Coffee heat rising

Hired Help Humor

This morning I discovered that someone stole a pair of shoes that I use every day.

I wouldn’t have put them “away” someplace where I couldn’t find them, because they have a standard “away” place in the closet. I would have put them in that place. If I carelessly left them out, they’d be sitting by the bed.

So presumably one of the hired help snabbed them.

Experience suggests that these “care givers” pull little stunts like this — stealing your shoes, spiking a dish of leftovers with ultra-hot chili — because they think it’s funny. Or maybe they think they’re getting back at you for some senile offense they imagine you did on purpose.

… … …

It’s bad enough to contemplate having to move into an institution for the last phase of your life. But dear God!  If this is how those folks behave in order to keep their wards under control, it will turn the last few months — or, God forfend, years — of one’s life into a living Hell.

If you can call that living.

I’m thinking it may be time to end things before they reach that point.

Egad! $$$$$

Just realized that two of the five Panasonic telephones in my house are gone. 

Yeah, I had five extensions. Now I have three.

Ducky.

Got a suspicion of who the perp is: one of the cleaning crew. But which one? No clue.

Generous of her to leave me three, eh? Some kind soul came into my home and stole TWO of my phones.

Not sure how to cope with this. If I buy new extensions, can they be programmed to work with my system? Or….what???

Without a car, I can’t get to the store where I bought the phones. So replacing them will not be easy.

What the FUCK is the MATTER with people?  Stealing some old lady’s phones? SERIOUSLY????

Looks like it costs somewhere between $14 and $60 to replace one of these handsets. Here’s one online: $53!!!!

To get new ones, I’ll have to go up to a store in the nearest shopping mall, which I can’t reach without a car.

Can you believe this?????

Bad to Worse!

As if we weren’t having enough “fun” here, yesterday as I was puttering in the front yard a black widow spider bit my right hand.

OOOWWWWWWW!!! Does that HURT!

And it still hurts this morning, as dawn cracks.

This would be quite enough “fun” if I didn’t already hurt from head to toe with this accursed peripheral neuropathy. Add the pain from a spider bite, and…HOLEEE MAQUEREL!!!

To frost that cake, Ruby the Corgi is sick. She’s laying on the bed hyperventilating.

No way for me to get her to the vet, not without a car. My son is swamped with work and also sick himself, so asking him to come here, pick her up, and drive her back and forth is…out of the question.

Add the cleaning-lady maliciousness…and, by golly, we are in TROUBLE!

NOW what???

Wooooooooooooooooooooo…….

1:20 in the morning and a weird noise is coming from….where?

I think it’s coming from the neighbor’s house. Possibly their air-conditioning? (Yes, in Phoenix you DO need to run your AC well into September…)

* Trudge outside. Explore around the yard.
* It ain’t my pool
* It ain’t my air-conditioner

Not much else on my property that could be making a weird noise.

That doesn’t PROVE it’s not coming from somewhere around my house or yard. It’s the freakin’ middle of the night…pitch dark…I can’t see much out there…I’m dead tired…

Awww jeez!  Whatever it is, it’s getting LOUDER. But…better yet, I can hardly hear it when I go outdoors, but inside: it’s resonating through the bedroom window.

No, it’s not the bedroom ceiling fan.

WTF?

Welp: forget getting any more sleep tonight.

If I’m right that it’s coming from outside, then it’s likely to be an expensive fix…unless, with any luck at all, it’s coming from the neighbor’s house.

Uh oh…. The AC unit just clicked off, so commanded by the thermostat. Hmmmm…. And guess what? No woooooooooooo.

Yeah. That suggests, o’course, that it IS coming from my place. That it’s probably emanating from the air-conditioning unit. And that my bank account is about to be cleaned out.

Ohhhhhh goodie!

****

Waitaminit… NOPE! The wooooo is back, but my AC is still off. A miracle! The noise, whatever it is, is NOT coming from my gear.

