Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

One Damnfool Thing after Another

by

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.

by

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! 😀

Merry Christmas(?)

by

Christmas treeGood Yule Morning to you! I hope your holiday is happy.

Hereabouts, it’s raining. Again. Still. This is the second day of steady rain, with more (we’re told) to come. Just this moment, it’s stopped. And here I am trying to take advantage of that pause to fix something to eat.

It’s not working. Had the bright idea of frying some baby potatoes in butter, rather than, as usual, grilling them. Mistake! The smoking butter set off the fire alarm. Got that damn thing shut off. Carried the potatoes in their pan out to the grill to set the things on the grill pan. It’s starting to mist again. The tiny raindrops sifting out of the sky hit the hot grease and created a stutter of staccato explosions.

Soon it will be raining again, which will make it impossible to cover the grill whenever I’m done “cooking” (or whatever it is) because the metal grill lid will be too  hot.

Haven’t heard when my son wants me to come over for the proposed dinner, a circumstance which I’m beginning to assume means “never.” Okay…whatever.**

What’m’I gonna do about that grill in the rain? Hmmm…  Whenever I can pull the food off of it, I guess, cover it loosely with a few strips of tinfoil. Then as soon as it’s cool enough, put the mostly worn-out cover back over it. No wind is blowing, so a few sheets of tinfoil probably will stay in place for half an hour.

This is devolving into a nice Day from Hell.

Still have the gawdawful cough. The hand still hurts like the devil, though it’s a little better… Friday I’m supposed to go out to the Mayo to get a chest X-ray (since this cough may very well be incident upon the antibiotic they gave me for the UTI, a side effect with potentially fatal ramifications) and a hand X-ray. How exactly any of this is going to help escapes me…there appears to be little to be done in either event. The lung damage, we’re told, will clear on its own in about four months — assuming it doesn’t kill you. The hand? I don’t think it’s broken…and so what exactly is to be done, other than maybe some physical therapy, also remains to be seen.

Yes. The hand…and the woo-woo. Actually, we have woo-woo remedies in connection with both. Videlicet…

This damn cough is about to kill me. Now that we know the stuff that powers Robitussin and its knockoffs — stuff that works very effectively to silence the hack for several hours — jacks up the blood pressure by something upward of 20 points, we’re left with nothing to treat the damn cough.

So I tried an old folk remedy: fresh ginger steeped in hot water and honey.

Interestingly, this does create an improvement. And it works for several hours! The difference is not as joltingly quick as what occurs after a dose of the pizzen in Robitussin, but it’s about the same. And it seems to last for about the same period of time.

Uh huh… Strawberries, cherries, little angels kissin’ spring…

Night before last, I came across the jar of CBD cream that came into my possession a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, until I had to rummage around for some lip balm.

“Hmmmm,…” thought I, ever articulate: “Why not?”

So I rubbed this stuff on the sore spots, fell into the sack, and forgot about it.

Next morning, I wake up and lo! The pain is about 85% improved.

Of course, I think the Goddess has changed Her mind and decided to smile upon me. By the light of dawn, I blithely forget about the crème de cannabis that I’d smeared all over the paw.

As the pain slowly returned over the next 20 hours or so, somehow I managed to remember the doped cream. Could it be possible? I wondered. Looked up the question of whether medicaments of one sort or another actually can soak through your skin and affect your muscles and tendons. Weirdly, there seems to be evidence that this is the case. I mean scientific evidence, not woo-woo.

What the hell? This morning I smeared on some more. It required some time to take effect — if indeed the outcome is an effect. But after a bit, the pain, which has been pretty intense at times, was somewhat relieved.

Who knows?

woo-OOOO-ooo!!
😀

….and time passes…and the tinfoil trick works, and lo! there’s a streak of blue across the sky, something we haven’t seen in two or three days. The steak & potatoes came out just fine, despite the inclement weather.

Ruby just came in and opened the door to the garage(!). What is that dog trying to say to me?

It’s mighty cold outside. She doesn’t seem to want to go outdoors, exactly. But what interests her in the garage? That escapes me.

But then…most things escape me.

** Lo! The message M’Hijito sent re: proposed arrival time was sent at 11:20…appeared in my in-box at 1:40. Gee, thanks, Apple!

Revival Time

by

Not that kind of revival! 😀

Amazing, it is, how fast we melt away when we lay around all day doing nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can manage.

I’m pretty good at that, we might add.

After falling over a broken slab of pavement a week ago Friday, I’ve been in so much pain I can barely move. And so, reasonably enough (one would imagine), I have been barely moving.

