Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Why I Love Walmart People…

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So, it’s coming onto the noon hour when I stumble into the neighborhood Walmart grocery store. This is when workin’ (and non-workin’) folks get off for a bit. Both the check-out lines run by humans are backed up halfway to the pharmacy counter. (I know: self-service checkout…but no. Do not do that. Keep your fellow Americans employed, dammit!).

So I join the shortest human-operated checkout line. I know this clerk. Which means I know better. She’s gotta be 80 years old if she’s a day, and she’s sloooowwwww as molasses in January. She comes from an era where that old chestnut made literal sense.

We stand and we stand and we stand and we stand and we stand and we stand while she goes through one (1) lady’s only moderately large basketful of purchases. I would guess we spent at least 15 minutes waiting to get up to the cash register.

But….. Ya can’t complain.

We — that would be me and half the planet’s population in line behind me — are standing behind THE single cutest little boy that God and all His Goddesses ever put on this earth. He’s parked in the shopping cart’s baby seat and is being, sporadically, doted upon by the woman he has with him. He is a creature of great cheer.

Believe me. This is a male child who will ALWAYS have women with him.

He is not cute. He is staggeringly, movie-star handsome. Every future woman in this child’s generation is dooooomed! The same is no doubt true of a fair number of male children.

Between the woman and the boy, a family resemblance is obvious. Is she the mother? Or is she the grandmother?

“Look! Flags!” the little boy points to patriotic tinfoil decorations strung over the check-out lines.

“Those are for the Fourth of July,” the matron explains.

“When is the Fourth of July?” he asks.

We line-waiters watch. All RIGHT! Tell him: when IS the Fourth of July?

Flummoxed, she shrugs. Luckily for her (and for the rest of us), she reaches the head of the line and so is forced to abdicate this Teaching Moment by forking over a basketful of groceries.

A bum walks by behind us.

He is tired. He is hot. The ambient temperature out of doors is 105 degrees. He heads for the hallway that houses the men’s room. And the women’s room.

We in line think: and THAT is why we don’t use the toilet in the Walmart: so we don’t get nits.

But he doesn’t go into the men’s. He marches up to the water fountain and drinks. And drinks. And drinks.

The old lady behind me and I glance at each other. Without a doubt, we each have the same thought: There but for the grace of God…

The agèd cashier finally dismisses the little boy and his grandmother/mother/whatever, just about that moment.

“That was a cute one,” I say to my informal cashier friend, whom I see almost every time I go through that store.

Her tired expression brightens. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, he was!”

Thank you, God, I think. And it is not because I’ve finally reached the front of the line.

Pests…and pests

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Eight a.m. sharp and a damned robocaller pest gets through the new CPR Call Blocker. Occasionally they do slip by. That notwithstanding, though, we’re still down from a dozen nuisance calls a day to one, at most. Often whole days go by without a single nuisance call!

The FCC recently passed a rule allowing phone companies to block robocalls. BUT…they’re allowing the companies to gouge us an extra fee for the privilege! Naturally. The effin’ phone company gets you comin’ and gets you goin’. If I’ve had to go out and plunk down a hundred bucks for a gadget to block pestering calls when the phone company could’ve been doing it for me all these years, then I should not be required to pay still more for the privilege after the phone companies decide to move, a day late and a dollar short.

Blanket robocall blocking poses a number of problems, the main two being school systems and emergency alert systems. Personally, I do not need to be reminded by some GD recording that I have a doctor’s appointment this week or a prescription waiting at the Walgreen’s. BUT…if a wildfire is bearing down on my little town out in the boondocks or if my kid is sick and needs to come home or be taken to a doctor — or is playing hooky — I sure want to know about it. To my mind, the CPR Call Blocker is about as good as it gets in that department, because it gives the user the discretion to choose which nuisance calls will get through.

Also in the Department of Pests, the weather is gorgeous at this time of year…and so naturally we’re overrun by mosquitoes.

To my knowledge, there’s no actual standing water in my yard, and I kind of doubt there’s any in my neighbor’s…she never replaced her deceased dog (hence, no water dish), and she’s not into container gardening.

I, however, decidedly am. Into container gardening, that is. Bzzzzzzzt!

