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…and Again… Still Hotter than Hades!

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Quickie circumnavigation of the block, by way of running off some neurotic frustration. Come 2:30 in the afternoon, the pavement out there is WAY too hot for Ruby the Corgi’s little feet. So, to her disgust, she got left home while her human sweltered its way down the road.

HOLEE mackerel, it’s hot out there! Back porch thermometer reads 109 degrees: fully in the shade! 

Ugh!  WHY do I stay in this godawful place?

Well: there’s a question…one that drives the next question: WHERE would I go other than this godawful place?

My son is here, and I have no desire to move away from him. Nor do I have any desire to move TO the alternatives.

  • San Francisco Bay Area: love it, but can’t afford it
  • Southern California: and how is that any better than here?
  • San Diego: don’t know anyone there anymore; don’t wanna start all over
  • Ft. Worth, Texas: All my relatives have moved or croaked over; don’t know anyone left there

On and on…really, there isn’t anyplace where I’d rather live than here.

Actually, Arizona has a lot to recommend it, surprisingly enough.

Phoenix is an actual big city, with big-city amenities.

When I was teaching, Arizona State University (on the other side of the Valley) paid a decent salary and hired me full-time.

This place does have a cultural life, believe it or not: two excellent museums in Phoenix alone, plus a couple of theater troupes and historical museums and three universities — one of them nationally prominent — and a plethora of historic sites, and…on and on. It’s a pretty nice and reasonably interesting place to live, to tell the truth.

And it has slews of decent restaurants — including some that exceed decent. I no longer eat out, but when Dear Husband was in the offing, we raided the local eateries a couple times a week.

****

And now it’s coming on to 6:00 p.m. Cleaning Lady from Heaven is still blasting around, bless her. Outside: 108 degrees, or so we’re told by Wunderground. Could be: it’s hotter than the hubs out there.

Talk about jobs you’d druther not have! Cleaning people’s houses: eek! 

She does an excellent job…well, actually, she’s a Godsend. This place is beyond spotless by the time she goes out the door.

And what that means, in the current short run, is that the next time the government busybodies come over here to inspect my lifestyle, they’ll think I run around cleaning my house every day.

Yes. Somebody sends busybodies to check on me. They come from some office in the State of Arizona. So far they’ve been  no worse than a passing nuisance — largely, I suspect, because of this fine woman’s work. Yes: I do clean my house…but nothing like as magnificently as she does. Last time the State’s spies dropped by, she had just been here…and so they saw…

* no dust anywhere
* freshly vacuumed and mopped tile floors throughout (the shack has no carpets)
* sparkling clean kitchen counters and appliances
* sparkling clean bathrooms
* a freshly made bed
* shiny clean windows

She’s just finishing up right now…and once again the place is as clean and organized as a museum.

I do hope Big Brother’s last inspection actually will be the last. That surprise descent upon my home was truly infuriating! Who they HELL do they think they are, nosing through my house? Out of the blue, without my invitation or permission!

Anyway, if we’ve gotten rid of those busybodies, it will be solely because of CL from H’s excellent work. 

Hotter Than the Hubs!

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Seriously: It must be a jillion degrees in the shade out there in the back yard.

Okay, okay: hold the melodrama. Let’s see what Wunderground says the temp really is:

Brrrrr! A chilly 103 degrees in the shade!

Who’d’ve thunk it was that crisp out there? Predicted high for today: 105 degrees. Tomorrow: 107.

Lovely. Garden spot!

WHY do I stay in this place????

Oh yeah: because the Kid lives here.

Be assured: if my fine son weren’t parked in this berg, I wouldn’t be, either!

LOL! Truth to tell, I’m coming to hate living in Phoenix — L.A. East. Too hot, too Los Angelized, too grody, too damn bourgeois.

{sigh}

Given that my son is parked here, though, I guess I’m not moving away. Ain’t movin’ away from where that kid lives!

His presence, though, doesn’t make me like living here any more than I already hate it.

Ohhh well: no point in belly-aching…doesn’t do any good, does it?

Hafta say: I ain’t fond of Phoenix.

Where would I go, if I could escape?

Not Sun City, that’s for damn sure!!  😀

Actually, if I were gonna stay in Arizona, one of my residence spots of choice would be the Oro Valley, a suburb on the north side of Tucson. A little wide spot situated beneath the Santa Catalina Mountains, it’s moderately upscale, reasonably safe, and very pretty. Certainly cooler during the summer.

In the absence of my son, I’d move down there in an instant.

But…he’s here. So I’m here.

And that’s that! 😀

 

Jumping on the Wagon!

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Once again, as happens occasionally here at the Funny Farm, I take it into my head that I need to abjure alcohol. Once and for all. Onto the wagon, and don’t jump off!

😀

Seriously: my mother’s family were tee-totalers (far from what my parents were!). But come the next generation, she and my father enjoyed swiggling so much that they learned to make their own booze while we lived in Arabia (where alcohol was verboten), and then continued to brew their own after they moved to Sun City, Arizona.

Do I believe I drink too much?

Well…no, not of late. In the past, without doubt I have. But these days, I never drink more than one or two cocktails or glasses of wine in a day.

Now that I’m getting old, though, I’m thinking even that is too much. So, these days I’m do believe it’s time to knock it off altogether.

Let us see, then, if we who are the funny-looking human can make that happen!

Count: 1
Today is the first 100% booze-free day of the current effort!

Watch this space!

Cleaning Lady/Babysitter???

