Coffee heat rising

Angst

{Pant} {GLUB} {Pant}!!!!

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😀  My goodness! The boggle minds!!!  

Stupidly, along about 2:30 in the afternoon I imagined I could stroll out for a short walk around the block.

Can you spell DUMB AS A POST?
How about CRAZY AS A LOON?
Or maybe WHERE DID YOU LEAVE YOUR MARBLES?

😀

Honestly: what was I thinking?

Not only is it hotter than the Hubs — 107 degrees, saith Wunderground, with the caveat that it “feels like 110” — it’s freaking humid. No kidding: 21% of that air you’re puffing in is water!

Feels like an obscene summer day in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, on whose sands I grew up next to the Persian Gulf.

****

This place is just AWFUL in the summertime. That would be why anyone who can afford it takes off for far venues during July and August.

But most people here can’t. I sure can’t. So you suffer through two months(+) of unmitigated Hell.

Truly: if my son weren’t here, I’d be LONG gone. Once my parents both passed, I’d have shot back to California like the proverbial rocket.

But I’m surely not about to take off for distant parts and leave him behind. My parents dragged me here; he was born here and raised here, and now his career and personal life are here. Nothing is left for me in California. Everything is left for me in Arizona.

So as long as that dude is here, I’m here.

Lucky him, eh?

***

There are folks who come here for just the fall, winter, and part of the spring. Most of them are retirees: people who don’t have to stay in x or y venue for a job. And it is very pleasant during those seasons.

Not so much in the summer, though!

***

Do I wish my parents had never come here, never dragging me with them?

To a degree, yes.

I would have much better opportunities had I been able to stay in California. At the time they dragged me here and dumped me at the University of Arizona (in Tucson), I was all set up to go to UC Berkeley.

And oh, how I wanted to go to Berkeley! Even just an undergraduate degree would have opened so many doors for me. And that’s to say nothing of the Ph.D. that I eventually landed. Imagine where you could go with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley!

A far piece from freakin’ Tucson, that’s for sure!

So…I can’t say I hate it here. Or even dislike it. Just that it wouldn’t have been my first choice of places to spend my adult life.

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.

***

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!

Argh! What next, Lord?

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Why does everything crash on your head at once?  Ever notice that? Let one thing go wrong, and EVERYTHING ELSE goes haywire!

Just now I’m trying to cook a piece of salmon on the grill…and not having much luck. Appears the gas burners are on the fritz.

They seem to be burning..but…on “low as low can go.” Can’t fire the thing up enough to actually COOK the meat.

This, …

  • While my son has purloined my car, so I can’t get to a repair shop
  • While it’s so hot you can hardly breathe out there
  • While the babysitter my son hired to supervise my every moment (and prevent me from sipping a glass of wine…) hasn’t shown up — and probably went to the home of a neighbor whose street number is the same as mine (just one block north)
  • While I don’t have anything else in the fridge and so need that grill to work…or else will have to cope with a giant mess in the kitchen

Yep: the grill is definitely busted. I’m probably gonna have to buy a new one. And that’ll set me back a couple hundred bucks. Or more.

Uhhhhh….

Waaait-a-minute… The damn thing is set on “Low”!  Whaaa????  No wonder it won’t cook the fish!

That’s a mistake I’ve never made before…not in a good 50 years of outdoor grilling!!!  Senility: it’s sneakin’ up!

Or maybe it’s galloping up….

 

Egad!! No Doggy-Walks Here…

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Get this! Wunderground says today’s high is supposed to be 111 degrees. You saw that right: a hundred and eleven degrees! 

Where does this damn place think it is? Saudi Arabia?

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer reads 110 degrees…in the shade of the north-facing back porch. A covered porch. A ventilated covered porch…

Holeee sheee-ut!

We do have salmon and shrimp and accouterments that can be cooked up on the barbecue today. But tomorrow…well… Tomorrow I’ll have to walk(!!!) to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts to restock the supplies. And that will be a challenge.

I may see if I can get the neighborhood Uber driver to tote me over there…but…whaddaya bet that guy won’t feel any enthusiasm for getting on the road as dawn cracks?  And I sure don’t wanna be slamming around in the heat.

Let’s see…what time do these worthy retailers open?

  • Albertson’s:  6:00 a.m.
  • Sprouts: 7:00 a.m.
  • El Rancho: 6:00 a.m.

