Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Hotter than a Two-Dollar Cookstove…

by

Jayzuz!! As we scribble — at 6:05 p.m..,early evening! — it’s 109 degrees out there on the back porch. 

Got that? A hundred and nine degrees in the freakin’ SHADE of the back porch!!!!! 

Auuughhhh! 

Even (un)lovely Saudi Arabia never got THIS warm and cozy. Horrible!!!!!

We lived right on the shore of the Persian Gulf, so it did tend to get pretty humid. Temps soared into the low 100s…sometimes. But pushing 110? Not so much.

Just now, we have a little high overcast, but it doesn’t seem very humid….hmmmm…we have a resource that Saudi Arabia couldn’t offer at the time: Wunderground. 

Let us inquire…

Hmmmm….

110 degrees in the shade
No overcast
“Active warning: Extreme heat” eeeek, be very scared!
Full forecast: 115 tomorrow

Well. That will make for a nice, cozy night and a …uhmmm….balmy day tomorrow.

LOL! You have to be balmy, all right, to choose to live in this place! 😀

Seriously, though: the winters are lovely. Even at its coldest, the low desert doesn’t get snow. Usually, though, the winter days are cool and clear and pretty as can be.

Invited M’Hijito to come up and spend the night here. The Funny Farm is some 30 or 40 years newer than his place, and accordingly better vented, better insulated, and much better air-conditioned. It looks, though, like he’ll hold his own down in old Central Phoenix.

******

Ever so much later… 11:14 p.m. in yet another endless night.

To make everything perfect, it appears that I have a dental abscess. Look this up in the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest (i.e., the Internet), and you learn this requires dental surgery. Ohhh goodie! More pain, pain, and pain. 

I can hardly wait.

People think I’m being morbid when I joke about dying, finally getting free of all this sh!t. (At least I think and hope I’m dying…most folks, it develops, are so terrified of the end that they can’t see the appeal to it…)  But y’know…it’s NOT morbid to want to be free of pain. Free of fear. Free of pointless medical procedures that induce more pain and fear. Free of stupid BS that does not encourage you but leaves you hopeless.

No.

Freedom’s just another word
For nothin’ left to lose…

Ole’ Janis had somethin’ there…

That’s what death means, you know: Nothing left to lose. It’s not, of course, a joke. It’s plain, unadulterated truth. At some point life ends. And at that point…well, yeah: you have nothin’ left to lose. And nothing left to be afraid of.

Do not go gently into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

So Dylan Thomas begged his dying father. But…no, Dylan, my man. There’s no point in raging. The light dies for all of us. No amount of raging will change that.

What it means is that at some point, the pain stops.
At some point, there’s no need to rage.
At some point you will be set free.

And that, my friends, is not a bad thing. 

Tired of Stupid!!!!!!!

by

So a few minutes before 8 a.m., Ruby the Corgi and I get back to the house after an hour’s trudge through unholy heat and humidity. ALL I WANT is to get back in the house, back in the air-conditioning, and sit down with a glass of water in my paw.

But nooooooo….NOT A CHANCE!

As we approach the front yard, we find a dog-loving moron standing there, with her own overheated hound. She awaits our approach, simpering inanely.

Dammit. If you’ve lived with a dog longer than six months you should know: Dogs are NOT your little “furbabies”! They’re CARNIVORES. Tribal carnivores, whose instinct is to defend themselves and their fellow pack members against all comers.

No matter how pea-brained the comer!

Problem is, city folk tend to confuse dogs with kids. They think their dog is on a par with their eight-year-old. And they imagine you think the same. Gawdlmighty, these people are stupid!

So we try to go around the front-yard visitor. This doesn’t work. She and her dog come to greet us.

GO! AWAY! YOU IDIOT!

No amount of attempted mental telepathy or body language helps. She comes bounding over to us. And yeah…right off, the two dogs go at it!

Jayzuz, am I tired of stupid!!!!!

We — Ruby and I — manage to get inside the gate without bloodshed. But it was close. Very close.

Can’t say this kind of stupid stuff happens every time Ruby and I go out for a walk. If it did, we wouldn’t go walking. But it surely does happen enough to annoy the Hell outta you.

Actually, it happens enough to lead me to think maybe I shouldn’t go out walking with Ruby. At all.

Hate to do that! Ruby needs the exercise. And so do I.

But jeez. One of these days, somebody — canine or human — is gonna get hurt!

