Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Let Us Try Again…

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So…ahem!  What happens if we post another test entry? Or…what the hell: a WHOLE, REAL entry for Funny about Money???

Okay: testing, testing! 

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Today we’re enjoying another Day from Hell. 

My poor son is so frustrated with me and so mad at me that he can barely manage to be civil. Yea verily, at times he can’t rise to that stratospheric height.

And I don’t blame him. Forgodsake, I can hardly remember my  name. I keep getting things confused. I keep fu*king things up. Everything I touch or even so much as think about goes KERFLOOIE!

And I’m starting to get really scared. Like, REALLY scared. 

Never before has the entire goddamn world gone bzzzzzzzz for me. Everything is confused. I can’t remember things. I lose things. I forget to pay bills. It’s a freaking ASTONISHING mess.

***

Wonder Cleaning Lady is here, wrestling with the pigpen. She’s a truly delightful and amazing person.

Honestly: at this point I don’t know what I’d do without her!

I  need to go to a grocery store, but dare not traipse through 100-degree heat on foot: eight or ten blocks each way. I probably could order something online…but in the past have discovered that is not a real successful way to get what you want.

Americans don’t eat a lot of fresh produce. When you order a delivery, you have to ask for packaged stuff: things that a person doesn’t have to pick out. Ask for fresh vegetables or fruit, and what you get is ick. Yeah: inedible ick.

So the only way I can get the kind of food I normally eat — largely fresh produce — is to go to the store and pick it out myself.

And…if I can’t do that, I’m in a pickle.

An inedible pickle!

Might ask her to drive me to a store…but that seems a little much. She’s spent hours cleaning this place….and now I want her to chauffeur me around?

Don’t think so….

WHOA!!!!! 

Lookee here! Sprouts opens at 7 a.m.!!!!

Holeee shee-ut! 

Even in the current weather, at that hour the air will be cool enough that I could get up there and back without succumbing to a heat stroke.

Jeez! Who knew?

Okay, let’s think about this….

If I left here at 6:30 — maybe more like 6:40, actually — I could get there just as they open. I do have a little-old-lady’s rolling cart(!!). So if I dragged that over there, I could load the groceries into it, get out of the store by about 7:30 a.m., and reach the house at 8:00.

It would still be on the low side of unbearably hot by then: no question of it. But…it wouldn’t be suicidal yet! I probably could get a pile of food and household stuff and get back here before the heat would be enough to make me sick.

Looks like temperatures are expected to be around 79 to 82 degrees at that hour.

Yeah. That’s tolerable. But yeah: I will have to shoot out of the house at dawn.

Goodie.

And as we scribble?

A hot, heavy wind has blown up. It’s roaring around out there.

That is NOT something you wanna be strolling around in. So that obviates trotting to the store this evening…even if that was something I wanted to do. Which I sure as Hell don’t….

So…hmmm…. Will I be able to BBQ tonight? Wanted to cook up the salmon my son bought for me a couple days ago.

Doesn’t look like it. But…one never knows.

Wait until Wonder-Cleaning Lady leaves and then decide, I guess.

And if this weather obviates grilling? Hmmm…  Well…there’s pasta…that’ll do the job, I reckon.

***
AUGH!!!!

Just to make everything perfect, Wonder Cleaning-Lady reports that the damn vacuum cleaner is busted.

I fiddle with it. I dork with it.

Yep. She’s right: it’s not working.

With no car, tomorrow I’ll have to DRAG it to the appliance store. Won’t that be fun!  While I’m dragging a shopping cart, too.

Okay. Let’s tempt a little fate and see if this post will go online….

 

 

Another Fine Day in Southern California

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Holy mackerel!  THIS is going on right in the vicinity of where my parents and I lived in Southern California. Really: it’s right down the road from where our apartment building stood.

My father would have been at sea, of course — he was an oil tanker captain. But by now my mother and I would be at her grandmother’s house in Berkeley: several hours’ drive away from the present scene of the drama.

Apparently thousands of people have been evacuated from the region. Or relegated to shelters…doesn’t that sound like fun!  My mother would have been terrorized!

My father, o’course, would have been off at sea. So she and I would have been left to cower at home…or to jump in the car and start drivin’ drivin’ drivin’.

Kinda doubt she would have betaken us to a motel. Most likely she would have driven up the coast to the relatives’ house in the Bay Area, and we would have camped with them until the drama subsided.

Mighty glad not to be in that melodrama this afternoon!

Unclear how long this is gonna go on, or how much risk of a real catastrophe exists. If it were me, though, I’d be sooooo far outta there! That’s for sure!

How Could She Do That?

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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.

A Little Escape…Of Sorts

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{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?

Hubs of Hades Central!

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LOL! Yesterday I reported that it was hotter than the hubs of Hades here. And yea, verily: so it was.

BUT…we hadn’t seen Hades yet, by yesterday afternoon. Today it’s handsomely HOT and stickily HUMID. Ick!!!!

Seriously: I’d planned to walk over to one of the three nearby grocery stores and pick up a few food items this morning.

