Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

El Gobierno Quiere Ayudarte…

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El gobierno quiere ayudarte… The government wants to help you! HOW, after all, would we ever get by without being made to traipse back out to the car from the pharmacy counter to retrieve still MORE identification so we can buy a package of nasal decongestant? This means, after standing in line behind three customers, I have to trudge outside, dodge the panhandlers, trudge back inside, and stand behind three more customers.

Y’know what I think?

O’course you do, but lest we somehow miss the point: Dammit! If you want to convert a box of Sudafed into meth and snort it up your goddamn nose, you DESERVE WHAT YOU GET. And if you’re stupid enough to buy meth from a drug dealer who has distilled the junk from a boxful of Sudafed, YOU EFFIN’ DESERVE WHAT YOU GET.

Let them eat fuckin’ cake!

Okay, okay, let’s admit it: weirdly enough, I did have some fun traipsing in and out and in and out of the Albertson’s.

First, on the way back in, I pass the BIGGEST, yea verily THE BADDEST, most MASSIVE dude you have ever seen in your entire life, marching out of the store with a bouquet of flowers in his paw.

Awwwww…soooo adorable! And, alas, born 30 years too late.

Moving on, I rejoin the pharmacy line, where I fall in behind an Old Dude. He’s loafing in an electric scooter which, as it develops, he doesn’t really need. But in his old age, he has discovered which side his butter’s breaded on. He and I chat about the joys of retirement, which allow us to not give a damn whether we’re first in line. He says he loves to go fishin’. I ask where he likes to fish. He names a park pond over in Po’ Folk Country, where if you fork over a fee for an “urban fishing license” (don’t ask, goddammit: el gobierno quiere nothing more than ayudarte!) you can catch catfish, a creature he finds delectable. And you know he comes from your father’s social class, which causes you at once to love him and to fear him. 😀

The guy behind the counter, also born about 30 years too late, is another of the cutest things you’ve ever seen.

It takes this lovely creature a good 10 minutes of farting around, filling out online forms and more online forms and MORE online forms to sell you ONE BOX of menacing nasal decongestant. This is OK, because of course it provides you just that much more time to admire his adorableness.

How can you possibly be annoyed when you get to absorb this much cuteness and adorableness from an array of random males?

Well, of course, you can’t.

You CAN be annoyed, however, when you get home and find you can’t break into the mini-Fort Knoxes with which El Gobierno arranges to protect you and your brainless children from yourselves. It damn near takes a chain saw to break the lid off the squirt bottle of nasal decongestant, and putting the Sudafed knockoff away in such a form that you can get at it in the middle of the night without driving yourself into a flying rage breaks your fingernails and requires you to find a jar with a lid and a blank label in your garage junk collection.

So yes. Yes, you are pissed by the time you get these medicaments into your house and into a state that allows you to use them without rage-inducing hassle when you will need to use them.

Porque el gobierno quiere ayudarte. By golly!

Eatin’, Workin’, Doggin’…Rainin’?

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Workin’…

WooHOO! I’m halfway through the last piece in this issue of Chicana/Latina Studies, our semiannual client journal. This issue seems to be an especially good effort. One of the authors is such a good writer and she has such an interesting subject that, IMHO, she could be writing her stuff up for The New Yorker. She’d need to put out some effort to learn to write creative nonfiction and escape the academicese, but given the quality of her style, I’d say that would not be an unreasonably tall order for her.

What with The Kid’s project to streak through a new master’s degree program (while holding down her usual two full-time jobs…), I suggested that if she wanted me to do the whole job, rather than splitting it the way we usually do, that would be okay by me….

Yipes! Don’t break the Internet leaping at that one, Kid!

😀

So I’ve been reading all the copy for the entire issue, which is fine by me because a) not a lot of work is in-house just now and b) things having been mighty slow over the past quarter, I sure can use the monnaie.

It’s gone a lot faster than I thought it would. So I think, anyhow: these things will still have to be subjected to a second reading. But still, it appears that won’t take so very long. With any luck. the copy can wing its way back to the journal in another couple days, record time for a whole issue’s turn-around.

And lhudly sing huzzah, a new spectacular Chinese scientist is at the door, wanting an estimate on an arcane paper. This is good: we have missed our beloved Chinese scientists. It has been a slow 2018 Q4!

