Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Good Morning, Dogmerica!

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WHY, oh why are people SOOOO STUPID?

Just back from the morning (almost typed “moroning”….talk about your Freudian slips!) hike around the park. That’s a mile or so of trotting along  behind a very bossy corgi, dodging fellow dog-slaves around a lovely, grassy expanse.

Well. It would be lovely if my fellow humans could manage to cling to just a smidgeon of their brains.

Idiots.

The ones who take the proverbial cake are the nitwits who imagine their dog “just wants to pwayyy” with my dog.

Me: Please keep your dog back.

Nit: It’s OK. They just want to pwaayyyy…

Me: No, stupid. My dog just wants to eat your dog!

God, but I’m tired of stupid! 

Apparently we have a bottomless supply of it, though. Don’t seem to be able to escape it.

Please. When you’re out with your dog…

a) Keep your dog on its leash (!!!); and
b) Refrain from imagining that every other dog you encounter wants to be your doggy’s little pal!!!!!

Some of your fellow human idiots are mightily tired of being dragged into dog fights!

GORGEOUS Evening!

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Oh, my! WHAT a beautiful evening!

Just got back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: for the first time in living memory, without the dog dragging me around. Lovely! Absolutely LOVELY.

The air is soft and delicate. No heat. No cold, either.

No one else was around, so the way was quiet and peaceful, just as gentle as gentle can be. I’ve not had as pleasant a walk in as long as I can remember!

So. After this, the Dawg gets her hike the first thing in the morning. Then I get my stroll last thing in the evening. That way, I get twice as much walking in. Ruby misses out on nothing. And I get to enjoy this lovely neighborhood.

Gosh, I hope the evenings stay this pleasant for a good long time: ideally, into and even through the summer.

That’s a forlorn hope, o’course: come late June and July, it’ll be hotter than the hubs of Hades out there.

But for the nonce, I can build a habit of a daily walk. And then when the summer blast fires up, Ruby and I can follow the same route first thing in the morning, before the sun comes up. That’ll leave only about three weeks when the summer heat makes the place truly non-navigable.

Quite a stroll it was, too. Not a single bum. No weirdos. No undue racket from the main drags. Unusual, one could say.

Survived to See Another Day

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Incredibly enough, dear Janie’s ministrations did NOT wreck the vacuum cleaner. Or if they did, the effects are yet to be seen. The thing seems to be working okay. At least for a few quick swipes.

One of the challenges that greets you in old age is that younger adults treat you like you were a non compos mentis kid. Fixing your vacuum cleaner when it doesn’t need to be fixed, for example. 😀  Or better yet, insisting on doing it herself when plainly any such job would need to done by a mechanic!

Honest to gawd!

Soooo….what does this imply?

Probably, it suggests that you need to build a small corps of repairmen who can fix things around your house: quickly and with minimal hassle. Preferably people who will come to your house, since it may be difficult to get some items to their shop.

Today, for example, the weather is moderately cozy: only 85 degrees in the sun, but NINETEEN PERCENT humidity. That slug of water in the air makes it feel like it’s hotter than the hubs out there! Without a car — my son having kiped mine — I would either have to pay an Uber guy to drive me to the nearby repair shop, or tote the vacuum over there myself.

Neither of those options appeals. But because I’m stuck without my car, I have no sensible choice. Either I make myself sick hauling the machine to the nearest appliance store on foot through the unholy heat, or I pay through the schnoz to get it over there, and pay again to get it home.

It just makes me so goddamn MAD that she messed with that expensive machine when I asked her not to!  Who the fuck does she think she is????

Anyway, just now it seems to be working OK. We shall see how long that lasts.

Otherwise, the day has been relatively quiet. Hot: very hot. But no inane crises going on. That’s refreshing.

I guess….

 

The Gentrification of the ‘Hood

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Well… Truth to tell, the ‘Hood started out gentrified.

This has always been an upper-middle-class urban neighborhood. But of late?  HOLEE maquerel!

Young people are buying up our 1950s and ’60’s ranch houses and turning them into freaking palaces. Give this trend another ten years, and real estate here is gonna be not just through the roof but hovering in the stratosphere. 

And THAT is a primary reason why I want to stay out of an old-folkerie and in my home: all the way up to the moment I die. BECAUSE I want my son to inherit what will no doubt be a very hot, very pricey piece of centrally located real estate.

Yeah: my guess is that in ten years this place will be worth twice its current value…and houses here are already absurdly overpriced.

So, whenever M’hijito gets this place, he’ll be able to move into Fancy Danville here, or sell the shack and move wherever he wants: debt-free. Yeah: the Funny Farm was paid off some years ago, over my financial advisor’s vociferous objections.

