Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Techno-skeptic: I could’ve predicted this…

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Friday: Dispatch to NextDoor readers…

Ohhhh the techno-life just gets better and better!

You may recall my whinging a few days ago about Cox’s announcement that it’s taking down the copper connection to our land-line telephones, and that if we want to continue to have a land-line-like set of phones (i.e., a phone in every room), we’ll have to get Cox’s digital phone service, which is connected through one’s computer via a second modem to clutter up your desk.

The Cox guy showed up: extremely nice man, seemed to be competent. Yes, he admitted: if the power goes down — no phone. If my computer crashes — no phone. If my computer’s modem crashes — no phone. If the extra annoying modem goes down — no phone.

Sooooo…now we have three ways from Sunday for your phone to die. And say what? you need to call 911? Well ..|.. very much!

Ohhhkayyy, well there doesn’t seem to be much choice here. I can buy an Ooma modem and pay a guy $90 or $180 to come over and help my untechie self connect it to my computer and attach my call-blocker to it. Or I can have Cox come over and install its wondrous modem for free. And continue to gouge me $35 a month for less-than-optimal phone service.

I decide to opt for Cox despite the rip-off, because it’s at least sort of a known quantity. The lash-up was installed Wednesday.

Two days into this Brave New World… A phone solicitor calls. I pick up the phone so I can cut off the call and capture the number in the call-blocker before the voicemail picks up. And what I hear when I pick up the phone is this LOUD racket that sounds like an unmuffled motorcycle engine accelerating: b-r-r-r-B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

I figure this is the robocaller SOBs doing a number on me. Hang up. Block the number. Pick up the phone and try to call another number, and when I do, I get the same racket. My phone has been taken over by a motorcycle on meth!

Now I walk across the street carrying one of the system’s handsets and call Cox from my neighbor’s phone. As usual, this entails a great hassle getting through the aggravating phone tree, but eventually I reach a very helpful tech guy.

He is beyond extremely nice and is anxious to help, but he has NEVER HEARD of what the phone is doing. But since my handset’s signal reaches all the way across the street and into my neighbor’s home, I dial up a phone number out of the device’s memory and get B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R…, which of course he can hear loud and clear. He tries to manipulate the modem from his end, but it’s not working.

I go back to my house and disconnect the call blocker, which is in-line with the modem. This does not help.

He arranges for a workman to show up here tomorrow morning — because after all what DOES the little woman have to do with her day than sit around waiting for yet another workman, eh?

Meanwhile, he suggests I try unplugging the modem, letting it set for 20 or 30 minutes, and then replugging and testing. This I do, with baleful results.

The phones are now completely nonfunctional. You can sometimes(!) get a dial tone and if you do, you can dial out, but within 30 seconds the meth-headed motorcycle starts back up again.

Okay, I’m willing to allow that maybe there’s something wrong with my phones. But I doubt it. LOL! Guess I should be glad this little fiasco hasn’t taken my computers down. Yet…

* * *
Comes the Dawn…
* * *

So it is now “tomorrow”: Saturday.

Right about as scheduled, a new Cox guy shows up. Actually, this one is not “new” but grizzled and road-worn. This is a fellow who has had long experience. Let us, I reflect, hope that most of his experience has to do with the electronics of telephone systems.

The guy is flummoxed by the motorcycle on meth serenade: admits he’s never heard anything like it. He tests every piece of equipment on the line. He discovers an outmoded DSL connector, which he tosses. So far: nothing works. What, he asks, is really connected to this line, amongst the 6 handsets I say I have online???

Finally we figured out that the problem is the old Panasonic base, which for reasons unknown continued to operate after I plugged in then five-handset Uniden base with which I intended to replace it. Long as it was working, I just left it sitting there, giving me a 6th phone. Very convenient.

Upon examination, we realized the reason it was working was that it wasn’t really talking to the Uniden. It was plugged into the copper wiring, and so was ringing on its own: not as a de-facto sixth handset, but as an entirely separate unit. That thing, he theorized, could be causing a short.

Interestingly, the copper wiring has been disconnected and none of the outlets work anymore. Yet…wait…that phone does have a dial tone. Wot the hell?! We unplug it, and damned it that doesn’t work!

So now the phone system is working. I’m down one handset in a location close to the floor, where I might reach it if I fall and hurt myself. Fortunately, one of the Uniden handsets was in a location where I rarely go, and so I just moved it into the family room, where…yea verily, I can crawl to it if I fall in the kitchen, dining room, or family room. I hope.

