Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Ah hah! First Thing to Go Right This Morning!

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LOL! Here we are at Funny about Money…After only three tries to get online. 😀 By 5:30 a.m., this morning had already revealed itself as the start of One Of Those Days. Ugh! Whatever you touch goes wrong. Touch it twice, and it goes wrong with a vengeance.

This morning will start with a major misadventure: I have to WALK to the grocery store, way to Hell Gone halfway to frikkin’ Yuma.

Why? Because my son has stolen my car. 

Why? Because my idiot cleaning lady convinced him I was passed out drunk at the dining-room table.

No kidding!

When she was here the other day, banging around from pillar to post, I was feeling very sick. The peripheral neuropathy was driving me nuts; I hadn’t been able to sleep all night; and I hurt from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

So while she was roaring around the house, I sat down to the dining room table to have a bite to eat with half a glass of white wine. That accomplished, I stayed sat, folded my arms on the tabletop, and laid my weary head down.

She, in all her wisdom, decided this indicated I was passed-out stinko drunk! 

So, the Soul of Concern, she whips out her phone, snaps a photo of me with my head laid down on the table next to a half-empty wine glass, and emails it to my son!

He freaks. Charges over here. Even though I’m clearly not plastered, he thinks I must be — how could a genius cleaning lady like Luz be wrong, eh?  So he decides to confiscate my car! 

No kidding!

It’s now parked at his place, too far away for me to walk, and impossible to retrieve anyway because he no doubt has it locked inside his garage.

So now, the only way I can get groceries is to HIKE to one of the grocery stores around here, dodging drunks and panhandlers every step of the way.

Hey! It’s good exercise: adds an extra mile or two to the mile-long daily doggy-walk. But how am I supposed to haul a week’s worth of groceries two miles through 100-degree heat?

In an old laundry cart, that’s how.

Well, it’s 6 a.m. The Sprouts doesn’t open until 7:00 a.m., but the far less desirable Albertson’s will be open now. Wunderground predicts a temp of 105 degrees today…so I’d better get going before the sun rises any further.

What the fu*k IS the matter with people?????

Dawn of Another Dreadful Day

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So, so, soooooo sick! Is this thing EVER gonna go away?

Just now, I’m about ready for me to go away. Spectacularly tired of stinging and burning and hurting and not being able to walk across the room without the hip shrieking (metaphorically, of course).

Dog is fed. It’s a gorgeous morning. Need — want — to take Ruby for a walk. But migawd! It hurts so much I can barely stumble around the house…much less hike two miles around the park and through Upper Richistan.

Or even one mile.

Gotta get that poor li’l dog walked. Can’t leave her snoozing under the toilet all day.

Learned why the ineffable Luz is a cleaning lady and not a nuclear physicist.

:-D
Get this:

Along about the middle or late morning, I’m sitting at the dining table, soooooo sick I can barely wriggle. EVERYTHING hurts: hands, feet, head, belly, teeth, gums….whatever: if it’s part of my body, it HURTS. The racket from the vacuum cleaner and the toilet scrubbing and the general cleaning-lady carrying-on trumps trying to sleep.

Exhausted, I fold my arms on the table top and lay my head down.

Now the brilliant Dr. Luz wanders into the dining room and sees me with my head and arms flopped down on the table. She whips out her camera, snaps a photo, and sends it off to my son!  With a message that I’m falling-down stinko DRUNK!

For.

The.

LOVE.

of.

God!

He comes flying over here in a freaking state. Apparently no brighter than Luz, he also decides I’m shit-faced drunk.

Understand: I haven’t even had half a glass of white wine, because I’m too, toooo sick to get around it. No kidding: I literally cannot drink a glass of wine with a little food: that’s how sick I am.

Like our honored Medical Cleaning Lady, he also concludes that I’m sh!t-faced.

An amazing fight ensues. Would’ve been more amazing if I’d had the strength to defend myself…but it was quite amazing enough.

He charges through the house, tossing everything in all the closets as he searches for Demon Wine. Finds one (count it: (1) bottle, which he steals.

Jayzuz!

I should can that stupid woman. But frankly, I’m too sick — way too sick — to clean the house myself, nor am I in any condition to conduct a search for a new cleaning lady.

Well. You may be sure that if and when I manage to get well enough to drag myself around the house, dear Luz will be seeking a new job.

What next, Lord?

Holy Sh!t….DUCK FOR COVER!

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KeeeeRAAP! Some ba*tard just shot at our cop helicopter!

The action took place a couple blocks to the north of the Funny Farm…maybe three. But definitely on our side of Main Drag North.

