Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

New Post? Nothin’ Much New…

by

Gorgeous morning! Nothin’ new for October in Arizona.

Great doggy-walk, from one end of the ‘Hood to the other. Nothin’ new for Ruby the Corgi.

Yard dudes down the street ripping up the place with their LOUD goddamn hardware. Nothin’ new for this time of day.

Pool Dude in and outta here before I could catch him. Nothin’ new there, either.

E-mail all f**ked up… Well, yeah. That IS something new. Something that will consume about half the morning and probably cause me to grind my teeth halfway down to the gum line.

Yeah. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY unopened message in the in-box, 98% of them junk. So now I’ve got to scan those and delete the hundred and ninety-nine that are trash. No idea what brought that on. And without a car, I can’t schlep the machine to my usual computer dudes to get them to figure out the problem.

This is, actually, one of the few occasions where an owned car really is NEEDED. Most of the time, I’m finding (to my astonishment!), you can get by without one just fine.

More than fine, actually.

Exquisite hip pain this morning. 

Dayum! It was about gone by yesterday evening. So I thought hallelujah brothers and sisters, i’m CURED. 

LOL! Not so much, eh?

I’m slated to accompany M’jito to the physical therapist this afternoon. His appointment, not mine. But since I’ve come to know those folks, I may work up the nerve to ask them what I can do to ease the current excruciation. Otherwise, it’s half a day wasted schlepping to the doctor’s office (again!), several days wasted waiting for an appointment, 30 or 40 more minutes wasted driving to the therapist’s gym and waiting around and waiting around and waiting around.

One of the signal fixtures of old age is the doctor’s office. Ohhhhboyyy! Am I ever SICK of visiting doctors’ offices. And since my son rests his faith in the august Mayo Clinic, a “visit” to the doctor’s office means a traipse to the far side of Scottsdale: 30 or 40 minutes on the road, each way. 

Old Age: what a bizarre land!!! 

This morning I was horrified to discover that SDXB does not remember the accident we were in a few years ago. I was driving & he was the passenger.

We were cruising through a dangerous slum, in the rain and in the dark. As we approached the freeway underpass — we were headed south on a six-lane road (seven, if you count the left-turn lane…) — the light changed.

The idiot ahead of me, seeing a yellow light, SLAMMED on her brakes. This caused her to screech to a halt in the middle of otherwise normal traffic. And that caused me to rear-end the moron.

And because I was the one who hit her, I was deemed to be at fault.

You can imagine what this exploit has done to my auto insurance — years later! Despite the fact that it was a minor fender-bender.

And now — years later — the frikkin’ Mayo is using it as an excuse to nullify my driver’s license!

WTF?????

I’ve about had it, and am beginning to think about moving to another state, just to get away from this BS. But of course — as you know — insurance companies follow you wherever you go. This means there’s probably no escape from my criminal driving record.

So I’m profoundly infuriated. Really, there’s no excuse for this crapola. Move to another state? How about Sinaloa?

Seriously: I may need to decamp to Mexico to get away from the bullsh!t attack. And frankly…that comes under the heading of “More Trouble Than It’s Worth.”

In brighter realms… Ohhhh my! I wish, Dear Reader, you could have been with me and Ruby on our morning hike. We passed a house where a young father had his toddler out in front. The kid was having a gay old time in a stroller. And…hoooleee maquerel! You have never seen a cuter, more adorable, more awe-inspiringly gorgeous little kid in YOUR LIFE!!!!! 

What a delightful young fella!

See, this is one of a jillion reasons I would never wanna decamp to Sun City. How can anyone live without the glory of little kids? Without the ever-entertaining lunacy of teenagers? Without the harassed joy of young parents?

This is life in the’Hood. And, in my opinion, it’s what makes life worth living!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Gorgeous morning

by

It’s already 8:30 and the day is brain-banging GORGEOUS. Beautiful clear skies. Balmy temps. Dawg yapping at the passers-by. What more could anyone want, eh?

Well…hmmmm…  Absence of pain, for one thing. Whatever went wrong with my hip is still wrong. Hurts like the dickens to get out of a chair, to say nothing of limping across a room.

Ohhh welll…. Thæs overrode; swa may thisse…

Pool Dude came by this morning, bless him! (oooooohhhh beloved Pool Dude!!!!) He left a bill instead of waiting three minutes so I can write him a check. So, alas, the much-deserved payment for his work will have to wait a week to be delivered.

Rummaging through The Economist, one of my fave periodicals, I come across a spread on (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, the hell-hole where I grew up.

Doesn’t sound like it’s a whole lot better than it was in the 1950s. Sure am glad I’m not there now!

Hmmmm….here comes some sorta air-borne vehicle. ……naaaahhhh…. It drifted off to the north. Dunno what it was: not a prop-driven airplane or a jet, that’s for sure. ohhhh well….

