Coffee heat rising

Angst

Hotter than the Hubs!

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Seriously: hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. At 7:20 in the morning, the shaded(!) back-porch thermometer reads 85 degrees…but you couldn’t prove that by me. Ask me, and I’ll guess 95 to 100.

* Wet.
* Overcast.
* And hot.

A humid day like this is NOT a typical Arizona number. Generally, “it’s a dry heat,” as the locals like to say.

Ruby and I: just back from dragging the human around the park. Sweltered!

This morning M’hijito is dragging me to the dentist, lhudly scream Goddam. A crown fell off a back molar. So won’t THAT be fun!

Frankly, I don’t think it needs any repair work…because when you look closely at it you see it probably never needed a crown to begin with. I suspect a lot of these li’l procedures are actually procedures on your pocketbook.

That is almost certainly the case here. You can see, absent the crown, that the tooth was never cracked and probably never broken, more than at the level of a small chip. If it were up to me, I’d go on about my business and leave it alone.

But when you get old, things are not up to you. The next generation takes over and pushes you around like you were an eight-year-old.

😀  Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. In some aspects, I probably do operate about on the level of an eight-year-old. After a certain number of decades, you lose patience with all the hassles, all the bullshit, all the unnecessary expenses, all the gouges and just let it go. And frankly: I’m long past that point.

LOL! One benefit of living at McCormick Ranch would be that it would be too far from my son’s house for him to justify traipsing across the city to accompany me to every little event and crisis. And you may be sure that if I were out there today, I would not be trudging to the dentist this morning. 😀

Lazy Hazy Crazy Day of Summer…

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LOL! Twenty after 9:oo in the morning — Sunday  — and the Human & the Hound are back from our daily perambulation of the neighborhood park.

It’s a nice, grassy spread, surrounded by rows of upper-middle-class homes. Very pretty, nice and quiet: Dawg Hevvin!

Today, though, is hot, stuffy, and overcast.

To perfect that scenario, somehow my son arranged a flickin’appointment with the flickin’ Mayo Clinic…for TODAY. Yeah. Sunday. 

Why escapes me. Just now, nothing is ailing me (except a sore hip, no doubt acquired by sleeping cattywampus).

Whatever the reason for this scheduled visit, I sure as hell could do without it. I’ve come to truly hate traipsing to the Mayo, clear across the north Valley, halfway to freakin’ Payson. It’s almost an hour’s drive out there, through homicidal traffic (you ain’t seen a homicidal driver till you’ve seen a Phoenix driver!). So…half the day is gonna be blown away for…what?

Far as I can tell: for nothing.

Besides the drive, of late another thing that has concerned me has been apparent misdiagnoses. The last few oh gawd! oh dear! diagnoses that have emanated from there turned out to have altogether different causes than the Mayodocs claimed.  Given some tests, the Mayodocs’ frantic claims turned out to be…wrong…wrong…and dead wrong.

So…I get less and less comfortable with these journeys to the East Side of Eden. And increasingly wary about diagnoses that may or may not be right.

Ugh! Through the Swamp

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Just back from this morning’s Doggy-Walk. HORRIBLE out there: it’s like a damn swamp.

Ohhh well…it cut down the number of merrie dawg-walkers, anyway. Nowhere near as many nitwits who think their dog (and your dog) are basically four-legged kids. Is there a reason people are so stump-dumb stupid?

Anyway,the dog is fed and watered and walked. I have to wait until M’hijito and I get back from the Mayo Clinic before having anything to eat. Which irks the hell out of me.

Not that I’m hungry. But that I regard today’s little diagnostic journey as a waste of time. And gasoline.

Been there. Done this. Over and over and over again. Why do we have to go through it again? 

The Mayodocs have run blood test after blood test after blood test on me, and never have been able to figure out the cause of the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy.

Is there some part of “pre-diabetes” they can’t figure out? Maybe an aspect of “inherited proclivity for diabetic conditions” that’s really, REEEEELY hard to understand?

How can you go through all those years of medical school and come out so damn stupid?

