Coffee heat rising

Appliances

FOUND IT! But…..

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So yesterday I was bellyaching because I couldn’t find my gas grill’s outdoor cover — not a cheap item. Figured one of the gerjillion workmen had made off with it.

Nope. That was ungracious of me!

Found it. But…but…

The reason it seemed to be disappeared is that some idiot stashed it away, after he had hauled the grill a good long distance from the brickwork pad where the thing resides. He left it way out on the far end of the backyard. Uncovered and open to the elements…which at this time of year are considerable.

Jayzuz!

So this morning I managed to drag the (heavy!) grill back to the patio by my little girlie self and reposition it on its brick pad. And then…

In the process, I finally found the plastic/fabric cover that goes over it: put the whole lash-up back in place, on its pad outside the fireplace chimney. (Yeah: yesterday I’d had to jury-rig a cover out of black plastic garbage bags!)

Dripping sweat by now: this is a July day in lovely uptown Phoenix. Hot, still, and humid to the point of soggy.

Tape a sign to the brickwork:

PLEASE!!!
DO NOT DRAG THE GRILL 
OFF THE BRICKS AND 
LEAVE IT IN THE YARD!!!!

What the f*ck IS THE MATTER with people? How can you  be so FREAKING STUPID that it doesn’t occur to you that maybe a homeowner placed a heavy appliance in a specific spot because THAT’S WHERE SHE WANTS IT?

Godlmighty, but people are stupid!

Honestly. This kind of sh!t begins to make an apartment in an old-folkerie look good. I’m starting to understand why retirees sell up and move themselves into institutions…where someone else takes care of most of the ditz.

***

Okay, if I’m going to stay here (a prospect that begins to look dimmer and dimmer), after this when some workman is bouncing around, I’ll have to go out there and supervise the ba*tard. 

Dayum! Really and truly, I do NOT want to live in one of those prisons for old buzzards. But…it’s beginning to look ominously unlikely that I’ll be able to cope with this kind of BS for many more years. Or even for many more months. 

What is WITH people??????

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G*ddammit! I just went out in back to tidy things up, and there I discover some moron has dragged my gas barbecue OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE GRAVEL-COVERED YARD and effin’ LEFT IT THERE!

It’s out of reach of the gas canister, so I can’t even turn it on to grill a piece of hamburger.

And it’s way, way, WAY too heavy for me to heave around!

What the F*CK is the goddam MATTER with people?

Seriously: WHY would a person do anything so stupid?

The only thing you can figure is deliberate maliciousness. Haul the thing away from where it belongs and make the Bitch Homeowner drag it back all by her birdbrained little self.

Goddammit. Now I’ve got to find a male neighbor or worker to come over here and haul the thing back into place.

If I knew which yard worker or pool worker pulled this stunt, I’d call them on the phone and FIRE them. RIGHT NOW.

But of course, I have no idea. We have…

  • Pool Dude
  • Three or four landscape maintenance guys
  • Possibly some guy I called to work on the Que (don’t recall just now)

Goddammit!!!
And further goddammit: the link to the ‘Cue image suddenly doesn’t work!

******trying again*******

Okay….I shanghaied the neighbor —  who works out of his home — to come over and drag the grill back into place. Being male and pale — and about 100 pounds bigger than me — he was able to do this without too much trouble. Other, of course, than the interruption in his day.

Anyway, he was kind enough to traipse over here with me, reposition the BBQ, and make sure it works. It does seem to be operating the way it’s supposed to (…i hope), and so in a few minutes — after my rage settles down — I’ll go out and grill a piece of salmon and some frozen French fries.

Wish I knew which worker caused this little snafu. He’d be looking for another customer… But I haven’t a clue. 

God Bless Great Neighbors!!!

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Yeah: I mean that literally. We have THE best neighbors on this street: the nicest people, and those people are willing to help a brain-boggled old lady.

Thanks to these fine folks, our brand-new vacuum cleaner is now functional (noooo..it did NOT work right out of the box…you expected a frog?). Haven’t tried to clean house with it yet — that actually is the job for The Cleaning Lady from Heaven. But I wanted to be sure it actually works before she shows up here to wrestle with it. And yeah: looks like it’s running right.

I hope.

Meanwhile, the same fine folks are, in real life, accountants. (Not vacuum-cleaner repair techs!) They ride herd on my incompetent bookkeeping — somebody has to do it. And now it looks like they’re going to be willing to work with my son to keep my money matters in order and to keep him fully informed.

And that, my friends, is HUGE. 

No kidding! As more and more marbles roll out my ears, I get less and less competent to do even the routine daily money tracking. As you can imagine, this creates some fine headaches for my son! So…if things work out the way I hope, they may be able to relieve him from a gigantic PITA, while they help to keep the finances under control.

