Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

And further(glub!)more….

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As we were saying about what a fine, wet, HOT soggy morning this is…BE GLAD, BE VERY GLAD that you are not a lawn dude.

Oh aaaaagh! What a job! 

It’s 11:30 in the morning. Hotter than the Hubs outdoors. Ninety-five degrees, 15 percent humidity. Coming on to noon, and I’m sitting here exhausted from the strenuous job of loafing that has soaked up most of my morning. Just about the time I decide believe I’ll take a li’l nap, what do I get but
brrrrrrrraaaaaahhhhhblassssstttwrrrrrrrrr!!!!…. 

ohhhh shit!

Gerardo’s guys!

They roar around. They blast around. They fling around. They charge around…on and on and on.

No nap for the lazy one! 😀

Now I’ll have to wait for them to get done so I can give them a check.

I should whine, right?

Honestly, I do not understand how those guys hold up in this unholy heat! Slamming around and banging around and roaring around and hauling around: Augh!  

About 15 minutes of that job would kill me.

Which, o’course, is why I hire them…. But selfishly, crabbily, old-bitchily…I sure wish they’d time their visits outside the napping hour!

😀

OMG! Lookit that: he’s cleaning stuff out of the freakin’ pool!!!! I can’t believe it.

I mean, how awesome can these guys get? <3

***

Forked over a hundred bucks to them. Kind of a stiff bill, until you think…uhm,,,,how would I like to be out there slamming around in 100-degree heat? And how many lawn dudes would skim the floating stuff out of the pool???

My heroes!

Actually, they’re Ruby’s heroes. 

She sits and lurks and waits for them. And when they finally show up, she goes in for the attack and loves them into submission. 

My gawd, that dog loves those lawn dudes!

I don’t know how she knows it’s Lawn Dude Day, but she surely does. And she IS waiting for them.

Weird.

Life is weird. Dogs are weirder.

Amor de Amazon…

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How do I love Amazon? Let me count the ways!

Here we are loafing on the bed with the dog, watching a fierce-looking storm come a-rolling in. And what have we done that’s even faintly useful?

Well: one real useful thing! We just ordered a leaf-skimming net from the beloved Amazon.

This gadget is a device much needed for maintaining the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money…and with delivery to the front door, it’s only eleven bucks!

JOY!

So tomorrow we’ll be able to lift out the leaves that blow into the drink tonight. Pool Dude will be happy: our old net was plumb wore out. And the price was beyond right!

EEEK!

and Wow! What a storm!  You should see the wind, the flying dirt, and the sailing plant matter! And the neighbors’ yard decorations. 😀

How glad are Ruby and the Human to be inside and watching this storm from the comfort of our bed? Let us count the ways!! 

Let’s see what Wunderground sez:

Active Warning! Severe Thunderstorm Warning!

Heh!!! Ya don’t say?

Eeek, we say to that. Eeeek! 

Hmmmm…Loookit there: raindrops the size of quarters! That’s a bit of a phenomenon.

But oddly, not very much of this slug-sized rain is falling. Huh…barely enough to get the pavement wet.

Weird. But then….Arizona is always weird.

Hope my son has battened down his hatches. He’s out of town for a business meeting. But…he does know enough to secure the place before fleeing.

Now it’s SERIOUSLY pouring: large, fat raindrops, in gay profusion.

Well, one thing’s for sure: we won’t have to add water to the pool tomorrow! 😀

But we will have to add a sh!tload of chemicals. Hope we have enough.

Dunno if Pool Dude really is supposed to surface tomorrow. He’ll have his hands full tomorrow, so may not be able to get to everyone’s place in one day. We shall see….

Jobs we’re glad we don’t have, #1,368…

What WAS the matter with us???

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Ever have one of those reflective, memory-filled moments when you wonder…”Why didn’t I do this?” or “Why didn’t we do that?” Yeah…don’t we all, eh? This afternoon I’m haunted by one of…well, the most haunting such moments.

In the first chapter of our marriage, DXH and I lived in Phoenix’s downtown Encanto district, a quaint historic tract filled with beautiful old houses and, yes, lots of history.

Heh. It was filled with burglars and rapists, too: drawn by the affluent young people who thought a historic district was cool, and by their pretty wives (yes, in those days most young married women counted their occupation as “housewife”) who were were a sexy draw.

