Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Rain on the Roof…

by

 

Looks like the deluge predicted for the Valley is starting to let up. Hereabouts, a patter on the roof started around 4 a.m. Rained pretty briskly for most of the morning, and now, pushing noon, it’s still drizzling.

But gray. Warm and gray.

We’re supposed to sing at a wedding this afternoon. What a glum day for a wedding!

Reminds me of the day the ex- and I married. We’d had to put the wedding off and put it off and put it off, because my father was stuck at sea in a major storm off Alaska. Finally we gave up and went ahead without him.

And of course, the day we selected to go ahead with the ceremony willy-nilly: that was the day the storm blew across the desert from the West Coast. It rained just like it’s doing now, all day long and into the night.

I remember thinking that I’d been told rain on your wedding day was a bad augur, an omen of bad luck.

So it seems.

That evening on our way to a fancy restaurant where we proposed to celebrate our match, the car’s wheel hit a curb and busted the tire. Water was rushing over the curb. D-XH got out of the car, in the dark, in the rain, in the flood…in a suit, in his good shoes…to change the tire.

It was the first and the last time I ever heard him use the F-word.

I, however, use it with gay abandon. 😉

Where were we?

Yes. Rain on the roof.

We got to the restaurant, unhappily. Sat through a dinner, pretending to be gay and delighted. Got home and consummated the marriage.

Which lasted 20 years, give or take. Entertainingly enough, we managed to pick gawdawful weather for every major thing we ever did during that union. The day we moved from our apartment into the Encanto house was Arizona’s hottest day on record. Then we picked a day to move out of Encanto up to snooty North Central in the middle of the heaviest rainy spell on record. The movers’ truck broke down in the middle of a major thoroughfare along about midnight; D-XH ended up driving into the black rain in search of them and helping them jump-start the thing, while I huddled on a sofa with our exhausted six-year-old. That was grand fun.

Give me the hottest day on record over the rainiest day on record, any time. As an augur, that is. We loved living in Encanto. I truly hated living in North Central, whose inhabitants surely beat Scottsdale’s in any competition to measure Snooty and Snobby. Lowbrow as I was, I somehow managed to fit in fine with the gentrifying Encanto set. But the got-it-made set in North Central could spot white trash in an instant. What dreadful people!

Sooo…rain on the roof: no, it doesn’t augur well. Not in my experience.

Gaaah! One Thing After Another

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Is there an explanation for the one thing after another phenomenon? Clearly, it’s very common. So common that we have a variety of folk terms for it: never rains but it pours…damned if you do, damned if you don’t…Houston, we have a problem…out of the frying pan, into the fire…all part of life’s rich pageant…

Argh! With pageants like this, who needs Mardi Gras?

In the background, we have, as we all recall, the lamp fiasco, the driver’s license nuisance, the raccoon/coatimundi question, the foisting of the raccoon nest upon the Yard Dudes of the Century (more about which, sooner or later), income tax prep, the busted deadbolt, and similar bidness as usual. And in the further background (please, God! Make it as far in the background as possible), the endless series of visits to the Mayo’s ER.

To begin at the ending — or at the latest, because you just know this will not be the end of the infinite cosmic jest — last night as I was flying around getting ready to go to choir, I peered in the mirror to paint myself and saw…WTF?  Some kind of ZIT in my eye????????

Yes. It looks like a little blister or pustule on the white of an eye. It doesn’t hurt. But it’s bloodshot around the damn thing, and it looks potentially ominous. Whaaaa? Infection? Injury? Allergic reaction? Some new fiasco incident upon the dental implant (right below it) that refuses to heal up?

Call the Mayo’s night line. Wait and wait and wait and wait  and wait and wait x 10²²… Paint face, paint face, paint face, comb hair, comb hair, comb hair, pull on clothes, pull on clothes… Finally a nurse gets on the line.

She listens to the sad story, asks a few questions, opines that it’s nothing to get hysterical about (but of course she does so in far more professional-sounding terms), and advises me to douse it with some artificial tears and call back if it doesn’t get better.

Ohhh god. It’s time to leave for choir practice, which won’t end until after 9, when everyplace in reach will be closed.

