Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

{Pant} {GLUB} {Pant}!!!!

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😀  My goodness! The boggle minds!!!  

Stupidly, along about 2:30 in the afternoon I imagined I could stroll out for a short walk around the block.

Can you spell DUMB AS A POST?
How about CRAZY AS A LOON?
Or maybe WHERE DID YOU LEAVE YOUR MARBLES?

😀

Honestly: what was I thinking?

Not only is it hotter than the Hubs — 107 degrees, saith Wunderground, with the caveat that it “feels like 110” — it’s freaking humid. No kidding: 21% of that air you’re puffing in is water!

Feels like an obscene summer day in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, on whose sands I grew up next to the Persian Gulf.

****

This place is just AWFUL in the summertime. That would be why anyone who can afford it takes off for far venues during July and August.

But most people here can’t. I sure can’t. So you suffer through two months(+) of unmitigated Hell.

Truly: if my son weren’t here, I’d be LONG gone. Once my parents both passed, I’d have shot back to California like the proverbial rocket.

But I’m surely not about to take off for distant parts and leave him behind. My parents dragged me here; he was born here and raised here, and now his career and personal life are here. Nothing is left for me in California. Everything is left for me in Arizona.

So as long as that dude is here, I’m here.

Lucky him, eh?

***

There are folks who come here for just the fall, winter, and part of the spring. Most of them are retirees: people who don’t have to stay in x or y venue for a job. And it is very pleasant during those seasons.

Not so much in the summer, though!

***

Do I wish my parents had never come here, never dragging me with them?

To a degree, yes.

I would have much better opportunities had I been able to stay in California. At the time they dragged me here and dumped me at the University of Arizona (in Tucson), I was all set up to go to UC Berkeley.

And oh, how I wanted to go to Berkeley! Even just an undergraduate degree would have opened so many doors for me. And that’s to say nothing of the Ph.D. that I eventually landed. Imagine where you could go with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley!

A far piece from freakin’ Tucson, that’s for sure!

So…I can’t say I hate it here. Or even dislike it. Just that it wouldn’t have been my first choice of places to spend my adult life.

Roarrr! Not to say “Question Mark?”

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Gerardo’s amazing crew of yard dudes showed up as I was in the middle of scribbling this post. And somehow in the course of chatting with him, I contrived to lose the entire draft.

Wonnerful.

How DO those guys manage to do their job in this ungodly climate? As we scribble, the sky is overcast and the thermometer on the back porch reads a hundred degrees. Our boys are out there roaring around like tractors!

Migawd. I can barely stumble out the back door into that heat. Much less push lawn equipment back and forth and haul away huge bags of debris.

Jeez. It’s already 11:30. I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up. Why is unknown. But M’hijito is supposed to come over for dinner tonight — a gorgeous steak awaits him in the fridge. So…prob’ly I should try to sneak a nap in, so I can stay awake through his visit.

What DOES it all mean, anyway????

Here in the Hubs of Hades…

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Actually, it’s hotter than the hubs out there just now. At 10 in the morning it’s 101º in what should be the shade of the back porch. But there’s no shade: the sky is overcast. So everything is sorta…gray.

Steamy gray.

Truth to tell, I like a gray day…if it’s in San Francisco.

Hereabouts: not so much. Our “gray day” resembles the inside of an oven.

Ruby and I opted the morning doggy-walk. Even at 7:00 in the morning, it was soggy enough and hot enough to extinguish the Human.

Ahh, but it does lead you to count your blessings. Think of all the jobs you don’t have, for example.

  • You’re not digging a trench across an excavated roadway.
  • You’re not driving a delivery truck: one that has no air conditioning and no windows or passenger doors.
  • You don’t work in a service station. (Or do you?)
  • You’re not walking dogs for your neighbors.
  • You don’t dock tankers at a pier.
  • You don’t mow lawns.
  • You don’t herd small children around a preschool playground
  • On and on….

 Seriously: today is an awful day. As ugly and as uncomfortable as I can remember, this side of unlovely Ras Tanura, the unholy oil camp where I grew up by the shore of the Persian Gulf.

At least hereabouts we can be confident that the air will cool down a bit over the next week or so. Or at least dry out!

M’hijito is supposed to come over for dinner tonight. I sure don’t want to go out in that swamp for a grocery expedition. Hmmmm….

Well, we have a VERY nice steak in the fridge.

***

Huh!

Yesterday I was feeling awful. Actually asked my son to tote me out to the Mayo today.

This morning, whatever that was is totally gone. 

Can’t even imagine what ailed me. But whatever it was, I’m mighty glad to be rid of it.

Weird!

Glub!

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Hot! AND muggy. What a gummy, awful day! Pushing 90 degrees at 7:15 a.m., in 39% humidity.

Oh! There’s pool dude…speakin’ of jobs you’re glad you don’t have! How he manages to clean pool after pool after pool in this hot, sticky weather, I can’t even imagine. Just cleaning my own pool is almost more than I can cope with: on a cool, dry day.