I sure do hope it works out that way!!!

Man!!! Don’t get old, my friends!

Another Day, Another Nightmare y-Cumin’ In

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Ugh! Here we go again! Another noxious day in lovely uptown Phoenix. Just what I need, eh?

Today, someone named “Janie” is supposed to show up here. Who she is and what she’s primed to do: those details escape me. I assume she’s a babysitter.

Just what I need: another nosey nuisance in my face all day!

Well…the vacuum cleaner busted. So one thing we can do with this lady is make her drive it over to the Worst Buy, where they’ll repair the thing. Failing that, I suppose I can buy another vacuum. Just what I wanna spend a hundred-fifty or two hundred bucks on.

{chortle!} Seriously: if it weren’t for having to spend time with my fellow humans, it is a GORGEOUS day. Nay verily: a SPECTACULARLY gorgeous day. Cool. Smog-free. Lovely dawn. A gentle breeze barely moving the trees.

HOW do I not want to get in someone’s car and traipse around the city, looking for someone to repair a vacuum cleaner?

So…I expect that will be the nightmare of the day. The main one, anyway.

{sigh}

What a gorgeous morning! Normally, in this kind of weather the dawg and I would be taking a nice walk through the neighborhood. But no…

The “Janie” creature hasn’t shown up. It’s only 7:30, so it’ll probably be another hour or so before she surfaces. And by then it’ll be too hot to traipse over the sun-baked asphalt roads. So that will mean Ruby and I will get no walk this morning.

Y’know, the problem with living as a lone wolf is that when you do have to interact with people, it’s annoying. Annoying as Hell, one might say.

I don’t want people around me — especially not at this hour, first thing in the morning. And I don’t want to have to negotiate my day’s activities around the comings and goings of someone else.

Ugh. Need to take a bath and wash my hair. But…noooooo. Can’t be lounging in the bathtub with my ears underwater when some woman shows up at the front door.

So that means to get cleaned up, I’ll have to wait till she’s here. And that means I won’t have any privacy to bathe and put on clothes.

Ugh and UGH.

What I really wanna do is go back to bed. But obviously: that ain’t gonna happen. Not with this woman showing up.

***********

LOL! Not to say ohhhh forgodsake! 

Janie the Wonder-Cleaning Lady takes it upon herself to CLEAN AND REPAIR MY VACUUM CLEANER! Nothing I say will dissuade her!

Now she’s pouring tap water over the parts.

So…we’ll be buying a new vacuum cleaner one of these days.

Jayzuz!

Now she’s taking the filter to “put it in the sun so it’ll dry.” Nevermind that the ….  Ohgawd, the poor soul is making so much chaos, I actually lost track of what I was scribbling here!!!!

😀

Please, God. Take me now!  

I hope heaven is free of helpful nuisances. 

 

 

 

What next, Lord?

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Thursday a.m.

So I called the dentist this morning to try to weasel out of today’s appointment. My understanding was, we were to discuss and maybe try to do something about the chronic pain in the upper left jaw.

Ugh! Just what I don’t wanna do with my morning…

….and in fact, when I rolled out of the sack this a.m., the pain was GONE!

This is something that’s been going on, unchanging, for weeks. Now, poof! It’s GONE???

Well, I have other things to do than endure more dental torture, so I called to cancel the appointment. But…

noooooo…..

Today’s appointment wasn’t for dental pain. It was to get my teeth cleaned.

Dammit!

I am DEAD SURE we did that less than 6 months ago.

*****

24 Hours Pass
Now It’s Friday

*****

Somehow I survived the trip to the dentist’s. Just tooth-cleaning. No big deal. Time-consuming, but otherwise bland enough.

Followed by a very bland day.

M’hijito has made no move — that I know of — to pursue another dog. Probably that’s best: he needs to recover from losing the beloved Charley. But I do hope he can shake off the blues and seek a new sidekick, in due course.

Meanwhile: One of the lamps on my dining-room chandelier developed a short. I installed it shortly after moving in here, lo! these many years ago, and I still love it. This one is close, though not identical. You get the idea, though: half-a-dozen fake candles

So I call Electrician Dude. He and his young sidekick surface. He spends maybe half an hour inspecting and then fiddling with it. Get it working again. Then he forks over a bill for TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS!

As you can see from that Amazon link in the previous paragraph…I could have bought a brand-new chandelier for that!

Soooo…dammit! Guess we’ll be looking for a new electrician.

****

Saturday a.m.

