Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Swampy-Dampy Day

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As dawn rises, we’re back from this morning’s doggy-walk: out the door, around the park, through Lower Richistan, back up into the ‘Hood, and straight to the kitchen.

It’s too hot and wet for coffee. So we’re imbibing iced tea with what passes for breakfast. Ruby is flopped on the floor in her favorite place: where the fan blows “cool” (i.e., moving) air across the Human and the Dawg.

What an icky morning! Sometimes I think I would brain my father for dragging me to Arizona, if he were still living to possess a brain. I swear…literally!

Because…I was all set to go to UC Berkeley when he announced that whoop-de-dooo! He and my mother were moving to Sun City, a middle-class retirement “community” (gimme a break!) on the western edge of Phoenix. No one under the age of 50 was allowed. If you had kids, they had to be adults living on their own, or sent off to college.

My father sent me off to college, all right. Because I was an ultra-honor student in Southern California, he contrived to get me into the University of Arizona a year early. So…whoop-de-doo! It was off to Tucson for me, at the age of 16.

Sheee-ut! I was stupid enough to be flattered at getting accepted to a state university when I was still a kid. But…also stupid enough have have no clue what that would mean for my career prospects. His little triumph canceled my plans to go to graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley: once and for all.

Yes, eventually I did get the Ph.D. No, I never did get a really good job.

So…yes, I hate Arizona. Having matured enough to understand what dropping out of high school a year early to enroll in a second-rate university would mean for my career aspirations, I now do indeed hate Arizona and very much wish I’d  been allowed to stay in school and go to UC Berkeley, as planned.

Everything I hoped for in a career went straight down the drain the minute I enrolled in the UofA. And though I managed to recover to some extent — thanks to marrying a high-earning lawyer — and though I did ultimately earn that Ph.D., none of it did me a damn bit of good, career-wise.

But who cares, anyway? She’s just a girl, after all…

I Want My Mother Back!

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Not only her, but also my great-grandmother and my elegantly intellectual great-aunt. (My grandmother was gone long before I came onto the scene.)

Oh, my! How my mother would have admired her bright and classy grandson today! She really would have thought he was The Business.

But alas, she smoked herself to death shortly before her grandson came on the scene.

When the word came down, in the 1950s, that smoking causes cancer, she decided the pronouncement was Big Brother trying to control our behavior. So she chose to ignore the science.

And, not surprisingly, she developed the disease shortly after my father retired and betook himself and her to Sun City, Arizona.

Not long after her cancer was discovered, my pregnancy was also discovered! No kidding: my first (and only) child.

She was so sick by the time she lay dying that she didn’t much care about anything or anyone around her. No doubt what she most wanted was an end to it all.

Shortly after M’jito was born, I took him out to my parents’ house in Sun City, there to introduce the grandparents to him.

When I carried him into their bedroom to show him off, she took one look at him, shrugged, and said,”Meh!”

She wasn’t even slightly interested in him.

So offended was I that I felt I never wanted to see her again. But…well…  That was neither feasible nor humane. My father needed my support, and on reflection I had to allow that she had no reason to get all excited about a child that she would never watch beyond infancy. Particularly given that she didn’t especially like children…

Eventually, then, I got over it. After all (as I came to realize)…

  • She would not live to see this child grow old enough to toddle around on two feet.
  • She didn’t especially care for children; she had me only because her grandmother insisted on it.
  • When she died, we figured, our little son would be well short of the age when he would remember her. And that proved to be true, in spades.
  • And I could not walk away from her as she lay dying.

Still. What would it have taken to have muttered, “That’s nice, dear. Congratulations…”

So. OK, I never got over it. And yeah: I want my mother back. The mother who was still reasonably healthy before she smoked herself into oblivion, the one who cared about everyone around her, the one who would have been delighted with her adorable little grandchild.

But no. ‘Twas not to be.

What a Place!

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Ugh! Arizona…WHAT a dump!!!

It’s 95 degrees in the deep shade of the back porch, under overcast skies. Wunderground predicts we’ll hit a crisp 100 degrees today, with 15% chance of precipitation. The skies are solidly gray, so…Funny’s Weather Service predicts one helluva lot better chance of rain than 15%.

I hate this place. (In case you hadn’t noticed…)

WhatEVER possessed my father to drag us to the middle of the baking Arizona desert after he retired?

Oh, yeah. I know: Cheap!

Compared to California, where we’d been living for the six years after we got back from Saudi Arabia, this place was a bargain on steroids.

* Housing: cheap
* Utilities: cheap
* Gasoline: cheap
* Doctors’ fees: cheap

On and on and on….

The fact that he cut off my opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley? Meh! Who cares? She’s just a girl. Why does she need a Ph.D. to cook on a stove and wash dishes in the kitchen sink?

Yeah, I did eventually finish the doctorate…from Arizona State University.

And yeah: it most certainly DOES matter where you got your advanced degree!

Except for the ego gratification, I might as well not have bothered.

