Traipse to the credit union: pointless. Guy can’t tell me any more than I don’t already know, which ain’t enough.
Stop at a Fry’s supermarket to pick up a bag of candy to contribute to this month’s KidFest. FIFTEEN BUCKS (!!!!!!!) for a couple pounds of tooth-rot!!!
Cruise east across the city, dodging a variety of mobile nut cases. Head south of Conduit of Blight Blvd., and…
and…
HOLEEEE MACKEREL!
Not to say WTF IZZAT???????
Seriously: What the HELL is going on in the southwest Valley?
It looks — quite literally — like a bomb has dropped over there.Huge plumes of smoke are rearing up over the tract after tract after track of cheap suburban housing. It’s Orange County East, y’know: piles and piles of ticky-tacky, sold to young (mostly white…) families at extortionate prices.
Fly into the garage. Give WonderAccountant a call: Haveya heard anything?
No, she hasn’t. She fires up the boob tube and learns there’s some kinda controlled burn going on over there: “Don’t be alarmed,” we’re urged.
Uh huh. Keep calm. Unless you’re a duck, a quail, a baby quail, a deer, an antelope, or a stray cat.
Jayzuz. TELL me, somebody, puhleeeze tell me that I don’t live in this ludicrous place.
TELL me that the County Assessor is not threatening to throw me in jail if I haven’t paid some extortionate amount in property tax by…tomorrow!
No kidding.
Did a bill for this fine civic duty come before last week?
Well. Noooooooo…..
Okay, it could’ve. Could’ve been misdelivered. Okay. Sure. But if that’s so, why isn’t a WHOLE lotta other stuff misdelivered? So now tomorrow I have to do battle to figure out WTF that’s about.
One effin’ nightmare after another!
*****
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning
Welp…I still haven’t a clue.
It now appears that probably I indeed failed to pay this year’s county taxes. Tomorrow I’ll have to trek to the CU, find out if indeed the money was never paid, and if so, arrange to have them send it ASAP. Then somehow I’ll have to bust through the county bureaucracy to reach a human there and let them know the late taxes are on the way.
Presumably there’ll be some extortionate gouge for that, too.
It’s 1:15 a.m. What a great way to spend the night, eh?
Tired, cranky, mad as the proverbial cat, and…yep. Unstuck in time.
Remember these?
I sweartagawd! Life is one long frustration here in the endlessly annoying 21st Century. Stuff that used to be part of everyday life…well…it’s GONE. If you want it, you can’t have it!
By “part of everyday life,” I really do mean the most ordinary everyday stuff.
Like a trash can. Do you realize you can’t buy an ordinary stupid little steel kitchen trash can with a separate lid that you set on it? Not a gigantic one for raking up all the leaves and dogsh!t in the yard. Just a little fella about three feet tall, one that fits in the kitchen or the garage and holds the day’s cooking and cleaning debris.
The things are almost impossible to find, and when you do find one, it costs upwards of fifty bucks. For a fukkin’ TRASH CAN!
I need a non-chewable (read: metal) kitchen garbage can to replace my open plastic trash can in the garage. A metal garbage can with a firmly fitting lid that Rattie can’t tip over, can’t pull apart, and can’t climb into.
Otherwise, every single scrap of delectable-tasting and -smelling trash is going to have to be walked outside to the alley garbage bins, every time I need to throw something — ANYTHING — away.
What’s calling Rattie into the garage is, unsurprisingly, the trash can. Yum! Sooooo… NO LONGER can I put the garbage out there.
For the nonce, I’ve enlisted the refrigerator’s fruit and veggie bins as garbage bins. But…
a) They’re too small for the purpose; and
b) WTF am I supposed to do with the fruits and veggies when those bins are holding garbage?
Today I’m going to sally forth to a couple of my favorite Ace Hardware stores, which I hope MAY carry a real garbage can. Don’t hold out much hope, though.
What the HECK do people do with their daily garbage mounds? To take out every single plastic grocery-bag full of trash would entail trip after trip after trip into the alley.
This means…
* Either dig up a padlock key and unlock not one but two gates going out to the alley, and do this several times a day, each time remembering to put the padlock key back where you found it; or…
* Hike all the away around the end of the block and back up the alley, hauling bags of garbage after every single meal or cook-fest; then,
* Hike back into the house.
