Last couple of days I’ve felt more lively than I have all summer. Probably it has to do with the slight drop in outside temperatures — still in the low 100s, but 105 is a far cry from 115. And the mornings and evenings now are really lovely.
So I’ve contrived to get off my duff long enough to do a few small jobs that have lain fallow for month after unjustifiable month. The bermudagrass that I cleared out of the flowerbed last November sprang back in all its glory over the summer. I’ve just been too, too lazy to get out the chemicals, mix them up, get them all over myself, barricade the dogs away from the chemical dump, clean up the mess, and scour myself down with dawn and a scrub brush. What ought to be a fairly easy task is made difficult by the presence of presumably toxic, very stinky chemicals.
Anyway, the smell is dissipating this morning, even though I poured a-plenty of it on the damn devilgrass. Yesterday I finally got around to that job, along with figuring out what to do about the trash situation and cleaning the pool and picking up after the dogs and cleaning up after the yard guys and running the laundry and swiffering up the dog hair.
Gerardo’s guys pulled the translucent plastic paneling off the cedar beam & lathwork that covers the back patio, so that the painter can clean up the mess where the stuff leaked and apply new sealer. However, they left the strips that hold the things on…some of them. I think they did that pursuant to putting new stuff on, but…they busted up a lot of the strips. And how exactly the painter is supposed to get around that junk escapes me. Nor am I convinced Gerardo and his underlings have got what it takes to replace that stuff without having it leak from the git-go.
After Richard’s crew applied it, the thing lasted 10 years before it started to leak. Really, only one area leaked, which leads me to think the hail and probably a damned cat jumping on it caused the damage.
Some time during the day, I’ll go up to Home Depot and see if they can refer me to a contractor who knows how to install that stuff. Richard, I think, is no longer in business — he never answered my call. He fell off a roof a couple years ago and broke his back in a dozen places, so he’s presumably not in any shape to wrangle a work gang.
Meanwhile, naturally, I’ve got to drive way to hell in the opposite direction from the damn HD to get gasoline at Costco, hoping to reach the pumps before prices go through the proverbial roof. I’m afraid it’s probably too late, though.
So that mean’s I’ll be on the road for about an hour, dodging my fellow homicidal drivers. Ugh! I do hate driving in this city!
But meanwhile, finally some work came in from China — thank God! After that deluge in the first-quarter, it has been a long, dry summer.
Couple days ago my friends VickyC and KJG had a shopping get-together: drove out to the East Valley to visit Ikea, where VickyC needed to buy a small occasional table. And of course, we couldn’t miss wandering through the entire place ogling the loot. I picked up a box of candles (Ikea has THE best no-stinkum candles!) and impulse-bought an inexpensive pair of glass candle-holders.
We also went to REI, just down the road, where the camp stove offerings are far superior to the ones I’ve seen elsewhere. I may go over to the REI here in town to get one of those. It looks like they require a special propane canister, which will mean having to keep several of those on hand for emergencies. But…time to be prepared, IMHO.
…park selves at back door and arf. Human gets up (having just barely brushed the seat of its easy chair with its fanny) and lets the dogs out. Dogs go out onto the patio and stand there, staring expectantly at human.
Human: It’s 105 and overcast out here, and you want to go outside and stand?
Dogs: Well, yes. Yes. Of course.
{sigh}
Phone Solicitors…
…apparently are having a phone-solicitor jamboree.
Despite the wonderful call blocking device, quite a few still get through. They do this by spoofing phone numbers that are not in service (reinforcing one’s suspicion that Cox is in cahoots with them: how else would they get such extensive lists of out-of-service numbers?), or simply by calling from numbers that the device has yet to block.
Even the calls that get blocked still jangle my phone: they ring once and then are cut off. This has to do with the way the gadget has to be connected, because of the number of computers and phones and crap that are attached to the incoming cable. In one way, this is annoying: whatever you’re doing still gets interrupted, albeit very briefly. In another, it’s kinda gratifying, because you know the bastards are getting hung up on. The ones that do get through, though, set off your answering machine, so you have to listen to that thing yap. Sometimes they stay on the line long enough to cause the answering machine to pick up the “busy” signal that ensues, so you have to get up, walk to the machine in the back of the house, and delete the voice message that’s going beep-beep-beep-beep-beep….