Eatin’…

By golly, I can not figure out why anyone spends their money and their time on third-rate fast food, when it’s so quick, so easy, and so amazingly delicious to toss together an amazing meal out of real, unprocessed, healthy food.

Today it was a few scallops sautéed with some garlic and some cut-up asparagus, tossed over some Italian pasta (tagliatelle!) and doused with some Pomí tomatoes, an Italian answer to canned tomatoes that comes in a box.

Failed to take a picture of that, but did grab one of some shrimp and spinach that was awesome…and now, having “organized” the 87 gerjillion images on the hard disk, have lost it. But…it was awesome. And took all of about 10 or 15 minutes to fix. To wit:

  • Defrost and peel a few big shrimp (once called “prawns”), per diner
  • Chop one or two cloves of garlic
  • Cut a lemon in half
  • Grab a bag of frozen chopped spinach out of the freezer
  • Pour a little olive oil into a frying pan.
  • Get some curry or cumin off the spice shelf
  • Optionally, have a tablespoon or two of butter at hand.

Sauté the shrimp with the garlic in the olive oil. Sprinkle the shrimp with curry or cumin, to taste. Don’t overcook. About the time you figure the shrimp is done, squeeze some lemon juice over it.

Remove the shrimp from the pan. Add a little more olive oil or, if you prefer, the butter. Add as much frozen spinach to the pan as you think the diners will eat. Stir this over medium heat until it’s defrosted and cooked to your taste. Add a teaspoon or so of sugar, if you so desire, to soften the flavor of the spinach.

Pile the spinach on a plate. Top with a few cooked shrimp. Et voilà: very easy, very fast.

Fill out the meal with a sliced tomato and some sliced avocado on the side.

Doggin’…

Cassie the Corgi steadfastly refused to use the doggy door installed, lo! these many years ago, for Anna the German Shepherd and Walt the Greyhound. So I shut it and locked it and forgot about it: it became part of the wall. As it were.

Welp…of late I’ve been invited on this day trip and that day trip. My son has indicated less than high joy at the prospect of babysitting Ruby the Corgi while I gallivant around the state, and my friends have evinced even less excitement at the thought of taking her along. I can’t leave her locked in the house all day. And I certainly can’t leave her out in the rain, heat, and coyote territory for eight or ten hours at a time.

Would she….? Could she…learn to use the doggy door?

Who’d’ve thunk it: the answer is she sure can. She quickly got the idea of pushing her way out. Coming in is a different matter: she doesn’t seem to remember that if she can get out through the plastic flaps, she can get back in through them, too.

I think a week or so of drilling (read “bribing with doggy treats”) will persuade her that she can come as well as go.

She’s a smart little dog. But one must bear in mind that she’s not a puppy. Dogs, like humans, tend to get sot in their ways as they age. So it will take a little longer for her to set both ideas in her mind: out and in.

Not real thrilled at the idea of going off and leaving that thing hanging open… She is, after all, decidedly not a German shepherd. A grown man can climb through that thing (and has). But I think I can disguise the area around the opening so it can’t be seen from the back wall. If someone’s going to climb over the cat barrier to break into the house, they’ll break in through the back door or a window, anyway. So though the dog door does indeed present some risk, it’s probably no worse than any other risk here in the ’hood.

Rain…

Not so much, despite the alleged “atmospheric river.” {snicker!} It had been sprinkling shortly before the dog and I rolled out of the sack this morning, but despite beautiful, plump, fluffy clouds floating through the blue, blue sky, no serious rain has developed. It is, however, perfect weather for a doggy-walk. Particularly if you’re a corgi.

 

 

Good Saturday!

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G’day, indeed… Here’s a Saturday that’s been an unusually good day. Weirdly so, one could say.

Come noon, Ruby and I are trotting along…Ruby is practically glowing with joy. Her whole little body radiates a single message: oboy, this is a PERFECT dog day! And yea verily: the weather does make for a corgi-perfect perfect dog day: cool, even crisp, under Welsh-gray sky.

The natives were outside frolicking in force. We came across two kid parties and one big yard sale, all with folks hopping around like popcorn. It’s such a nice neighborhood, with legions of great neighbors!