Once again, then, all is well in the Brave New World. For the nonce…

Life’s Daily Vicissitudes vs. Blood Pressure

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Or, we could say, vicissitudes vs. your health…

Okay, so here’s what happened:

1) A friend noticed the post in which I whinged at great length about Cardiodoc and the crazy blood-pressure reading in his office taken, after a nightmare drive down there, by a clerk who didn’t know what she was doing and…oh, hell, on and on and freaking on. She remarked that stress indeed does jack up your blood pressure, and that you can often bring the numbers down by deep-breathing for a few minutes before allowing yourself to be subjected to the test. If you’ve ever taken LaMaze or yoga or voice classes, you know how to do this breathing technique.

2) I think…oh, yeah? That sounds like woo-woo. A brief Google search shows it is not woo-woo and that indeed, a study has been done that shows a five- to ten-minute period of controlled breathing indeed can lower blood pressure numbers. Yea verily, no less an authority than Harvard University reports the results of said study. Indeed, there’s a gadget — which the Mayo approves(!) — that can help with this scheme. Alternatively, silently repeating a mantra about 100 to 150 times will also do the trick. One such mantra is the Ave Maria, in Latin (not the English version), which I can rattle off as easily as my usual mantra, “Quit that damn barking!”

3) Izzat so? think I. Okay, let’s test that little fucker. Why ohhhh why do I not believe it? So along about 5:30 in the afternoon, I take the usual series of three readings, one after another, as instructed by the cardiodocs who have harassed…uhm, seen me. Then I try a brief period, about three to five minutes, of deep breathing, the kind I was taught to do in LaMaze classes and then later by a yoga instructor. And… God help us, here are the results:

Got that? Systolic pressure — the one that really counts — dropped from 136 (on the high side of “moderately elevated”) to 129 (on the low side of “moderately elevated”) after just a few minutes of relaxation exercise. That’s seven points. Diastolic, interestingly, rose a point…

4) I think that is batshit crazy and prepare to disregard it. But still: I’m kinda impressed.

5) A night goes by and the next morning SDXB shows up at the door with NG (New Girlfriend). This alone is enough to raise my blood pressure, but, as usual, that’s another story. We go out and walk for an hour or so behind North Mountain. Then we go to a restaurant, where I have a cup of iced tea and they reveal their right-wing tendencies. Which is OK, but…blood-pressure enhancing. On the way, we have been discussing the craziness that is Phoenix-area traffic…and…just as we’re all agreeing that given our choice we would stay off the roads here, the sounds of brakes and a CRASH erupt behind us. The woman behind us has been rear-ended by the chucklehead behind her. By the grace of God, she was far enough behind us to miss rear-ending SDXB’s car. But it was a close call, and it was evident that her passenger was injured. In the Suspicions Confirmed Department: charming.

6) So I am stressed when I get home. Also very hungry. I fix a fairly hefty meal of a couple lamb chops, grilled potatoes, tomatoes, and spinach braised in butter with almonds and pine nuts. And I have two glasses of wine and a fistful of chocolate chips. (Bad!) Then I start to tear around to pick up the backyard, the kitchen, and the house, test the pool, cope with barking dogs, dodge the daily cop helicopter buzz-over, pay the bills and…and…

7) As all this controlled chaos is going on, I think “What would happen if I tried the deep-breathing thing with the BP monitor, right now in the middle of all this hectic racing around?

Hmmm…. As noted in this spreadsheet, I did not wait several minutes to “rest” before running the BP monitor. Between the first and second test, I did about three or four minutes of deep breathing. The second test, interestingly, registered a 10-point drop in systolic pressure; five points for diastolic. Trying again without the fancy breathing maneuver got a rise in PB of four points. That notwithstanding, 125 is within the permissible range for an old bat like me.

Average BPs were 132/80.8 last night and 125.7/81 this afternoon. Last night: after sitting quietly before testing, and including one (1) test with deep breathing. This afternoon: no rest before the first measure but with deep-breathing before the first and second measures; with no deep breathing between the second and third measures.

Normally, if I did not sit and rest before the first measure, my blood pressure would be several points higher. I simply hate, loathe, and despise the blood-pressure test — not because it’s uncomfortable especially, but because it’s a damned time-suck and because it makes me nervous. I just really, really do not enjoy this procedure, whether done at home or in a doctor’s office. It stresses me out every time, and I suspect that alone elevates my blood pressure.