Uh…no. Nope, noooo indeed.

Fortunately, we have plenty of dawg food: enough to last a good week or ten days.

Human food: likewise. Plenty of frozen salmon, pieces of steak, pasta, veggies, and whatnot.

Shouldn’t have to raid a grocer for at least ten days; probably two weeks. Amazon will ship the dog food. Human food also: to a degree….but personally, I like to see and examine my own chow before I buy it. This, however, should not be a problem. Just get out of the house about the time a store opens, and it should be easy to dodge the soggy heat.

My neighbor was out front pruning shrubbery when I trotted past his house. Man of steel, I’ll tellya! You couldn’t pay me to do that in this weather. BUT…it does have to be done…and hiring some hapless wretch to do it for you is likely to bankrupt you.

At any rate, as I frolicked  past, he assured me that he would drive me to a store if need be.   🙂

The supermarkets nearby (three of them!) open at around 7:00 a.m. So if I roll out of the sack at sunrise, I’ll be able to walk over to a nice store and stock up on whatever I need, before it gets too hot. But seriously: I don’t think that will be necessary for awhile.

PLUS: the other day a neighbor invited me to visit the nearby Sprouts with her. She drove us over there. That was nice…AND it was fun. So I may be able to talk her into a repeat trip.

And a variety of professionals and service providers operate within walking distance:

* ophthalmologist
* veterinarian
* computer store (2 of ’em)
* drugstore/pharmacy
* supermarkets (2 huge ones), each with its own pharmacy (a third lurks across Main Drag West)
* hair stylist

On and on and on, actually…. Truth to tell, there really is no need to go outside the Funny Farm’s immediate neighborhood to get about 98% of one’s standard needs done. Especially with Amazon filling in the gaps!

Y’know, this is how it was when DXH and I lived in London for several months, while I worked on the Robert Sidney book. We never needed a car, unless we took it into our heads to go sight-seeing in the country. I suppose that means Phoenix has “grown up” as a city: it now functions as a genuine metropolis.

WhatEVER: just now I feel pretty confident that I’ll be able to live here at the Funny Farm for at least a couple more years — maybe longer than that. Especially if I can hire someone to come in and take care of the house, drive me to requisite destinations, and generally ride herd on me.

We shall see if that proves to be true! 😀

BELAY that Last Post!!!!

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Forgodsake. Look at this morning’s FaM Post. Read that, and then say to yourself, with sterling accuracy and common sense, My gawd! The woman has lost every marble she ever had!  And THEN some!!!!! 

My imaginative little discovery, contingent on my son stealing my car out of my garage — “I don’t need a car to get around here! ” — turns out to be the single stupidest thing I’ve ever thought, said, or written. 

Yeah.

Today, as the sun made its way across the sky, I took it into my thick little head to walk down to the Albertson’s supermarket and pick up some dog food for Ruby the Corgi. While I was in the vicinity, I wanted to talk with a lawyer who practices in that shopping center — no, nothing drastic… Just a business matter. So: grabbed my home-made roller cart and headed on down there!

  • Walked.
  • And walked.
  • And dodged panhandlers.
  • And walked.
  • And fried.
  • And walked.
  • And fried some more.
  • And walked…..
  • Holeeeeee shee-ut!

The business lawyers whose office I’d seen so often in that shopping center were…GONE!!! Their space was empty.

Dayum!

The other lawyers, the ones across the parking lot, said they don’t do business law. But if I ever get arrested for drunk driving…. 😀

Yeah. 😮

By now, I was just fricasseed!

Went into the supermarket; hung out with the security guards for awhile. They put up with me, kindly, while I cooled down a bit.

But…now I had to get home. And that entailed walking block after block after block after block through searing, GAWDAWFUL heat.

Honestly: for a few minutes there, I wasn’t at all sure I was gonna make it.

Got up to the church. No one there; all the doors locked. Just a couple of bums hanging out in the shade.

Stumbled across the vast, black asphalt church parking lot. Staggered into the ‘Hood. Hotter and hotter and hotter….

Trudged and trudged through the residential part of our ‘hood. Hoped my neighbor Tom would be out…he and his wife Carol would let me inside to cool off, and keep me there long enough to be sure I wouldn’t pass out.

Nope. No sign of those two.

Hauled the empty cart along, and hauled it, and hauled it, and hauled it. Finally came to my house…not at all sure I could make it through the courtyard to the front door.

But I did: unlocked the door (clumsily: hands not working well) and staggered into the house.

And now here I yam, parked in front of the wonderful table fan. Dog snoozing on the floor: thank GAWD I didn’t take it into my feeble little head to take her with me this afternoon!

It’s much, much hotter than I’d estimated: 108 degrees, sez Wunderground. That may be an understatement!

At any rate, I made it home (miraculously!) and am now cooled down.

I guess I’m going to have to go out and rent another car — or maybe buy one. Obviously, I can’t get around on foot, not in this heat.

My ears are whistling.

My heart is pounding.

I probably should go to the ER. But without a car and through this unholy heat, how on earth would I get there?