Coffee heat rising

Angst

Makes the Old Folkerie Look Good…

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Gawd, I never imagined I’d have any such thought!  But here it is, not even 6 in the morning, and I’m being blitzed with hassle after hassle after HASSLE.

Got to take the dog for a walk before it gets hot — which means we’ve gotta get out the door NOW.

The pool is suffocating in dead leaves. WHERE is Pool Dude????  Amazon just delivered a new net for the leaf catcher, the original having plain worn out. 

Put that out back with a note for Pool Dude. No guarantee the guy is gonna show up.

Pool cleaning is one of the “professions” for which the state prison system trains its residents. So…that means chances are good that your pool cleaner is an ex-convict: not exactly the soul of reliability. I should wait here and see if he shows up, but you KNOW that if I do that, the dog will not get out for her walk. Because…

* The guy won’t show up before 10 a.m., by which time outside temps will be pushing 108 degrees; or
* The guy won’t show up at all.

Meanwhile, to get to the grocery store on foot before it gets too hot to walk up there (my son having purloined my car), I need to get started on that errand NOW.

But I can’t do that and take the dog for a walk. And even if I leave for the store right now, by the time I get back it will be too hot to take Ruby out.

My son is probably right: the time draws nigh when I will no longer be able to stay in my home. I’ll either have to move into an apartment (and what am I gonna do with the dog?) or into an old-folks storage bin (and what am I gonna do with the dog?).

Actually, I think some of those places will let you keep your dog. Ducky: how do you keep her from yappiing at every footfall that comes up the hallway?

Speaking of footfalls: better get the dawg out for her walk before the heat comes up: i.e., NOW.

Another (un)Fine Mayo Day

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Ugh! This noon we have to traipse to the far side of the galaxy for another round of poking and prodding at the Mayo.

How can I do without that? Let me count the ways!

Way #1 is simply that I do not believe anything serious ails me. For that reason, this medico-charade strikes me as a fine waste of time and gasoline. (Believe me about that last item: it takes a quarter tank of gas to get out there!)

Meanwhile, other more immediate issues pile up. 

A piece of pool-cleaning equipment fell apart. I need to get to the pool store (walking ten blocks through 114-degree heat) and get it fixed or buy another one.

I need a car i need a car i need a car i need… You can’t live in Phoenix without a car. Therefore, I need a car translates that I either have to go buy one or go rent one.

My son persists in confiscating the Dog Chariot, so I’ve decided to give up and just let him have the damn thing (let him explain that to the insurance company!). To fill its place, I can either walk up to a car rental outfit about eight or ten blocks up the road, or go over to a dealer and buy one.

Theoretically, I’m enjoined from driving. Why? Because I’m old, apparently. Our honored bureaucrats can explain their reasoning (such as it is) to my lawyer.

Complicating this matter, my redoubtable lawyer died a few weeks ago. It appears his partners have simply shut down his office. No one answers the phone. So now I need to find a new lawyer.

It’s been sooooo long since I was married to one of the most prominent lawyers in the state that I now no longer know anyone in practice. The bastards have all retired,  if you can imagine the nerve!

Seriously: no one that I know is still practicing law; at least not that I can find. So somehow I’ve gotta get someone to refer me to someone and then get that second someone to see me and persuade him/her that they want me as a potential client and…ohhhhhhh gawd!

So sooner or later, I’ve got to get off that dime.

And ya know what? I don’t wanna!!! 

Come to think of it…I don’t wanna do anything. Nothin’. Not anything at all.

 

MORE Pool Dude Shenanigans

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So I stagger out to the backyard to be sure Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner is working properly…as he should be, after Pool Dude got finished with the job late y’day afternoon.

Should, eh?

Shoulda coulda woulda….

The damn thing isn’t hooked up properly. Nothing is working right. The bottom of the pool is showered in black dead leaves and debris.

Goddammmit!

Hotter….Than…The…Hubs!!!!

