Coffee heat rising

funny

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Doglarming!

by

The human and the dog are loafing. Human is playing pointless games on its computer. Dog is snoozing in her nest behind the toilet. One of them on the far west side of the house; the other on the far east side.

All of a sudden:

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

Out of the back bedroom rings a frantic doggy-alarm…HOleee sheeut!

Human leaps to its feet, grabs a scimitar out of the steak-knife drawer, and proceeds post-haste to the back of the house, where Dog is indulging a little frenzy.

By the time I get down the hall, she’s calmed down.

Cat, I figure. The kitties get into cat-squabbles, thereby getting Ruby, who regards cats as her natural prey, akin to burglars, all doggy-exercised.

Peer through the bedroom drapes, lights off. Quiet out there. No sign of a cat. But…yes…here comes the cop helicopter.

But…

By damn, here comes another cop helicopter! Briefly. It moves on.

Those guys should set up a landing pad in our park. They could have a coffee shop out there, too.

Ruby remains doglarmed for awhile. I figure the whole flap is probably over one of Other Daughter’s cats, who frequently visit the yard. The remaining cop flies off to the north, there to hover over the dire slum above the canal.  Let Ruby out in back. Now she seems unimpressed. She strolls around briefly and then comes back in the house.

The windows are all locked. The doors and their heavy-duty security screens are locked. The human is armed.

The dog? Snoozing on the bed.

Morning in Arizona…

by
Breakfast-time, and the livin'(oughta be) easy…

A morning designed to amuse the bored gods and goddesses, hanging out over their morning gin-and-tonics in heaven. No doubt of it. They have nothing else to do, so decide to amuse themselves by inflicting intricately woven complications on their critters’ lives.  Athena, you may be sure, was highly amused this morning. And hevvin only knows what other shenanigans She has in mind for this day

Amazingly, this human slept in today. No kidding: it was almost 7 a.m. when I woke up! Can you imagine???

OoohhKayyyyy….  So the hot water is poured over the fresh-ground coffee in the French press. The dog is fed. The toast is toasted. The bacon is sizzled in the microwave. The food is on the table and the human is hunkered down in front of breakfast and…

BING BONG!

arf arf arf arf arf arf arf 

BING BONG!

kee-rap, NOW what? It’’s not even eight o’fukkin’clock in the morning!

arf arf arf arf arf arf arf  arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf 

SHUT UP, DAMMIT!!!!!!!

Grab yesterday’s blue jeans and jump into them.

arf arf arf arf arf arf arf 

BING BONG!

COM-i-i-ng!!!!!!!

Button jeans. Open door: it’s the new yard dude.

Jeez, Dude: you could’ve given me a li’l warning!

They’re here to clean up the yard.

Unlock the side gate. Point out new minor headaches that need their attention. Drag Ruby away.

Ohhhh well. Back to the breakfast table.

Sure. Back to breakfast: serenaded by the roar of a couple gas-powered blowers, a weed-whacker, and the dog barking.

Shortly, shovel the gentlemen back into their truck and wave them down the road. Find a dripper hose with the head broken off. Can’t find the baggie of dripper heads in the garage. Not at all in the mood to toss the garage cabinets and shelves in search of those things — make note to buy more next time I drive past the Ace Hardware. Meanwhile, clip the hose shut with a clothespin.

Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!

Cop helicopters take up the serenade. They roar back and forth….off in the distance, the wail of sirens — cops? fire trucks? ambulances? What. a. racket!

All. I. Wanted. To. Do. was sit down and have a modest, QUIET breakfast.

One unreasonable demand after another, eh?

Yipes! ANOTHER Cop “Incident”?

by

So the dawg is fed and I’m just about to throw on some clothes and take her for the morning doggy walk. It’s around 6:30.

Right. Sure.

Ruby is chowing down; I’m looking for a pair af marginally presentable jeans. And…ohhhh yeah:

R-R-R-O-O-O-O-A-R-R-R-R….

Cop copter flyover.

Round and round and round he goes. He’s looking for someone, and that someone is within a few blocks of the Funny Farm. The police dispatch website says nothing about it.

