Coffee heat rising

funny

This post may be a paid guest contribution.

Another Fine Day y-Cumin’ In….

by

Boyoboy, I can hardly wait. /s/

That’s /s/ with a vengeance. You know it’s time to go when you realize you’re unstuck in time: I’m a creature of the 20th century that most surely does NOT belong in the 21st century.

This afternoon I have to drive to a huge mid-town hospital complex to meet a new doctor. This, because I decided to go in search of a new GP, one that is not part of the Mayo bureaucracuy. Not that MayoDoc isn’t wonderful — she’s very good. The problem is that the Mayo is halfway to freaking Payson, over a huge main drag that is always under construction

No overstatement: I cannot remember when I haven’t had to weave and trudge and stop-and-start through mile after mile of roadwork on Shea Boulevard, the only way out there from here. This was worth it when my great old doc was out there. But the woman onto whom they foisted me when he retired has made it very clear she doesn’t like older female patients and she especially doesn’t like me.

No kidding. Last time I was out there, she actually grimaced when I walked in her office door.

I’ll keep my place in line out there by visiting once a year, but meanwhile, I need to get a doctor in town for routine stuff. So…today we’ll see if this woman at Good Samaritan will be a decent fit.

Good Sam is where my son was born. It was adequate…I guess. The main thing I remember about it…heh….this is soooo stupid:

When the kid arrived on this earth, I didn’t know I was in labor until he was about to pop out. Why? Because labor does not hurt as much as your period.

I’d been told ooooohhh dear ooooohhhh dear, giving birth would be SOOOOO hideously painful, eek awk be ready for serious torture.

Uh….well…no.

At no time, not from beginning to end, did delivering that nine-pound boy hurt anywhere much as a routine menstrual period.

Down at Good Sam, which was the closest hospital to where we lived at the time, I overhear some broad simpering — no kidding, these were her words — “How can she stand it?” 

Idiot. How do you think I could stand it every fuckin’ 28 days? 😀

This: the result of doctors not believing what women say. Many times I’d told doctors that my periods could drive me to the brink of suicide. And just as many times I got the pat on my pretty little noggin and the there there, little girl, it’s all in your head.

You wonder why I stay away from doctors as much as possible? Some of these folks do make Christian Science look good…

Oh well. I figure it’ll take about an hour to get downtown through the traffic, find the parking garage, navigate to the fifth floor of their office building…and how CAN i count the ways i’m not lookin’ forward to that?

In other sylvan realms:

Ordered up some rat repellent from Amazon. These finally arrived yesterday. Whenever I get off the computer and then have some breakfast, I’ll have to climb into the attic and toss a few of these things around — they come in the form of bags — and then place the rest of them in strategic places around the garage, where Ruby can’t get at them.

This appears to be truly nasty stuff. After I’d picked up the box to read the instructions this morning, I rubbed an itchy eye with my left hand. Understand: I hadn’t even opened the damn box!

The microscopic amount on my hands made my eye BURN AND BURN AND BURN. I thought I was gonna have to go to the ER! Finally, after I scrubbed my face twice with soap and water, it stopped. Thank the heavens for small favors!

Now we know, anyway, not to even touch the package without wearing disposable gloves.

***********

11 ayem…

Yes. Ever have one of those days? You know…where everything you touch goes

SPROI-I-I-N-N-G

???

Yeah.Well….this is turning into one of those days. Whatever I’ve tried to do and had to do has tangled itself up, unraveled itself, fallen apart. jammed together, whatEVER. 

Finally got the supposedly rat-repellent bags of aromatic mint deposited here, there, and everywhere around the garage. Yeah. Uh huh.

Frankly, I think have about a snowball’s chance of this stuff working. Or doing anything other than emitting a stink that probably annoys humans as much as it annoys rats. If it annoys rats, that is.

There are those who believe it does repel our furry little friends,. But apparently it’s a short-term solution.

