Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Survived to See Another Day

by

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….

 

Goin’ All Mormon!

by

Actually, in my case: Goin’ all Christian Science! 😀  The tee-totalers in my family were devout Christian Scientists.

My wild-assed parents were not among them. Yea, verily: in Arabia, where we weren’t supposed to get ahold of booze at all, my parents learned to make their own.

No kidding. In Arabia — where booze was soooo naughty as to be radically illegal — my father had an old piano crate in which he housed his still. The thing was always in use.

So I grew up with the stuff all around me, and as soon as I came of age, joined the honored parents in swizzling merrily.

Years of swizzling have passed…and apparently they’ve come home to roost. Or whatever swizzling does…

I’ve developed a fine case of peripheral neuropathy: constant, crazy-making tingling in the hands, feet and lips. GAAAAA!

What I’ve eventually discovered is that if I lay off the wine and the whiskey, the buzzing lays off me. 😀

So: it looks like we’re on the wagon now: permanently.

Depressing, but hardly the end of the world.

My Mormon friends are all tee-totallers. So I’ll have good company in this new endeavor.

Too bad: a glass of wine in the afternoon after dinner — I take my big meal of the day at noon — was one of those minor pleasures that make day-to-day living worth plodding through. But…well…I guess I’ll just have to find something else to amuse myself.

Easier said than done at this time of year. It’s only May, and already the weather is hotter than the hubs of Hades. So…hiking, walking, roaming through shopping malls, whatnot…that sort of stuff is Out with a capital “O”: that leaves loafing in the house as one’s main source of entertainment.

😀

Not that swizzling bourbon was my main source of entertainment…

 

How Could She Do That?

by

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.

Eeeek-a-Dawg!!!

by

Ohhhh my goodness!  This evening I truly thought the Pool Dude had left the side gate open, that Ruby had found it, and that she’d taken off for Yuma!

Couldn’t find her when I went to call her in for the night. 

The back door to the house, in lovely weather like we’re having now, hangs open most of the time, so she comes and goes as she pleases. Consequently, the side gate to the yard is normally closed and latched.

But…Pool Dude was here. What does he know of dogs and of gates???

This evening she disappeared from view. Didn’t come to call. Ohhhhhhh sheee-ut!

And yes, the side gate was unlatched.

Ho-leeee shee-ut!!

Called and called.

No dawg.

Went inside to put on the clodhoppers, so as to go out through that gate and trot off down the road, calling and calling and calling…no doubt fruitlessly.

Just when I got back to the side yard, though: she surfaced.

No, she had NOT run away down the road.

THANK YOU, GOD!!!!

* * * *

Whew! After this, forgodsake, REMEMBER TO CHECK THAT GATE in the wake of any workman who stumbles into the yard!!!!!

A Little Escape…Of Sorts

by

{chortle!} Looks like I escaped a nuisance that was slated to descend on me today. 😀

Mijito arranged for some woman that he’d hired for babysitting me to show up this morning. It’s now mid-afternoon: no sign of the woman.

😀

Unkind as it is of me, I’m afraid I’m MIGHTY GLAD she hasn’t shown up.

No, I do NOT want some employee bopping in here every day or so to check on me and pester me. I do just fine all by my stupid little self!

Yes, I would welcome someone to drive me to grocery stores and the like. But guess what? An Uber driver lives right across the street. All I have to do is call the Uber number here in town and they’ll send him over.

Most of the shopping I do routinely is available within easy walking distance, though. That, however, does NOT apply when the outside temperature exceeds 100 degrees. At this time of year: yeah, I do need that Uber dude. Most of the year, not so much.

Anyway, I was (as a matter of fact) figuring that whenever this new babysitter showed up, I’d have her take me to the Albertson’s (supermarket) and to the computer store. But…evidently not! 

All that means, though, is that now I don’t have to go out in 100-degree heat this afternoon!

Awwwww….what a shame, eh?

Around the Swamp…uhm, Park

by

Hot, soggy morning. Ruby and I: just back from circumambulating the big, green park that forms the centerpiece of the ‘Hood,

Handsome young parents roll their adorable toddlers around in strollers. Other old buzzards like me dodder around behind our dogs. Athletic middle-aged types stride or jog past us. Workmen shoveling out the house vacated by the couple who lost everything when their son was arrested on some absurd charge putter around the corner house. Early commuters zip past on the mini-arterial that runs up the center of the ‘Hood. Very pretty, very classy spot.

Briefly, I considered buying that house. But…well, no.

It just requires TOO much work. That crew of workmen have been there for a couple of weeks, and it sure doesn’t look like they’re gonna be finished soon. Plus the pool was allowed to stand in the sun and dry out, ruining the plaster and probably everything that runs the thing. And the traffic on the road that runs past it is fairly fierce. Nope. don’t think so!

Plus it’s too damn public The house backs onto the park. Even with a bank of oleanders running along the back fence, it’s too easy for passers-by and burglars to see into the yard and, if they look closely, through the French doors and into the house.

I do believe the place I’m in will be a much better investment to pass along to my son — assuming I can manage to stay here until I croak over. It’s in excellent shape: decently maintained inside and out; pool running well and also well maintained; a decent distance from busy (read “noisy”) roads… No: this is the place.

This is the place I need to hand along to my son!