Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

WHY do people live here???

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7:38 p.m.  The sun has gone down. And it’s 105 degrees under the ventilated shade structure on the back porch.

Central Arizona. Maricopa County. What a HELLISH place to live! Why do people settle here, anyway?

I got here because my parents dragged me here, when my father attempted to retire. (Failed, thanks to a major recession: he had to go back to work for another couple of years, much to his despair.)

Yeah. They thought Sun City was about the most brilliant village the human mind had ever conceived. Fine ticky-tacky houses. Gravel yards — no grass to water! Kids prohibited: no brats screaming outside your window when you’re trying to take a nap. Blacks prohibited: no negroid types pushing down your property values.

Yech!!!!!

As soon as they got moved and settled into their new brick hovel, they sent me down to Tucson and enrolled me in the University of Arizona. Because I was a National Honor Society scholar, they accomplished this by pulling me out of high school a year early: I never even set foot in a senior-year classroom.

Sun City is grim enough. Central Arizona forms the cake beneath that frosting: hot, intellectually backward, graced with bigotry….what a place! The UofA is a more or less adequate intellectual institution…though nothing like the school where I was set to go: U.C. Berkeley.

So…my arrival in Arizona was an encomium to disappointment.

And I do have to wonder, sometimes: if you don’t have a well-paying job here, WHY would you come here, and why would you stay here? Given that you have any choice in the matter…which I did not.

Why do I stay here? Well…I’m pretty well glued in. Everyone I know these days lives here. My son lives here. My jobs have been here. My paid-off house is here. My freelance business is now based here. Reckon I’m set here.

But it wouldn’t have been my choice….

One of Those Days, Continued

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Magically, the toilet has started working properly. Yep: outta the blue. This was shortly after I’d called WonderAccountant to get the number of the excellent plumber we share.

The telephone started working, too. Why?????

So I had to phone her back and call off THAT excursion. She must think I’m even crazier than I am.

Tooth hurts tooth hurts tooth hurts tooth hurts and not a DAYUM thing I can do about it. Too early to reach the dentist on the phone; plus it wouldn’t matter anyway because I can’t get to his office without a car.

There’s a dentist down the road from the Funny Farm, but I don’t have their phone number…so that is going to entail walking down there in 100-degree heat and soggy humidity. And…very probably finding them Not Open.

W.A. sounded a bit harassed this morning. Probably (as usual) working too hard. Having her nutty neighbor pester her over the phone surely cannot help her own sense of harassment… {sigh}

I fear it may be getting time for me to move into one of those horrid old-folks’ institutions. You know: where you live in a dormitory and you have staff baby-sitting you and execrable food served up in a dining hall.

Ugh. Any day I’d rather take a flying leap off the North Rim. But…what are you gonna do?

Doggy Day from Hell

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Migawd!  I had SUCH a sh!tf!t of frustration this morning that now Ruby the Corgi will not come out from underneath the toilet, where she’s hiding.

That’s after I stalked out of the house and hiked all the way around the park and back, by way of unwinding. She’s been under there nigh unto an hour, and still refuses to come out.

Helle’s Belles!

Well, I don’t know how to calm her down. Offered her all sorts of prime doggy treats: she’s having none o’ that.

Horrible morning.

Actually, meteorologically it’s quite pretty. It’s just that…well…what we have here is One of Those Days: when everything you touch, look at, or think about goes wrong.

Tooth aches. That’ll be a fine bout of dental surgery, no doubt.

Peripheral neuropathy is making the hands and the lips go BZZZZZZZZZ!!

Dog remains terrorized.

Toilet sounds like it’s leaking. Again. That’ll be another spectacular plumber’s bill.

Computer screen decides to “zoom in,” expanding the size of everything in view by about 120%.  “Zoom out” command does…exactly nothing.

Without a car, I’ll have to carry this damn computer to the repair shop: through the heat and humidity.

Yep. Just a few minutes after 7:00 a.m., and we’re already looking at ONE OF THOSE DAYS. 

***

Yea, verily: come 7:40 a.m., one of those days is what we’ve got.

Somehow, the computer fixed itself. How, I do not know.

Toilet: still leaking. Why: unknown.

Let’s try flushing it again to see if, by some miracle, that’ll stop it.

Nope.

Dork with the stuff inside the tank.

Nope.

So…that’ll be another fine plumber’s bill. Hot dayum!

Tooth hurts tooth hurts tooth hurts tooth hurts: upper left molar. Too early to call the dentist. Plus: how am I gonna get over there without a car?

Helle’s Belles!  This is gonna be ONE OF THOSE DAYS.

Ohhhh well… At least the Dawg relented, climbed out from under the terlet, and is now snoozing atop the bed.

Yep.
This.
Is.
Gonna.
Be.
ONE OF THOSE DAYS. 

Here We Go Again…

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Ugh! Today is the 30th, and the calendar says one “Janie” is supposed to surface at 8:00 a.m. — that’s 20 minutes from now — and hang around until 4:00 p.m.

Janie is a babysitter. A woman my good son has hired to watch over senile little me, drive me to grocery stores, and whatnot.