Today I decided to change up my “system” for keeping the rambunctious Ruby under control. Because (like many corgis) she’s given to dramatic episodes of reverse-sneezing, often set off by pressure on the windpipe, I’d been lashing her up in a harness so that she didn’t give herself a choking fit whilst dragging me down the street. This, when she was a pup, had its drawbacks: without the control of a collar, she could and would pull me along like a little tugboat, so I used a tandem (two-dog) leash, clipping one lead to her collar and one to the harness. This provided some extra traction to keep her at heel but little control to communicate my (usually ignored) desires to her doggy brain.

Cassie could not keep up with Ruby charging down the road at full throttle. So I would have one dog dragging me forward and another dragging me backward…not a very happy arrangement. The double-leash lash-up helped ameliorate that, but it was a major PITA. Now that Ruby  and I can move along without an anchor, it’s a great deal more fun to go for a doggy-walk. And this afternoon I finally registered that, now Ruby is no longer a wacksh!t puppy and now that she’s a lot less susceptible to reverse-sneezing frenzies, maybe a single lead attached to the harness would do. Her collar, of course, bears her name and my phone number, so she can’t go without it. But possibly she doesn’t need to be connected to it.

And yea verily! That proved to be the case. She still drags during the first half-mile, but after awhile she was trotting right along like a normal dog. On a perfect dog day.

Sights in Payson…

Yesterday’s comedy of errors — in which I got the date wrong for a long-planned day trip to Payson — having resolved itself, today was freed up for me to go to the special rehearsal for tomorrow’s evensong concert. Hot diggety! Our choir director has lured a gifted guest conductor into town to lead us in this endeavor, and when I heard about this (belatedly arranged) coaching session, I really wanted to go to it.

So that was wonderful. As usual I learned a lot of things and enjoyed every minute of it. It should be a pretty impressive service:

  • William McKie, “We Wait for Thy Loving Kindness” — which was written for the marriage of the then Princess Eizabeth and Lt. Philip Mountbatten in 1947
  • Preces and responses by William Byrd
  • Stanford’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G Major
  • Sir Edward Elgar, “Give Unto the Lord”
  • Salve Regina (a Marian antiphon

The Elgar piece is pretty challenging, at least for the likes of moi. But it’s all truly gorgeous music. So it’s quite a joy to be able to participate in that.

Back at the Funny Farm, I managed to get the paperwork tasks under control, more or less, whilst treating the pained back with an ice pack. I’ve learned the cold seems to work better on this particular spavin than does heat. Indeed, the heating pad sometimes seems to make it even worse, whereas a cold pack numbs the damn thing so no pain (well…little pain) can be felt.

In the paperwork department, I was pleased to find a water bill of “only” $118. This is well below the recent “normal” figures of late. And I’m pretty sure it’s because the pool job must have sealed off a leak. Normally, in wintertime the pool would need to be topped up a couple of times a week — presumably because that much evaporates in the dry air. But nay…since we resurfaced the thing last November, I’ve only added water two or three times. Total! And that, not very much.

Admittedly, we’ve gotten a little rain over the past few weeks. But in fact, “a little” is the operative term: in years past, it would have been nowhere near enough to keep up with the “evaporation.”

Starved after the doggy-dragwalk, I enjoyed a pasta orgy in the afternoon: gorgeous sea scallops sautéed in garlic & olive oil along with some chard and cut-up spring asparagus, then doused in marvelous Pomí tomatoes flavored with a splash of wine. Not too bad at-tall. This, celebrating a return to the desired weight target (to my surprise…).

Oddly enough, pasta that is made in Italy of wheat grown in Italy does NOT elicit the usual effect of bloating me up by two to five pounds. Literally: one serving of ordinary American pasta instantly puts on a chunk of weight, which then takes two or three days to dissipate. But for some reason, a comparable amount of this expensive imported Italian stuff does no such thing. Since pasta is my comfort food, IMHO it’s worth the price. But y’know…. If the Italians can make pasta that doesn’t f**k up your system, I fail to see why we can’t do so, too. At any rate, I never buy American pasta anymore. Try it: you might find the same.

Image: Payson art gallery. By Alan Levine from Strawberry, United States – Down The Street Art Gallery. Uploaded by PD Tillman.

Pillar to Post…or is that Po$t?

