Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Huffa puffa…WOW

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Hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there. It’s only 11:15 in the morning, but the thermometer on the back porch reads 100 degrees. Objectively speaking, that ain’t very hot…for Arizona, we mean. But it’s a little humid out. So the heat…or whatever it is…strikes one as a shade (heh!) on the uncomfortable side.

But FUN!!!! I do love walking around the ‘Hood, which is…well, just one great hangout. No question of it.

On the way home from the U.S. Postal Services official mailbox — whither I’d gone to drop a can’t-wait-on-it piece of mail — I passed a couple attending to their BRAND-NEW, GORGEOUS, HUGE, FIRE-ENGINE RED MINIVAN. Parked in their driveway…to die for.

Seriously, I think the only reason they weren’t in the cooler reaches of Payson or Flagstaff or parked beside a Pacific Coast beach is that they had just bought the thing.

When I stopped to admire it, the woman owner who was tidying the thing up said they’d bought it for their road trips — soon to be a regular feature of retirement — and because it had a nice, safe place for their little dog.

You can be sure that if it were mine, it and I and the dawg would be ON THE ROAD, right this minute. 😀

Many years of grand fun to you, folks! <3

***

No grand fun here, just this minute. Well…unless grand pain is the same as grand fun… 😀

Seriously, the hip seems to be dislocated. At some points, you can almost feel that the femur doesn’t fit quite right into the hip socket. At other, the joint works smoothly and with very little pain.

I was gonna drive out to the far west side to try to snab a new doctor. But my son having snabbed my car put the eefus on that. Not far from here, we can rent cars…but…on reflection…how much DO we want to walk through 100-degree heat on a hip that hurts every time you move it? Hmmmmmm…..

So: called the proposed new quack and canceled that appointment. Not an easy trick: the guy apparently is too cheap to hire a receptionist/phone-answering lady, and I had a bitch of a time reaching a machine that would take a “won’t be there” message. I hope he doesn’t try to charge me for the missed meeting.

‘Cause he ain’t about to get paid for it…

*****

And now Wonder-Cleaning Lady is here, pushing dirt and dog hair around the tiled floors. What a fun way to make your living, eh?

Idle conversation about our predecessors. Hers, of course: largely Native American mixed with Spaniard types. Seemed unclear to her what tribes might have made up the native set…but if her people came from fairly deep in Mexico (as they probably did), you can be sure they weren’t Chocktaws and Chickasaws.

My father, as far as we can tell, was largely Chocktaw. Apparently his mother was a member of the tribe who married a gringo buffalo hunter. We know his family came out of the deep South, though they had landed in Texas by the time he was born.

What was my mother? The surprise gift of a spate of naughty adventuring on the part of her mother and…some guy. Raised by her paternal grandmother and, later, by my maternal great-grandmother, my mother was amazingly staid. One would never know the maternal line of the family was composed largely of March hares who subscribed to a crackpot religion called Christian Science. 😀

A lot of strangeness lurked in that branch of the family…but none of it had to do with being Native American.

Still More Existential Agonizing

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My poor son is freaking out because — with some reason — he thinks I drink wayyy too much booze.

And y’know…the truth is, even a glass or so a day is prob’ly too much.

My parents always had a cocktail or two before dinner. And as I reached the Drinking Age, I came to join them. Actually, my college boyfriend at the time got me started on swilling a cocktail or two a day. So it was pretty easy to just blend right in with the family custom. 😀

Has that custom grown into an exceptionally bad habit?

Hmmmm…..  One could argue so. 

Yeah, I do have a whiskey & water or a glass of wine every afternoon, before dinner. Then a glass of wine with dinner. And yeah: it makes sense to say that’s too damn much. Especially for the girlie scion of a good Christian Scientist family. 😀

So now, dammit….I’ve decided to climb on the wagon. 

Ugh, what a way spend the late afternoon, right?