Call the dog — she’s loafing in the kitchen, and she sees no good reason to get up and leave her scrap-scavenging post.

Call the dog.

Call the dog.

Call the dog again.

At last the obedient beast decides to get up and roam over to see what I want. Who knows? Maybe the Human has food.

Coax her up the hallway and hit the tiles. 

Stay down until whatEVER-the-Hell is going on quits.

Cop Copter is hovering over our old house, the noise-collector a few houses in from Conduit of Blight Blvd. That’s about a block-and-a-half from where the Funny Farm stands.  We hunker down on the bedroom floor…and….

ohhhhhh shee-ut, here he is again, roaring over at roof-top height. 

WTF?

Stay hunkered.

At last the Copter swoops around and takes off into the north-easterly distance.

Lift the corgi onto the bed. Check the doors — for the third time! — to be sure everything is locked.

Climb onto the sack with the dog.

Holeeee krap, what a place!

A WTF Week…

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I’d say this is One of Those Days…except that doesn’t do the current three-ring circus justice. One of Those Weeks?  Lordie…just hope “week”is the right term…

Actually, it started out several weeks ago.

What IS the matter with me? No IQ, maybe? Presumably what IQ points I had have rolled out my ears and skittered away down the gutter.

The fun began when a friend — a guy I’ve known for years through a business group we both belong to, an apparently lovely man given to a kind demeanor and an intelligent air — asked to borrow my laptop computer. Thinking he’d return it in about a week, I said why sure. 

Don’t do that, folks.

😀
Not to say
😮

He made off with my computer and…ghosted into the distance, leaving nor hide, nor hair, nor email message.

Time passed.

After nary a satisfactory reply from my alleged “friend,” my son swaggered around a bit and finally got the computer back. Very fine, thank you Dear Son.

But…turn it on and come to find out IT’S BROKEN!

For the luvva gawd!

The perp is not responding to emails asking WTF happened to it. Surprise, eh?

We took it to my favorite computer fix-it and sales store. Their staff said they couldn’t fix it: beyond their skills.

So now M’jito hauls the thing to another store, where they tell him it needs to go back to the Apple store.

Ohhhh…kay….  He takes it to the Apple store in Ritzy-Titzyville, a spectacularly expensive shopping mall in Phoenix’s Biltmore district. They now have it, supposedly fixing it…and nor hide nor hair has been heard again. My guess is they can’t fix it and that’s why we’re not hearing from them — whaddaya bet?

My computer has now been gone for weeks, and we have no word as to if or when the Apple St0re will get it fixed. Now I’m sitting before my desktop Mac, perched in a hard wooden chair in front of a conference table converted into a desk.  And that pose HURTS.

Replacing the computer will cost about $2,000. I can’t afford that.

***

Okay…over in the next circus ring…

Months ago — many months ago, nigh unto a year or so — I was involved in a fender-bender. It was raining, dark, and in a bad part of town. The woman in front of me jammed on her brakes the instant a red light turned at the intersection. I jammed on my brakes…but my car skidded on the wet, oily pavement and rear-ended her car.

As is customary in those conditions, I got a ticket for causing a wrecky-poo. Hereabouts, it’s assumed that if you rear-end someone, you’re driving too close…and nevvermind about the slippery pavement.

Months pass fairly uneventfully.

Now I’m at MayoDoc’s office with my son, and he tells the doctor about this episode and that it was all my fault.

This is accepted as evidence that I’m non compos mentis and should not be driving at all. So she writes an order that the state must rescind my driver’s license!!!!!

So now, I cannot drive legally and my son has dutifully confiscated my car.

Phoenix is an L.A.-style city — vast, spread-out, and frantic. You can’t even get to the local grocery store without being able to drive, to say nothing of a doctor’s or a dentist’s office.

So this really puts me over the barrel.

Probably I can get around, to some degree, by hiring Uber cabs. But just imagine what that will cost!!!!

****

Fortunately, there’s an Albertson’s about five or six blocks to the south of the Funny Farm; a Sprouts right across an eight-lane thoroughfare and set of lightrail tracks, and a Fry’s supermarket a few blocks to the north.

Grand fun, walking to these establishments in 100-degree heat.

This morning I started out around dawn — opening time — to visit the Albertson’s and the Sprouts. Fortunately, I have a rolling cart, which will allow me to haul a week’s worth of groceries from these fine establishments to my house.

