Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Another Fine Day in Southern California

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Holy mackerel!  THIS is going on right in the vicinity of where my parents and I lived in Southern California. Really: it’s right down the road from where our apartment building stood.

My father would have been at sea, of course — he was an oil tanker captain. But by now my mother and I would be at her grandmother’s house in Berkeley: several hours’ drive away from the present scene of the drama.

Apparently thousands of people have been evacuated from the region. Or relegated to shelters…doesn’t that sound like fun!  My mother would have been terrorized!

My father, o’course, would have been off at sea. So she and I would have been left to cower at home…or to jump in the car and start drivin’ drivin’ drivin’.

Kinda doubt she would have betaken us to a motel. Most likely she would have driven up the coast to the relatives’ house in the Bay Area, and we would have camped with them until the drama subsided.

Mighty glad not to be in that melodrama this afternoon!

Unclear how long this is gonna go on, or how much risk of a real catastrophe exists. If it were me, though, I’d be sooooo far outta there! That’s for sure!

How Could She Do That?

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Y’know… It’s one thing to poison yourself.

But another thing altogether to poison your child.

How on earth could she have done that?  Why would she have done such a thing? Year in and year out?

My mother smoked. She didn’t just smoke a little. She smoked constantly. She was never awake when she didn’t have a cancer stick in her mouth. Not even in the shower! You knew when she awoke in the middle of the night by the stink emanating from her bedroom.

And I was sick all the time I was growing up in her household. Constant, unending respiratory illness. Never stopping. Not until I got out of her house.

She smoked herself to death. And she damn near smoked me to death. Maybe she imagined it would be fitting and lovely for us to share a grave?

Yeah, I understand: it was an addiction. 

But you know, a person can beat addiction. Apply some knowledge and some will power, and you can take it down.

She knew exactly what she was doing. The word came down in the late 1950s: tobacco smoking causes cancer. And it makes the people around you sick.

Oh, yeah. She knew what she was doing. She did it anyway.

It killed her.

What a waste.

Pool Dude In! Pool Dude Out!

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Ohhhhhh my gawd!!! Two hundred bucks (plus, plus, plus) to clean that damn swimming pool and service the equipment.

No wonder my neighbor Terri just lets hers sit there dry and rotting away!

Actually, repairing the mess after you let the thing go to pot for several years would cost one helluva lot more than keeping it up every few months. But…jeez. It still gives you a gawdawful shock, every time you have to get someone in here to work on it.

And WORK is the operative word!!!  Holeeee mackerel. First off, the guy has to know HOW to work on it…which is one helluva lot more than I’d be capable of. Then he has to bang and thrash and scour and haul and carry on and carry on to get the damn thing clean, service the filter and motor, and…on and on and freakin’ ON!

That’s in the afternoon heat. As we scribble, the back porch thermometer reads a chilly 105 degrees. No joke: normally at this time of year it would be around 110 out there. And that makes our guy’s job one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have! 

Yea verily: my neighbor does leave hers sitting empty. 

But…but… What that does is ruin the plaster and let the equipment go to pot. So…if and when she goes to move out, to get that dead pool working will cost her not one but SEVERAL arms and legs. Really: it’s incredibly stupid to just let your pool go to pot. What a mess you’ll have to repair when you sell the house!

And I have to say: I do love the pool. I swim in there several times a week. Not every day, admittedly…but often enough and with enough enjoyment to make it worth keeping the thing up.

Man O man!  What a JOB that guy did. Nothing about Pool Dude’s work is either simple or easy. Even regularly keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance, there’s no way in Hell that I could do the work that fella did this afternoon.

Anyway, whenever the sun goes far enough over the yardarm that I can jump in the drink without giving myself a roaring case of skin cancer, I’ll take a nice swim. And that will be…rewarding, I reckon.

STUNG!

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black widow spiderOne of Arizona’s fine black widow spiders caught me on the left foot yesterday. CHOMP!

Hurt?  Lemme tellya hurt!

Called St. Joe’s hospital. They said to watch and wait. If it flares up a lot, to come in to see a doctor.

Yeah. Well. Looks like I’ll be paying them a visit, soon enough.

Oddly, the neuropathy in the hands seems milder, as though it has settled down a bit.

So pretty clearly the mad tingling and hurting in the left foot and lower leg are aftermath of the spider bite.

WHEN, forgawdsake, is this stuff EVER GONNA STOP???

Jobs We’re Glad We Don’t Have!