So what is implied here is that deep breathing before the first effort this afternoon, done — against all advice — directly after eating a large meal, after drinking alcohol, and after hassling around physically, probably pushed the first measure down significantly, to 131/80. Since my average blood pressure readings over the entire month of December was 133/83, always taken on an empty stomach and after resting, that is very probably a nontrivial difference. Certainly 121/75 is nontrivial.

What if my belly were not stuffed and I had not just scarfed down two glasses of wine and I had been sitting quietly as usual and then had tried the LaMaze/yoga/chanteuse breathing maneuver?  Welp, we’ll have to wait awhile for that part of the experiment. But…it’s interesting, isn’t it?

By the time I got to Cardiodoc’s office the other day, I was in a rage. I’d encountered two truly crazed drivers, one of whom tried to get me to break the law before doing so himself. I was trying to balance a computer and a blood-pressure machine in my arms when the receptionist shoved a bureaucratic form in my face to fill out — one that I’ve filled out three times already, identically every time — and then demanded that I dig out a bunch of Medicare and insurance cards that she also had photocopied three or four times already in the past and that had not changed. Before I could fill out even half a page of the damned form I was called into the back office, where an apparently oblivious underling took my blood pressure incorrectly — clearly had no training (or if she did, it hadn’t registered in her pea brain…).

So, if stress and annoyance affect your blood pressure — and they most certainly do — then it was not surprising the figures elicited at Cardiodoc’s office were outrageously high.

Do they justify putting me on a medication that will make me sick? Possibly, if the numbers were consistent. But they’re not.

One of Those High Blood-Pressure Days

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Hugely one of those days, for Godsake.

This morning I had what I expected to be my LAST regular appointment with CardioDoc. The blood pressure has been well in the normal zone most of the time, except for a few moments of rage or drunkenness, despite the fact that I’ve gained 12 pounds since going off the Great Diet Plan and I only get off my duff when forced to it. Overall average for December was 132/83, despite several spikes attributable to a) dental pain and b) episodic stress.

Like, for example, today’s episodic stress.

You know how much I love sharing the roads with my fellow homicidal drivers. This morning, as per usual, all my pet morons sensed that I was climbing into my car and so leapt into theirs and swarmed onto the roads.

Dear God, where do You find these people?????

Notable winners:

Runner-up: The guy who decided to dawdle down Indian School Road. Traffic is moving OK, but this one thinks 35 mph (5 mph under the limit) is too fast and he’d better hold up the parade. He’s in the center lane. We come to the signal at Central. The light turns green and he…sits there. That might seem reasonable because the four or five cars ahead of him are also very slow off the mark: we all just sit there. I notice the adjacent traffic lane is empty, so glide into that…and find space for three or four cars between him and the car ahead of him, who is not moving, either. He has stopped for the light at least three car-lengths behind the guy ahead of him.

Grand Prize: Now I’m headed south and need to turn left off Seventh Street. The light is green and the northbound lanes are clear except for ONE guy, who, instead of moving through, STOPS in the fast, left-most traffic lane. I’m in the southbound left-turn lane waiting for him to get the fuck out of the way so I can make my turn. He stands there, in the traffic lane, and starts FLASHING HIS LIGHTS AT ME.

I think…Whaaa? Am I in the wrong lane? Am I standing in the oncoming lane??? Noooo. Close inspection reveals that I am indeed in the left-turn lane and he is not: the northbound left-turn lane is vacant, and he is in the fast northbound traffic lane. Sitting there. Flashing his lights.

What the FUCK? Finally the idiot swerves left in front of me, across four southbound lanes. Apparently he decided belatedly that he needed to turn west there, after he’d missed his chance to go into the left-turn lane; so, of course, instead of proceeding north a block where he could have turned left into the neighborhood and made his way right back to where he was supposed to be going, he went wackshit.

Meanwhile, in the Where’s Yore Sign competition, I make a wrong turn. Actually I make two wrong turns: one is just a normal wrong turn that sends me in the wrong direction; the other is a stupid decision. Second “wrong turn” is an effort to turn left onto 7th Street off the side street where I now find myself….you’d think I’d know better by now, wouldn’t you? Eventually I had to make an Arizona Turn: this maneuver involves turning right, then left, then right again so as to turn left across or onto a major thoroughfare. Or even a minor thoroughfare.

These exercises slow me down considerably, but I reach CardioDoc’s office in plenty of time. I’m clenching my teeth by the time I pull into his office.