And believe me: you do NOT want to be strolling around that alley any more often that absolutely necessary. It’s just not safe.
There’s a reason the back fence has two padlocked gates going out of the yard…
Matter of fact, often I’ll pile the garbage cans into the back of the car and drive them up the alley. That way I can see whether anyone is around, and I’ll have a quick getaway if need be.
This accursed rat situation is beyond the pale. Roof rats started to invade Phoenix several years ago, and now they’ve pretty well spread across the city.
Yeah: I know: Get a cat.
In the first place, I don’t want another cat! We weren’t allowed to have dogs in Arabia (they would fight with the jackals that came into camp, pick up rabies from them, and then spread the disease to the local humans). So we had cats.
And cats…
And cats…
I never want to clean out another cat box as long as I live….
In the second place, Other Daughter’s herd of cats owns the neighborhood. If cats could get rid of roof rats, we would not have any rats here.
And in the third place, Ruby thinks cats are FAR more fun to chase than rats.
She may be right…
Well anyhow, back to the point at hand: The Invasion of The Rat Hordes means every speck of garbage has got to be sealed inside a tightly lidded container or else kept in the refrigerator until trash pickup day.
A-A-A-A-N-N-N-D-D-D…
****
Speaking of 21st-century joys, there I am tapping away on the accursed keyboard when
CLONK!
Off the goddamn thing goes. Dead. Black. Kaput.
Out of juice.
Does it matter that the goddamn thing has been plugged in for the past 45 minutes?
Nope.
Bang around bang around bang around bang around
Drag the computer to a cord. Be sure the fukkin’ cord is plugged in to the wall outlet. Plug it in. Fire it up.
Yup. It loads right up. And forthwith goes CLONK!
Dead. AGAIN.
Or is that STILL?
Bang around charge around bang around charge around bang around charge around finally find another charger cord. Plug it in to a different extension cord.
Cuss, swear, cuss, swear, cuss some more… At last the goddamn thing fires up.
It’s working. Supposedly the battery is all of 3% charged.
And THAT means now I’ll have to sit here twiddling my thumbs half the day waiting for it to get charged enough to be dragged in to Best Buy to get…
to get…
to get…
…ohhh hell! to get whatever it was fixed that needed to be fixed THIS time. I’m so upset and frustrated, I’ve FORGOTTEN the issue for which I needed to drag the damn thing in today.
Oh, I know: the fukkin backup issue.
It won’t back up data.
We’re told this computer has had no backups for 553 days.
That, of course, is ridiculous, because Best Buy had the back-up function working the last time I had to traipse back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to their store. That was one helluva lot more recently than 18 months ago. And the external hard drive is plugged in most of the time.
Jayzus!
Now, to add another distraction: In comes a nuisance email telling me, oooooh JOY!Medicare Enrollment is here, wheeeeeeeeeee!
So it looks like I have to jump through that set of frustrating hoops again, lhudly sing goddam!
Whenever I can draw a deep breath, I’ll have to call the Medigap insurance lady and find out whether I can just let this go, or whether this is yet another brain-banging hassle to kill time with. This means I’ll have to dig up her name and phone number, which quite frankly is the last thing I feel like screwing with just this moment.
See what I mean about Life in the Twenty-First Century?
Dayum! Dontcha just hate it when you wake to a morning when everything you touch goes SPROOOOIIINNNGGGGG!
Dawn cracked rather too long ago. It’s quarter to seven, which means the sidewalks will be swarming with other people’s dogs that “jus’ wanna pwa-a-a-y“…which is another way of saying “swarming with morons.”
I must not have wiggled all night long. My back hurts, my hips hurt…so much I can barely hobble around the house. Gulped down an aspirin with a piece of bread and butter (aspirin + no food = sick as a dawg). Fed the dog, who — sensing disaster a-pending — is now hiding under the toilet.
Lost my hair comb.
How the HELL can you LOSE an eight-inch-long fancy wooden comb???????
HowEVER, it’s now lost.
Ripped the tangles out of my hair with a plastic “brush” thing. That hurt a bit…grand way to greet the day.
