Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

No Longer Even Bother….

by

BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

CALL FROM “V….[ETC ETC ETC]

Oh, hey!!!  Turns OUT

it’s from my pal VickyC!  She wants to go out for brunch…lunch…whatever it is!

Yahoo! Now I have less than an hour to get off my duff, wash up, and get dressed.

The heck with that noise: I’m drinkin’ the rest of this coffee, come what may! 😀  😀  😀

And how convenient: I need a new lawyer, my beloved guy having retired. And she DOES know a good one, I believe. I hope…she was hiring my guy, but I think she needed someone who had a slightly different specialty.

Well! We shall see in an hour or so.

Must review the piles of legalistic paper and be sure my will and other paperwork remain set up to cover my son, with the least possible degree of hassle, for when I croak over.

*****

Aaahhhhh SHEEE-UT! 

No, we won’t see any such thing. Turns out my son has made a goddamn appointment with the goddamn Mayo Clinic…on SUNDAY MORNING!!!!!!!

This is not the first time those idiots have done this.

It’s a hour’s drive out there, one-way.

That means if I have choir: cancel choir.

If I have anything else to do: cancel that.

Get in the car and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and…  Find a place to park in their maze of an underground parking lot. Ride upstairs and wait and wait and wait and…GODDAMMIT!

Just what I wanna do on a Sunday morning. Choir or no choir.

****

And now here we are in one of their draped rooms, waiting for…Gawd only knows what new torture. Presumably something entailing a generous jabbing of needles.

How do I hate this place? Let me count the ways.

One nice thing about it, I guess: if you croak over, you don’t regret it so uch…it would be a bit of a relief.

1:54 p.m.

“Morning,” eh? 

Well, it’s comin’ on to two in the afternoon. We’ve been here for HOURS. I’m still lashed up to a needle and fukkin’ tubes and…HOW can I say how much I hate this?

Yeah, I do recognize and understand how amazing our medical system is and how astonishing all the stuff we can do is and…boyoboyoboy…  And how much I hate this stuff.

Cruising the Internet. Come across a notice of my nephew’s demise. Poor guy. He never was…well…quite right. Short a few IQ points, from the git-go. Just…really sad.

This was the grandson of the woman who became my stepsister when my father married her mother…

2:15 in the fukkin’ afternoon…

Tied down to a couch in the Mayo with a damned needle in my arm for…how long? I’ve lost track of the time. Feels like fukkin’ hours, though. Son is yelling at me..I can’t open my mouth without pi$$ing him off.

One

Bitch

of a

Day

* * *

And now we’re on the way home. My poor son’s mood is not improved by our escape. He’s yelling at me. I just want to get home, get in the house, and shut the door!

And maybe, with any luck, find something to eat. Without having to hike to the grocery store.

EEEEK! Senility Attack!!!

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Well…that was a moment of high terror…

This morning I went to get my laptop so I could take it out on the back porch, there to play with the Internet by the dawn light of a gorgeous morning.

Get computer from bedroom…

Uh…no. Nope.

No computer in the bedroom.

Nor on the bed.

Nor under the bed.

Nor in the bathroom…nor…anywhere. 

Repeat searches. Search and search and search.

No computer.

Must have left it in the car, think I.

But…the car is at M’hijito’s house. He’s decided that it’s unsafe for me to drive (no kidding!!) and has purloined the vehicle. If I’d left the laptop in the car (not impossible: I take it to coffee shops all the time, for loafing purposes), then the computer’s at his house, too.

Shoot off an email to him. You know the variety: the “I’m nuts” type…

This is Sunday. He won’t roll out of the sack for another couple of hours, and probably won’t turn on his laptop for another hour or two after that.

Resign myself to having lost my most precious li’l object. Tromp through the bedroom to the bathroom. Tromp back out of the bathroom…and…wait for it! 

Right: THERE IT IS, sitting on top of the bureau drawers, right there in the bedroom.

Yep.

I must have looked at it three or four times and not even registered it.

WTF?

If I ever had any marbles, I seem to have lost the last of them.

***

Meanwhile: hurt hurt HURT lemme tellya HURT!

The gettin’ old stuff is NOT for the faint of heart. No, indeed not.

This morning a hip joint has gone out of whack. Every. Single. Step is excruciating. So is getting up out of a chair. I hurt so much I can hardly breathe!

All that notwithstanding: with no one here to help, I have to get up and limp around….

And…

And….

GOOD GRIEF!

I’ve limped out to the back patio. Plopped down in a chair. Opened the computer.

Realize that (what’s the matter with the damn computer NOW???) (??? naturally it’s stopped doing whatever it was doing…whaaa?) my coffee still awaits…on the kitchen counter.

O Hell O Damn

Drag myself out of the chair. Limp into the kitchen. Pour a cup of coffee. Limp back out here. Pull a chair up to the table…and find THE PAIN HAS STOPPED!!!

