Angst | Funny about Money

Real Risk, Perceived Risk

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017 by funny

What a beautiful, peaceful evening. Venus, a brilliant diamond, shone in a deep sapphire sky when the corgis and I set out to jog a mile-long course through the ’hood. The dimming sunset, still glowing orange, backlit tall palm, ash, and pine trees to the west.

Two houses between here and Richistan, very nice houses, are on the market. One is a fix-and-flip, acquired from a very aged man who probably was the original owner. The other has been upgraded a couple of times over the past decade and is significantly further from Conduit of Blight than the Funny Farm.

I consider, as I pass each house, whether if I had a sh!tload of money I would wish to buy one of these places. And the answer is no.

In each case, the house’s next-door neighbor has two or three large, deep-throated barking dogs that go berserk whenever anyone walks by on the side walk with their own dogs, their children, their friends, or their door-to-door fliers. Across the street from each house was at least one neighbor harboring large barking dogs.

Now of course, I have barking dogs, too. But when mine are yapping, they don’t act like they’re going to come through the window and grab you by the throat. Nor are they left outside in the yard at all hours of the day and the night — most of the time if they bark at a passer-by, it’s from the living room. They’re not guard dogs and they’re not intended as guard dogs.

A lot of people in this area have large, fierce dogs — more than one of them — because they perceive that the area is unsafe.

But is it?

True, the district just to the north of us, less than a mile away — really, just a few steps across a main drag from the northernmost homes in the ’hood — is notoriously crime-ridden, the territory of a notable meth gang. The district to the west of us, where aging apartments continue to deteriorate and an abandoned golf course has become a campground for homeless drug addicts, also has a high crime rate and an increasingly sketchy ambience.

But that’s the nature of the City of Phoenix: it’s a patchwork of enclaves. Anywhere you look, you’ll find upscale neighborhoods full of doctors and lawyers and business tycoons cheek-by-jowl with drug-infested slums. If you want to live in uninterrupted affluent homogeneity, you pretty much have to move to Scottsdale…which, because everybody knows its inhabitants have plenty of money and plenty of loot to steal, is as much a target of burglars and thieves as any other part of the Valley. Apparently we Phoenicians like it this way: we do nothing to change it.

So it is that our neighborhood, flanked by blight on two sides, is a hotbed of risk.

Well… I’ve taken to walking the dogs every evening after dark. Nary a resident is to be seen outside: they’re all parked in front of their televisions or their computers. You could break into a car, steal a tchotchki off a front porch, peer in a window without anyone ever noticing.

Never once have I seen a bum wandering through the night or a likely burglar slinking by. Except for the occasional coyote — which isn’t any more interested in confronting you than you are in confronting it — after dark there is nothing out there that looks like a threat. Not a burglar, not a bum, not biker, not even a kid in a hoodie.

During the daytime, you see an occasional derelict. Once in awhile you’ll see someone who’s obviously casing houses. But not often. Usually you can walk a mile or more through the ’hood without every seeing anyone but a few workmen and some wandering neighbors.

That was not so 30 years ago, when my ex- and I lived in the then gentrifying Encanto neighborhood, a picturesque remnant of small-town Phoenix that, like the ’hood where the Funny Farm stands, was discovered all at once by a horde of young upwardly mobile urban adults. It quickly became known as “the lawyers’ and doctors’ ghetto” — because it was within easy driving distance (even walking distance) of the downtown hospitals and law firms.

The Encanto area’s zip code had the highest per-capita drug use in the city, at the time. Despite the efforts of some developers to pave it over with a freeway, it survived a great deal of pressure to force the young would-be city-dwellers out to the suburbs. Today it’s one of the city’s bragging points.

Exactly the same thing is under way here: the ’hood is the New Encanto. But unlike Encanto, the ’hood is not overrun with derelicts and criminals. There are a lot of homeless mentally ill riding the buses and trains up and down Conduit of Blight Blvd., but not so many actually inside the neighborhood — local opinion to the contrary.