Based on past experience, the someone will be…

  • an ordinary burglar (not likely: they’ve been up there almost 40 minutes…they wouldn’t waste that much fuel on a workaday prowler);
  • a wanted criminal on the run from some other neighborhood;
  • somebody who actually did break in to a house here and raped or otherwise engaged the resident;
  • a bum who picked a fight with a homeowner trying to evict him from a garage or a backyard; or
  • a criminal, probably of the violent type, on the run from the cops, who chased him here after some other incident.

WhatEVER: it put the eefus on the Morning Doggywalk.

Fortunately, the weather has cooled dramatically. So, we can afford to wait an hour before setting out to defile the neighbors’ lawns.

😉

Yesterday the neighborhood association had its annual Giant Shindig in the Park, so we weren’t able to go over there during that. And now I”m not so sure about taking her into the park anyway, at least for the nonce. We’re enjoying a parvo plague. This fine and often fatal disease can be picked up off the ground. And Ruby, like any dawg, loves nothing more than sniffing every stink she comes across. Especially if it’s associated with a pile of feces.

Ruby has had her parvo shots, of course. However, I don’t get her shot up every year, because…a study showed that most of the routine vaccines last up to a decade. The researchers shot up a passel of dogs and watched them to see how long the initial rounds of shots worked. The vaccines were still protective nine years after the study began. At that point, the researchers ran out of funding and so dropped the study.

Thus we don’t know for sure how long the shots last, but apparently it covers the dog for as long as most dogs live. And also thus: I’m less than thrilled about taking her to our park, which everybody and their little brother uses as a de facto dog park. Not only are their little furbabies running around off-lead (some of them looking for a fight), but lead or no lead, any dog that’s been exposed to parvo is dropping viral particles everywhere it goes.

***

Hmmmm…. And this may have something to do with this morning’s Copter Flyover:

…the intersection of [Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South] is closed in all directions this morning and will not open until much later in the day. Please seek alternate routes. #PHXTraffic

Probably some idiot drove or walked out in front of the train.

Y’know…I love my neighborhood and all the wonderful young people who are moving here with their kids. I like being centrally located. I love the greenery and the park and the fancy houses in the Richistans and the cute little tract houses in my parts. But I sweartogawd, sometimes I think what AM i doing here?

My son is adamant that I should not move out of this house. But the truth is, there are safer districts, and they’re not all in the Sun Cities.

Fountain Hills is the most attractive of these. Problem is, it’s about as far away from everyone I know and everything I do as the Moon is. It’s halfway to Payson! Close to the Mayo Clinic…but otherwise, I know no one out there and have no great desire to get to know anyone. Sun City is quiet, if you enjoy the silence of the tomb. And mile on mile on mile of houses that look so much alike you can’t tell the difference between them.

Most areas in north Phoenix and Scottsdale do have fewer bums…we get inundated because we live at the end of the lightrail line. The bums and the indigent mentally ill climb on the damned train, ride it up here to the end of the line, get out, and fan out into the neighborhood. Of course we always had some crime before that thing was built. But we didn’t have a bum in every yard, and we didn’t have to be extra-cautious about taking the trash out in the alley (I have two sets of padlocks on the back gates!), and we didn’t have to walk around spaced-out bums sleeping off their latest fix in the park. These are largely functions of the idiotic lightrail project and the insertion of several drug clinics in the immediate vicinity of the neighborhood. So in theory one could escape some of the crime and ickiness simply by moving to a different district.

One of the magnets that calls the transients in: the FIVE drug treatment centers within easy walking distance of the lightrail stops at Main Drag South and at Gangbanger’s Way. One of them is right down the street from a grade school!

Drug abuse is pretty much endemic here. And it spans all social classes. So unless you live in a gated community such as the Biltmore or the Phoenix Country Club, you are going to have drug addicts wandering your neighborhood streets and sleeping in your yard.

Welp, Ruby is lobbying for a doggy-walk. I haven’t had anything to eat and am starved. And so, awawayyyy….to breakfast and then to brave the day’s outdoor adventure.