Walked out into the garage to get…don’t remember what now, the brain having gone numb. There I found rat shit on the floor and signs that Ratty had quite a party out there.
Can’t put out rat poison without transporting Ruby to M’hijto’s house and leaving her there for at least a couple of weeks. Then before she can come back, the whole property will have to be policed to find any chunks of poison that have gone astray.
And no. No, rat traps do NOT address the issue. Rats are too damn smart to go inside a rat trap.
What’s needed is a large, hungry cat. Something along the lines of a Manx.
But to have such a creature in the presence of Ruby will mean getting it as a kitten.
How do I not want to bring up another kitten? Let me count the ways.
Belly is hurting like I swallowed a beaker of hydrochloric acid.
Got a lump on my lower jaw. Take recourse to Dr. Internet, and HOLY shit! Come across this serenade from the Mayo. Remove tumor/cyst and nearby teeth, tissue and jawbone; send for biopsy; reconstruct jawbone; inflict “medical therapy”; supportive care that includes “assisting with nutrition, speech and swallowing, and replacements for missing teeth…”
Couple years ago, I very nearly bought a handsome li’l condo just about in the middle of this garden spot.
As usual, I was craving to get away from the Tony Situation. One of the possibilities was to go all the way downtown and buy a place smack in the middle of everything. The development I found — which was, yes, right at this place, offered a brand-new condo just up the street from the Episcopal Cathedral, where I surely could have joined the choir. I wouldn’t even have had to drive to rehearsals…well…assuming I didn’t mind putting my life and my virginity on the line to walk back and forth to the church at night. 😉
Man! Some things are worse than a houseful of juvenile delinquents across the street!
***
LOL! Narrowly escaped heat exhaustion this afternoon, too. Ruby and I just got back from a late afternoon doggy-walk. Not very far: only about a mile.
But dayum! Thought I was gonna collapse before we got back here. It’s humid enough just now to make the crisp 87-degree afternoon a lot more uncomfortable than expected. The dawg was huffing and puffing and I was drenched by the time we got home.
Adding to the afternoon’s small annoyances… Ruby has a black thing on her upper lip that looks like a mole. Or something. That’s what the vet says it is: nothing to worry about. But to me it looks ominously like a melanoma.
So now I’ve got to drag her to ANOTHER vet, something I would eminently prefer not to do. But…it keeps getting bigger, and it scares the bejayzus out of me. Tomorrow’s Saturday…we’ll see which of the many money-grabbers I can reach tomorrow.
Nope. Nooo, I’m surely not a nice lady. Not if you judge by this afternoon’s antic.
Need to go to the credit union. Actually, this visit is overdue, and I really, really need to schlep way to Hell and gone across the west side to the CU’s office;
bang around bang around bang around bang around, collect all the junk to take over there, pile it in the car, lock up the dawg, back out of the garage, back out back out ba…waitaminit…
Whozzat guy?
Yeah. Some guy is out in front. He’s not a neighbor that I recognize. That doesn’t mean he’s not a neighbor. Only that I haven’t seen him before.
He walks eastward from the westerly corner toward our easterly end of the block. Turns around, walks back westerly again. He goes up to the front door of a house in that direction. But he doesn’t do anything: doesn’t knock on the door, doesn’t ring the doorbell, doesn’t pull out a key and stick it a lock. Huh uh.
He just stands there for a minute, then turns around and continues to walk up in our direction.
In the department of huh uh!, I don’t want this guy to see me pull out of the garage and cruise off down the road.
But DAMMIT, do I ever need to get to that credit union! Cruise toward the intersection with Conduit of Blight.
Think…nope.
nope nope nope…
Pull a U-ie, come on back to the Funny Farm. He makes a half-hearted sally toward another front door, then, as I cruise back to my house and back into my driveway, turns around and heads in the direction that he came from.
Park in the garage. Close the door. Stalk inside and pour half a glass of wine. Take up a position in the front courtyard, with the Killer Corgi at hand. Think ohhhh sheee-ut how paranoid CAN a city-dweller get?
Ruby barks at the kids in Tony’s institution.
The kids across the other street take up a game of basketball-tossing, always a delight.