When we lived in Encanto, you couldn’t poke your nose outside the door without seeing a bum or two roaming up the street. One family, a block to the south of us, was baking cookies while watching television of an evening. Since everyone was in the house and they felt safety in numbers, it didn’t occur to them to bolt all the doors and windows. A bum watching from the alley noticed this and observed that the wife would come into the kitchen, stick a pan of cookies in the oven, and then go watch TV while they baked for 15 minutes. During one of those interludes, he just stepped into the kitchen, picked up her purse, and made off with it. 🙂

Not all these exploits were so funny. One of my neighbors was hacked to death by an ax murderer, having surprised the guy robbing her house when she came home from the beauty parlor. Another was studied by a man who knew a) where to find the only window in the house that was not alarmed and b) when her husband was out of town. He took the opportunity to spend an entire night beating and raping her.

We have never had anything like that happen here. We’ve had some close calls, but no real horrors. Yet.

But interestingly, few people in Encanto kept large, fierce dogs. I had a German shepherd that I’d inherited from a neighbor. The lady behind us had a doberman pinscher. Our babysitter, a street to the south of us, had a pair of airdales. One couple in our car-pool had a pretty ridiculous bloodhound. But otherwise, that was about it: I didn’t know anybody else who had big dogs.

Here, everybody and his little brother has a large, fierce dog with a threatening bark — or two, if possible. Cassie has been pounced twice by loose German shepherds. You can’t walk around the park without coming across someone with a big dog running loose — on Sunday mornings a bunch of locals bring about a dozen large dogs over there and let them run around, illegally, off the leash. Encanto Park was bum heaven, but you never saw a dog off the leash there. You didn’t see many dogs at all, come to think of it.

That says to me that people who live in this neighborhood are scared. The number of derelicts visible in these parts is a tiny fraction of the number of car-sleeping and window-peeping and yard-toileting natives who used to hang out in Encanto. Yet people apparently perceive a great deal more risk here than they did there.

Yes, we do have some incidents: the bum that jumped a wall to diddle with a couple of small girls being the most recent. And yeah, I did enjoy the Great Garage Invasion. But in the 13 years we lived in Encanto we had…

• The cat burglar on the roof
• The Night of the Screaming (in which I chased off a rapist by hollering “fire” at the top of my lungs)
• The burglar who was chased out of the house at 2 a.m. by our German shepherd
• The ax murder
• The night-long rapefest at the neighbor’s house
• The guy who took up residence in a neighbor’s car and was pissed when he was thrown out so she could go to work
• The guy who tried to push his way in through my front door even as not one but two German shepherds stared him down
• The guy who chased one of the nannies in Palmcroft
• The guy who followed me even as I was pushing a baby in a stroller (I dodged into a neighbors’ house)
• The couple who used our side yard as their latrine

It kinda went on and on. On Mondays, the head secretary at my office (yes, Virginia, in those days admins were called “secretaries”) would ask me what new story I had for them…and I usually did have one.

We hardly ever have things like that happen here. We have a hell of a lot more dogs than we do bums and criminals. Heh…maybe one fact follows the other as the night the day?

I doubt it. I think people are just scared. Unduly scared.

It doesn’t do to be scared of the bogeyman, you know. You’re usually bigger than he is, and nine times out of ten you’re a hell of a lot smarter (your brain not being clouded by dope or booze). A dog is nice company, but it’s not real protection. A gun is reassuring until you consider the fact that you’re more likely to shoot yourself in the foot than to wing the burglar.

The best protection? Keeping your wits about you.

Venus over the Ocean: Brocken Inaglory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Venus_with_reflection.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5223759

Gestalt Morning…

January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 by funny

Good GOD is this EVER going to stop??? It’s one of those mornings when a thousand little tasks come crashing down on you at once, and you can’t get one thing done before the next thrusts itself into your face. I’ve been binged at, bonged at, banged at, tweeted at, rung at, buzzed at, thumped at, yakked at, and barked at nonstop since the first goddamn robocall struck at 7:00 a.m.

