Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Lunch at the ‘Que…

by

Got a steak and an ear of corn on the grill. But.. WTF? They don’t seem to be cooking!

It is horrifically hot out there in the backyard. The meat and corn oughta cook by themselves: just set ém out on the back table, eh? But they’re hardly browning…surely not charring, that’s for sure!

Hm. The grill is on. There’s plenty of propane. But it’s barely running.

Guess I’ll have to put this stuff on the stove to cook. Then call the BBQ guy to come fix…whatever’s wrong with it.

Goodie! Just what I wanted to do on a 100-degree day!

Hotter’n the Hubs!

by

Wunderground claims the temperature here in lovely uptown Phoenix is a balmy 93 degrees.

Hah! They must be CRAZY! The thermometer on the back porch reads HOT HOT HOT!

Hmmm…actually, it says 93 degrees. Yep. Right there in the shade. Barely on the high side of warm….

Must be a little humid today. Hmmmm…12 percent. That’s not bad.

Whatever: if feels hotter than hot out there.

Just got back from a stroll around the park. Thought I was gunna damn near melt before the Funny Farm’s front façade loomed into view. Good thing I didn’t take the little dawg with me. That asphalt pavement would have singed her feet right off.

Actually: I would have had to pick her up and carry across each road. Neither option much fun!

Guess I’d rather be in San Francisco….

Yeah. Today, so we’re told, we’d be looking at a high of 62 and a low of 52 there. Partly cloudy tonight. Tomorrow: Sunny, with a high of 66 and a low of 53. Looks like they expect that to be pretty consistent all week. With rain, off & on.

Rain? Rain??? Whazzaat?

Loafing through the past many hours, I haven’t done the main projected task of the day:  Wanted to run by the young lawyer’s office up by the El Rancho supermarket. The plan is to review the croak-over plans to be sure M’hijito gets Everything….and then some.

Seriously: I want him to get everything I own, with as close to zero hassle as possible. This will include real estate holdings as well as cash dollars and such. Not complicated — at least, I don’t think so. But I figure we’d better be sure everything is set up correctly.

Gawdlmighty, I hate this bureaucratic BS. But guess there’s no way around it.

At any rate, I spavined my left heel this morning. Hurts like the dickens. So…that lets out strolling up to the next big intersection and hiking around the shops there in search of Young Lawyer. If my son hadn’t made off with my car, I’d still be able to set up this part of his inheritance. But…hey…ya get what you ask for, eh? 😉

The car won’t make up for the jillion bucks in cash. But…it’ll be something. I guess. 😀

 

 

 

Let Us Try Again…

by

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! 

****

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

by

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?

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.

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?