We lived next door to Mrs. Wilson: the widow of the city’s first city manager, a woman with some historic significance and a long, long-time resident of the central city.

Mrs. Wilson was scared.

But then, so were most of us. The Encanto district was richly populated with drug addicts, panhandlers, vagrants, burglars, and thieves. One never knew when any such worthy would come a-visiting. This fact alone was the main reason many of us lived with massive pet dogs: German shepherds, doberman pinschers, great Danes, and whatnot.

Well.

One morning Mrs. Wilson told me that she had gotten up in the night, walked out of her bedroom through the living room and into the kitchen…and on the way spotted some guy sleeping on her patio, right outside the living-room’s French doors.  

Holeeee sheee-ut!

What did she do?

Did she grab her pistol?

Nope.

Did she call the police?

Nope!

She retreated to her bedroom and cowered until sunrise.

No kidding.

What is the matter with people? All she had to do was lift the phone and dial our number. My husband would have gone right over and scared the midnight camper away. Or called the cops and sicced them on the guy.

Folks! This is why we have a  pistol. It’s why we have a German shepherd or a doberman. It’s why we have a FREAKIN’ PHONE!!!

Apparently it never entered her mind to pick up the phone in her hallway and call the police. Or us. Too terrorized, no doubt, to think.

No one would expect an 80-year-old woman to have a .45 at the ready. Okay, that makes sense. But she sure as Hell can have a telephone at the ready.

So can any of the rest of us.  

Whenever you’re home, ALWAYS HAVE A PHONE WITHIN EASY REACH. And know how to call emergency services. Most municipalities use 911; if yours doesn’t, you can dial the Operator and tell her what’s up, and where. She’ll call the cops for you.

This is easier now, with cell phones that don’t have to be plugged in. But it might be wise to have a land-line at hand, too…just in case.

The other thing we all need to do is think through what we’re going to do in this set of circumstances or that set of circumstances. 

What are you gonna do if you wake up and find someone creeping around your house? What are you gonna do if the house catches fire? What are you gonna do if you hear someone start up your car and drive it out of your carport?

And be prepared to make these maneuvers work. If you figure you’re going to grab a pistol, be sure that pistol is well lubricated, working, and loaded; and that you know how to use it. And that it’s kept out of the kiddies’ reach…  If you’re going to flee, have several escape routes in mind, and know how to get to them. If you imagine your dog is going to protect you, have your dog trained for the purpose.

Be set to go into action. Always. 

Which Way to Jump? If Jump at All…

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So this morning I’m idly thinking of walking down to the Beatitudes (since my son has kiped my car) and looking into how much it would cost to move into that old-folkerie.

A lot, I can tellya.

After my mother died, my father moved into one of those places. It cost just about everything he had — and he had a lot, for a workin’-class boy.

All the proceeds from the sale of their home in Sun City plus most of his retirement savings went to buy him into that place.

For me, that would be like paying someone else to get outta my way so I could commit suicide. But having gone to sea since he was 17 years old, he was used to institutional living. If anything, he preferred it to living on his own.

Most of the old-folkeries around here — “life-care communities,” eh? — range in quality from good to very nice, indeed. My problem with them is simply that I loathe communal living. 

No, folks. I do NOT WANT to live elbow-to-elbow with an army of other old farts. Nor do I want to be required to take at least one meal a day in a dreadful mess hall. Or to have to listen to some half-deaf soul’s TV set blaring away at all hours of the day and night.

That pretty much puts the eefus on moving into one of those places.

But I have to allow: it’s highly questionable whether I’ll be able to stay here in my home — hired help or no — until the last gasp. Or even anywhere near the last gasp.

Because Old Folks are something less than second-class citizens in American society, the only way you’re going to keep a grip on how and where you will live is to make those decisions before you need them and then to get yourself settled in acceptable accommodations before you need them. And since I’ve pretty well arrived at croak-over age, that means I need to make said decisions now and get things set up for them now. 