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Okay, I knew I was going to have to drive from pillar to post this morning. But that doesn’t make life any less…amazing.

Item: Yesterday by pure serendipity I happened across a study that looks real (but sure, may not be: have we heard of the International Journal of Dermatology?) reporting that virgin coconut oil is almost as effective as mupirocin in beating back staphylococci. I’ve come to the end of the time that one is supposed to use the anti-MRSA staph ointment, and my nose still itches and the fading remains of the first and largest of the staph boils lingers on my paw. I am neurosing.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to throw out all of my makeup, because of course all if it is contaminated with the honored microbe. Yesterday I spent $90 at the Target replacing just  a few of my favorite drugstore cosmetics. But Target, being in the process of dumping last year’s fashions and restocking with this year’s fashions, offered precious poor pickin’s.

Item: Today I need a bottle of wine and a bottle of that “green” odorless relatively environmentally friendly dish detergent, which Sprouts does not carry. Sprouts does carry woo-woo shit like “virgin coconut oil,” whatever that is. There’s a very fine Sprouts down in the old, now obscenely gentrified neighborhood. It’s across the street from a Safeway, which will sell the coveted detergent. And I needed to go in search of the eyeshadow and brow powder that Target didn’t have.

Target, which I visited yesterday, is in the process of replacing last year’s stocks and so had almost none of the brands and products I use. To frost that cake, most of my makeup is several years old. Makeup, like clothing, goes out of style under the impetus of its manufacturers’ craving to sell more, more, and still more of the stuff. So of course I couldn’t find most of my preferred brands and colors.

I wear a lot of makeup when I go out in public, because my weathered skin is so grotesque that my unpainted face will scare small children. It’s an annoyance: when I was a young thing, especially during the hippy-dippy period when women went around bare-faced all the time, I could go out unpainted without feeling self-conscious. But now: not so much. Two layers of L’Oreal foundation covers a lot of brown spots and scars.

And carries a lot of staphylococci, presumably: I apply it with a brush, which gets dipped back into the cream between smearings-on.

First stop was the new Sprouts in Encanto, where yes, they did have several brands of the coconut oil nostrum, including one in a house brand that was significantly cheaper than any of the offerings at Amazon. Plus of course some wonderful red potatoes on sale. And a beautiful squash…and…and…

Moving on: of course, as usual, the road was under construction. Getting out of the parking lot involved dodging an 18-wheeler and a ninny in an SUV who felt entitled to take his half out of the middle of the road (and whom the truck driver also had to dodge), then navigating a fine mess at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Osborn.

I needed, also, a bottle of red table wine. Sprouts’s choices of wine range from poor to mediocre, all of them overpriced. So I needed to dodge through the construction to get into the large, fairly fancy Safeway across the street.

Wow! I’d forgotten how massively gentrified the stores in that area had become. Holy mackerel! At the Safeway, I saw a bottle of wine that Costco sells for $9…on offer for eighteen bucks! No, thank you.

This added a trip to said Costco.

Up to Costco through the homicidal traffic. It being Wednesday, almost noon by then, the place was as uncrowded as it’s been in weeks. I stand in a very short line and buy a bottle of $9 wine and a bottle of $7 wine.

How hard is this?

Very, apparently. The cashier charges up a lifetime supply of butter to me, which really belonged to the guy in front of me. Said guy doesn’t notice.  Neither do I until I pick up the box his sidekick hands me. He says he didn’t charge me for the butter, and they take the stuff back. I head for the door, but check the receipt on the way. Yes, he did charge me.

It’s the unsalted variety, which I use. I go back and say “you did charge me.” His sidekick is about to take it back to reshelve it. I say I’ll take it, by way of avoiding the hassle of standing in line again and wrestling with the cash card to get the money back. Fortunately, it’s the unsalted variety, which I prefer, and so that’s one fewer thing I’ll have to buy in the future.

Onward.

Cruise east and north across the city to get to the Walgreen’s I habituate. This entails driving through a residential neighborhood to avoid having to wait to turn left at the interminable red light at Montebello and 15th Avenue. Which is OK, but a nuisance.

Arriving in the vicinity of the Walgreen’s, I see it’s a good thing I decided to try the Safeway downtown, because as usual the City has the streets torn up and getting catty-corner across the street into my usual Safeway haunt would have presented a headache.