Meanwhile, weirdly enough, I do have some things I need to do, but I can’t get at them for all the pesterments.

The dogs have not stopped yapping since they rolled out of the sack this morning. I think it’s because the kids are all out of school, it being MLK Day, and they’re having a gay old time playing outdoors on this beautiful cool day. Cassie and Ruby would love to be out there chasing around with them, but about the best they can do is race around barking at the front door, barking at the back gate, barking at the side gate, barking at the east wall, barking at the west wall, barking at the south wall, barking…barking…barking…BARKING.

Everything I pick up to do gets interrupted by something else that has to be done right this minute.

The handyman was slated to come by at 9 a.m. to see if there was anything he can do about the plugged bathtub drain, a task the plumber shows no interest in doing. Handyman guessed that it was a BIG job, one that could entail pulling out the plastic tub surround. (These things were installed in the houses at the frame-out stage…to get one of them out through a bathroom door entails sawing them apart in the bathroom and taking them out in pieces. How you get a new one in escapes me…my guess is, you don’t.) After showing up an hour late with his brother in tow, he thought about it and then went off to think about it some more, saying he’ll be back tomorrow.

The pool guy is supposed to come by between 3 and 5. But before then, I need to get Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner over to Leslie’s to see if he’s jammed…because it dawned on me that the reason Harvey has stopped moving may not be the pump or the filter but Harvey himself. A fix at Leslie’s would be one hell of a lot cheaper than a fix and a filter cleaning trip by an expensive repairdude in a gas-guzzling service truck.

But the question is, WHEN can I get out of here?

An acquaintance was supposed to come by, also (conveniently while a repairman is underfoot) at 9 a.m. to drop off some books to donate to the church’s book sale. She called about 10:30 to say she’d be here in 45 minutes or so. Since she’s coming in from Sun City West, which is halfway to Los Angeles, that actually will be more like an hour, unless she’s in the habit of flying low.

So that puts the eefus on getting done with the SLEW of errands that need to be run between now and 3:00 p.m. In addition to the trip to Leslie’s, I need to make a Costco run and a Home Depot run. The Costco run can be (and probably should be) put off until tomorrow, but H.D., not so much.

Sat down to catch up with bidness and with the personal email. Every thirty seconds the damn dogs launched into another barkfest! Read half a sentence…bark bark bark bark bark bark BARK BARK BARK…try to figure out what the interlocuter wanted…bark bark bark bark bark bark YAP YAP YAP…go back and read it again and try to figure out what’s needed and bark YAP YAP bark bark BARKITY YAP bark…try to frame a response…type type BUZZZZZZZ dryer goes off…haul out blankets, move another load of laundry out of the washer into the dryer, put blanket back on bed YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK BARK BARK bark bark…start over with email, try to think through what to say…type BARK BARK briinnnggggggggg goddamn TELEPHONE…wait till the system hangs up the robocaller’s system…type type YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK BARK…ohhhhh crap! Give UP!

Pick up the litter and sort of clean the house before people show up here and see how I really live. briinngggggggg goddamn TELEPHONE “Yes, I’m here, come on over whenever you can” BARK BARK BARK yap yap GROWWWWLLLLLLL bark bark BARK Swiffer up the dog hair off 1860 square feet of tile, something that should be done every single day but that in reality gets done about every second or third day. Throw ten days’ worth of microfiber dog-hair-swiffering rags into the wash… Ruminate on how pissed it makes me that some asshole robocalled me at 7 in the morning on a national holiday.

You know, I really need to dump Cox and get Ooma, a VoIP service that lets you use NoMoRobo. The latter is supposedly the most effective nuisance call blocker around.

