Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Too Hot for Little Dogs!

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{chortle!}  So much for any proposed scam to take Ruby into the Sprouts or the Albertson’s with me, disguised as a “service dog.”

Without exaggeration, it is hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. Come ten in the morning, I take it into my fuzzy little head to make a pointless little circumnavigation of the ‘Hood: Incredibly stupid!

Walk a block in that heat, and you feel like you’re gonna pass out.

So, shortly, it was turn about and head back to the air-conditioned Funny Farm. Boring, but at least boring is unlikely to kill you.

At any rate, tromping around on those sizzling sidewalks surely is likely to kill the corgi…or at least burn the hide off her little feet. Fortunately, the human had the foresight to leave her home: foregoing the “service dog” boondoggle.

Y’know…I do hate this place. If I could find a better place to live that I could afford, I’d be outta here in an instant.

It’s the that I can afford that’s the operative term. Now that I’m old and retired, my savings will not buy into a lot of middle-class venues. Not within reasonable driving distance of my son, that is.

My parents retired from Southern California (where my father made a decent living) and betook themselves to Sun City, dragging me with them.

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to live there: youth being against the rules in lovely Sun City. No problem: they got me out of their hair by sending me down to the University of Arizona in Tucson. That took care of the problem for four years.

Thence, it was off to a real job for me, based in central Phoenix.

Another garden spot… /eyeroll/

Ugh!

Where would I live, if I could go anywhere I choose?

> Berkeley, California: whence my mother’s more affluent side of the family.

> San Francisco: the city of my dreams.

> The Gold Bar Ranch, up on the Mogollon Rim. We owned a share of it while my dear ex-husband was part of the law firm whose partners glommed it. When I divorced him, I divorced the ranch. That was stupid…

> Switzerland: A high-rise slice of heaven.

> Prescott, Arizona: Also up on the Mogollon Rim. Pretty town with a nice university campus that supports — can you imagine, here in Arizona?? — an intellectual life.

Really: not very many places, given that I’ve traveled all over the world and lived in the Middle East, England, and the north, the east, and the west of the United States.

Whew!

I’m exhausted, after the mid-morning tour of the ‘Hood. And so…

Awaaaayyy!!! 

Off to the sack, with a little dog to decorate the foot of the bed!

Cathedral Rock, Sedona, Arizona
Arizona, lovely Arizona…

Still Frolicking in the Hubs

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Last time we were in these parts, Funny remarked that the weather was hotter than the hubs of Hades. No kidding….

Well, we’re still lurking in that locale.

Not yet 8:00 in the morning, and we have 93 degrees, with 21 percent humidity under “partly cloudy” skies. No rain in the forecast.

Dog and Human, having circumambulated the neighborhood as dawn was cracking, are perched on the bed. The Human sincerely hopes no nuisances show up at the door…as we scribble, the righteous and the well-meaning are out there trying to recruit her to an old-folks’ home.

How exactly I’m gonna evade that fate escapes me: Greyhound bus, maybe? Will they let me take the dawg on a bus???  Hmmmm…well, no. Not unless you can faze it past them as a “service dog.” Good luck with that…

At any rate, it’s definitely another soggy doggy day…even inside the house, the air feels damp. And that places Arizona smack in the middle of Hades!

So I consider: Do I really want to stay here?

Surely not if I’m likely to be nabbed and locked up in a prison for the elderly.

How likely is that to happen? Well…I’d give it about a 40 percent chance. Which is about 100 percent more than one would like…

Once again, we’re brought back to the fact that women in my family who didn’t smoke and didn’t catch amoebic dysentery in some god-forsaken Arabian desert have lived well into their 90s. And in pretty damn good health, we might add.

But as one ages, one tends to be infantalized. And that leads those around you to take over your life and decide matters like where you will live and how you will be treated.

And I for one do NOT wish to be treated as a child.

How exactly to evade that fate pretty much escapes me. 

 

Hotter than the Hubs…again…

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LOL! Maybe what’s going on here is that we ARE the hubs???!?

It’s 110 degrees on the back porch….and overcast!

Can you imagine that? A hundred and ten degrees, and the sky wants to dump rain on us. Boiling rain, presumably…

Just pulled lunch/dinner off the grill: Lovely salmon and fine accompaniments.

Now we have to wait for the contraption to cool off before we can close it back up and replace the plastic cover. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna rain before the grill reaches that point…but we shall see.

Man! It is seriously hot out there!  

Could be worse: Thank your stars we’re not in Venezuela!  (uhm…assuming you aren’t reading this in Venezuela…)  HOLY mackerel! Thousands of people killed in earthquakes!

They seem to think the big one was magnitude 7.2.

Hmmm… I’ve been in one of those — in California, some decades ago. But because of the laws governing construction there, the damage wasn’t catastrophic…and few people were killed. But…it looks like this thing was HUGE. Don’t recall getting a ride like that!

At any rate…110 degrees under gray skies is about enough to complain about, eh?

Hotter than…

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HOLEE doggerel! It literally is hotter than the Hubs of Hades outside. Ruby and I set out, along about 20 or 30 minutes ago, to circumnavigate the dawg’s beloved neighborhood park.

Mistake! We didn’t even get all the way over to the park, it’s soooo hot out there. And humid, we might add: feels like hideous Saudi Arabia out there…sautéeing on the sands of the Persian Gulf. I’m soaked with sweat. The dawg is flopped on the tiles, panting.