Today I’ve had at least eight calls, about half of which have gotten through. That’s just while I’ve been here: left the house at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t get back until sometime after 11.
Whoops! There’s another one: the third from “Bountiful, Utah” today!
Mosquitoes…
…definitely are having a mosquito jamboree.
Don’t know when I’ve seen so many skeeters around. I think it’s probably because I left a dish of water out for the dawgs while it was excessively hot, because I was afraid Ruby would slip out unnoticed, as she’s inclined to do.
Cassie prefers to lurk indoors, but Ruby will go out and lurk in the yard even when it’s hotter than the proverbial hubs of Hades. I do try to check to be sure she’s inside, but given my growing level of incompetence, the chance remains that she’ll get herself stuck out there in the heat.
Even with water, she wouldn’t last long at 115 degrees. It’s cooled down to 105, so I brought the mosquito habitat inside. But that left, of course, a generation of little biters flying around.
There’s a chemical-free way to keep them from chewing on you, though: turn a reasonably powerful fan to “blast” and point it at yourself. Interestingly, mosquitoes are not very strong fliers, and they can’t navigate well in a breeze. Right now we have a large box fan roaring away. Whenever I work up enough energy to get up, I’ll turn on the other three table fans in this room. The box fan is sitting here next to the sliding door, because I take it out onto the deck at breakfast time by way of discouraging the little biters in the morning.
Incompetence…
…Really? Is it really possible that I could get the date of a Mayo Clinic appointment wrong not once, not twice, but three times?
Entre nous, I begin to doubt it.
The journey from my house to the Mayo is halfway across the galaxy. I just simply HATE driving out there. So when I needed to traipse across town by way of finding out why whatever ails me has been hanging on for the past five and a half months, I was not pleased.
I had a meeting in Scottsdale this morning, which would put me about halfway there. So I arranged an appointment at 9:10. This meant that the errands I needed to do while I was in the area where the group meets had to be deferred until next week, and some of them are things I would like to get done this week, not sometime in the far future.
So I leave the meeting early and fly across Scottsdale headed toward Payson — for reasons I can’t imagine, the Mayo built its office complex damn near out to Fountain Hills, which borders the freaking Beeline Highway. Naturally, Shea Blvd, the only way to get out there, is all dug up with “lane closed” signs all over the place. But I hit the campus just in time: run up the parking garage stairs and race into the reception area, only to be told…
“Oh, that’s not today: that’s next week! :-)”
Son. Of. A. Bitch!
This is the third time I’ve trudged way to hell and gone almost to freaking Fountain Hills and been told the appointment I had on my calendar was not for that day but for a week hence.
•The first time, I put it down to my usual old-lady incompetence.
•The second time, I was really pissed.
•But this time? Now I’m beginning to wonder.
Does it really make sense that I would get the date wrong for a trip I truly hate loathe and despise three times?
I go to a whole lot of doctors, dentists, veterinarians, car mechanics, and whatnot. Why would this keep happening only at the Mayo? It never happens with Young Dr. Kildare or CardioDoc or the glasses guy or the dentist or the hair stylist or the vet or the business meetings or choir…so why would it happen with the Mayo and only with the Mayo? Why would these errors consistently be exactly one week off, when they’re usually made pretty far out in the future? (This one wasn’t: I made it a few days ago, but mostly you’re scheduling three or four weeks down the line.)
(Wow! Here’s the fourthcall from Bountiful! This guy just does not give up! Now we’re at about 9 nuisance calls today.)
So, yeah: does it really make sense that this kind of scheduling error would happen only with the Mayo?
If they’re deliberately mis-scheduling, why? Could that make sense in even the wildest scenario?
The only possible reason I can imagine is that the Mayo doesn’t like to deal with Medicare patients. Medicare doesn’t pay enough, and collecting is a hassle for them. The Mayo prioritizes private patients over Medicare patients. They may be quietly trying to discourage me from making appointments at all. If a person makes enough wasted trips — especially if the person is elderly or disabled and it’s hard to get out there at all — maybe she’ll just give up and go someplace else.
And I certainly would, if they weren’t about the only game in town.
