Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

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…

Corner of Hell and Hades….

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HOOleee keerap!

It was hot when I left the Albertson’s to walk home with a small armful of groceries. My GOD what torture! I hafta tellya…

For sure:  I’ll never buy groceries at that Albertson’s again. As we scribble, it’s 115 in the shade of the back porch. Wunderground says it’s 116.  Out in the middle of an asphalt road, no shelter anywhere to be seen? EASILY 120…very probably more than that

I have never walked through such gawdawful heat…and I grew up in Saudi Arabia, where a 115-degree day was normal.

Today all I wanted was a six-pack of beer and a bottle of white wine. That notwithstanding, the bags weighed more than I wanted to haul through that heat. Asked the clerk if it was OK to borrow a cart and bring it back in the morning.

Well. No. 

So…will I be shopping at Albertson’s again?

Well. No.

Nope. Never again!

A grocery cart typically costs a couple hundred bucks. I can spend that much in a typical trip to a grocery store. Let’s say I make two such trips a month… Today Albertson’s traded $200 for a $400/month loss. For a year’s worth of shopping, that’s $400 x 12, or $4800.

Mighty fancy grocery carts y’got there, Mr. Albertson!

EGAD!

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Holee doggerel! Temps here are supposed to hit 117 today. Nice and cozy, eh?

Ruby the Corgi and I were out the door by 7 a.m. or so…and it didn’t seem any hotter than usual. Maybe it’s just that for most humans, our version of “no hotter than usual” is the same as “too damn hot”…  😀

Let’s bestir ourself to stumble out to the back porch and check the thermometer…  hmmm…. only 100 degrees. Sorry folks: that’s just not all THAT hot.

A little warm, maybe, for 9:11 in the morning. But not THAT hot. Gimme a break!

It is, however, a bit humid. Damp enough to be reminiscent of (un)lovely Ras Tanura, where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Yea verily: Saudi Arabia was hotter (and wetter) than the hubs of Hades, not a place normal humans would choose to dwell. But…that was all the time, not just a day or two in the depths of a hellish summer.

And usually, the yak-festers here are not kidding when they say “it’s a dry heat.” When the atmosphere is just plain parched, a hundred degrees doesn’t seem intolerably hot.

Fellow dog-walkers this morning were whining and squawking about (ooooohhh eeeeeek!!!!!!) a terrifying coyote strolling up one of the neighborhood streets. The sheer horror, eh?

What IS the matter with people? Are they really so stupid that they don’t know all they have to do is turn around, glare and the beast, and holler “GIT!!!! B-a-a-a-a-d Dawg! GIT OUTTA HERE!” and the savage person-eating monster will turn right around and run away?

And yes, I do speak from experience.

Don’t know which is the most annoying experience: a confused coyote or a doltish human.

Ohhh well.

At any rate: yes, 117 degrees is passing warm. Hope the AC system holds up through the day. Hmm…  This is Wednesday…so if it doesn’t crap out between now and, say, 2:00 or 4:00 p.m., we should be OK. The repairmen should be out in force, so we won’t have much trouble getting someone to fix it, if need be.

After mid-afternoon, the atmosphere will start to cool a bit: not into the bearable range, but usually into the survivable range.

Meanwhile, we have a predicament: I lost my bicycle the other day.

In a moment of senility, I took it into my graying head to hop on my beloved bike and ride around the area. Stupidly crossed Central Avenue, cruised the upscale area around the parochial high schools over there, and ended up socializing with some neighbor on her front porch.

By the time we broke up that chat-fest, it was getting so hot she thought I should not ride home by myself. So we called my son. He showed up, piled me in his car, and…heh…we both forgot about my bike. 

Well. So I think.

I believed we brought it back here. But it’s not in the garage. And that tells you how fried my brain was.

The other possibility is that M’hijito took it to his house and locked it in his garage, to block me from taking off for any more two-wheeled fugues. Once again, he seems not to be speaking to me, so I dunno whether the bike is at his place or not.

