Coffee heat rising

Angst

And moving on…

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Okay, so our call to the volunteer group that supposedly will help you get groceries and the like when you’re carless in Gaza: that was a FAIL.

What to do next?

M’hijito has offered to come over and get groceries for me. That is an exceptionally generous offer!!  As we all know, he has other things to do besides run errands for his mutther.

Other options:

  • Hire Wonder-Cleaning-Lady to make grocery-store runs for me. She comes in once a week anyway…maybe she’d be willing, for a little extra $$$, to pick up some things for me on the way here.
  • Try to get one of the grocery stores to deliver. Apparently, some of them will do so.
  • Give up! and hike to the nearest store through the unholy heat, stock up, haul the stuff home through the unholy heat.

If there’s another choice, I sure don’t know what it is. 

Joys of Olde Age

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Grrrrrrr!!!!!!  Have you noticed that as you get older, you find it harder and harder to get routine things done?

The stupidest things become major freakin’ hassles!

6:15 this morning: 

Charging around the backyard, trying to get the potted plants watered before the dog and I go out for this a.m.’s doggy-walk. Checking on the pool. Generally f*rting around…when OUCH!!!

A fine stab of pain in the sole of the left foot.

WTF???  Did I step on something?

Inspect the ground: yeah. Sure did: stepped on a bee that somehow had been becalmed on the pool’s Cool-Deck.

Awwww, geez. What is THAT gonna do to me?

Far as I know, I’m not allergic to bees. But it being 6:15 in the morning, don’t you just KNOW that if I’m ever gonna develop an allergy to bee stings, this will be the time!

Tromp in the house, retrieving the dog on the way. Slather pain-killer on foot.

Burning calms down a bit.

Can I get away with walking the dog? She needs her doggy-walk, and I need the exercise, too.

Put down food for the dog.

Hungry. Headachey. Slice a piece of bread for an on-the-run snack. Stale. Wouldncha know. 

Time to decide: Can I safely get away with walking around the neighborhood on the be-stung foot?

Probably. But what if I can’t?  Then what am I gonna do at 6:30 in the morning over on the far side of the ‘Hood?

Neighbors have reported coyote encounters in recent days.

Don’t you just know that if we limp out there, this morning will be the time we come nose-to-nose with one of those critters?

Ruby looks depressed. She wants to go out.

With coyotes running up & down the alleys, I can’t let her out to putter around the backyard alone.

Bees. Dogwalks. Coyotes. Park full of bums. Hunger. And the day has hardly even begun!

Hotter Than the Hubs…Again…

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Or “still”…  Or something. 

Sunday…

The AC has been pounding away. Don’t even THINK of asking what the power bill is likely to be this month. Probably two or three hundred bucks. But…don’t think about it. No. No thinking!!

Today is Sunday. If I had any sense, I’d surface down at the church and rebuild old friendships. Because…well…I do need some human company. No question of it.

But…my son has kiped my car. 

I have no way to get down to the church except on a bus, a highly questionable ride.  Plus just now, as we scribble, the temp in the shade of the back porch is A HUNDRED AND FIVE DEGREES.

No way in Hell am I traipsing 16 blocks eastward to the bus stop and standing around in that heat until a south-bound ride comes along. If a ride comes along.

Now…yes, it IS true that if I would get what passes for my act together, I could lasso a fellow church-goer into picking me up and schlepping me down to All Saints. But…that would be…you know…work. 

It also would be a great deal nervier than I happen to feel just now.

Gasp! I keep thinking it’s hotter than the hubs in the house. But that really isn’t quite the case. What’s happening is…it’s just a little humid in here. And in Arizona, you don’t have to get very  humid to make the heat feel like a blast furnace. That would be because it IS a blast furnace….

Perusing real estate ads in Sun City. Y’know, the house that I’m in was built by the same developer who built out most of Sun City. And you can see the similarity!  My house looks surprisingly like a Sun City shack.

Mine is rather better built, though. The price range in North Central is far higher than westside locations will support, and so Del Webb — the Sun City guy — produced neighborhoods here that echo the look of Sun City, but…well… The houses here are sturdier, better insulated, more diversely designed. Even though the exteriors look surprisingly similar.

***

And now it’s Monday…

***

Started this a while ago. Lost track. Wandered off. Fell Asleep. Who knows what else…

Splendidly HORRIBLE morning out there. Hot (95 degrees in the shade of the back patio), high overcast, damp, and sticky.