FLY out the door and, astonishing luck being on my side, zip into the Albertson’s parking lot without a traffic jam and without undue driver nuttiness. See with pleasure that Albertson’s has posted an armed guard in the parking lot, THANK you verymuch (this is a store that I do not enter after dark, not on a bet…not under ordinary circumstances). Race in the door, find a not-very-distracted pharmacist, ask where the “artificial tears” are (whatever those are), and am swiftly directed to the product. Not only that, but she agrees to take my money, so I don’t have to stand in line interminably at a check-out register.

Fly back out, dodge the damn light-rail tracks, circle back through the ‘Hood, and fly down Main Drag East to the Cult HQ, where I arrive just in time for choir practice. Just. Barely.

Two & a half hours later, apply this gunk to the affected eyeball. It’s soothing. But does nothing to clear the bloodshot look. Condition unchanged this morning.

I have receptionist duty at the church this afternoon — which happens to be where this missal originates, right this minute — but before I get out of the house I have GOT to finish the latest Chinese mathematician’s paper, proofread the damn thing, generate visible edits from my copy, and disgorge a statement.

This takes several hours.

Now I’m running late to get ready for the front-office gig.

Send off the edited copy and bill, fly to the back of the house, and start painting my face. The eye thing looks…certainly no better, possibly worse. I’ve looked it up on the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest and now believe it to be something called a pingueculum. Apparently it’s not considered very serious, at least not at this stage…but sometimes it does need to be treated with surgery. Godlmighty…here we go again!

Not only that, but there are tumors that can look suspiciously like that. gaaaaaaaa! c -a-a-a-n-c -e-r!!!!

So after I’ve sent off the client’s work, while I’m getting dressed to come down here to the HQ, I get on the phone to the Mayo again, by way of asking: does this thing actually need to be seen by…you know…a DOCTOR? A person with the letters “M.D.” after their name?

My beloved ophthalmologist passed away a long time ago. The guy who took his place was a raving fruitcake. The guy who took that one’s place, a study in overkill. I’ve been getting my eye exams and glasses prescriptions at Costco, whose contract staff do the job with one whole of a helluva lot less hassle and expense.

So I call the Mayo while painting, combing, and clothes-throwing on. And wait and wait and wait and wait  and wait and wait x 10²²… 

Just as their nurse picks up the phone, it’s BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BING BONG!

ooohhh shee-utt! NOW what?? I’m half-dressed and it’s almost time to go out the door.

Run to the front of the house: it’s SDXB…sur-PRI-I-I-ISE!ˆ

He wants to socialize, just having come away from coffee with one of his oldest cronies. Ruby is having a yap-fest. The nurse is on the phone. I dodge down the hall trying to find enough quiet to explain the issue and ask: is this something that should be seen by a doctor?

“Not yet,” says she. If it hasn’t gotten better in about two weeks, call back and make an appointment.

…godlmighty…

Then…yes: The raccoon/coatimundi/Creature from the Black Lagoon issue…

Ah, I see I haven’t blogged about this one. How could I have let such a juicy story lapse?

So a few days ago, I stumble out into the back yard behind the dawg and find these weird pawprints. Something with very long, strong claws has been digging at the surface of quarter-minus top-dressing in the backyard. Quarter-minus, for the uninitiated, is finely crushed granite. After you lay it down and it gets wet and dries out a few times, it packs down to form a practically weed-proof surface. Unlike gravel, it’s comfortable enough for you and your dog to walk around on barefoot. Also unlike gravel, it looks a lot like the surface of the Sonoran desert. And it doesn’t make your yard look like it belongs in Sun City, home of the green-gravel lawn.

What ARE these? think I

Welp, the locals have spotted both coatimundis and raccoons in the ‘Hood. Our resident gadget enthusiast has set up cameras in his backyard and captured images of a coati cavorting around out there. Other neighbors have caught pictures of raccoons visiting their yards.

A raccoon, I could do without. They make a big mess and can be destructive. A coati, however…ohhh yeah! A pet coati is exactly what the Funny Farm needs. They eat bugs. That scratching behavior reflects an attempt to scruffle up some slugs and such.

However, the foot seems not to be shaped quite like a coati’s. Ultimately we conclude it’s probably a raccoon.