Huh??????

Not to say

WHAAAA?????

No idea why it stopped.

But lemme tellya…

THAT

DID

HURT! 

Argh. 

Now I’m afraid to sit down, lest the pain start up again..

So…

What we have here is one of those days!

Need to walk over to the Sprouts and reprovision a few favorite goods. But I’m kinda scared to try it, lest that pain flare up in the middle of the quarter-mile hike.

Hmmmm….what to do, what to do?

When in doubt, nothing. Right?

***

Yep! That seems to be the correct motto…  Just laid down on the bed. Put my feet up…and…OWWWWWWWW!

Holeee MACKEREL does that hurt!

Hmmmm… Whaddaya bet I ought not to stroll across a seven-lane thoroughfare plus a railroad track with this thing doing…whatever the.hell it’s doing.

Definitely something in the hip joint. But what? I cannot imagine.

Oh, yeah…ONE OF THOSE DAYS! 

What’s Your Favorite Phone Solicitor Bounce?

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EVERY….GODDAM…MORNING the accursed phone solicitors ring up this number. Even though I have the telephone set to ring through only on calls from specific area codes, almost every day at least one nuisance call gets through. Usually more than that.

They spoof area codes as well as local exchanges, trying to trick you into picking up the phone. I, for example, no longer answer the phone unless I recognize the caller’s name or the call is coming from an area where a client might be located. But this means,  of course, that if you do any amount of business over the phone, you really can’t afford to decline to answer the call.

Phone soliciting is a prison industry. So a fair number of the dorkuses who roust you as the sun rises are convicts, working some miserable job as part of their sentence. Others are more ordinary scam operators: crooks of one sort or another who have a special skill at putting on the Dumb and the Feckless.

To my mind, that files the whole lot of them into the category of Crook and Nuisance. So I feel no compulsion to be polite to them.

So…if they’re taking advantage of you (they know it’s 7 in the morning where you are, and you’re running around trying to get ready for work, wrangling the kids for school, or choking down breakfast and coffee), why not have a little fun with them?

Videlicet:

Them: Good morning, Ms. Bltzvck. {Pronouncing your name wrong…}

You: Hello, dear. What are you up to?

Them: {Launches into sales pitch.}

You: Is that so?!? That sounds very interesting! How long does it take to get {whatever they’re peddling} here to East Thailand?

*******

Them: Good morning, Ms. Bltzvck. Blah blah bl…

You: Omigawd! EEEEEK!

Them: Huh?

You: HOLEEE SHEEE-UT!  Call the fire department. The kitchen is ON FIRE!!!! 

Them: Where are you?

You: Eeeeeeeek! HAAAAAALP!!!! Ow, ow, ow, nooooooo!!!!! HEEELLLLPPPPPPP!

Them: What’s your address?

You: GAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

SLAMMMM!
(Mark slams down the phone)

****

Them: Good morning, Ms. Bltzvck. This is Dimwit Dummas calling for Ripoff Industries. How are you today?

You: Just fine, dear. And you? Now the Mark engages the predator in conversation. As the exchange proceeds…

You: By the way, may I ask you something?

Them: Sure?

You: I’ve heard telephone soliciting is a prison industry. What jail are you calling from?

And so on, to infinity. 

As if you had that much time to waste…

What’s your own favorite phone-solicitor revenge? Tell us about it in the comments below…please!

Awww, jeez! Guys!!!!

by

Dare to sit down to breakfast, and ARF!!!!

Get up to see what the Hound is arfing at, and see Gerardo’s wondrous gang of yard dudes out front.

Dayum!!!

Get off duff. Trot around: pick up junk, put junk away; set up pool so guys can work around it; pick up more junk, put more junk away; pick up and discard mounds of dog sh!t… Finally get the place ready for the men.

Stumble back in the house. Look out front to see if they need me to go out there and unlock the side gate…

and…

and….

THEY’RE GONE!!!!!!!

WTF??????  Nary a sign of a yard dude! Or a yard dude’s truck!!

ohhhh…kayyyy…. So where’s the dog?????

Ruby!

RUBY!!

R-U-U-B-E-E-E-E!!!!!!

Nary a small fuzzy corgi!

Ohhhhh shee-ut! Did they open the gate and let her out?

Frantically search around and search around and call and call and search around and search around and call and call and…and…

Lo!
Here she is! 
Ambling out from underneath the toilet.

ggrrrrrr….  This is gonna be one of THOSE days, ain’t it?

Still a GORGEOUS Monday

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Yep…we’re on the third blog post of the day. Tis true! and the truth is: telephone scammers notwithstanding, worries about old-age incarceration notwithstanding: this is an OBSCENELY GORGEOUS day.