In the Walgreen’s, I finally find the make-up I’ve been searching for. Damn! I kick myself: I should’ve gone to Walgreen’s first, not hoped I could find replacements at Target.

Yesterday I spent $90 at the damn Target on foundation, mineral powder, blusher that was the wrong color, and eye paint, but still didn’t find the products I prefer.

At the Walgreen’s, hallelujah sisters, I do find a blusher whose color probably will be OK. And they have a lady who runs the toiletry and make-up department: unlike the Target lady, this one knows what she’s doing. I ask for matte eyeshadow. She does not look at me as though I’ve lost my mind. And she does indeed find a box of the stuff I want, over on the Neutrogena shelf. They also have the L’Oreal gold accent shadow I like, which I grab before it evaaporates.

The new mode is to sell all eyeshadows in “sets.” so to get the color you want, you have to buy a box that contains upwards of five colors: four or more shades you don’t want. This is exceptionally annoying, but far as I can tell can’t be avoided. The Walgreen’s still had a few of the glittery gold eye stuff I wanted to replace in single pads. But to get the matte brown I need to use as eyebrow fill-in, I had to buy five colors.

Shee-ut! $30, all told.

So I’ve now spent $120 replacing the makeup contaminated by the late, great staph infection. Ducky.

Now to get home…  Hah! The city has the intersection of Seventh Street and Glendale blocked for construction, too. So now, to go west and north I have to backtrack a block, come back around, navigate the left-turn at the intersection, veer through a neighborhood, beat my way through to Central to go north. Lovely.

The dog, of course, has peed on the floor while I was gone. Again. I’ve already cleaned up two brown mounds this morning, before leaving the house. Is there any question why I have a staph infection all over my hand and arm?

In cruising the Web this morning, I learned that rubbing alcohol — which I used in hopes of disinfecting my computer’s case and touch-pad — does NOT disinfect. To the contrary. It’s exceptionally counterproductive in the case of S. aureus. It not only does not kill staphylococcus, it enhances the bacteria’s film, which it produces and which harbors the little bastards.

Holy fuck.

The only way to kill S. aureus is to clean well with water and detergent. And of course…you can’t very well apply those substances to a computer keyboard, hm? The CDC says about the best you can do is equip the keyboard with one of those plastic covers, which  can be removed and washed in a sink.

Holy shit. As though this damn computer isn’t hard enough to use?

I wonder if I’m going to have to buy another MacBook? Like I have a spare three grand laying around for the purpose.

Oh, well. At least I found this out before I wasted my time scrubbing down all the door handles in the house with rubbing alcohol.

The coconut oil, by the way, is extremely soothing and makes your itch feel a lot better. It also makes you smell like a walking Mounds bar. But if you don’t dislike the parfum de palme, it’s something to know about.

Now I have to cover my face with the new make-up and run off to choir practice. And so…away…

Monks, Bums, and Pee Pads: Why I Love the Walmart

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Yes. If there was ever any question whether Funny is politically incorrect (really??), let it be forever dispelled: I love the Walmart in our neighborhood.

Why?

Well, in the first place, it’s the only grocery store within about an eight-mile radius where I feel safe getting out of  the car in the parking lot. This is because unlike the Safeway or the Albertson’s or the Walgreen’s or the Sprouts, they hire a security guard service. Actually, staffers at my favorite coffee house, right across the asphalt from the Walmart, say the shopping center hires the service, apparently grâce à a kind of protection racket (don’t ask: I can’t prove it; it’s just a rumor). When you don’t see an armed guard ambulating around the property, you see a massive male Walmart employee lurking out in front, allegedly wrangling the shopping carts but in fact transparently keeping an eye out for shenanigans.

Never once have I been harassed in that parking lot, which fronts right on Gangbanger’s Way. I’ve been harassed at the Safeway (which serves a very fancy part of North Central). I’ve been harassed at the Walgreen’s across from the Safeway and at the Walgreen’s in my neighborhood. I’ve been harassed at the Albertson’s in my neighborhood — indeed, chased around the parking lot at a run. I’ve been harassed at the Sprouts across the street from that Albertson’s. So annoying is this that I will cheerfully (well…grudgingly) drive through 20 miles of homicidal traffic to get free of it. Or…oh, indeed: or shop at the nearby Walmart.

