Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

WORSER & WORSER

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GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!  Want pain? Lemme tellya PAIN!

Spent the better part of y’day and this morning at the Mayo Clinic’s ER.

I fell face-forward on the tiled floor. Reflexively stuck out my left hand as I was going down. Whacked the Hell out of my hand. Busted the humerus, one of the long bones of the upper arm. Apparently didn’t break anything else (to my surprise). But oh!

Hurt?  Lemme tella HURT! 

And hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt… Holy mackerel, it hurts!

The little dog is accustomed to sleeping on the bed. But she’s too small to jump up here by herself: she has to be lifted.

They told me not to lift her onto the bed. (They who have no clue to what a corgi is…) So of course I’ve been lifting her onto the bed.

Just now: Slipped. Lost my footing. Dropped the dog. Wrenched the arm, And HURT!!!!!

Oh Dear GOD did that hurt.

This elicited a sky-splitting shriek of agony. Terrorized the little dog. She now refuses to come out from under the toilet.

That may be just as well. At least she won’t be out here banging on the bed trying to get up.

I don’t think Ruby got hurt. But I sure as hell did.

Ohhhhh well…  The worst of the screaming pain has about subsided

And hallelujah, brothers & sisters, Amazon carries little staircases to help a small dog climb on the bed!

heee! Have you ever seen such a thang?!?

I’m thinking that tomorrow, if I can drive (highly questionable), I’ll run over to the nearest Petsmart and grab one of these for Ruby. Failing that: order it up from Amazon.

Dunno, tho… Amazon shows several models that are cheaper. Oh, well. There’s plenty of time to think about that.

Eeeek! Stop the freakin’ WORLD!

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Like it wasn’t already crazy enough…

Traipse to the credit union: pointless. Guy can’t tell me any more than I don’t already know, which ain’t enough.

Stop at a Fry’s supermarket to pick up a bag of candy to contribute to this month’s KidFest. FIFTEEN BUCKS (!!!!!!!) for a couple pounds of tooth-rot!!!

Cruise east across the city, dodging a variety of mobile nut cases. Head south of Conduit of Blight Blvd., and…

and…

HOLEEEE MACKEREL!

Not to say WTF IZZAT???????

Seriously: What the HELL is going on in the southwest Valley?

It looks — quite literally — like a bomb has dropped over there. Huge plumes of smoke are rearing up over the tract after tract after track of cheap suburban housing. It’s Orange County East, y’know: piles and piles of ticky-tacky, sold to young (mostly white…) families at extortionate prices.

Fly into the garage. Give WonderAccountant a call: Haveya heard anything?

No, she hasn’t. She fires up the boob tube and learns there’s some kinda controlled burn going on over there: “Don’t be alarmed,” we’re urged.

Uh huh. Keep calm. Unless you’re a duck, a quail, a baby quail, a deer, an antelope, or a stray cat.

Jayzuz. TELL me, somebody, puhleeeze tell me that I don’t live in this ludicrous place.

TELL me that the County Assessor is not threatening to throw me in jail if I haven’t paid some extortionate amount in property tax by…tomorrow!

No kidding.

Did a bill for this fine civic duty come before last week?

Well. Noooooooo…..

Okay, it could’ve. Could’ve been misdelivered. Okay. Sure. But if that’s so, why isn’t a WHOLE lotta other stuff misdelivered? So now tomorrow I have to do battle to figure out WTF that’s about.

One effin’ nightmare after another!

*****

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning

Welp…I still haven’t a clue.

It now appears that probably I indeed failed to pay this year’s county taxes. Tomorrow I’ll have to trek to the CU, find out if indeed the money was never paid, and if so, arrange to have them send it ASAP. Then somehow I’ll have to bust through the county bureaucracy to reach a human there and let them know the late taxes are on the way.

Presumably there’ll be some extortionate gouge for that, too.

It’s 1:15 a.m. What a great way to spend the night, eh?

 

 

 

But…I Want It NOW…

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Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not whenever I can find it (if I can) on the local market.

NOW.

It’s spectacularly convenient to be able to order up this little thingy and that little doo-dad and have it delivered right to your door. Yes. That much must be admitted. That much must be admired.

But the other day, I wanted one silly little, minor little, once always-available-about-everywhere little thing, and I wanted it now. Today. Ideally, within the hour.

It was the sort of thing you used to be able to find in a type of store called a “dime store,” such as a TG&Y: chain stores that sold inexpensive handy-dandy gadgetry that people use around the house and the car and the yard.

No more! Far as I can tell, dime stores no longer exist.

I drove from pillar to post searching…

  • Albertson’s does not carry it.
  • Safeway does not carry it.
  • Target does not carry it.
  • Bed Bath & Beyond no longer exists.
  • Walmart does not carry it.
  • Lowe’s does not carry it.
  • AJ’s does not carry it…

On and on and gas-guzzlingly on. NO ONE carries it.

What is “it”?

It’s this: an old-fashioned purse-sized, pocket-sized spiral-bound notepad.

Apparently they still make them. Although of late retailers will not let you copy an image and paste it into your effing blog post….