And tonight? HALLOWE’EN! Armies of cute little kids trucked into the ‘Hood from lower-income districts, here to collect the loot. We always sit in the WonderAccountants’ driveway to hand out candy…so that will be fun.

Yipes! Another Monday Already??? WaitWait…

by

Holeee Maquerel! A whole week has gone by since last I posted at Funny. How did THAT happen?

Hm.

I think it happened because precious little has been happening. The days shoot past in the present state of isolation and quarantine-like living. One after another…most of them identical. You would think time would feel slower under these conditions…but it doesn’t. To the contrary… It’s Monday, October 24. The last I knew, it was Monday…the 17th. A whole week is gone, and I’ve barely noticed it was here.

Now that I’ve quit the once-a-week volunteer job at the church, I literally have nothing to do, no one to see, very little that must be done to keep life trundling along.

For some reason I don’t feel especially bored, though. The church receptionist gig had to go because it WAS boring. Excruciatingly so. For some reason, when I’m here at the Funny Farm I never seem to be sitting around doing nothing, staring into space. Even when I’m doing nothing, though, I don’t feel oppressively bored. Why that would be the case escapes me…

What have I done today, for example?

Precious little, yep. Luis the Arborist is here. I’ve spent all of ten minutes aiming him toward the jobs to be done. Then got back out of the men’s way: they passed most of the day pruning the jungle in front.

Wasted a fair amount of the day playing computer games. Didn’t even take the dog for a walk this morning: too, toooo lazy.

Which is too bad, because the days have turned gorgeous. The spate of thunderstorms we had the other day broke the heat. So now the weather is cool and lovely and beautiful.

***

LOL! and now it’s Tuesday. I wandered off and forgot to post this thing.

Luis and his guys spent the entire darned afternoon beating back the jungle. The most signal of his achievements is to lawsuit-proof my front yard: One of those thorny trees likes to dangle a branch over the sidewalk, right at face height for the passing humans. People prance up and down that sidewalk day and night, without ever looking up from their damn phones. Sooner or later, somebody is going to get stabbed in the face by that thing — it’s actually poked me a couple of times, and I do watch where I’m going.

So I figure that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. I’ve nipped it back a couple times myself, but I’m getting too feeble to climb up on a ladder and chop away at tree limbs.

Anyway, now it’s fixed.

My friend VickyC is supposed to come by this noon. We were planning to go exploring in Cave Creek/Carefree, and upscale tourist trap on the north side of the Valley. That scheme crashed y’day; don’t know if we’ll try to do that, or just go out to lunch.

Which brings us to the current techno-hassle: I accidentally blocked VickyC’s phone number on my land line. It’s possible to unblock a number, but to do so…well…you have to find the number.

Literally hundreds of numbers are blocked on that phone. Without that firewall, as it were, I get anywhere from three to ten nuisance calls every day. They spoof local numbers, so the only way you can tell the call is from a pest is by not recognizing it. Apparently one time when she called, I succeeded in not recognizing her number. So she can’t get through to me. And now I can’t find it in the vast bank of blocked numbers, nor can I find a way to unblock ALL numbers and start over again.

In that department, entertainingly enough…it appears that SHRIEKING INTO THE PHONE AT THE SHRILLEST TOP OF YOUR VOICE is working to cut down the volume of nuisance calls. After a week or two of engaging that tactic, I’m getting many fewer calls per day.

At any rate, if I can’t figure out how to unblock VickyC’s number, I may have to buy a new set of landline phones.

Jeez. Ain’t life in te 21st Century fun?

Dispatch from Costco’s Tire Shop: Monday as Day From Hell

by

Any day could be a Day from Hell, I suppose. Monday’s as good any for spiraling downhill. After a full morning in Hell (cleaning lady, nail in a tire, driving round and round Robin Hood’s Barn), as we scribble we’re now parked on a bench in the Tire Shop at Costco, waiting a predicted two hours to get one flickin’ tire fixed.

Again.

Dave, the doughty fella manning the customer service desk, is so busy he hasn’t had time to take a deep breath. Literally: the action here NEVER STOPS, not even for a minute or two.