😀

But truth to tell, I think we’ll all be better off if the old lady quits lapping her li’l cocktail every afternoon. How booooring!

My parents always had cocktails before (and sometimes with) dinner. The difference was that they didn’t drink wine. So they didn’t have that nightly swill of cabernet or Sauvignon blanc with dinner. Instead, they generally lapped up a whiskey and water or two beforehand. And that was it.

My son, having noticed how much wine I’ve taken to slurping down (doubt if he’s noticed the disappearing whiskey…), has asked me to knock it off. And truth to tell…I think he’s right.

So here we are, riding the wagon again. 

Matter of fact, I hadn’t noticed until recently how much booze I’ve been lapping…and y’know, I do believe he’s right. I need to quit that! 

One of the li’l problems that arise when you get in the habit of regular boozing is that you don’t realize how much you’re spending on your swilling. If you buy a bottle of wine or whiskey only when you go into the store to buy food, that cost gets blended in with the grocery bill, and unless you’re paying close attention, you simply don’t notice that the grocery bill is hovering near the stratosphere.

And in fact, that is pretty much what’s happened here. Recently I realized that holee maquerel! I’m spending an obscene amount on food. 

Well.

No.

Sorry. Cabernet is not food. Neither is Sauvignon blanc. Nope. Not food. But it sure as hell is jacking up the grocery bill.

So. No. Quit it!

As of this evening, we’re guzzling iced tea or water with dinner. Ugh.

Oh well: we’ll survive. And probably be the better for it. 

 

The Night Comes…

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                                                             –Dylan Thomas

One of my favorite poems since I first read it, now “Do Not Go Gentle”  seems to speak directly to the moment. Here at the end of life, one’s impulse indeed is to fight the pending end, to quarrel with it, to sock it back, to dodge out of its way.

All futility, of course. Life begins. Life ends. We can’t evade those fundamental truths.

Is life itself futile? 

I don’t know. If there’s a God, why would that god invent such an elaborate creation, if not for some reason?

Okay, okay: Out of boredom.

Yeah, that makes some sense. It might even make more sense than the theory that God created life to satisfy some goal, to make something happen, because it mattered.

Sometimes it seems as though nothing matters. Other times, as though everything matters.

What to make of that confusion? 

Nothing, I reckon. Who, after all, are we to imagine that God — if there is a God — would have some reason for building creation? Other than boredom, that is.

What we need to contend with, on a logical and on an emotional level, is simply that none of it makes any sense. Not to the mere human mind, anyway.

If it did make sense, we would not ask these questions, would we? We would not imagine or envision a God, would we? Because we would know. If there were a Truth, we would know that truth.

We who are human may imagine we know truth. But objectively speaking: no. We cannot. Because we’re merely human. Existence is so vast, so outrageous that there’s no way for we who are humans to make sense of it.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense, hm?

Joys (and Amazements!) of Cultural Difference

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Ever notice how differently people from different cultures do things in daily life?

😀

The current amusement, here at the Funny Farm, has to do with toothpaste.

Wonder Cleaning Lady, that gift from Heaven to our house, is totally flummoxed by the Old Bat’s habits in dental cleaning. Ohhhh weirdness…

I like to brush my teeth not with minty icky commercial toothpaste but with baking soda. It’s slightly abrasive, it doesn’t taste disgustingly minty, and it really gets your teeth clean. Accordingly, I keep a pile of it in a little glass bowl on the bathroom counter.

Apparently this is a bit too alien for WCL.

She has taken to throwing out the baking soda in the bathroom counter bowls!

Admittedly, most Americans would find this dental cleaning habit pretty alien, too. So I can’t blame her. But…JEEZ! Lady, at least ask me if it’s OK to throw away the damn stuff!

😀

Today I had to retrieve the whole box of baking soda — entailed a bit of a search of it — and refill my bowl of DIY “toothpaste.” And next week, I’ll have to catch her long enough to explain that I use the stuff every day and wish she please wouldn’t throw it out.

