Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Another Soggy Doggy (Nitwit-Infested) Day!

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Whew! Just back from the early-morning doggy-walk. At this time of year, we have to get out the door no later than 6:30 to get our daily exercise walk in. Even then, it’s a bit on the too-goddam-hot side to be traipsing around out there.

But here we are, back by 7:25. The Human is soaked in sweat. The Dawg has guzzled down half a (large!) bowl of water and is now flopped on the cool (heh!) tile floors, panting. The day is wet, soggy, icky, and hot. Thank the gods we were born in the era of air-conditioning!

That notwithstanding…

Have you noticed that we are surrounded by morons? 

Yes. Freaking, raving, bird-brained IDIOTS. And somehow — idiotically — we end up hiring them on our payrolls!

Next time I hire someone, I’m making them take an IQ test to qualify for the damn job.

This morning I grab a plate of leftover grub out of the fridge, something to cut the hunger pangs. Stuff a forkful of the stuff into my face…

Turns out the STUPID WOMAN that I hire as a cleaning lady has spiked the food with a load of chili pepper!

The damn stuff sears my mouth and throat!! Like I swallowed a forkful of burning coals!!!!

My gawd!  For a minute or more, I couldn’t even breathe!

What the f*ck gets into people!??  WHY would you do that to the food at someone else’s house????? And then stick it back in the refrigerator where the proprietor can get a blasting surprise when she stupidly eats it??!?

I should fire the bitch. But my son, who also employs the dear lady, will be irked if I pull that stunt.

So I guess the next time she shows up here, I’ll have to tell her to keep her hands off the food in this place.

Honestly. What IS the matter with people?

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 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. 😀

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!

…and we did this…WHY????

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Chortle!  Today’s Moment of Stupidity seems to take the proverbial cake.

What on EARTH possessed me? 

Come about 1:40 in the afternoon, I took it into my feeble little mind that nothing would do but what I should take a little walk around the neighborhood.

Yeah. That’s the neighborhood where the back porch thermometer just now registers 115º in the shade. Don’t ask what that translates to when you’re out in the direct sun!

Okay…so, bein’ stupid as a post, we don’t ask that key question, but just pull on a shady hat and trundle on off down the sidewalk.

Extraordinarily bad idea. Got about a block before I smartened up, turned around, and came back to the house. Made it before we fainted and plopped face-down on the sidewalk….

Holeeee maquerel! It’s almost hot out there!

Welp...tomorrow’s exercise will have to occur at dawn. Again. And probably (again!) without our furry friend’s company. If the heat is still this fierce, outdoors will be no place for Ruby the Corgi.

What a gawdawful place!  WHY did my parents drag me here, lo! these many years ago?  

I should have headed back to Northern California on my own, the minute I graduated from the University of Arizona with the low-rent B.A. This was not the place for me to have stayed put!

Swamp?? Make That Quagmire!

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Wow! What an AWFUL, wet, swampy morning!!!

Ruby and I just returned from our daily circumnavigation of the neighborhood park. MISTAKE! We should never have started out on that venture!

At 7:45 in the morning, it’s 100 degrees out there, with 40% humidity. So saith Wunderground.

If anything, that’s an understatement. It’s as hot and as soggy out there as anything we used to see on the shore of the hideous Persian Gulf, when we lived there in Saudi Arabia. And believe me: that is NOT a place where you would want to live!

Dawg is flopped on the kitchen tiles, having swiggled a raft of water. I’m flopped in a leather chair, its upholstery covered with a cotton throw in an effort to keep the sweat from wrecking the thing.

Horrid morning in a horrid place. If I had any choice at all, I’d be living soooooo far from here!

Where would so far be? Probably the San Francisco Bay Area, whence my mother’s family emanated. Yes, the air gets wet there, too…but at least it’s COOL air!

Our relatives lived in Berkeley, then a middle-class to upper-middle-class district sprinkled over rolling hills. Such a pretty place! I sure do miss it!

What possessed my parents to move to Arizona…well, I can’t say that escapes me.

Yeah, I know what called them:

Money. At the time, the cost of living here was so much lower than California’s that my father figured he could afford to retire. And…yah: quit his job and knock off working was what he most craved in life! At least, at the time that was so.

Politics. Arizona is as far to the right as you can get outside of the Deep South. People’s hearts are filled with hate here. Especially in regard to anyone who is not white and middle-class. My parents made an Alabama politician look liberal.

Weather. Yes, summers here are gawdawful. But the other nine or ten months of the year are pretty lovely. In the low desert: temperate days, no snow, rare rainy days.

Cost of living. You can buy a house in Sun City or Youngtown for a fraction of what a similar place costs in California, whence we emanated. True: it’s not a place you’d like to live year-round: summers here embody Hell. But air-conditioning makes it possible to survive.

Cheap tuition at the state university. I got into the University of Arizona at the end of my junior year in high school. After we’d lived here for a year, the cost of “education” (as it were) in Tucson was a fraction of what any California college or university charged state residents there.

Well. My son is well established here, so I’m not about to leave the state. Where be my son, there be I.

That doesn’t make me like this place a helluva lot more, though….

😉