Some have suggested we might as well give up the endless war on rats and learn to live with the li’l fellas. This would be fine if they didn’t chew up the wiring, rip out the insulation, feast on the citrus harvest, and carry one disease or another. Or another. And another….

At this point, I’m up in the air. From what I can tell after talking to a couple of exterminators, for a small fortune those guys don’t do anything more than you can do yourself.

The most effective tactic would be to put out poison. But I surely can’t do that with Ruby around. If she didn’t eat the stuff herself, she’d almost certainly take a taste of any dead livestock she found out there. And that would be the end of her.

The fallback tactic: Cat.

Not just any cat, but a Manx cat.

These critters, in addition to being very smart and highly active, are big enough to take on a damned rat.

Yes. But.

Heh. They’re big enough to take on Ruby, too.

Over the years, Ruby has learned that the Human is highly entertained when she chases Other Daughter’s goddamn cats out of the backyard.

(Other Daughter is Tony the Romanian Landlord’s less-favored adult daughter. Apparently she doesn’t conform to his expectations well enough to be in line to inherit the Romanian Empire. But he does care for her, so much so that he has bought her a house two lots to the west of the Funny Farm. She’s a cat lady. There have been times when she’s probably had six or eight cats down there. She doesn’t run the AC: she leaves the windows and doors open, so the critters roam in and out. And if you have a bird feeder, your yard is the first place the little kitties roam…)

Anyway, the result is that Ruby delights in chasing furry things around the yard.

Unlike cats, though, rats are unfazed. They shoot up a tree or over a wall and then shortly come right back.

*more to come*

Another NOT a Disaster…waiting to be proven…

by

LORDIE what a day!

Driving from pillar to post, chasing after the truth, bathing in nostalgia, getting…essentially nowhere.\

Gaaahhhhhhh!

In comes a notice from American Express. They think I owe them something well in excess of $2,000, and I haven’t paid it. This alleged bill is said to be massively overdue.

My records say that yea verily, I certainly DID pay them, and did so electronically.

But…but…FIRST we learn of some other snafu at the credit union. Frankly, at this very moment I’m so tired I’m well beyond describing it. Just be assured: it was silly.

Get into the Dog Chariot and drive out to the credit union on the ASU West campus. Drive and drive and drive. It’s a bitch of a drive out there. They examine the evidence and agree that yep: the whole thing is silly. It’s declared fixed.

Stop by the upscale Sprouts near the university on the way home. Grab food.

Drive home: driving driving driving…

There I find the bizarre notice from AMEX.

Call AMEX. Reach a CSR who hasn’t a clue. She doesn’t get it that I indeed paid the bill and nothing should be owing. Finally she seems to figure it out, but…this li’l lady, I do not trust.

Pile all the AMEX paper into the car.

Drive to the downtown credit union, where they have CSRs who work with business executives, not with retirees and ASU faculty. Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and…

Finally make it down there.

Show their teller the paperwork. Explain that AMEX thinks they haven’t been paid.

She pulls up the month’s records of payments and income.

“They certainly have,” says she. And she pulls out the paperwork to prove it.

Gather the incomprehensible paper trail. Stumble back out to the car.

So tired I can hardly see.

Drive homeward homeward homeward…this time through the heart of Phoenix’s Willo district, where DXH and I lived for ten years or so.

Such a beautiful area.

How I miss it!

Drive past the street where both our beloved babysitters lived: two women who had raised their kids handsomely and set out to raise other people’s kids, for a fee. Miss those two wonderful ladies.

Past the street where my dear friend and editor at Phoenix Magazine lived. Miss him and his wife a lot.

Northward through haunts and shops that we used to patronize. Miss the Willo neighborhood. Miss it very much.

Still…as the years go by, driving in Phoenix gets more and more like driving in Southern California. In some places, I’d’ve sworn I was driving around (un)lovely Long Beach. Never having been fond of SoCal, said state of affairs does not speak well for my mood about this place. Driving driving driving driving…finally get back into the’Hood.

