Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

Spavined!!

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Actually, the spavined hip is beginning to feel noticeably better. Doesn’t mean it’s healed…matter of facts it still hurts. And hurts. And hurts…hurts…hurts…hurts.  But: doesn’t hurt as much as it did.

Whatever our grand physical therapist tried to do the other day, that didn’t help.  If anything, it made it hurt WORSE.

By this evening, the pain is back to normal: hurts, hurts, hurts…. 

Maybe, with any luck, in a few days it will recede back to something in the vague vicinity of normal. Not holding my breath…but hope springs eternal, eh?

Ain’t this nice? Our fine city leaders plan to jack the garbage collection rates by nigh unto 50%. Then to keep raising them every time we turn around. Makes life on a ranch in the middle of nowhere look better and better.

Seriously: if I were 10 or 15 years younger, that’s exactly where I’d be headed: back to the Gold Bar Ranch, out on the far end of the freakin’ Mogollon Rim.

I’m coming to hate this Los-Angelized city.

Seriously: I loathed living in L.A. Was sooooo relieved, all those years ago when my father retired and dragged us to Arizona. But now: WTF. Might as well be back in Southern California.

At any rate: what else is new?  

Our honored City Parents are getting set to gouge the bejayzus out of us again: a FORTY-SIX PERCENT INCREASE in garbage pickup rates!!!!!

Bastards.

Well. It makes moving to some other city look better and better. The only reason I haven’t done so is that M’Hijito is here.

And it’s safe to assume that will continue to be the case. As long as he lives in Phoenix, I’ll be here, too.

One of my friends installed a little house in her back yard for her parent. So…thereby they each had their own place and their privacy, but all the costs for utilities and trash pickup and yard care were shared.

Can’t imagine M’Hijito would put up with that. Too bad: it’s definitely a Thought!!

NEVER Stops…

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cripes. Come along about noon…I just get my spavined body settled onto the bed with the heating pad cooking the sprained groin muscles, and…

!!!!!BING BONGGGGG!!!!!

God DAMN it. 

Drag out of the sack, limp through the house…limp through the house…limp through the house: Gerardo and his boys at the door: all set to rake and blower and trim and blower and rake and, forGODsake fix the goddamn busted plumbing in the front yard and….

…and who the hell knows how much that’s gonna cost. 

All I wanna do is try to cook the pain out of my leg. Guess that ain’t gonna happen today!

God only can imagine how much he’s gonna gouge me for today’s antics. My guess is around a couple hundred bucks. DAYUM!

Can’t complain, because it’s work that…

a) I don’t really know how to do; and
b) I absolutely positively don’t WANT to do.

But…hafta say, today I’d ever so much druther NOT have anyone do it. DAYUM! Let me lay on the sack under the damn heating pad and freakin’ leave me alone!

My gawd, this stupid thing hurts. Why escapes me. I must have twisted the joint and then laid on it crooked during the night, while I was sleeping.

Wouldn’cha think that would wake you up? If it did, I sure don’t remember. All I know is, I came to this morning with my hip hurting so bad I can barely waddle around the house. And now it hurts and hurts and hurts and HURTS.

*****

GEEEZ! Talk about hurts! Gerardo the Wonder Yard Dude just charged me some staggering around of money to repair the irrigation system. Just what I wanted to do: spend the afternoon bankrupting myself.

And now I’ll get a blast of RAGE from my son, who will be totally NOT happy when he sees how much I paid for this project.

Daaayyy–yuuummm!

MAKE IT STOP, LORD!

{Cosmic laughter echoes out of the heavens…}

Securing the Security…

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Lookit this hair-raising tale! 

This charming incident happened just down the road, in Tucson. Holeee shee-ut!

The victim is a famous person — or near famous, connected with the Today show. But y’know…it could be any of us. You or me or…who knows?

It’s a good reason to be sure you secure your exterior doors. And I do mean seriously secure them. Make it damn hard for anyone to push their way inside when you go to answer the doorbell.

One way to do this is to install heavy-duty security screens with similarly heavy-duty deadbolts. This is what I’ve done at the Funny Farm.  Mine are of this ilk, easy to get at Home Depot and to hire someone who knows what he’s doing to install them.

There’s a lot of choice out there, though. Look around for one that suits your taste, if you have nothing better to do. For me, the trick was to find something simple and clean-looking, reasonably priced to install, and as close to impregnable as possible.

Perps, I figure, don’t want to spend a lot of energy and effort on breaking in; so, when they see something like this, they’ll move on to the next house.

Annoying as Hell, in my not-so-humble opinion, to have to fortify your doors like they belonged at Fort Knox. But…better that than letting some jerk break his way in.

One of this thing’s benefits, too, is that on a  nice day it lets me leave the front door open (with the security screen closed and locked, of course). Fresh air flows in: perps stay out.

I have one on every exterior door to the house, plus one on the side door to the garage. Nothing, of course, is absolutely perfect…but these things do go a long way to make you feel safer and more secure, here in the Big and Ugly City.

Are We Still Online?

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Looks like once again I’m back in to Funny about Money, despite the last week’s hijinks.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! That’s surely some kind of little miracle.

It’s a gray, drab morning: 8:30 and no brighter than about 7 a.m.

