Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

The Boggle Minds!

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LOOK at the prices on these old Hudson’s Bay blankets!

My father, who was a merchant mariner sailing oil tankers, brought two of these back for my mother. He would faint dead away if he saw the prices posted here!

So would my mother. I’m sure she knew, at the time he brought them home, that the things would be worth a lot more in the mainland U.S. than he paid for them in Alaska. But not THAT much more.

Of course, part of the outrageous price results from years of inflation. But still…$425????  Come ON!

How Lucky Can Ya Get?

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Really: just exactly how lucky CAN some little old lady get? 

The Cleaning Lady from Heaven just trotted out the front door — very likely en route to her next house. That woman works like a horse. Oh hell: make that like a Clydesdale. You’ve never seen anyone who does so much work at such high quality in such a short time. It’s 2:00 p.m. — and you can be sure she’s on her way to another house. That would be her third house of the day.

I do know she does the WonderAccountants’ house on the same day she does mine. So…no, I cannot be sure she goes to a third work site. But wouldn’t be surprised.

Finding this splendid woman was about the best thing that’s happened to me…at least in my adult life. She really is amazing, and what she charges is the going rate: the same amount other house-cleaners in North Central Phoenix charge.

Yesterday I spavined my back — don’t ask how. Today it hurts so much I can barely hobble around the house. NO WAY could I have cleaned this house — vacuumed, dusted, scoured, scrubbed, polished, changed sheets, and on and on. No matter how much ibuprofen I gulped down!

Wonder Cleaning Lady saves me from my self…and my decrepitude. Bless her!!

Morning in Arizona…

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Ahhhhhh! Is that coffee good, or IS that coffee GOOD?

Waiting for Wonder-Cleaning Lady to surface…if she’s gonna surface. It’s 9:40 in the morning now, and she hasn’t appeared at the Wonder-Accountants’ house — she goes there first; then comes to the Funny Farm. Sooo…I think (hope!) it’s safe to assume this isn’t one of her work days.

Oh! Yes: of course it’s safe!!!!  This ain’t Monday, folks...TODAY IS SATURDAY!

😀

Who’d’a thunk it? 

😀  😀

Man! I am in so much pain this morning, I can’t even tell what day of the week it is!!!

Put my back out a day or so ago, and just now it’s trying to remind me that I’m crippled. Doing a pretty good job of that, too….

Oh well. This means I don’t have to tear around the place picking up things and shoveling junk out of Wonder-Cleaning Lady’s way. That’s a relief!

Figured to take the Savage Corgi for a walk this morning, after it warms up a little. Just now, Wunderground says it’s 60 degrees out there. Which ain’t that cold…my guess is Wunderground is wrong and my back porch thermometer is right: 60 degrees. Ooops!!

😀

Reading was never one of my strong points.

😉

A-n-n-d… LORDIE! Did you see the news reports about the fire in that Swiss ski resort’s bar? Dear God!

Y’know, THAT is why I won’t go into those places. Never make a big deal of it…just always have something else to do or some other idea for amusement when friends want to spend the evening bar-hopping. Take yourself to a popular one and look around you… It’s pretty obvious: if you needed to get out in a hurry, you could find yourself in big trouble.

Kinda tells you something, right? Stay home to get snockered! 

We used to stop in Switzerland — occasionally — along the journey between New York and Dhahran. This was during the ten years my parents and I spent in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. Every two years, they had a long leave…three months off(!!).

We would fly into New York, buy or lease a car, and shoot cross-country as fast as my father could manage: first to his brother’s place in Texas; then to my mother’s best friend’s place in Southern California; then up to the San Francisco Bay Area to hang out with the relatives for a short while; then like a rocket back to New York. Thence to Beirut, en route to Dhahran.

What a life. Ugh! 

Some of the American ex-pats out there would use their leave time to travel around India, Pakistan, Lebanon, and waypoints. My father, being a tanker captain, had his fill of travel and wanted nothing more than to get back to the U.S. and hunker down with friends or relatives.

At any rate, Switzerland was one of the favorites for the ex-pats. I think some folks spent their entire long leave there. It is a pretty place. Especially if you’re not dodging burning roof beams…

Reel Estate…

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Good lord! Looking at the local real estate ads is like watching a horror movie! 😮  Prices have hit the stratosphere and are headed into orbit.

Here’s an aging tract house in my son’s neighborhood, nothing special: $389,000. What the hell do they think it’s made of???? And…have they ever heard of “taste”?  That orange and black in the bedroom: eeeek!!! Wait wait! check out the blood-red bedroom!!!

Zillow thinks my son’s house is presently worth $498,000!!!

Let’s see what the prices are here in the ‘Hood…

One house for sale, right on a truly gawdawful main drag: 3 bedrooms, $420,000. And…1300 square feet; doesn’t even have a pool. WTF???  Here’s one up for auction(???!!!): it’s the same model as mine, $477,000. 