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Quarter to two in the afternoon, and no visitation from the honored cleaning lady: she who (so I was led to believe) has been hired to babysit me on the side.

Her car is still in front of the WonderAccountants’ place, straight across the street. And you know what that means, right? The poor woman is over there working her butt off! 

Speaking of jobs we’re glad we don’t have….

At any rate, it also means that well over half the workday has passed and I remain free of supervision. HOOray!

My son will not be pleased if he finds out he’s paying her to be here several hours a week and she’s not showing up. But…far be it from me to tattle, eh?  😉

Heh…he’ll have to read this blog to find that out.

😀

Seriously: of course I’ll let him know if she doesn’t surface. But she probably will…because she’s honest, sweet, and brain-banging hard-working.

If it weren’t so searing hot, I’d walk to the Sprouts and pick up some incidental chow. But at 1:30 of an Arizona June afternoon, indeed it IS searing hot. Walking over there would be suicidal…and whatever I need from that place, I don’t need it so much that I feel like hassling with hiring a driver to get there.

If Wonder Cleaning-Lady fails to surface this afternoon, I’ll have an Uber cab deliver me to the Sprouts. This neighborhood is saturated with Uber drivers — a good dozen of them live right around here. So it should be easy to get some poor wretch to drive me wherever I want to go.

Which, in this heat, is…into the living room. Thankee.

Morning in Lovely(?) Arizona

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The Corgi is out back, sniffing every corner of the yard — her daily task, right? The Human loafs, feet on the hassock, computer on the lap. All is quiet…for the nonce.

Not looking forward to this morning, though. M’Hijito has hired a babysitter to come in and supervise me, forgodsake. Today, as I understand it, is to be her first day on the job.

It’s only a little after seven, and so we presumably have an hour or two before she surfaces.

Once the poor soul is welcomed into the Funny Farm and has a chance to look around, we’ll have to try to get to know each other. And since Funny is in fact One Weird Chick, …heh!!  We’ll see how long she lasts!

😀

Seriously: I am a strange little broad and always have been, since I was a little kid. As a child, I had hardly any friends, because I did not and could not fit in with the crowd.

Over half a century of life on this earth indeed has taught me to keep my mouth shut. But that’s easy enough when the victim…uh…companion isn’t living with you. When you’ve got someone in your face all day long…well…that’s a whole ‘nother story.

So, truth to tell, even though I’m interested to meet this new person, I’m sure not looking forward to it.

By now Ruby and I would have circumambulated the ‘Hood on our morning walk. Instead, we’ve had to sit here and wait for the babysitter to show up. Of course, she has not done so, and because June is one of the hotter months in lovely central Arizona, our chance for a doggy-walk is already lost.

Since it’s unreasonable to ask some poor underpaid soul to surface before 7 in the morning, I’ll have to go over to the locksmith’s shop and have him make another key, to give to this lady. That will allow her to get into the house while Ruby and I are out junketing around the neighborhood.

Just what I wanna do: hand out front-door keys to all and sundry…

Meanwhile, my office looks like a bomb dropped in there. WHAT a mess! Instead of loafing here playing with the computer, I should be back there shoveling out that room.

Ugh! Grand way to start the day, eh?

This is part of what makes my character weird: I don’t like people telling me what to do with my life or what to do with my time. 

Ever has it been thus. So…school was a PITA. Organized sports: PITA. Church activities: PITA.

Huh….  What happened over the years to incline me to dislike other people so?

Hmmmm…

Well: my earliest memory is of the time I was playing in a sandbox with a neighbor’s two brats. I was under three years old, because this happened before we left for Arabia…and we arrived in that sylvan realm a day before I turned three.

We’re sitting there in a sandbox in front of the house my mother had rented in Berkeley, California. The neighbor’s two brats are there, too, playing with me.

I imagine we’re all having a good time, when the brat girl picks up a load of sand in her little kiddie shovel and SLAMS IT INTO MY FACE. 

Slams it into my EYES.

Oh, my god! Never has anything hurt so much, before or since.

And there you are, folks:

That is how I learned to dislike and to distrust other people. That lesson, we might add, has never been forgotten.

And that’s why I don’t want strangers in my home. It’s why I don’t want the babysitter my son has hired in my home. It’s why just now I do not want to sit here waiting for the woman to show up; but instead I crave to be striding around the park behind a bouncing corgi.

Humanity: God’s gift to Satan.

Eine Kleine Paranoia…

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For reasons unknown, the possibility of a major earthquake in Southern California — powerful enough to affect lovely Arizona — has been lingering in my feeble little mind for the past couple of days.

No: I’m not clairvoyant. 😀  So don’t worry about any magical prediction. Some parties have been gnashing teeth about a possible major quake over here…but that is so unlikely as to be hilarious.

The thing is, though… Structures in California are built to withstand earthquakes. That’s not true in Arizona. Because o’course we don’t have earthquakes. Right?

Upshot: a quake of any noticeable magnitude would do some serious damage here.

MEANWHILE….

It’s 109 degrees in the shade(!!) of the back porch. Vast, towering white cumulus clouds are barreling down on us from the north. Dollars to donuts, it’ll rain like He!! this evening. That’ll cool things down a bit.

But until then: 109 and humid is no joke!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where my parents dragged me to live for nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf. You ain’t seen heat and humidity till you’ve enjoyed a summer in those parts.

At any rate, Wunderground is forecasting 100% chance of precip, with thunderstorms to rage into the night. Goody… 😮