Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Glub!!

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Hot! Humid. Light overcast. Not enough to rain — which might clear out the swampy effect. Just enough to create misery.

Dawg and I have circumnavigated the ‘Hood again…pretty much a daily ritual. My bike is still missing: either purloined by my son or stolen by a passer-by. The upshot is the same. Whenever I work up the energy, I need to go rent a bike at the nearby bicycle shop. Then, presumably, find a place to hide it.

Antecedent to that, Ruby and I have circumambulated the ‘Hood, traipsing from one end of the place to the other through a hot, soggy morning. Now we loaf upon the bed. Ruby is already conkered out, and — after this morning’s damp tramp — I wish I were, too. Swilling coffee and munching chocolate no doubt will militate against any snoozing on the human’s part, though.

Here inside the house, it’s hotter than the Hubs…and soggy. Aim the table fan at the Human and the Dog. Gaze enviously at the snoozing pooch…think turn off that light, shut down that computer, and go back to sleep!

Yet and still…even inside the house with the AC blasting and the fan whirring, it seems too hot and damp to doze. So we play electronic “card” games on the laptop.

Missing my mother. How dare she work up the nerve to DIE, f’rgodsake?

She killed herself, actually. Poisoned herself with tobacco.

Seriously: never was she conscious that she didn’t have a cancer stick in her mouth. And eventually, the damn things did their job: killed her painfully and hideously. Put my father through the tortures of the damned: doting on her, tending to her through every agonized minute of her last three or four months.

Life is evil, y’know?

Speaking of the which, my bike is still gone — probably in my son’s precincts. But I don’t care.

There’s a Goodwill store across the road, and on the corner a retailer of bikes and such. I’m thinking I’ll go over to one of those and buy another bike.

That, however, would require me to get off my duff, climb out of the sack, and hike through the humid, overheated morning.

How do I not wanna do that? Lemme count the ways.

Gasp! Huff! Puff!!!

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Just back from about two miles through 105-degree heat. HOLEE shee-ut! Not only hot out there, but passing muggy. If I had any sense, I’d plunge into the pool. But…

a) No, I have no sense; and
b) It’s 107 in the shade out there on the back porch

Jayuz, it’s almost as miserable as Arabia.

And THAT, my friends, is bloody miserable.

On the way to and from the shopping centers, I walk past these blocks of apartments that my mother wanted me and DXH to move into when we first explored this part of town.

WHY in the NAME of God would your mother want you to move into a ticky-tacky pile sandwiched between a freeway on-ramp and one of the busiest, loudest surface streets in the Valley???

Never did understand her enthusiasm for those dumps, except that they superficially resembled apartments she and I inhabited in Southern California.

Ugh. Long Beach Redux. Who would choose to live in such a place?

Oddly, though, our Realtor found us a development to the east of the freeway, a tract that amounts to a pleasant middle-class neighborhood with a nice park, plus some distance between most of the houses and the traffic racket. And the structures in it are HOUSES, not tumble-down apartments.

Phoenix is kinda weird that way. Ticky-tacky tracts interspersed with reasonably decent middle-class developments wrapped around upscale neighborhoods. That’s our garden spot.

Ohhh well. 

It seems unreasonably hot out there. Just now, Wunderground tells us the temp is a balmy 110 degrees. Lovely.

Passed a truck driver in one of the parking lots, loading boxes — by hand — into his semi. Ugh!!!! Some people’s jobs, eh? Offered to help, but mercifully he declined.

Finally made it home and now am  loafing in the air-conditioning.

You don’t even wanna KNOW what the power bill is gonna be this month. My guess,, though, is around $300.

Summer bills run upwards of $200 here. But then, in the winter they’re practically nil…so it all levels out.

Welp…at least we don’t live in Texas. Have you seen the horror shows emanating from that place? Floods that wash people away, drown folks hiding in attics...augh!

That’s whence my father’s family emanated. I can remember my uncle relating memories of times when he and my aunt stood on their wooden porch and watched tornadoes sail past on the prairie. Never did understand how they escaped those storms…guess the weather must have been off in the distance.

Argh! As my father used to say: Texas is a good place to be from…as far from it as you can get. 

July 4, 2025: 7:30 a.m.

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Accuweather:  Humidity 50% at 7:37 a.m., wind 3 mph Predicts a high of 103. Yeah…it’s gotta be that already!

Shindig in the park: July 4. Place is overrun with kids and dogs and grown-ups. Shenanigans under way.  IMHO, w-a-a-y-y too hot to be shuffling around out there!