Horrible morning!

And…to frost that donut…we’re expecting my son’s nuisance babysitters to show up this morning. Just what I need: a busybody or three sticking their noses into my private life.

Ugh! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!

This is the problem with life as a lone wolf: most of the time, what you truly do want is just to be left alone. Altogether fukkin’ ALONE.

Ohhh well…by the time the poor souls show up, maybe I will  have cooled down enough — physically and psychologically — to behave myself. As much as I ever do…  😉

I do need to take a bath or a shower, after that little junket. But…not now.

Ruby looks like she’s fried. She’s still laying on the tiles, panting frantically.

Shouldn’t have taken her out in that heat…but truth to tell, I really did NOT realize it was that hot and muggy out there.

***

Y’know, Arizona does have its charms. But about half the time, I hate it here. And highly resent my parents for having dragged me to this place and dumped me in the University of Arizona (a year before I graduated from a California high school).

I was slated to go to UC Berkeley. And I’ll tellya: the UofA Cal-Berkeley does not make.

Oh well. It allowed me to pocket a Phi Beta Kappa key without expending any effort. That’s…uhm…something. I guess….

hmmmm…

Where would I go if I could get away from here?

Berkeley — whither my California relatives — is…

…expensive
…aging and largely decrepit
…full of termites
…cold much of the time
…built up and down steep hills that leave you panting by the time you walk a block
…awash in crackpot liberals that are even loonier than me…

Ugh. No…don’t wanna go back there.

Hmmmm…waitminit here…looks like I’ve got the wrong day for Babysitter Lady. This is Thursday! She was here yesterday. Proof positive: the furniture has been dusted.

😀

Wow! That’s senility for you: can’t even remember what happened yesterday!

Was that absurd woman here yesterday?

{chortle!}
{Nope}

She was here the day before yesterday.

So, see? It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember what happened yesterday.

😀

Matter of fact, it really doesn’t. Every day is the same.  They all blend together into one timeless pudding.

That issue would resolve if I could go back to singing in the choir. But…without a car, I can’t drive to the church. So…no…I can’t belong to the choir.

Basically, everything that was interesting or fun in my life has come to an end. The life itself is the only thing that hasn’t arrived at that stage. And, I suppose, it’s about time for that to happen. When you have nothing left to do, why hang around doing nothing?

“Another Lovely Day in Arizona…

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“Leave us all enjoy it…”

That was the by-word of a prominent radio announcer who worked here in lovely uptown Arizona for years.

Ugh. With lovely days like this, who needs…arsenic, eh?

Hot, wet…soggy. As we scribble — come 8:30 at night — it is 103 degrees out there.

The AC pounds away and pounds away…hope it doesn’t give out.

Meanwhile, the heat sets records on the East Coast: be glad you’re not there. At least here it’s the famous “dry heat.” So freaking dessicated you can’t even feel it….

Report from the Hub of Hades

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6:40 a.m. Dear Gawd, it’s HOT out there, and hideously WET.

Just back from the morning DoggyWalk. The weather is so nasty out there that I am literally DRIPPING wet.

No, it’s not raining. Nary a cloud in sight. Just hideous, Saudi Arabia-style humidity, so thick you’re practically walking through water. Horrible, horrible weather.

And purely NOT typical of Arizona. Dry is typical here. This kind of hideous humidity is so rare as to be regarded as nonexistent.

But…heh! It ain’t non existent…not today, anyhow!

What an ugly day. 

Worrying about my son. He lives in an older house, originally air-conditioned by what was called “swamp cooling.” That method sucked outside air into the ventilation system and (sorta..kinda…) cooled it by running it over vents bearing tap water. Better than nothing…but as you can imagine, there was a reason that everyone who could manage it decamped to the high country all summer.

Even though a real air-conditioner is now attached to his roof, the allegedly “cooled” air has to pass through the antique ventilation system…less than halcyon, shall we say.

Anyway, because the morning is so ugly, Ruby and I escaped running into any idiots with crazed, out-of-control dogs. That’s something, anyway.

I must say…at times I hate living in Arizona. If my parents hadn’t dragged me here when my father took a spectacularly early retirement, I’d be in California right this minute. Where I came from, and where I belong. This is truly NOT my place.

My place was San Francisco. There, we lived in an apartment development called Parkmerced…just a gorgeous place. My mother got herself and me in there when we came home a few months early from Saudi Arabia, leaving my father in Hell to finish out his contract with Aramco. I just loved the place — Parkmerced, that is: certainly not Arabia!

My father was just FURIOUS when he got back and discovered she’d signed a lease on a place that cost about eight times more than he was willing to pay. He flew into quite the little rage. 😮

After he went back to sea (he was a Merchant Mariner), she got a receptionist’s job in the Parkmerced front office. Pay was hardly enough to pay the exorbitant rent, but at least it defrayed the cost a little. And shut my father up…a little. She quickly moved us into a cheaper apartment, out of the elegant tower where we’d started. Not enough to smooth his feathers, but at least she tried.

At any rate…I miss Parkmerced. I miss my relatives’ home in Berkeley. I miss the houses and apartments around the junior high school I attended.

Arizona is really not my Thing…but I’m stuck here now. Not going anywhere else.