She, in consequence, will be further convinced that I’m crazy. LOL! That won’t take much more convincing! But maybe she’ll knock off the toothpaste disposal habit. Tooth detergent, I guess you could call it…cause it ain’t pastey.

It’s interesting, though, how differently people do things. And that sometimes those aren’t individual differences but collective differences.

Ah, Bartleby. Ah, humanity!

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.

😀

Sauna City!

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It is hotter than a two-dollar cookstove outside — as my father used to say. Feels like Ras Tanura out there. That’s Aramco’s crummy little company town, perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf, about 40 miles out of Dhahran.

Horrible place. Horrible horrible place!

Damn glad I don’t live there anymore.  But sometimes I do wonder if there’s much difference…at least, at some times of year.

This is one of those seasons: hot, still, and wet. Just walked in the house from the morning doggy-walk, drenched in sweat.

Oh well: a morning like this is short on doggy-walkers. That means fewer encounters, fewer near-fights (or full-on fights), fewer morons to ask to puh-leeeze keep their dogs back. That’s something I guess.

Something else: today is NOT a day when my son is dragging me out to the damn Mayo Clinic. Thank goodness! 

What a waste of time: An hour’s drive through nasty traffic. They put me in these stupid workshop meetings where a dozen old buzzards sit around and bitch about how they can’t remember things. Is any advice offered on how you might keep track of things that you used to be able to manage?

Nooooooo. It’s just whine whine whine wine….I can’t remember where I put my shoes…. Not one person in the room — fellow whiner or medical/psychological professional — says “Well, then: get in the habit of always putting your shoes in the same place!”

Duhhhhhh!

My patience with that clap-trap is, shall we say, long gone.

Well, anywho…that frees up the day for my favorite activity: loafing. Ruby and the human are are now well-walked, and so we can loaf without guilt.

LOL! Sentimental-journeying through websites picturing Ras Tanura, the horrid company town where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Claustrophobic. Hot. Small-town mentality. Horrible place.

Mercifully, my father retired from Aramco when I was at the end of the 6th grade. My mother and I came back to the states six months ahead of him and settled in San Francisco…just in time for the big earthquake at the end of the 1950s.

My mother was absolutely terrorized by earthquakes. To capitalize on that, they stupidly rented a high-rise apartment — a very nice one — in a tony development called Parkmerced. He had gone back to sea, and so was floating around the ocean on a tanker most of the time.

Yeah: in a real earthquake, that swell Parkmerced building would sway back and forth! “How to terrorize your wife even more,” eh?

We hadn’t been there long when, during a school day, a major quake struck. I was in school — sixth grade. The teachers paraded us all out onto the playground, where flying debris and collapsing ceilings were unlikely to kill us.

Meanwhile, my mother totally freaked out. So much so, that she lost consciousness of her experience that day. Her first memory of it is finding herself in the middle of a street in front of our building, running around in circles! My father had gone back to sea at the time, so he wasn’t there to calm her down.

Ahhh, the good ole’ days, hm?

So…despite the gawdawful heat and the bat-brained right-wing politics, Arizona has a lot to recommend it. High on the list: no earthquakes. 

😀

I stay here because there really isn’t anyplace that I know of that’s any better. But primarily because my son is here. He stays here because his dad is here. And because he grew up here. And because he has a decent job here.

Actually, I can think of a number of better places. If M’hijito weren’t in Phoenix, where would I go?

* Berkeley, California
* San Diego, California
* San Francisco, California
* Paris (yeah: the one in France)
* Santa Fe, New Mexico
* Seattle, Washington
* Mexico City

I dunno. There really aren’t all that many places in the world that are much better than where I am. What would be the point of moving?

Except, maybe, to get away from the summer heat. Then you get…what? Winter cold?

Welp…the dog is walked. The human is hungry. Better get off my duff and fix some breakfast. Outta here!