Shut down the system. Haul Harvey out. Clean the crap out of him, as best as possible. Disconnect the vacuum hose. Lay it out flat (so it won’t sear itself into a curled-up position like an angry cobra…). Burn feet on pavement. Some guy is outside the east wall. Check on that: apparently just a random workman.

Realize the debris all over the bottom of the pool is going to have to be vacuumed out. But I ain’t doin’ that in 112-degree heat. 

Hm. It’s almost 3:30. Sun blasting away. Sheeee-ut!

Decide to leave Harvey on the deck until sunset, at which time it may be a little cooler out there. At that point, get the hose vacuum, scoop as much debris as possible, and then put Harvey back in the drink.

What fun.

Makes a box in the sky look good, doesn’t it?

Hou$e-Cleaners!

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Egad! Check this out:

The other day I decided my beloved cleaning lady, Luz, has gotta go. While she was here slamming around, I sat down to the dining-room table to grab a fast lunchoid. That ingested, I suddenly felt very tired — hadn’t slept well the night before.

So there I am sitting at the table, where I fold my arms in front of me and lay my head down. Not really expecting to fall asleep, mind you — certainly not with a vacuum cleaner roaring around the house — but just to rest the very tired eyes.

Yeah: I do fall asleep. And…holeee mackerel! Have you EVER met anyone who can make trouble just by dozing off after lunch? Well…now you have! Online, but here she is….

While I’m sitting there snoozing, Luz takes out her camera and snaps a picture of me and the wine bottle. What she gets is a photo of a woman who looks flat-out, zonkered-out DRUNK, passed out on the dining-room table.

This, she emails to my son! No comment: just the damning photo.

Upshot: he thinks exactly what you would expect him to think: Mom has been sitting there swizzling wine until she has passed out snockered.

He and I get into a very nasty exchange, one for which I have not yet and may never forgive him.

But speaking of forgiveness, one thing Luz ain’t getting is any of that!

I haven’t called her to fire her yet, but I will. Today, I expect.

Hoped to find a new house-cleaner first, but I haven’t been ambitious enough to launch into that kind of search.

I’ll tellya, I do hate cleaning house! And so resent (very much!) having to fire the woman. Sure don’t want to do the job myself. And just now don’t know where to turn to find a new house-cleaner.

But…egad!

*****
o-h-h-k-a-a-y…

Search online for someplace to hire such a person, and you discover the prices for cleaning a house are now just phenomenal!

Lookit this! TWO HUNDRED BUCKS to clean a 1500-square-foot shack???!!?? Actually, no: that’s $164 to $350 for an average-sized house.

Surprising that Luz doesn’t know this. I pay her $80 a hit.

Hmmmm……

Well… Guess I’ll just have to sit her down and have a little chat about professional behavior on the job. Whatever caused her to do such a stupid (vindictive??) thing, she’s still a bargain on four wheels!

Hmmmmm….not to repeat onself. I wonder why Luz doesn’t seem to know she’s vastly undercharging a going market.

O’course,, there’s only one of her. If you hired a service you’d get at least two people in the house; probably more like four. The job would be done faster. And their employer presumably would have insurance. None of those apply when hiring the standard cleaning lady.

****

On the other hand…hmmm… At 80 bucks a hit, I pay Luz $320 a month.

BUT…I do get four cleaning visits a month. Looks like what these formally organized outfits are charging would be more like $800 a month if they came in weekly. Wow!

****

Well…  I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut. Just have to be a whole lot more careful around her. And don’t even think about taking a nap while she’s here. Or eating dinner, either….

Ah hah! First Thing to Go Right This Morning!

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LOL! Here we are at Funny about Money…After only three tries to get online. 😀 By 5:30 a.m., this morning had already revealed itself as the start of One Of Those Days. Ugh! Whatever you touch goes wrong. Touch it twice, and it goes wrong with a vengeance.