My blood pressure is always higher than usual in any doctor’s office, so much do I love dealing with those places. Truly, I do hate doctors’ offices and hospitals as much as I hate and fear anything. But we’ve found that if I’m allowed to sit quietly in his waiting room focusing on something that doesn’t annoy me and doesn’t scare me, by the time I get in to see him and his army of sidekicks, the numbers are in the normal range. So yes, I’ve brought my computer so as to have something to amuse myself.

But no. First thing they do is shove a two-page form in my face: fill this out AGAIN — same form I’ve filled out four or five times. Then they demand insurance cards: I say nothing has changed. They say insurance companies require that they scan the cards once a year. I say look, give me an e-mail address and I’ll scan them and send you a PDF. She says she can’t do that. I’m irked. Go off to find some place to sit down and jump through these aggravating hoops. Again.

Before I can even fill in half of page 1, they’re calling me back there!

They do an EKG, requiring me to pull off my shirt in front of a man (yes, and a woman) and expose my exquisite scars. Then his tech takes my blood pressure. She does it wrong, allowing my arm to fall down by my side. This will jack up the blood pressure reading, even if you have, as advised, sat quietly for half an hour without any distraction or annoyance. Which (this latter) was decidedly not the case. I say to her, why don’t doctor’s offices follow the instructions put out by the makers of these devices and by the Mayo Clinic?

Huh?

You know, you’re supposed to have the person’s arm at about the level of the heart.

Okay, let’s try again.

Now she holds my arm at shoulder-joint height! Shit…I give up.

The doc surfaces forthwith. Of course, the result of this test is sky-high, after a half-hour on the road and the bullshit in the clinic and now this ignoramus. I’ve enjoyed a good 40 minutes of aggravation and hassle and haven’t even had a chance to take a deep breath.

He now decides he should put me on blood pressure medication. This is something to which I highly object and that I suspect can be avoided. I point out that my regular BP is not that high. Well, says he, nevertheless, better a few side effects (like swollen ankles and vertigo…) than a stroke.

Welp, I do not think I am in immediate danger of a stroke, although it must be admitted that less risk would apply if I never had to drive another frikkin automobile as long as I live. Nor am I about to put myself on a possibly unneeded drug after the circus I’ve just been through.

On the way home, I decide I will pick up the medication at the Walgreen’s; then set it on the kitchen counter for a week. During that time I will a) get back to exercising every day (have let that lapse with a vengeance!); stay completely off the sauce; and start working on shedding the ten pounds that I could do without.

When I point out to him that I drink a fair amount, for a little old lady, he says you can drink two glasses a day without affecting your blood pressure.

Oh yeah? That’s news to me. Apparently to the American Heart Association, too, which says women should drink no more than one (very small!) glass of wine a day. SDXB’s docs told him to stop drinking altogether, and the Mayo seems to favor that strategy, too.

I figure a week of brisk daily exercise — of better quality than being dragged forward by Ruby and backward by Cassie around a mile-long trace through Richistan — will start to have an effect, if an effect is to be had. Plus if I quit drinking and lay off the pasta and the sweets, in a week I’ll drop a pound or two, no problem.

Let us, I think, make a baseline measure after a half-hour or forty-five minutes of quiet this afternoon, and then compare it with a new set of measures after a week of this mild proposed routine. If there’s no change, then I’ll start swallowing pills. But if it’s back down into the normal range, I’ll call the Mayo itself and arrange an appointment to discuss the issue.

Right. A half-hour or forty-five minutes of quiet: NOT so much.

Run by the Walgreen’s to pick up the pills. Line is out the door. I stand and stand and stand and stand watching nothing happen…and finally think, oh screw it! This can wait for a day or for the proposed week.

Get home: Decide to make my first dog-free speed-walk of the day right now, hoping to run off some of the frustration and residual jaw-clenching stress. Fly around the park — that’s a mile and a half. When I get back, the phone is jangling with a recorded message to come pick up the effin’ pills. But meanwhile a lot of other Hell has broken loose. Gerardo, who was supposed to come over tomorrow to do a messy and much-needed job in back, has left word on the machine saying he wants to come today and will  be here around 2 p.m.  It is now after 1:00.

I need to do a bunch of stuff out back before they can get to the jungle vines that need to be hacked back. Race out there to do that; find some tarps to help keep the worst of the mess down. Haul around and thrash around.

SDXB gets on the phone and announces he wants to come over not on Thursday but on Friday, a typical swivel-hipped move. What is it about men — TWO of them in one day! — that they think women have nothing to do but sit around waiting with bated breath for them to show up? Hassle with the junk in back, hassle with an Excel spreadsheet, hear Gerardo’s truck pull up in front.