The much-abused (so we’re told) staff at the Walmart are always nice to you. I’ve never met an employee there who wasn’t polite, kind, and helpful. And, as a lagniappe, nary a one of them is stupid as a post.

If they don’t know where something is (they usually do), they’ll try to find out. This is not invariably true at those other fine emporia: I no longer buy meat from the Safeway’s meat counter because one of their butchers was so rude to me. I’ve had clerks at the Whole Foods recognize at a glance that I decidedly did not belong there. At the Albertson’s…well, good luck finding an employee: they’re like Seldom Seen Smith. The staff (when you can find one) at the Paradise Valley Fry’s are very nice, but their efforts are negated by the Maserati-driving customers, who recognize poor white trash when they see it. 😀 Ditto the clientele at the Whole Foods, which since Amazon’s takeover sports even fewer hired help than the Albertson’s. But at the Walmart? No one at the Walmart treats you as though you don’t belong there, even when they are visibly tired, stressed, and overworked.

Which brings us to another small truth: Walmart people are my people.

That’s right. The customers behave as though they were decent human beings, even when they’re dressed in rags and buying their groceries with today’s equivalent of food stamps. I love Walmart people.

  • The tired-looking hard-working laborers who show up late in the afternoon
  • The Mexican mothers with their beautiful, sweetly behaved babes and toddlers, the mothers who speak Spanish with the cashiers, no doubt hired for the purpose
  • The disabled welfare recipients who stand patiently, endlessly in the line at the pharmacy (when the pharmacy’s open) and jump through hoops to get the care they need
  • The old people who amble around the store, searching for the best prices
  • The Black women, sharp and quick-looking, who no doubt also search for the best prices…but a great deal less obviously
  • The locals who act as though they were in a small-town corner grocery and will strike up a neighborly conversation with you at the drop of a hat
  • The hungry-looking, weary vagrants, also negotiating a purchase or two on “nutrition assistance”

They’ll all talk with you, genially enough, as though you were at a small-town corner grocery. Who knows? Maybe you are. Maybe Walmart is actually a port to the Twilight Zone.

I love these people because there’s a decency to them that you don’t find in the overpriced Fry’s or the Amazonized Whole Foods or the self-righteous Sprouts. No: they’re no more decent than you or I or Ms. Gotrocks. But they don’t hide what decency they have behind an elitist façade.

Today I rolled toward the checkout stand and found, ahead in the closest line, a clear and present homeless dude. Being old, single, and jaded, I tend to be wary of single homeless males. They can be all right. Or they can be…well, in need of medication. So….I roll into a longer line behind a youngish guy who appears to be, shall we say, mildly disabled intellectually. He’s clean, he looks honest, and I know I’m smarter and faster than he is, and so he’s my choice of fellow shoppers. Behind me: two other homeless or near-homeless guys, one of them hauling an oxygen tank. They’re clean enough and quiet. We wait until the cows come home while the cashier checks out the guy in front of the intellectually questionable guy. Then we wait some more because he has a sh!tload of stuff. In passing I think about asking the two homeless-looking dudes if they’d like to get in front of me but think better of it because they also have a basketful and I only have three things.

One of the guys ambles over to the machine that dispenses lottery tickets and shoves some change in there. The pot is $245 million. Silently I send a petition heavenward: Goddess! Hey, Goddess? Yeah, you, Ma’am. Please give this guy 245 million bucks. She refrains from emitting a reply at that moment.

But if you hear that some poor scruffy-looking fella in Phoenix won $245,000,000, you’ll know where that came from. 😉

To our right, another show is going on. We regulars who are in the know happen to know that the customer service desk will check you out, just like any of the check-out stand. Most people don’t do that, even though we’re aware of it, because it’s kind of rude to occupy the customer service lady with routine cashiering when there are people who really do need some special attention. But because it’s busy, a half-a-dozen shoppers are stacked up there, too.

Among them is a guy in a dress.

What?

No: he’s a monk! A real monk. He’s wearing gray Franciscan robes and he has a beautiful crucifix around his neck and…by heaven, he’s the handsomest man you have ever seen in your life. Born 40 years too late and about 90 degrees too religious. But…gorgeous. And he exudes a kind of radiance. This is a man who is deeply happy, so it seems: presumably in his vocation.,

Happy New Year to ye, brother. And many happy more.

