Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Hotter than a Two-Dollar Cookstove…

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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. 

In the Land of Looney Toons…

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Welp, speaking of Looney: I’ve lost the post I was writing. In it, I went on at length about an alarming incident: a surprise visit from a pair of social workers, who apparently were trying to elicit evidence that some of my marbles have rolled out my ears.

Luckily, Wonder Cleaning-Lady had just been here, so the house was spotless. Presumably, then, they did not conclude from a slovenly mess that I’m too marble-free to take care of myself. 😀

At least…I hope not.

Lemme tellya: these folks are REALLY scary. A significant part of their job appears to involve deciding whether you’re well enough to live in your home and take care of yourself. From what I can tell, when they show up, you’re at some risk — very possibly significant risk — of being declared non compos mentis and locked up in a facility.

One of the alarming characteristics of such folks is that they have no sense of humor. They seriously can not distinguish between something you say in jest and something you really mean seriously.

One of my schticks, for example, is the very silly proposition that I’m a-gunna throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

I have to ask you: How silly is that? And…if a person were really going to do such a thing, do you seriously believe they’d babble on about it in a casual conversation? Holy sh!t. Obviously, if I were going to kill myself by leaping into the air and plunging several thousand feet down a cliff, I wouldn’t tell you about it first. Would I?

So without thinking, I let part of this joke out, and HOLEEEE SHEE-UT! You’d have thought I took out a pistol and stuck its barrel in my ear.

Okay, after I calm the two down a bit, the conversation devolves into a discussion of a silly incident that followed on a quarrel SDXB and I had while he still lived in the ’Hood — years ago!

I don’t even recall what we squabbled about. But in a fit of pique, I stalked out of his house and charged off down the road, figuring to take a walk and burn off some rage.

For reasons that I also do not recall, I took it into my pea brain to walk up an alley. I think the deal was that this alley went straight from the residential street where I was walking to the street just south of my house, effectively creating a short-cut home. In stomping up this alley in the dark, I got turned around, and….eeeps! I got lost! I couldn’t tell which way was north and which way west, the directions I needed to know to get back home.

A party was going in one of the back yards, so I stopped there and asked if they could tell me which way I needed to go to reach Main Drag West. For reasons I do not know, this bunch now calls the cops, telling them a disoriented woman is wandering loose in the alley.

When the cops arrive, they quite reasonably think I’ve lost a few marbles.

You can see which way this is going, right?

I got them to take me back to SDXB’s place, where together we were able to persuade the cops that I was not stoned and not crazy, and that SDXB would take care of me for the rest of the evening.

And so it went: he drove me home; I went to bed; and that (I imagined….) was the end of that.

BUT… Apparently this escapade went into my permanent record. 

Yes. Did you know you have a record, whether or not you’re a criminal type? Be aware that whatever shenanigans you get into, even the most innocent, go into this record…

Now — several years later! — when these social workers show up in my living room, they know all about this long-ago escapade, and they suspect it’s evidence that my marbles are loose.

No kidding. 

  • Have I ever been arrested?
  • Have I ever gotten into any trouble with the cops, with my employer, at the church, with my fellow crazed drivers?
  • Am I stone cold sober at the time?
  • Do I act like I’m crazy with these women?
  • Am I coherent and level-headed?

Forgodsake: the correct answers to these questions are no, no, yes, no, and yes. I emit all of these correct answers, and prove those answers by my behavior.

Nevertheless, they decide I’m nuts and file a report with their agency to that effect. So now I have an official record as a nut case, and as far as I can tell there is NO way to change that.

Hafta tell you: I don’t know what to do about this episode. Obviously, I need to call a lawyer. But my lawyer recently died! I called his office and got no answer there. So I have no idea which way to jump.

Monday, I’m gonna have to get on the phone and start calling lawyers, at random, until I can get someone to talk with me. And hope I can get them to position themselves between me and the Authorities.

Really. This is scary enough that if my son didn’t live here, I’d pack up my house and leave the state, right now. But he is here. So I’m staying…very possibly to end up in some institution.

Quite some society we live in these days, eh? Orwell set 1984 about 41 years too soon. 

Morning in Aridzona…

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Brrrrr! It’s mighty cold out there come seven in the morning: just 89 degrees.

In fact, even for lovely uptown Phoenix, that’s hot and muggy. The air is so damp it’s practically squishy.

Ruby and the Human:  just back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: over to the park, down the street that parallels the south side of the park, past the home (uhm…former home) of the folks who lost everything when their son got arrested for diddling some underage chippy, up the east side of the park: northerly, northerly into Upper Richistan.

Lovely neighborhood, that. The Richistans are occupied by folks who can afford acre-plus irrigated lots, big swell houses, and armies of workmen. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live there: been there, done that, don’t wanna do it again. Riding herd on 87 berjillion yard guys, maintenance guys, repairmen, cleaners…and on and on and on… Blech! Never again!

But still: it’s fun to eyeball other people’s overpriced, high-maintenance properties. 😀

The beloved Old Guy is no longer in evidence. He would hang out in a lawn chair parked on his front driveway, his coffee and his newspaper in hand, and greet all us passers-by. I do miss him.

With any luck, he will have dropped dead of a heart attack. More likely, though, this being Today’s Day & Age, he’s locked up in some old-folkerie, waiting for Death to come and get him.