The outdoor plants do not have saucers under their pots: they rest either directly on the ground or on the plastic fake “wood” deck on the side. BUT…once temps reach the 90s, they have to be watered every…single…day. Miss one morning drench, and the potted plant keels right over dead.

This means the soil itself is damp all the time, and so the soil itself is probably what harbors the mosquito larvae. Confirmation: leave the sliding door to the deck open for a few minutes, and you’ll be swarmed.

So I ordered up a 30-ounce bottle of Mosquito Bits. This stuff is the business. It contains a bacterium (Bacillus thuringii) that produces a toxin that affects only the larvae of mosquitoes, blackflies, and fungus gnats. You apply it to standing water (such as water in the drip dish of a potted plant, or birdbaths, or backyard ponds), perennially damp soil (such as the soil in potted plants that have to be watered every day…), and the like. It works, and it does no harm to any other critters.

In the past, I’ve bought the stuff from an outfit in Arizona that supplies organic farms and ranches. That’s their business: providing environmentally friendly products and tools for organic farmers. The problem is, they charge an arm and a leg for this stuff. You get a tiny bottle containing just enough to apply it to the potted plants outside and to the very few spots where standing water occasionally accumulates, however briefly. (Mosquitos can go from pupa to flying dive-bomber overnight in this climate.) But lo! At Amazon, here we find this freaking pail of the stuff for all of 18 bucks!

Sold!

Sprinkling it into every pot I even vaguely suspected might harbor skeeters and working it into the cracks between boards on the deck (you just know the pot water is dripping down under the deck’s flooring and puddling there, don’tcha?) used less than a third of the bottleful. So I figure this ought to last through the season, at least.

Speaking of pests, Ruby is campaigning for a doggy chew treat. She’s already had her morning ration. So the mumbling and boofing around the kitchen is likely to go on for awhile. {sigh}

In the doggy pest department, though, it’s other people’s damn dogs that are the pests hereabouts. After the Loose GerShep Attack, I’ve taken to carrying a heavy ironwood walking stick with me when I take Ruby out for her morning doggywalk. This morning we stupidly walked down Feeder Street Northwest — having gotten a late start, we were encountering enough traffic that I could not easily step out into the traffic lanes to avoid incoming, a little detail that gave me pause when we started…but it was a shortcut, and because we were late, the heat was starting to come up, and I was hungry, and…and…I just wanted to get home quicker.

Naturally, around the corner came a guy with two dogs in hand, one of them a large pit bull. Sheee-ut! That sidewalk is narrow and there’s no way to easily cross the street at that hour, because of the commute traffic. I had to climb up on a xeriscaped yard to drag Ruby out of the oncoming doggitude.

“Ohhh don’t worry, they’re friendly,” says the dog lover.

“Sorry. I’ve had my fill of dog fights,” say I, “and I don’t want another one today.”

That’s gotten to be my standard keep your damn dog at heel! line. It gives even the dimmest nitwit enough pause (they apparently have to think about this…) that I can usually slip past them without incident.

Well…here’s the client on the e-mail. So i suppose i’m going to have to get back to (ugh!) werk!

Driven?

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So, did I end up driven to drive, drive, drive around the city yesterday afternoon? Did I reserve a space at this afternoon’s writer’s group, where I would like to peddle my services in the guise of seeking feedback on my half-baked unfinished noveloid?

Well. No. And also, no.

Yes, I did climb in the car and turn on the ignition. About the time I got to the end of the driveway, a thought occurred: Why am I doing this???????

Got about 200 feet down the road…and then drove around the block, returned to the Funny Farm, parked the car, and proceeded back inside. Where I’ve been fairly happily ensconced ever since, except for a dog-walk or two.

Yes.

Thought: Hey, estúpida! What do you think you’re doing?

Human: Driving to the credit union and to the grocery store on…uhm…some road over there.

Thought: You’re kidding, right?

Human: Uhm…

Thought: Tell me you’re not serious. You’re REALLY going to drive FORTY MINUTES so as to avoid farting around with the accursed Internet for 10 or 15 minutes to deposit two measly checks?

Human: Well, but…

Thought: And this vaunted grocery store is on…WHAT road?