  • Beautiful sunlight.
  • Beautiful mild temperatures.
  • Beautiful clean air.
  • Beautiful spectacular blue skies.
  • Beautiful little dog.
  • Beautiful glass of beer.
  • Beautiful beyond anything you can think of.

Beyond gorgeous.

Yes, you bet! I’m still damn scared of what the future holds. But when the present is this lovely, you can afford to divert your attention from tomorrow.

***

Ruby has waddled off to her favorite locale under the master bathroom toilet. Truth to tell, it’s the middle of the afternoon and we have yet to do our daily dog-&-human walk. And that is solely the fault of the lazy, easily distracted human.

Distracted today by memories of a beloved old boyfriend, a man I came within inches of marrying. 

Ohhhhh how my parents hated the man!!!

Ohhhhh how I loved the man!!!

In my then yet-to-be misspent youth, I assumed they hated him because he was The Other. Not American, hevvin help us. Worse yet: Eastern European. 

Paul was Bohemian. Real Bohemian, as in the nationality — not metaphorically so. Why they hated him, I failed to grasp during my naive youth. But now in my Old Age, I see…yeah.

As an example: Paul thought it was OK — just brilliant, actually — for his best buddy to be diddling a barmaid he’d picked up during a night on the town. Because, after all, his wife was eight or nine months advanced in pregnancy, and so  she couldn’t “give him any.”

Back in the Day, when I was madly in love, I thought my parents’ distaste for Paul was based in their distaste for other-than-Yankee roots. They must hate him because his parents were not 100% Yankee. Right?

Well.

No.

Actually, they hated him because he was a jerk. And because they could see, clear as day, that marrying the jerk would wreck my life.

Luckily for me, he made an ass of himself one time too many. And so I wandered away from him.

Sometimes God actually is on our side. Right?

What finally brought God’s Word — or at least, Her Thinking — to my attention was the time that Paul observed how VERY right his best buddy was in picking up a chippy in a bar and f*cking her…BECAUSE his wife was too advanced in pregnancy to accommodate his dong.

No kidding.

He thought his wife’s pregnancy with HIS child was an acceptable excuse to diddle whatever li’l darlin’ he came across in a bar.

No. I really DO kid you not. 

Dumb as I was, even I could see what was wrong with that picture.

Soooo…out he went, pore ole’ Paul. And good riddance to him. Since then, I’ve managed to scrape up a LITTLE more discrimination, when it comes to men.

How long that will last remains to be seen…

A Day Not QUITE from Hell…

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But close. Very close. 

Why?

Well…where on earth to start?

Let’s start in the neighborhood computer store.

My laptop crapped out; needed the attention of a computer tech.

My son has my car, so I can’t drive the computer across the city to the Best Buy, where I have a warranty that covers it.

Shee-ut. So I pick up the gadget and hike the six blocks to the neighborhood computer store, down at the corner of Main Drag South and Conduit of Blight. Haul it in. Explain the problem. “Oh…” says the ninny at the service desk, “We don’t fix that issue.”

Wonnerful. I do have a warranty at Best Buy. But taking the machine to that august computer dealer entails a half-hour or forty-minute drive through nauseating traffic, plus a good 15 or 20 minutes of standing in line. “Know anyone nearby who can work on it?”

She sends me across the street to the electronics store over there.

Hike across six lanes of homicidal traffic. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand…

“I dunno what the problem might be. You need to take it down to the Best Buy.”

Yeah: the one I just passed over because I didn’t want to make the half-hour drive in each direction.

Hike back into the parking lot, mightily pi$$ed.  A military jet ROARS over, emitting a terrifying racket.

Reminds me of how much I hated living in Sun City, just down the road from Luke Air Force Base, which sent its ROARING jets over our homes every morning starting at about 6 a.m., and serenaded us for the rest of the day.

That reminded me of Sun City’s other horrors, not the least of which was its incompetent, misogynistic doctors. The bastards who made my mother’s final suffering ten times worse than it had to be.

Or maybe a hundred times worse. When does stupidity morph into outright evil, anyway?

By now, as you may have intuited, I was having a just LOVELY day.

Circled back to the Funny Farm. 

Here at the house, I stumbled across an ancient computer power cord. And LO! The damn thing fits in the laptop’s plugs!!!

We’re now attached to an outlet, and it looks like the critter is going to keep on working. Apparently the problem, such as it was, had to do with the present power cord, which must have broken or worn out.

Do miracles ever stop?

* The palms of the hands are still buzzing.
* The upper gums over the front teeth: still buzzing.
* The soles of the feet: still buzzing.
* The ears whistling at high volume, nonstop.

Somehow, none o’ that seems to matter much.

* Computer breakdown
* Idiots in computer store
* Roaring jet
* Sun City memories & horrors
* Persistent peripheral neuropathy

WHAT a wonnerful day!!!!