And another 24 hours pass. Wake as usual at dawn, dawg campaigning to go outside. Putter around. Notice her eyes are running, not an unusual thing here in Allergy Central. Like humans, dogs are allergic to all the dust that blows around and the weeds that sprout everywhere you look. Get a Kleenex to wipe her face and…ohhhh shee-ut! it comes away with BLOOD on it.

Holy mackerel. Her eye is red because it’s bleeding!

Should I take her to an emergency vet?

{cringe!}

That means

a) an interminable wait (one commenter on Yelp said they sat in a waiting room for SEVEN HOURS)
b) a BLINDING bill

Any chance I could squeeze in to the ineffable Dr. Bracken’s schedule?

Right! Sure! On a Saturday morning!!

They supposedly open at 8:00 a.m.  It’s 8:15 a.m.

Get on the phone: line is picked up by an answering yakathon. It blasts Muzak (of a sort) into my ear: a repetitive banjo twang.

twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang
twangidy-twang twangidy-twang

….on and on and on… After about five minutes of this, a young-sounding male voice answers. He takes my number, supposedly to call back. He says they don’t open until 9:00 a.m. I remark that maybe they’d better change the data on their website.

Ohhhhh welll….

How can I SAY how much I don’t wanna drive way to hell and gone into Darkest Arcadia on a Saturday morning?

This will blow away half the day…assuming I can get in at all.

Phone rings: Vet’s staff on the phone. Explain what’s happening. She wants to ask him about it. She puts me on hold: BLASTING goddamn annoying Muzak…combined with advertising pitches for why you must bring your pet right in.

Godlmighty! Are there PR people out there who specialize in annoying your customers?

Human comes on phone:  He wants to wait and see. Thinks it could be allergies, since she’s not digging at it and seems not to be in pain. Suggests gently wiping with dampened cotton balls; call back if not improved by Monday.

THANK YOU, GOD!

This is why I take my livestock to that veterinarian, endless schlep notwithstanding. He’s not in the business of clipping you, and so if he thinks something can benefit by a wait-and-see approach, he’ll tell you.

As it develops, everybody else who’s ever heard of the man betakes themselves there, too. That office is humming with traffic, all day, every day.

I’m convinced that he really IS the single best vet in the city, and probably in the state.

***

In other precincts: someone else has noticed that it’s hot outside. 😀  Ohhhh how the media love Arizona summers! On any given Slow News Day, there’s always something to get rattled about…

EEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!
HISTORIC HEAT WAVE CONTINUES ACROSS ARIZONA THIS WEEKEND!!!!

What to do? What to do?

Hilarious.

Nothing like a little hysteria to sell newspapers and news websites. No, there’s nothin’ “historic” about 112 degrees. It’s actually pretty typical for July and August in the low desert.

That said: my power bill is gonna be through the roof.

Jacked the A.C. down to 77 last night, so as to manage to sleep. Just turned it back up to 80, which will make it mighty hot in the family room & kitchen, where skylights act like automobile windows. So we’ll have to hang out in the bedrooms throughout the afternoon.

Which is what I’m gonna do right now: Go back to bed!

The Saga of the Fridge…continued

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So the AMEX bill arrived, bearing with it the single largest bottom line I’ve ever seen on a credit card statement.  Eeek!

Well, it’s because they’ve combined the current state of the Refrigerator Fiasco with a gigantic and breathtaking clerical error.

Error the first: When it looked like I might be able to get rid of the ridiculous GE refrigerator that I stupidly bought from B&B Appliances, a local (and highly questionable!) vendor, I decided I’d better acquire a new, functional fridge before the present thing goes out the door, lest all the food in the house spoil.

Sooo…I went over to Home Depot and ordered a nice new LG refrigerator. They arranged for delivery, a few days later, and we all went on about our business.

Events evolved…

The GE refrigerator eventually quieted down. Nowadays, it’s making no more noise than any normal refrigerator does — meaning that, hallelujah brothers and sisters, it can’t be heard in the back bedroom on the far end of the house. At least, not so’s it keeps you from falling asleep at night.

Observing this, I went back over to HD — in person, no less — and canceled the order for their refrigerator.

So…okay, if the matter isn’t resolved between American Express and B&B, it’ll be no skin off my proverbial teeth.

Thus thought I, until that AMEX statement came flying into the mailbox.

They charged me TWICE for B&B’s accursed fridge. And no, they never did register a credit for the piece of junk. Meanwhile, Home Depot’s charge also appears on that bill.

So now I’ve got THREE REFRIGERATORS charged up on my AMEX card!!!!!!!!!

Heeeee!

Just now, WonderAccountant has the AMEX bill. She’s busy with other clients’ work right this instant, so we’ll have to wait or day or three to figure out exactly what to say to the factotums at American Express.

Just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?

😀