Coffee heat rising

funny

This post may be a paid guest contribution.

Hotter than the Hubs; Ever Amazing

by

Holeeeee maquerel, is it hot out there! In the shade of the patio shade structure, tucked away among the leaves and branches of the big old ficus plant, the thermometer measures 108 degrees.

My excellent son charged out into the blasting heat and returned with a pile of chow and treats from the Sprouts — sparing me from having to hike over there or do without. “Do without” being the most likely operative term… So now Ruby and I are well fed and loafing on the big bed — very late in the afternoon, early in the evening, it being 5:30 p.m. and still hotter than the Hubs.

Hubs outside, Hubs inside: it is just plain HOT, every which way you turn.

And lookee here what just popped up on the ever astonishing Internet! If this true (the ever-nagging if, eh?), it may cut off the pending Alzheimer’s in its tracks! Lithium is pretty easy to acquire: you can order it from Amazon!

Clearly we’re very early in that game, though. Don’t think I’ll be ordering the stuff from the Internet until we see what, if anything, it really does.

Interesting, though….

How’m I Gonna Get it???

by

Well. I ain’t a gonna get it. 

Wine, that is. From the nearest fancy yuppy grocery store. Because I can’t get to said store without risking my life. And I ain’t a-gonna risk my life for a bottle of Sauvignon blanc.

No kidding: As we scribble, the temperature in the deepest shade of the back porch registers 108 degrees. Humidity is 19 percent.

My son has kiped my car, so I can’t drive the five blocks or so to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s to snab a bottle of wine.

And just now I would like nothing much more than a nice cold glass of white wine.

Could call Uber and have my neighbor Uber driver schlep me across the street, through the unholy heat, to snab a bottle at the Sprouts. But…seriously?????? 

Nope. I’m desperate, but I’m not so desperate as to hire a cab to drive me four blocks to a local grocery store.

Man!!  It is hotter than the hubs of Hades here this afternoon, even though 108 just isn’t that hot. It must be a bit humid out there, making the heat feel more intense than it is.

So I reckon tomorrow morning I’ll turn out of the sack early and show up at the store as the opening bell jangles. Yea verily: They all open at 7:00 a.m. So if I’m at their door at seven, I should be able to snab a bottle or two of booze and get back here before it gets dangerously hot.

{chortle!} You couldn’t do that in Sun City. Leastwise, I don’t recall that one can. Not unless you lived right next door to the shopping center. The place is VAST.

Lately I’ve considered following SDXB out to that indeed vast, monotone retirement city. It would have a few advantages: lots of other old bats; probably less traffic and fewer screaming ambulances; no kids yowling. But…

Well…been there, done that. Don’t think Sun City is my Thing.

****

SDXB just called from Seattle, where he’s visiting his sister and brother-in-law. They have a lovely home there, up north where the weather is cool at this time of year.

His sister is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Heaven help her. That’s about the saddest news I’ve had in life: she’s an active, vivacious woman, very outdoorsy, very lively. To be crippled up with an ailment like that must be seven kinds of torture.

Well. Rather few of us are gonna get out of this place without some kind of torture, I guess. About the best we can hope for is that it will be relatively brief.

****

OMG!!!

M’ijito just showed up at the door. He went by the grocery store and surfaced with bag after bag of loot — even including a bottle of white wine!

Gosh. Now I won’t have to make a grocery run for the better part of a week. And I won’t have to sneak off to my favorite secret wine shop to snab a bottle of addictive slosh.

Wow!

Tried to get him to stay for dinner, but he took off like a cannonball.

See? That there would never happen if I were parked in Sun City!

😀

OMG. Not to say ha ha ha hee hee ha hah! 

He brought me a bottle of — hang onto your hat — zero alcohol white wine!

Zero flavor, too. It’s billed as Sauvignon blanc…and it has about as much flavor as tap water.

It was very thoughtful, though. What a sweetie!

And interesting to get ahold of the zero-alcohol stuff: now we know what it tastes like. Or…uhm…doesn’t taste like. 😀

 

ohhhh well….

by

11:20 Friday night:  And dayum! 

Here I thought this vicious ailment was getting a little better…but ohhhhh no! It’s back with a burning, tingling, hurting vengeance.

LOL! Do not annoy the Gods of Pain, whatever ya do!

Seriously, by evening I (stupidly) did think it was slacking off. Getting a little better. Becoming tolerable. Har har har! 

Not. So. Much.

