Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Ruminations on Ruination

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door…NOW!

Seriously: the Dawg and the Human just sat down to take in the morning slack — coffee mug in hand, computer atop lap — and it dawns on the Human: Do not sit there with the back door hanging open, dammit!!!  Nay verily, not even if the screen door is closed and locked.

‘Cause, as we know, any clown and his/her little brother can kick or yank that screen open.

Sounds paranoid, eh? But I do hafta say: it feels more and more unsafe to me, living here in lovely Arizona. Especially in its (un)lovely cities.

Day or two ago, a Tucson woman was murdered at her home, apparently by a nut case. So…sitting around your house or patio taking in the morning air is decidedly NOT advised. Surely not around here.

So many of our fellow citizens are off the rails here in this crazy-making 21st Century — and it’s so easy for them (and us) to stock up on firearms — that really: You’d be nuts to loaf in your family room with the back door hanging open.

I never used to feel especially unsafe in my home, certainly not in the daylight hours. But lately that has changed…and I don’t think the change is a function of age.

No. It’s a function of the steadily growing insanity and violence around us. Not that humans haven’t always been crazy…but really, it does seem a lot more pronounced than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Sometimes I think I should move out of uptown Phoenix — surely the suburbs would be safer. When I mentioned that to a cop during the great home invasion adventure, he remarked that there aren’t any places in the Phoenix metropolitan area that can be regarded as safe.

Really…when you re-read the post I put up at Funny after that little adventure, you hafta ask yourself: Why am I still living here???

What the HELL is the matter with me that I haven’t moved somewhere else? Somewhere far, far from here! Really: this house should have been on the market the next day after that episode…

But…but…WHERE would I go that’s any better?

Sun City, that fine mausoleum on the west side? 

Well, no: this kind of stuff happens out there. My mother lived in white-lipped terror all the time she and my father owned their Sun City manse. And I’m not interested in living in a ghetto for the aged and the cranky. No, thanks.

A box in the sky? One of the high-rise apartments along Central Avenue or in Scottsdale?

Well…I’ve lived in such a place. And…no thanks. Don’t wanna do that again. I’m just not in to communal living.

No communal living, eh? Well, then: how about back out to the ranch, just outside the wide spot in the road called Yarnell? Right up on the Rim…cool weather, lots of cows and sheep, plenty of room for the burglars to spread out comfortably?

Hm. Yeah, I did love the ranch. BUT: we didn’t live there 24/7. It was more of a weekend retreat for us. And y’know: I don’t think I would want to live out in the middle of nowhere 24/7. Besides, if a burglar/rapist/murderer can visit you in your city subdivision, what’s to keep him from visiting you on your remote ranch?

Basically…where there be humans, you be not safe.

Yeah: I’m afraid that’s a fact.

Or, alternatively:  I’m afraid. That’s a fact.

😀

 

 

Back Online! And Chariot-Free

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Hallelujah! Funny appears to be back online. Why, when, where? No idea. At any rate, we’ll soon see if this post goes up.

Meanwhile, our li’l world is toddling off to Hell on a handcart. (Can you toddle on a rolling thing?) Everybody that I know, just about, is sick as a dawg.

(Why are dogs thought to be sick, anyway?)

The purloined car is permanently gone. The Mayo/driver’s license issue is, I think (but am not sure) is still up in the proverbial air. I do have another doctor who says the Mayo doc is ridiculous and there’s no reason I can’t be driving…but truth to tell, I don’t feel much like barging into battle over the issue.

As more time passes, I find (more & more) that, given where I live and given the commerce all around here, I really don’t NEED a car to get by just fine. More than just fine, really.

Everything I need or crave, day-to-day, is available within easy walking distance. And for the stuff that’s not right around the corner, an Uber driver lives straight across the street!

Matter of fact, I’ve learned that at least half-a-dozen Uber drivers live right here in the ‘Hood. So as a practical matter, it really is true that you don’t need a car to live in this part of town, comfortably and conveniently.

That is a HUGE money suck that goes away forthwith! Riding on the lightrail, the busses, and the local Uber autos costs a tiny fraction of what owning a car costs. I’m now thinking I’m not going to bother to try to extract my license from those idiots at the Mayo or to retrieve my car from my son’s garage.

If he gives the car back or reimburses me for it, I’ll sell it and bank about 10 grand. That will buy a whole lotta Uber rides, eh?

Gosh. It’s almost like living in San Francisco. When my mother and I lived there, waaayyy back in the day, my father’s swell Oldsmobile remained parked in the apartment’s underground garage whenever he was off at work (he went to sea and was gone for weeks at a time). The only time my mother and I got that car out was to drive to Berkeley: there to visit the relatives. Most of the time, we rode the trains and busses. Or walked.

This, interestingly, changes the tenor of life in Phoenix.

Until recently, living here was more like living in Southern California than anything: hot, traffic-ridden, bourgeois, boring. But as commerce builds up and it becomes more feasible to get around on foot, it feels more like living in San Francisco, where you don’t bother with a car unless you have a long drive to make.