Friend is slated to come over this noon, thereupon to go out to lunch. Hope she does indeed surface: Nothing like a convenable human to make life more or less livable!

Maybe I should offer to fix lunch here, so we don’t have to go out in that swamp. Don’t have much, though. And without a car, you can be sure I don’t feel like walking to a grocery store.

Hmmmm….

Not to say {chortle!}  Just stuck a wonderfully stupid sign on the front security door, telling the accursed door-to-door solicitors to take a flying F at the moon.

Well. Ahem.. Possibly not that explicitly. It asks that they not ring the doorbell, because someone inside is ill.

I’m ill, all right: SICK of nuisance phone and door-to-door solicitors pestering me several times a day.

LOL! My friend already knows I’m crazy. This visit will confirm her suspicions.

****

Grrrrrr!!! Speaking of nuisances, I’ve got a whole, large bag of beautiful frozen shrimp in the fridge…and can’t tell whether they’re the recalled, contaminated variety or not.

It doesn’t LOOK like they are, though. The brand name on the package doesn’t appear to be associated with the bad shrimp.

Hope not. Because I really, REALLY don’t want to go traipsing out in the heat to buy more dinner food. Nor do I want to throw out God only knows how many dollars worth of chow.

***

LOL!!!!!

Welp…there was a reason I didn’t want to traipse out in the heat to pick up chow for dinner.

It is too goddamn hot to make it all the way to the grocery store!!!

Or even halfway to the damn grocery store!

Wunderground claims it’s only 106 out there. And in fact, that’s exactly what the back-porch thermometer says, right now: 106 degrees.

I find that a little hard to believe: if asked, I’d have said it was 110 or a bit higher. But…heh! I are a English major: I are not a thermometer!

So. Half an hour ago, I set out for the supermarket on Gangbanger’s way, there to buy some light chow and a bottle of white wine. And as you can no doubt intuit: didn’t make it! 

Gave up before I got a block from the shack. Turned around. Came back.

Thank all the gods for iced water!

😀

Thinking of asking Wonder Cleaning-Lady to drive me up to the store. She’s here banging around the house just now. But…but…that seems like a little much to ask. As if she weren’t knocking herself out quite enough!

The local grocery stores open at 7:00 a.m. So..duhhhhh! The answer to this conundrum is to show up at the Sprouts or the Albertson’s door at 7:00 a.m.

How hard IS that?????

Some of these establishments are now delivering. If I really wanted to bestir myself, I could call one of them and get stuff sent over.

But that has a fundamental drawback: Americans.

Seriously! 😀  Americans by and large don’t cook with fresh food — they heat junk that comes in cans and boxes. S-O-O…they don’t know how to pick out fresh fruit and vegetables. Ask them to bring you a fresh head of romaine, and they  just grab whatever’s on top of the pile in the grocery-store bin. And that…well…tends not to be good.

******

Whooooaaaaa! Look up the local Albertson’s on Conduit of Blight, and you see they open at SIX a.m., not at seven!

Hot dayum!

(And we DO mean “hot”!)

This opens a whole new door. 

At 6:00 o’clock, it’s already hot here, but it’s not fukkin homicidal. If I show up with a list and my roller-cart, I should be able to get outta there by 6:30 — surely no later than 6:45 or 7:00 a.m. The walk home is only 20 or 30 minutes.

That means I can get back here before the heat turns truly homicidal! 

Think o’ that!!!

Not a very pleasant way to start the day. But it sure beats hiking through 100-degree heat! If I can get in the door by 6:15 a.m., I can get back to the Funny Farm by 7:00…maybe earlier than that.

At 7 o’clock, the heat will be in the 90s. But that sure ain’t 110. 

Round and Round She Goes…

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And where she stops, nobody cares… 

😀

My son alleges that he managed to get my driver’s license invalidated. Which is to say, it is now illegal for me to drive. (Thus his excuse for hijacking my car, right?)

Well. Ohhhhkayyyy. 

Who can tell us whether that’s true? Who can say whether this little plastic-coated document is good for anything other than decoration?

Well: the Department of Motor Vehicles, of course.

I can’t easily get myself down to DMV in this unholy heat: certainly not without a car of my own to navigate the insane traffic.

Ohhhhkayyyy….

So I got the bright idea to go into a store or business that COULD check whether a document that you use as ID for check-cashing and the like is actually valid. Seems like that oughta work, right?

