Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

One Li’l Catastrophe After Another

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Man! When we say it‘s one of those days, we ain’t kiddin’!

The latest news to crash on our skulls:  The Wonder-Accountants are freakin’ RETIRING!

And for an innumerate old bat like me, that is a freakin’ CATASTROPHE.

Because…in case you can’t imagine, eh?…my son is NOT innumerate. Not at all. Quite to the contrary. And…as with his grand-dad — my fierce and chronically angry father — my own inability to deal with numbers drives him up the wall. The frustration of having to watch an idiot like me try to figure out the simplest operations…well…it must be just awful for him.

It’s damned awful for me, that’s for sure.

Well. I can NOT figure my taxes: must have an accountant for that task, even when its stages are fairly simple. Tax prep is so far over my head, I have no hope of doing it right. Or doing it at all. And because my understanding of what the heck I’m supposed to be doing in said task hovers near the ZERO level, trying to connect brains with a new accountant is gonna be… Well…gawdawful, that’s what.

*****

In other sylvan vales: Mygawd, it is hotter than the proverbial hubs outside.

Went out for a quick walk around our part of the hood, mostly to try to run off some of the stress and worry. No dog with me, of course: the pavement is so hot it would scorch her furry feet right off her legs.

It’s such a pretty little neighborhood. Nothing really special, to tell the truth: 1970s tract houses, by and large. But everything is neatly cared for and handsomely painted and tidy and clean…I love this place.

Ideally, I’d like to stay here until I die.

****

That, alas, is no longer the American Way. Nowadays, we who lurk in the aging middle class are consigned to prisons for old folks, where we’re locked up and fed bad food until we finally get out of our family’s hair.

So about the best you can hope for, when you come unto my age, is a stroke or a heart attack that will carry you away forthwith.

Not the custom in my family, alas. My mother died horribly of a gut cancer, allegedly brought on by her incessant smoking  but more likely spurred by the hideous, gawdawful treatment she had for the amoebic dysentery she picked up in Arabia. It was a slow and ugly death.

My father wasted away in the excruciating company of the woman he unwisely married after my mother died. Took a good two years for him to die. Horrible.

My maternal grandmother supposedly died fairly young of cancer, apparently brought on by her flamboyant promiscuity. However, it appears that this story, as told to (or by…) my mother, was not true; in fact she lived to be 88 years old. Well…that’s if you believe the figures in Ancestry.com….a site that appears to be less than fully reliable.

The grandfather…well, if they’re facts, they’re pretty vague. If you believe the scanty data on Ancestry.com, he died at the age of 65.  Or not…who knows?

*******

Oh, well…. When we say side-tracked, we mean sidetracked, eh?

The reality of the day is the WonderAccountants’ decision to retire. A hair-raising contemporary reality that has nary a thing to do with all that historical, ancestral babble. 😀

Not-Too-Bright Walk!

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3:00 p.m. on a June day, here in hottest Phoenix: I stupidly take it into my feeble little brain to go for a stroll around the neighborhood.

Some of us, after all, really ARE “not too bright.”

At least I had the brainpower to leave the little dawg home. The scorching sidewalks would burn her feet right off!  Eeek!

Seriously: it IS magnificently hot out there (as in “hotter than the hubs of Hades!”) and Ruby’s feet would have been royally singed if I’d been stupid enough to take her with me.

Other than baking my brains, though, this afternoon’s stroll seems to have done little damage to the human. But…uhmmm…say, Stupid…next time remember to wait until after the sun has set!

😀

Really, at this time of year — mid-summer in lovely Phoenix — the best and maybe the only time of day to take the dawg for a walk is right about at dawn. It’s already (well: still) hotter than Hell at that hour, but at least the sidewalks are relatively cool — not having baked in the sun all day. By evening, the sidewalks are horizontal frying pans!

Truth to tell, though, I seem not to be getting enough exercise. So…in upcoming days and weeks, Ruby and I will need to go out the door right at dawn. This will send us around the park — or at least around several city blocks — and get us back to the Funny Farm before the pavement heats up.

Arizona. What a place! Not designed for humans…

ANOTHER insanely hot day!

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{chortle!} Yea, verily: some of us  have NO measurable IQ points!

Just stumbled back in the house from peregrinating around the neighborhood in the noonday heat.

Hey! Why not? It’s only 105 degrees out there!

No IQ, eh?

Ohhhhh well. At least I got the desired exercise.

Tony the Romanian Landlord caught up with me in his car. Handing out his religious propaganda!

boyoboy! 

WHY do people do that? Do they seriously think they can convert you to their faith by pestering you?

I assume he does: otherwise he wouldn’t bother. 😀

Certainly is annoying, though.

It is seriously hotter than the hubs of Hades just now! Got back to the house without fainting dead away…some kinda miracle, I reckon.

I had fantasized that I might walk down to one of the three nearby grocery stores to pick up a couple of idle necessities. But…ahhh…. No! Nope! No!Way too hot to hike several blocks and then haul a couple bags of loot back home.