By the time he and his guys leave, it’s after 3 p.m. and I’ve been charging around since 10:30 in the morning.

Needless to say, I have not spent five minutes seated in a straight chair with my feet flat on the floor, trying to relax. 😀

Days of Our Lives, Dogs of Our Lives

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Cassie the Corgi is beginning to look a little grizzled. So it crossed my mind to wonder…how old is she?

Well, she was three years old when I nabbed her from the dog pound. I got her in June of 2008. So that makes her, God help us, about 12 years old!

Anna the GerShep was 12 — just — when she shuffled off this mortal coil. On the other hand, everything that could go wrong with a German shepherd went wrong with Anna. Cassie, on the other other hand, has been bizarrely healthy. Literally, between the time I got her and the recent dental abscess surgery, she almost never saw a vet. Not for any ailment whatsoever, that’s for sure.

She still marches right along on a doggy walk — a full mile is no problem, as long as the weather is cool. (She wilts, and always has wilted, in the heat.)

Still. Twelve years old. In doggy years, this critter is as old as I am. And, subjectively speaking, that is damn old!

She probably won’t live more than another two or three years.

Ruby, on the other hand, is only three years old, in the prime of her doggy life.

So…when, not if, Cassie shuffles off this mortal coil…then what?

At that doleful time, I think, there will be two choices:

  • Do nothing and let Ruby become the queen of the roost
  • Get another dog

Why would I get another dog? Because I don’t think these little corgis are much protection. All they can do for you, really, is make noise when someone comes around. And both of them make one hell of a lot of noise.

I’ve had dogs all my adult life. Most of them have been protection dogs — sometimes for good reason.

And despite the endless stream of vet bills…damn, I miss that German shepherd!

Plus the “good reason” is back. Imagine if Anna had been here when Matthew the Garage Invader had jumped over the back wall into the backyard! If he’d survived (highly questionable), he would have been mightily glad to be delivered into the hands of the cops who beat the bedoodles out of him. An angry cop is as nothing compared to an angry German shepherd. I’ve now seen both and will take the German shepherd, thank you, to hold vigil over my junkyard.

Thanks to the city’s misguided light-rail project, our neighborhood has become infested with drug-addicted transients. And thanks to an efflorescence of roof rats, the hood is also overrun with coyotes. Whereas a German shepherd or the late great greyhound could hold its own against a coyote (a creature that can ghost over a 6-foot wall with nooo problem), a 22-pound corgi hasn’t a chance.

Whatever occupies that backyard next needs to be something that can stand its ground against a coyote as well as a prowler. Both of which we have a-plenty these days.

But…

The next dog who comes to live with me, if another one does, presumably will be inherited by my son.

He is not thrilled by small dogs. He was willing to take the corgis when I was feeling in extremis, but he made it clear these were not to be room-mates for anyone’s life: mine, his, or theirs. He prefers large dogs. And of the larger varieties of dog, he prefers retrievers.

My experience of retrievers has been, pretty much uniformly, that they are exceptionally stupid. Not as stupid as some domestic canids, but not so bright that they do well at interpreting human behavior. And because so many humans admire retrievers, all but the most obscure varieties have been ruined by overbreeding.

Charley the Golden Retriever is really sweet, but he sure doesn’t have the sharp edge that a German shepherd has. And the car phobia: what to make of that? Really, there’s nothing you can make of it other than that he suffers from a neurosis induced by irresponsible breeding practices.

Much like, say the German shepherd.

Day from Hell: Part II

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Ha haaaaa! It didn’t stop after I sat down for awhile and tried to unwind.

So come eventide, it was dinnertime for the dogs. Cassie goes in a back bedroom to dine, so that Ruby can’t shove her aside and grab her Molecules.

Dogs must have Molecules: every single last flavor molecule left on a dog dish or that might have slopped onto the floor after all the food is vacuumed into the dog.

And this is where the competition between Ruby and Cassie comes in: Flavor Molecule Wars. To keep them from tearing each other apart, I’ve taken to feeding them on opposite sides of a closed door. Since it’s now a bit too cold to put Ruby on the back porch, Ruby gets the kitchen and Cassie gets the bedroom.

While the royalty is dining, I take it into my feeble brain to use the blender in a little household hack: I wish to thin some aging hair conditioner with water so as to use it as a laundry softener — a function the stuff performs admirably.