The kids who bought Sally’s house (right behind the Funny Farm) put these stupid rotating vents up on the roof. They make a racket whenever a breeze blows. Dunno how the kids can stand it! I’d have blasted the things to Kingdom Come by now.

They also got some guy to patch the roof…with shingles that don’t match the ones that were installed when Sally lived there. That’s…cute.

What IS the matter with people?

Makes a high-rise on North Central Avenue look good. And that’s sayin’ something.

Hmmm…something terrible. 

Lately, I’ve been contemplating just such a high-rise as a possible alternative to moving into the horrifying old-folkerie called The Beatitudes. An apartment stuck on the N-teenth floor of an old-folks’ storage bin does NOT appeal to me. A private apartment in a 15-story rabbit warren doesn’t look much better…but…

On the other hand, I know my son would like to have this house — the sooner the better. And I’d sure like him to have it. But not at the cost of my having to move into some garden spot that I’d wish I’d never seen.

It’s crossed my mind to suggest that he and I trade houses. Then he’d have this place and I’d have his pretty little 1950s red-brick bungalow, within strolling distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Yuppie Supermarket.

Trouble is, those houses were built before there was such a thing as air-conditioning. They were “cooled” (after a fashion) with whole-house swamp coolers. These are none too efficient…as a practical matter, the residents in those days just spent the summers up north, in the high country were the weather was tolerable.

And the houses are, as is appropriate for swamp cooling, leaky boxes. So when you turn on the air-conditioner, you’re actually air-conditioning the whole damn block.

Hmmmmm….  Another strategy we could undertake:

  • I buy his place.
  • He moves in here.
  • I sell his place, and…
  • Use the proceeds to buy an apartment in a Central Avenue high-rise.

Probably couldn’t get enough for his house to get into one of those little boxes in the sky. But…hmmm…really, what do I care? I’ll only be here for a few more months or years — a decade at the very longest. No reason why I couldn’t decamp to a box in the sky, paid for on time. Lots and lots of time….

My mother and I lived in one when we took up residence in San Francisco after we left (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. I loved the place!

Now, I’m not a 12-year-old anymore, and so I no longer regard running up and down the interior fire escapes as an entertaining pastime. But still… Those places are just a few blocks down the road from the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store. The train goes right past the front and will drop you off at the store. Mwa ha ha! I’d never have to drive again!!

Progress Being Made…

by

Hey!!!! Here’s something weird: the hip pain has slacked off SO DRAMATICALLY that it hardly hurts at all to walk around the Funny Farm!

Whaaaaaaa?????

Getting out of the bathtub? Didn’t feel like I’d better have the phone close at hand to call the paramedics.

Making the bed? Swift, tidy, and easy. And…uhm…most important: pain free! 

WhatEVER would cause such a dramatic shift?

It still hurt when I rolled out of the sack this morning But after a couple of hours? The pain is gone!

Well: almost gone. About 95% pain-free…

Why? I can’t even imagine! 

Within the hour, M’Hijto will show up at the door, eager to schlep me to the Mayo Clinic. We already had an appointment out there for a routine visit. He (and I) have figured we can inflict this hip injury on MayoDoc this morning.

But…noooooooo! Apparently NOT!

One can only hope, I suppose.

****

It dawned on me this morning (nothing like dawn to brighten up a morning, eh???) that after I’d spent a day NOT sitting in my favorite overstuffed leather easy chair, the hip pain calmed down. WAY down.

???  WHY???

Only thing I could figure is that something in the upholstery is either not supporting the spine or is pushing my back into some unknown weird position.

So today I’ve been trying to avoid that fine brown throne.

Easier said than done: that is THE loafing chair for me, the centerpiece of the family room. Plopping myself down there is so habitual that I don’t even think HEY STUPID! GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!! 

But the room does host another mega-comfortable chair, one far nicer and fancier than the leather Crate & Barrel number. And that would be an amazing, sophisticated, you-want-Fancy-Dan? wooden rocker from Thos. Moser. It’s all wood, no squishy cushions. Dowels form the back support. Very, very handsome. Very, very pricey: a creature from the time when I had…you know…a job. 

After perching in this chair for some fraction of an hour, I can get up with almost no pain. And I’ll tellya: that feels like some kinda miracle!

Here’s my son at the door…in a rage, for reasons unknown. And so…awaaaayyyy!

 

A-n-n-d… {rumble rumble} here we go again!!

by

Dusk. Dog and human fed and dutifully loafing. And the evening serenade rumbles in through the windows:

GRRRGGRGGRRRRRUUUMMMMMBLLLLEEEE GRBAM!

Wooo HOO! Lightning and thunder bouncing in through the gray skies.