And where do raccoons like to nest? In woodpiles, that’s where. And what do we have in the backyard? Uh huh…

Shortly after I moved in here — 16 freakin’ years ago, for hevvinsake! — SDXB decided to move to Sun City.

SDXB just loved his fireplace. He was very, very fond of sitting in front of a roaring fire. This, apparently, is characteristic of Michiganders and Minnesotans. 😀  To supply his habit, he used to scavenge for firewood hither, thither, and yon. Understand, as a Master Cheapskate our SDXB would never in a million years pay for firewood. Whenever someone would chop down a tree, the remains would be stacked by the curb or in an alley for the trash pickup guys to haul off, once every four months. So he would grab this miscellaneous stuff off the side of the road, whenever he found it.

When the quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord erupted — Tony was living in the place right next-door to SDXB — SDXB decided to flee to Sun City.

I was not goin’, though SDXB tried to persuade me to sell the place and move out to Mausoleum West. Even though the judge wouldn’t let us leave the courtroom. Even though my terrorized lawyers begged me not to return to the house and to vacate the place right this goddamn minute. I ain’t a-scared of no Romanian mafiosi!

Reluctant to leave his priceless collection of dead wood behind, he toted it over here and stacked it neatly in my backyard.

And there it has sat, for lo! these 16 years. I tried it a couple times in this house’s fireplace and decided I really, truly HATED the stink it poured into the entire house, and that I really, truly do NOT want to spend my time cleaning out a fireplace. So…I’m pretty sure that’s where both Rattie and the Raccoon have dwelt, on various occasions.

It’s too heavy for me to move en masse, and besides, I don’t have a pickup. But after Rocky the Raccoon arrived on the scene, I figured I was just gonna have to get rid of the rodent habitat.

So my latest plan was to slip the stuff into the alley garbage bins, one piece a week, from now until the end of eternity. This had many practical disadvantages, not the least of which is that it’s illegal. Soo…I was at a bit of a loss as to how to dump it. Stacking it in the alley for the bulk trash guys was not very practical: I don’t have the physical strength to haul that many partially split logs, and I don’t wanna, and if you put the stuff out there before The Time to put out bulk pick-up you’ll get a fine, and…did I say I don’t wanna?

Yesterday, however, I finally prevailed upon the redoubtable Gerardo to remove the stack of rotting, termite-ridden firewood so generously deposited in my backyard lo! these many years ago.

The trick was to ask one of his barely English-speaking cousins to do the job before the boss showed up on the scene. So his guy Tony agreed to do it, in his sweet naïveté. By the time Gerardo arrived on the scene, it was tooo late to wiggle out. 😀

He asked for the usual 50 bucks to haul the debris to the dump (which is a long, LONG drive from here). I gave him 80.

Good riddance to that mess!!

Back to this morning: SDXB hangs around telling me about his buddy’s (very trying) recent Troubles of Old Age (and of landlordship… Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be landlords!) while I’m pulling on clothes, wrangling the dog, rassling up the things I need to bring with me to the church.

Finally get him out the door, splash some of the drops onto the suspect eyeball, grab the keys and the credit card, and shoot out the door.

At least for a change no aspiring burglars were lurking around the house trying to suss out the easiest way to get in. That’s something. I guess.

Later — tonight, tomorrow, whenever, as long as it’s LATER — I’ve got to get on the phone to the Apple Support gurus and put them up to helping me figure out how to fix the Mail program.

Apple computers have a feature that computer geeks apparently think is passing Kewl but that normal people find aggravating, annoying, and infuriating: you can set it so that when you change windows or switch to different programs, instead of just going “clickola” over to the page you crave, it does this goddamn “slide-show” thing! Like a slide on a slide projector slimpsing over to the next picture to view. It’s time-consuming, it’s irritating, and it screws iup the menu in the bar at the top of the screen. I hate it, hate it, HATE it.

The computer, therefore, is set not to do that.

But apparently there’s some accursed keyboard command that will switch it on, within a given program. And apparently as my hot little fingers were jetting across the keyboard, I unknowingly hit that command, in typo mode. Suddenly, MacMail starts with the car sick-making slide-show mode.

Now I cannot for the life of me find out what that command is, nor can I find, on the Web or anywhere else, how to undo the damn command.