You just can’t find them. At least not in brick-and-mortar retail stores. I searched all over the effing city, and nobody had these things.

Upshot: It’s not that you can order it from Amazon. It’s that you HAVE TO order it from Amazon. And if you need it now? Well, screw you, m’dear.

Ugh! I am sooo unstuck in time! My God, sometimes I feel like I live not in a different era but on a different planet from the one I grew up on.

And while we have many, many blandishments that are wonderful and amazing…well… Are they?

We have these awesome phones we can carry around! Whoop-de-doo!

  • Now anyone who takes a whim to do so can pester us on the phone as we drive around or hike or bicycle ride or sit in a meeting or…whatEVER.
  • Now advertisers can track us around the city and harass us at will.
  • Now if our car craps out and we don’t have one of these gadgets with us — or, Gawd forfend if it’s not charged up — we are in deep, deep trouble.
  • Now if we’re on the lam from the cops, the authorities can track us down, intercept us, and bust us…

Hmmmmm…. THIS is a good thing?

We have delivery services that bring everything from a cheap notebook to a filet mignon to our doorstep. But what if we want to shop for it in person? What if want to see what we’re getting before we plop down our credit card?

What if, f’r hevvinsake, we want it NOW?

Ugh. What a brave new world!

Where were we…about stopping the world?

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Gawdalmighty, “STOP THE WORLD” seems to be the byword of the day.

It’s after dark. The dawg and I are fed. It’s too crazy out there to go for an evening doggy-walk, so we’re hunkered down.

And hunkered in full stop the world mode.

A cop helicopter is buzzing the ‘Hood. Lemme tellya: these guys don’t burn pricey aviation fuel for nothin’. They’ve been overhead for a half-hour or 45 minutes: searching, searching, searching. Rattling the windowpanes. Disturbing the dawg. Disturbing the human.  Now they’re cruising above the streets just to the north of us.

Have I said how much I hate living here?

But…

But….

But……

Is there anyplace better to live?

Truth to tell, what that cop said right after the Great Home Invasion Episode appears to be true: “It’s the same all over the Valley.” From the Richistans to the blue-collar slums to the ghettos, it really DOES appear to be “the same all over the Valley.”

Okay, wtf is going on now? Over to the neighborhood Facebook page, usually the fastest source of fact and gossip…

H. Acken

Was anyone else asked to stay inside?

Loren Rohrer

Helicopter is saying to surrender now….that can’t be good….

Morgan Hoaglin

I am betting on the K9 here
Sonja Marie Clarke Yurkiw
What’s happening with the helicopter?

Megan Tranter
          A truck was pulled over on Drey Drive. One of the occupants fled the scene. There’s where it stands just now. But…Ughhhhhhh am I ever tired of it.

You ‘n’ me both, sister!!!

Wednesday, October 4, 2023…Stop the fukkin world, already….

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De bonne heure  (which is a way of saying “at the crack of dawn”)…

Well, the cop cars have moved on from Tony’s Home for Juvenile Delinquents. 😀

When Ruby and I went out along about 6 or 6:30 this a.m., TWO cop cars were parked over there. Must’ve been quite the little dust-up under way. It’s quiescent now. A car is parked at the curb along my house’s east wall…presumably a vehicle belonging to one of the keepers. The policia were gone when we got back from this morning’s doggy-walk, about an hour later. With any luck, maybe they will have found something new the County can use to bop Tony about the head and shoulders.
hmmmmmm…….  Y’know….if I were a parent and I learned that a school bus my kid was riding — for the Glendale Union High School District(!) — was detouring off its route to pick up one or more urchins from a home for juvenile delinquents in the Phoenix Union High School District, I would NOT be happy.
* Which brings up another little irregularity: We’re in the Sunnyslope High School district, not in the Glendale Union district. Or the Phoenix Union High School District.
So..WTF???
Ever entertaining!
Gorgeous morning…actually COOL out as dawn cracked.
****
time marches on
****
4:00 p.m.
Late Afternoon 
Irrigation Dude is here. Has been all afternoon…speaking of jobs one is happy one does not have. He’s dug up the back side yard, rebuilt the underground irrigation on the west side of the house, got most of it working. Arrgha!
Now his son just showed up, a grown young man evidently intended to inherit the business.
I yam starved, having done without lunchoid. Even though it’s only a little after 4, I’m about to expire. Soooo….
What we have on the menu is shrimp sautéed in garlic, tossed with boxed tomato sauce over pasta.
Yay! Was delighted to find the shrimp in the freezer, and even more delighted to find a box of “canned” tomatoes in the cupboard. To say nothing of a bottle of white wine.
Just watching Irrigation Dude dig and haul and gadgetize all afternoon — in the heat — has left me exhausted.
***
Yea verily: So exhausted I can’t think clearly. As in WHY THE FUCK WON’T THE GODDAMN OVEN TIMER SHUT THE FUCK UP! 
 
