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FOUND IT! But…..

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So yesterday I was bellyaching because I couldn’t find my gas grill’s outdoor cover — not a cheap item. Figured one of the gerjillion workmen had made off with it.

Nope. That was ungracious of me!

Found it. But…but…

The reason it seemed to be disappeared is that some idiot stashed it away, after he had hauled the grill a good long distance from the brickwork pad where the thing resides. He left it way out on the far end of the backyard. Uncovered and open to the elements…which at this time of year are considerable.

Jayzuz!

So this morning I managed to drag the (heavy!) grill back to the patio by my little girlie self and reposition it on its brick pad. And then…

In the process, I finally found the plastic/fabric cover that goes over it: put the whole lash-up back in place, on its pad outside the fireplace chimney. (Yeah: yesterday I’d had to jury-rig a cover out of black plastic garbage bags!)

Dripping sweat by now: this is a July day in lovely uptown Phoenix. Hot, still, and humid to the point of soggy.

Tape a sign to the brickwork:

PLEASE!!!
DO NOT DRAG THE GRILL 
OFF THE BRICKS AND 
LEAVE IT IN THE YARD!!!!

What the f*ck IS THE MATTER with people? How can you  be so FREAKING STUPID that it doesn’t occur to you that maybe a homeowner placed a heavy appliance in a specific spot because THAT’S WHERE SHE WANTS IT?

Godlmighty, but people are stupid!

Honestly. This kind of sh!t begins to make an apartment in an old-folkerie look good. I’m starting to understand why retirees sell up and move themselves into institutions…where someone else takes care of most of the ditz.

***

Okay, if I’m going to stay here (a prospect that begins to look dimmer and dimmer), after this when some workman is bouncing around, I’ll have to go out there and supervise the ba*tard. 

Dayum! Really and truly, I do NOT want to live in one of those prisons for old buzzards. But…it’s beginning to look ominously unlikely that I’ll be able to cope with this kind of BS for many more years. Or even for many more months. 

Why?

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Why do people steal things out of people’s yards?

Just discovered that someone made off with the full-force plastic/fabric cover for my gas barbecue. 

“Just discovered” because it’s going to rain tonight, for the first time in Gawd Only Knows how long. Goddammit. So that makes the first time in G.O.K. how long since I’ve really needed to cover the ‘cue with a generously sized waterproof cover, made for the purpose and for the grill’s size.

I’ve been using a lightweight Home Depot fabric cover. leaving the heavy-duty number for…heavier duty. The lighter one keeps the dust off, but it won’t protect the grill from serious rain or hail. So this evening, having found that the I-mean-business cover was GONE, I had to jury-rig a sturdier cover out of large black plastic garbage bags. Then weigh it down with rocks so it doesn’t blow off when the wind comes up in a typical Arizona storm. One of which, this being mid-summer, we’re likely to enjoy tonight.

It’s hotter than the Hubs out there…so throwing myself around trying to come up with something to protect the BBQ equipment was less than perfectly fun. If I knew which one of my worthies stole that cover, he’d be fired forthwith.

But of course, I have no way of knowing. It may not even have been one of my regulars, but some one-trip repairman who was called to work on the A.C. or the plumbing or the pool equipment….or whatnot.

Y’know…what this says is that whenever ANY service or repair guy is here, I need to stand nearby and watch him as he works. All the way until he goes out the gate and gets back in his truck.

Jayzuz! What HAS this country come to?

Hotter Than the Hubs…

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7:30 p.m.: 100 degrees in the shade of the back porch, with high overcast.

Make that just “on the back porch,” since we’re past the time of shade. We’re comin’ on to dusk: and it is, yes, one. hundred. degrees out there.

Ugh. And tell me again: WHY do we persist in living here?????

Red-Hot or Nailed Down….

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That was what my parents used to say about the locals where we lived in Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf: “If it’s not red-hot or nailed down, they’ll steal it.”

Uh huh.

Well, now you can say that about the Yankee set.

Honest to gawd. ANYTHING that you carelessly set down out of your sight or out of your house is GONNA get stolen.