Soooo…there’s another time-sucking hassle waiting to be coped with.

See what I mean? Never a dull fukkin’ moment!

 

…And I’m complaining…WHY?

by

Ever have one of those moments when you find yourself wondering “Why am I whining about _[fill in the blank_“?

Coming nigh to the close of another full day of batting from pillar to post — doggy walk, grocery run, Home Depot run, Lowe’s run, Best Buy run, electric supply store run, bird feed project, mess pick-up, correspondence catch-up, real estate surveillance check, feast cooking, raccoon tracking, and on and on and endlessly on — I find myself wondering…why the hell do I worry about the chronic insomnia that rousts me around 2 or 3 every morning, when in fact during the day I DON’T FEEL TIRED?

In fact, I feel quite peppy all day: no sense of insomniac fatigue or crankiness.

Maybe — could it be? — just maybe going to bed around 9 or 10 p.m., waking up at 2 or 3 (= 5 hours’ sleep), loafing in the dark until 4 or 5 a.m., then falling back to sleep and waking up around 6 or 7 a.m. (= 5 + 2 hours sleep, for a total of 7 hours) is perfectly reasonable? The upshot is around seven hours’ of sleep, despite a two- or three-hour hiatus. Seven hours is thought to be normal and healthy for the agèd human. What is the difference whether you sleep 7 hours straight from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., or 7 hours off and on between around 9 p.m. and around 7 a.m.?

Seems to me if you feel fine the next day, all day, there really is no difference.

How many other things do we whine about when…really…they make no difference?

  • The homicidal traffic and our fellow moronic drivers? If we get from point A to point B without killing each other, does it really make any difference?
  • Our crazy relatives whose political opinion pigheadedly differs from our enlightened wisdom: this makes a difference how?
  • The gas price at the QT was 22 cents higher than at the Costco, where we had to drive an extra 7 miles (14 miles round-trip) to avail ourselves of the bargain: this changed our lives how?
  • The city raises its monthly trash collection bill by $2.46: our lives are destroyed by this to what extent?

Huh. Think o’ that.

What’s your favorite whinge?

It’s the Little Things That Count…

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Ever feel like the dopiest little things make you feel as gratified as the occasional major triumph? Maybe more so?

Case in point: the blue jeans ironing-fest.

Thanks to Costco’s bargains, I live in jeans. Hardly ever wear anything else. For years, I’ve pressed these fine garments every time they were washed. Because…well…because. Not until a young fellow choir member gasped, as she was climbing behind me up the stairs to the loft, “You iron your jeans??” did it strike me that this was weird behavior. They’re cotton. They wrinkle when you wash them. They’re tacky. They look less tacky when they’re pressed. So I press them.

Admittedly, though, it’s a bit of a tedious job.

Tiring of tedious jobs and feeling liberated by her surprise at the very thought of ironed jeans, over time I quietly gave up pressing denim. Nobody seemed to notice.

Nobody but me, that is…

This evening as I lifted three pairs of jeans off the rack by the washer by way of hauling back to the closet, I reflected that these things just look scruffy! I hate unironed jeans. It also occurred to me that the other three pair I’d just pulled out of the washer and hung up to dry would probably dry looking pressed if I ironed them right that minute, while they were wet. Hmmm…

Looked like that would work. Sooo…while the iron was hot, out came the rest of the baggy jeans from the closet. By the time Rachel Maddow had finished holding forth, I’d ironed ten pairs of jeans, each with nice straight creases running up the legs.

Hot diggety!

Speaking of Costco, by yesterday the Venza was about out of gas. So along about mid-morning I capitulated and traipsed down to the store by the Bum’s Park, which often has the cheapest gas in town.

That, as you might guess, means it has the longest lines in town. {cringe!} Saturday morning: I expected to sit there and sit there and sit there. But resigned myself to that fate, because I’d kept the gasoline wolf from the door a few days earlier by buying a couple gallons from the rapacious QT up by the canal and did not wish to endure another emergency rip-off so soon.

So it was down to the Costco. Long line turning left off Bethany Home onto 15th…and of course every car turned right onto Montebello, headed for the store’s entrance. One guy cruised straight on through the intersection behind the store. Gone! But another guy crossed into the intersection from the left, coming from the rather dire apartments that border Bum’s Park.