Sure am tired of hurting. Wish this thing would go away…or I would go away. Whichever is necessary to make it stop.

The little dawg turned out of the sack a little early for her wee-hours perambulation of the backyard. It’s only about 11:30. She usually lasts till 4:00 a.m., give or take.

Because the ‘Hood is infested with coyotes — any one of whom would enjoy a delicious 20-pound dog as a midnight snack — I have to go outside with her and stand around until she does her Thing. Then lure her back into the house. That’s not a terrible thing to have to do, really. One could do without the background music of constant ear-whistling. But ten minutes or so in the backyard of a pleasant night….that’s OK enough. I guess.

Ugh! Still wonder what those two officious social workers — ostensibly from the State of Arizona — wanted when they descended on me. And still marvel at the incredible luck that Luz the Wonder-Cleaning-Lady happened to have visited early enough to have shoveled out the pig-pen before the nuisance women showed up. That was a bizarre visitation — from the two officials, that is. What the Hell were those to up to?

Whatever it was…wasn’t good, of that you can be pretty sure.

***

That dose of ibuprofen I dropped seems to have helped a little. Let us try to get back to sleep!

😀

 

Eeeps! Sell Car? Get Free? Whaaaaa!

by

O…M…G…  Contemplating the idea of selling the car, as I was throwing myself around fixing dinner, suddenly gave me SUCH an emotional overload that, briefly, I thought I was gonna pass out.

Such is the power of cultural tradition, eh? 😀

Told M’hijito about this idea. To my amazement, he didn’t seem especially exercised about it.

But he’s kind of a calm guy, in a lot of ways. Maybe he figured this is not something to make a big deal about.

Hell, maybe he figured I wasn’t serious.

We’ll see about that…

Meanwhile, the kitchen has stopped spinning, for the nonce. Hope it stays put awhile longer!

********

And…uhm…used Toyota Venzas are selling in the vicinity of 20 grand!  And UP!

Yow!!!!  Can you imagine? That would buy one helluva lot of Uber rides!!!

And Yet ANOTHER Wild-Eyed Radical Idea…

by

Hmmmm…. If you read my past few posts, you’ll get the distinct impression that I’m in the middle of some kind of life-changing revelation. Changes to the left of me, changes to the right of me, wack-shit ideas pouring in from all directions. 

Well, it’s not quite that radical. But something has happened that presents the potential to make some major changes. And to save big, BIG bucks.

What happened?

My honored son pilfered my car out of my garage. Drove it off and locked it up in his garage. This apparently resulted from a) anger at me and b) some sincere concern that enough of my marbles have rolled out my ears that really…maybe I shouldn’t be driving.

Upshot: for the past two or three weeks, I’ve been doing without a car. In the 115-degree heat, we might add.

And y’know what’s happened?

Nothing. 

Got that?

Nothing. NOTHING, nary a disaster, nary even a noticeable inconvenience has happened. That’s what’s happened.

And…why hasn’t my world ended? Well…

It turns out that if you live in a sufficiently urbanized area, you very well may not need a car.

And why not????

BECAUSE… here in the city you have busses. You have taxicabs. You have trains. And you have reasonably safe streets leading to the nearest grocery and drugstores.

No kidding. Within easy walking distance, I have…

* A Sprouts
* A Walgreen’s
* An Albertson’s
* A Fry’s
* and an El Rancho

Got that? FOUR SUPERMARKETS(!!!!) and a drugstore within six blocks or less of the Funny Farm. Mostly less. Significantly less.

Furthermore, directly across the street from the Funny Farm, we have a guy who’s driving an Uber!

So if I don’t feel like walking a few hundred feet to the nearest store, I can hire the guy to haul me over there, and carry the groceries back here in his car!

My son probably thought he was inflicting some kind of disaster on me, in the moment that led up to this scheme.

But no.

What he was doing was creating a revelation. 

To wit: in a large city saturated with public transit AND with private taxi services, you don’t need a car!

Think o’ that.

And think  how much you spend on the damn car(s) in your garage and driveway, hm?

You could rent a LOT of Uber rides just for the insurance premiums on those tanks. Add in the car payments (if you’re still coughing them up), the gasoline, and the regular servicing and…hoooleeee mackerel!

Get rid of the rolling hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money and you will save a TON of change!!!

You want a swell ride to go someplace special or take a vacation trip? Forgodsake, RENT one. There’s a car rental place less than three blocks from my house.

