Coffee heat rising

Dogs

Arfa Arfa OUCH OUCH!

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OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!!!!

Come about six o’clock at night. Nothing will ARF do but what we must ARF a doggy-walk around the park. That’s about a mile’s dog-drag.

Ohhhh goodie…

We start out.

Drag drag yank yank drag drag HEEL, DAMMIT!!! Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..

Ohhhhh Hell  Enough is arfing enough. The human commits an about-face and hauls the Dawg back to the house drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..  And lemme tellya, that HURTS the sore, tired hands.

We trudge back toward the house. The neighbors no doubt feel their suspicions are confirmed: I am nuts. Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…finally make it back to our front yard. Up to the door. Into the house.

Ughhhhh!!!!!

The feet hurt. The shins hurt. The hands hurt. They all hurt like the dickens: the friction makes the peripheral neuropathy kick in with a vengeance. So we get yank yank hurt yank burn burn yank yank hurt hurt ROAR with pain.

By now the Human is royally pi$$ed. The Dog is dragging with all her wolfish strength.

Sheee-ut! My fingernails are lifting off the nail beds, which makes the yank-fest hurt even more than normal. By the time we get back to the Funny Farm, the Human is uniquely pi$$ed.

Now the feet hurt, the hands hurt, the chronically pained lips hurt… f-u-u-u-u-c-k!!!

Sez here the last time I took an ibuprofen was 2:2o a.m.

Hmmmmm…. Pretty sure I dropped one in the afternoon. Whaddayabet that’s 2:20 p.m. Hmmmm…

It’s after 6:00 p.m. now. So…presumably another one won’t poison me.

Swill an ibuprofen and a B12 pill. EEEEWWWWW!!!!!

I hate bolting down pills almost as much as I hate being stabbed with shots.

Smear the last of the CBD balm on the chronically burning lips. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out and buy some more of that stuff. Ugh!

CBD cream and balm are the only things I’ve found, so far, that work fairly promptly and effectively on the horrid neuropathic pain.

Dunno what is causing this ailment and dunno what might make it go away. All I know is, it hurts like the dickens. Very, very tired of it.

Too early to crash in the sack: it’s not even 6:30 yet. In the unlikely event that I should fall asleep now (give or take an hour), I’d be up at 1:30 in the morning: for the duration.

I hate laying awake through the wee hours almost as much as I hate tingling and burning from fingertips to elbows.

Dammit! Even my teeth hurt!

And Speakin’ of Colder Than a By-Gawd…

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😀  What an insane afternoon!

We’re back from the late-day perambulation of the park. EGAD, but it’s cold out there! Overcast, windy, and…well.. more than “crisp.” Colder than a by-gawd, as my father would have said.

Ruby has patrolled the neighborhood streets and inspected the park. Clouds have blown up during the time we wandered about: it’s dark gray out there now.

Wunderground predicts an 84% chance of rain…I’d say that’s a conservative estimate. Supposedly 52 degrees out in the backyard just now…but again: I’d say, “conservative estimate.”

We’ve managed to repair to the Funny Farm, and Ruby has taken up her position at the foot of the bed.

…. uhhh….

Well, no: She’s taken up her position at the chow bowl, having rousted the human and demanded a pile of Dawg Food.

😀

{sigh}. I hope the stuff races through her forthwith, so we can get her out into the backyard before it starts to rain. Which will happen…soon, I imagine.

Well…what if?

What if we lived in Fountain Hills, a suburban locale I covet?

It would be colder there than it is here. And no doubt windier.

What if we still lived downtown, in the antique and very classy central-city neighborhoods?

‘Twould be no warmer there than it is here, but a WHOLE lot noisier. We’re comin’ on to rush hour, so would be serenaded with traffic noise and ambulance sirens and fire-engine sirens and…gaaaaaaahhhh!

On the other hand, we’d be closer to M’hijito’s house, so it would be easier for us to pester him. 😀  😀  😀

How’s about Sun City, the garden spot where my parents took up residence for their retirement?

