Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Movin’ On! Or is that STAGGERING On?

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LOL! So the Human took it into its pea-brained head to walk down to the nearby supermarket to pick up some stuff for itself and for the dawg.

That was what we call “Not Too Bright.” For godsake, as we scribble, the thermometer mounted in the deep, dark shade of the back porch reads 110 degrees. 

Really? What d’you suppose Wunderground thinks?

Yep: the same. A chilly 110. 

Welp! It’s a good thing I grew up in Saudi Arabia, there on the fringe of Hell. This kind of weather was par for the course there. Most of the time….

My guess is, this afternoon I survived BECAUSE the Arabian desert acclimated me to it.

So… As we’re staggering through that heat, our thoughts turn to…what if?  As in what if we dwelt somewhere else? Somewhere more civilized, someplace where humans were adapted to live?

Ohhh…kayyyy…. So, where would we go?

My cousin, a lovely and brilliant young woman, lives with her family in a suburb called Fountain Hills, over on the east side of the Valley. The area is somewhat elevated, enough to be noticeably cooler than my parts. Yea, verily: in the wintertime they’ll actually get snow.

Whatever THAT is.

It’s a bitch of a long way from my son, though. If he didn’t live in Central Phoenix, I might very well be in Fountain Hills as we scribble. But…f’r hevvinsake! It’s an hour’s drive from there to his house!

Nope. Not doin’ that.

SDXB moved to Sun City, in the wake of our brain-banging quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord. He tried to get me to go out there with him. But having lived there with my parents, I wasn’t bloody well about to go through THAT again! So…I felt bad to lose his companionship….but frankly, I can deal one helluva lot better with Tony than with roaring jets, bigoted neighbors, cheesy construction, and grocery stores that don’t carry real food.

Yea, verily! Here’s a terrifying revelation: I’ve come to rather LIKE ol‘ Tony the Romanian Landlord. In addition to being the single hardest-working man I’ve ever known, it turns out he’s remarkably intelligent. This is One…Smart…Dude. And that, alas, is a character trait that strongly attracts me.

So, here we are in a state of détente, quietly and slowly drifting toward truce. And maybe toward — hang onto your hat! — even friendship. We shall see what develops…and hope a move to Sun City is NOT that development. 

Soggy Doggy Day!

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Echhh, is what I say to that!  Ruby and I foolishly went out for the routine morning doggy-walk, under a sky padded with thick, high gray clouds.

“Thick”? The air itself is thick! And no: I exaggerate not. It actually feels like you’re breathing something that’s not quite air and not quite water. Ewww!

So after several blocks of trudging, we turned around and came back.

Can’t tell that the dog is exasperated: she may have been as close to melting as her human was.

Speaking of humans, we passed a fine young gringo professional wheeling his beautiful little adopted Black boy up the sidewalk. Oh, my! What a cutie!!!!  The kid, I mean.

One wonders how an African-American child fares, over the course of 18 years, when adopted by a White family. Dollars to donuts, this one will do pretty darned well…he’s landed in a very upscale neighborhood, served by the best public schools in the state. To say nothing of the very fancy private schools that also thrive here.

Anyway, it was a delight to see the ole’ man and his adopted kidlet. 😀

Now the Human is half-starved, but too lazy to get up and thrash around fixing breakfast. So we’re faced with a conundrum:

  • Whether to stagger into the kitchen and dig something to eat out of the fridge; or
  • To go back to bed.

The latter is a sore temptation. 😀

But…

Coffee

Must…Have…Coffee

And so, away!

Soggy Doggy July 4!

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Wow! Is it ever hot and wet out there!

The Hound and the Human just got back from cirucmnavigating the park. 😀  All sorts of July 4 shenanigans are going on over there. WHAT a hoot!

Hot and overcast: Thermometer reads in the 90s…under the shade of the back porch! Patchy gray clouds loom overhead. To the east: high, streaky white clouds look like they were applied with a paintbrush.