Today we have to traipse out there for ANOTHER pointless goddamn blood test. My son will be here in half an hour to drag me across the Valley for that little adventure. Every time I go out there for yet another goddam blood test, they tell me “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes!” Ask them what “pre-diabetes” is, and they can’t come up with a satisfactory definition. About the best they can gag out is “well, it means maybe you might be about to develop diabetes. Someday. Maybe.”

No kidding. This is NOT the first time I’ve been through this infinitely annoying hoop-jump.

Last time they went “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes! — a year or so ago — I went over to Young Dr. Kildare,  my “doctor in the wild” who used to practice right up the road from here.

He went jab jab test test, then called me back in to his office, and announced “No, you do NOT have pre-diabetes. You do not have diabetes. Nothing is wrong with your blood sugar levels.”

Got that? So…I expect this to be another annoying waste of time. And now that YDK has moved to effing Sun City, still more time will be wasted either traipsing halfway to Yuma to get to his office or finding another doctor, explaining all this bullshit, and talking him into re-testing me.

Spent half of yesterday out in Scottsdale, visiting a friend who lives in McCormick Ranch, an upper-middle-class suburban development nestled in expanse after expanse of grassy golf courses.

Nice little place my friend and his wife have out there. Unfortunately (IMHO), “little” is the operative word: it’s tiny. 

Cute, charming, and tiny. 

I suppose an aging couple could get used to it and come to like that aspect, though. Less space to have to keep clean. Less space to have to air-condition.

It’s a little small for my taste, though: I’m spoiled to living in a four-bedroom North Central Phoenix commuter palace. Though I’d love to live in that much tonier and safer Scottsdale district, I sure don’t want to have to downsize that much.

And really…is McCormick Ranch all that much tonier, just because it’s in Fancy-Dan Scottsdale? Really, North Central Phoenix is mighty Fancy-Dan, too. Even though our neighborhood is just a mile or so south of a dangerous slum (Sunnyslope leaves a lot to be desired in the Department of Safety), it still is a district of North Central, not Sunnyslop.

{sniff!) We’re soooo fancy, y’know!!!  😀

BREAK TIME!!!!!!!

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Okay, it’s time for Funny to take a little vacation. 😀

Seriously: I seem to have teetered off the Deep End and begun to write bizarre stuff in these posts. I’ve not been aware of the bizarritude, but when a friend brought a moment of Looney Toons to my attention, I thought…well…EGAD!!!!!

What on earth would lead me to write wack-sh!t posts containing putative suicide threats…that escapes me. I was not aware that quite so many marbles had rolled out my ears.

So…let’s build a little “platform” here from which to clarify matters and intentions, and then let’s have Funny take a li’l vacation.

Here we go…

I. THE PLATFORM

Folks, do know: I am not about to throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, to season my chocolate soda with arsenic, or to blow out my brains with my daddy’s pistol.

If I posted something — anything — that could be interpreted as a suicide threat, rest assured: THAT WAS NOT MY INTENTION. 

Nope. No. No way. Not about to exit stage left, now or any time in the foreseeable future.

****

II. The AUTHORIAL WEIRDNESS

Overall, I happen to be contented and upbeat. Happy with my home. Delighted with my  friends. Awed by my son.  Entertained by my doggy pal. Endlessly amazed by the phalanxes of cop helicopters buzzing overhead ( 😀 Another copter is up there as we scribble!)

So: have no fear.

Do bear in mind that I have an eccentric sense of humor, one that easily drags me toward the Dark Side. But that indicates nothing more than that my sense of humor is warped, indeed.

Don’t be scared.

III. A PASSAGE OF PEACE

Okay, while we all calm down, let’s give Funny about Money a rest.

No, Funny is NOT going away. 

We’ll take a break of TWO WEEKS, starting tomorrow, July 16.

This means no narrative posts will appear at Funny-about-money.com between July 16 and July 29. That’s 14 days.

Don’t panic: we’ll be back! But over that two-week period — starting tomorrow — we’ll give it a rest.

  • It does not mean I don’t love you.
  • It does not mean I’m taking Funny down.
  • It does not mean I won’t be back. 