Haul the blender jar out of its kitchen cabinet, go to set it on the countertop, and WOOP! It slips out of my hand, crashes to the floor, EXPLODES all over the kitchen. Glass flies everywhere, including into the dog’s food dish.

Ruby is terrorized. BUT…ah yes, but Ruby is a corgi. Nothing deters a corgi from eating. She’s shivering in fear, but she’s still trying to scarf down her food, which by now is glittering with sharp pieces of glass.

Snatch her up and carry her away from the chow — I hope before she swallows any glass. We’ll know by morning, I expect. Lock the shaken dog into a different bedroom; then run back there with a fresh plate of food, which she instantly attacks.

It’s been a long time, I reflect while vacuuming up glass, since I’ve broken glass all over the floor like this. Occasionally a wine glass will break in the dishwasher or sink, but dropped jars have become a thing of the past.

SDXB used to drop glasses and jars all the time. This, we thought, was because he had a depth perception problem: it was hard for him to tell exactly how far item X was from counter Y or faucet Z, and so glasses were constantly getting busted. For that reason, I bought a set of drinking glasses in the heavy Mexican bottle-glass tradition. These things are, for all practical purposes, unbreakable — years later, the entire set still resides in the kitchen cabinet. Two prior sets of less rustic-looking glassware were demolished within months.

Luckily, speaking of demolition, I happen to have not one but two extra blender jars. So despite the annoyance, the hassle, and the time suck, not all was lost.

What. A. Day!!!

Day from Hell: Halfway Point…

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Have you ever noticed that when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong?

It started yesterday, really: Arriving at the Mayo along about 2:00 p.m. for a CAT scan, I’m informed that the imaging machine has been up and down a couple of times during the day, so they’re running a little late.

How much “little late”?

Ahem…well, about three hours.

Holy fuck. It’s an hour’s drive, one way, out there: two hours through homicidal traffic, round trip. I save an hour of misery by depositing two hours in the Mayo’s misery machine.

Still, I do have other things to do with my time than twiddling my thumbs in a waiting room.

“Look,” say I. “I am not in pain and whatever ails me isn’t about to kill me. Why don’t we reschedule, and then you can move everyone who’s sitting out there looking patient/cranky/miserable up 15 or 20 minutes.”

“Oh, no no. It’s no problem. They’ve been catching up!”

Uh huh. READ “We are check-in staff, not scheduling staff.” Also known as “not my job.”

So I take a seat and wait for an hour or more. Luckily, I brought a yellow pad with which to doodle. I make some notes on the direction in which I intend to take the current mini-project.

Some people waiting there are clearly very sick (that, after all, is why you pay extra to go to the Mayo). I remain convinced that they should get priority, since they should not have to sit around till the cows come home to get attention.

An hour later, two of us get called in to a pre-examination waiting room. She’s one of the folks who is obviously, visibly, very ill. Very sweet, too. I learn, as she speaks through a paper face mask clearly intended to protect her from the contagion of her fellow waiting-room denizens, that she’s from Seattle and she has a husband who has manfully stood with her through a long and spectacularly difficult illness: he “retired” from his job to take care of her. This couple is decidedly not at retirement age. Another is a guy who is less visibly in pain, a sufferer of chronic kidney problems. He does not complain, but what he describes is something that has to be fairly excruciating. He is a Republican, but one with common sense. We get on well and if we were not at the Mayo Clinic would no doubt be solving the nation’s problems over several beers.

Finally I escape: yes, three hours late. Trudge across the Valley through rush-hour traffic (why do they call sitting in miles-long lines of cars a “rush”????). Bolt down a few bites of food, feed the dogs, and fly out the door to choir…for which I am totally not prepared.

BUT… minutes before I must race out, an email comes in from M’hijito. He has put his back out, big-time, and is beside himself a) with pain and b) with frustration that this comes just when he has arranged to take two days off work to enjoy life. Do I still have any of the droggas that I obtained during the Year of the Surgeries?

Well. Yes, I do. What he doesn’t know is that I have stashed them (where he cannot find them and take them away from me) to use as the key to my Final Exit, whenever it may be needed. Which could be…oh, very possibly right now, depending on the results from this CAT scan.

Hm.

I also have certain other chemicals obtained in states where they can be purchased legally.

A first-aid kid assembled, I fly down to his house and find him…not there.