This morning I had to take Ruby the Corgi to the vet to find out about getting her stinky teeth cleaned. This is a much neglected task: having foolishly imagined that I would be responsible enough to clean her teeth myself, I’ve let it go and let it go and forgotten about it and let it go until now she stinks so much she no longer can be ignored.

Actually…the issue is that her mouth is too small to allow me to fit the finger-sized tooth-scrubber thing in there. So no amount of pretend scrubbing does…well…anything. So this morning I took her to the vet, who wants A THOUSAND DOLLARS to clean her teeth.

This was no surprise, because the same vet used to pull the same stunt on La Maya, who (more or less) willingly forked over the cash for her two dachshunds.

Expecting this, I told her that on Social Security there’s no way in Hell I can afford anything like that.

She recommended some outfit called Doggy Dental, which supposedly does nothing but clean dogs teeth, for something vaguely resembling a reasonable fee.

That notwithstanding, she charged me for X-raying the dog’s teeth (did I ask her to do that?), and of course for the privilege of walking into her office.

So on the way home I stopped by a newer, closer vet to ask what they’d charge. Walked in. NOT A SOUL AROUND! Waited awhile. Left.

Next: low tire light comes on. Sumbiche!

Stop by the Firestone shop on the way home – they’re up at the corner Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s Way. Guy there says the tire needs to be replaced. And that’ll be a thousand bucks.

Uh HUH!

See ya!

So now here I am at the Costco, waiting and waiting and waiting to see if they can fix the tire and, if, not to simply buy a new one. Which, you may be damned sure, will NOT set me back a thousand dollah.*

This place is hectic!!!

The guys at the desk haven’t had a chance to take a deep breath since I walked in. But now…weirdly!…the crowd has abated, people have roamed off, and it’s downright quiet in here.

Meanwhile, NATCHERLY today is Cleaning Lady Day. So Luz is on her own at the Funny Farm. Fortunately, because I had to duck in there on the way, I did manage to pay her. That’s something. I guess.

Dayumnation! Somewhere, somehow I’m gonna have to find a vet that charges reasonable fees. And is competent.

That’ll be quite a trick. All the good old vets that I knew have retired and sold their veterinaries. So I don’t know anyone anymore. And they don’t know me, either…so haven’t the slightest compunction about charging me through the schnozzola. {sigh} Because of that, I reckon, Ruby  the Corgi is going to be the last dog to live at the Funny Farm.

How much longer, I wonder will the Ruby last? Overall her health seems to be excellent. So, barring accidents…what? Three to five years?

Holeee shee-ut! In five years I’ll be EIGHTY-TWO YEARS OLD! Assuming I’m still alive, that is.

Doesn’t seem possible.

That’s actually not out of the realm of possibility, though. On the California side of the family, women have lived into their 90s…and since they were Christian Scientists, that was in the absence of medical care. One of my uncles was 88 when he croaked over…. But… my mother’s New York grandparents weren’t so fortunate. Her grandmother died of diabetes in what must have been her mid- to late 30s…early 40s at the latest.

So then we’re confronted with the question of whether, after Ruby passes on to her furry fathers, can I justify getting another dog? Or even handle having another dog?

. . . .

Tire Shop Desk Dude: It’ll take about two hours to fix that.
Customer: That’s fine. I’ll do some shopping. The car is right outside.
TS DD: Where’s the wheel lock key?
Customer: In the glove compartment.

Uh huh. NOBODY would ever think to look for it there….

Guy just came in with a tire that needs fixing. Warrantee expired three years from the day he bought it: YESTERDAY.

Augh!

. . . .

As we were saying…. Can I, should I get another dawg after Ruby passes on to her Furry Fathers? Assuming she predeceases me, that is.

Unless the proposed successor to the Crown is already pushing old age when she arrives in the Realm, I’m not likely to survive her. So…who will take her? Can my son be bamboozled into agreeing to take in an ancient dawg when his mother croaks over? Hmmmmm…..

Old Guy comes in, pays a bill, walks out. He’s wearing well-used jeans held up with suspenders. Looks like he belongs in the Ozarks.