Wanna know a little secret? You’re not gonna see that guy at the Whole Foods…

Moving on… The reason I had to make a run on the Walmart was that I ran out of doggy pee pads. Poor little Cassie is really sick (again, still). And as you know, whatever little needs or emergencies that need to be attended to always occur on a major holiday. Wasn’t sure the store would be open today, but was very pleased to discover it was doing business.

Cassie has been going through four or five pee pads a day, between pissing on them (or missing them and puddling up the floor) and shitting on them. This is turning into a bit of a nightmare. Yesterday after cleaning up, cleaning up, and cleaning up again, I realized that I did not have enough paper sponge pads to last another 24 hours. And this, m’dears, presented a major problem. If it turned out that the Walmart was closed today — as any retailer that treats its employees decently would be — then the dogs and I were going to have an Issue.

What on earth was I going to do if the Walmart was closed? Really: THE last thing on this earth I felt like doing was running around the city searching for pee pads. Wheeeee!

But thank God Walmart treats its employees like slaves and yes, they were indeed impressed into service on New Year’s Day.

Last night was the usual seven kinds of Hell presented by New Year’s Eve in the ’Hood. Offered the opportunity to buy any kind of fireworks they like, folks rich and poor will do exactly that, and spend half the night blasting away with those and with their cannons.

The locals start shooting off fireworks and guns about 11:30. This goes on until they run out, around 1 a.m. The idiots out in the alley, right behind the house, are blasting away…but that’s alright because the racket is going on for miles around. At least it’s raining, cutting the fire risk out there. Gerardo sprayed the weeds behind my knucklehead neighbor’s house, but he didn’t cut them down, so there’s a swath of dried-out dead grass and brush out there. I’d hoped the rain might keep the ninnies inside in front of their televisions…but ohhhh no!

The racket scares the bedoodles out of Ruby, so there’s no chance of diving under the pillow and trying to sleep. She paces around anxiously, threatening to jump off the bed. Said sack has one of those stupid double-thick mattresses…I didn’t realize how ridiculous it was until they delivered it, at which point is was too late to do anything about that bad choice. It’s so high that if she jumps off, she will hurt herself, and then I’ll get to drive through the dark and the rain, dodging bullets, to take her to an emergency vet.

Time passes. Eventually she settles down.

3:30 a.m.: Dog pacing awakens the human. I imagine it’s Ruby, probably hearing another round of ordnance going off — the drunks don’t stop just because midnight happened three and a half hours ago.

“Go to sleep!” I growl. Dog pacing continues. Get up. Turn on the light.

It’s not Ruby, it’s Cassie, experiencing an embarrassing urgency. Lift her off the bed. Set her on a pee mat, hoping she’ll go there because it’s freaking cold and wet outside. While I search for my shoes, she squats on the pee mat and goes PHPHBHPPHFFFPPTTTT…. Doggie effing diarrhea. Then she waddles off the end of the pee mat and goes PHPHBHPPHFFFPPTTTT some more: all over the tiles.

Well, I should be glad that it is tilework and not damn carpet. And not on the bed. But I’m not THAT glad. I lose my temper. Swear the dog is going to have to go: I cannot be on my hands and knees scrubbing floors with disinfectant four, five, six times a day, 24 hours a day. This is no longer a viable arrangement.

Get another pee mat — running out, and I expect the Walmart will be closed tomorrow. Toss it on the floor.

She immediately waddles over and pisses all over it.

Get another pee mat. Tear it whilst shaking it open. To$$ that in the garbage.

Get out another one — now there’s only one or two left, and I’ve been putting down four or five a day. There are three on the bed, which I can take off and lay on the floor. That means both dogs will have to sleep on the floor tonight, which means they’ll be banging against the bed all night long. What the hell. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since Cassie got sick, along about the first of September. So it doesn’t much matter.

The damn burns on my wrist itch like fire, as does the rash. One of these burns is going to leave a perfectly hideous scar. On the positive side, the rash is going away, so I guess it must not be MRSA. That’s something. I guess.

Another blast of ordnance goes off — now almost 4 a.m. Sounds more like a shotgun than a cherry bomb. But the stuff they sell in the Albertson’s and Home Depot parking lots at this time of year really does sound like…artillery fire.