But WHOA! He didn’t glide into the gas station’s lot — a miracle. He just proceeded straight for the parking lot. The truck right in front of me, though, did dodge into the station. How many gallons does a pickup hold? Eighty??

Mirabilis! The guy didn’t realize or didn’t care that Costco’s gas tank hoses are extra-long, so that you don’t have to park your vehicle with the gas tank lid next to the pump to fill up. Poor guy plodded over to join a line that would put his gas tank as close to the pump as possible. A long line.

And then another miracle: here’s a pair of pumps with only one car parked in their lane. And the woman hogging both pumps has just put the pump handle back, collected her receipt, and climbed into her car. I nuzzle up behind her. She dawdles but eventually starts her engine and putters away. HOLY mackerel! I’ve gotten to a pump in a matter of seconds! And without anyone barging in front of me to cut me off.

So I got in there and out in just a few minutes, rather than the 10 or 15 minutes I expected. A-N-N-N-D…I paid 22 cents a gallon less than the QT charged!

Definite major minor triumph. Ohhh the smugness!

Doesn’t take much to make some people’s day, does it? 😀

One Damnfool Thing after Another

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It’s 9 a..m. sharp. Cox’s internet (and consquently its phone service) has been down since 10 p.m. That’s right: last night.

Uh huh. If you’ve got business to do or calls to make, f’get it!

At 1 a.m., I woke up with pain in…something. Chest? Belly? Whaaa? Did I need to go to the Mayo’s effing ER again??? Decided maybe I was going to be forced to take those blood pressure meds the last ER doc prescribed. But when you read the package insert, you find they say you must proceed with caution if you have a sulfa allergy.

Allergy? Are they kidding? As a toddler I had a monster reaction when my mother’s cat scratched my face and a doctor gave me a sulfa drug to fight off “cat fever,” whateverthehell that was supposed to be. At the intensive care ward, a doctor told my mother I would not live through the night.

So…ohhhkay…. Tried to get online to check out the sulfa connection: nope. Picked up the phone to check for a dial tone: busy signal. Reset the modem: nope.

The same holds forth just now.

Luckily, I seem not to have died of a heart attack. At 7:30 in the morning, I neurotically take my blood pressure: 117/79. Whatever ails me, apparently it’s not a near-death experience.

Morning having dawned with Cox’s internet system still not working, I figure I’ll have to drive to The Little Guy’s coffee shop and buy some token product so as to get online. But right at 10 a.m., the service (and phone) came back on.

In the phone department, I’m slowly getting used to the new Panasonic landline. It’s really a pretty nice production, as those things go. To my astonishment, its built-in call blocker works – only three or four calls have gotten through since I installed it. That is at least as good as the CPR V5000’s performance; possibly better. My attempt to block “Name Unavailable” calls failed, but otherwise it apparently detects and blocks most robocalls.

Far as I know, nothing like that exists for cell phones. Which is one of several reasons I do not want to go out and blow a jillion bucks on an iPhone.

We’re told, though, that Apple is about to promulgate a low-rent iPhone. When that happens, I may get one. In that case, will discontinue Cox’s overpriced VoIP service. Since I got the phone at Costco, I can take it back if I decide to get rid of the fake landline.

At 9:30, I figure I’d better start to fly, so as to get dressed and start batting from pillar to post.

Before the outage, Costco did get through to report the repaired glasses were ready to pick up, so willy-nilly I had to schlep across the city to retrieve those.

Stopped by the Home Depot on the way.  I’ve let the side yard go wayyy too long, so want to pick up some plants to replace a number of very tired critters that did not survive the period over the summer when the watering system quit working (it only takes a day or two without water to kill a potted plant here).

Looks like those dwarf bougainvillea I put in front are going to croak over. Annoying. It may be that they’re just suffering from the cold…but it hasn’t been that cold. We haven’t had a hard frost this winter. I’m thinking I may pull them out and replace them with roses, which I know do well in that exposure. But it frosts my cookies…speaking of frost.

The huge rubber plant in a vast pot on the side deck is dying. Why, I do not know, but it’s just as well because those things do tend to get out of control. I figure a ficus or a scheffleria (sp?) would do well in that spot. A bunch of smaller pots need new plants. Plus I’m determined to get the coveted rose food.