Human: I think it’s at 43rd and Peoria.

Thought: NO, you moron! That’s an Albertson’s, not a Fry’s. And it’s not even a halfway decent Albertson’s. It is, in a word, a CRUMMY store!

Human: Oh. Yeah. Well…but…

I gave up. It took less than 10 minutes to deposit $2500 worth of client monnaie online. This was good. There was plenty of food in the house: two chops from a rack of lamb; tiny delicious little beets to grill (this worked exceptionally well, BTW); excellent buttered spinach to heat, also on the grill. And half a bottle of wine.

Truly, I hate farting with the computer and the credit union’s website to deposit checks electronically. But…hate it SO MUCH that it’s worth driving 20 minutes to the CU, standing in line, and driving 20 minutes back?

Maybe not.

As for today’s proposed introduction to the midtown writer’s group: they meet weekly. The local Play-Nooz reported that the police and fire department are occupying lovely downtown Phoenix with a mock Emergency Response today…and that chivaree sounds like something to avoid.

So I decided to put that little marketing maneuver off for a week: Next Sunday, thankyouverymuch. This will give me time to schlep the printout of the current installment of Ella’s story down to the UPS store and put them up to making and stapling together 10 or 12 copies, rather than expending my own ink & paper for the purpose.

Hmmmmm… Lookee here: for $30, you can get 50 pens with your bidness name on them. 😀 The MO of these writer’s groups is that you hand out a few pages of your golden words and people critique the stuff. What if in addition to a sheaf of paper, you gave each person a pen with your editing outfit’s name and URL? 😀

Apparently this outfit will deliver in four or five days, which would get said little treat here by the end of the week if I ordered it today.

If ten people show up (that’s how many were signed up for this weekend), one order would last for five weeks. Lots more then 10 show up at the West Valley Writer’s Workshop, but there’d still be enough to hand out gift pens there and still supply one or two of the in-town meeting’s participants.

Putting it off for a week will also give time for me to get off my virtual duff and write a plot outline. One of the reasons (one of several reasons) this story has petered out is that I’ve been writing it like topsy, as it grows. Frankly, I have no idea where it’s going.

Well. I know where Ella’s recollected life on Zaitaf goes. But what happens on Varnis, where her currently lived experience is happening, is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. It’s topsy…I do need to cultivate that garden.

And speaking of uncultivated gardens, now I need to return to the client’s magnum opus…

Conundrum of the Day: To Drive or Not to Drive?

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So today’s conundrum — it’s huge, hyuuuge, I tellya! — is whether to dork around with scanning and uploading checks to the credit union or just to schlep them up there.

I need to pick up some groceries, too. The credit union is way over on the west side and the grocery stores where I would look for quality produce are way to the east or down to the south. And…few things do I hate more than driving around in Phoenix’s noxious traffic.

However…the other day I discovered a Fry’s (Kroger’s, for those in more civilized venues) over on West Peoria, conveniently on the way (more or less) to the credit union. The neighborhood is sketchy. But probably only a little more so than mine. It doesn’t look, at a glance, like the parking lot is too dangerous to walk across — and now that I no longer carry a purse slung over my shoulder, there’s relatively less risk of mugging.

So much do I dislike the scan/scan/crop/crop/upload/upload hoo-hah (x however many checks you have to deposit) that really…sometimes I’d actually rather drive all the way up to the CU and just fork the money over to a teller.

This is do-able when I have to go to a Costco, too — a decent Costco resides on that side of town, only about six or eight miles from the credit union. (Yeah…jolly, eh?) It’s also relatively safer than the one closest to where I live — although you’ll see a fake crippled vet sitting in a lawn chair holding up his sign at one of the entrances to the parking lot, you never run into anyone in the lot actively accosting you to panhandle.

Don’t need to make a Costco run, though. All that’s really needed is just enough produce to tide me over until next month’s Costco junket. Which, we might add, I would like to put off as long as possible.

Meanwhile, I need to meet people.

Do I want to meet people? Not especially. I’m happy enough here in my cave. Indeed, I’d be just as happy if the cave were in the side of a slab of southern Utah sandstone. But…I suppose, for one’s mental health, one needs to meet people.