Well…they STILL hate “minorities” out there, even after all these years. A friend of mine — a fella of the dusky persuasion — bought a place in Sun City. He was hounded out in less than six months.

Though I myself am of the paler persuasion, you couldn’t pay me to move out there. What awful people!

So…here we are, Ruby the Corgi and I, loafing on a bed in lovely North Central Phoenix. Ruby has enchanted a number of the locals, having strolled around the park and cutied them into submission. The skies have clabbered up and turned threateningly gray. Ruby, unconcerned, snoozes. I scribble.

What can  we say? Other than arf!

Beloved Pool Dude!

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Dogs know.

HOW they know escapes me. Can they read a calendar? It appears not. Do they have Dog Telepathy? That must be it.

Ruby the Corgi loves, adores, and worships Pool Dude. Seriously: she thinks that guy is the best thing that has ever walked across the surface of the planet.

Pool Dude comes around on Tuesday. And I’ll be damned if she does not know when it’s Tuesday.

Can she read a calendar? One would think not: she’s a DOG, after all. Besides which, the only calendar in the house hangs on a wall in my office, halfway to the ceiling. Even if she could read it, she couldn’t see it well enough to parse out the day of the week.

But come any Tuesday morning, that dog is standing at the door waiting for him.

And OH! The joy when she spots him.

My joy, too: the man keeps that pool sparkling clean. He’s amazing…and he does it with just one visit a week. When I tried to keep it clean, I’d be dorking with it every day…and I sure never got it to look like it does now. Not one day a week, to say nothing of seven days a week. But one weekly trip from Pool Dude keeps the thing looking pristine: every day!

Arf!!!

Coyote Morning

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Urban coyote

Out the door around 7:30: the little dawg and I head out for her favorite route, circumnavigating the park.

It’s a beautiful morning. Clear, not too smoggy, cool enough to be just this side of cold but not really cold. And as we trot along, who should we come nose-to-nose with but…oh yeah! Wile E. Coyote…

Ohhh shee-ut.

What could make a more delicious breakfast than a 30-pound corgi?

Fortunately, I happen to have in hand  a shilelagh that passes as a walking stick — carried for just such an encounter.

Dayum.

Wile E. is the reason I can’t just let Ruby out in the back yard to do her thing, whilst I go on about my business fixing breakfast or dinner. The local coyotes will ghost right over your six- or eight-foot backyard wall and take off with your dwarfish dog.

At any rate…we make our way past the local wildlife without incident. Short-cut through Lower Richistan without incident — probably because a fair number of workmen are out puttering around. Make it back to the house without incident. Hallelujah.

ohhhh well. Give me a four-legged predator over the two-legged variety, any time.

😮

What the Dickens?

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It’s just NOT THAT COLD outside: 45 degrees on the back porch. But for some inscrutable reason, it seems a whole lot colder than that. Don’t know why it seems so chilly: no overcast, no wind; But colder ‘n’ a by-gawd.

No sign of the Beloved Pool Dude this morning, but the pool is totally, utterly, completely spotless. This suggests he showed up before dawn, before the dawg and I rolled out of the sack.

If he did…well, getting into the yard, wrestling with the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money, and then slipping away without alerting Ruby the Corgi was quite a trick.

That dog adores the man. She knows which day he shows up (how???) and lurks, watching for him so she can fling herself at him and try to love him into submission.

Truth to tell: if that pool were covered up and set to drain off any rain, the house and yard would pose no more trouble than living in an apartment. The desert landscaping just sits there — at this time of year, Yard Dude drops by once a month or so and pizzens a few weeds, and that is…IT. Even in the summer, when the weeds do grow, keeping them under control is no more than a monthly chore.

My next-door neighbor has done exactly that: drained the pool and left it empty. That thing has been an empty hole in the ground since before I moved in here, some years ago.

Problem is, the plaster dries out if the pool is allowed to drain. Then if you ever want to use the pool for swimming, you have to replaster the pool. No, Thank$.