Yeah. So…where the f*** is he? I do not know. The house looks like…well, a bachelor pad. I leave the scene to your imagination, which will have to be fairly vivid to be up for the job. So I deposit the medicaments on the kitchen counter, find a piece of paper and (miraculously!) a pen, and drop a note to him in the middle of the living room floor directing him to the source of first aid. Then fly to choir, worrying that he may be at some “urgent” care center.

Later I learn he’s gone to a movie because, says he, he feels better sitting than laying down or standing up. Read “I do not want you to know about the girl I’m with.” Okay.

Moving on…

The light dawns this morning. If anything it is even murkier than it was yesterday. Hoooollleeee sh!t.

Roll out of the sack around 7 a.m., which is about when it gets light at this time of year.

Go to e-mail to check on the Son’s condition. No clue about that…but lo! Here’s an email from a client in Singapore demanding that I produce an estimate on a project we’ve discussed in passing: by 9:00 a.m. September 22, Singapore time.

By now it’s 10:30 p.m. Singapore time, December 21.

Estimate? On what? To my knowledge, I have not even seen his current project. I search incoming and sent e-mail. On the third go-round, I realize his co-author is another of my clients, and this individual has indeed sent me the article and its associated correspondence… As attachments to an e-mail that is a reply to an e-mail from me (itself a reply) that already contained an attachment. In other words, his attachment is in a message that already contained attachments.

WTF?

I download these and find it is a large project.

It’s 9:00 before I get it figured out and calculate the costs plus the PayPal gouges and prepare a formal estimate that they can present to their institution.

BUT…I was supposed to have my car at Chuck the Wonder-Mechanic’s place at 9:00 a.m.

And I’ve forgotten to feed the dogs. Throw some food down and fly into the back of the house to wash the face,. brush the teeth, and and toss on some marginally presentable clothes. Haven’t had a chance to bolt down breakfast.

Fly back into the kitchen, pour some hot water over some coffee grounds in a French Press, slice a few bits of cheese to munch in transit. Step on a dog dish I’ve left in the middle of the kitchen floor. Twist my ankle, bruise my instep royally, but amazingly enough, fail to break the dish.

Swear like a sailor — a veteran sailor, nay, a pirate. The back door is open. The sweet little prissy little mother now living in Sally’s house hears this imprecation and exclaims in horror. F*** you, you twit, I think while limping back to the office to retrieve the car keys and the credit cards.

Along about 9:10, I leave the house, computer in tow — I hope to get some work done while sitting in Chuck’s waiting room, even though he doesn’t provide an Internet connection for the hoi or the polloi. Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner is already resident in the car, having broken down yesterday: the plan was to get him fixed at Leslie’s on the way home.

Turning east into the glaring sun, I cannot find my sunglasses. I search as best as I can while driving, and cannot find them. Sh!t…what could have happened to them? It’s not something I would’ve taken into the house…but failing to find them after much groping around, I figure that has to be what happened. Either that or the damn things fell out of the car in some parking lot.

Headed out of the neighborhood… I follow a route of back streets in order to avoid the spine-wrenching speed bumps and the tooth-grinding roundabouts that decorate the most direct feeder streets. At the corner of Neighborhood Lane North-South and Main Feeder Street East-West, I spot a cop car, lights flashing. Figure one of the locals has driven out in front of one of the crazy fools who speed across Main Feeder Street E-W, so slow down for what I expect to find is a fine wrecky-poo.

Nope. No wreck. Instead, it’s a cop and a civilian car and uniformed cops walking around. And there’s the resident of the rental house on the corner, out in her front yard in her bathrobe (it is a chilly morning), looking exceptionally unhappy.

Mm-hmmm. A Police Situation.

Over the past week or so, neighbors on the Nextdoor social network have reported several incidents where creeps sorry, strangers have shown up at the front door, knocked or rung the doorbell, and when confronted with the occupant, identified themselves in various transparently spurious ways. Painfully clear that these people are looking for opportunities to burgle. So I’m thinking that’s probably what happened here. Either that or one of the spouses took it upon him/herself to wallop the other one. Who knows?

Since I’m running so late, I’ve missed the worst of the rush hour and it takes only about half the expected time to arrive at Chuck’s. Of course, because now I am late, I’m told to get in line…meaning a one- to two-hour wait. That’s OK. Car mechanics are, by and large, convenable company.

Ensconced in Chuck’s …uhm…waiting room after having sponged another half-cup of coffee from the boys, I examine the bruised foot. Hurts, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as expected.