Overall hospitals and medical care in Arizona are pretty piss poor. In the Phoenix area, only two hospitals are rated excellent; one is the Mayo and one is a facility way to hell and gone out in Sun City. I don’t know anybody who practices in Sun City, and I sure as hell don’t want to drive as far to the westside as I have to drive to the eastside to go to a doctor.
It’s late. I’ve got to get up and start preparing the walls for the upcoming paint job. And so, away…
Why? Because endlessly annoying Facebook will not pick up the image you want to illustrate your post. It wants to pick up the banner image, which, if it’s generically the same day after day, quickly bores readers or makes them think today’s post is a repeat of yesterday’s. So the only way to force FB to use an image that has anything to do with your post is to change the banner image to fit the subject of the day. That means today’s banner image (a historic photo of four Nazis, for example) bears no relation whatsoever to the topic of yesterday’s post (ruminations on power outages, for example). So annoying.
So yesterday afternoon we schlepped the ailing dog out to his Regular Veterinarian, way to he!! and gone on the northerly reaches of Paradise Valley.
Charley is much improved, and yesterday made a Great Leap in terms of recovery. He’s certainly not cured by any means, but yesterday was walking around a little more normally, despite having to struggle to get up and down. He’s even getting up enough zing to take up one of his favorite activities, counter-surfing.
Day before yesterday, M’hijito discovered a large, strange wound that seemed suddenly to have appeared on his back. Son was beside himself: we did not know where this came from or what it could possibly be.
Actually, I had a theory: First day back from the vet hospital (a.k.a. hole in the ground into which to pour money), Charley levered himself to the floor in the kitchen while we were fixing food. When he got himself down, he was laying with his back jammed up against the sharp corner of the cheap Home Depot cabinetry we had installed in that house. I thought at the time he must be getting jabbed, but elected not to try to drag him away from it for fear of injuring him more. So he could have scraped himself while in that position.
We cut away as much hair as we could and washed it, but since we already had a vet appointment there wasn’t much else to do.
The vet did a much better job of removing fur all the way around the thing, cleaning, and applying a med. He opined that it’s a hot spot.
I said “how can he have a hot spot, since he can’t reach the middle of his back to lick it?” My dogs love to create hot spots, but these always appear on their legs, which are convenient venues for lick-fests. These create fine festering wounds.
He said a hot spot can start as a bacterial infection. He says they’re very common in goldens.
So now poor Charley is bald on the belly (where they shaved him to do an ultrasound of his abdominal cavity), on his front legs (where innumerable IVs were inserted), and on his back.
However, the vet said he appears to be significantly better and held out some hope for a complete or near-complete recovery.
He also discovered that in X-raying the dog’s chest, the 24-hour veterinary had found a couple of ruptured vertebral disks.
Well, holy sh!t, would that ever explain a lot. As you may know from your own experience, disk pain is pretty damned excruciating. It certainly can cripple you up. And it can cause you to feel extremely stressed.
So if he was already in pain when he was placed in the Hated Car, the combination could have stressed him enough to give him a neurotic fit, as it were.
And you simply would not believe how this dog behaves inside a vehicle. He truly is totally panic-stricken.
Yesterday I rode in back with the dog while my son drove the car. All the way across town, Charley huffed and puffed and gasped for air and tried to burrow in behind my back to hide. There’s no question at all that he was terrorized.
The vet thinks the Thunder Shirt idea is a good one. He says a lot of people swear by them. If you read the reviews, about 75% of users feel they work well or at least adequately to calm their dogs’ anxiety. So my kid is going to order one up. But we’ll have to wait until the hot-spot wound on his back heals up before wrapping him in Velcro and nylon. Also the maker’s site says not to put one on a dog when the weather is over 90 degrees — it’ll be a month or two before temps get back down into the 90s hereabouts.
Anyway, this guy is really a great vet: like Young Dr. Kildare, he combines a great deal of expertise with that rarest of all commodities, common sense.
2. House
So I bought a gallon of gray paint to re-do the orange hallway. I’d very much like to get started on that, but it ain’t gonna happen today. Or tomorrow.
This morning I’ll run up to the Depot, where I figure I can get the rollers and a couple new paintbrushes cheaper than they sell them at Dunn Edwards.