That seems to be the fate of most of today’s denizens of the middle and upper classes. We don’t die in a timely way. We drag out dying, and drag it out and drag it out and drag it out…horribly, hideously. Parked in a dreary prison for old folks, where we rot away like so much unrefrigerated bacon.

Please, dear God: please, just let me drop dead on the sidewalk!

Y’know, before you croak over or end up in an old-folkerie, you should find out what your grown kids REALLY want you to do with your property.

You assume, quite reasonably in its antiquated way, that they will want to inherit your beloved home and its handsome yard and…all that. But consider: it ain’t necessarily so!

A lot of grown offspring have their own homes. Homes with which they’re quite satisfied. Homes they don’t want to move out of. Foist a $300,000 piece of property on them and now they’re burdened with something they’ve got to figure out what to do with. Something laden with emotional overtones that make them feel guilty when they go to sell the place.

If they can bring themselves to sell it, that is.

Now they’re stuck with it. What ARE they gonna do with it?

I’m pretty sure my son wants this house. But…before much longer, I do need to sit down with him and ask him whether he really does want it, or whether it would be better for me to sell it before I croak over and invest the proceeds in some cash instrument he can inherit and do with as he pleases. With minimal hassle, that is.

Of course, that’s one of those conversations none of us wants to have.

And as you know, we’re likely to put it off and put it off and put it off until…well…it’s too late.

***********

Speaking of selling or not selling the shack…

**********

ONE RINGY- DINGY! TWO RINGY-DINGIES! THREE….

No, I don’t recognize the caller’s number. That means chances are about nine out of ten that this is yet another goddamn nuisance phone solicitor.

Me: “And what would you be wanting?”

Her (after a brief, awkward pause: “Would you be interested in selling your house?”

Me: “GET OFF MY F*CKING PHONE AND STAY OFF MY F*CKING PHONE!!!!!!!!!

Gawd ALMIGHTY am I sick and tired of morons calling me on the phone to hustle me.

It should be illegal to call a phone number unless you have real, certifiable business with the number’s owner.

Heeeeeeee!  What d’you suppose would happen if, when an idiot phone solicitor gets you on the horn, you were to say, “Did you make an appointment to call me”?

Them: Duuuuhhhhh… Uhm…an appointment? 

You: Yeah. you need to have an appointment to call here. What’s your name and what is your appointment number?

{chortle!} Godlmighty, but I hate these people. Wish there was a better way to bug them than by blowing an air horn into the phone.

I wore out my air horn. Guess I should order another one from Amazon.

😀

Bastards.

Did you know that many of those folks — possibly most of them — are calling from inside prisons?

Phone solicitation is a prison industry. A substantial number of the jerks who pester you on the phone are more than jerks: they’re criminals. 

And QUADRUPLE-ARRRRRRGHHH!

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So some long-time workmen who are pretty reliable fellas show up. They’re puttering around…and somehow….

SOMEHOW…

…they get ahold of my front door keys and they fuck them up with élan!!!!!!!

My GAWD!

None of the keys works any of the locks or none of the locks or whateverthehell…WHAT A MESS!!!!!!!!

HOW THE HELL DID THEY DO THAT???

GODDDAMMMMIT!!!!!!!

Now I’m gonna have to call the locksmith AGAIN to come over here and untangle all the goddamn locks.

This guy charges an arm and a leg just to breathe the air inside your house, to say nothing of doing any work. So this is gonna be another $200 bill. Then I’ll have to listen to my son bitch at me for spending all that money on the goddamn locks.

Again. 

Y’know, when I had the first locksmith over (they all work for the same outfit), I asked him to fix ALL THE LOCKS so they work on the same key. So: this would make it hard for me to confuse the keys and fu*k everything up.

Now, NO TWO LOCKS work on the same key. Set one key aside and you are FUCKED until you can dig it up from wherever the Hell you put it down.,

And wherever that is will likely be pretty random, meaning it will be hours or maybe days before you find that key, if you ever do.

STOP THE GODDAMN WORLD!!!”
I WANNA GET OFF!!!!!!!!!

Arrrrghhhh!!!!!

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Puhleeeezzze, li’l computer! Let me enter ONE (1) new post without another disaster!

Just got sat down to wrestle with this thing, when BING -BONGGGGGG!!

Yard dude at the front door.

I’m so harried with the damn computer that i don’t remember why I called him!!!!!

Nor, in the course of yakking with him, does it come to me.

Well….you can be sure it WILL come to me…along about two or three hours from now.

And what will it BE?

You can be damn sure it will be something that affects the entire system and probably chokes the water off to every plant on the property.

STOP THE WORLD!
I WANNA GET OFF!!!

Woof!

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Good freakin’ morning, America!

Five-thirty in the freakin’ morning, and the dawg just rousted me out of the sack, barfing.

Actually, I’m not sure she actually woofed up. Got her outside before she threw up, and she then seemed sorta OK. Then I stumbled inside. She just roamed back in and appears not to be barfing.

Not right this minute, anyhow.

Something outside is whining. What, I can’t tell. Apparently not one of the wind turbines on the roof…but I can’t echolocate on it. Is it off in the distance, or…what?

BASHED THE HELL out of my foot on the screen door, dammit! Injury’s not that bad, but it appears to be on top of an older, yet-to-heal injury.

Never a damn dull moment, eh?

Welp…today is supposed to hit 109 degrees, according to Wunderground. Better bandage up the wounded paw and take the dog out before it’s too late.

{sigh} If it’s ever not too late…