But…but…on second and third and fourth thought… I can imagine installing a deck over that thing. Set up the drain so it’s somehow “open” permanently, meaning you’d never have mosquitoes to worry about and never have to fiddle with emptying out rainwater.

Still…people don’t buy houses with pools in these parts just so they can have a deck over a hole in the ground. Any such maneuver would surely harm the property value. At best, before you could put the shack on the market, you’d have to revive the pool and repair a sh!tload of damage.

Hm. Leaving it empty would be a convenience, all right: an expensive convenience.

AND FURTHERMORE….

Augh! Just as the human sets foot out the door to go down to AJ’s for some serious loafing (and grocery purchasing), WWWHHHHZZZZZZZZZ!!!  There’s Gerardo and his guys. Blasting away with their weed-whackers and their blowers and...arrrghhhhhh!

Sheee-ut. So much for lunch. Or dinner…or whatever I imagined it would be.

Now I’ll have to wait till those guys exit, stage left, before I can even turn on the grill and throw a chunk of fish on it.

Dayum! Better get off my duff and write them a check.  {sigh}

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a…NUT CASE!

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LOL! Yes, I do believe we’ve ascertained that it’s a nut case, abetted by an industrious bird.

Or…who knows?…maybe  by a space alien.

Just now I’m perched on a kitchen chair in the garage, trying to ascertain whether a persistent beep!… beep!… beep!… is coming from the house-wide smoke alarm system, from something gone on the fritz in the car, or from the resident fruitcake’s imagination.

😀

And lo! It begins to appear that the perp is actually a bird. WHAT bird remains unknown: this is not a call I’ve ever heard from the local avian set…and I’ve lived here since 19 and aught-62. I think I would have learned to recognize a fire-alarmish beep coming from a bird.

****

Well… Yeah. And No.

It IS the flickin’ smoke alarm. Not the giant garage-based house-wide fire alarm system, but one of the cute little portable smoke alarms that you attach to your ceiling with a Velcro strip.

It’s sitting out there chirping to itself as we sit here, type, and guzzle coffee.

😀

So in a couple of hours — whenever I get off my duff, whenever the Ace Hardware store is open, I’ll have to traipse out and buy a new smoke alarm. Then figure out how to get it back up in the garage.

If that one is crapping out, it means all the rest of them are on the verge of crapping out, too. Hmmm…let’s see…. Hmmmmmm….

Not to say Uh oh….

Come to get up off my duff and check, and what do I see but that most of the li’l cheapo fire alarms have long been retired from service. FIVE of them have been removed from their stations.

WTF?

Welp. That’ll be a li’l chore for Bila the Handyman. He can climb up on a ladder and replace the darn things. Won’t he be pleased!

They must have crapped out one at a time, with lengthy periods in between. Otherwise I would’ve noticed that we…uhhhh….no longer have a functioning smoke alarm in most of the rooms.

/eyeroll/

Ohhhh well. I’ve got a bunch of other chores for him to do. So this will enrich his month’s income nicely.

*****

Along comes, of all things, a stray German shepherd!

She comes trotting up the street to the front patio and peers in the gates.

Ruby is beside herself with fascination. Neither dog makes a move to eat the other one.

Hmmmmm…. She has no collar. No ID. oboyoboy would i like to have THAT dawg!

uh oh… That’s not nice, is it?

Oh well. Before I can engage a plan to steal her, she trots off down the street.

The damn smoke alarms continue to beep. I begin to suspect it’s not the little portable alarms, but the ancient house-wide alarm that some previous owner installed, lo these many years ago.

I have NO idea how to turn it off or even if it can be turned off (thought it was turned off at the time I moved in here).

Seems like if you could shut it off, it would’ve been turned off by a prior owner, since it was nonfunctional when I appeared on the scene.

Cripes. The wandering pooch is after the neighbor’s stray cat. Oh well…it gets them both outta my yard, anyway.

The beeping continues. Could it be a bird, cheeping outside?

Hm. Anything’s possible. I guess.

If so, it’s a bird with an alto cheep. That’s kinda weird.

One of those days…