Delivery? HOT diggety!

by

Eight o’clock in the morning and already hotter than the Hubs of Hades outside. Without a car, I need to get going RIGHT NOW to hit the Sprouts, the Albertson’s or the Fry’s to buy the groceries I need.

But…but…I also want breakfast. More than I want to go grocery shopping. By far…

The coffee is steeping. What passes for breakfast is ready to come out of the microwave. So…noooooo. Nope: not traipsing to a grocery store at crack of dawn.

And…LO!!!  Here’s a REAL good excuse not to do any traipsing at any time.

Albertson’s, Safeway, and Sprouts will deliver groceries!

Who knew??? 

Now that I know…we’ll be trying that out.

I’m dubious, though. My diet tends to be heavy on fresh produce. And in my experience, Americans know amazingly little about selecting and preparing fresh fruits and vegetables. So whatever those stores deliver is likely to be catch-as-catch-can.

But it’s worth a try.

Imagine! Never having to trudge to the store again!!!  

Woweee!

If one or more of those fine establishments can manage to deliver decent produce, I actually might not need a car. My son could be right!

Even if their staff can’t select decent produce, an Uber guy lives right across the street. He can deliver me over there, maybe for an extra fee help me gather the groceries, and haul the stuff back here. I mean…WOW!

Talk about the lap of luxury, eh?

An alternative might be to pay the Cleaning Lady Par Excellence to drive me to the store. That would work better, because then I could select my own groceries. But it would add to her workload and probably not ingratiate her. Not one…little…bit… 😮

Y’know… When we lived in England, we didn’t own a car. 

In London, a car wasn’t necessary. An unholy number of locals had them and trudged around in them…but…even more rode the Underground or the surface-street busses or…hang onto your hat..walked. 

What if…what if you thought like a Londoner? and behaved like one?

  • You wouldn’t own a car, partly because you couldn’t afford it and partly because you wouldn’t need one.
  • You would ride the busses and trains to and from work.
  • You would stop by a lovely little grocery store on the way home from the transit station; there, you would buy the makings for dinner, plus a bottle of wine.
  • You would eat like royalty, because virtually all of the food you bought would be sterling FRESH.

Well…o’course, we have no Underground. But we DO have the new fancy-dan streetcars, Hot diggety!

And we DO have Uber. The whole damn city is infested with Uber drivers. Hot diggett dawg!

Hmmmmm….. Intriguing!

The only time this would be impractical would be right now: in the dead of summer. Hiking around in 110-degree heat is not the best of all possible strategies.

However, the stores in question open as dawn cracks and stay open until well after dark. You could either start out at six or seven in the morning, or simply ride Ubers during the summer and shift to healthier (and cheaper!) walking when the weather cools.

Huh.

Today, I think, I’ll try the Albertson’s or the Sprouts delivery services. Let’s see how they do.

If they can select decent produce (and I’ll betcha Sprouts can)…well…

If they can, mirabilis! I’ll have groceries delivered here. Once in a blue moon I’ll visit the stores, explore their current offerings, and adjust my delivery lists accordingly.

First, though…I believe I’ll go back to bed for a nap. Was sleepy when I woke up at dawn’s first crack, and now am zombified.

Hotter than a three-dollar cookstove…

by

…as my father used to say about the lovely weather in the garden spot that was Saudi Arabia.

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer claims the temperature is 108 in the shade.

Yeah. That’s degrees Fahrenheit.

Ye gawds! It makes Arabia look balmy.

But…but…seriously: it’s 12:30 in the afternoon. Earlier in the day — shortly after the local grocers and farmacias opened, our li’l thermometer was already registering 102.

And yes, that does make Arabia look pretty balmy.

Fortunately, we have actual air-conditioning, rather than the gummy swamp-cooling that Aramco installed in its residents’ homes in Ras Tanura. Even then, it’s damn hot and sticky in here.

Nevertheless, the brain continues to run on overdrive. 

All sorts of original, clever, and…uhm..weird ideas are drifting through my overheated little mind. And in particular, the most significant ones have to do with my son’s adventurous liberation of my car.

Yes.

The garage remains empty.

And y’know what?

I’m finding I just…don’t…give…a…damn. 

This neighborhood is overrun with guys who wanna get rich quick driving for Uber. A nearly brand-new train runs down Main Drag West, one that would drop me off six safe and quiet residential blocks from my son’s house, if I chose to ride it. And the city busses cruise right past the intersection of the nearest feeder street and Central Avenue, which would take me to the front door of the beloved AJ’s market. Or let me off a block from the kid’s house.

Personally, I’d choose Uber if I knew they would show up reliably.