But I hesitate. I can see that attaching Ooma is going to involve a) a learning curve and b) DIY technodiddling. The chance of my screwing it up is high. You have to wrest your phone number away from Cox, meaning that if I screw it up (as I will), un-screwing will present a major-major hassle.

It could be worth it, though.

Cox is charging a little over $14 a month for the phone plus another $13 a month for alleged “taxes.” Ooma calculates a total of $4.08 for taxes & fees in my zip code. Switching would mean a HUGE savings.

On the other hand, there are trade-offs.

First, obviously, you would not even have ONE phone in the house that operates when the power is off. Right now one of the eight extensions in fact is directly connected to the landline. And it does run when the power is turned off. Not well…well enough to call 911.

Second, you’d be dependent on an Internet connection. Cox’s Internet is not what you’d call “reliable.” And…lo! Here’s someone at the door…

BARK BARK BARK BARK YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK…bye…

What to Do, Financially, to Weather the Coming Disaster?

January 13, 2017 by funny

Our country — and by extension, your finances and mine — is in deep trouble. We are about to inaugurate as President a man whose mental stability is questionable; who announces his petulance in wee-hours tweets; who gropes women and brags about it; who exploits hatred and fear to gain power; who is at odds with the country’s intelligence agencies; who denigrates the disabled, the female, and the brown-skinned; and who “owes one” to the corrupt, thuggish leader of a nation that has been our enemy since shortly after the end of World War II. He is backed by a phalanx of extremists who want to reverse not just the ACA but the entire New Deal, which has been in place for almost 80 years.

The New Deal, we might point out, came into being in response to the Great Depression. Part of its purpose was to prevent a repeat performance of the Depression.

I believe that, in the near future, we are going to see a recession that will make the Bush Recession look like a cakewalk. The reason is that the dominant economic thinking among the doctrinaire right wing riding Mr. Trump’s coat-tails is simply wrong. It was proven wrong by the Great Recession, as it was proven wrong in earlier recessions.

Since 1948, this country has seen 11 recessions. Seven of them — 63.6% — were presided over by Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Bush the Younger). Some of the economic downturns were precipitated by factors over which we had little control, such as rises in oil prices. Others correspond with rises in interest rates by the Federal Reserve or with monetary tightening in pursuit of a balanced national budget. Most egregious, from a political point of view, was the Great Recession, which was brought about by deregulation of financial institutions (a mainstay of voodoo economics). The Great Depression of 1929-33 was largely aggravated by “extensive new tariffs and other factors [that] contributed to an extremely deep depression.”

The pendulum swings. As we all know, things go one way for awhile, and then they turn around and go back in the other direction. For the past few years, we’ve seen a roaring economy. We can expect that it, like any hot economic period, will cool down. But I think the pendulum is going to swing, all right: waaayyyy in the opposite direction.

It would be good to position your investments in a balanced portfolio to include variable rate bonds and variable rate preferred stocks that pay decent income and aren’t as sensitive as stocks are in a downturn. In addition, some financial planners make it a policy to sell certain exposure to the market should it turn down below a certain level. This doesn’t protect from losses should the market sell-off, but should help cushion further losses in a market meltdown. Now is the time for you to speak with a financial planner about steps to take in managing your savings.

Additionally, you should be prepared for a period of unemployment. During the Great Recession, 10% of Americans were put out of work, a rate beat only by the Reagan recession (10.8%), the Great Depression (24.9%) and the subsequent 1937/38 recession (19%). That means having at least six months’ worth of living expenses in cash savings and possibly taking on a side gig now, not later, so that you’ll have something to fall back on should you lose your main livelihood.

Remember that many of us were never able to get jobs comparable to the ones we had before the Bush recession — large numbers of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed. After you become discouraged enough to give up seeking full-time work, you no longer register in the government’s unemployment figures, and so most of us in that category are simply not counted.

In addition to building cash savings, pay down debt and avoid racking up new debt, especially on credit cards.

Now more than ever is the time to live not just within your means but below your means. Good luck to you, folks. We’re all gonna need it.