Also, conveniently, I’ve discovered that folks who crave to be published writers will pay The Copyeditor’s Desk’s going rate of 4 cents a word, just to get me to read their golden copy and advise.

For the current client, what I’m doing, really, is instructing: essentially teaching the guy creative writing techniques at about the university sophomore of junior level. This is pretty easy for me…because of course it’s what I spent 15 years doing at the Great Desert University. It crossed my mind, as I was contemplating that project, that I could actually offer to teach people creative writing, along with editing their copy. And that would be worth paying 4 cents a word for.

Or more. Whatever the market would bear.

The problem is, I’d need to find folks who crave so much to give their golden words to the dark and the waiting sky that they’re willing to pay for the privilege.

Well, here in Amazon’s Self-Publishing Dystopia, the woodwork is crawling with writer’s groups, some small and some large. This weekend one meets downtown, at a coffeeshop associated with the Episcopal Cathedral — and one can (usually) park for free in the Cathedral’s lot.

To engage oneself with this group, one has to send in 1500 of one’s golden words for members to read and critique, and then print out a half-dozen copies for the purpose.

Do I want to do this?

Hm. The cave beckons (don’t leave me, humann!)

Well, I could send them the current chapter of Ella’s story, which no, I have not updated since I sank into the current slough of despond. It’s actually about 1800 words, if you count the blurb at the top. Close enough, I reckon.

How much explaining do I want to do, though? Do I seriously want to tell a passel of wannabe writers that I consider publishing stuff on Amazon to be a colossal waste of time and effort, and that I publish my stuff for free at my website, where it probably garners more readers than books on Amazon get? Do I really want to tell them that if you want to succeed as a writer you have to succeed as a marketer, and that if I wanted to spend my time marketing, I’d be making a decent living selling ad space for magazines, peddling cars for Toyota, or hawking refrigerators and stoves?

Not. so. much.

Well, I really don’t know. As you can see by the length of this squib, I’m having quite enough trouble bestirring myself to get off my duff and drive to a credit union & a grocery store.

 

Weaseled Out!

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Ohhh naughty human! SDXB has been trying to wrangle me into a day trip. The poor guy has been working at it literally for weeks. Nay, even months. He wants to drive up to the newly revived Castle Hot Springs, a historic resort that has been massively and expensively renovated. Every time he’s made a plan, though, something has come up to dash his hopes — usually rain.

Well. Entre nous, I’ve been to Castle Hot Springs, and I’ve been to expensive fancified historic resorts, most notably the Greenbrier. And I kinda think once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Simply haven’t been able to work myself up to much enthusiasm for this proposed junket.

He put up another lady friend of his to come along on the trip…which is good…because… Along about 5 p.m. I realized said journey was going to occupy the entire damn day tomorrow. And…there’s no way I’m going to go off and leave a dog door big enough to admit a 200-pound man standing open with only a 25-pound pooch between some sh!thead and a houseful of possessions. Including the cute, highly stealable pooch herself.

In a desultory way, I e-mailed M’hijito and asked if he could come by during the noon hour and let her out. He said he would be working at home tomorrow and I could leave her at his place. To do that and then get out to Sun City by the appointed hour — 8:30 in the freaking morning — I’d have to feed her; feed me; get myself washed painted combed, and dressed; and leave the house by no later than 7:3o. Matter of fact, 7:15 would be more like it. Then after dropping off the dog, brave the unholy rush-hour traffic on the 17 and the 101. Then along about 5 p.m., repeat the process in reverse.

Whee. What fun.

When I hadn’t heard back from the kid — after all of about 15 minutes — I told SDXB that I felt it would be cruel and irresponsible to leave the dog here with no way to get out and relieve herself all day. He seemed…unsurprised.

Oh, well.

 

Joys of the Day

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Today has been a day of small joys. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Just imagine…

1. The phone stopped jangling

Yes! The minute the new CPR v5000 Call Blocker was plugged in, the nonstop robo-harassment came to a proverbial screeching halt. The nuisance call rate is down from upwards of a dozen a day to one. That’s right. And none of those once-a-day nuisances have come at some wacky hour like 7:30 or 8 in the morning or 8 or 9 at night.