Hmmmm…  The El Rancho is closer. But the Albertson’s is a far better store for a middle-class shopper.

If I leave the house at 5:45, I could get to the store just as they’re opening. Grab the loot. Pay up. Gallop out the door…and maybe get back here by 7:00 a.m.

Or so…

Actually, that might not be too bad. Except that I don’t wanna start charging around at that hour. And toting groceries six or eight blocks through questionable territory doesn’t sound like much fun.

Also, one thing I’ve discovered over the kerjillion years that I’ve lived here: there’s a route through the neighborhood that comes out on the back side of the Albertson’s shopping center. That would allow me to get down there and yet dodge the jerks screaming obscenities at me.

Hm. They open at 6:00…okayyy… I might get back here by 7:00 — surely no later than 7:30. It would still be hot outside, but not yet hotter than Hell.

Dare not walk down there in the evening. For one thing, it’ll be hotter than the Hubs, all right: after a full day of Arizona sun blasting. But more to the point: whatever the weather, it’s just not safe. Too many jerks, assholes, and predators roam around between here and that shopping center.

Been there, done that, ain’t doin’it again!!

Really: what a place to live. If my son weren’t just down the road, I’d pull up stakes and head for either north Scottsdale or (un)lovely Sun City. Sure wouldn’t stay in central or north Phoenix: it truly isn’t safe.

I don’t wanna live in Sun City. Been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again. BUT…at least in a ghetto for old folks, you don’t have a$$holes screaming obscenities at you as you walk to the nearest grocery store.

Soggy Doggy Day!

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Yuch!!!  It is SO HOT and SO WET out there, it feels like horrible Saudi Arabia, where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Wet, hot, and miserable.

To gild that soggy lily, war planes are busily roaring in and out of Luke Air Force Base. Nevvermind that they’re 20 miles to the west of us. We still get serenaded with the ominous melody of World War III, on its way to us: ggggRRRROOOAAAAARRRRRRR!

My mother used to sit on her patio, partaking her morning coffee to the melody of those damn warplanes. Ohhhhhh, she would coo. It’s the sound of fweedom! 

Yeah, Mom: the sound of Death, comin’ for you.

Why ARE people so stupid, anyway?

Ohhh well.  Ruby and I made it back to the house, finally, through air so thick you could practically swim through it. I’m now so hot and miserable, about all I can manage is sitting down and pounding on a keyboard. Had to put a throw over the back of the chair, to keep from wrecking the leather upholstery with the sweat I don’t feel like washing off myself right this minute.

I never could understand why my mother thought that jet warplane racket was some kind of sweet, patriotic melody.

Never did understand why she didn’t grasp the fact that the “melody” was a funeral ode to every civilian within nuclear bomb distance of our balmy home.

But then…I never did grasp what she thought was soooo wonderful about dreary, racist Sun City. Guess we just weren’t on the same wavelength.

Ugh!!!

Well, I’d better get up and brew a pot of coffee, before I fall down face-first on the tile floor….

And Now…WTF????

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Yesterday was a true, certifiable Day from Hell. Seriously…by bed-time, I knew that if I weren’t trapped here by owning the damn house outright and by the piddling retirement income and by the craving to live vaguely near my son, I would be SOOOO OUTTA PHOENIX!

But now…we have this morning. WTF?????

  • The weather is clear and more or less temperate. On the warm side, but highly tolerable.
  • The peripheral neuropathy: present, but tolerable in intensity.
  • The dawg: prancing along happily.
  • The hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money: functioning normally this morning.
  • The toilet: now working normally.
  • The house: spotlessly clean after Wonder-Cleaning-Lady’s ministrations.
  • The laptop computer: apparently working normally again.
  • Outside temperature in the shade of the back porch at 7:30 a.m.: only 100 degrees.

Weird. 

The hound and the human got out the door early enough to circumnavigate the park without melting in the heat.

The babysitters M’hijito hired to ride herd on the Crazy Old Bat have not surfaced (thank Gawd!), or else they came by here while we were doggy-walking and simply ignored the note I left on the door for them, asking them to wait a few minutes until I could get back to the house. Good riddance, say I!

So…I dunno why the Manifestations from Hell have settled down. And I ain’t askin’!  Just hope they STAY settled down for awhile!