Prob’ly cruised in from Paradise Valley in his Rolls.

This is the West Side, though. Not impossible that he could be an old cotton farmer or rancher. Not likely, though.

Hey: Tire Dude says the guys are just finishing up with the Venza. Give it 2 minutes; then walk out to the second bay.

Hungry hungry hungry. By the time I get home it’ll be dinnertime, almost. So I guess that’ll be the main meal of the day.

How much longer before two minutes have passed?

Ohhhh how I wanna go home!

****

ESCAPED!

* Oh, and it cost $12 to replace the tire… It was on warrantee.

 

Ancestors

by
Olive Getten DeLong

Whiling away some idle moments — fast turning into hours! — exploring the Web for clues to my honored (and not-so-honored) forebears… Sources like Ancestry.com are full of stuff: if you’ve got a name, they’ve got the dope. The obvious, of course: details like birth and death dates, places of residence, relatives’ names. And some things that are less obvious, like marriage and divorce records, leads to relative after relative after never-heard-of ’em relative.

Some of this stuff confirms the family legends; some of it contradicts the stories you were told; some of it amounts to brand-new revelation. And some of it poses new mysteries.

Always entertaining.

The current entertaining mystery goes like this:

Ancestry.com says my grandmother — my mother’s mother — died in 1979. That would have put her in her 80s, which is far from impossible: other women in her family lived into their 90s.

However….

My mother said she died in her 40s (this would have been in the late 1920s or early 1930s), of uterine cancer (supposedly brought on by her extravagantly wild lifestyle). My mother claimed to have attended her at her deathbed, as a teenager caring for her dying mother at the California grandparents’ home in Alameda. Like her maternal relatives, we’re told, Olive was a Christian Scientist (despite her loose sexual mores). Thus she refused to go a doctor for the obvious symptoms until it was too late to save her life.

At least, so my mother claimed.

If Ancestry.com has the story right (BIG “if”), that claim was fabricated and richly embroidered. And the horror of this speculation is…well…truth to tell, anything’s possible.

Ancestry.com has her dying in 1979.

Double-check that. Triple-check it: yes, 9 December 1979, in Berkeley, California.

But…but…but…. that doesn’t even make sense! We were back in the States by then. My mother, claiming I was too ill to continue in the miserable school in lovely Araby, demanded to bring me home. She and I arrived in San Francisco when I was in the 6th grade: around 12 years old. That would have been 1956 or 57. But by then my mother was already claiming that her mother, Olive, was dead. The rest of the family lived in Berkeley and Sausalito, and believe me: there was no sign of a wild-assed grandmother there.

As a teenager, my mother had been sent from Upstate New York to California — to the East Bay — when her paternal grandmother died, leaving the grandfather with a dirt farm to cultivate and no help in caring for a teenager. The grandmother dies in 1927, when my mother would have been 16. Olive already has the Big C, and my mother ends up tending her during what must have been my mother’s mid-teens. BUT….

Yes. But…the notes I’m finding at Ancestry.com say Olive died in 1979. Fifty-two years later!

Where WAS she all that time? If she wasn’t in the ground, that is…

Most likely, the date is actually 1929…it’s probably a typo. But still…it’s intriguing.

Innaresting.

My cousin, who probably is responsible for this narrative, converted to Mormonism many years ago. Though he lives in California, these records are probably at the Temple in Salt Lake City.

However, my dear friend and erstwhile business partner happens to be — yea verily! — a nice Mormon girl! A-a-a-n-d she’s active with the Church. So she knows whereof she speaks and how to speak it.

The Temple here in Arizona — in a suburb called Mesa — has access to these records.

My thought is that I should get off my duff while I’m still capable of rising from a chair, drive out there, get myself signed in, and go through whatever records they have.

Lemme tellya: Olive’s life is the stuff of novels. If I had enough information, I could write a story that truly wouldn’t quit. Very possibly one that could become a best seller or the foundation of a movie. She was one. wild. lady. And her relatives, while outwardly stodgy, were…well, verrreee strange.