Coffee heat rising

Angst

WHY….?????

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Does EVERY GODDAM THING happen AT ONCE?

Holee mackerel!

It’s not even 6:30 in the morning and already I’ve had to deal with a new rat infestation; with a sick, angry, scared dog; and a new plumbing leak…UNDER the side deck!

Won’t be able to get the plumber on the phone for two or three hours.

Meanwhile, it’s hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there: Hot and Wet with a Vengeance.

Oh, and to frost those cookies? It’s Cleaning-Lady Day!

Arrrrghhhhhhhh!  I know this sounds callously ungrateful, but Cleaning-Lady Day drives me nuts…especially when everything else is going to Hell on the Proverbial Handcart. It means the Mess has gotta be picked up — fortunately there isn’t much mess this week.

Except of course that Ruby and I have been sleeping in the middle bedroom, because it’s right under the AC unit and so is the only halfway cool room in the house. That will confound her… Now I’ll have to explain why that bed is a mess — and, I remind myself, find a set of clean twin-sized sheets. If there is one. Since I don’t use that bed much, I prob’ly don’t have two sets. 😮

That will add ANOTHER layer of hassle: strip that bed, wash the sheets, and get them dry before she gets here. gaaaahhhhhhhh!

Meanwhile, I step out to the west side porch to start setting rat traps around the yard, and LO!

Water all over Satan’s do-it-yourself deck.

Since that thing is an amateur job (a pretty good job, but still….), that means the deck will now have to be repaired or replaced. Ohhhhhhh gooodie!

Someone seems to have pulled out all the steel wool I stuffed into the cracks around that goddamn thing. Gee thanks, Gerardo! So now I’ll have to get out there and stuff new steel wool in, allllll around that lash-up.

WHY do workers think you do things if you don’t WANT them done that way? WHY do they feel called upon to undo all your little do-it-yourself stop-gap (heh! literally!!) measures?????

Not sure enough steel wool is left to go all the way around the deck. If not, then I’ll have to drive to Home Depot and buy some more of that. Gooooodie!

Maybe I can get it at the hardware store. That place is about a quarter of the distance one has to drive from here to the Depot. That would help a lot.

Ruby has an eye infection. (So do I, come to think of it.) I’ve been dosing her with the OTC stuff the eye doc told me to put in my own eye. It’s hard to find and it’s expensive as Hell. Since we’re both …

…………………………………………………………………….

Gawd DAMMIT!

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Now the damn computer dies!!!!!!

It’s out of juice.

Plug it in…. Nothing

Fight with computer cord

Fight with extension cord

Fight with plug-in outlet

Finally,  weirdly it comes back on.

Ohhhhhhh yeah. This is gonna be one of those days!

And now for a balmy afternoon….

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Heh! After yesterday’s 110° at 7 p.m., we’re having a balmy afternoon today. At 4:30 in the afternoon — usually about the hottest point of the day — we’ve only barely reached the 110 mark. Brrrr!

Taking advantage of the crisp temperature, I sallied forth to the Safeway, there to buy some eye salve for the poor little dog, plus a whatnot or two. Truly hotter than the hubs on those black asphalt streets.

Safeway has invented a new annoyance: if you want to buy wine or other boozy beverages, they try to steer you into a dedicated checkout stand in the liquor aisle. Took a second or two to figure that out…

Right, guys. Like I want to stand in line to pay TWICE! Once for food and household items, once for a bottle of Chardonnay.

Criminey. WHO thinks this stuff up?

Oh well. When I expressed my annoyance, I was excused from the booze department line and allowed to buy all my groceries with a single pass-through at the front-of-the-store cash registers.

Man! My air-conditioning bill is gonna sail through the stratosphere this month. Here in the front room, the temp is 80 degrees, with the AC unit pounding away nonstop. But in the front guest bedroom, where Ruby and I have taken refuge from the present heat wave, it’s 78. That’s because the room sits directly under the AC unit, and its vent is the first vent that comes out of the machine.

By the time it reaches the family room, where I’m poking away at the keyboard right now, it’s in the low 80s. And the unit does not go off. Nope. Not once, not alllll dayyyyy long! That’s even though the thermostat is in the hall right outside that refrigerated bedroom.

No sign of the mid- to late-summer monsoon weather. Usually by now we have rainstorms that coalesce late in the afternoon and hold forth from around 4 or 5 p.m. on into the evening. This phenomenon cools the air significantly, sometimes to such a degree that in theory you could cut back on the AC bill.