So…what can one do? A few possibilities do present themselves:

* Hire someone — the cleaning lady, maybe? — to come in daily:

  • Check on you
  • Take you shopping if need be
  • Gas up the car
  • Bring the groceries home and help put them away
  • Prepare at least one balanced meal in your kitchen; serve it or store it in the fridge for you
  • Clean up the kitchen
  • Clean the bathrooms as necessary
  • Water the outdoor potted plants
  • Check that the pool is working properly; note any problems observed and report them to Pool Dude
  • Negotiate with Pool Dude to be sure he knows what (if anything) needs to be fixed
  • Walk the dog
  • Drive you to appointments
  • Ride herd on Lawn Dude. Be sure he knows what needs to be done this week, and that he does it.

Yeah…sure. What fun, eh?

And what d’you suppose it costs to hire someone to cover all the details of your daily life, every day? 

* Another possibility: Put up your adult kid to ride herd on the hired help. Also put him up to doing some of the noxious household chores.

Won’t he just love that!  And realistically: Our grown offspring have their own very full, very hectic lives to manage. They can’t be spending hours taking care of our affairs.

Arrrrghhh! So I’m awfully afraid I’m not gonna be able to evade having to go into one of those old-folkeries…simply because I won’t be able to afford to hire someone to cover all those chores, nor, as I get older, will I be able to ride herd on them. Once I reach that point…well…realistically, I’ll no longer be able to stay in my home.

On the other hand:  I must say that hiring people to come in regularly and do the scutwork of homeownership is working exceptionally well. Just now, anyway.

I never have to lift a finger to keep that damn swimming pool running, for example. And it’s always sparkling clean and running perfectly. Useta be: I had to work on that thing every. single. day.

Not since I slipped on the kitchen tiles and busted myself up have I had to clean the 1800 square feet of tile flooring in this house. Or scrub the kitchen. Or scour the bathtub. Hiring someone to do that has worked exceptionally well.

While that fine someone is here, she also dusts the furniture and cleans the bathrooms.

The cost of hiring these folks comes nowhere near what it would cost to live in an old-folkerie like Orangewood or the Beatitudes.

And…well…I still get to live in my place. 

Dog & Human & Heat & Humidity

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8:25 in the morning. Back-porch thermometer says 95 degrees in the shade. And WET. Wet as fukkin’ Saudi Arabia. Wunderground says a mere 11% humidity…but I wouldn’t believe that. It is plain downright SOGGY out there in back.

Wanna fix coffee and food, but don’t feel like ingesting anything: it’s just too hot!

Ruby and I hiked around the park, through the neighborhoods to the east and south of it. Did not envy the workmen who had arrived in their pick-ups, preparing to heave, haul, prize, and hammer at one house under repairs & upgrades. Ugh! Physical work in this heat? Spare us, Lord!

Got a dentist’s appointment this afternoon. Will have to hire an Uber to drive me over there, unless I can persuade my son to knock off the job for the purpose. He’s the one who stole my car…so I guess he’s the one who oughta drive me to appointments. I may just cancel, though: I’m not up for dental hassles today.

Guess I need to call Financial Dude, extract a few thousand dollars, and go buy a car. This time, too, purchase a padlock for the garage door! Can you believe my kid stealing my car? Uhh…“protecting me from myself”….?

Real protective, trekking around on foot through 110-degree heat, eh?

Speaking of summer marvels… What the HELL is Trump doing in DC? Who does he think he is? Adolf Hitler Redux? And WHAT the Hell has happened to American voters’ brains?

Frankly, I suspect what we’re seeing there is a result of the long-term dumbing-down of America’s schools. It’s taken a few decades…but our wanna-be dictators are, indeed, winning out.

Oh well. This post is supposed to be about a dog and a human and heat and humidity. Not at all clear that Mr. Trump is human. He’s certainly not smart enough to be a dog. “Hot,” he’s not, in my book. That makes him “humid,” eh? 😀

*****

A-N-N-D… Just get yourself sat down to munch a little breakfast and swill a little coffee and it’s

R-R-R-R-R-R-O-O-O-O-O-O-A-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R!!!!!!!!!

Gerardo’s boys show up! And now they’re out back ripping and roaring and banging and crashing and hauling and dumping and….awwww geeeez!

F*ck. Now I’ll have to clean the pool. Just what I wanted to do on a 108-degree morning.