Result: taking the dog for a walk yesterday freaking wore me out!

When I haven’t been sleeping all day, I’ve been laying around all day playing computer games and cruising websites. Otherwise, when ambulatory: limping and hobbling around with great dramatic flair…like an old lady, we might say.

Well…it turns out that loafing all day is even worse for us than we think. Which, for those of us who do think about it, appears to be pretty bad.

It develops that when you take naps in the daytime, you up your chances of having a stroke significantly. This might not seem like much of a concern when you’re in your 30s or 40s, but when you’re rocketing toward 75, it gets your attention. Because…welll…sleeping half the afternoon away? That’s what I do all the time.

Because…I routinely wake up at two or three in the morning. Often I can’t get back to sleep. Or if I do, it’s just for another hour or so. This leaves me in Zombie Mode throughout the daylight hours. Which means I usually take an afternoon snooze.

So that article about napping and stroke definitively caught my attention.

Ohhhkayyyy…. So no more of that sleeping-the-afternoon-away business. Revival Time!

Yesterday I managed to stay awake all day, without too much discomfort. Surprisingly, too, I slept till around 7 a.m. — which is very late for me. That, I expect, was because I dropped half a Benadryl…but whatever, it worked.

Today for a change I was not so exhausted I couldn’t hold my head up. But did realize that the dog and I have lost our habit of the two-mile doggy-walk, mostly because I hurt too much to walk to the front door, much less wrangle her all the way through Lower Richistan, Upper Richistan, and back.

So it was out the door. But the walk was cut somewhat short, first by my overall sensation of weakness and then by a moron neighbor who was standing on her front lawn yakking with someone while her large, batshit dog stood guard. I had to pick up Ruby and carry her past them as the dog stared greedily at us and the nitwit cooed “oh, don’t worry, he never hurts anybody!”

Uh huh. This is the hound that she allows to snooze on a table or shelf in front of her large living-room picture window. Every time this critter sees me and Ruby and I walk up that street, it goes ABSOLUTELY SCREAMING BATSHIT. It growls, it barks, it slams itself against that window. Over and over. I avoid walking past the nitwit’s house, because sooner or later that dog is going to break through that damn window.

And that will be one hot mess.

I mean, really: do you seriously suppose this stupid woman just doesn’t notice that her 90-pound mutt goes freaking out of its mind when it sees a dog and a human amble by on the front sidewalk? How do people who have taken leave of that many IQ points remember how to put their shoes on?

But I digress.

Two doggy-walks a day, while a good thing, are rather more than I feel like doing, with one hand too maimed to manage the dog and one knee and the other hip hurting at each step.

So decided a yoga routine would be good. Or better: three of ’em: one in the morning, one around noon, and one in the evening.

The problem with having Jim the Incredible Pool Dude around is that because he does such an amazing job on the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money, I no longer have to go out in back every day and wrestle with pool brushes and hoses. So that is a source of exercise that has gone away. However obnoxious it may be, it did at least get me off my duff and require me to slam around for 15 or 20 minutes. Or more.

A short yoga routine actually worked very well: painless and strangely refreshing. Well…almost painless, as long as nothing touched the hand or the knee.

So I think I should try to do about three of those a day, preferably lengthening each session considerably. And then somehow get back to two miles on the doggywalks. At a time of day when the morons aren’t swarming…

Image: Wikipedia. Erling Mandelmann / photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch

Down at the HQ

by

So… Trying to get out of the Funny Farm to drive down to the Religious HQ for today’s volunteer stint at the front desk, whereinat I now reside. Finally…

LORDIE, what a hassle.

To start with, I hurt from top to bottom. Even though the injured paw is slowly healing (I think) it’s very slow. The wrenched knee also hurts. If I get into the bathtub, I can’t get out through any normal contortions and so have to scrabble around to try to get on my feet without slipping and braining myself.

Not that it would make much difference these days.

A normal person would take a shower, not get herself trapped in a tubful of hot water, right? Yes. But first, I’m far from normal. And second — more to the point — soaking in hot water seems to be about all that eases the present tumble-induced aches and pains.

Next, the deadbolt on the door between the kitchen & the garage has jammed. Soonest I could get a locksmith out to the house was tomorrow. Fortunately, there’s a drill-proof Schlage lock on the garage’s side door, and prizing open the garage door itself…well…that’s not very hard, but it would be a little conspicuous for a burglar’s tastes.