That doesn’t appear to be the case…but…but…yeah. I haven’t tested any such thesis. I will, in the future…probably the slightly cooler future. But if I do find they show up when they say they will, then…well…

Wanna buy a nice used Toyota Venza?

Yeah. Y’know what I think about this caper? That kid did me a huge favor. He’s helping me to get rid of a tank that needs to be serviced (expensively) every six months, that needs to have $3.00/gallon gas pumped into it every time you turn around, that takes up space in a garage that could be used for any number of better purposes, that pollutes the air, that….

Uhm…and how am I gonna get the dog to the vet, in an emergency?

Uber.

Or the kid. He still has his car. If Ruby has to be rushed to a veterinarian, he can come up here and collect her.

Or on foot. A 24-hour veterinary hospital is right down the road: about six or eight blocks, on foot. She weighs all of 25 pounds: I can easily pick her up and carry her there.

Meanwhile, check out these contraptions! I happen to have one of these. As we scribble, it’s now all tricked out with cardboard panels, the easier to haul stuff without dropping anything.

Here in the ‘Hood, we’ve got not one, not two, but three major supermarkets within walking distance: a Fry’s, a Sprouts, and an Albertson’s. I can do most or all of my grocery shopping on foot, without ever leaving the neighborhood. And right across the street dwells an Uber driver. Matter of fact, we’re told the ‘Hood is over-run with Uber drivers.

Heh! I haven’t tested that hypothesis. But it wouldn’t take a mob of wannabe cab drivers to provide plenty of transportation to the nearby shopping. 

A Hundred WHATS????!!??

by

HOLEE DOGGEREL!

Gerardo the Lawn Dude’s guys just finished blowering and raking the front and back 40. His head dude knocks on the Arcadia door and asks to be paid.

“How much?”

“$100.”

HOLEE SHEE-UT!

That’s up from the $80 they usually charge. Forgodsake: we’re not talking about any extra work here. Nothing special. Just blower up the leaves and wind-blown debris and trim whatever few plants need to be trimmed.

Once again: here’s a “house” thing that makes life in a high-rise apartment on North Central Avenue look a whole lot better.

Well.

It would look better if I didn’t have the dog.

Ruby would have to be paper-trained or litter-trained (did you know you can train a dog to use a cat-box?). That amounts to more hassle than I care to engage. For what?

For a box in the sky. No yard for Ruby to run around in. No peace and quiet for me. No private pool where I can go skinny-dipping…

Barf. 

Okay, okay…settle down! And let’s consider the things we imagine DO make the proposed Box in the Sky look good.

Bear in mind: I have lived in high-rise apartments, and in fact rather enjoyed them. But..that was a long time ago and I was a lot younger and my parents dealt with the management and they paid the rent and…. Today, to tell the truth: I don’t wanna. 

{sigh} Well…unless you’ve got someone to run interference with Life, The Universe, and All That, you’re always gonna have these hassles, right? And you’re always going to be paying for the hassles.

So…quitcher bellyachin’ … right?

Heh…  Another thing “I don’t wanna” is to take care of that damn yard in this heat. Gerardo’s boys earn their pay and earn their pay and earn their pay some more. A hundred bucks — let’s get real — is a bargain to get four guys slamming around in the heat for an hour.

Because he’s not just paying them for an hour of work. He’s paying for an hour of work x 4 … that would be FOUR hours of work. And he’s paying for the gas to run his truck over here (and the wear & tear on the truck). And for gas to run the blower and the mower and the tree trimmers and the shrub trimmers and the weed-whackers…. Arrrghhhha!

How am I glad I don’t own a yard-care business? Let me count the pestiferous ways…

****

On the ‘tother hand…

What with my son having purloined my car, I was gonna walk over to one of the nearby stores — maybe the Sprouts — and pick up some chow and assorted junque. That ain’t a-gonna happen now.

It’s 102º in the shade just now. And I’ll tellya…that does NOT inspire me to hike 8 or 10 blocks (x 2: make that 16 or 20 blocks, round trip) for the privilege of buying lunch and some ice cream!

The local grocery stores have recently announced that they’ll deliver. I haven’t looked into this offer yet…but need to do so.

In the Department of the Stuff of Nightmares…

Last night I found myself dreaming of visits to the terrifying Mayo Clinic. Auuugh! Arrogant doctors who presume that because you’re old you must be stupid. Endless waits in dreary waiting rooms. More waits in the doctor’s office. Wasted breath trying to explain yourself to said doctor, who’s only half-listening to you. And when a visit or three has happened recently, it’s a challenge to tell the difference between a memory and a nightmare.