A Gray Day…Sky-wise and Financial-wise

January 10, 2017January 9, 2017 by funny

California’s rainstorms are making their way over here. Every time a significant storm blows into California, eventually it crosses the mountains and the desert and arrives here. The sky has been threatening to dump on us all day. And…speaking of “dump,” naturally I pick today to work on the financial books.

Not too bright. As it were…

So one thing — the one thing — that appears immanently obvious is that the current amazing budgetary triumph is a fluke.

And: even if said fluke continues indefinitely, as long as I have to make car payments on top of helping my son pay the mortgage on a house he can’t afford on the salary he earns, I cannot make make ends meet. Said salary of my son’s ranks slightly above Arizona’s paltry median household income (and his 66-year-old virtually uninsulatable house is valued right at the Greater Phoenix median cost for a single-family home) — Yes. Well. The one obvious factoid: my RMD and Social Security are not going to support me unless I get rid of the car and the dogs.

That’s even if I were able to keep monthly expenses at the flukish minimum. Which ain’t bloody likely.

Uck-fay.

Because I hate the recurring budgetary data-entry job, I tend to put it off. So today had to spend two or three hours ripping open envelopes, poring over statements, and entering number after number after tedious number into spreadsheets. And, of course, paying bills.

Engaged in this fun project, I happen to notice that this month’s water bill is exactly the same as last month’s bill, right down to the penny: $99.69.

Say what?

Last month it did not rain every day or two. Last month the watering system was running — it came on every third day. This month the watering system has been off for at least two weeks (could be longer), and the ground and pots are still soggy from the unending rain. Not once have I had to pour tap water into the swimming pool. And because it’s colder than Billy-Be-Damned, I put off bathing as long as I possibly can.

Soooo…there’s no reason the current bill should be anywhere near as much as last month’s bill. That it would be identical makes no sense at all.

I called the water department to inquire about this anomaly — a hundred bucks being high for this time of year, especially after all the rain we’ve had. I was told the meters are still manually read in our neighborhood. This seemed contrary to the notice we got a couple years ago saying our meters would henceforth be read electronically…but who knows? Anything’s possible. The woman I spoke with, Linda, said I should go outside and check the meter to see if it registered the same as or less than the figure shown on the statement. If it didn’t register more, in order to get the Water Dept to investigate, I would be charged a $23 gouge for the privilege.

So I went out this afternoon, in the rain, to check as advised. What I saw was a gauge encrusted in dried-on dust, leaves, and old bougainvillea blossoms.

The statement says the meter was read on January 3. Today is January 9. Obviously, no one could have read the meter without pushing aside the crusted-on dirt. That much mud and crap would not have weaseled its way in to the covered meter box in six days.

Curious about the condition of the irrigation system, I turned the valves on and then traipsed back through the rain and checked to see if any change registered with the meter. None: it didn’t budge. Evidently there’s no leak in the system, even when the system’s valves are open.

I called back and reached Mario.

He said, in direct contradiction to his agency’s first representative, that the meters are read electronically.

He further said I must have used that much water, and it must have been just an AMAZING coincidence that the two readings were the same despite the fact that I happen to know the irrigation system was turned off, no water was added to the pool (thanks to this month’s rain), and (because it’s colder than a witch’s t**** in December in this house when you can’t afford to run the heating system) I haven’t bathed excessively.

After I hung up from this run-around, I sent a complaint to my city councilperson. An exercise in futility, I expect. WTF.

I’m going to have to find a way to get more money. I simply cannot bear the thought of teaching freshman comp again. Honestly. I’d rather starve.

Which at this unemployable age, I probably will.

Wonder-Accountant has said, in passing, that it’s about time to draw down a “salary” from the S-corp. Well. Yeah: actually, it’s probably way past time.