Harvey the Beloved Pool Cleaner appears to be on the fritz. Looks like he’s stuck on on the bottom of the Hole in the Ground Into Which To Pour Money. I’m not sure whether this is Pool Dude Day — he comes around every week or so. But I’m unstuck in time and so have no clue whether this is one of his days.

If I stay here waiting for him, that will put the eefus on Ruby the Corgi’s doggy-walk.

****

Ah HAH!  His glorious convict-like Cuteness arrived! Pool Dude is here! Out back and puttering away with the dratted…uhm, beloved swimming pool. And when we say DOG JOY, we do mean dog joy. 

Yes: many of these guys are convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the trades for which prisons in Arizona train inmates. So, chances are pretty good that our beloved Pool Dude has seen the inside of a concrete cell.

That notwithstanding, he is a sweetie-pie. Just a very nice, very personable man. And he does a great job! So whatever he did in his previous career…I don’t much care.

As for Ruby: he could be Jack the Ripper and she’d still adore him.

 

Weirdness!!!

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Jayzuz!  Last week ended weird and today — Monday — starts weird!

No clue what’s going on, but whatever it is…it’s weird.

We’re coming up on 8:00 a.m.  I’ve been charging around since dawn, searching for the source of weird noises.

One of these is a strange thump-thump thump-thump that sounds like it may be coming from the plumbing (?????????). In fact, I suspect that’s not its source, but I can’t echolocate on the damn thing…unless it’s coming from the roof, which would suggest the HVAC system is the source.

But I don’t think so.

Whatever it is, it’s definitely coming from somewhere in the house.

At least…I think so. 😮

Now it has stopped. So…uhm…is it from the central heating unit? that’s gone off. Hmmmm…that would tend to support the suspicion that the HVAC system is out of whack and emitting some sort of weird noise.

Uh oh…there it is again, and the unit’s not on.

***

Okay, the vent is turning around. No wind to speak of. AC is off. Why it would rotate at all is a mystery. But that NOISE! Whack-whack whack-whack whack-whack…  Helle’s  Belle’s!

Who to call to get it fixed? It’s 8 a.m. now…I need to find a workman ASAP.

***

Okay, I call my handy-guy. NATURALLY he’s not answering the phone. Probably driving to a job, or to breakfast.

Meanwhile and just to make everything perfect, I’ve put my right hip out. Must have slept cattywampus during the night…and Man, does that HURT!  

Holeee shee-ut, it hurts!

And naturally, because I’ve left word with Handyman Dude, now I can’t hear the crazy noise.

Heh…

This is gonna be One of Those Days, ain’t it?

Here We Go Again…

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Speaking of the glories of the Middle of Nowhere (as we were yesterday), this morning a fine cop copter is buzzing the low-rent district just to the north of us — right across Main Drag North.

Nine times out of ten, these little dust-ups (“copter-ups”?) amount to nothing. It’s the times when they chase the guy into your yard, where he tries to break into your house: that’s the tenth time out of ten. And it’s what makes the Middle of Nowhere look good.

Seriously: if we were out on the ranch and some jerk were running around out there, the mule and a couple of horses would be charging nervously around the corral. The ranch dawg would launch into Full Assassination Mode. And we would have plenty of time to get our shotgun.

😀  O’course, because the ranch was the Middle of Nowhere, chances are the perp would not be running around out there. He might run through the MofN, but believe me: he’d keep on going. Especially when he got the glimpse of our blunderbuss.

Very, very tired of Big-City Life. Gosh, but this stuff is tedious. Seems like some stupid Event occurs almost every day.

The wee corgi figures I’m gonna give her a piece of the cookie I’m munching for sorta-breakfast.

She’s right, o’course: I wanna live.

Weird, hazy, icky day, the sort of weather the newspaper climatologist calls “partly cloudy.” Clouds?  Well, OK, if you say so…  But I’d say not. I’d say “icky.”  Or “let’s go back to bed.”

Y’know…I’ve about reached the point where I’m sick and tired of life in Lovely Uptown Phoenix. Spare me the daily (hourly?) cop fly-overs, the poor neighbor terrorized because he saw (ooo gawd!!) a coyote ambling across the park; the whitey-white neighborhoods (no coloreds need apply…); the crime-laden school and apartments across the road; the endless ambulance and fire sirens, the…how long does one have to go on?

I fear I was not born to live in the Big City. 😀

Which Phoenix decidedly was NOT, when my parents moved here and dragged me along with them.

What is it now? Decidedly urban, we might say.

And y’know…I don’t much like it.

Yes, I truly loved living in San Francisco. {But San Francisco, Phoenix ain’t…)

And yeah, I tolerated living in Long Beach, within reason. (Yeah, this place is ticky-tacky in a way reminiscent of Southern California, but…California it ain’t.)

Phoenix, weirdly, is another matter…for reasons that aren’t altogether clear.

It is very Southern California. But really, it’s…what?

* architecturally dreary
* culturally boring
* intellectually…nonexistent
* too hot for life in the summer
* too smoggy for life in the winter

Given half a chance, I’d escape to points west, north, east, or south. In an instant!  But…I ain’t leavin’,  because my son is here. And besides, it’s too darn much work to pack up the castle; tote a lifetime’s worth of furniture, dishes, clothing, artwork, and whatnot across the country; unpack it all; and find new places for all that junk.

Guess you can’t complain about what you can’t complain about…