2. The clindamycin pills ran out.

Woo hoo! I got through the whole ten-day prescription without any noticeable side effects!

Yet.

You can enjoy a C. difficile infection as much as six months after a course of this stuff. That’s the worst of a raft of potential unpleasant outcomes.

Really unpleasant. SDXB’s former wife died of a C. diff infection. On her living-room floor. She lay dead for two days, before a neighbor and friend came over to check on her, looked in a window, and saw her corpse there.

Wonder-Endodontist recommended scarfing down probiotics whilst taking this fine drug, so I went out and bought a box of that stuff at Sprouts. Look it up on NNT: as a prophylactic to head off C. diff-related to antibiotic treatment, 42 people have to be treated for 1 person to be helped. Among high-risk patients, 1 in 12 is helped.

Yeah.

Well. It’s better than none. “C. difficile infection is the leading cause of gastroenteritis-associated death,” says NNT, “and was estimated to cause 14,000 deaths in 2007.Although almost half of infections occur in people younger than 65, more than 90% of deaths occur in those 65 and older.” Since “65 and older” appears to equate to “high-risk,” it looks a lot like swallowing this stuff is worthwhile.

But swallowing it is a challenge. You have to take three a day on top of the four clindamyacin horse pills, and the probiotic pills are also horse pills, about the same as the Big Gulps of the antibiotics.

My plan is to finish the entire box, which included enough pills for another five days. Then for the next six months or so, eat plenty of foods allegedly rich in the magical probiotics. I already do that, because I eat a slice or two of cheddar cheese almost every day. I hate yogurt, but can tolerate it mixed with other foodoids, such as soups and sauces. And I’m very fond of fresh (unpasteurized) sauerkraut and kimchi. Love olives — this house has two trees full of them, and I happen to know how to brine them in the Greek manner. One site claims chocolate contains probiotics…that, too, I eat in modest amounts every day.

3. Amazing weather lingers

It’s the end of May — by now summer should be y-cumen in. But no! It’s 60 degrees in the morning, and the days are still cool enough to loaf around outdoors all day long. That is weird.

The place is overrun with doves and tweety-birds. This afternoon I bought another gigantic bag of birdseed from the WalMart, since the little dinosaurs have gone through the existing supply.

Also cleaned and refilled the hummingbird feeders; relocated one to the newly pruned paloverde tree.

4. Finally deposited about $2,000 worth of checks. I hate the credit union’s at-home deposit function. Sometimes it’s so time-consuming, especially if you have several checks, that it’s less annoying to drive up there and drop the checks off in person.

5. Pleased to recall that I put two grand aside in emergency savings: covered Luis, thank God. Luis and a sidekick cleaned out the front porch, thinned the giant mesquite tree, cleaned up the shaggy desert willow, trimmed the yellow oleander, pruned the paloverde branches off the roof, and cut about a third of the looming goddamned Australian weeping acacia out, thereby eliminating most of the risk of the damn thing falling on my house or my neighbor’s during this summer’s monsoon winds. For two day’s heavy labor by two men, he charged $940. A bargain, I’d say.

6. Remembered that I needed to download all the checking account transactions since the first of the year. The credit union has upgraded its system so it took all of 5 minutes to download 6 months’ worth of data for 3 accounts!

7. When I put off a chore because I hate doing it, I tend not to do the other chores I’m supposed to do that day. Then I put everything off and get nothing done. The ditzy bookkeeping tasks done, I went so far as to clean the bathrooms and pick up most of the litter and run a load through the clothes washer.

Woot!

8. Then it was off to Walmart, Walgreen’s, and Costco, what fun. Got an external hard drive, needed for Time Machine backups, for $10 off, it being the last one on the shelf. Whilst ambling around Costco, remembered that the barbecue repairman was supposed to have shown up at 1 p.m. At this point, it was after that.

Luckily, the lines were short. Flew out of the store and raced home, but by the time I got here it was 2:00 p.m. However…

9. The BBQ guy had let himself in. By the time I got here, he had about fixed the broken igniter switch. Then he cleaned the entire, very dirty unit. Thing looks like new and works as well.

All in all, it was a productive and pleasant day.

Or would be, if I could count… 😉