The park: more fun than life!  You never so SO MANY adorable little kids running around, shooting back and forth around their handsome young parents. A small band is banging out clichéd music. Dogs are frolicking. Cops are loafing.

Too, too good.

Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such icky weather here. Normally, when we say “it’s a dry heat,” we ain’t kidding. Today, though: it looks like Saudi Arabia out there: hot and dripping wet! The sky: coated with gray overcast. The air: like a steam bath. And it’s supposed to hit 116 here this afternoon.

Well…guess I can be glad I’m not still in Saudi Arabia, where this kind of weather was par for the course during any given summer day. Rasty Nasty’s weather report for today predicts 57% humidity; no rain; temps in the low 100s.

Garden spot!

My father worked down on the docks of the oil camp where we lived. He was a harbor pilot: steering tankers and freighters in and out of their parking spots. Surely a job exceeding “horrible.”

At any rate, he was on track to accruing enough capital to retire and move us all back to the States when my mother came down with amoebic dysentery. That did in his beautifully laid plans. He had to send her and me back to San Francisco, where she was locked up in a hospital for weeks. The doctors (probably at her behest…) told him she was NOT to go back to Arabia. He took a job in the Bay Area, shipping out of the East Bay. And so we escaped that horrible place.

Thank God!

ARF!

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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Yow!!  Is it ever HOT out there!!!

Dawdled half the day away and so didn’t get out for the usual morning walk. Stupidly, I figured I’d go on out along about 3:00 p.m.

Bad idea. Extraordinarily bad idea.

As we scribble, it’s a mere 103 degrees out there, in full sun. 😀 Might’ crisp, eh???

Oh, well. Undeterrable, I take it into my feeble head to stroll past my old house and SDXB’s old house…not far from the Funny Farm, really: just a block to the north. My first house here was about two blocks to the west, on the same street as SDXB’s place.

Ye GAWDS!!!!!  

It must be a little damp out there, because it feels like the damn place has turned into an electric oven. Actually, Wunderground tells us the humidity is only 4%. So…dunno why it feels so unholy hot out there, except maybe because it’s late in the afternoon.

Ohhhhh well… Made it back to the Funny Farm without passing out, which just now seems like a bit of an accomplishment. We won’t pull THAT stunt again!!

***  😀 ***

Seriously, I do need to get off my duff and get that exercise walk in: EVERY DAY. Problem has been: various visitors and pests have been descending on me first thing in the morning, so I’ve had to sit around until they’re gone….and by then, a whole lot of other chores and tasks are waiting to get done. And by then, too, it’s already to goddamn hot to be frolicking up and down the sidewalks.

So:

After this, the Dawg and the Human shoot out that door no later than 7 a.m.  

That will get us back here by 8:00 — earlier, if we’re lucky. And though it’ll be getting hot by then, it won’t be paw-singeing or human-fainting. Yet.

Gosh, I miss SDXB.

Not so much as I’m willing to follow him to Sun City… Been there: ain’t goin’ there again. But I do wish he hadn’t moved away. He was a good neighbor and a pleasant friend.

He likes Sun City, though. Dwelling in a mausoleum never much appealed to me (hated the place when my parents lived there). But he and New Girlfriend seem to enjoy it and the unholy roar from the Luke Air Force Base fighter jets….loveleeee.

My mother loved it, too. She used to sit on her back porch every morning sipping her coffee over the morning paper and, when I was around, socializing with me. Incredibly, she actually claimed to LIKE that ungodly airplane racket.”Ohhh! It’s the sound of fweedom!” she would simper.

“Noooo, muther! That’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way.” /eyeroll/

That was something I never could understand! The noise was just SO unpleasant…and forgodsake, first thing in the morning! 

Mysterious, people are….

So, anyway: After this, Ruby and I are out of the sack at dawn and on the road! That should get us back here before the worst of the heat comes up. Still will be hot: at this time of year we’re looking at temps in excess of 105 degrees. But nigh unto dawn, it should be tolerable.