Spot WonderAccountant just heading out as I pull into my driveway. Waylay her and let her know I’d like some dibs on her time tomorrow, by way of figuring out…WTF happened with American Express and how to handle it.

Tomorrow, then, I’ll have to get on the phone to AMEX again and do battle again. This time I have evidence that the bill was paid. But just now I’m to tired to even contemplate that upcoming squabble. Besides, by then with any luck I’ll have WonderAccountant on my side…and she’s still young enough to have a functioning brain.

Surprise!!! NOT a Disaster!

by

Yes.

For a change, something went more or less right today. And when I say “a change,” I ain’t kidding: whatever I’ve touched and whatever has touched me has gone SPROOOOINNNNNGGGGGG!!!

Mostly this has had to do with money. AMEX claims it wasn’t paid; AMEX claims a payment bounced (bullsh!t to that!); WonderAccountant’s mind is boggled; Financial Dude has retired and gawd only knows WHAT is becoming of my investments…and on and on and brain-banging on.

This afternoon, after I’ve enjoyed a good two hours of wrestling with everything that could go wrong and did go wrong, the doorbell goes off: BING BONG!!!!

This causes the dog to go off:

ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF!!!!!!!!!

Leap up. Run to the living-room. Nobody there. Truck is pulling out from the curb. Oh hell, now what?

Oh!

Now what is the lampshade I ordered from Amazon!

My favorite living-room lamp is a big old brass number my mother bought in San Francisco, when we came back from Arabia. A handsome number indeed, it still retains its original silk lampshade (I think…unless she bought a new one after we moved to Arizona, while I was off at the university).

That shade started to fall apart, and I realized — alas — I would have to buy another one.

You understand…she bought the thing about in 1957 or ’58… And that lamp has stood on a table in her house or mine all those years since then. That would make the lamp and that lampshade 65 or 66 years old!

Can you imagine a retail product sold today lasting that long?

Hah! Fat chance, as we used to say back in the 1950s.

😀

So I break the shade out of the box, with considerable trepidation.

It does measure 14″ x 14″, just as the old one did…but somehow it looks slightly different. Looks a little smaller. But it’s not smaller. It does fit the lamp. And, mirabilis…

It looks OK.

Not quite the same as the original. But there’s a limit to how much you can ask, eh?

For inscrutable reasons, it looks rather smaller than the old shade. But…it’ll do. If you didn’t know about the old shade, you’d think this one looks just fine.

Amazon has jimmied the image so there’s no way in hell I can copy it for you. So you’ll just have to guess at how it looks. God forfend we should help them sell their products, eh? 😀

Here it is on Etsy, though…for 20 bucks less than I paid for it at Amazon. Memo to self: after this…check other websites before buying from Amazon!!!

Cry, the Beloved Weather…

by
Picture these at 105 degrees…

Holee mackerel, the weather is yucky. Not very hot: about 95° in the shade of the back porch. But humid: stuffy humid. Feels like it wants to rain, but there’s not enough cloud cover to make that happen.

Very glad I don’t have to work outdoors here in lovely Arizona. Though many days are balmy, my guess is that more days than not fail to lend themselves to laboring comfortably.

This morning I had a couple of termite exterminators puttering around. And you do hafta say: that looks like a nasty job, under the best of circumstances.

These guys quoted a reasonable price — unlike some of their competitors, who wanted amounts in the four figures. For $400, they not only sprayed the obvious spots, but also got into the attic and puttered around up there. One of those outfits wanted ten times that much.

Now o’course that doesn’t mean they did a great job. But with any luck, they squirted enough of the stuff around to slow our little buggy friends’ progress.

I hope.

Some of this stuff is very toxic. I had a friend who was working in her home office, her dog loafing under the desk when an exterminator visited. They sprayed all around the foundation. The stuff seeped under the slab and outgassed into the house. (Concrete foundations here typically develop cracks over time.)