Unfortunately…the route between my house and those fine establishments is littered with stoned-outta-their-heads bums. A lightrail train comes up that main drag and drops these fine citizens off in our neighborhood, where they can panhandle and burgle to their crusty hearts’ content. This makes the trek from the Funny Farm to either of those stores…well…shall we say “less than pleasant.”

§

The journey to the Fry’s is not quite so…umh…daunting. You can reach that shopping center by a shorter route and then dart into a stretch along a sidewalk passing a number of small stores that are usually open. If anyone starts to pester, you can whip into one of the stores, and that invariably chases them off. But of course it means you have to hang around the store until they’re gone, and hope they’re not lurking down the way, waiting to snab you again.

Complicating that option: said Fry’s is an ethnic store, the neighborhood to the north of us being a barrio. The emphasis, then, is on Mexican food…which is really kinda cool. It would be a whole lot better if I knew anything about Mexican cooking.

My good Latina friend who used to live around the corner from the Funny Farm has moved away, settling in an upscale suburb. Actually, I once thought about buying a house there, but…well, it’s quite a distance from M’jito’s house, and the other folks that I used to know over there have died or moved away. So…that kind of obviates opportunities to learn la comida mexicana.

Speaking of the which, it’s almost noon. Already too hot to walk to the grocery store. But WTF…it’ll be even hotter in an hour or two, and I do need some chow items. And so…awaaayyyyy….

Stumbling toward Eternity

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Sooo very sick! Surely this can’t go on much longer. I’m ready to. go…but f’rgodsake, WHERE is the exit door?

Tried to make an appointment with the much missed Young Dr. Kildare. That didn’t work. First off, he’s moved his practice to Sun City, halfway on the other side of the globe. I’m not supposed to be driving at all these days (hah!). Fact is, even  though I’m cheating and praying not to get caught, it’s just too darn far to drive.

Then we have the fact that my mother died horribly of neglect and abuse out there. During the last months of her lifetime, medical “care” in Sun City left a whole lot to be desired (like, say…care). The very thought of seeing a doctor and trying to get care in Sun City makes me cringe.

It’s time to go. Wbere tbe heck IS that Exit door?

Chaos in Hevvin…

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Well… {ahem}…one wouldn’t exactly call Conduit of Blight Boulevard “Heaven.” But it’s not too bad, as Phoenix-area main drags go.

Apparently some new catastrophe has taken place, though, amid the fine rush-hour traffic. Sirens have been yowling up and down Blight Blvd for the past half-hour. Probably a moron drove or stepped out in front of a train.

Conduit of Blight is one of the main routes for the accursed light-rail road-blocks….uhm, “trains.” They get in the way of everything and slow traffic on the main drags inexcusably.

This being Arizona — Home of the Rabid Driver — morons dart around the things and out in front of them and…HOOOlleee mackerel! You wanna talk about traffic hazards? Egad!!

That’s why I won’t drive on 19th Avenue, Camelback, or Central Avenue: not  along any stretch where the accursed light-rail trains run. Those fine politically correct conveyances have turned all of those main drags into clogged messes.

This adds considerably to the congestion and the frustration factor. Basically, to keep from tearing out all your hair, you have to drive anywhere from half-a-mile to a full mile out of your way to avoid the tangles along CofB .

Hmmmm… Speaking the local road-morons…someone just cruised up the alley behind our backyard. Sounded like they stopped at the trash cans or nearby. So…did they dump their trash outside my gate (again)? Fill up the freshly emptied garbage can with a gigantic pile of debris (again)?

Can’t tell by peering over the wall.

And so…awayyyyyyy!

Nope! If they dumped it in any of the other trash cans, it wasn’t here.

And speaking of trash accumulation:

Arizonans are now required to replace their (perfectly valid…) driver’s licenses with a new annoyance called a “Real ID.”

Jayzus Aitch Keeeerist! If the card with  your photo on it, acquired by taking a test and standing in line a good 40 minutes, does not suffice to show you’re who you say you are, then NOW what is?

***

That notwithstanding…

It’s an incredibly BEAUTIFUL day. Clear, with a few fluffy, cottony clouds drifting overhead, and cool.

Yea verily, I’m even thinking of getting off my duff and trekking around the nearby North Mountain Park.

Maybe.

But maybe not. The last couple of times I went hiking up there alone…well… I swore never to do that again. At one point I had to dodge down into an arroyo, tuck my  bright blue backpack underneath me and lie down on it, and pray the jerk who started following me didn’t see where I went after I ran around a bend.

No kidding. The guy stood on the trail a good ten or fifteen minutes, scanning the landscape and altogether too obviously searching for me.

{sigh} This is why every woman needs a German shepherd…