Coffee heat rising

funny

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HOW do dogs know????

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Doggy telepathy, right?

Obviously, Ruby can see me sit down. Get comfortable. Open the computer on my lap. Start playing with it. But how does she know the exact moment when really, truly, I do not want to drop everything, get up, traipse across the house, open the back door, and let her out?

She does know. Absolutely.

And there will be no loafing for the human when this dawg is around. No chance!

Let her outside? Next chore is to wait around till she’s finished patrolling the backyard and then let her back in.

😀

Yuch! It is hot and wet out there. Not yet 9:30 and the weather is already ungodly. Way too hot and humid to leave the back door open so she can come back in at her whim.

The coyote issue is getting a bit more intense, too. As our local wild canids get more tame, I grow more reluctant to leave a 20-p0und corgi toddling around the backyard by herself, unobserved and unguarded.

****

Amusement 0f the day, later on, will be testing a new wine M’hijito showed up with. Uhm…make that “wine,” quote-marks included.

Understand: I have my main meal of the day between noon and 2:00 p.m. And because yes, I do like a glass of wine with a good meal, that is when I snort down my daily dose of what he regards as booze.

He gets all worried about this. Apparently he thinks I’m a lush, and that I’m swilling down half a bottle or more. Every day.

This is somewhat distant from the truth. Yes, I do snort down wine with lunch. I usually have a glass — at most a glass and a half — of wine with that mid-day meal.

Shocking, ain’t it?

This is a habit I picked up from an old boyfriend, a guy with European origins who did, indeed, start tippling his wine along about mid-day. Because…that was what his own people did.

Since it looked very much like I was going to marry this guy, “his own people” were fast evolving to become “my people.” And I wanted to fit in.

Lemme tellya: my parents about had 15 shit-fits. 

Not that they didn’t drink themselves. They did, indeed. In fact, my father could (and did) brew his own.

Long story short: after some months, it became clear that if I married our guy, I would never see my parents again. They just hated the man, partly as a matter of racism and partly because they genuinely thought he was a jerk.

I deep-sixed that relationship…but did not deep-six the wine. 😀

And so, over the decades (and that’s what it’s been: decades), I’ve been in the habit of swilling a glass or two (or three…) of wine every day.

Shocking, eh?

Well, my son pretty much abhors this habit. And I will say…he probably has somethin’ there. It can’t be good for you to be gulping down a couple of glasses worth of wine every day.

No! Baaaaad basselope!

So I can’t get irked over his resentment of my swilling habits. But…neither do I feel much enthusiasm to knock them off….  😀

He has tried to reform my evil ways. No luck, poor kid.

So now he’s found a new tack: deflect my boozing onto non-alcoholic booze!  

Don’tcha love it?

Seriously, if this stuff is drinkable, you may be sure I’ll be switching over to it.

He just showed up with it a day ago, so I haven’t tried it yet. But this afternoon I will, with dinner. Should be innaresting to see (uhm…taste?) what happens.

{chortle!}

The real truth is, what I need to switch over to is iced tea. Or iced water.

This would require me to behave like a grown-up. And we know I have a moral objection to that, right?

😀

Hotter than the Hubs

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6:15 p.m., and it’s 105 on the back porch.

The back porch wherein no sunlight penetrates….

{whine whinge!!} It’s SO hot, so miserable that it’s hard to believe this is Arizona.

Yeah, it does get HOT in Arizona. But as we like to brag, “it’s a dry heat.” Today the oven appears to be attached to the plumbing. We’ve got hot, all right. But also weirdly damp. 

An unpleasant wind has been blowing all afternoon, waving the trees around in the distance. And we have a weird, high overcast. Very thin clouds, gathered over us like a sheet on a bed. They’re keeping the heat close to the ground, and the wind is blasting that heat back and forth.

Saaaave us!

Ohhhh well. Ruby and I are barricaded inside the house. The AC is blasting away…we can only hope it keeps on blasting, and doesn’t crap out in the middle of the night.

My excellent son brought over some good things to eat, and so the human is stuffed. Presumably the dog is, too, since she just scarfed down a dish of pooch chow.

This junket to our house was very kind of him: it rescued me from having to walk to the Fry’s or the Sprouts. They’re close enough…but in this heat, nothing is close. So I was mighty glad to be spared the grocery-store hike.

Tomorrow the temp is predicted to hit 110. Again: not surprising at this time of year. But still…heh! lamentable. 

One of my neighbors — a great favorite of mine — has rented an apartment in Prescott: a cowtown and tourist trap up north on the Rim. It’s not far from where our ranch was. But…hmm ….  Y’know, the ranch wasn’t exactly balmy in the dead of summer.

Lessee…. Tomorrow Prescott is supposed to hit 113.

Well. It’s better than 120. I guess.