An extra ten thousand dollars would do the trick. But…there’s only nine grand in the S-corp’s account. Most of its income goes to cover its expenses. It just about breaks even. So obviously, it’s not going to keep any wolves from the door.

Crazy-making day…

December 22, 2016 by funny

It’s 12:30 in the freaking afternoon and my wheels are still spinning.

I’d planned not to go to this morning’s meeting of the Scottsdale Bidness Association. It’s a long drive under the best of circumstances, and today it’s raining. Meanwhile, as usual in my drought-and-flood business model, the flood pours in right at Christmastime, the only time of year when I have a lot of social activities that (for a change) keep me busy. These are social activities that I do not want to give up, most certainly not in favor of plodding through eye-glazing academic ponderosity, much of it infested with cant.

So I slept in until 7:30. Then sat down briefly (heh…) to read the email while waiting for the coffee to brew.

At 11:30 I got up to throw out the forgotten coffee, now stone-cold, and bolt down a piece of cheese and a few grapes. While the new coffee brewed, tossed the dogs’ bed throw into the dryer to shake out the fur, loaded the Swiffer with a Costco microfiber rag, dustmopped the floors to pick up another couple days’ worth of dog hair and dust.

Awhile back, I assigned myself the project of machine-shaking out the dog throw and dust-mopping the floors every morning, having discovered that this easy, almost work-free routine keeps the floors clean and holds off the allergies handsomely.

In the process, the puppy got trapped in the garage. Neither dog will bark to be let out of the garage. They just stand there at the door, apparently figuring their mental telepathy will reach you.

In the “brief” interval between 7:30 and 11:30, what was I doing that I missed breakfast and missed even so much as a swig of hot coffee?

Reviewed The Kid’s herculean effort to untangle the worst excuse for an academic paper I’ve seen this side of freshman comp. She has spent hours on this thing (as I have), and this morning she finally threw up her hands. The anthology’s editor — our client — is going to have to send the magnum opus back to the author for a rewrite. What an UNGODLY mess.

But of course, the process of a) CYA and b) explaining to the client what the problem is takes God only knows how long. A long, long time.

The Kid has fired our formatting lady, for reasons that explain why one of our journal’s co-editors had a kitten over the documentation for an entire issue’s worth of scholarly papers. So now we have to hire someone to take up that slack, and damned fast because we’re both about to drown under the deluge of Incoming.

A new Chinese scientist wants his paper Englished. Haven’t even had time to answer his query. That’s next.

I’ve drafted a couple of skills tests for APA, Chicago notes-&-bibliography, and Chicago author-date styles, but it must be said that because it’s been 15 years since I had to actually teach these methods in the classroom, I don’t have an existing set of quizzes or anything I can plagiarize for the purpose. So this morning after trying to figure out the tangle and then trying to explain it to the client, after updating our copy-flow records, after going back & forth with The Kid, after cleaning out the DropBox folders, after… after… after…, I return to the task of trying to make some sense of the skills-testing project.

Along the way I realize about half of these papers are formatted in Wyrd’s newer default — one-inch margins all the way around — rather than with the old default margins — one inch top and bottom, 1.25 inch left and right. Our page rates are predicated on the old default. Is there SOME REASON Microsoft has to fuck with EVERYTHING?????????

That extra quarter-inch reduces the length of a typical 35- to 40-page paper by three to five pages. So we are getting cheated when we base our fees on the length of a page that has Microsoft’s new margins. That means either we have to raise our rates — which, believe me, will not bring us any new work — or about every second or third page has to be reformatted. And I need a tracking table for that task, showing the number of pages per paper with 1.25-inch margins, the number of pages we’ve edited in total, the number of words per paper and in toto and goddamn it. Talk about your fucking pointless time sucks. Why? Because some moron at Microsoft decides it’s fun to mess with the customers’ heads.

The skies darken with my mood.

At length the clouds split open and a freaking waterfall cascades down into the backyard. A lake rises toward the back door.