Wow!

Now we begin to ask, am I going to be able to stay in my home? Because the taxes are gonna go into the stratosphere.

That’s what happened in Southern California when real estate prices went berserk. I had a cousin — an elderly woman who had lived in the same place for-freaking-ever — who lost her home because she couldn’t afford the taxes.

THIS is not good.

Oh, jeez! Here’s one right up the street from me…matter of fact, it seems to be the same model as mine: $635,000!!!!!!

Uhm…I may not be able to pay the taxes, either….

 

BANG! BANG!! BANG-A-DA-BANG!!!

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Eight-thirty of a New’s Eve! And everyone within (and beyond) earshot is celebrating: BANG! BANG!! BANGA-DA-BANG!!! 

Amazingly, Ruby the Corgi is taking it all in…very relaxed stride. Really: I would have expected her to be all nervous and jumpy and spooked.

But nay! She seems to realize all that racket is coming from somewhere else: somewhere a fair distance from the Funny Farm. Not only is she NOT spooked, just now she’s flopped on the foot of the bed, loafing!

How weird is that, I hafta ask you?

LOL! This evening the brain-pan filled with memories of a very weird experience...one I never really have been able to make much sense of.

My father, you need to understand first-off, was a very macho sort of guy. Anything that smacked of “queer” would set off his rage genes. He hated queers (so he said), and would launch into paroxysms of disgust on the subject if given half a chance.

Sooooo….  It struck me as VERY weird when one time in a balmy Arizona season, he took it into his head to gather a bunch of Boy Scouts to go out on the desert and shoot at stuff. Target shooting.

Not too weird, until you learned that — hang onto your hat — he proposed to stay out there overnight with the passel of teenaged boys. All of them ejaculatedly revved up by shooting guns into the night air.

Yeah.

Whaaaaa???????

To my astonishment, my mother said nothing to try to derail this plan. Probably, I imagine, because she couldn’t think of anything…or maybe she just didn’t want to get into a quarrel with him.

So he rounds up a troop of senior Boy Scouts, and off they go into the desert night.

No other adults with them: just my father and a half-dozen or so teenage boys.

Uhhmmm…..

Since I wished to continue living, I, too, said nothing about this…but thought any number of unmentionable thoughts.

Well. OK….

Off they went, into the desert and the dark. Far as I know, nothing much transpired — or if it did, you may sure none of them mentioned it.  They drove off, set up camp somewhere, and spent the night shooting their bang-bangs and sittin’ around the campfire.

You understand: my father wasn’t given to that kind of thing. By and large, he didn’t much like kids — these were not kids, though, but teenagers. And this was the ONLY time in my life that I’d ever heard of him or seen him go camping. Not that he couldn’t: he grew up out in the Texas boondocks. But he didn’t subject me or my mother to it.

So…when I hear the BANG BANG BANG of fireworks or firearms echoing through the night, that’s what I think of: my father out on the desert with a passel of teenage boys, shooting off their guns into the dark.

Or whatever.

And that makes these firework-accented holidays feel…weird, to me. Very, very weird. 

***** GODAMMIT!*****

Now we’ve got idiots out there shooting off fireworks over the tops of the palm trees.

I’ll have to go out there and keep an eye to be sure the damn trees don’t catch fire.

WHY ARE WE SURROUNDED BY MORONS?

Pool Dude, Beloved Pool Dude

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HOW ON EARTH does this dawg know when it’s Pool Dude Day???  Do dogs have internal calendars?

That wonderful man comes around regularly to shovel out the leaves, the dust, and the whatnot, to update the chemicals, and to keep the pump equipment running. If it weren’t for him, by now I’d have had to do what my neighbor does: shut down the pool, drain it, and use it as a nest in which to breed mosquitos. (You can’t fully drain it: even with the drain open, a little puddle gathers at the deep end.)

Her neighbor on the other side is a lady who likes to sleep with her windows open. (Yeah, I know. But she’s from Europe and knows not about the risks posed by the local criminal set). So…European Lady naively goes to bed with the windows hanging open and apparently with no functional screens covering the empty space.

And…SURPRISE!!!!! She gets all bit up by the mosquitos breeding on the bottom of our neighbor’s pool, and this leads to a fine, roaring infection that damn near kills her. In fact, at one point the doctors told her dad she wouldn’t live through the night.

But she’s a tough lady, and so she surprised them. She’s back and going strong. And our neighbor’s mosquito pond still sits in that backyard, with a nice little puddle at the bottom.

I suggested to European Lady’s dad — who happens to be the famed Tony the Romanian Landlord — that he quietly toss some insecticide over the wall into the puddle. And…well…he must have done that, because we no longer get mosquito raids here.

What a place!

And to put the crown on that: this is one of the better “places” in Phoenix.

Wherever there are humans, there be morons.