****

But alas. The Depot has neither a ficus benjamina nor Bayer rose food.

Apparently ficus has gone out of style as a house plant.

I mean…really???

I guess it’s obvious to normal humans: of course there are styles in houseplants, evolving tastes, even a strong non-taste for plants that have to be watered couple days or even just a couple times a week. But…dayum! Ficus????

As for the rose food, apparently the product or the company has been acquired. The maker is now called “Bio.” Same blue bottle. Same size bottle. Same shape bottle. Except instead of Bayer Rose and Flower Care, now it’s Bio Rose and Flower Care. The Home Depot dude was…nonplussed. He looked it up on his smartphone and found that yea verily: Bayer has been taken over by something called “Bio.”

WhatEVER. Grab!

From there it was on to Lowe’s, a straight shot across T-Bird, in search of a ficus plant.

Not without, however, having grabbed some spectacularly gorgeous orange poppies (ostentatiously labeled with a cancer warning, for those of you who hope to distill them into something…ahem…usable).

Lowe’s had three, count’em, three little Ficus benjamina. Two were ratty and tatty. One was in OK shape. Grab!

By now I’ve driven miles and miles and fuckin miles to pick up three, count’em, three items.

Back at the Funny Farm, the MacMail is still out of whack.

{sigh}

This means a call to Apple Support.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Apple’s support staff. They are wonderful. They are endlessly patient, and they are freakin’ geniuses. They can solve problems that God Herself could not figure out (or would prefer not to expend Her infinity on). But ohhhh…God in Hevvin….

Two hours later… We have MacMail operating, and we have finally figured out why I get nuisance pop-up after nuisance pop-up after nuisance pop-up, all day long and all night long, informing me that my iCloud sign-in is…well, out of whack.

These annoying messages are stimulated by a fuckup among Apple Geniuses. Last time I dragged the MacBook to Scottsdale to be fixed, some moron…uhm. sorry, Genius took it upon him/herself to change the iCloud password for the MacBook. It did not register with this person that I own another Mac computer…but then, forgodsake, why should it.

Well, it develops that if one personoid ends up with two Apple ID, havoc is sown. And that explains the puzzling panoply of hassles.

Both computers have to have the same iCloud password, quoth this young(-sounding) fella. The way to do this is to arrange something arcane that I do not understand no matter how clearly he explains it (and the guy is a master of clarity). All I understand is that I will get a phone call that will announce a four-hour window in which I have to be available and ready to rise to this challenge.

Don’t call them. They’ll call me.

I explain that I have…you know…a life.

He explains that the life will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Holy ess aitch ai.

At any rate, he seems to have the mail program running adequately for the nonce. But experience shows that with Apple, “for the nonce” most decidedly does not mean “forever and ever, amen.”

Ohhh dear God.

***

Now, right along in here, after I get off the phone from this worthy, somehow it crosses my mind that I do not have the old pair of glasses that the new swell pair of glasses replace. Where TF are they?

Well, the optical department folk gave them to me in a strange little three-dimensional case, which one of them tossed in the bottom of the cart I was pushing around. From the optical dept I made my way through the store to pick up four or five items on my list. Then rolled the cart out to the parking lot and packed the debris into the back of the Venza.

Was the glasses case amongst the debris?

I do not remember.

Ohhhh cripes. That was a $400 pair of glasses, which I planned to use as a back-up for the new $150 pair of (not as stylish but functionally better…) Costco glasses.

Where TF were those elegantly, expensively stylish old glasses?

Gone, that’s where they were.

Now I call the Paradise Valley Costco and ask if they’ve been turned in to Lost & Found. And lo! They have. The guy says it looks like the case was run over by a cart, but the glasses themselves are fine.

Holy ess aitch ai, indeed!

It’s now 4 p.m.

I’ve had nothing to eat since 6 in the morning. It’s been one hassle and one frustration after another. But I need those damn glasses.

Soooo… back into the car and off to the East Side.

Well. Sort of east. Closer to Richistan than the ‘Hood, anyway.

Bat my way through the rush-hour traffic.

Yes. They do have the honored vintage glasses. They are undamaged. Collect these and head back to the Funny Farm through now even thicker rush-hour traffic.