Nothing that I do makes it stop. It’s not showing a count-down. As far as I can see, it’s not on. But every five minutes or so, it starts in again with beep…beep…beep…beep…   Damned if I can figure out why, and therefore damned if I can shut it off. Tonight I’ll have to go to bed behind  a closed door… 
 
Oh…now whatever it thinks it’s doing is done: BEEEP BEEEP BEEP BEE…
 
Run over there and shut it off. But don’t see how to shut it completely off once and for all because I don’t see HOW to shut it off, period. Before I go to bed tonight, forgodsake, I’ll have to go outside and shut off the damn breaker switch to the kitchen!
 
Stop the world, Lord. I wanna get offf!
***
5:15 P.M.
Tired. Spectacularly tired.
Moderately hungry, but not very… Read: “too tired to eat.” Pasta is boiling. Unclear what I’m gonna do if I can’t shut off the fuckin oven clock’s dingy-bonger.
BEEEP BEEEEP
Fuckaroonies!!!!. Let’s see if we can shut it off at the breaker box.
Yes. That shut it up.
Dump the raw pasta into the pan of boiling water. (The stove runs on gas, so is exempt from the goddamn breaker box’s present set of antics.)
Walk into the family room. Sit down. Pick up computer, Proceed to…to…
BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP 
God DAMN it. 
Traipse to the kitchen. Glare at the oven. Click off. 
 
 Off, godammit! Off off OFF!
 
Quiescent for the moment,. Dunno how long that will last. And have NO idea how I’m gonna get any sleep tonight if the fucker doesn’t QUIT IT!!!!!
*****
Only Quarter to Six…
Soooo exhausted that all I wanna do is GO TO BED!
But it’s too fiukkin hot to go to bed, despite the air-conditioner pounding away…and pounding away…and pounding away nonstop. Expensively nonstop!
Finally get the goddamned oven timer to shut up.
How???
Noooooo idea!
6:03 p.m.
The fukkin oven timer has stayed shut up. WHY, I cannot imagine. But it this point, I figure discretion is the better part… The fewer questions asked, the better.
Ya know what?
I HATE living in the 21st century! 
It’s seven fukkin’ types of Purgatory….
What a time. 
What a place.
What a people.
And…and…and…
 
Every line in that little graphic I’ve had to do three times. AT LEAST. 
‘
Stop the fukkin world. I wanna get off!

Out and About in Loony-Toonsville

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Lordie. Just ONCE for a whole day to go by in quiet, level-headed sanity!!

LOL! Unfortunately, you do not get into a car in these precincts and expect sanity of any kind to ensue. 😀

What a place!

So…the other day we had the excellent Haddox Electric over, doing battle with the latest Adventure in Homeownership. They got everything fixed…took two guys half a day of wrestling with the infrastructure here, so I figured their $400+ bill was fair and gave them a check.

This morning Haddox calls me up and tell me the check has bounced.

What??!? That account has several thousand dollah in it.

Call the credit union; confirm that to be true. The airhead I speak with, however, hasn’t a clue as to why a perfectly valid check would have been bounced.

Call Haddox; arrange for them to charge the bill on a credit card.

Hop in the car; drive to the downtown CU office, which is much less busy than the one on campus and seems to be inhabited by pretty experienced staff.

Traffic: fukkin’ HIDEOUS! Took forever to get down there. About halfway through this be-tangled journey, I realize I should’ve just gone out to the campus branch. The drive is further but the hassle factor is milder.

Belly up to the teller’s counter.

She says nothing was wrong with my check. She says it cleared.

We are mystified by their claim that it flubbed. But she, being a bankin’ type, is suspicious. She says to be careful that it’s not a scam:

a) That the call really did come from the beloved electricians’ office; and
b) What does someone who answers the phone call from me say is going on.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive through slums that grow direr as the days pass. Drive through the Old Neighborhood: the beautiful historic Encanto District. Think how much I miss my splendid house there, how much I miss my neighbors. How much I don’t miss the burglars and the wannabe rapists…ohhhh well.

Drive through a couple of neighborhoods where I imagine I might like to buy a house that could get me out of the clutches of Tony the Romanian Landlord.

* Realize there really isn’t another centrally located neighborhood as good as this one; certainly not one I could afford.

* Realize I have to resign myself to a Battle of the Wills with that Romanian bastard. Dayum.

Finally get home.

It’s 109 in the shade of the back porch…and 77 in the “guest room” where Ruby & I have taken refuge.

Every other room in the house is best described as “baking.” Hovering around 90 degrees. The AC is just not up to its job.

Ruby and I have been trying to sleep in the “guest” room. Problem is, a twin bed just doesn’t do the job for a human and a bodacious little dog. We have plenty of room on the queen-size bed in the master bedroom. But it’s hotter than the hubs in there.

How can I count the ways I don’t wanna buy another bed???

And what am I doing to do with the twin bed that’s in there? Which, we might add, was NOT a cheapie.

Well…how obvious is this???  Duh!

I call a couple of movers and have them move the twin bed out of the “guest” bedroom/defunct TV room into the master bedroom, and shift the queen-size bed into the “guest” bedroom.

Et voilà! Problemo solved!

Well. I’ll get on that later….