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This afternoon a UPS guy showed up with a package.

My hip still being somewhat spavined, I hobbled out to the curb on my hiking stick. It looked kinda like this…  Or this…

Got back inside the house. Went to pick up the stick, to put it away…and… Yeah. Gone. Nowhere to be found.

Couple of hours later: I still haven’t found it. 

So I must have dropped it by the guy’s truck and he took it, or else I dropped it on the ground out there and some damn passer-by grabbed it. WhatEVER: it’s gone. 

Replacing it via Amazon will cost about $30 to $50, and nothing there looks as nice as the one I had.

The Sprouts on the far side of Main Drag West carries them — or it did, last I noticed. But my gawd! As we scribble, the temp in the shade of the back porch is 103…and that’s at 6:30 in the evening!

If Sprouts is selling the things for less than Amazon does, it might be worth hiking to the store through the heat. Unfortunately, their website says nothing about canes or walking sticks or anything like that. And I sure as Hell don’t wanna plow all the way over there through the heat, only to find they no longer carry them.

So…. Helle’s belles. Looks like the path of least resistance is gonna be to pay through the schnozzola to buy a new one from Amazon.

Dayum!

Glub!

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Hot! AND muggy. What a gummy, awful day! Pushing 90 degrees at 7:15 a.m., in 39% humidity.

Oh! There’s pool dude…speakin’ of jobs you’re glad you don’t have! How he manages to clean pool after pool after pool in this hot, sticky weather, I can’t even imagine. Just cleaning my own pool is almost more than I can cope with: on a cool, dry day.

That guy is one of the crew that makes it possible to stay in my home…and not have to move into some baby-sitting old-folkerie.

Hmmmm….  Let’s see…how many folks DOES it take to keep me here?

1. Pool Dude
2. Cleaning Lady from Heaven
3, 4, 5. Gerardo and his crew
6. Plumber
7. Electrician
8. Uber driver

At least! And that’s not counting my son, who does the work (and the thinking) of about 10 people.

No doubt there are more. Fair number of baby-sitters, eh?

Don’t know when it’s EVER been so hot-and-muggy. What a nasty morning! Definitely not a day that you’d like to spend working outdoors. 

RELIEVED…

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…of running around in the sun!  Whew!!!

WonderAccountant and I planned to get together this afternoon: meeting at her place. This would entail my having to walk over there…through 108-degree heat, according to the back porch thermometer.

Well. Ruby the Corgi and I have already traipsed through the heat, thankyouverymuch, and I can tellya: assuredly I don’t want to walk across even the one blacktop road between here and the WonderAccountants’ place!

Mercifully, when I called to arrange this forthwith, she suggested we put it off to another day.

YES!!!!!

Not to say HOOOOORAAAHHHH!

Yah: this was a chore that I absolutely positively was NOT in the mood for today. Any task that involves anything even remotely resembling math (of any variety) is over my furry little head. That’s why I hire WonderAccountant to handle my books, and it’s why M’hijito rides his stallion behind her to check on it and keep himself aware of what’s going on.

So: that was escaped.

And so was the (very short) trip across the broiling asphalt between our houses. Ugh!

Honestly, I’m coming to dislike living in Arizona more and more as the seasons turn. Spring and summer here, taken together, form a variety of Hell, so unholy is the heat. Just walking across the street entails armoring your feet with thick-soled shoes.

Where would I go, if I could escape this place?

Well. The San Francisco Bay Area would be my first choice. Either Parkmerced, where my mother and I lived when we first came back from Arabia and my father (a Merchant Marine deck officer) shipped out of the East Bay, or Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

Of course, I couldn’t afford to live in either of those places…but it’s something to daydream about. 😀

Failing that? Well…here in Arizona: we have Prescott, an upscale college town to the north of us. Or the Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson.

Otherwise? In general: meh! There aren’t many venues that are better than this place. Summers here suck, but the rest of the year, the climate is lovely. The district where I live is solidly middle-class, ringed with pleasing stores in easy walking distance of my house.

Truth to tell, I’d just as soon live out the rest of my life right here!