However, it must be said that when I rolled into Dunn Edwards the other day with no paint on my face and engaging my usual long, space-covering hiking stride (had to park on the far end of the lot to get the car in the shade), I looked pretty lezzie. The lone clerk personing the counter was a distinctly mannish-looking woman, and she instantly took a liking to me. Amazingly, that led to her establishing a tradesman’s account for me! ♥ So I got the paint at a deep discount.
Ordered just a quart of the white trim paint, since I figured all that would be needed would be some touch-up. But when I arrived to pick up the paint, I learned they couldn’t get the color (which is long out-of-date in the style department) unless they whipped up a gallon. Incredibly, the guy dispensing the paint gave me the whole gallon for the cost of a quart!!!!!
Hot dayum!
The trim in my son’s house is the same color white. Our honored painter screwed up quite a few things in that house. Among these: he painted the hall cabinet without sanding the high-gloss lead paint already on it, and then — get this — after he finished painting he pushed the drawers shut! Not surprisingly, the paint just peeled right off the first time my son opened the drawers.
Painter dude also applied some of the wall paint carelessly and slopped it on the trim around the kitchen doors.
So with this excess of white paint, I’ll be able to repair the paint at M’hijito’s house, whenever I get around to it.
3. Docs
But that will not be soon: I can’t even work on my own house today.
Have to prepare a presentation for tomorrow’s 7:30 a.m. meeting, and from there go straight out to the Mayo, there to begin the (undoubtedly freaking endless) process of figuring out why my body is still afflicted with whatever struck on March 1. Still coughing and gagging, though it’s slowly getting better. But…this is August: whatever the ailment is has hung on for five and a half months.
Young Dr. Kildare referred me to a lung doctor.
I called this guy’s office during office hours and was instantly shunted into an aggravating punch-a-button phone tree. Okay…so get used to it, right?
Don’t think so. This was an aggravation on steroids. By the time I got to the sixth level of “listen carefully for our menu has changed,” I thought oh fuck it! and hung up.
Now this outfit keeps calling me on the phone and leaving messages for me to call and make an appointment. This after they sent me a letter to that effect; I wrote them a note in reply explaining that I gave up after reaching the sixth punch-a-button put-off and that I feel a business that treats its customers this way reveals its lack of consideration.
And I believe that is exactly so. In any setting, when you put off someone who wants to do business with you by sending them through a long, annoying run-around, you’re really saying you care so little for your customer that you won’t even be bothered to hire a minimum-wage clerk to listen to messages left on a voicemail that answers at the first or second level. When your callers are sick people, for chrissake, that is true in spades. How hard is it to plug in a voicemail system that says “Please leave your name, your number, and a brief description of your concern and we will get back to you soon”?
So this is not a medical practice with which I wish to do business.
Called the Mayo and reached a human on the second hoop-jump. Made an appointment. Unfortunately, it’s for 9:10 in the morning tomorrow. So that is going to make tomorrow a bitch of a day: starting out with a 40-minute drive into the rising sun and a presentation whose subject I have yet to dream up; then racing to the Mayo (another 30- or 40-minute drive from the meeting). And presumably, knowing the way my life goes, downhill from there.
4. Like Mother, Like Son
{chortle} I was tickled to learn that a certain retrograde cast of mind runs in the genes. After we returned from the veterinary expedition, M’hijito went off to a favorite Thai restaurant and retrieved a bunch of take-out.
So we’re sitting around after dinner finishing our beers and reading. M’hijito has turned on the lights…and he apologizes for their dimness because, says he, “I hate those new lights! I hate that blue cast they put out…they hurt your eyes!”
Heeeee!
So I was moved to make a confession: when the last administration decreed that incandescent bulbs would be taken out of our sticky little hands, I hoarded boxes of real light bulbs.
Heh heh…if he’d heard about that when it happened, I’d have had to listen to any number of lectures about how foolish that was.
But like his muther, he tried the fluorescent bulbs and tried the LCD bulbs and found them…amazingly wanting.
So when I croak over, he’ll inherit a lifetime supply of lightbulbs that don’t hurt your eyes or make you grit your teeth.
😀
Why? Because endlessly annoying Facebook will not pick up the image you want to illustrate your post. It wants to pick up the banner image, which, if it’s generically the same day after day, quickly bores readers or makes them think today’s post is a repeat of yesterday’s. So the only way to force FB to use an image that has anything to do with your post is to change the banner image to fit the subject of the day. That means today’s banner image (a historic photo of four Nazis, for example) bears no relation whatsoever to the topic of yesterday’s post (ruminations on power outages, for example). So annoying.