This is a sixteen-mile round trip. Times 2? That would be 32 miles of junketing back and forth between the Funny Farm and the Paradise Valley Costco.

Running low on gas, but cannot contemplate either paying a premium to refill in a rapacious gas station nearer my house or schlepping to the mid-town (lowest prices in the city!) Costco and standing in line there until the Northern Star traverses its nightly path.

Make into the ‘Hood. Ghosting across the neighborhood lane that leads toward the Funny Farm, I come across a gaggle of young children playing on the sidewalks, in the front yards, riding bicycles and assorted contraptions.

Thank the Good Goddess and All Her Minions that I slow down — a lot — to enjoy the sight of these beautiful young creatures playing. Because…

One of them, a lovely, heedless little girl, decides to veer into the street and then make a U-turn on her bike…right in front of my car.

Hm. Well, we now can say something good about the hated Venza: its brakes work.

At least, they work very well, indeed, at excruciatingly slow speeds.

The beast managed to stop just as the child swerved straight out in front of me.

omigod omigod omigod

The child appeared not even to register how close she came to ending her life at about the age of seven.

But you may be quite sure the Fatlady registered it. Holeee shit!

What. A. Day!

 

Another Day, Another New Year.

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New Year’s is my least favorite holiday. Honestly, I think maybe next year I’ll try to rent a place in Yarnell so I can get the hell out of this zoo!

Last night the plan was to go over to the  WonderAccountants’  for a light dinner and to introduce Ruby the Corgi to Chloe the Cockapoo, who recently came to live with Mr. & Mrs WonderAccountant.

This made for an overall pleasant evening — they’re exceptionally nice people. The neurotic Chloe, still getting used to her new digs, didn’t get on well with the hyperdominant Ruby, but on reflection I think it was a mistake to bring Ruby into the poor little pooch’s new territory. A better way to have introduced them would have been a doggy-walk around the park after the day warmed up.

Back to the house by 9 and wanting to go to bed.

Ruby is terrorized by the firecracker racket, and I have to say, it annoys me too. Last night every nitwit in the city was shooting off fireworks and guns, way on after midnight. And the clowns who have rented Pretty Daughter’s house across the street…honestly, I wish one of their colleagues would come pick those two off. One of the jerks has an unmuffled motorcycle. He got on that thing and revved it up as LOUD AS IT WOULD GO, just ear-splitting even inside the house, and roared up and down the street at 11:00 at night. By the time you could call a cop, he was gone, of course.

It sure as hell was maddening. But it could have been worse…

• A three-year-old was collateral damage from gunfire in lovely West Phoenix/Glendale.

• A guy standing at a bus stop around the corner from the university’s west campus (also in beautiful Glendale) was shot and killed. I was near that spot just the day before yesterday.

• An aged guy ran a signal at the intersection of Gangbanger’s Way and the freeway access road. He died; the 19-year-old passenger was OK, as was the 28-year-old occupant in the other car.

• A passenger in an airport parking shuttle van was killed when a truck ran into the van. Truck driver was drunk.

• Another drunk driver slammed into a power pole but, undaunted, soldiered on to bash nine other cars. Quite an impressive accomplishment!

• A crash at Feeder Street N/S and Virginia (mid-town, a distance south of here) put six people in the hospital, four of them in critical condition.

• Some hiker died on a trail in Tucson; a pair of mountain lions found the corpse and proceeded to dine on it. Caught in the act, the lions were murdered by Arizona Game & Fish.

• A 16-year-old girl died when the intoxicated driver of the vehicle she and five or six other people were riding in clipped another car and lost control. Unrestrained by any encumbrance such as a seatbelt, the girl was ejected from the car and died at the scene.

None o’ that stuff allowed!

So…New Year’s Eve here amounts to a night of mayhem, racket, and scofflawing. The city had a no-burn order going, because the air pollution is really bad at this time of year. When I walked in the house after dinner at the neighbors’, the stink of burning firewood was so strong indoors, I thought briefly that the house itself might have a fire going somewhere. So had to go out and inspect the premises, just what I love to do in 40-degree temps. Decided one of the idiot neighbors had a firepit or fireplace going.

Oh, well. Thank goodness it’s only one night a year! 😀