parts of it — such as our neighborhood — are on the high side of upper-middle class. They qualify as North Central Phoenix, a tony district, indeed. But get six blocks to the north of us, and…hang onto your (hard-)hat!

Lordie! What a place!