Looks like Financial Dude was wrong and I was right. If the present trend continues, these houses — now on the edge of one of the most upscale districts in the Valley — will be worth TONS of money. My son will be able to occupy a stylishly antique pile in a neighborhood of overpriced 1950s tract houses (overpriced when new! outrageous now…), or he can sell this place and retire on the proceeds.

In any event, it now appears we’ll have something to leave to M’hijito that will be worth a sh!tload of money. One way or the ‘tother: no matter what he chooses to do with it.

Let Us Try Again…

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So…ahem!  What happens if we post another test entry? Or…what the hell: a WHOLE, REAL entry for Funny about Money???

Okay: testing, testing! 

****

Today we’re enjoying another Day from Hell. 

My poor son is so frustrated with me and so mad at me that he can barely manage to be civil. Yea verily, at times he can’t rise to that stratospheric height.

And I don’t blame him. Forgodsake, I can hardly remember my  name. I keep getting things confused. I keep fu*king things up. Everything I touch or even so much as think about goes KERFLOOIE!

And I’m starting to get really scared. Like, REALLY scared. 

Never before has the entire goddamn world gone bzzzzzzzz for me. Everything is confused. I can’t remember things. I lose things. I forget to pay bills. It’s a freaking ASTONISHING mess.

***

Wonder Cleaning Lady is here, wrestling with the pigpen. She’s a truly delightful and amazing person.

Honestly: at this point I don’t know what I’d do without her!

I  need to go to a grocery store, but dare not traipse through 100-degree heat on foot: eight or ten blocks each way. I probably could order something online…but in the past have discovered that is not a real successful way to get what you want.

Americans don’t eat a lot of fresh produce. When you order a delivery, you have to ask for packaged stuff: things that a person doesn’t have to pick out. Ask for fresh vegetables or fruit, and what you get is ick. Yeah: inedible ick.

So the only way I can get the kind of food I normally eat — largely fresh produce — is to go to the store and pick it out myself.

And…if I can’t do that, I’m in a pickle.

An inedible pickle!

Might ask her to drive me to a store…but that seems a little much. She’s spent hours cleaning this place….and now I want her to chauffeur me around?

Don’t think so….

WHOA!!!!! 

Lookee here! Sprouts opens at 7 a.m.!!!!

Holeee shee-ut! 

Even in the current weather, at that hour the air will be cool enough that I could get up there and back without succumbing to a heat stroke.

Jeez! Who knew?

Okay, let’s think about this….

If I left here at 6:30 — maybe more like 6:40, actually — I could get there just as they open. I do have a little-old-lady’s rolling cart(!!). So if I dragged that over there, I could load the groceries into it, get out of the store by about 7:30 a.m., and reach the house at 8:00.

It would still be on the low side of unbearably hot by then: no question of it. But…it wouldn’t be suicidal yet! I probably could get a pile of food and household stuff and get back here before the heat would be enough to make me sick.

Looks like temperatures are expected to be around 79 to 82 degrees at that hour.

Yeah. That’s tolerable. But yeah: I will have to shoot out of the house at dawn.

Goodie.

And as we scribble?

A hot, heavy wind has blown up. It’s roaring around out there.

That is NOT something you wanna be strolling around in. So that obviates trotting to the store this evening…even if that was something I wanted to do. Which I sure as Hell don’t….

So…hmmm…. Will I be able to BBQ tonight? Wanted to cook up the salmon my son bought for me a couple days ago.

Doesn’t look like it. But…one never knows.

Wait until Wonder-Cleaning Lady leaves and then decide, I guess.

And if this weather obviates grilling? Hmmm…  Well…there’s pasta…that’ll do the job, I reckon.

***
AUGH!!!!

Just to make everything perfect, Wonder Cleaning-Lady reports that the damn vacuum cleaner is busted.

I fiddle with it. I dork with it.

Yep. She’s right: it’s not working.

With no car, tomorrow I’ll have to DRAG it to the appliance store. Won’t that be fun!  While I’m dragging a shopping cart, too.

Okay. Let’s tempt a little fate and see if this post will go online….

 

 

Fire Central!

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Gosh…am I glad we’re not still in Southern California.  That’s where I was born, yea verily. Though I grew up overseas — in Saudi Arabia — when my father retired, we moved back to the States, where we ended up in Long Beach, part of the vast L.A. sprawl.

Never cared for Southern California, myself. Smog is not to my taste. Nor are the noise and the traffic and the overall atmosphere of Looney Toons. But boyoboy! Today those fires would tear it for me!

I imagine my mother would have packed us up — well, “us” would have been “her and me,” since my father continued to make a living going to sea with the Merchant Marine — and we would have headed up the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area. She would have barged in on our relatives in Berkeley, and there we would have stayed until the drama subsided.

They would have put up with us for awhile, I expect: a couple of weeks, probably. Much longer than that:  ????  Unknown. But I suppose if she were really scared, she could have rented a motel room for us.

Anyhow…awful glad not to be there now!!