Coffee heat rising

funny

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r-r-r-r-r-o-o-o-a-r-r-r…

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Cop copter overhead. Again.

Jeez. Is the ‘Hood really so overrun with criminals that we must have police helicopters buzzing our homes almost every goddam night?

How effective are cop copters, anyway, at chasing off the perps? Would a cop in a patrol car do as well? Or one on foot, with a pistol in hand?

What a racket!

Hmmm… This evening they flew off fairly soon. Hardly hung around at all.

We have a LOT of cop helicopters buzzing the ‘Hood. And I do find myself wondering: why?

If you were a perp, wouldn’t you just dodge in under the oleanders to get out of sight? If you were in a vehicle, wouldn’t you s-l-o-o-w down to make yourself look like an innocent passer-by and then just toddle out of the neighborhood?

One does wonder…

Drivin’…Drivin’…Drivin…

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Had to cruise through the district called Moon Valley y’day. It’s a sub-suburb of the North Phoenix area. A dear friend and her husband — both now Late with a capital “L” — used to live there… I drove past their house, which, amazingly enough, is still standing.

“Amazingly,” I say, because the architecture up there is SUCH sh!t…it really is hard to believe those places remain upright. 😀

What junk. At the time my friends moved in, I went up to do some repairs and upgrades — yes, my daddy DID teach me how to use a hammer, a screwdriver, and a paint brush. And I was just astonished at the pi$$-poor construction. The walls and floors were such cardboard that when you stood there painting, barefooted, you could feel the heat radiating into the structure a good three feet along the exterior walls and into the living room. You don’t even wannna know what their summer power bills must have been!

Still…despite the junk building, it’s kind of a pretty area: upper-middle-class, neat and tidy, nestled in among the desert hills.

Drove all over the tract, wondering if I’d like to sell the Funny Farm and move up there.

And…well…the answer is No. Not on your life!

While my house isn’t exactly Buckingham Palace, it’s nevertheless reasonably sturdy. Centrally located. Almost within walking distance of my son’s house. Absolutely walking distance to an Albertson’s supermarket, a beloved Sprouts fancy-Dan overpriced grocery store, a storefront doctor’s office, and a train line that would take you to the ultra-beloved AJ’s market and to the kid’s house, if you had the patience to deal with Phoenix’s public transit.

{sigh} I do miss my friends, though. They were a good 20 years older than me, so it’s not surprising that they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. But gosh. They were fun and smart and full of ginger!

Why can’t humans live forever?

Mid-century Joy!

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Oh, my. You cannot imagine my mother’s joy when, along about 1957, we came back to the United States to find…ohhh gosh! FROZEN FOODS!

No mere packages of frozen veggies: no indeed, but whole meals — meat, veggies, starches — neatly packaged in tinfoil pans, ready for you to warm up in the oven and toss in front of the Brat, ready to eat.

The Brat, conveniently enough, had never seen any such marvels before, out in horrible Saudi Arabia, and so had no idea that frozen slop is still slop. 😀

No idea at-tall.

***

Just tossed a fistful of frozen spinach and another fistful of frozen French fries on the grill. 😀

Nooo, we did NOT have microwave ovens, back in the Good Ole’ Days.

Nooo, living in a mid-century high-rise San Francisco apartment, we did NOT have a gas grill.

My mother wouldn’t have known what to do with either of those. What she knew was to stick the tinfoil pan, fresh out of the freezer, into the oven. Let it overheat the pan’s contents. Haul it out. And dump it on a plate in front of the brat.

The brat, having no more  clue than her mother did back in the Day, thought that was just real cool.

😀

Make no mistake: my mother could cook.

Oh my, could that woman cook!

It was just that…well…she’d druther not. And especially she’d druther not clean up the mess after cooking a full-on family meal.

😀

Her excellent grandson can cook.

Oh my, can that young man cook!

And I do believe that’s one of several reasons she would have been thrilled to know him. If only she’d lived another 20 years(+). How extraordinary she would have thought he is!

Because, as a practical matter, that’s what he is. Even today, in our extraordinary times.

Arfa Arfa OUCH OUCH!

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OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!!!!

Come about six o’clock at night. Nothing will ARF do but what we must ARF a doggy-walk around the park. That’s about a mile’s dog-drag.

Ohhhh goodie…

We start out.

Drag drag yank yank drag drag HEEL, DAMMIT!!! Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..

Ohhhhh Hell  Enough is arfing enough. The human commits an about-face and hauls the Dawg back to the house drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..  And lemme tellya, that HURTS the sore, tired hands.

We trudge back toward the house. The neighbors no doubt feel their suspicions are confirmed: I am nuts. Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…finally make it back to our front yard. Up to the door. Into the house.

Ughhhhh!!!!!

The feet hurt. The shins hurt. The hands hurt. They all hurt like the dickens: the friction makes the peripheral neuropathy kick in with a vengeance. So we get yank yank hurt yank burn burn yank yank hurt hurt ROAR with pain.

By now the Human is royally pi$$ed. The Dog is dragging with all her wolfish strength.

Sheee-ut! My fingernails are lifting off the nail beds, which makes the yank-fest hurt even more than normal. By the time we get back to the Funny Farm, the Human is uniquely pi$$ed.

Now the feet hurt, the hands hurt, the chronically pained lips hurt… f-u-u-u-u-c-k!!!