It’s great fun to see all the little kids racing around in the park. All the parents chasing around after them. That place is gonna be mobbed at 8:00 a.m. Ruby and I got our morning doggy-walk done just in the nick of time.

It is sooooo hot and humid over there just now. Feels like lovely Saudi Arabia. At least that happens only a few days a year in Arizona. On the shore of the Persian Gulf, this kind of suffocating weather occupies a good third of the year.

Despite the mile-plus hike, I’ve hurt my hip bad enough that mild exercise doesn’t help. Yea verily: hurts like Hell!

Some years ago, a MayoDoc said I would one day need to have surgery on that thing. Looks like the day has about arrived.

Which raises the obvious question: HOW am I going to manage a four-bedroom house, a third of an acre, a pool, and an active little dog when I’m laid up with a bum hip?

No idea how that’s going to work out. Ruby, I guess, will have to stay at M’jito’s place. She hates that. Sits by the door the whole time she’s there, staring and waiting for her human to come back, open it, walk inside, and rescue her.

Meanwhile, my son — the Emperor of the Universe — has decided I’m too decrepit to be driving safely. (In that, he may very well be right…). So he has purloined the Dog Chariot and intends to sell it for me.

Ducky.

So, I’ll be thrown back on Uber drivers, or on surreptiously renting a car from the lot up the road. This, as you might imagine, will not be a good thing…seven ways from Sunday!

Argha.

Well, I can walk to a Sprouts and two large supermarkets — though I intend to investigate their skills at delivery.

Problem is, Americans by and large tend not to know how to select fresh produce. And fresh produce makes up the major portion of my diet. So…if I can’t get to a store to pick out my own food, I’m gonna have a major headache. But there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.

Right now I can’t walk much of anywhere. I seem to have sprained a hip. This morning’s stroll around the park about crippled me!

Seriously: I don’t even know if I can make it into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.

…Let’s try it…

Ooooohhh f’rcryin’ out loud!

It STOPPED! The pain suddenly, completely QUIT.

Why? No clue.

But it’s gone. 

Too weird.

Is this whole day gonna be bizarre???

Inauspicious Morning

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Ugh! Not 7:30 yet, and we’ve already had one Drama of the Day. More to come, no doubt…

Ruby and I were headed homeward from the morning walk, when we came upon a favorite neighbor. This lady lives alone. She’s very smart and very charming and just the sort of person you enjoy having as a neighbor.

As we greet each other, she trips on a heaved slab in the sidewalk…and DOWN SHE GOES.

She whacked the heck out of her head. I wanted to go get my car and drive her up to the ER. She declined. Which was good, because in the heat of the moment I’d forgotten that my son has stolen my car.

Another neighbor came along. She also proposed that we take our friend to the ER. Again, Friend declined.

Reluctantly, we complied (what were we gonna do? Tie her up with a clothesline??). And our group dispersed.

***

And this is why I need my car. You never know when some emergency, small or large, will arise.

If my son persists in refusing to return it, I’ll have to go rent a car. And I may report him for stealing my car, which will cause him to lose his job. I hope the principle of the thing is worth it to him.

***

Ugh. Hot and humid out there: 99% chance of rain.

I should get off my duff and walk to a grocery store, since a few things are needed…and I sure don’t want to be prancing around in 100-degree heat…or 100% rain.

But ohhhh…how I am not in the mood! 😀

***

Reminded of where we lived in San Francisco, a sprawling middle-class apartment development called Parkmerced. Loved living there!

One of the amenities was a huge underground parking garage. My mother would park our car in its slot on the 6th floor (that’s 6 floors down), and we would rarely use it unless my father was in port. (He went to sea; we had to pick him up when his ship docked in the far East Bay, but otherwise, we had no real need for a car).

Frankly, it was cool not to need a car. Well: not “cool” in a social way but in a day-to-day lifestyle way. We could walk to the grocery store. My mother’s job was within easy walking distance. The city busses had a stop right outside our building: I could jump on a bus and ride to school.

If we were going anywhere outside of Parkmerced, my mother would drive us. But that amounted to surprisingly few trips! Mostly, the car sat in the parking garage…day in and day out.

Wish we could live that way now.

Back from the Hubs of Hades…

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Holeeee sheee-ut! Is it ever HOT out there!  Hotter than the hubs, and damp as the inside of a shower stall.

Seriously: it’s nowhere near as hideously hot ad humid as an Arabian morning used to be. But it’s close.

