Coffee heat rising

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Melted!!!

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Argh! I overestimated the heat when I went for today’s exercise stroll. As we scribble, Wunderground claims the temp is 111 just now. “Feels like 117.”

Is THAT all?

Yeah…well, I’d have guessed 119. 😀

It feels like freaking Saudi Arabia out there, where we lived on the edge of the Persian Gulf: hot, humid, and suffocating. And yes, that place was capable of reaching 120 degrees. Nooooo problem!

So, 117 degrees doesn’t seem THAT out of the ordinary. Eh?

This is one of many days that make me wish I were back in San Francisco. Where I belong.

Ohhh well. That ain’t ever gonna happen again. My son is here, and I’m not leaving as long as that’s the fact.

{sigh}

Most of the time, Arizona has a tolerable climate. It does get absurdly hot in the summertime, as we can see by today’s balmy afternoon. But the winters are lovely, as are most of the spring and fall days.

That notwithstanding, I do wish my parents had never discovered Sun City, the garden spot that drew them here. Boyoboy! Imagine a whole gigantic subdivision where NO KIDS ARE ALLOWED!

Goodie.

You were allowed to live there if your brats were over 18 or off in college. I was 16.  So…

They engineered a deal with the University of Arizona whereby I would start my freshman year there a year early. So it went: I dropped out of high school at the end of my junior year, and they dragged me to Arizona. Soon as we got here, they exiled me to Tucson.

That I was all set to go to UC Berkeley the following year meant nothing to my father. (Well…he himself was a high-school dropout, and the truth was he understood little or nothing about universities and university education…) They yanked me out of school, sent me off to Tucson, and with great delight moved themselves into a pleasant tract house under the flight path of the war planes from Luke Air Force Base.

The cute little Sun City house was my father’s lifetime gift to her. And she was SO delighted with it! Seriously: she even made herself relish the roar of those damn fighter jets: as the pilots practiced, she’d sit out on the back porch in the morning sipping her coffee and simper, “Ohhhh! it’s the sound of freedom!”

Yeah, Mom… The sound of World War III comin’ our way…

She loved it, though. So it was a beautiful thing he did for her, after decades of marriage living in difficult conditions.

Charging off to college a year early was a nice ego trip for me…though it wasn’t the greatest of all possible ideas. At 16, I really was too young to go off by myself. I did OK — the UofA was hardly the most challenging of all possible higher ed institutions.  But I would have been better off waiting a year or two. And FAR better off going to one of the University of California campuses.

Not that I did all that poorly: I did graduate Phi Beta Kappa. But my social life left something to be desired. Like, for example…a social life.

So…heh! I guess you could say my life was melted. Just as I was melted by today’s blasting heat on the sidewalks of the ‘Hood.

And that was one of the first reasons that the phrase “I hate Arizona” became my byword. 

Here We Go Again…

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Dammit! Cop helicopter buzzing the neighborhood to the west of us.

By golly, I’m tired of this stuff! Every time you turn around, here’s another Happening.

Part of it is because we live directly south of a low-income, high-crime district. SOMETHING is always going on up there.

Only way to get away from that is to sell my home and move to a higher-rent, lower-crime zone.

But ya know what? I LIKE my house. And I like my neighbors. And I like our location. And no, I do NOT want to move to some other district.

This is an old-line, moderately upscale central-city neighborhood. Prices here are moderate, too. Moving to a similar neighborhood in a “safer” part of the city would cost me a proverbial arm & a leg. And, as one cop remarked, it wouldn’t accomplish the goal. ALL neighborhoods in the Phoenix area are plagued with crime.

Crime is endemic here. You can’t get away from it.

So, no. There’s no point in spending 87 gerjillion dollars to move to Scottsdale or Moon Valley or…whatnot. It’s all of a kind.

Another Unlovely Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all NOT enjoy it.” 

Ugh. Not yet 9:00 in the morning and it’s 100 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Some asshole has messed up my watering system. Spent altogether too much time trying to undo that fiasco and get water going on the plants. (Any amount of time on that mess is too much time…). Time spent in ungodly heat.

Goddammit! I hope it wasn’t Gerardo or one of his guys who did this! If I find out that’s the case, he is sooooooo fired!

Kinda doubt it, though. He has worked here for years, and nothing like this has happened before. I reckon it must have been a service man or a prowler.

How to keep any such worthies out of the backyard escapes me, though. The guys from the power company and the city water department have to get back there to fiddle with things. They’ve never done anything like this before, and since I’ve done nothing to offend them, I kinda doubt the perp was any of those guys.

Problem is, they have to get back there to do their job. So I can’t change the locks on the gates…it will keep them out as well as the sh!thead who f*cked up the watering system.