Ruby ambles indoors.
Tom — Mr. WonderAccountant — comes home and parks his truck in his driveway, across the street.
My wine-glass is still half-full.
Should I ask Mr. WA to keep an eye on the Funny Farm whilst I make a run on the credit union?
How can I count the ways…not?
It’s a gorgeous afternoon.
I decide to avail myself of a beautiful day and a grand kid with a basketball and a fierce little dog and — especially — a glass of wine and a few slices of fancy cheese.
Why does this make me feel like a sh!t?
Well…
Because… Zat guy is a black man. Yea verily, a handsome black man. Yea verily, a radically middle-class-looking black man. But nay verily, not a gent of any color or ethnic persuasion that I’ve seen anywhere near that neighbor’s house.
Yep. He’s prob’ly harmless.
Ayup;. He’s probably a brother-in-law of one of the residents.
But…{sigh} Nope: I absolutely positively do NOT want this guy to see me drive off down the street leaving the garage empty. Nope.
Arrrrrghhhhh!
Would I have felt that way if he were white or Latino?
Possibly not. Surely not if he were white: I would have recognized him as not a neighbor. If he were Latino: I would have regarded him as possibly a neighbor but I don’t think so because I happen to enjoy Latinos and Latino culture and so I would have come to know him, at least to some degree, by now.
Friday: SO MUCH stuff I needed to get done while banging around this afternoon. Dayum!
At least half of it won’t get done. The other half — computer PITAs — can get done tomorrow, on top of a cruise toward the other side of town.
Next Monday: today’s PITA will remain to be addressed.
My mother’s mother was a glamour girl named Olive Getten. She apparently, to hear my mother tell it, was quite the flapper.
My mother claimed that she — my mother — was the illegitimately conceived offspring of Olive and a fella named DeLong, an a-scant offspring of a prominent turn-of-the-century family in upstate New York. Though the couple married, once my mother was born and given a proper family name, they divorced. My grandmother allegedly returned to California (or Illinois, or wherever her tribe was living at the time) and my mother’s custody was adjudicated to her father’s parents. In other words, my mother was raised on a farm in upstate New York by her paternal grandparents.
The more you learn about these people, the more jaw-droppers come your way:
Most striking: apparently my mother really believed Olive died in the mid to late 1920s, but that was not true. Olive evidently was still living in the 1970s, when my own son was born.
My mother believed she saw Olive die: that she passed in the Berkeley home of the maternal family and was carted out of the house into a hearse and driven off down the road.
This, apparently, was some kind of a trick. Very clearly, she did NOT die…she left many a footprint in the years that followed.
Olive may have married Jack Sansome, scion of a prominent San Francisco family. If that was the case, she spent at least part of her life as a very wealthy woman.
Somehow they hid this from my mother, OR my mother made it her business to deny it. HOWEVER, in other parts we learn my mother married Sansome: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85936198/john-colin-sansom
It’s not impossible that the Gettens themselves may have been fairly wealthy. In the 1920s, that part of the Berkeley foothills may have been pretty swell. According to my mother, the house on Hopkins was a Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff, if not an actual FLW design.
If this involved sub-plot has any truth to it, then how much did my mother know?
Did the Getten bunch lie to her? If so, did they do so in cahoots with Olive?
Why?
Or did they evict Olive from their family and their lives, telling her she would be dead to them henceforth?
If so, how did they put her up to the fake cancer death? That would have been a very elaborate performance, apparently designed to trick my mother and possibly some others.
Sansom lived until the late 1970s, and incredibly, he’s listed as my mother’s spouse, married in 1931. This would have been shortly after Olive’s purported demise. Is it even remotely possible that he married her daughter soon after she died? Why??????
Is it more possible that the data appearing online is wrong, confused? Uh…well…yeah…
Here we find an interesting entry in the ever-unreliable website known as Ancestors.com:
Apparently Olive lived until 1979…if you believe Ancestors.com. My mother claimed to have seen her carted off from her deathbed, placed in a hearse, and driven away down the road…when my mother was in her teens.
My mother was born in 1911. So she would have been, say, 15 years old in 1926. Olive would have been in her mid-30s.