Not this year, though! Not so far.

No doubt Ruby wonders where her dinner is. Poor beast!

I’m holding off on feeding her until the sun goes down — that’ll be another 2 hours or so — so that if and when we go for an evening doggy-walk, the pavement will be cool enough for her to walk without burning her feet. Even so, if we wanted to cross the street, we would have to wait till around 10 p.m. for the asphalt to cool. The sidewalks we can manage awhile after sundown….the roadways: not so much.

Ruby has a low-level eye infection…i think. Either that or allergies. Nothing much grows at this time of year that ought to trigger allergies, so the hypothesis is either an infection or dry eyes. My doc has me wiping my own dry eyes with something called “iVisia,” which seems to help a little. Tried it on Ruby, and found that yes, it’s seems to work on her, too.

But…go ahead! Just TRY to find it.

Found it a few days ago at the Safeway….but today when I picked up another bottle and brought it home, I discovered the stuff I’d grabbed off the shelf is a gel, not the liquid drops.

arrrrghhhh! AM i going to traipse back through the heat and the lunatic drivers to return that?

I dunno. Really…some things are just. not. worth it.

Speaking of “not worth it,” have you seen THIS little bit of intelligence? Robert Kennedy’s nutty son is busy spreading crackpot conspiracy theories…as part, it appears, of a projected run on the presidency.

Holy sh!t.

Are there, d’you think, enough anti-vaxxer ignoramuses, enough paranoiacs who believe 5G networks are a tool to spy on us all, enough conspiracy theorists who imagine the CIA put out the hit on RFK Sr. to carry this nut case into the White House?

Holy sh!t. Truly. If there are, I am moving to Venezuela. Or better yet: to a desert island in the middle of the Pacific.

 

 

Never a Dull Moment

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Ohhhhhh lordie! IS there some reason why there’s never a dull moment around the Funny Farm?

5:00 a.m.: Roll out of the sack. Stumble around. Throw on some clothes, feed the dog preparatory to going out the door by 5:30 for the morning Doggy Walk, which at this time of year needs to be accomplished before the sun comes up.

5:05 a.m.: ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF GROWL ARF ARF SNARGLE GROWL ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF…

ahhhh shee-ut! NOW what?

Stumble out to the kitchen, where Ruby is banging against the back door.

Gerardo’s crew: they’re here to trim the damnable palm trees.

I forgot.

Now we’re stuck here while those guys wrestle with the Job from Hell, in the meantime trashing the swimming pool by tossing filthy palm fronds into the water.

Whenever they leave, I’ll have to call Pool Dude to get him over to clean up that mess. Do I even have his phone number? If so, where is it??????

Oh shitoshitoshitoshit this was NOT how I wanted to start the day!

As long as the back gate is open, collect and haul the garbage out to the alley. Another fine way I would hope not to start a day.

Someone has dragged the communal garbage can wayyyyy down the alley, so hauling this stuff is an annoying hike. I’ll have to ask these guys to haul that trash can back up where it belongs. That’ll be a trick, since they don’t speak English.

Better, probably, to wait till after the trash pickup and drag it back myself.

Trash pickup…ohhhhh sheee-UT if the city employees see my guys dumping stuff in the alley, I’ll get a citation!

Ohhhh well. At least our boys waited until after the July 4 festivities were over. Around here, morons set off fireworks right and left, often catching fire to houses and plantings. My house is surrounded with lots of flammables, so…this is my LEAST favorite holiday.

***

HOLEE mackerel, you’ve never seen a man WORK until you’ve watched a campesino working. What are those men made of?

And they don’t even seem especially fazed…not at a job that would kill me — very likely in a literal sense — if I tried to do it.

Soon as the gents are done, I’ll have to call Pool Dude to come help clean up the mess. Won’t he be pleased?

Mr. and Mrs. Wonderaccount, who live across the street, had their accursed palm trees removed. As I recall, they hired Gerardo’s guys to do that job. Whenever he comes around, I’ll have to ask him how much he’d charge to take the things out.

Hate to kill them…but GAWD they are a nuisance! Especially anywhere near a pool. They don’t cast any shade. They don’t do anything except drop seeds, dried blossoms, and dead fronds…and attract lightning bolts.

Just what everyone needs in their backyard, eh?