So now I’ve somehow got to catch Gerardo the next time he surfaces here — or else call him on the phone and pester him. He’ll need to untangle that mess and get the system working properly again. And…won’t he be thrilled!

Maybe I could sneak a motion-sensitive camera back there. It would run whenever ANYone strolled into the backyard, so would rack up Gawd Only Knows how much time wasted studying the images. But at least it might catch the jerk.

Hm. Another thought: how about installing a motion-sensitive bell back there? Then anyone who walked into the backyard would cause it to ring BING-BONG inside the house…then (assuming I was home at the time) I could see who was roaming around.

Or…I could just post a sign reading “SMILE! YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA!”

Chortle! If the jerk believed it, maybe he’d stand down.

How I Got to Arizona…

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And  now, after yesterday’s astonishing mercury level, it’s only 108° in shade of the back porch. That’s comin’ on to 5:00 p.m.

Brrr! Get out the sweaters!

Can  you imagine? Honestly! I could brain my parents for dragging me to this hellish place. They made me skip my senior year in high school, betook themselves to Sun City, and shipped me off to the University of Arizona in Tucson. This, so that my father could retire to Sun City.

Understand: I planned to attend the University of California at Berkeley…and was well on my way to qualifying for that when they yanked me out of high school.

Did they understand that there was a qualitative difference between the universities?

My mother certainly did. I doubt if my father did — or if he cared. He wasn’t interested in giving me a fancy education. He was interested in retiring. ASAP.

What a mean thing to do to me, after I’d worked my butt off through high school to get into Berkeley!

Did he understand that? Sorta. Kinda. But…I doubt it.

He was a blue-collar boy, through and through. In fact, I’m not sure he even graduated from high school. The minute he qualified to get into the military, he joined the Navy. From there (his health sagging), he went into the Coast Guard. After that, the rest of his work life was dedicated to the Merchant Marine. Well…except for the ten hellish years with Saudi Aramco.

He did pretty well in the Merchant Marine, by the way. Especially for a guy who had exactly zero higher education.

Give him credit: he paid for all four years of my time at the University of Arizona. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and, after marrying a lawyer, transitioned into a Ph.D. program at Arizona State University.

But…know that it had been understood that after high school I would go to Berkeley, move into with my great-aunt and great-grandmother in their  bungalow (which had room to accommodate me nicely), and get the bachelor’s degree from the University of California.

Which, we might say (by way of understatement), was a far cry from the U of A. And an even farther cry from ASU.  Did he know that? Well…I kinda doubt it.

He was a workin’-class boy; grew up in Texas chasing the rear ends of cows until he made his escape by running off to the Navy.

And he was not about to diddle away his retirement cache to send his girl child to some fancy college. After all, what was a girl supposed to grow up to do? Be a wife and mother, of course. And ya sure didn’t need a college degree for that!

Today the UofA has a much improved reputation, regarded as one of the top 25 U.S. universities by Times Higher Education. Well…it wasn’t like that then: back in the day it was renowned as a party school. And I got in a year early with a middling-high grade average after three years of taking five solids in high school.

The upshot was that I landed a degree from what was then a mediocre institution but what is now pretty well regarded. Who’s to know, eh?

So…here we are in 2026, still in Arizona.

Do I regret not going to UC Berkeley?  Damn right!

Do I regret taking three degrees from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University?  Not really.

Hey. It’s better than nothin’, eh? 😉

Those degrees did get me a high-test husband and a university faculty job, so I can’t complain too much.

But still…sometimes I do wonder what would have been the outcome if even one of those degrees had come from Berkeley.

Well. We’ll never know. 

Hotter than the Hubs…AGAIN

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Or maybe make that “STILL”?

At 11:30 in the morning, the thermometer in the darkest part of the back porch reads A HUNDRED AND TEN DEGREES. 

Yeah: we’re talkin “in the shade.”

So. It’s another balmy day in Arizona…leave us all despise it. 

Seriously: I do have to say that if I could escape from this place, I would. RIGHT NOW.

Actually, I would’ve escaped some time ago…

Where would I escape to?  

Probably the San Francisco Bay Area, whither my mother and I emanated some years ago.

When my sea-faring father retired, the two of them betook themselves to Sun City, here in fricasseeing Arizona. Looked ideal to them: NO KIDS.

And yes, they did hate, loathe, and despise kids. And anyone whose skin color differed from their own.

To my mind, that communal sentiment out there makes Sun City a highly undesirable place. Hate does not seem like an ideal foundation upon which to build your life.

Ohhhh well. To each his/her own, eh?

My part of town — the North Central district — is considerably better educated and considerably more humane than [un]lovely Sun City. Hate is not the foundation upon which this part of town was built.

But still…it’s hot. It’s miserable. And it ain’t San Francisco.