Soggy Doggy Day

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7:40 in the morning: Under a clear sky, the air is hot, wet, and soggy. Ruby and I  just shot in the front door, ahead of the babysitter by 20 minutes.

Yeah: that’s right: 20 minutes of peace and quiet, into which to jam one’s breakfast and coffee.

The Human stepped into a riot of ants as we stumbled along the sidewalk around the park. Got bit up royally.

Ah: The coffee is poured!

And so, to chow down…more or less…

8:00 a.m.
She’ll be here in minutes…

This is the thing about being a lone wolf all your life: You don’t want anyone around you!

That always has been my state of mind. Well…as long as I can remember, anyway.

Seriously: one of my very first memories is of sitting in a sandbox with the neighbor’s small kids, a boy and a girl. The sister brat takes her little shovel, scoops up a mound of sand, and SLAMS it into my face.

Instantly, my eyes are full of sand. And HURT? Lemme tellya hurt….

That was when I first learned to dislike and distrust other people.

We hadn’t left for Arabia yet…I just turned three years old on the day we arrived out there.

So…think o’ that: By the age of three, I hated my fellow humans. Already. Six miserable years in Aramco’s dreadful Ras Tanura grade school did not endear humanity to me any further.

So…yeah. Much as I appreciate whomever my son has hired to ride herd on me in my own home, I just don’t want anyone around me! Privacy is more important to me than safety.

Not a healthy attitude, I suppose.

****

Cripes. It’s twenty after eight. Where IS that woman?

Any chance (ohhh please, God!) that she’s not supposed to come over this morning?

Naaahhh…. More likely, she’s caught in traffic. I think she comes in from the far east side, which means she gets into profoundly hellish traffic jams on the way to the job. How glad ARE we that we don’t have to commute to work? Let us count the ways….

Hotter Than the Hubs….Still….

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6:00 p.m. and the thermometer reads 101 degrees: in the shade of the covered back porch. 

Ugh!  What a garden spot we live in!

What was that I was scribbling, a day or two ago, about wishing I could be living back in San Francisco?  Where I belong….

And…what kind of worm could possibly have crawled into my parents’ brains to give them the idea that nothing would do but what we must move to Arizona?

….But what they must buy a house in ugleee Sun City, beneath the melodic roar of the Luke Air Force Base fighter jets?

….But what they must send their daughter to school at the University of Arizona? (That would be the daughter who was set to enroll in UC Berkeley…)

….And then, after she graduates, move her into their ugleee Sun City home and have her live there with them until she finishes trade school and gets a job in downtown Phoenix?

Well, I’ll tellya: for them, it was the right move. 

My mother dearly LOVED Sun City. Lived there in joy and contentment until her tobacco habit killed her.

My father evidently liked Sun City, too. He made no sign that he wanted to move out of their cute little house after she died. And when he remarried, he and the Dragon Lady lived there until they capitulated to old age and moved into an old-folkerie in central Phoenix. A prison for old folks, that was.

That place made Sun City look good, for sure. From my point of view, anyway.

My mother’s dying brought an end to the joy in my father’s life, pretty much once and for all. The New Wife did nothing to revive his happiness: she was a witch who tormented me and made him understand the value of what he had lost in my mother.

Oh well: 20 years later, here we still are in Lovely Uptown Arizona, baking away in the heat, luxuriating in bird-brained conservative politics, plodding along day by day.

As you might gather by the tone of this post, I’m not nuts about Arizona. If I could move away, I would. But as long as my son is here, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Plus I doubt if nowadays I could afford to live in the Bay Area, which really is the only place on this earth I’d prefer to live.

{chortle!} Think o’ that…  Where have I lived? 

Long Beach, California
San Francisco, California
Alameda, California
Berkeley, California
Sun City, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
Beirut, Lebanon
London, England
Tunbridge, England

On & on…helle’s belles, I can’t remember them all!

Nor, one might add, do I want to….