Not enough better, IMHO, to make it worth renting or buying real estate up there! 😀

 

Hot and Hellish

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Lovely, lovely Arizona. 

At 3:30 in the afternoon, it’s 108 in the shade of the back patio. And overcast. 

Got that? 108 under a blanket of gray clouds.

What a place! Almost as lovely as lovely Arabia. Ick!

My son, figuring to protect me from myself (somebody has to, right?), brought over a few cans of beeroid.

And “beeroid“is the operative term: the damn stuff is non-alcoholic!

😀

LOL!  

Actually, in the flavor department, it’s not bad. Tastes much like real beer…a little bland, but otherwise acceptable.

WhatEVER…I am NOT in the mood to venture out, on foot, (the kid still has my car) to hike through cloudy (gawdawful!) heat and wind for the sake of a six-pack of beer.

On the other hand, neither am I in the mood to deprive my little self.

So here we are, perched on the bed, peering through the back windows as we watch the storm pile up, and…swilling. Beeroid, is what we’re swizzling..

Tried to talk M’hito into coming over for dinner. He, being no fool, was having NONE OF IT. So…okay…there’s some work I don’t hafta do.

And instead of that steak in the fridge, I reckon we’ll have some spaghetti. Well, I will: that dawg will turn up her cute little nose at spaghetti. 😀

By dinner time, this storm will have rolled into our parts, and we won’t want to be dodging raindrops to grill a slab of meat.

Hmmmmm….  Actually….that was prob’ly a smart move on The Kid’s part. This weather is growing worse with mathematical élan! Wind is picking up fast. Ugh! Looks like we’ll both be glad we stayed hunkered down in our respective caves. Temp.: 108 degrees. Wind speed: a mere 9 mph…just now… But tree tops are waving in the wind, a standard sign that soon the wind will be whipping us all around.

***

Uggleee afternoon. The sky’s the color of mud.

Sure am glad I don’t have to go anywhere this afternoon. And especially glad I won’t be driving home from work in a storm through rush-hour traffic.

Retirement: it’s the business!! 😀

 

 

 

And…you thought “hotter than the hubs” was hot?

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Hah! we say to that…

{chortle!}  7:19 a.m.: Just back from the morning Dawg Walk.

It seems hotter than the Hubs of Hades. But in fact…it’s not. In fact, it’s only 90 degrees out on the patio.

That seeming, I expect, is occasioned by the fact that it’s a bit damp out there. The air is hazy: not overcast, but…kinda fuzzy-looking.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the neighborhood, from the upper reaches of Richistan to the humbler, Sun City-style bungalows that characterize our parts. Indeed, my house was built by the same developer who brought us that sylvan ghetto for old folks. And once you know that, you can see the resemblance. Kinda.

WhatEVER. Even though it’s not hot outside by Arizona standards, it’s mighty cozy by ordinary human standards. Yes: Hubs of Hades.

And what have we here? A wind seems to be coming up. Rain in the offing maybe, later today?  Innaresting.

Thinking, whilst hiking, about how I”m going to contrive to stay in my house until the last cat is hanged. My son wants to consign me to the Beatitudes, a prison for olde folkes.

I just HATE institutional living — hated living in the dorms, and know very well that being locked up in an old-folkerie will quickly drive me to suicide.

Which ain’t the way I wanna go out…

Recently I learned that Wonder Cleaning Lady used to take care of old bats in their homes. Whether she stayed with them overnight, I do not know…but with all the gadgets we have these days, it wouldn’t be hard to equip oneself with a call button to summon your caretaker or the EMTs. If said caretaker surfaced around 7 or 8 a.m. and stayed until after dinner, you’d be OK.

By and large.

And given what it costs to stay in one of those horrible places, you’d probably come out ahead financially.

A-a-n-n-d interestingly, I seem to be getting by just fine without a car! Dear son, who kiped mine and locked it in his garage, has driven me to a few places that I need to go, and has made it clear he has no intention of returning the chariot. But….

But…I don’t need it! 

The guy across the street is an Uber driver! He can schlep me just about anyplace I need to go. And if I can’t snab him, I can…hold onto your hat! This is radical stuff!…just call a taxi.

Yes. Phoenix still has taxi cabs. If you can imagine.

It’s interesting to think….  That you could get by without a car in a major city, I mean. Back when my mother and I lived in San Francisco, we mostly did without the car. My father’s car, that is: most of the time it was locked up in an underground garage, while he went to sea. She and I took the bus, the streetcar, or a cab. And we got around just fine.

The presence of Uber’s amateur cab drivers would hugely enhance that. With those guys on stand-by all the time…really…you wouldn’t need to own a car.

Truth to tell, though…once the weather cools a bit, I probably won’t have much use for the Uber dudes, anyway.