Turn on the computer and consider what to do. Before leaving, I’d typed the notes I’d made at the Mayo yesterday into the work in progress; hit “save,” or so I thought. But don’t feel very creative and am worried about the Chinese math papers. So open the response to the reviewers and start to work on it in a desultory way.

Start to write a comment to Paragraph 2 when…ker-blankoooooh!!!! The file goes completely white and…yes…fucking Wyrd CRASHES, taking down the other two files that were open.

It is, as it develops, a major crash.

Manage to recover the program, but it takes another hour to recover the crashed goddamn files. The one I’d added data to and had saved seemed to have lost data. It “recovered” in several iterations, no two of which were identical — and all free of the most recently added passage. After much despair, I finally found — as by a fluke — a version that contained the data I’d entered at 7 a.m., suggesting it probably had retained the content I had entered earlier yesterday.

The Chinglish response to peer reviewers…not so much.

Fortunately, I’d only sifted through a couple of paragraphs of that thing. But every sentence that you have to do twice is a sentence that costs you money.

Chuck arrives, himself running late because his wife, who is very sick indeed, is having an exceptionally bad morning. {sigh}

Chuck and Mrs. Chuck are one of those fairy-tale couples who still, 50 years later, are still deeply, passionately in love. And when you hear Chuck describe their travails, you know that watching her suffer (unto what, at great length, will be her death) is even more painful to him than it is to her. You wish there was something that could be done, but you know there is not.

Selfishly enough, this does not help your outlook.

The men finish with the car. I search for my expensive prescription sunglasses one more time, before setting out on the roads again. No, I do not find them.

Northbound, the road is under construction (is there any street in Lovely Uptown Phoenix that is not torn up?). Finally make it to the Leslie’s pool store. Search for the expensive prescription sunglasses again. No, I do not find them.

Schlep Harvey in to be fixed. Find another piece of the disintegrating pool brush in his innards. Discuss cartridge filters with the beloved Leslie’s guy. While we’re chatting, he spots a shoplifter exiting.

This is so commonplace he doesn’t even rise to the bait. {sigh}

I do not mention to him that I’ve ordered a new cartridge filter from his competition, Swimming Pool Service and Repair (because they do not gouge me for a “trip charge,” or at least they are not forthcoming enough to admit that’s what they’re doing). Reflect on how extremely annoyed I am that a) they’re ripping me off for $1,250 for the privilege and b) Leslie’s is only charging $799 for such a filter.

Leslie’s, of course, is not advertising the installation charge, and so I feel pretty confident that the bottom line would be about the same. Still, I’m irked.

Drag the repaired Harvey out to the car, feeling happy not to be panhandled on the way. Search for the sunglasses again, thinking maybe they fell under the seats and got stuck in the exceptionally annoying narrow crevasse between the Venza’s seats and its exceptionally annoying credenza lash-up between the seats.

Back in the ‘hood, I head up Neighborhood Lane NS, retracing my back-roads route toward the house. Naturally I get behind a U.S. Postal Service truck!

Understand: the mail isn’t delivered in our parts until after 5:00 p.m. WTF is this guy doing here at this time of day? There’s not enough room to get around him, so I have to make a U-turn (a fairly elaborate maneuver on a narrow street) and go back down to an east-west neighborhood lane, make my way to Feeder Street NS, and dodge fellow nut-cases and confused workmen to get back to the Funny Farm.

It’s almost noon by the time I get home. All I’ve had for breakfast is a slice of cheese, one decent cup of coffee, and a great deal of caffeinated swill.

Fly into the house, turn on the computer. Find response to early-morning worried e-mail from M’hijito. The high-test addictive drug I delivered scares the bedoodles out of him. He declines to swallow it. I suggest he cut a pill in two or that he try the marginally legal alternative also delivered to his precincts last night. And I cannot figure out how to demand that he return the H-T AD without revealing that I want it for suicidal purposes, having determined not to go through a helluva lot more Healthcare Bullshit in the future. Some things, you simply cannot explain to anyone under the age of about 65 or 70. Especially if they’re your kid.

Drag the computer and Harvey out of the car, let the dogs into the backyard, retrieve two pieces of leftover pizza from the fridge and set them into the toaster oven to warm. Pour a glass of wine.

On impulse, search the car again. This time I finally find my spectacularly overpriced shades: under the choir binder in the passenger seat…where I’ve already searched twice, fruitlessly. The only explanation is that the damn things dematerialized the first two times I searched for them.

{sigh}

So it goes. A long day consisting of annoyance after frustration after socially delicate predicament after grief after annoyance.