No, a guy who never finished high school could not be expected to understand why his kid would want a Ph.D. and what advantages it would present to her. Still…how pig-headed can you get?

So, yeah…I hate Arizona. Wish I’d never been dragged here. Wish I’d had the initiative and the ambition to get myself out of here while I was an undergraduate, or, forgodsake, at least for graduate school.

But…by the time I hit the Ph.D. program, I was married to a well established lawyer here in Phoenix. He wasn’t going anywhere (nor should he have!), and neither was I. So…Okay: Ph.D. from Arizona State. Whoop. De. Doo.

What a place!

Swampy-Dampy Day!

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Yuch!!  Just back from this morning’s (soggy!) doggy walk. What a horrid morning! Gray, wet…yes, SO wet the air actually does feel soggy.

Feels like Saudi Arabia, by the shore of the Persian Gulf, where we used to live while my father worked for Aramco — the Arabian American Oil Company. HORRIBLE. One of the nastiest places to live that you can imagine.

Ruby is panting frantically as she lounges on the kitchen floor’s cool tile. I’m covered with sticky sweat…thirsty but too tired and sore to get up and lumber into the kitchen after a glass of water.

WhatEVER possessed my father to move us to this ungawdly place when he retired?

Oh, yah: I know. CHEAP.

Del Webb was practically giving away the houses in Sun City — certainly by comparison with California real estate. But Sun City’s BIG appeal to him, IMHO, was NO KIDS.

Truly: he abominated kids. He hated the sound of kids playing outside. And when he heard of a whole housing development where no kids were allowed, he thought he’d found Nirvana.

He made me drop out of high school a year early, so he could send me to the University of Arizona…thereby getting around Del Webb’s rule that no one under some extenuated age could live in Sun City. If your kid was away at college, you were allowed to move in…even if the brat was under 21.

So that fucked up my education. But why should he care? I was just a girl. What did I need a degree for, since all I was gonna do was take dictation and type? And raise kids, of course.

Y’know, if he’d waited just one more  year, I would have gotten into UC Berkeley, and there I could have landed a decent degree that would indeed have led to an interesting job or a first-rate graduate program. But nooooooo….we had to move to f*cking Sun City.

What a place!

At any rate, here we are, enjoying a classic Arizona late-summer day. Wet, soggy, dark with overcast…just gross. I hate Arizona (in case you hadn’t noticed…). And really…I will resent him for the rest of my life for f*cking up my educational plans (I was lined up for a Ph.D. from Berkeley or UCLA!) and dragging me out to the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

But…yeah. So what? I was just a girl….

I Want My Mother Back

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She was murdered, y’know. My mother was.

She was murdered by the tobacco bastards.

They got her hooked. And she smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked herself right into the grave.

So the evil greed-masters did her in.

Oh, well. We all have to die of something, eh?

She lived long enough to see her grandson. Briefly. My son was born while she was hammering at death’s door…there in her bed floating on drugs and soaking up pain. When I brought him to her, a newborn infant, and showed him to her as she lay on her deathbed, she took one brief look at him, shrugged, and said “Meh!”

Nope. She didn’t care that she had a grandson. She was too damn sick to care.

There ya go, folks! That’s what tobacco does for you. Makes you not care one thin damn about the people around you.

A lot has happened since that grim evening. My son is now a grown man with an excellent degree and a fine job. I’ve made myself unemployable by getting my own degree, a Ph.D. I’ve written books. We’ve traveled around the world. My son landed an excellent position in the insurance industry. Life has gone on.

I just wish her life had gone on, too…

Ohhhh well. You can’t have everything, eh?

So much evil in this world. So much of it manufactured for profit…

August 6 Grinds On…

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Egad! Just stumbled out back…glanced at the back-porch thermometer. A HUNDRED AND SEVEN DEGREES. Yeah, you saw that right: 107º… IN THE SHADE OF THE BACK PORCH ROOF!

Yep: 107 in the shade. 

Almost as balmy as lovely Saudi Arabia, whither my parents and I spent 10 years. Except it was damn humid there…I’ve seen rain start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Here, it really is “a dry heat.”

And the “dry heat” is significantly more tolerable than swamp conditions. Not anything that you’d like to frolic in…but at least it doesn’t suffocate you.

I see we’ve got a dead shrub out back. Looks like it’s not getting watered. Drag the hose over to it. Remember to ask the Yard Dudes to be sure the system reaches that part of the hedge. And have them take out the dead thing.

Yard Dude: there’s another of those fine jobs one is mighty glad not to have. Gerardo and the boys get started as dawn cracks: that’s so. But they’re sure not done before the heat comes up. I don’t see how they do it!!

We’re told we have a 15% chance of rain. Why do I doubt it? Maybe later tonight: like, well after dark. But not any time soon.

After dark…it’ll still be too hot for Ruby’s feet. So that’s another daily doggy-walk we’ll miss today. We did get out, as usual, along about dawn…even then, it was nigh unto too hot for her. I’m afraid this evening will be well beyond the pale for little bare doggy feet.

Yech!!  What a place!