The Funny Farm is within walking distance of three fine shopping centers. Taken together, they house…

> an Albertson’s (giant supermarket)
> a Walgreen’s
> a computer store (new gear and repairs!)
> a Fry’s (supermarket!)
> a Sprouts (hippy-dippy supermarket!)
> an El Rancho (another supermarket!)
> a music store
> a beauty parlor
> a liquor store
> a doctor’s office
> a couple of clothing stores
…and several others that offhand I don’t recall.

Soooo…I lucked out when I bought this house here at the top end of North Central.

What it means is that I can reach any of those stores in a ten-minute walk. And with the roller-cart that I tricked out, I can carry a freaking ton of goods from place to place to home.

And what THAT means is: no need for a car!

Seriously: if I need a car, all I have to do is go rent one.

And…if Luz is representative, I can rent a caretaker, too! 😀

Hotter than the Hubs; Ever Amazing

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Holeeeee maquerel, is it hot out there! In the shade of the patio shade structure, tucked away among the leaves and branches of the big old ficus plant, the thermometer measures 108 degrees.

My excellent son charged out into the blasting heat and returned with a pile of chow and treats from the Sprouts — sparing me from having to hike over there or do without. “Do without” being the most likely operative term… So now Ruby and I are well fed and loafing on the big bed — very late in the afternoon, early in the evening, it being 5:30 p.m. and still hotter than the Hubs.

Hubs outside, Hubs inside: it is just plain HOT, every which way you turn.

And lookee here what just popped up on the ever astonishing Internet! If this true (the ever-nagging if, eh?), it may cut off the pending Alzheimer’s in its tracks! Lithium is pretty easy to acquire: you can order it from Amazon!

Clearly we’re very early in that game, though. Don’t think I’ll be ordering the stuff from the Internet until we see what, if anything, it really does.

Interesting, though….

How’m I Gonna Get it???

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Well. I ain’t a gonna get it. 

Wine, that is. From the nearest fancy yuppy grocery store. Because I can’t get to said store without risking my life. And I ain’t a-gonna risk my life for a bottle of Sauvignon blanc.

No kidding: As we scribble, the temperature in the deepest shade of the back porch registers 108 degrees. Humidity is 19 percent.

My son has kiped my car, so I can’t drive the five blocks or so to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s to snab a bottle of wine.

And just now I would like nothing much more than a nice cold glass of white wine.

Could call Uber and have my neighbor Uber driver schlep me across the street, through the unholy heat, to snab a bottle at the Sprouts. But…seriously?????? 

Nope. I’m desperate, but I’m not so desperate as to hire a cab to drive me four blocks to a local grocery store.

Man!!  It is hotter than the hubs of Hades here this afternoon, even though 108 just isn’t that hot. It must be a bit humid out there, making the heat feel more intense than it is.

So I reckon tomorrow morning I’ll turn out of the sack early and show up at the store as the opening bell jangles. Yea verily: They all open at 7:00 a.m. So if I’m at their door at seven, I should be able to snab a bottle or two of booze and get back here before it gets dangerously hot.

{chortle!} You couldn’t do that in Sun City. Leastwise, I don’t recall that one can. Not unless you lived right next door to the shopping center. The place is VAST.

Lately I’ve considered following SDXB out to that indeed vast, monotone retirement city. It would have a few advantages: lots of other old bats; probably less traffic and fewer screaming ambulances; no kids yowling. But…

Well…been there, done that. Don’t think Sun City is my Thing.

****

SDXB just called from Seattle, where he’s visiting his sister and brother-in-law. They have a lovely home there, up north where the weather is cool at this time of year.

His sister is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Heaven help her. That’s about the saddest news I’ve had in life: she’s an active, vivacious woman, very outdoorsy, very lively. To be crippled up with an ailment like that must be seven kinds of torture.

Well. Rather few of us are gonna get out of this place without some kind of torture, I guess. About the best we can hope for is that it will be relatively brief.

****

OMG!!!

M’ijito just showed up at the door. He went by the grocery store and surfaced with bag after bag of loot — even including a bottle of white wine!

Gosh. Now I won’t have to make a grocery run for the better part of a week. And I won’t have to sneak off to my favorite secret wine shop to snab a bottle of addictive slosh.

Wow!

Tried to get him to stay for dinner, but he took off like a cannonball.

See? That there would never happen if I were parked in Sun City!

😀

OMG. Not to say ha ha ha hee hee ha hah! 

He brought me a bottle of — hang onto your hat — zero alcohol white wine!

Zero flavor, too. It’s billed as Sauvignon blanc…and it has about as much flavor as tap water.

It was very thoughtful, though. What a sweetie!

And interesting to get ahold of the zero-alcohol stuff: now we know what it tastes like. Or…uhm…doesn’t taste like. 😀