It is hotter than a two-dollar cookstove outside — as my father used to say. Feels like Ras Tanura out there. That’s Aramco’s crummy little company town, perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf, about 40 miles out of Dhahran.
Horrible place. Horrible horrible place!
Damn glad I don’t live there anymore. But sometimes I do wonder if there’s much difference…at least, at some times of year.
This is one of those seasons: hot, still, and wet. Just walked in the house from the morning doggy-walk, drenched in sweat.
Oh well: a morning like this is short on doggy-walkers. That means fewer encounters, fewer near-fights (or full-on fights), fewer morons to ask to puh-leeeze keep their dogs back. That’s something I guess.
Something else: today is NOT a day when my son is dragging me out to the damn Mayo Clinic. Thank goodness!
What a waste of time: An hour’s drive through nasty traffic. They put me in these stupid workshop meetings where a dozen old buzzards sit around and bitch about how they can’t remember things. Is any advice offered on how you might keep track of things that you used to be able to manage?
Nooooooo. It’s just whine whine whine wine….I can’t remember where I put my shoes…. Not one person in the room — fellow whiner or medical/psychological professional — says “Well, then: get in the habit of always putting your shoes in the same place!”
Duhhhhhh!
My patience with that clap-trap is, shall we say, long gone.
Well, anywho…that frees up the day for my favorite activity: loafing. Ruby and the human are are now well-walked, and so we can loaf without guilt.
LOL! Sentimental-journeying through websites picturing Ras Tanura, the horrid company town where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Claustrophobic. Hot. Small-town mentality. Horrible place.
Mercifully, my father retired from Aramco when I was at the end of the 6th grade. My mother and I came back to the states six months ahead of him and settled in San Francisco…just in time for the big earthquake at the end of the 1950s.
My mother was absolutely terrorized by earthquakes. To capitalize on that, they stupidly rented a high-rise apartment — a very nice one — in a tony development called Parkmerced. He had gone back to sea, and so was floating around the ocean on a tanker most of the time.
Yeah: in a real earthquake, that swell Parkmerced building would sway back and forth! “How to terrorize your wife even more,” eh?
We hadn’t been there long when, during a school day, a major quake struck. I was in school — sixth grade. The teachers paraded us all out onto the playground, where flying debris and collapsing ceilings were unlikely to kill us.
Meanwhile, my mother totally freaked out. So much so, that she lost consciousness of her experience that day. Her first memory of it is finding herself in the middle of a street in front of our building, running around in circles! My father had gone back to sea at the time, so he wasn’t there to calm her down.
Ahhh, the good ole’ days, hm?
So…despite the gawdawful heat and the bat-brained right-wing politics, Arizona has a lot to recommend it. High on the list: no earthquakes.
😀
I stay here because there really isn’t anyplace that I know of that’s any better. But primarily because my son is here. He stays here because his dad is here. And because he grew up here. And because he has a decent job here.
Actually, I can think of a number of better places. If M’hijito weren’t in Phoenix, where would I go?
* Berkeley, California
* San Diego, California
* San Francisco, California
* Paris (yeah: the one in France)
* Santa Fe, New Mexico
* Seattle, Washington
* Mexico City
I dunno. There really aren’t all that many places in the world that are much better than where I am. What would be the point of moving?
Except, maybe, to get away from the summer heat. Then you get…what? Winter cold?
Welp…the dog is walked. The human is hungry. Better get off my duff and fix some breakfast. Outta here!
Went to call the Ruby-doo this afternoon