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Egad!!!!!  It’s a chilly 100 degrees out there: rather cooler than it feels. As we loaf in the shade, who do we see across the road but a crew of men flinging themselves around in that unholy heat. Actually, they have a flatbed truck and a large hoist, with which they’re hauling a whole-house air-conditioning unit onto the neighbor’s roof.

And migawd, WHAT a job!

Definitely, indisputably one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have!

LOL! Another job I’m mighty glad I don’t have is wrangled by my excellent neighbor straight across the southerly street: He drives a cab for Uber.

HOLEE mackerel! In this heat!! And in Phoenix’s unholy L.A.-style traffic!!!

It’s almost too horrible to contemplate.

Seriously: Phoenix traffic really is gawdawful. Drivers here roar around like lunatics. Add the heat and the crowded conditions, and you have a freakin’ nightmare.

So…one COULD, with some degree of logic and sanity, argue that my son did me a favor by purloining my car.

As a practical matter, I’m discovering that I don’t need to own a car(!!!): this neighborhood is swarming with Uber drivers! That’s above & beyond the guy who lives right across the street. We’re told that a half-dozen hold forth just in the few nearby square blocks.

If that’s the case, then there really is no reason to own a car!

And that is something this ole’ California driver finds just plain downright astonishing.

What DXH and I used to find truly astonishing was that in London, we truly had no call to own a car. When we got over there for the three-month period we dedicated to the research I was doing for the Robert Sidney book, we discovered that between the Underground, the city busses, and the local taxicabs, we didn’t need to rent a car at all!

That saved us a ton of money…to say nothing of vast stores of aggravation. Driving in London is almost as much fun as driving in New York City.

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Whew!! The guys across the street got the AC unit back on the neighbor’s roof. Looks like they’re gonna have to re-lay some or all of the shingles. Doesn’t THAT sound like fun, in 110-degree heat!

LOAFING: The best of all possible occupations!

BELAY that Last Post!!!!

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Forgodsake. Look at this morning’s FaM Post. Read that, and then say to yourself, with sterling accuracy and common sense, My gawd! The woman has lost every marble she ever had!  And THEN some!!!!! 

My imaginative little discovery, contingent on my son stealing my car out of my garage — “I don’t need a car to get around here! ” — turns out to be the single stupidest thing I’ve ever thought, said, or written. 

Yeah.

Today, as the sun made its way across the sky, I took it into my thick little head to walk down to the Albertson’s supermarket and pick up some dog food for Ruby the Corgi. While I was in the vicinity, I wanted to talk with a lawyer who practices in that shopping center — no, nothing drastic… Just a business matter. So: grabbed my home-made roller cart and headed on down there!

  • Walked.
  • And walked.
  • And dodged panhandlers.
  • And walked.
  • And fried.
  • And walked.
  • And fried some more.
  • And walked…..
  • Holeeeeee shee-ut!

The business lawyers whose office I’d seen so often in that shopping center were…GONE!!! Their space was empty.

Dayum!

The other lawyers, the ones across the parking lot, said they don’t do business law. But if I ever get arrested for drunk driving…. 😀

Yeah. 😮

By now, I was just fricasseed!

Went into the supermarket; hung out with the security guards for awhile. They put up with me, kindly, while I cooled down a bit.

But…now I had to get home. And that entailed walking block after block after block after block through searing, GAWDAWFUL heat.

Honestly: for a few minutes there, I wasn’t at all sure I was gonna make it.

Got up to the church. No one there; all the doors locked. Just a couple of bums hanging out in the shade.

Stumbled across the vast, black asphalt church parking lot. Staggered into the ‘Hood. Hotter and hotter and hotter….

Trudged and trudged through the residential part of our ‘hood. Hoped my neighbor Tom would be out…he and his wife Carol would let me inside to cool off, and keep me there long enough to be sure I wouldn’t pass out.

Nope. No sign of those two.

Hauled the empty cart along, and hauled it, and hauled it, and hauled it. Finally came to my house…not at all sure I could make it through the courtyard to the front door.

But I did: unlocked the door (clumsily: hands not working well) and staggered into the house.

And now here I yam, parked in front of the wonderful table fan. Dog snoozing on the floor: thank GAWD I didn’t take it into my feeble little head to take her with me this afternoon!

It’s much, much hotter than I’d estimated: 108 degrees, sez Wunderground. That may be an understatement!

At any rate, I made it home (miraculously!) and am now cooled down.

I guess I’m going to have to go out and rent another car — or maybe buy one. Obviously, I can’t get around on foot, not in this heat.

My ears are whistling.

My heart is pounding.

I probably should go to the ER. But without a car and through this unholy heat, how on earth would I get there?