But…if in fact I’ve LOST the bike, there’s a big store right across Main Drag West that sells the things. So I may just walk over there and buy a new bicycle.

Or not. Seems like more work than it’s worth, in this infernal heat. 😀

The city has had to close down all the local hiking trails, in the face of the normal stupidity of humans.

No joke: in 117-degree heat, the local cretins WILL go out in that desert and stumble around the rocky, often steep trails.

Don’tcha wonder how the human species has managed to survive this long?

WTF?????

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Okay, friends…and yes, dear foes: I’m about to tell you something I probably shouldn’t tell you. Or anyone.

Stuff is scaring the Hell out of me…even though it probably shouldn’t.

Weird stuff. Stupid stuff. Even serious rational stuff.

For example…

I lost my bicycle. 

Yeah. Lost it BIG time. Don’t know where. Don’t know how. Have only the vaguest idea of when.

The other day I rode my beloved old gaudy pink bicycle through the ‘Hood and over into the classic North Central neighborhood just to the east of here.

That neighborhood is dominated by two historic Catholic high schools — Xavier and Brophy Preparatory — which are surrounded by staunchly middle-class, boring little homes.

As I got tireder and hotter, I came to light at the home of a woman who was hanging out on her front porch. She invited me to take a seat and rest.

It became apparent, before long, that I probably should not ride my bike home in the heat, especially in the fagged-out state I was exhibiting. She brought out a phone, and we called my son.

Shortly, he showed up in his car, coming to light in front of her house.

He loaded me into the vehicle, and we left: he brought me home and deposited me in the air-conditioning.

Here’s where it gets weird: He apparently forgot to load the bike into his vehicle — or didn’t realize he needed to. When we got home: no beloved pink bike! 

I was very much overheated and not in any state for anything more than tumbling into the sack with a cold washcloth on my head. He drove me over to St. Joseph’s hospital, where, by the time we arrived, I had pretty well recovered and cooled down into a safe status. We came home. I forgot all about the bike…until the next morning, when I realized it is GONE!

I want my bike back! 

Getting weirder now: We can’t figure out where we left it. If we left it anywhere. I thought we’d brought it home and left it in the garage.

But it’s not in the garage. Or inside the house. Or in the backyard. Or…anyplace we can imagine.

Did I actually ride my bike over to the high-school neighborhood and carelessly leave it there, when M’Hijito arrived and toted me off?  Dunno. I have no memory of that. He says not. But…it’s a pretty vague-sounding “not.” Maybe I actually walked into that neighborhood???

If so, where the Hell is the bike?

So… I’m bereft at the loss of a beloved bicycle. But more than that: I’m scared sh!tless at the loss of my IQ points!!!  WTF? WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED? 

That is what’s scaring me. Really, really scaring me.

It’s hotter than the Hubs of Hades outdoors today: temps over 110. So walking back over into that neighborhood and trying to explore around is pretty much out of the question.

And M’hijito is (quite reasonably) pretty much out of patience with this shenanigan. He has a job (can you imagine??) and cannot take off to wander around searching for a bike that by now has probably been spirited off to Yuma.

Dunno whether he recognizes that a big, scary part of this moment of lunacy is that I genuinely cannot remember what actually happened at that lady’s house, not in any detail at all. So frankly, I don’t know if we left the bike there…or what. Probably did…but at this point anything’s possible.

At 6:00 p.m., it’s 108 in the shade of the back porch. Too hot, by far, to go exploring around North Central Phoenix — not that we’d  be likely to find anything.

Meanwhile, M’jito, deeply alarmed with this weird behavior of mine, has kiped my car and locked it into his garage. So I can’t climb into it and drive it around that neighborhood on a searching expedition.

Soooo… I guess my beloved pink bike is gone. As in GONE gone. Along with a few of my brain cells, presumably….

Jayzuz! Don’t get old, whatever ya do!!!