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funny

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For the Luv of GAWD!!!!!

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KeeeeRAP!!!!!

Come the crack of dawn, the dawg is dragging me around the park on the usual morning Doggy-Walk. And what fun happens?

Yeah.

SHE DRAGS ME THROUGH AN ANT NEST!

The li’l ladies are out for their morning forage, so they’re swarming all over the place. I don’t notice them until it’s too late: now they’re all over my sandaled feet and legs, going bite bite bite bite-bite-bite BITE BITE BITE!!!

Hurt? Lemme tellya HURT.

We scurry away and I manage to bat most of the little gals off my skin. But now my feet and legs HURT LIKE THE DICKENS.

We turn around and race back toward the house, through the horrible SWAMPY morning. A classic nasty Arizona summer day is dawning, and the goddam place feels like the Okefenokee Swamp!  Holy crap, is it gawdawful out there!

Now my feet are covered in stinging, itchy ant bites. Coating them in calamine lotion doesn’t seem to be doing much good.

GAWD, but I hate Arizona!!!!!  What a horrid place to live. A thousand curses on my idiot parents for dragging us to this horrible, nightmare right-wing dump.

Yeah: part of their joy in this hole was its right-wing aspect. They abominated LIBarulism, which was one reason they were miserable in California. Barry Goldwater was holding forth here at the time. Believe it or not, I used to be a Goldwater Girl, one of his gingery little supporters.

Over time, the scales fell from my myopic eyes. Now you couldn’t get me anywhere near the right-wing crazies. Sorry if you’re one of them…but… Been there, done that!

What a horrible place this is, full of horrible people. If my son weren’t here, I’d be SOOOO FAR GONE from here!

Where would I be, if I had my choice?

I dunno. Not Hell, that’s for sure.

The east side of the San Francisco Bay Area, if I could afford it. But no doubt I couldn’t even begin to afford it.

My mother’s relatives lived in Berkeley, having settled there early in the last century, when it was reasonable to do so. I think their little bungalow is now valued at nigh unto a million dollars. Here’s one on the Web, just up the street from their place, at over two million dollars. But…it looks like that place is about twice the size of theirs.

So obviously, I couldn’t afford to live there today.

These days, I think I probably would consider the east side of Tucson. Weather’s decent there — because of the mild elevation, it’s not even too horrid in the summer. But there, too, unless you’re willing to go into a “townhouse” (which I believe means “apartment”), the prices are outta sight.

Since the Funny Farm is situated on the fringe of Phoenix’s highly upscale North Central district, presumably this place will be worth a fair amount when my son inherits it…. That’s assuming I can manage to live here long enough to be able to pass it to him but not so long as to be relegated to a prison for the elderly — and unfortunately, longevity is a thing among women on my mother’s side of the family.

So, I’ll probably be dragged off (kicking and screaming, you may be sure!) to one of the horrid old-folkeries that are now in vogue. Those places take everything you have in exchange for babysitting you through your dotage. And so…if I don’t drop dead fairly soon, presumably little or nothing will be left for my son.

What times we live in, eh?

Hotter Than the Hubs!

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It’s pouring rain, hot and sticky outside…and some poor wretch is out there weedwhacking a neighbor’s lawn! 

Yow! Talk about jobs you’re glad you don’t have….

At a little past 7:00, Ruby and I are back from the morning circumnavigation, just in time.

Despite the gray skies and now steady rain, our honored Weather Service tells us to expect “extreme heat” this afternoon. Temps are supposed to get up to 110 today, 114 on Thursday, and 116(!!!) on Friday.

That’s more than my air-conditioning system can handle. And far more than M’hijito’s aged system will beat back. He may have to come here or over to his dad’s place to live through the afternoons. And probably to sleep at night.

What an awful place. WHY do we live here?

Yeah: because our parents dragged us here, right?

California. Make that Northern California. That’s where I came from. And that’s where I belong!

Hotter Than the Proverbial Hubs…

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Back porch thermometer says it’s only 111° in the shade out there. Hm…and Wunderground, that fount of officialdom, says…?  Yeah: 111 degrees!!!

Blech!  How could we do without it? Let us count the 87 gerjillion ways…

Why, again, do I stay here????

Oh, yeah: because my Honored Son is here. 

Man!!! If he weren’t, you may be sure I’d be back in Northern California, whence I emanated lo! these many decades ago.