Just enough rain to wet the pool’s decking and the houses’ roofs. But otherwise: mostly stürm und drang…rather little water. That notwithstanding: we who are a human and a dawg are mighty glad we’re not out prancing around in it.

Innaresting…I can’t tell just how ferocious this freshet thinks it is. NOISY is what it is, actually. Lots of crabby-sounding, grumbling thunder, but not a lot of visible lightning, and just a fairly conservative rainfall.

Hmmmm….. Let’s close them thar drapes. Oddly, I just don’t like the look of whatever is going on out there.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Idle Curiosity, let us look up my father’s people: the Chocktaw tribe of America’s South.

Interesting bunch, they were. My mother said he came out of the deep South. Apparently that was the case…with flair. 😀

He would never admit to being anything, genetically, but whitey-white. But all you had to do was look at him to know something was out of kilter with that claim. He had dark brown hair: so dark that when he slathered Brylcreem into it, it appeared to be black. Combine that with the most striking blue eyes, and…my goodness. He was quite a looker. He was tall, slender but well-built, overall a pretty handsome sorta fella. Came out of Texas and the Deep South.

LOL! My mother was genu-wine whitey-white: French and English. And where he was striking, she was unprepossessing. Nice-looking enough, but not so as to grab your gaze.

And what does that make me? Bland. Very bland. 

Back at the Ranch…in the nick of time

by

GAAAAAHHHH!  Go ahead: just try to sit down while the coffee steeps!

Hah. we say to that. Hardy-har-har!

Comin’ on to 8:00 of a VERY soggy morning. Thunder rolling. Clouds lurking. RRRR-O-O-A-A-R!!!! Just made it back in the house from this morning’s doggy-walk….

How can I count the ways…?

Seriously, this is one weird morning. We’re right at 8:00 a.m. and it’s so dark out there you’d guess it was around 6:00. Water all over the back porch: it must have rained during the night, ’cause it missed us while Ruby and I were traipsing around the ‘Hood.

Somebody’s burglar or fire alarm was wailing away…they must be out of town. Or all dead, presumably murdered by their alarm’s visitor. WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU !!!! What a racket! 

Inside our house, we can’t hear that serenade, though. Just the KER-BOOOOOOOM! of the present thunderstorm.

Man! It’s really roaring away out there! Wunderground predicts a high of 86 with a 98%chance of precip. That would seem to translate to HOT AND WET. 

Uh oh. Lawn blower racket. 

Puuuleeeze, Gawd! TELL me that’s not Gerardo’s boys banging around the yard!!!!!

Nope: they’re across the street, lucky guys. Thanks, God!

How would you like to be trying to mow and blower up a 1/4-acre yard as the sky is roaring at you? Sometimes even the most crabby-making days look just fine compared to someone else’s fine day….

Garden Spot!!!

by

So saith the beloved Wunderground, as we scribble: 103 degrees(!) with a 15% chance of rain…  Glub!!!

Seriously: It feels like (un)lovely Saudi Arabia out there: Hotter than Hell and as humid as the inside of an active shower stall.

We’ve got pretty clouds fluffing their way across the sky…so I’d suggest (being the expert weatherperson that I am!) a bit more than a 15% chance of rain. Whaddaya bet that by sundown tonight, we’ll have not a CHANCE of rain but REAL, PALPABLE water falling out of the sky?

😀

Fluffy clouds or no, it’s hotter than the hubs out there. Vaguely, I’d planned to stroll over to one of the neighborhood markets (what we have here, within walking distance, are an Albertson’s (same as a Safeway), a Sprouts, a Walgreen’s, and a Fry’s. Plus some smaller stores of diverse varieties.

Not in this heat, though!

If it cools off enough, the Ruby and I can assay another stroll around the park. But…I kinda doubt it. This sort of humid heat, when found in (un)lovely Arizona, doesn’t cool down real quick, even after the sun sets. The streets will remain too hot for her li’l feet until well after nightfall.

So it looks like our next Doggywalk will be put off until dawn tomorrow (and not later than that!).

She doesn’t seem to mind: she’s conkered out on the sack just now. Canine response to heat, I reckon.

Y’know…  Phoenix — the Valley of the Sun — never used to be like this. It didn’t get this humid.

Yes, it did rain. But when the air got as wet as it is now, that’s when the rain would coalesce out of the sky. 

No kidding. Back in the day, it never felt as soggy and muggy as Saudi Arabia used to feel. But now? Yeah: for some period during the summer, you’re gonna feel like you were perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf. The joys of urbanization, eh?

And this is what makes me miss the San Francisco Bay Area, where my relatives dwelt before my parents took off for distant parts. Damp? Sure. But damp and hotter than the Hubs? Nope.

Ohhhh how I wanna go home!!
😮