It killed the dog and made her very, very sick. As in damaged her health long-term.

Downtown, our beautiful old 1929 house was built over a wooden crawl space. The folks before us had arranged regular termite treatments, which we continued after we moved into the place. You pretty much had to, if you were going to live mid-town: that area was infested with termites.

The cats would barf for three days after the place was sprayed. I shudder to think of what that stuff must have done to the guys who crawled under the house(!!) to spray that stuff around.

So…I really don’t like to spray for termites. But there’s a point at which you have to. Otherwise, you’re gonna enjoy some serious damage.

In other pricey realms: The irrigation system that I installed at the time I moved in here — 12 or 15 years ago — has about given up the plastic ghost.

Plastic is what the pipes are made of, and the stuff is about shot. Major leaks…plants that don’t get watered at all, puddles out in the middle of the yard…on and on.

So earlier today I called Gerardo, who claims to be an irrigation dude. (R-i-i-g-h-t!) He’s going to come over and inspect by way of making a Plan. And…I think most of the plumbing will have to be redone. That won’t be cheap.

Tho’ he should be able to avoid having to actually dig up most of the existing array of water lines, he’ll have to disconnect those, dig new trenches, and install new pipes, bubblers, drippers, and sprinklers. Front and back, I’m afraid: the whole system is quietly going kerplooie.

So that’ll be an expensive venture.

Our honored Republican leaders, if we believe the news, are merrily shutting down the government. And that is going to create quite the little catastrophe. The logical outcome will be a stock market crash.

When that happens, I’ll lose my shirt: most of my savings are in the market.

So on a personal level, this little antic of theirs is gonna come at the worst of all possible times.

LOL! Can you believe I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool Republican?

Yeah. Active in the party. Even a bit of a John Bircher.

It was chip-off-the-old-blockerie: my parents were extremely conservative. I fell astray after I married a wild-eyed liberal who was active in the ACLU — he was on the national board. And alas, I’ve never returned to the fold. 😀

To this day, one of the funniest things I can remember my mother saying — it must have been in the early or mid-1960s — was that (her words!) “if gasoline gets to a dollar a gallon, we’ll have sooooshalism!”

LOL! Well, by now you’d think we’d have officially linked up with the Soviet Union, eh?

Watching Money Flow Out the Door…

by

Good grief! It’s Bankruptcy Day at the Funny Farm!

😮

Actually, I can’t complain. Or at least, shouldn’t complain. Much.

The other day, the garage door opener — cry the beloved garage door opener! — gave up the ghost.

Died on the vine. Kaput.

Though the door can easily be opened and closed manually, given the Garden Spot we live in here, a functioning garage door opener is not an optional luxury. Whatever is inside that place — from clothespins to car — will eventually be stolen or vandalized if a sturdy door isn’t closed and locked. And heaving it open and closed and then securing it closed with a couple of concrete blocks is less than desirable, as daily habits go. An electric door opener gadget shuts the door behind you and securely locks it.

So today I had my preferred garage door mechanics come and install a new opener. Admittedly, it was a Job. Took them half the morning.

And admittedly, the thing works wonderfully now: smoother than it did, quieter than it did, snazzy all around. They did an excellent job (far’s I can see), and the new unit has THE best lights on it: they light up the whole interior of the (formerly dim) garage, bright as day.

But…

But…

But then we have the bill…

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS!!!!!

Holeee shee-ut.

Well…okay… I hafta say, it took two guys who clearly knew what they were doing a good two hours to install the thing. And it looked like a bitch of a job. So…despite some grousing…I think that’s probably not an unfair price. Much.

I’ve been in this house a good 12 or 14 years, and that unit was far from new when I moved in. So if we’re looking at a brand-new gadget that’s likely to last 15 to 20 years, is a PITA to install, and protects your car and your home from theft…it’s prob’ly a bargain.