My parents dragged me to Arizona after my father retired from the Merchant Marine. They’d discovered Sun City, which they thought was just about THE most marvelous thing they’d ever heard of. So they bought a little house there (all the shacks out there are “little”), dumped me at the University of Arizona (say good-bye to UC Berkeley, dear…) and decamped to a cute little house directly under the flight path of the jet planes from Luke Air Force Base.

Garden spot.

Well. They thought it was, anyway. They were delighted with it.

😀  I was delighted to get away from it.

Anyway, the University of Arizona was OK, I guess. But Tucson sure as Hell wasn’t Berkeley. On the other hand, one could easily land a Phi Beta Kappa key while snoozing through one’s classes….

From the UofA I roamed back up to the Phoenix area and alit at Arizona State University, a monument to mediocrity, where before long I captured a Ph.D. Didn’t do much to launch a great career…..but at least it led me into a job that was better than answering the phones at the law firm that was supporting me.

These are the kinds of experiences that have led me to regard Arizona as the Land of Mediocrity. Only thing that’s NOT mediocre here, far’s I can see, is the heat. That, and the mediocrity itself. We do have first-rate mediocrity. 😀

Day Is (Barely!!!) Dawning….

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Yep. Barely dawn and all Hell is already breaking loose. Jeez!  WHY does all the sh!t happen at once?

Latest antic: I go to flush the toilet and the thing goes SSSWWWWSHHHHHHHHHHHH and sprays water all over the goddam bathroom!

Sheee-ut!  and oh well: now all the fixtures and counters are nice and clean in there.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotta get someone over here to fix Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner, so thoughtfully trashed by yesterday’s workman.

This means, presumably, I have to approach some other pool company, since I suspect that “trashing” was a deliberate act. Because…it appears the pool dude stole several lengths of hose.

Dammit!!!!!!! 

Now I’ll have to call a bunch of neighbors to find out who they’re hiring, and then call around and call around and call around until I find someone to come fix this stuff.

*********

Grrr grrr grrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

Okay, I capitulated and called my regular pool company. Told them “someone” (har har) made off with several lengths of pool hose…and blah blah blah.

They’re supposedly gonna send someone over to try to fix that. Which means I get to sit here and sit here and sit here and sit here until the guy shows up. If he ever does. Then try to explain what’s happened….and good luck with that.

Dammmit!!!!!!!!!

I’m beginning to understand why my neighbor drained her pool several years ago and leaves it dry.

There surely is something to be said for that.

Problem is, when  you go to sell the house after leaving a pool empty for Gawd only knows how long, you’re looking at a WAD of EXPENSIVE repair bills.

Plus your back yard is graced by an ugly hole in the ground.

Better to keep the thing up from day to day, than to have hundreds or thousands in bills just as you’re ready to move out.

****

Ugh!! This deluge of crapola is beginning to make the prospect of moving into a old-folkerie like the Beatitudes almost look good. At least there, someone else has to ride herd on the repairs.

But…sheee-ut.  Just look at the joys promised by that link. Ain’t that just ducky?  You, too, can shed your household headaches by locking yourself up in a prison for old duffers.

You get to shed your cash, too. Those places grab every penny you’ve got in exchange for shepherding you into the next world. Such was the case with my father. Seriously: his old-folkerie glommed virtually all of his life savings. AND….he made a good living as a sea captain, plus he was one of the great tightwads of the Western World. So he had a sh!tload of money for them to snatch away from him.

*****

Dayum! But I’m MAD AS A CAT over that stolen pool equipment.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I guess if I’m gonna drain the damn pool, I’ll need to have some sort of platform built over it.

The next-door neighbor hasn’t done that. She just has an empty hole in the ground back there. Looks like HELL, and for my taste renders the back porch/yard essentially unusable.

You can bet she hasn’t covered it with a platform because any such thing will cost a goddam arm and a leg.  So I should spend hundreds or more likely thousands of dollars to cover the hole in ground with a wooden deck?

goddammit i don’t wanna do that.

Helle’s belles. Maybe I’d do better to jury-rig repairs to the dam thing now, then put the house on the market, sell up, and move into the horrifying Beatitudes.

But..to coin a phrase:

goddammit i don’t wanna do that.

I just LOATHE congregate living. And I do NOT want to live in a dormitory for old buzzards.