Whenever Gerardo comes around, I’ll have to ask him how much he’d charge to take the damn things out. Then have Financial Dude break loose some money for the purpose. I guess.

Meanwhile…too much coffee on an empty stomach. Gotta get some food!

Hotter than a Two-Dollar Cookstove!

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That was my father’s saying. Never heard it from anyone else…some sort of Southernism, I reckon.

It’s only 108 out there, but for some inscrutable reason, it seems hotter than that. I’d have guessed 112, if I hadn’t seen the back-porch thermometer. Wunderground, my fave weather site, claims it’s just 107. And truly NOT humid. Why it feels so damn hot, I dunno…but boyoboy, it sure does!

Wunderground does remark that June was the hottest month on record, but that generalizes around the northern hemisphere, not specifically here in Lovely Uptown Phoenix.

And I’m sorry but I DON’T consider 107 to be extremely hot.

This is amusing, speaking of Wunderground. Alas, they don’t publish a typescript of this squib, so you have to sit through a not-very-entertaining talkathon…but at least you can get an idea of what’s going on.

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Hmmmm…. Apparently we have an explanation for the weirdness of the hotness: we humans who exist in the sunlit side of the planet just lived through the Earth’s hottest day on record.

Be scared. Be very scared.

 

 

YOUR DOG IS NOT YOUR KID! The fur-baby syndrome

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Honestly. What IS the matter with people?

This morning’s doggy-walk devolved into another Trip Devoted to Hassles. At this time of year, a day very quickly gets hot. So all the dog-lovers are out by 5:00 or 5:30, traipsing around the park and up and down every street adjacent to the park. This would be charming (as long as you watch your step and don’t have a lawn that invites doggy toiletry), if only people would be just a little smarter about dogs. If only the idiots would keep their dogs under control. If only they wouldn’t assume you’re out there so that your dog can “play” with their dog.

Ruby is poorly leash-trained, because the minute I got her, I landed in the Mayo Hospital getting both boobs lobbed off. So she never has been adequately leash-trained. She’s fine as long as no one else is around, but let someone come trotting up with their “fur-baby” and she has a lunging frenzy,.

If you say something like “please keep your dog under control,” the idiots simper and go ohhhh don’t worry! They just want to pla-a-a-a-y!

Well. No. They don’t just want to pl-a-a-a-a-y. My dog wants to clear the earth of mutts like yours, stupid!

Seriously…what does possess people to come bounding up to a stranger and let their dog have at your dog?

Part of the problem, IMHO, is the idiotic “fur-baby” trope.

Jayzus! Talk about stupid!

Your dog is not your “fur-baby.” It is not your child. It is a highly evolved wolf. It can be regarded as part of your family only if your family is regarded as a pack, like unto a dog pack or a wolf pack.

That latter bit sounds promising, until you consider that dogs are not humans, humans are not dogs, and canine social structure is only superficially similar to human social structure.

The fact that those two social structures are vaguely similar makes it possible for dogs to live with humans, for humans to live with dogs, and for the residents to empathize with each other. But it does NOT make a dog the same as a human child, or a child the same as a dog.

This morning Ruby and I got out the door at exactly the wrong moment: 5:30 a.m. sharp. From the git-go, everywhere we looked, here came some chucklehead with a dog towing them down the street. In several cases, the dogs were off-leash. One guy had three dogs with him, nary a one on the legally mandated lead. At the park itself, people’s dogs were running around loose all over the place.

To avoid confrontation, we had to walk by on the far side of the street. This is a road that has no sidewalks in front of the houses facing the park. So either we climb up onto people’s lawns and tromp on their grass, or we risk life and limb to walk along that stretch of asphalt.

Finally we reach our corner of the ‘Hood and turn up our street. There, what do we encounter but a guy with one dog on a lead AND a guy with THREE dogs romping around off-leash!

Understand:

  • We’re not in the park
  • We’re not in anyone’s yard.
  • We’re on a public sidewalk running along a street where most people drive around 40 mph, out of not-payin’-any-attention habit.

What IS the matter with people?

Covidified!

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coughity cough
coughity cough
coffity cough
cough cough COUGH cough cough cough….

The song of the day… 😮

I’ve been living on aspirin and Robitussin for longer than I can remember now. Fortunately, though, I don’t HAVE to remember. In a blinding stroke of foresight (how DID i know i would not be able to remember my name, much less when i took the last dose of pain-killer or cough med?), I set up an Excel spreadsheet to record when I gulp down this med or spray that med into my nose.