If I could get back to the City, I sure would. But as a practical matter, I can’t see how that would happen: Just can’t afford it. And as a sentimental matter: my son is here and I ain’t movin’ away from him.

Lucky him, eh?  😀

***

Jayzuz! Just now we have water pouring –– and I do mean POURING– on one of the trees in front. Poor little plant looks like it’s about to keel right over.

Once the timer runs on that, I’ll have to drag the hose across the yard to another parched victim.

See what I mean when I say that I hate this place? Those trees, like all the other plants in the Funny Farm’s yard, are on an automatic watering system. Regular, timed watering is not enough to keep them alive in this f*cking heat.

That notwithstanding…you don’t even wanna know what the water bill is gonna look like.

Ugh. When I say I hate this place, I do mean I hate this place.

*****

…hose drag hose drag hose drag hose drag hose drag…

Okay, we got PART of half of the front yard watered. Meanwhile, other environs are more desperate. Sooo…

Dragged the hose into the backyard. Got it running on the paloverde tree and on one of the roses.

The rose plant is dying. I very much doubt that it’ll survive.

So much for the watering system’s timer, eh? It was set to water those damn plants every day, in this heat.

Yeah. Okay. After this, I’ll have to do a hose drag EVERY DAY until the weather cools.

  • Westside roses
  • Potted plants on the east-facing side of the west wall
  • All four citrus trees in the backyard
  • The mountains of cat’s-claw vines climbing on the north wall — vines that are struggling to survive

On and on and on. Apparently the watering system has crapped out in some way…but I can’t find the problem. That means I’ll have to hire an irrigation guy to come in, figure it out, and fix it.

Goodie.

And some moron butched up my rolls of masking tape. So, to post new charts for my guys, I’ll have to order more of that from Amazon. No, I cannot drive to the store: my son has kiped my car. No, I cannot walk to the store in 110-degree heat.  And Amazon gouges you upwards of $4 for delivery.

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

Gaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Migawd. Nobody could have been this stupid! Nobody could have fu*ked everything up this elegantly without knowing what he was doing.

*********

Seriously: No one could have made a mess like this by accident. No. They deliberately dorked up everything in my yard!!!

Wish I knew who “they” might be…so I could fire them.

This is, no doubt about it, purposful vandalism.

 

Waiting for Godot…uh…for the Babysitter

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Banging around: Load the breakfast dishes into the washer, feed the dog, make the bed, clean up the bathroom, rescue the dog from another choking frenzy, wonder how I can get her to a vet without my car… On and on and on.

One of the babysitters is due here pretty quick. And that, to put it mildly, is a nuisance. Of the first water!

Everybody does things a little differently. So these women come to my house and see all the weird things I do — the way I make the bed, where and how I store the dishes, how I address the week’s laundry, and on and on — and whenever what I do is different from the way they do it, they think I’m a nut case.

And so they undo everything I do and rearrange everything the way they do it.

As a professional nut case, I find this stuff beyond annoying. It’s frustrating. It’s a nuisance. It’s fukkin’ enraging!

To have a cleaning lady come in once every week or two and do everything the way she’s used to doing it: that’s fine. But every freaking day??? Not so much.

***

Ugh! Hot, gray day outside. Not raining, but humid to the point of soggy. Very uncomfortable.

As Ruby and I trot around the neighborhood each morning, we pass crews of workmen slaving away at repairing houses or building new additions. How on earth they manage to do that sweaty physical labor in this horrible, humid heat: that escapes me.

****

It’s after nine, and the babysitter hasn’t surfaced yet. Probably stuck in traffic. At least one of these women drives all the way into town from a farm community located about halfway between here and Tucson. Horrible trip! It must take her a good hour to get here. At least: by the time she hits town, she’s also hitting the worst of the rush hour.

Who knows? Maybe I chased the poor soul off with my crabby personality. I hafta say: I do rather resent having someone in my home all day, every day.

My lone-wolf temperament makes me uncomfortable with long stretches of company. An hour or so of togetherness: that’s fine. But the whole damn day? Not so much!

This morning I really should go to a grocery store. But it’s too damn hot and humid to walk there.

We do have an Uber driver living right across the street, though. I may impose on him to drive me someplace to get supplies. Later. Much later.

Actually….hmmmmmm….   I wonder if he and I could make a kind of standing appointment, whereby he would pick me up at xx time on yy day, every week (maybe even two or three times a week?) and schlep me to the stores and to appointments.

If he would do that, it would solve the transport problem. Because the Funny Farm sits on the north end of a highly commercial district, I can get to most places on foot or by lightrail. But…I ain’t fond of public transport (next time I have to put up with another sh!thead, I’m gonna murder the ba*tard!). So…if I could hire a driver to show up here at a regular time on a regular day, I could get just about everyplace I need to go (barring doctor’s and dentist’s appointments).