Okay, Okay…yes, I surely am glad I don’t have to mow and dig and weed-whack and trim and haul…on any morning, to say nothing of one where the thermometer reads 108 in the shade of the back porch before 9 o’clock. But how do they KNOW when all I want to do is sit down and unwind?

Really. I should sell this house and move into a North Central high-rise. Let the Kid sell the apartment when I die and figure out what to do with the dog.

****

Forked over a hundred bucks for 20 minutes’ worth of yard work. But…he had five guys out there. One of ’em a newbie.

WHAT an obnoxious job. A hundred bucks is a freakin’ bargain, I’ll tellya! Especially on a 118-degree day…

So now we’ve got a new guy…nice-lookin’ fella, fresh out of Mexico. We’ll see long he hangs around.

Honestly, I don’t understand — not even faintly — how those guys hold up under the strain of physical labor in 100-degree heat. They must be strong as horses. Or crazy as loons…

Called the kid to tell him he’ll have to drive me to the dentist. He was less than thrilled. Maybe he thinks I’m going to hire an Uber to get over there?

Well. No. Just gonna let all my teeth fall out.

😀

Beloved Contract Workers….

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Bein’ an old lady alone with a 25-pound dog in lovely Phoenix, well…natcherly I have a swimming pool, right? And natcherly it takes up about a third of the back yard.  And, it bein’ a swimming pool, natcherly it has to be kept clean.

In lovely Arizona, maintaining a pool involves much more than a weekly brush-down and a slug of chemicals.

Much, much more.

It really needs to be swept down every day. And it certainly needs to have its chemicals kept current…that would be acid, chlorine, and whatnot.

It’s not very hard, and as a matter of fact this ole’ lady can do the job just fine.

Problem is, a pool requires daily maintenance, not — as some would think — weekly maintenance.

And that causes the ole’ lady to become surprisingly bored with the job. 😀

Just in from the backyard, about five minutes ago. Looks good out there. Thanks to Pool Dude, the guy who comes around once a week and beats back the algae, the water is just plain pristine. No kidding: downright crystal-clear.

Everything else is crystalline, too: the equipment is in good shape, the system’s working fine…nary a glitch in sight or hearing. YAY!

This state of affairs is not because of a busy ole’ lady but because of the Beloved Pool Dude.

Lemme tellya: THAT is a guy who earns his keep. In spades! 

He comes around early in the week to clean, service the pump and filter, and apply chemicals. Today, incredibly, is Saturday and that thing is still crystal-clear. He is making it possible for this ole’ lady to stay in her house. Because at this age? NOT A CHANCE would I be able to keep that hole in the ground even half as clean as he does. To say nothing of keeping the equipment running as though it were brand-new.

The pool and the backyard are, taken together, a main reason I absolutely do not want to move into an old-folkerie like the Beatitudes.

That water out there? It doesn’t have anyone else’s germs in it but mine. Well…and a few birds’. 😀

That fencing out there? It keeps the Ruby Doo out of the drink. (Ever had to jump in the pool to rescue a dog? Innaresting experience…) And it serves nicely for the occasional bird to perch on.

That equipment out there? It runs seven days a week, nooo problem no trouble no hassle. Once a week, Pool Dude checks it and administers whatever maintenance is needed.

He’s not the only guy who comes around to keep this place running. We have Gerardo and his crew, about whom you read every couple of weeks. Those guys…ohhhhh Lordie! WHO would want their jobs? Talk about working like horses…  They not only beat back the weeds and maintain the desert landscaping in 110-degree heat, they keep the watering system working, trim the voracious trees and shrubs, and control the vines that pile up along the back and east walls. The thorny vines… The ones that keep the prowlers, peeping Toms, and cats out. There’s a reason they’re called cat’s claw vines.

Then we have the watering system guy, who (along with Gerardo) keeps that large and complicated system running. Properly.

And Wonder-Cleaning Lady, who kindly absolves me from housework. Just about all housework, short of dropping the dinner dishes in the dishwasher.

And the electrician, who is certifiably smarter than the average cat. By about 1000 percent…

And the plumber, who understands products and systems that date back to the early 1970s…

How do I love Gerardo and his colleagues? Let me count the ways…  WAIT! I can’t count that high! 

😀  <3  😀