  • That the Funny Farm is within walking distance of three grocery stores: meh! Doesn’t matter.
  • That I value my privacy above just about all else: meh! Doesn’t matter.
  • That just this minute, I do not relish the prospect of having someone in my face: meh! Doesn’t matter.
  • That the kitchen  needs to be picked up before someone barges in and starts sniffing around: meh! Doesn’t matter.
  • That all I wanna do at 7:45 in the morning is relax and play with my computer: meh! Doesn’t matter.
  • That, failing a good loafing session, the second-best thing I wanna do at 7:45 in the morning is take a nice skinny-dip in the pool: meh! Doesn’t matter.

Well…the latter probably isn’t relevant. At this  hour, one never knows what yard and pool workers will show up.

At least the Hound and I got out the door early enough for the day’s circumnavigation of the park. Not history’s most pleasant stroll, though: it’s muggy and sticky and yucky out there. Reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where you could wake up in the morning and see rain falling out of a clear sky.

Arizona’s never that bad. But today, we’re in the competition. The air is hot, wet, and gummy. And air-conditioning notwithstanding, I sure am glad I don’t have a job where I have to throw myself around cleaning house. Or pretending to clean house.

***
A-a-a-n-d…here she is!

What a marvelous pistol this lady is! If you MUST have someone underfoot all day, this is the one to have. 😀  She’s smart, she’s witty, she’s friendly, she’s got her act 100% together. And I think I can pester her into taking me to a grocery store.

She brought over some nopalitos: a type of cactus-based delicacy.

Onward!

Too Hot for Little Dogs!

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{chortle!}  So much for any proposed scam to take Ruby into the Sprouts or the Albertson’s with me, disguised as a “service dog.”

Without exaggeration, it is hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. Come ten in the morning, I take it into my fuzzy little head to make a pointless little circumnavigation of the ‘Hood: Incredibly stupid!

Walk a block in that heat, and you feel like you’re gonna pass out.

So, shortly, it was turn about and head back to the air-conditioned Funny Farm. Boring, but at least boring is unlikely to kill you.

At any rate, tromping around on those sizzling sidewalks surely is likely to kill the corgi…or at least burn the hide off her little feet. Fortunately, the human had the foresight to leave her home: foregoing the “service dog” boondoggle.

Y’know…I do hate this place. If I could find a better place to live that I could afford, I’d be outta here in an instant.

It’s the that I can afford that’s the operative term. Now that I’m old and retired, my savings will not buy into a lot of middle-class venues. Not within reasonable driving distance of my son, that is.

My parents retired from Southern California (where my father made a decent living) and betook themselves to Sun City, dragging me with them.

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to live there: youth being against the rules in lovely Sun City. No problem: they got me out of their hair by sending me down to the University of Arizona in Tucson. That took care of the problem for four years.

Thence, it was off to a real job for me, based in central Phoenix.

Another garden spot… /eyeroll/

Ugh!

Where would I live, if I could go anywhere I choose?

> Berkeley, California: whence my mother’s more affluent side of the family.

> San Francisco: the city of my dreams.

> The Gold Bar Ranch, up on the Mogollon Rim. We owned a share of it while my dear ex-husband was part of the law firm whose partners glommed it. When I divorced him, I divorced the ranch. That was stupid…

> Switzerland: A high-rise slice of heaven.

> Prescott, Arizona: Also up on the Mogollon Rim. Pretty town with a nice university campus that supports — can you imagine, here in Arizona?? — an intellectual life.

Really: not very many places, given that I’ve traveled all over the world and lived in the Middle East, England, and the north, the east, and the west of the United States.

Whew!

I’m exhausted, after the mid-morning tour of the ‘Hood. And so…

Awaaaayyy!!! 

Off to the sack, with a little dog to decorate the foot of the bed!

Cathedral Rock, Sedona, Arizona
Arizona, lovely Arizona…

Still Frolicking in the Hubs

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Last time we were in these parts, Funny remarked that the weather was hotter than the hubs of Hades. No kidding….

Well, we’re still lurking in that locale.

Not yet 8:00 in the morning, and we have 93 degrees, with 21 percent humidity under “partly cloudy” skies. No rain in the forecast.

Dog and Human, having circumambulated the neighborhood as dawn was cracking, are perched on the bed. The Human sincerely hopes no nuisances show up at the door…as we scribble, the righteous and the well-meaning are out there trying to recruit her to an old-folks’ home.

How exactly I’m gonna evade that fate escapes me: Greyhound bus, maybe? Will they let me take the dawg on a bus???  Hmmmm…well, no. Not unless you can faze it past them as a “service dog.” Good luck with that…

At any rate, it’s definitely another soggy doggy day…even inside the house, the air feels damp. And that places Arizona smack in the middle of Hades!

So I consider: Do I really want to stay here?

Surely not if I’m likely to be nabbed and locked up in a prison for the elderly.

How likely is that to happen? Well…I’d give it about a 40 percent chance. Which is about 100 percent more than one would like…

Once again, we’re brought back to the fact that women in my family who didn’t smoke and didn’t catch amoebic dysentery in some god-forsaken Arabian desert have lived well into their 90s. And in pretty damn good health, we might add.

But as one ages, one tends to be infantalized. And that leads those around you to take over your life and decide matters like where you will live and how you will be treated.

And I for one do NOT wish to be treated as a child.

How exactly to evade that fate pretty much escapes me.