Good thing, because this damned covid virus affects your brain. I couldn’t remember my name if it weren’t written down somewhere. (But…where???)  Seriously: there’s no way in Hell I could keep track of the med-gulping without writing it down.

The Mayo’s staff diagnosed me with Covid on May 16. So this has been going on for over a month, with no credible end in sight.

Well. No. That’s not quite true. With mind-boggling genius, I started taking notes in that spreadsheet, recording the state of the Onion and the progress of the Disease. And adding any bits of information I happen to come across. Review those notes,and you see that in fact this thing is getting a LITTLE bit better, very very verrrreeee slowly. At the crack of today’s dawn:

Date Time Temp Meds Ailments
19-Jun 6 a.m. 97.7 Robitussin Mild cough
CBD cream itching hands, feet (milder than y’day)
Tingling about the same as y’day, maybe slightly better
8:00 a.m. aspirin Back pain mild, seems to be going away

WordPress resists any attempts to tidy up Excel’s formatting…sorreee. I’m just too sick to fight with a computer program this morning!

Hmmmm… The fever has gone away: 97.7 is normal for me, being the cold fish that I am. One of the most aggravating symptoms of the Ailment is FRANTIC tingling in your hands, feet, and lips. This is called peripheral neuropathy, and it is truly crazy-making. A little experimentation revealed, however, that over-the-counter CBD nostrums work handsomely on the phenomenon. Unscented CBD balm — comes in a tube that looks like Chapstick on steroids — beats back the lip tingling. And unscented CBD lotion keeps the buzzing in the extremities at bay.

This, of course, means you need to reside in a state where CBD products can be sold legally.

Robitussin and aspirin, though, should be available wherever you are in the US.

Lanacane and Aspercreme, both presumably legal anywhere in the nation, do exactly nothing for the peripheral neuropathy.

Apparently, the reason I’m not in the Mayo’s ICU just now is that I had the good sense to get ALL THREE shots of covid vaccine at the earliest opportunity. Otherwise — given my gruesome susceptibility to respiratory diseases — chances are good that I’d be on a ventilator. Or dead…

So, if you haven’t taken the covid vaccine, GET IT NOW! Do not buy into the superstitious nonsense about the vaccine. It will not kill you. It will not make you sick. It will not turn your hair green. But it will protect you from developing a life-threatening case of this hellacious disease.

Meanwhile, despite repeated evidence of the truth of the old axiom, “Whatever can go wrong WILL go wrong,” things are as under control as they can get. I guess.

* Ruby has apparently not caught the disease (yet), even though dogs are susceptible to it and even though there’s no hope in Hell of keeping her from sleeping on the bed with me.

* Swimming Pool Service and Repair came out last Friday and made off with the pool pump. They said it would take three days or so to fix it. So I hope their guy will resurface (heh) along about Wednesday.

* Pool Dude has disappeared from the scene. Whether he also has The Disease (a strong likelihood) or whether he got peeved when he discovered I’d arranged someone else to fix the equipment is unknown. I hope he comes back — the man has been a godsend. But if he doesn’t, well…I’ll just post a query on the neighborhood Facebook page, asking after some other service.

Don’t think SPS&R does regular weekly maintenance. If they do, they’d be charging some phenomenal rate…don’t even ask!  However, I’ve found a new Leslie’s outlet, and the guy who runs it does NOT behave like a vulture. So if Pool Dude disappears from the scene, I’ll go over there and ask for the name of a customer or two.

* Today is Cleaning Lady Day. Just now Luz should be at WonderAccountant’s house, across the street, though the last time I walked by the front windows I didn’t see her car out there.

Two weeks ago — last C.L. Day — I turned her away, because I surely do NOT want her to catch this thing. The shack really needs to be cleaned now. So…this does not bode well. I hope she hasn’t come down with the the covid horror.

****

Hmmm….  WonderAccountant thinks the Beloved Luz  arrives HERE around 9 and then goes to her place. I think the opposite. Ohhh well…

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BING BONGGG!
*****

And speak of the Devil…by golly, there she is.

Well, this is good. BUT….  I’m not real comfortable about exposing her to The Disease. Just explained to her that I’m Infected and so she does not have to clean the house today. Offered to pay her for this week’s job and let her go on her way. She declined.