It just means we’re taking a li’l vacation. 

Sorry to do this, but it does look as though we need to cool down a bit. LOL! Especially on a 116-degree day!! 😀

{chortle!} In the Department of Wacksh!t…

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{chortle!!!}  Noooo, I am not taking Funny about Money off the air because some sensitive soul imagines one of its posts is…is…really????…is suicidal. 

No kidding.

The more I study it, the stupider it looks.

Seriously. WHERE in any of the posts that have appeared over the past three weeks is there any hint of suicidal ideation?

Let’s see what topics we’ve had of late..Maybe we can find a meditation on throwing oneself off the Golden Gate Bridge…

Morning in Aridzona.  Okay, here I do say I’d druther drop dead than rot away in an old folks’ home. Hmmmm… Does that lead you to believe I’m getting ready to throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon?

San Francisco: Take Me Home. A sentimental reminiscence of the time my parents and I lived in S.F. I was in junior high school at the time. Loved it. Not interested in throwing myself off the Bay Bridge.

Reeeel Estate! Sentimental reminiscing on how I loved living in San Francisco.

Hotter than the Hubs and Crazier than a Loon. Blah blah blah about kids and coreligionists I’ve (apparently) annoyed in various inscrutable ways.

On and on…dayum, but I do have other things to do that are more interesting than trying to unravel this silly little mystery. Sorry, folks…but I don’t think anything I’ve posted lately suggests I’ve gone raving suicidal. What IS the matter with people???????

😀

 

Hotter than the Hubs & Crazier than a Loon

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Actually, it’s relatively cool out there on the back porch: only 105° in the shade. Which is just NOT that hot.

My son is on his way over here — or soon will be — presumably to scold the bedoodles out of me. Again. Apparently I was rude to one of my coreligionists. Again. Gawd only knows what I said this time!

My mouth runs loose all the time — always has, ever since I was a little kid. And I really never know quite how I offend. Only that I do offend.

All.
The.
Time.

God only knows what I said this time. All M’jito says is that I offended the woman.

He has a pile of other issues to chide me about this afternoon…what those are, we shall soon hear. And hear. And hear.

See, my problem is that I’m fundamentally not a nice person. The upshot of that is that people tend not to like me. And I tend not to like people.

Result: hour after hour after hour of blogging. And other kinds of writing.

This, you see, is why I’m a writer. Because I can’t speak to my fellow humans without setting them off.

The issue only became noticeable in the first grade. We didn’t have kindergarten in Arabia, and so I had an extra whole year in which NOT to make little toddling enemies. But as soon as school started, I quickly had everyone hating me.

That’s OK. Who needs friends, anyway? F**k’em all, I say.

Actually….it began earlier than grade school. The first time I became aware that other kids hated me, I was a toddler. It was before we went to Arabia (I turned three years old when we arrived out there). My mother and I lived in Sausalito, California, while my father, a merchant mariner, went to sea. One day the two neighbor kids and I were playing in the sandbox in front of our house, there in California. We were about two years old at the time.

All of a sudden, out of the blue, the little girl (they were brother & sister) scooped up a shovelful of sand and….WHAM!!!!

She slammed it into my face. Shoveled that sand right into my eyes.

Ohhh GOD! How that hurt!!! I remember it to this minute — one of the only things I do remember from that age. I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. My poor mother came running outside, horrified and mystified.

That was, I guess, the first time I understood that other people hate me. 

Why they hate me: that usually escapes me. I have no idea what set that kid off. Only that she did what she could to hurt me the most she could in that moment.

And…well…that’s the way most people have acted, over the years.

You see where I find my affection for humanity, hm?

So: fast forward to 2025. 

I don’t know what I said to my coreligionist, but apparently it wasn’t nice.

Seriously: I cannot recall saying anything that I can imagine would be offensive. But apparently I did. And apparently it was bad enough that she reported it to my son.

Most of the time I have no clue what I say to offend these delicate flowers. But I sure as hell DO offend.

Welp…I imagine I’ll get an earful of it pretty quick. He hasn’t shown up yet. But he will.

He will.