It doesn’t get high enough to over-run the concrete threshold — the house’s slab rises four, maybe five inches above grade. Thank God. If the foundation had been any lower, I would’ve had water in the house.

The water has now receded — it’s 2:00 in the afternoon, this writing having been interrupted by a lengthy telephone conversation with another client.

In any event, the good thing is…the good thing is…is…there’s GOTTA be a good thing here somewhere, doesn’t there? The GOOD thing is I’m sure as hell glad I didn’t drive to Scottsdale in this rain. Phoenix’s drivers are homicidal under the best of conditions. In the rain, they’re confused homicidal drivers.

And now…I have to get some work done.

How to unlock a Toyota…and other small miseries

December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 by funny

All you need is a small Allen wrench. Our friend Mike the Ukrainian Contractor, a co-conspirator at the Scottsdale Bidness Assn, locked himself out of his Toyota truck a couple days ago. After waiting an hour & a half for someone to come get him back in, he started to rummage around the Toyota’s bed. There he found a fairly small-sized Allen wrench. Stuck it in the lock, turned it, et voilà! the lock popped open.

Furthermore, this morning we discovered that my two-year-old Toyota key, which is cut exactly the same way his is cut, also will unlock his seventeen-year-old truck’s door. Noooo problem: just as if the key were made for the lock.

He bet that his key would open my Venza, but given the damned alarm system and all the wacky electronic stuff on the thing, I declined to test it. All I need is to be stuck in Scottsdale with a car alarm screaming and not be able to get into the damn vehicle.

Ruby is suffering from some kind of enteritis. It doesn’t appear to be distemper, because right this moment she’s flying around the house like a racehorse at full speed, leaping over rocks and running circles around Cassie. If she were seriously sick, she wouldn’t be up for that. I think the last batch of food I made contained too much rice and that’s what’s done her in.

Night before last, she barfed off the side of the bed. Despite her care to avoid listening to me bitch about having to strip and launder the bedding at three in the morning, she did manage to get a few drops of barf on the comforter and a sheet. Since that’s my thickest feather comforter, getting it clean is a chore even with the new washer. Took all day to get the damn thing dry.

Last night she and Cassie woke me twice. After the second elevator trip to the floor, I left them off the bed. Don’t like to do that, because I don’t run the heat at this time of year (by way of making up for the astronomical summertime air-conditioning bills), so if you’re not on or under the heated throw that tops the comforter, you’re very cold, indeed. Especially if you’re camping out on bare tile. But up-down-up-down-up-down all night long doesn’t make it.

So, mighty bleary-eyed when the alarm went off as dawn cracked, I ran off to the wee-hour meeting without my purse.

That meant I couldn’t run the errands I’d planned to do on the way home. And that means I now have to go out again and drive from here to Hell and back to buy gasoline and groceries. I was pissed about this and pissed about having to listen to more depressing bellyaching about our new fake President and REALLY pissed about having screwed up a manuscript so that I have to re-index 425 pages, a job I’ve already performed twice thanks to a prior screw-up.

As you can imagine, then, I was not pleased to come home to find Ruby’s rear end covered in dried-on dog sh!t.

She nests behind the toilet in the back bathroom. So the wall, the baseboard, the shower frame, the floor, and the toilet base were all smeared in dog sh!t, too.

Shee-ut. To coin a term…

So now in addition to feeling tired, cranky, and incompetent, I had to carry the dog into the bathtub and scrub her butt and thick furry “panties” clean, dry her off as best as possible (it’s still damn cold in the house), get out the disinfectant, and scrub down the walls, baseboard, shower frame, floor, and toilet in the back bathroom. Then open the windows back there and set up a fan at full blast to blow out the noxious disinfectant fumes.

This was really not how I wanted to start my day.

Admittedly, I did not want to make an extra trip out to shop for groceries and gasoline. In a car that anyone can open with an Allen wrench. Nor did I look forward to the first of four or five days of re-indexing chores. But this, I wanted to do even less.