Taking a few minutes to de-frazzle before flying out the door.
I have to drive down to my son’s house to check on the dog — really, like right now — but I’ve been racing around since 5:30 this morning and must decompress before getting on the road.
Decided I’d better shovel out the house today, so after cleaning the pool and walking the dogs and running three loads of laundry we moved on to picking up the mountains of litter that collect like snowdrifts in the Funny Farm. In addition to developing the bad habit of sitting in front of the Internet all day long, I’ve also been cultivating my natural tendency to drop stuff wherever I happen to be at any given time.
Result: every table top, every countertop, every desk, every floor, every appliance is festooned with trash, junk, and piles of paper. It’s taken two hours to pick this place up, and now I have a four-inch-high stack of paperwork that has to be entered into Excel spreadsheets (apparently all the bills got paid, though, mirabilis!).
Meanwhile, in the course of babysitting the dog I see my son has inherited these genetic tendencies, in spades. Though he does pick up (most of the time…), the floors are ankle-deep in dog hair.
So I’m taking an old vacuum cleaner that resides in the garage down to his place, the better to gag it with wads of white dog hair. I’m sure not using my good one, and his weighs about eight tons. What is it about men that they think the best way to clean a house (repair a gadget, get from Point A to Point B, run a country) is the hardest way???
It’s been so long since I used the old Shark, I could NOT for the life of me remember how to get it apart to dump out the dust and dog hair that had accrued in its collector thingie. After much wrestling around, I finally spotted the right button. Annoying.
Even more annoying is that damn car. It’s a good-sized vehicle, in theory…but the back end behind the annoying stupidly designed seats isn’t large enough to hold a lightweight Shark vacuum cleaner. Holy sh!t. So I had to take everything out of the vehicle and perform a feat of origami to load the damn vacuum cleaner.
The seats have to remain up and the pillows I stuffed in there to keep my own dogs from breaking their necks or their legs or both have to be removed and stashed in the garage because my son has to ride in the back with his neurotic dog to keep the animal from having another panic-induced stroke. This, every time we have to schlep the dog to the vet. Which, as you can imagine, is frequently.
Well, it’s almost 10 a.m. If I’m gonna do this chore, I’d better get going. If he catches me cleaning his house, he won’t like it.
This sounds like one of those stupid Quora questions, most of them posed by bored 14-year-olds in Bangladesh: Why, damn it, why does it take so goddamn LONG to get out of the house when you’re old? The older you get, the more time it takes to get into the car.
This morning I needed to leave at 8:30 to meet my son and schlep the sick dog to the vet, way to hell and gone over in the downscale section of Paradise Valley, which is a hefty long way from here through post-rush-hour traffic.
Up at 5:30, the usual hour. You’d think three hours would be plenty of time to get ready and out the door, eh? Not so…
Discover Charley’s symptoms could occur if he had been munching on compost, as dogs will do.
E-mail son; realize he won’t see e-mail.
E-mail two friends, only one of whom is likely to be up at that hour; ask them to text him w/ message to keep dog away from compost.
Try to print out one page on compost toxicity for vet; find printer isn’t working.
Fart with printer; get it working with one unit but not the other. E-mail page to self, open it on other computer, print it out, fold up printout, jam it in purse which is too small to hold another scrap of junk.
Clean the pool.
Realize I forgot to shock-treat last night; realize I can’t do that until tonight.
Clean out pool equipment preparatory to this evening’s shock treat.
Jump in the pool.
Realize I can’t shower and wash hair in the hose because guys blacktopping the streets are running around in big contraptions tall enough to let the driver peer over the wall.
Draw bath.
Feed dogs.
Start coffee.
Jump in bath, wash hair.
Race to kitchen, grab boiling pot, pour water over coffee in French press.
Back to bathroom. Grab comb, yank tangles out of hair.
Cut up an apple, cheese; grab nuts, grab blueberries; put on serving dish.
Assemble snacks for begging dogs, by way of keeping them out of my hair while I’m eating.
Pour coffee, grab plates of food, retreat to deck for breakfast.
Consume food while holding off dogs with cheese, carrots, blueberries and pieces of kibble and reading an Economist article.