This morning will start with a major misadventure: I have to WALK to the grocery store, way to Hell Gone halfway to frikkin’ Yuma.

Why? Because my son has stolen my car. 

Why? Because my idiot cleaning lady convinced him I was passed out drunk at the dining-room table.

No kidding!

When she was here the other day, banging around from pillar to post, I was feeling very sick. The peripheral neuropathy was driving me nuts; I hadn’t been able to sleep all night; and I hurt from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

So while she was roaring around the house, I sat down to the dining room table to have a bite to eat with half a glass of white wine. That accomplished, I stayed sat, folded my arms on the tabletop, and laid my weary head down.

She, in all her wisdom, decided this indicated I was passed-out stinko drunk! 

So, the Soul of Concern, she whips out her phone, snaps a photo of me with my head laid down on the table next to a half-empty wine glass, and emails it to my son!

He freaks. Charges over here. Even though I’m clearly not plastered, he thinks I must be — how could a genius cleaning lady like Luz be wrong, eh?  So he decides to confiscate my car! 

No kidding!

It’s now parked at his place, too far away for me to walk, and impossible to retrieve anyway because he no doubt has it locked inside his garage.

So now, the only way I can get groceries is to HIKE to one of the grocery stores around here, dodging drunks and panhandlers every step of the way.

Hey! It’s good exercise: adds an extra mile or two to the mile-long daily doggy-walk. But how am I supposed to haul a week’s worth of groceries two miles through 100-degree heat?

In an old laundry cart, that’s how.

Well, it’s 6 a.m. The Sprouts doesn’t open until 7:00 a.m., but the far less desirable Albertson’s will be open now. Wunderground predicts a temp of 105 degrees today…so I’d better get going before the sun rises any further.

What the fu*k IS the matter with people?????

Wow! I’m IN!

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One of the joys of dotage is that you can barely remember your name, to say nothing of the 87 berjillion passwords you have to memorize in order to operate your websites and cruise the Internet. But today….ohhh mirabilis! Today I managed to get in to Funny about Money‘s website…and with minimal hassle.

Dog and I charged around the ‘Hood at dawn. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s ugly. An altogether ugleee dawn.

Walked past the tragic wreck of a house on the southwest end of the park, once a pleasantly middle-class domicile for an apparently normal family. Now it’s a vacant slum property, having been abandoned after the family’s son got crosswise with the law and thereby bankrupted his parents.

One of the most alarming aspects of life in America — or maybe, more accurately, it’s an aspect of humanity — is the tendency for one to be unable to get out of trouble, once one gets into it. As a teenager, the young fella who lived in that house with his parents got up to some kind of mischief. I never knew exactly what his crime was: only that he was arrested and sent to prison. Once out of the slam, he couldn’t get a decent job — and his parents had about bankrupted themselves trying to rescue him.

So he started this laughable business: pruning trees. 

No kidding. He took a class offered by the County for wannabe arborists, wherein he tried to learn how to trim and nurture trees.

Arborists here do charge a pretty penny for their services: that’s for sure. If he’d been halfway decent at the job, he probably could have found his way to supporting himself. Problem is: he wasn’t even halfway there!

He damn near killed one of my front-yard trees, so ridiculously did he butcher it. Eventually the tree did have to be taken out. Now a yellow oleander is growing in its place…and doing surprisingly well.

Hm. Wonder how that human oleander is doing, these days…

{sigh} Their place is actually a nice house, even though it needs to be practically rebuilt from the ground up.

It backs onto the park.

Now I wouldn’t consider that a desirable feature: just what everyone needs, right? A public park as a backyard. 😮  But apparently others relish it. The houses adjacent to the park are (except for that one) handsomely maintained and regarded as prime properties.

Sooo….it was around the park and up a couple of busy local thoroughfares, the dog in search of beloved GRASS to get under her paws, the human contemplating its upcoming breakfast.

Now we’re back at the Funny Farm, pursuing the highest and best goal of human life: loafing.