😀

It gets better and better. 

First store I went into, they didn’t know how to call up your driver’s license and confirm it.

Got that? They were accepting checks, but they didn’t know how to tell whether the checks were valid! Or even whether you’re the person whose name is on the damn check!!

Hmmmmm….

Moving on: Didn’t get much further with the other places in that shopping center.

None of them said my driver’s license was invalid. That was good. I guess.

But none of them could really confirm that my driver’s license could safely be used as ID for check-cashing. Or not. 

Sooooo….. I still don’t know a damn thing. To confirm or deconfirm, somehow I’ll have to get out to the credit union where my banking account resides: on the Arizona State University West Campus, a half-hour drive on the other side of the freeway from here!!

My son has grabbed my car, and so getting over there is darned near impossible. Tomorrow I’ll try calling them on the phone…but doubt that I’ll get far with that.

Otherwise..I’ll either have to hire an Uber to drive me out there and back, or try to mooch a ride with a friend.

{chortle!}

Entertaining as Hell, isn’t it?

Didnja just know Hell is endlessly hilarious?

***

Phoenix is an LA-style city, meaning that you need a car to get around — whether it’s across the city or a few blocks up to the local grocery store.

This, I can cope with by hiring the Uber driver who lives across the street. But really…that IS a PITA, and I’d sure rather not be bothered with it.

***

What if I rent or buy a car, park it in a rented space in a nearby garage (where my kid can’t find it), and go on about my business? Remember: my driver’s license is hidden in my own car, where I normally store it so I don’t have to carry a purse with me everyplace I go. 

Conundrum: That notwithstanding, I haven’t asked whether that license is still valid, or whether the kid has contrived to quash it. To do that, I’ll have to traipse to the DMV office and stand in line till every cow in Arizona comes home. So…it could be that even if I get it back or get another copy, it may be worthless.

LOL! This is getting so ridiculous that even I think it’s kinda funny.

So, y’know what I think is the best thing to do?

Nothing. 

Yeah: nothing. 

Let him keep the damn car. He can pay the insurance and the taxes on it. (These, lemme tellya, are freakin’exorbitant!)

Between Uber, regular taxicabs, and public transit, it’s not that hard to get around this city car-free. In fact, if and when I get the car back, I may sell it: just to be rid of it and all its panorama of expenses. Now that I’ve learned to get around without it, why the hell do I need it?

Ahhhh to be in Berkeley, where you can live comfortably without a car!

No kidding! My great-grandmother and her daughter, my great-aunt, lived on a hillside in Berkeley, about a block below where the train from San Francisco passed through a tunnel into Kensington, the suburb where my cousins lived. But you could clamber up a concrete staircase to the top of that tunnel, where you’d find yourself on the neighborhood street that led to the cousins’ house. Great-Grandmother and Great-Aunt lived in Berkeley for year after year after year…and never owned a car! 

Can you imagine?

Well. You couldn’t do that here; not and retain any grip on your sanity. You’d melt into the pavement. 😀

***

Mumbling on in that precinct: y’know… I suspect it would not cost much more to drive a rental car than it does to own a car and pay the taxes, insurance, and maintenance.

DXH and I did that: he preferred to rent a car rather than own it. Accordingly, for year after year, the car at our house was NOT our car: it belonged to a rental company. If there was a logic behind that preference, I never understood it. Probably it had to do with the fact that he was deducting it from his taxes for his law practice. It was, in theory, a business expense, not a personal vehicle.

I think. But couldn’t swear to that. All I know is that we didn’t actually own the car parked in our driveway.

Sooo…do I need to “actually own” the car parked in my garage? Would it be more advantageous to rent it?

Something to look into. 

The Joys of Living in Phoenix

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10:52 p.m.

What a fukkin’ ZOO this place is!

Rousted by the dog: got up to let her out to do her Thing. Spotted a cop copter buzzing the neighb0rhood.

Managed to urge the dog along and then dodge back in the house. Cop is still buzzing around over Main Drag West…essentially right over my old house’s roof.

Oh…hold that statement. Here he comes over here.

Here at FaM, Main Drag West also goes by the name Conduit of Blight. That’s pretty much what it is: a thoroughfare that brings criminals, delinquents, and pursuing cops into the ‘Hood. Tiresome as hell!!

Speaking of tiresome, I yam TIRED and wish to go back to sleep. Looks like that’s not gonna happen for awhile.

What. A. Place!