Back to bathroom: paint face.
Finish getting dressed.
Back to bathroom: braid hair.
Throw ice in a mug, pour in iced tea, put in car.
Leave outgoing mail in mailbox, raise flag.
Lock doors.
Lock doors.
Lock doors.
Check on dogs.
Lock yet another door.
Fly out of the garage, running only 5 minutes late.
Huh. Come to think of it, I suppose it’s surprising, in a good way (sort of) that it “only” takes three hours to get out of here.
By golly, it was 80 degrees out here on the back porch come dawn this morning. At 9 a.m., it’s no warmer! And here comes Ruby, bearing a mummified orange. Cassie has taught her the delights of chewing up the things…and there she goes, carrying it to the Nest in the back bathroom.
Apparently quite a monsoon blew through during the night: friends who were leaving for vacation last night were marooned at the airport. But as usual, nothing much was up here except for some dust. No sign of any significant rain in our parts. {chortle!} We live in the desert part of the desert. Wonderful, fat-looking gray and blue-gray clouds still shade the desert floor, and for the first time in three months one can sit in one’s yard to play with one’s computer.
And that’s about the extent of what I’d like to do today.
I really need to make a Costco run but don’t see how that’s going to happen this week. Normally Wednesday is the best day: smallest crowds. Monday is not so good, because they tend to run out of stock over the weekend. They restock Monday afternoon, meaning pickings are relatively slim on the first day of the workweek. Plus the employees tend to be a little crabby on Monday.
L’orange de mon chien
The rest of the week looks even less promising, though: every day is filled up with one appointment or activity after another. Doctor’s appointment, dentist’s appointment, vet’s appointment: all of them scheduled smack in the middle of the time one would usually use for midweek errand-running.
Some of this stuff I could probably buy at Safeway, but a few Costco-specific things are running low. And, come to think of it, I need gas if I’m going to have to drive from pillar to post every day for the rest of this week and out to the Indian Reservation for this week’s bidness networking group meeting.
Hm. The vet appointment isn’t until 2 p.m. tomorrow. That would leave time for a Costco run in the morning, assuming I fly low, get back here early enough to pile the perishables in the fridge and freezer in time to shoot back out the door at 1:00. That would maybe be preferable to surfacing at the store and finding them low on produce and meat. I’m pretty picky…and when I’m paying that much for a lifetime supply of whatever, I want some choice in the matter.
Wednesday: out of the question. Doctor’s appointment in the morning, way to Hell and gone in Maryvale (a 45-minute drive each way). Then as soon as I get home, it’s off to meet a friend and go in search of some upholstery fabric.
She has a lovely dining room set,vintage Ethan Allen from the 1940s or 50s, which she found some years ago at a thrift store in Sun City. It still has the original, pretty damn handsome seat covers, but they’re wearing thin and need to be re-upholstered. So we’re going in search of upholstery fabric.
These days, that’s easier said than done. One of the many “joys” of surviving into the early 21st century is finding that most fabric stores have shut down. The Fabric World nearest to us closed years ago — and it didn’t carry much upholstery material, anyway. There’s an expensive store out in Scottsdale — you have to take out a bank loan to recover your favorite easy chair with stuff from that place. But up Cave Creek Road there’s a dingy but highly serviceable joint called Fabric Depot. Shopping there is a bit of a project. Though staff is anxious to help and will climb halfway to the stratosphere to get down whatever suits your whim, the stock is indeed arranged almost to the warehouse-high ceiling. So it takes some doing to find what you want, and then you have to get ahold of it.
I think she might be able to take the chairs to Ethan Allen and get them recovered there…but Ethan Allen being what it is, that could be outside the budget.
The shop in Sun City simply defies belief. It looks like an ordinary grungy thrift store. But what’s happening is, when some out-of-stater’s parents croak over in Sun City or have to go into a nursing home, the kids don’t want to be bothered with coming to Arizona and shoveling out the house, so they’ll just consign everything to these places — there’s a whole strip mall full of them. NG (that would be SDXB’s New Girlfriend) got a Stickley dining room set there!!!!!!! For a handful of peanuts.
Amazingly, she didn’t know what Stickley is…I had to explain it to her. Neither, apparently, did the former owners’ kids. Ohhh well: their loss, NG’s gain.