But…I tend to mindlessly drive away from the house without closing the garage door. Invariably I think of this as I get about halfway up the block, so feel honor-bound to turn around, go back, and check to be sure it’s shut. This noon when I pull a U-ie…well, naturally, my computer slides off the passenger seat and tumbles onto the floor. Shee-ut!

It doesn’t seem to have broken. Otherwise, obviously, this wouldn’t be getting written.

To add to the kitchen-door issue, the lock on one of the Arcadia doors won’t work. Turns out for some reason the door isn’t closing tightly enough to force the little button that makes it possible for the latch to shift into place. These doors are supposedly warranteed for life, but taking advantage of that will entail digging out the paperwork from files that date back 15 years…won’t THAT be fun? And then hoping the manufacturer is still in business.

To add to the computer issue, the MacBook has developed a slowly worsening quirk: its cursor randomly jumps backward up the file as I’m typing, and since I type very fast even with one paw wounded, it inserts a series of letters into some random place in the file. This, I find extremely annoying.

I also find it’s a known issue. And probably will clinch the requirement that I buy a new computer, which I really do not want to do.

One reason I don’t want to is that I haven’t been paid the $1300 owed by my most recent client. Contact his admin and find it’s because she failed to enter some tiny speck of data into the university’s excruciatingly complicated computer forms.

Soooooo….. Let’s hope this thing survives long enough for that payment to get here, so I can afford to buy another unit and jump through the involved set of hassles that will entail.

Further adding to the fun… Usually the Thursday afternoon front-desk gig is quiet as the tomb. Not so today. The phone has been jangling since I sat down. We’re doing a concert of Handel’s Messiah — people are calling with questions to which I do not now, never have, and probably never will know the answers.

At any rate, this is the kind of day that makes me question the state of my marbles. I can’t even get out the door without a fiasco, and when I finally get here — pushing late — I have no clue what I’m doing.

The front yard looks a lot clearer and tidier with all the brush that Gerardo and crew removed yesterday. But from the street you still can’t get a full view of what’s going on — if anything — inside the courtyard. So, what with that guy obviously casing the house the other day, I’m  not at all comfortable at leaving the place. Ever. Especially not for several hours at a time.

So we’re brought back to the question that arises these days every time I get in my car and drive away from the Funny Farm:

Why am I staying here?

Argha!

Main reason? I have no idea where else to go.

Not that I can afford, anyway. If you don’t want to live in  a suburb of eave-to-eave styrofoam-and-stucco ticky-tacky, there’s really not much you can afford in a safer area. Not around here, anyway. All of North Central — where I’ve lived all my adult life — is now outside my price range. Well, except for the strip that borders Conduit of Blight Boulevard, all of which suffers the same issue as we in the ‘Hood confront: our neighbor to the west is one huge meth slum. That’s why the ’Hood is relatively affordable.

The alternatives are Fountain Hills — an hour’s drive from everything I do, and also largely ticky-tacky construction, albeit on larger lots — and Sun City –also almost an hour away from my life, and a ghetto for old folks, to boot.

Prescott? Wickenburg? Oro Valley? I’d have to start my life completely over in any of those places. And y’know what? I’m just too damn lazy to feel like building whole new networks of friends, whole new networks of retailers, whole new networks of doctors and dentists and optometrists and hair stylists and car mechanics and cleaning ladies and yard dudes and locksmiths and AC repairmen and plumbers and bankers and veterinarians and accountants and computer gurus and…augh!! It’s more than one can contemplate.

Ugh…some woman just hung up on me because I have no idea where to buy size 3x men’s pajamas. WTF????

And…ohboy, two seconds later the wooden gadget someone made to hold the door open got busted. Now the door is permanently latched shut.

BUT…the amazingly resourceful Nanette forthwith walked in through the door, retrieved the busted device, and fixed it.

A parishioner wants to know at which the Christmas Eve service do we sing “Silent Night” in the dark. I say it must be the midnight service…because that’s when the choir sings and we always sing…etc. No, says she, it can’t be the midnight mass because they never go to that.

Huh? Well, then, sister, it must be the service you usually go to, no???

An hour to go before I can head home and pour a bourbon & water.

 

Is It Just Me…or Is It Just Chaos?

by

Beer! God’s greatest gift to Personkind…

Amazingly, I slept past my usual 3 a.m. wake-up call. Didn’t roll out of the sack until 7:30 in the morning. That’s a lot of sleep for an old cave woman. If we’d still been living in little tribes on the veldt, the entire clan would have been consumed by a sabre-toothed tiger around 3 :00, while the elder slept through the mayhem.