Will have to wait till dawn cracks tomorrow. The Sprouts opens at 7:00 a.m. And I think the Albertson’s may, too. If I’m at the door as they unlock the place, I should be able to grab some loot and then get back to the house before the heat is at the make-you-faint level.

Daydreaming about my long-late grandmother. She was a fast one! Apparently she would fu*k anything that had two feet, and some that had more than that.

My mother once related a story of coming home from school to her grandmother’s house, walking into the living room, and finding her own mother on the floor — in action — with a current paramour. My mother was a grade-school kid at the time and had no idea of what they were up to! 😀

Her first adventure in sex ed, apparently.

If I’m not mistaken (big IF), the grandmother tossed the floozy out, having learned from my young mother of the day’s shenanigans.

Often I wonder what on earth you’d do if you had a daughter who was mentally damaged in the sex department — as appears to have been the case with my mother’s wild-a$$ed mother. You certainly couldn’t have her around an adolescent child.

So…yeah: I believe the grandmother evicted her daughter at that point. Really….what else could she have done? Evidently, the younger woman was mentally ill — to the point where she had little or no control over her behavior. The only way to protect the girl, one figures, would be to show the mother the door.

Welp….it’s too hot to breathe in here just now. So it’s off to the bedroom with a phalanx of fans working. Away!!!

Yipes!!!!! Hotter than the Hubs…

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Yesh. Hotter for sure than the Hubs of Hades. Just now — coming on to late in the afternoon — it’s A HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREES in the deepest shade of the north-facing back patio. 

Augh, I say to that. AUGHHH!

Sooo…Ruby and I are trapped in the house, at least until the sun goes down.

More likely, until it comes up tomorrow.

I’m totally wilted, and probably should take a nap. But it’s after 4:00 p.m.  If I flop down on the bed now, it’s likely to be midnight before I wake up. And then I’ll be awake for the rest of the night.

😀

Well. That might be a slight exaggeration. But the truth is, it’s pretty much too late for napping now.

So, I reckon the Human will loaf in front of the computer until something resembling bed-time. Then hope for a decent night’s sleep.

Do need to get Pool Dude over here to check on the workings of that contraption. But later. Much later. Tomorrow, for example…

My son dragged me out to the Mayo this morning. GAWD, do I ever hate going to doctors.

LOL! Then, to my astonishment, he took it upon himself to answer some of the doc’s questions and to try to describe my ongoing nuttiness. 😀 That poor doctor!  

Ohhh well. He now has no clue to an accurate report of what’s going on with me. But that seems not to matter. Either he realized that, or he didn’t think whatever my body is doing is very significant. Didn’t order any tests. Didn’t ask me to come back.

RUN!

AWAY!!

{chortle!}

Anyway, it was an annoying traipse, but I felt like I got away pretty much Scot-free. Hooooray!

And…now, at 4:00 in the afternoon, it’s 109 degrees out there in the back yard. Too hot even to jump in the pool!

No doubt, too, the pavement will be too hot for Ruby’s little paws, even after the sun goes down. It can stay unbearably hot here until well after 10 p.m.

So I guess today’s doggy-walk will have to wait until tomorrow morning, along about 5:00 a.m.

But whenever the sun goes down this evening, it’ll be into the drink for the human!

Real Estate Awe

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Wanna see something that’ll drop your jaw? 

Take a look at this mansion…

The place is in Fountain Hills, an upscale tract on the northeast side of Scottsdale.

WHAT A WRECK! And they want four hundred grand for it!

Hey. Fountain Hills is real tony and all that…and yeah, you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from there. But…good lord! EVERYTHING in this shack would have to be renovated, including the pool and the landscaping.

Well. I guess it tellsya: Rich people will let real estate go to wrack and ruin, too. 😀

***

But doesn’t it boggle your mind? I mean, when you consider what that place should be worth… Fountain Hills is one of the toniest subdivisions in the Valley — probably in the entire state.

I can’t even imagine letting a place like that…in a location like that!…go down the tubes.

Even if they used it as a rental, it’s hard to believe anyone with half a functioning brain cell would have turned it into a wreck.

Four hundred grand at auction. Hell, I wouldn’t give them four hundred bucks for it. Just imagine what it will cost to restore that place to a livable house in a radically upscale subdivision!

Clicking through the images takes your breath away, doesn’t it?  Really…the best you could do with this place is to level it and build a new house. And that would require you to get your hands on it for one helluva lot less than 400 grand.

Wow!!

Lunch at the ‘Que…

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Got a steak and an ear of corn on the grill. But.. WTF? They don’t seem to be cooking!

It is horrifically hot out there in the backyard. The meat and corn oughta cook by themselves: just set ém out on the back table, eh? But they’re hardly browning…surely not charring, that’s for sure!

Hm. The grill is on. There’s plenty of propane. But it’s barely running.

Guess I’ll have to put this stuff on the stove to cook. Then call the BBQ guy to come fix…whatever’s wrong with it.

Goodie! Just what I wanted to do on a 100-degree day!