So. There’s the Question of the Day:

WHY HAVE WE BEEN SPENDING ALL THIS CASH ON A CAR PARKED IN OUR GARAGE OR DRIVEWAY?????

Why, indeed?

My car has been parked at M’hijito’s place for the past ten days or so. And y’know what?  I haven’t missed it!

So a New Plan is shaping up:

  • Have him sell the tank for me.
  • Bank the proceeds.
  • Convert the garage into an arts-and-craft workspace, and
  • Invite friends over to paint, draw, model clay, or whatever other artsy thing suits their fancy.

I might even rent the garage to an arts teacher to use as an artist’s studio.

From a hole in the ground into which to pour money
to
A money-making asset…
Mwa ha ha! 

Think o’ that!

Now that I’ve cleverly figured all this out (it only took…how many years??), I’m reminded that when DXH and I spent several months in London, we never bought or rented a car. We got around on foot or by public transit. Never did we feel especially inconvenienced.

Actually, that’s wrong: a couple of times we rented a car to go sight-seeing in the countryside. Never for longer than a day, though.

Why d’you suppose Americans feel we all must have cars?

Well: advertising and marketing, of course. But the truth is, going car-free may prove to be a hugely liberating experience. We shall soon see, eh?

Idle Reverie of the Day

by

Hotter than the Hubs outside. No car…not that I would go anywhere if one was sitting out there in the garage. Wasting time on the Internet.

One of my fave time-wasters: real estate ads. Another fave: reminiscing about growing up, and our time in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This little place looks kinda like my relatives’ home in Berkeley. Pretty li’l bungalow, early 20th century. Gosh, I miss that place, that neighborhood…my aunt, my great-grandmother. If I could move back there right now, I’d be outta here like a rocket.

It was sooooo pretty! Had a pie-shaped lot with a lovely little backyard. Its own garage (!!!!). Sat on a hillside street that took you right up to the stop for the train that ran directly into San Francisco. Overall, in this genre…

My great-aunt worked at Crocker-Anglo National Bank — one of the highest-ranking female staffers ever to come along — and so would walk up that hill every morning, five days a week and ride that train across the Bay.

She stayed in this sweet little house after my great-grandmother — her mother — passed away. Then eventually her son talked her into moving to an apartment in downtown Berkeley — I think she’d quit her (very!) longstanding job at the bank by then. And finally he put her in an old-folkery — uhm, an assisted-living facility — in the East Bay. She was at the end of her 90s when she kicked off. Just as her mother was: longevity runs in my family.

This reverie brings me back to the question of the day, which is will I be able to stay in my beloved home here until I die?

And I’m awfully afraid the answer is gonna be NO.

Not a chance, Duckie!

By way of background: I want my son to have this house. Given the family trend toward living a century or so, I probably will have to give it to him well before I croak over.

A hopeless lone wolf, I truly LOATHE living in communal settings. So the prospect of having to move into an old-folkerie makes me cringe. But short of jumping on a bus and heading away into the hinterlands, I don’t really see how I’m going to avoid it.

* I have no family to take care of me in my dotage.
* If I do live into old age, I may not even be able to care for an apartment, to say nothing of a house, a yard, and a pool.
* My son has…you know: a life. Remember those? It’s hardly fair to ask him to take the time when he’s not laboring at his job and devote it to caring for a crippled-up old lady.
* And, logically enough, the answer to these little challenges is simply to move into an institution whose whole purpose is to babysit elders until they topple over into the grave.

Our culture has changed, over the past 20 years or so, in ways that make it a lot easier to stay in your own home without having to gad about the city. Without having to drive.

Consider Amazon and its ilk, for example. You can buy almost anything your beady little heart desires online…and have it delivered to your door. Even prescription drugs can be dropped at your house or in a mailbox.

And THAT…yes: that is HUGE. It relieves you of hours of driving, piles of risk on the city streets…hot dayum.

But it still may not be enough to keep you out of the old-folkerie.

It occurs to me that one might be able to hire a helper — such as my cleaning-lady extraordinare — to stay with you during the waking hours, keep an eye on you, be sure your kitchen is stocked and your laundry is clean, be sure you get fed. Yea verily: Luz (the C-L extraordinare) says she has done exactly that.

One expects she’d still be doing it, if that were what she wanted to do. But if she’s around when the time comes, I surely will ask if she’d like to alter her job to become a care-taker for me instead of a cleaning lady for half-a-dozen gringos. We shall see.

But failing Luz, there may be some other candidate. Yea verily: we shall see.