There, you’d get out of bed and peer out the window to see water dripping off the eaves as though it had rained during the night.

No, it had not: the sky was clear blue and no clouds floated in the sky. It was just SOOOO HUMID that the dew would settle on the roof, flow toward the eaves, and drip off onto the ground.

Miserable place.

Just now, lovely uptown Phoenix ain’t much better. It’s soooo hot and soooo wet out there, it does remind you of grody Ras Tanura. But I must say: water is not actually dripping off the rooftops, they way it used to on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

Even this much humidity is out of the ordinary for lovely uptown Phoenix. It does get damp in late July and August, but not wet enough to make you feel downright soggy. Certainly not wet enough for the dewfall to drizzle off the houses’ eaves.

Anyhoo, we circumnavigated the ‘Hood in a kind of shortened route — east toward the rising sun, north toward my old friend Jerry Jacka‘s house (he’s now long gone), back south toward a beloved old neighbor’s place — she, also long gone.

I fear I will soon be next to be “long gone.” My son would like to lock me up in an old-folkerie called the Beatitudes: a horrible prison for the useless elderly. My plan is to take a flying leap off the North Rim before that can happen…but frankly, I’m not in any hurry to go.

I deeply loathe institutional living. Hated hated hated living in the university’s dorms and do NOT want to spend the last months or (hevvin forfend!) years of my life in some gawdawful old-folkerie. Presumably I’ll have to calculate a way to achieve a final exit…but just now, that is not anything I want to contemplate.

Man! That sky out there is clabbering up! Let’s see what Wunderground calculates that we have in store for today…

Hmmm… 96 degrees as we scribble: at 7:18 in the morning. Predicted high: a chilly 105. “Air quality alert” (what else is new?). Ten percent chance of rain.

In other words: “hot and humid.”

Hungry. Might’s well get up and see what’s in the fridge to eat…

hmmmm… Leftover baked potato, swathed in cheese. Ohhh lookee here! A whole new package of loverly bacon! A package of sweet bright red little tomatoes. And berries, berries, and more berries.

Things are lookin’ up!

Guess I should “look up” and fix a pot of coffee. That would require movin’ around though. Am I capable of that just now?

Dubious.

Hotter ‘n the Hubs…again

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Not even 7:30 a.m. by the time the Ruby and I stumble back to the house. We left at dawn.

The SMOG! My gawd, the SMOG!

At first I thought it was fog. Seriously: it looks like a San Francisco morning out there. Doesn’t feel like it. It’s 95 in the shade of the back porch. The sky: yellow with crap floating in the air.

Horrid, horrid place.

If my son weren’t here, I’d be soooo gone!

Where would I go?

Berkeley, where my relatives lived for decades. Gawdlmighty, I do miss Berkeley.

The foothills of Tucson. Clean air, relative quiet, fairly upscale.

San Diego, in its more upper-middle-class incarnations.

Paris…parts of it.

San Francisco, where I belong…

oh, Hell: ANYWHERE! Anywhere but here!

Wunderground, that eminent weather-reporting site, predicts 112 degrees with a 6% chance of rain. Hm…observant of them.

Local weather reporters claim yesterday was Phoenix’s hottest July 30 on record.

Uhhh…sure. Yeah. Must be mighty boring to be a weather reporter. 😀

Walking home, Ruby and I passed a house on the little pass-through street bordering our slab of the ‘Hood. And by golly, out in front watering his yard was one of the handsomest Black men I’ve ever met. Quite possibly one of the handsomest of all possible men.

Not only that, but he was friendly. And he had a big ole’ black lab named Olive.

Hilariously, Olive was my maternal grandmother’s name.

Must be Fate, eh?

Olive. She died horribly: uterine cancer as a result of her lively sex life. My poor mother had to take care of the woman on her deathbed (Olive’s, that is…not my mother’s… 😀  )

Seriously: imagine inflicting the care of a wild-assed chippie on a teenaged girl, as said chippie lay dying. What a horror show!!

And what the HELL possesses people?

There’s some question about that episode, though. Years later, I found evidence that Olive had not died when my mother was 16 years old, but in fact was living in the Santa Barbara area at the time my own son was born. Never tried to track it down, though: pisseth me off too much.

Still. Sometimes I do wonder if my mother knew her mother was still living. Or if the crackpot family told her she’d died, either by way of freeing Olive from responsibility for her illegitmate daughter or by way of freeing my mother of having to interact with her…uhh…”racey” mother.

What a bunch!