That guy is one of the crew that makes it possible to stay in my home…and not have to move into some baby-sitting old-folkerie.

Hmmmm….  Let’s see…how many folks DOES it take to keep me here?

1. Pool Dude
2. Cleaning Lady from Heaven
3, 4, 5. Gerardo and his crew
6. Plumber
7. Electrician
8. Uber driver

At least! And that’s not counting my son, who does the work (and the thinking) of about 10 people.

No doubt there are more. Fair number of baby-sitters, eh?

Don’t know when it’s EVER been so hot-and-muggy. What a nasty morning! Definitely not a day that you’d like to spend working outdoors. 

RELIEVED…

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…of running around in the sun!  Whew!!!

WonderAccountant and I planned to get together this afternoon: meeting at her place. This would entail my having to walk over there…through 108-degree heat, according to the back porch thermometer.

Well. Ruby the Corgi and I have already traipsed through the heat, thankyouverymuch, and I can tellya: assuredly I don’t want to walk across even the one blacktop road between here and the WonderAccountants’ place!

Mercifully, when I called to arrange this forthwith, she suggested we put it off to another day.

YES!!!!!

Not to say HOOOOORAAAHHHH!

Yah: this was a chore that I absolutely positively was NOT in the mood for today. Any task that involves anything even remotely resembling math (of any variety) is over my furry little head. That’s why I hire WonderAccountant to handle my books, and it’s why M’hijito rides his stallion behind her to check on it and keep himself aware of what’s going on.

So: that was escaped.

And so was the (very short) trip across the broiling asphalt between our houses. Ugh!

Honestly, I’m coming to dislike living in Arizona more and more as the seasons turn. Spring and summer here, taken together, form a variety of Hell, so unholy is the heat. Just walking across the street entails armoring your feet with thick-soled shoes.

Where would I go, if I could escape this place?

Well. The San Francisco Bay Area would be my first choice. Either Parkmerced, where my mother and I lived when we first came back from Arabia and my father (a Merchant Marine deck officer) shipped out of the East Bay, or Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

Of course, I couldn’t afford to live in either of those places…but it’s something to daydream about. 😀

Failing that? Well…here in Arizona: we have Prescott, an upscale college town to the north of us. Or the Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson.

Otherwise? In general: meh! There aren’t many venues that are better than this place. Summers here suck, but the rest of the year, the climate is lovely. The district where I live is solidly middle-class, ringed with pleasing stores in easy walking distance of my house.

Truth to tell, I’d just as soon live out the rest of my life right here!

Balmy Arizona Day!

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Yeah: if you think this place is livable, you ARE balmy! 😀

No kidding: as we scribble — at quarter to 11 in the morning — the back porch thermometer reads 111 degrees. 

Sheeee-ut!!!!! This place is almost as hellish as Saudi Arabia…a venue whose weather defined Hell.

Just back from a stroll around the ‘Hood with Ruby. 

Nooooo….of course I wouldn’t have taken her out if I’d realized we were headed into an oven.

But by the time that reality dawned on me, we were halfway around our course. So we had to keep going: turning back would have been six of one, half-a-dozen of the ‘tother.

We did make it back to the Funny Farm. But…now my hair is drenched, crown to collar. Shirt is wet with sweat, too. But…I ain’t changing clothes or washing hair until the fans here in the family room get the body cooled down.

Today’s balmy climate is reminiscent of what we endured — for ten endless years — in Saudi Arabia. Soggy, brain-banging heat IS summer on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

At least here, the phenomenon will disappear after a few days. It’ll still be hot, but it won’t be steam-room hot. 😀

Gawd, but I hate this kind of Saudi weather.

Seriously: HOT and WET was what we endured for nine seemingly endless years on that shore of the Persian Gulf.

How my mother, an Upstate New York girl, survived that monstrous interlude puzzles me to this day. She didn’t, really: by the time we left that garden spot, she was hideously sick. Amoebic dysentery, as it developed. She spent weeks in a hospital back in San Francisco and…really…never fully recovered from it.

Passed a small crew of lawn dudes, sitting in the shade of a tree partaking of liquids and food. Stopped to chat.

How the HELL do those guys survive working in this unholy heat and humidity? They must be made of asbestos!

At any rate, if I didn’t have Gerardo on the string already, I might have inquired as to whether they wanted a job.

WonderAccountant wants me to go over to her office this afternoon. Why? That escapes me. Seriously: after that stroll, my brain is SO FRIED that I can’t remember why we’re getting together.

Really, it’s just not that hot: high clouds have now cooled us down to only 100 degrees on the back porch. But it’s so humid out there that it feels like lovely Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Humidity is 32% just now. Chance of rain: 34%.

Ugh! WHY do I stay in this unholy place?

Pleeeze, God! Take me back to San Francisco, where I belong!