Apparently it’s coming from the neighbor’s house, or from some damfool thing off in the distance.

Hmmm… Pray for the best, then.  For me, that is…not for whatever poor wretch owns the freshly busted machinery.

Phoenix: garden spot!

Soggy Doggy Day

Wow! Is it ever WET out there!!!

Nope: no rain. Just air so soggy it feels like rain could coalesce around you as you’re walking up the sidewalk.

Ahh…but, the Young People out for their exercise walks are no more discouraged by this stuff than Ruby and I are.

Me, I  absolutely must get in a mile or more of stalking around. Otherwise the hip freezes up like it was made of steel. Very painful steel.

The young people, on the other hand, appear to fall more into the category of true health nuts. Plus some of them, like the Human, are just out walking their dogs in the park.  In any event, you can’t help but love ’em.

The pleasant architecture, the central location, the relative safety, and most of all the adorable young professionals are what make this neighborhood a delight.

How, I found myself wondering, can I engineer a way to stay in my home until the last cat is hanged?  I do NOT want to be hauled off to one of those horrible old-folkeries, like the (rather nice) one where my father spent his last years. Please, please, PLEASE, Dear God: let me drop dead first!

One strategy, I figure, will be to hire a live-in keeper.

Turns out Wonder-Cleaning Lady used to do that. Apparently you can hire them from some of the old-folks’ holding pens around here: the Beatitudes, the Terraces, and the like.

How you’d vet such a person’s qualifications escapes me. Plus…we have my prickly personality: ever since I was a little kid, I’ve infinitely preferred my onliness to the company of other humans. And evidence suggests the feeling has been mutual…

In the Doggy Day category: Ruby is choking every time she laps up a sip of water. She’s GOT to go to a vet, but I can’t get her to one without the car that my son purloined.

What exactly I’m gonna do about that remains to be seen. My son is already in trouble with his employers for the time he’s had to take to transport me back and forth to the Mayo Clinic. Yes: that’s even though it’s against the law to zap your employees for taking time off to haul a relative to the doctor.

Hmmm….  Might be able to talk Wonder Cleaning-Lady into schlepping us to a vet…but that would require coordinating an appointment with her visit. And that will be trickier than it sounds. She does three houses in a day, and so she can’t just trot over here whenever some vet decides they’ll see Ruby.

Ohhh well. Nothing I can do about it at this hour. Sooo…breakfast-time!

Why Do I Hate Arizona?

LOL! Truth to tell, I probably don’t. “I hate Arizona” is a jingle that intrudes into my dainty little mind any time anything here annoys me, inconveniences me, overcharges me, or makes me wish I were back in Northern California.

That’s a fair amount of jingling, to tell the truth. 😀 But the reality is…well…I don’t exactly HATE it. At least not most of it; not most of the time.

Let’s think about this…

What do I like about Arizona?

* Clear blue skies
* A swimming pool in every yard
* Warm winters
* Horses
* Two above-average universities: the University of Arizona and Arizona State University
* The Grand Canyon, and its hiking trails
* Sedona and its amazing scenery

What do I madly dislike about Arizona?

* Ubiquitous extreme right-wing politics
* Mediocre grocery stores
* Heat that’s enough to roast a pork loin
* Piss-poor public schooling
* Public transit that leaves a lot to be desired
* Phoenix
* Tucson
* Enough blacktop to coat half of Southern California…
* Too damn many people

This morning I really needed to take Ruby to the vet who practices about six or eight blocks down the road. But…

* I can’t take her on a bus.
* The pavement is WAY too hot for her feet to walk on.
* Basically it’s too hot for me to walk on, come to think of it.
* As we scribble, the ambient temperature outside is 104 degrees; headed to 107.
* I need some groceries, but what with Dear Son having purloined my car, I can’t get to the nearest market to buy those groceries. It’s just too hot to walk that far.

So, yeah. I hate Arizona. If I could get outta here, I would. And…well…come to think of it, I may.