Ruby, terrorized again, tries to jump off the bed. Get up, lift the dog down to the floor, search for shoes so as to take that dog outside. No: by the time I find my shoes, she’s hiding behind the toilet. Call her: she stays put. I lose my temper.

Go in the other bathroom in search of lidocaine to smear some on the frantic itching.

Well, no…that stuff I squished out onto my arm is sun block. F***!!! Scrub off the wound and rashes. Apply lidocaine.

Dog comes out. Call her to let her out in the yard. She dives back under the toilet.

Well. Who can blame her? The human is visibly NOT a happy camper… and the bedroom now stinks enough to gag a skunk.

Speaking of the knucklehead, those two acquired another dog, apparently as a Christmas present. It’s a yapper. So now they put this animal out in their backyard and it stands there and BARKS. And barks and barks and barks and barks….  This causes their other dog to start yapping. Cassie is too sick to bark back…but Ruby isn’t. When she hears that mutt barking, she runs out there and joins the chorus.

Aw, geeez!

4:45 a.m.: A Hell’s Angel flies by on Gangbanger’s Way. DUDE! Get a muffler on that damn thing!

What the heck. The guy’s prob’ly so high on meth and booze he can’t hear it. Or couldn’t, if he weren’t already stone deaf. Or…heh…stoned deaf. 😀

Happy 2019 from Beautiful Uptown Phoenix!

Images:

Walmart Store: WhisperToMe [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons
Monks: By Francisofmconv – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44107853

 

 

 

Happy New Year! I think…

by

Cheers! It is cold on this New Year’s Day. It is raining. It is a day to hide in front of the idiot box and binge on old Cadfael shows.

Well. Okay.

It’s not really that cold: about 43 degrees on the back porch. Arizonans consider that akin to 30 below. But I suppose normal people have a different perspective on things.

That will put the eefus on the fireworks displays this year. Which is too bad. On the major firecracker-banging holidays, every resort, municipality, and public park shoots sparkly rockets into the sky, which makes for a really neat display — especially if you can get yourself into a high-rise or climb up the side of North Mountain, Camelback Mountain, or South Mountain.

But…it will also put the eefus, with any luck, on the ninnies who go out and shoot their guns at the stratosphere, and the idiots who stock up on the fireworks that by state law are legal to buy in the city but by city law illegal to set off here and who then roam up and down the alleys blasting the neighbors. They use the alleys as their firing grounds because they figure they can get out of there long before the cops show up…and they’re right. It’s 30 to 40 minutes before the police answer a 911 call here, if they bother to answer it at all.

Sooooo…you wonder why some of us wild-eyed liberals are in the “out of my dead hands” set? You take care of yourself here in the Wild West, or you don’t get taken care of. 😀 What a place!

Rain: not good when you have a sick dog. Cassie the Corgi is having an unusually difficult day. Just now she’s inert. She lays on her dog mat beside the computer, which is stuffed with old bed pillows and so not consistent in…puffiness. This padding inconsistency causes her to sink into an arroyo, which she can’t pull herself out of. So I have to lift her up and set her on her feet beside the dog bed, which gives her a coughing fit.

{sigh} I really need to put this dog down. But can’t bring myself to do it. Every time I work up enough courage to do her in, she has a “good” day: almost but not quite back to normal. Well. Far from it, but at least she doesn’t appear to be suffering on those “nearly normal” days, and she’s sort of up for ambling out to the back yard between depositing puddles and mounds on the floor. Poor beast.

News comes from NextDoor: missing autistic child. A seventeen-year-old, out in the rain and cold and unable even to tell anyone who he is or where he belongs. Two minutes later: Kid found. Thank heavens for small favors, hm?

Accomplished today…what? Uhm…

Well…I polished my toenails. That’s something. I guess.

They look pretty nice. Lots better color than the last paint job.

No dog walk: too cold, too wet.

Wouldn’t go into a grocery or drug store on a bet. Nothing done in the re-provisioning department.

Clean house? Too dark.

Wash clothes? Done.

Pick up wet dog mats? Continuous.

Write? Not so much.

All of these things failing. I guess I’d better get up and iron the clothes and table linens. And so, away…

Happy New Year!