Fortunately, the only carnivore in evidence was a corgi, who also slept through till sunrise.

This has been one of those days. Nay, one of those weeks. You know: the “whatever can go wrong” variety?

When I came home the ’tother night from the Thanksgiving feast, fed and significantly refreshed, my attention was again drawn to the strange streaks on the bedroom walls I’d noticed before but, having no strength to fart with whatever that was, decided to ignore. About halfway in (I’d guess) to recovery from the present bronchitic episode, I explored.

Yes. Well. Those streaks looked wet because they were wet. As in…you know…water.

And that’s what they were: condensation from the two steamers that have been running in that room just about nonstop for the past six weeks.  The walls were coated with vertical puddles of water! These mixed with the ambient dust to form mud puddles.

Fortunately I have a lifetime supply of those Mr. Clean wall scrubber sponges, purchased from Costco in enough quantity to accommodate the cleaning lady until death do us part.

Equally fortunate: the water had condensed only on the room’s two exterior walls. This, presumably, because of the temperature differential between the outside air and the heated interior.

As it was, it took an hour to pull out the bed and scrub those two walls down from ceiling to floor. Jolly fun! In the middle of the night.

Laptop developed a wackshit quirk late last week, disconnecting it (so we’re told…but maybe not so much???) from iCloud. Now I have to traipse it to Scottsdale tomorrow…oboyoboy, i can hardly wait.

But that’s only part of the problem. It’s also hanging the cursor — totally disabling it so that I have to force-quit the computer and crash all the programs that are open in order to get the machine back to where it will function. This appears to be associated with a Washington Post game I like to play, but why that would be is profoundly unclear.

A-n-n-d Word just hung when I tried to reopen a file that was crashed in the most recent force-quit. So now I have to crash out of that.

The mail program crashes at random, for no discernible reason. And I keep getting a nagging pop-up message demanding that I sign in to iCloud — even though I am signed in to iCloud. And…none of the present and past passwords I have for iCloud seems to work, nor does there seem to be a way to reset the password in any way that makes any kind of sense. Or that works.

Apple’s formerly superb customer service has gone down the sewer. Until just the past few weeks, they’ve had THE most amazing phone techs, who could solve anything and fix anything over the phone. The last three times I’ve called, though, the people on the other end have been, shall we say, dumb as posts. How the Hell they got hired escapes me. They not only don’t identify the problem or come anywhere close to fixing it, the last nitwit actually made it worse.

So…that’s disapppointing. Interestingly, they’ve quit sending “how’d we do?” emails…presumably, then, Apple is fully aware of this.

Now I have to spend half the day Monday schlepping the MacBook to the Apple Geniuses, way to hell and gone in Scottsdale (since Apple kindly closed the central Phoenix store) and probably will end up having to ship the thing off. This will entail the usual endless arguments over my antique Word and Excel system. And of course, yet another endless trip to the recently dystopiified Scottsdale Fashion Square.

Really, I need to download LibreOffice and learn to use its word processor and spreadsheet software. But I cringe: I am SOOOO done with the electronic learning curve.

Speaking of the marvels our Our Technological Age, some strange email purporting to be from FeedBurner came in…go to site, fix this, fix that. WTF? Guru Grayson suspects it’s phishing, but in any event, FeedBurner was installed long before he took over wrangling the site. He advises that I should go over to FeedBurner’s website, sign in, and see if they really are bellyaching at me. Of course, it wants a password.

Well. That thing was installed by a previous web wrangler. If I ever had a password (which I highly doubt), I don’t have it anymore.

Back to Grayson. “The program is junk and no one is using it anymore,” says he. So it goes. One of us will deal with that later. Much later.

Still coughing. It’s s-l-o-w-l-y getting better, but at this rate it’ll be weeks — probably several months — before the hack goes away.

To frost the cake, I screwed up the Call-Blocker. Accidentally blocked the dermatologist’s number — is there a reason their robocall nuisance called on a Saturday night(!!!!!!!) to pester-remind me about next Tuesday’s appointment? Can’t unblock it following their instruction booklet. Now I have to get their techs on the phone — they’re not in on Sundays — and figure out how to undo that mess.

Amazon Prime video has hung up. So I guess not only may I not play an idle video game, neither can I watch one of the very few videos there that appear to be worth wasting one’s idle moments on. End up with an old John Wayne clunker. Thrill-a-minute… 😀

Oh, god. I’ve seen this thing. Soooooo long ago it was, and yet I still remember the opening scene.