Sez here the last time I took an ibuprofen was 2:2o a.m.

Hmmmmm…. Pretty sure I dropped one in the afternoon. Whaddayabet that’s 2:20 p.m. Hmmmm…

It’s after 6:00 p.m. now. So…presumably another one won’t poison me.

Swill an ibuprofen and a B12 pill. EEEEWWWWW!!!!!

I hate bolting down pills almost as much as I hate being stabbed with shots.

Smear the last of the CBD balm on the chronically burning lips. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out and buy some more of that stuff. Ugh!

CBD cream and balm are the only things I’ve found, so far, that work fairly promptly and effectively on the horrid neuropathic pain.

Dunno what is causing this ailment and dunno what might make it go away. All I know is, it hurts like the dickens. Very, very tired of it.

Too early to crash in the sack: it’s not even 6:30 yet. In the unlikely event that I should fall asleep now (give or take an hour), I’d be up at 1:30 in the morning: for the duration.

I hate laying awake through the wee hours almost as much as I hate tingling and burning from fingertips to elbows.

Dammit! Even my teeth hurt!

One of THOSE days…

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LOL! Yep: this here is “one of those days.” You know: the kind where nothing goes right and everything you touch goes SPRRROOOOIIIINGGGG!

If I touch it, it breaks. If I do nothing, some idiot shows up at the front door trying to peddle stuff.

Looks like the irrigation system has gone on the fritz. Plants are dying — and as spring melds into summer, will be dying faster and faster. Dialed the phone number on the system’s control box and…uh oh! A machine answered, and whatever mumbo-jumbo it emitted seemed to indicate that I had seriously NOT reached a yard-care company.

So now I’ve gotta track down someone to do that.

Later.

On a smaller but pestier level: Something’s wrong with my fingernails. Infection?? Injury??? Neurosis run amok????  Dayum.

So now I’ll have to traipse to the dermatologist, halfway across the damn Valley. But…first I have to go down to my son’s house and retrieve my car.

Through a baroque series of little fiascos, he ended up with my car in his garage. His house is too far away for me to walk there {well…I could, but a) it’s getting too warm for long outdoor junkets and b) I don’t wanna}…so now I don’t have a car.

For the moment, this is No Big Deal: two large supermarkets lurk within easy walking distance, and that doesn’t count the beloved Sprouts across the hectic road. So neither the dawg nor I will run out of any serious necessaries — not in the near run, anyway. But Phoenix is a very large city, and for most errands and appointments, you do need a car.

Dear Son has — of all the bizarre things — a job. Can you imagine? Remember those?

So he’s stuck in the salt mine from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Meaning I won’t be able to get my car back unless I walk down to his house or take a cab. Yes, we do have bus service…but it’s erratic, and between that and the drug-addled transients, one would prefer some other way to get around.

Prefer so much that it’s actually worth waiting till 5 or 6 o’clock to retrieve my car.

{chortle!} Remember back in the Day when you didn’t need a car to navigate from day to day? Remember when we had busses? Streetcars? Even (of all things!) taxicabs?

Ahhh, the good ole’ days, eh?

I can remember when it was safe for a 12- or 14-year-old girl to get on a city bus (NOT a dedicated school bus) to ride through two neighborhoods and a commercial district to get to campus. Today…hmmm…. I very much doubt I’d let my kid do that, here in the lovely 21st Century.

O’course…that was in San Francisco, a whole ‘nother planet from Phoenix.

****

WOOT! There was my son, just now, on the phone announcing that his late-morning meeting got canceled and, incredibly enough, he’s bringing the car up here!

It’s a miracle! 😀

Seriously: I planned to walk down to his place or maybe take a bus, so he didn’t have to leave his desk.

Hmmmm…. Maybe he’ll let me take him to lunch. Let us see…

Soggy Doggy Day

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Just this minute: back in the door from a 90-minute Dawg Walk. At 9:15 ayem, it’s not exactly hot out there. But it’s warm. And it’s stuffy. Jet engines roar from the precincts of Luke Air Force Base. {chortle!} If you think that racket is annoying, you ain’t heard nothin’ and you don’t live in Sun City, right beneath the jets’ take-off pattern.

We ran late enough to miss the thickest swarms of morning Dawg Walkers. So: no near-dogfights, no zig-zagging back and forth across the streets to avoid the neighbors’ affectionate (heh!!) fur-babies. That was good.

We made it all the way up to Main Drag North, a path that takes us past the former home of a dear old Arizona Highways colleague, now long gone and much missed. Jerry Jacka, his name was. What a marvelous man he was!

So much missed, indeed… those wonderful Highways days! Wonderful people, fun work, great adventures.

But…nothing lasts forever, eh?

Jerry’s house — former house, I guess: someone else has the place now — is just a couple of acre-size lots south of Main Drag North. A perfectly horrible conduit of traffic and racket now…in the good ole’ days when Jerry and Lois built up there, it was out in the country. Serious country: mostly cotton fields and citrus orchards.

I used to drive past it (little knowing then about its occupant!) on the way from my parents’ house in Sun City (waaayyy out in the country then!) to my law-office job in downtown Phoenix. This was soooo long ago that it was before my job at Arizona Highways, which itself came after the bachelor’s degree and the stint at a major law firm. 😀

Who’d’ve thunk it, eh?