Spare me, Lord!

It’s a bit of a drive over to the Mayo from the Funny Farm. Must say: more of a drive than I’d like to make. But the doctors and the facilities closer to home? Huh-uh!

My relationship with the adorable Young Dr. Kildare came to an end when I went over to his place shortly after a visit to the far, far-away Mayo Clinic. Figured I could get what ailed me treated there without having to drive halfway to Nevada for the privilege.

Yeah…I could. If I didn’t mind having him treat me for the wrong ailment! 

Hilariously so: he misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and misdiagnosed with élan. Understand, this was something that not only had been seen by the Mayo but also by the high-powered St. Joseph’s, in mid-town Phoenix, added to a couple of lesser issues about which he simply made mistakes.

YDK has now moved to Sun City. The medical care out there is one of the main reasons you couldn’t pay me to live in Sun City. My mother’s terminal illness was horrifically mismanaged by the quacks out there.

No doubt she wouldn’t have survived the cancer that was filling up her innards. But she didn’t have to suffer the way she did. Telling her it was all in her fuzzy little head increased her suffering massively. And my father’s: he was at home trying to treat her as she lay dying of her “imaginary” ailment. And that IS the specific reason I would never buy a house in Sun City or Youngtown. Horrible!

One would like to hope that medical care out there has improved. But get real: we know what Americans think of the elderly. We know how elders are treated in this country. Why take a chance when you can stay in town and at least have a shot at decent care?

Ninety degrees at seven-forty…

by

Yeah, you read that right, far as it goes:  Just now it’s 7:40 in the morning, and the thermometer reads 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Ugh!

Dawg and I just returned from a stroll around the park — about a mile or so. Ruby is SO ridiculously cute and adorable that every passer-by has to pause and coo over her. So that tends to slow things down a bit.

Gawd, it feels like effing Saudi Arabia out there.

Not quite as colorfully wet, though, as when we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Come a summer morning, literally the humidity would drip off the eaves like rain. Houses out there had swamp cooling, so the “air conditioning” was marginally helpful, at best.

Jayzuz! What a place to grow up! 

And Jayzuz! What a pair to grow up with as parents!

Not that they were bad parents, exactly (except when they were pounding on me). What made me resent them was their idiotic smoking habit.

Both of them smoked and smoked and smoked! The house stank from rafters to floor. The carpets stank. The furniture stank. The drapes stank. The air-conditioning system stank. We stank. Ugh!!!!!

What possesses people to do that?

To be fair, at the time — the 1950s — people didn’t understand (or believe) that smoking causes cancer. Seriously: When the word came down and reports appeared in women’s magazines and on the news reports, my mother discounted the whole idea. She believed it was Big Brother trying to tell us all what to do.

And, to continue being fair, she was deeply addicted to nicotine. She would have had a bitch of a time stopping, even if she’d wanted to — which, you may be sure, she did not.

But…jeez…  Wouldn’t you think the fact that everything stank of tobacco smoke — your clothes, your hair, your kid’s clothes and hair, the carpets, the furniture, the draperies, the bedding, everything — would register with a person?

If it ever did, she didn’t give a damn. If her cigarettes burned down the planet, she was not a-gonna stop smoking.

Wouldn’t you think she would have made the connection between the house’s saturation with stinking smoke and her little girl’s chronic, awful respiratory infections? I was sick ALL THE TIME that I was growing up. “Ohhhhh,” she used to simper, “you’re so susceptible!”

Yeah. Not so susceptible to viruses, dear muther, as to the poison you puff into the air all day and half the night.

I have no clue whether the addictive quality of nicotine was widely known at the time. Hard to imagine how anyone could miss it…to get the picture, all you’d have to do is watch someone try to kick the habit. She knew, all right. She knew she was addicting herself and she knew she was making me sick. She just didn’t care. Those fukkin cigarettes were more important. Far more important.

Ugh! That’s what I’m led to think about, when the morning breaks to a hot, muggy, stuffy Arabia-like day. Fukkin’ cigarettes. And a woman laying in her bed dying in agony as her husband worked like an animal to care for her.

Guess I should have more empathy for her dying throes. But…she knew what she was doing. She knew tobacco could and probably would kill her. She had cared for her mother as her mother lay dying of cancer, so she knew what that was about, too.

{sigh} It’s hard to work up a lot of empathy for a person who deliberately kills herself with a toxic product. Just really hard.