I guess.

But wouldn’t it be nice to live someplace where you didn’t have to count on the locals roaming into your garage, stealing you blind, and maybe even strolling into the house thru the kitchen door?

Yeah. Just imagine!

Ultimately (speaking of home updating/improving/whatnot) I did order the linen lampshade from Amazon. Let us hope — sincerely — that it’s as described.

Drove all over the damn city yesterday  and NOBODY had a lampshade even vaguely resembling the one my mother bought back in the Dark Ages. Local retailers had junk, pricey junk, and spectacularly overpriced junk. But not one simple linen lampshade for a living-room-sized table lamp.

So I ordered one up. Jayzus! Delivery included: EIGHTY-TWO DOLLAH AND FIFTY CENTS!!

Ohhhhh well. If it lasts long enough for my son to inherit it and then survives (as this one did) another 15 years after that, I guess it’ll be worth it.

arrghhhhh

Stop the effin world! I wanna get off!

Get-Off-Your-Duff Day

by

boyoboy, am i lazy!!!

Seriously. What kind of loafer bellyaches because she has to get off her duff to pick up her messy house so the Cleaning Lady from Heaven can come in and work herself half to death scrubbing the place down?

That would be moi.

But truth to tell, I just do not feel like getting up and putting all the junk away.

Today is gonna be a whole day of don’t-wannas.

  • Don’t wanna pick up the mess.
  • Don’t wanna traipse to Best Buy and get them to explain why I can’t back up the laptop, and maybe with any luck get them to fix it.
  • Don’t wanna drive so much as down to the end of the block, to say nothing of over to the most crowded, hectic stretch of hateful Camelback Road.
  • Don’t wanna try to find out what happened to Pool Dude, who seems not have surfaced this week. So far.
  • Don’t wanna go over to the Toyota shop and argue about whatever the latest recall is about.
  • Don’t wanna traipse to AJ’s and stock up on dog and human food…again.
  • Especially don’t wanna have to order this damn thing, to the tune of $84 plus shipping.
    • Wait, i take that back. Because i have Amazon prime, i don’t have to pay for shipping…assuming i play my cards right.

Yeah. Somehow the large, expensive lampshade on the brass lamp that stands near the front door got ripped. I think because I gently touched it…

The shades are so old that their linen has kinda turned to tissue paper.

Seriously: my mother bought these lamps in San Francisco, when she and I came home from Arabia to stay — and several months before my father arrived. That would have been about in 19 and aught-57…

Since he wasn’t here to stop her, she went all out with the home decorating frenzy. Bought stuff in very nice stores in the City…read “very expensive.” Macy’s. The Emporium. City of Paris. I. Magnin. The White House….

Gosh, those were the good ole’ days! 😀

He would never have allowed her to buy these things. His idea of “pricey” was Price Club, a predecessor to Costco. The concept of spending a little (or a lot…) more to buy a quality product, one that wouldn’t fall apart every time you turn around, was lost on him. He was so cheap, he wouldn’t even shop in Costco, once it established itself. After she died, he bought a junk lounge chair at a low-end furniture dealer called John F. Lawhon. “Junk” was an understatement…

She never told him how much she’d paid for the stuff. He’d have divorced her if he found out.

No kidding: periodically he would threaten to divorce her if she didn’t quit spending “his” money.

My son still has her dining room table. I glommed the matching chairs, which reside in my dining room. And the handsome bureau drawers and nightstands. And I still have five of the pricey lamps she bought. Wish I still had everything…

One of the lamps, which resides in my office now, is made of Venetian glass. It’s a gorgeous thing. Others were solid brass. And it’s one of those brass lamps that needs a new shade.

The old shade just fell apart, so ancient is it. I’m thinking I’ll order this overpriced thing from Amazon…having spent several hours yesterday traipsing around the city looking for a credible replacement.

Welp…better get up and start shifting around…