GAAAAAAAHHH!  STOP THE WORLD! I WANNA GET OFF!!!!!

WTF?????????

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How in the name of GOD do these clowns get their jobs????? And when a company hires some jerk, do they NEVER test them to see if the jerk knows what he’s doing???????

ARRRGHHHHH!

So….I go out to the pool and start to mess with the pump equipment, by way of cleaning out the filter’s strainer — which by now should be jammed with leaves and stuff, by now, right? Because Pool Dude was here several days ago.

And yeah, no question about it: I SHOULD have gone out there two or three days ago and checked the equipment. But no. I didn’t Because I was too damn lazy. And because, after all, that’s what I pay THEM to do, right?

Arrrghhhh! You’d think by now I’d know better, eh?

So I wander past the pump this afternoon and notice…uhhhh….waitaminit.

The pump’s strainer basket is sitting on the step stool.

Huh?

It’s not inside the pump, where it’s supposed to be. Some moron has taken it out of the pump and LEFT IT SITTING OUT. So all the leaves and crap can get sucked inside the equipment!

Ohhhh F****ck!

Shut everything down.

Take everything apart.

Clean everything out.

Swear, cuss, and swear some more.

Put the parts back together.

Seal the unit back up.

Pray to the Swimming Pool Gods…

Turn the unit back on…

SHHHHHHWWWWWWIIIIIIIIISHHH…..

A miracle!

Looks like the damn thing is working. And there’s even a chance it’s working right.

Well…Helle’s belles. We’ll know along about this time tomorrow afternoon if it actually IS running right. Because by this time tomorrow we’ll have a pool guy out here, to the tune of a pretty penny.

We can pretty much bet that the thing is busted or, at best, cattywampus.. Can’t hurt to hope, though.

But….in fact…. No. It looks like Harvey is probably busted. He’s just going around and around in little circles. That means tomorrow I’ll have to take him to the pool store…which will be quite the trick without a car!

Waitaminit…. Let’s take that back: It looks like Harvey is working but his hose has been shortened to the point where he can’t travel all the way across the bottom of the pool, shallow end to deep end and back. Hence: the elegant circles… Lo! the Explanation: Somebody stole several lengths of pool hose! Then disguised the theft by reconnecting the remaining hose to Harvey.

Goddammit! 

WHY DOES EVERY MORON ON THE PLANET HAVE TO GET IN FRONT OF ME?????????

If  they’re a moron, they’re guaranteed to come my way!

Man! Am I ever sick of STUPID STUFF. 

Lovely Morning from Hell

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Yuch!!!!!  It’s a Rasty Nasty morning out there, come 7:00-ish. “Rasty Nasty” is what my father used to call Ras Tanura, the oil camp where we lived by the shore of the (hot! sticky!!) Persian Gulf while he worked as a harbor pilot out there.

One place where you do not want to spend any of your lifetime is Saudi Arabia. What a horrible place!

Ohh well…. The dawg and I are back in the house, having staggered down the west side of the park and back through the slab of the neighborhood that I like to call Lower Richistan. Made it back inside without passing out…that’s something, anyway.

By the time the Human finishes cooling off in the air conditioning, M’jito’s babysitters will be here. He’s hired these women to keep watch on me…and you can see the vast Nuisance Potential entailed in that. If you’re a person who’s accustomed to doing what you want, when you want, the LAST thing you want or need is people underfoot all day. Especially not strangers.

So this is going to convert life at home into misery at home. And I’ll tellya: I ain’t a-lookin’ forward to it.

Oh, well. At least Ruby and I managed to steal a few minutes of pleasurable meandering. Now we’re back home, waiting for the nuisances to show up.

Dayum!

Right now, what I most want is an hour of peace and quiet in the silence of my own home, with only a dawg to keep me company. If pests want to show up in an hour or two, that’s fine. But NOT NOW, dammit!!

Anyway, we’ll have three fans blowing — one in the kitchen and two in the family room — which at least should help to cool the poor creatures down. It is SO hot and SO humid out there that it takes you a good half-hour to cool down, even with the AC set at 80 and all the fans blasting.

This humidity is alien stuff here in Arizona, where the air is usually dry and crisp — heat or no heat. Hot and humid was indeed the weather we “enjoyed” in unlovely Saudi Arabia.

I hate this place. Ohhhhhh how I wanna goooo home!

And “home” is San Francisco!