And y’know….since there’s a car rental place about three blocks from here, I may just get rid of the Dog Chariot altogether. Why own a hole in the pavement into which to pour money when someone else can own and maintain the thing, and you can rent one whenever you feel so inclined?

A-a-n-d…just to make things perfect…

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Now Facebook has changed its settings in some weird way so that I can’t get into my page there, or if I can, it won’t let me post anything there.

SCREW YOU, FACEBOOK!

Seriously: that’s the end of my Facebook presence…and…I hafta say, I am so out of patience with this kinda BS and with sites changing up the way you work them every time you damn turn around that I reckon I’m just done with social media. F***ém all!!!

Seriously: I’ll keep Funny about Money until the website crashes (as it inevitably will,  dontcha know), and then that is IT for my online presence.

Gotta find some other way to amuse myself.

Maybe take up amateur astronomy again as a hobby.

Yeah: I still have my old telescope. If the lenses haven’t sagged (they should’ve, by now), I could break that out and go back to spending the evenings ogling the heavens.

That’s how I used to amuse myself in junior high and high school. Yeah: can you imagine: a girl kid who thinks she wants to become an astronomer??

Well, be assured that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the profession of astronomy wanted NOTHING TO DO a girl wannabe. Not…A…Chance!

So I could play with my telescope in the backyard but…no…I couldn’t take courses in the hard sciences…no, I could not sit anywhere but in the back row in trigonometry class…no…I could not sign up for a course in physics…no…no…no…NO.

Ahhhh, the good ole days!

NEVER Stops…

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cripes. Come along about noon…I just get my spavined body settled onto the bed with the heating pad cooking the sprained groin muscles, and…

!!!!!BING BONGGGGG!!!!!

God DAMN it. 

Drag out of the sack, limp through the house…limp through the house…limp through the house: Gerardo and his boys at the door: all set to rake and blower and trim and blower and rake and, forGODsake fix the goddamn busted plumbing in the front yard and….

…and who the hell knows how much that’s gonna cost. 

All I wanna do is try to cook the pain out of my leg. Guess that ain’t gonna happen today!

God only can imagine how much he’s gonna gouge me for today’s antics. My guess is around a couple hundred bucks. DAYUM!

Can’t complain, because it’s work that…

a) I don’t really know how to do; and
b) I absolutely positively don’t WANT to do.

But…hafta say, today I’d ever so much druther NOT have anyone do it. DAYUM! Let me lay on the sack under the damn heating pad and freakin’ leave me alone!

My gawd, this stupid thing hurts. Why escapes me. I must have twisted the joint and then laid on it crooked during the night, while I was sleeping.

Wouldn’cha think that would wake you up? If it did, I sure don’t remember. All I know is, I came to this morning with my hip hurting so bad I can barely waddle around the house. And now it hurts and hurts and hurts and HURTS.

*****

GEEEZ! Talk about hurts! Gerardo the Wonder Yard Dude just charged me some staggering around of money to repair the irrigation system. Just what I wanted to do: spend the afternoon bankrupting myself.

And now I’ll get a blast of RAGE from my son, who will be totally NOT happy when he sees how much I paid for this project.

Daaayyy–yuuummm!

MAKE IT STOP, LORD!

{Cosmic laughter echoes out of the heavens…}

Kaput?????

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Well: we’ll see if Funny is kaput in the land of the flying computers…  AUGH.  It looks like my desktop is offline altogether, and the laptop is sorta offline…maybe kaput, maybe not kaput.

😮

To perfect that predicament, somehow I spavined a hip joint and now can BARELY limp up the hallway.

Hmmm… does that mean My hip is offline, too???  😀

Whatever it means, it sure as hell hurts!

Okay…

….TESTING….

Are We Still Online?

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Looks like once again I’m back in to Funny about Money, despite the last week’s hijinks.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! That’s surely some kind of little miracle.

It’s a gray, drab morning: 8:30 and no brighter than about 7 a.m.

Harvey the Beloved Pool Cleaner appears to be on the fritz. Looks like he’s stuck on on the bottom of the Hole in the Ground Into Which To Pour Money. I’m not sure whether this is Pool Dude Day — he comes around every week or so. But I’m unstuck in time and so have no clue whether this is one of his days.

If I stay here waiting for him, that will put the eefus on Ruby the Corgi’s doggy-walk.

****

Ah HAH!  His glorious convict-like Cuteness arrived! Pool Dude is here! Out back and puttering away with the dratted…uhm, beloved swimming pool. And when we say DOG JOY, we do mean dog joy. 

Yes: many of these guys are convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the trades for which prisons in Arizona train inmates. So, chances are pretty good that our beloved Pool Dude has seen the inside of a concrete cell.

That notwithstanding, he is a sweetie-pie. Just a very nice, very personable man. And he does a great job! So whatever he did in his previous career…I don’t much care.

As for Ruby: he could be Jack the Ripper and she’d still adore him.