Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

…and Again… Still Hotter than Hades!

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Quickie circumnavigation of the block, by way of running off some neurotic frustration. Come 2:30 in the afternoon, the pavement out there is WAY too hot for Ruby the Corgi’s little feet. So, to her disgust, she got left home while her human sweltered its way down the road.

HOLEE mackerel, it’s hot out there! Back porch thermometer reads 109 degrees: fully in the shade! 

Ugh!  WHY do I stay in this godawful place?

Well: there’s a question…one that drives the next question: WHERE would I go other than this godawful place?

My son is here, and I have no desire to move away from him. Nor do I have any desire to move TO the alternatives.

  • San Francisco Bay Area: love it, but can’t afford it
  • Southern California: and how is that any better than here?
  • San Diego: don’t know anyone there anymore; don’t wanna start all over
  • Ft. Worth, Texas: All my relatives have moved or croaked over; don’t know anyone left there

On and on…really, there isn’t anyplace where I’d rather live than here.

Actually, Arizona has a lot to recommend it, surprisingly enough.

Phoenix is an actual big city, with big-city amenities.

When I was teaching, Arizona State University (on the other side of the Valley) paid a decent salary and hired me full-time.

This place does have a cultural life, believe it or not: two excellent museums in Phoenix alone, plus a couple of theater troupes and historical museums and three universities — one of them nationally prominent — and a plethora of historic sites, and…on and on. It’s a pretty nice and reasonably interesting place to live, to tell the truth.

And it has slews of decent restaurants — including some that exceed decent. I no longer eat out, but when Dear Husband was in the offing, we raided the local eateries a couple times a week.

****

And now it’s coming on to 6:00 p.m. Cleaning Lady from Heaven is still blasting around, bless her. Outside: 108 degrees, or so we’re told by Wunderground. Could be: it’s hotter than the hubs out there.

Talk about jobs you’d druther not have! Cleaning people’s houses: eek! 

She does an excellent job…well, actually, she’s a Godsend. This place is beyond spotless by the time she goes out the door.

And what that means, in the current short run, is that the next time the government busybodies come over here to inspect my lifestyle, they’ll think I run around cleaning my house every day.

Yes. Somebody sends busybodies to check on me. They come from some office in the State of Arizona. So far they’ve been  no worse than a passing nuisance — largely, I suspect, because of this fine woman’s work. Yes: I do clean my house…but nothing like as magnificently as she does. Last time the State’s spies dropped by, she had just been here…and so they saw…

* no dust anywhere
* freshly vacuumed and mopped tile floors throughout (the shack has no carpets)
* sparkling clean kitchen counters and appliances
* sparkling clean bathrooms
* a freshly made bed
* shiny clean windows

She’s just finishing up right now…and once again the place is as clean and organized as a museum.

I do hope Big Brother’s last inspection actually will be the last. That surprise descent upon my home was truly infuriating! Who they HELL do they think they are, nosing through my house? Out of the blue, without my invitation or permission!

Anyway, if we’ve gotten rid of those busybodies, it will be solely because of CL from H’s excellent work. 

Hotter Than the Hubs!

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Seriously: It must be a jillion degrees in the shade out there in the back yard.

Okay, okay: hold the melodrama. Let’s see what Wunderground says the temp really is:

Brrrrr! A chilly 103 degrees in the shade!

Who’d’ve thunk it was that crisp out there? Predicted high for today: 105 degrees. Tomorrow: 107.

Lovely. Garden spot!

WHY do I stay in this place????

Oh yeah: because the Kid lives here.

Be assured: if my fine son weren’t parked in this berg, I wouldn’t be, either!

LOL! Truth to tell, I’m coming to hate living in Phoenix — L.A. East. Too hot, too Los Angelized, too grody, too damn bourgeois.

{sigh}

Given that my son is parked here, though, I guess I’m not moving away. Ain’t movin’ away from where that kid lives!

His presence, though, doesn’t make me like living here any more than I already hate it.

Ohhh well: no point in belly-aching…doesn’t do any good, does it?

Hafta say: I ain’t fond of Phoenix.

Where would I go, if I could escape?

Not Sun City, that’s for damn sure!!  😀

Actually, if I were gonna stay in Arizona, one of my residence spots of choice would be the Oro Valley, a suburb on the north side of Tucson. A little wide spot situated beneath the Santa Catalina Mountains, it’s moderately upscale, reasonably safe, and very pretty. Certainly cooler during the summer.

In the absence of my son, I’d move down there in an instant.

But…he’s here. So I’m here.

And that’s that! 😀

 

Eine Kleine Paranoia…

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For reasons unknown, the possibility of a major earthquake in Southern California — powerful enough to affect lovely Arizona — has been lingering in my feeble little mind for the past couple of days.

No: I’m not clairvoyant. 😀  So don’t worry about any magical prediction. Some parties have been gnashing teeth about a possible major quake over here…but that is so unlikely as to be hilarious.

The thing is, though… Structures in California are built to withstand earthquakes. That’s not true in Arizona. Because o’course we don’t have earthquakes. Right?

Upshot: a quake of any noticeable magnitude would do some serious damage here.

MEANWHILE….

It’s 109 degrees in the shade(!!) of the back porch. Vast, towering white cumulus clouds are barreling down on us from the north. Dollars to donuts, it’ll rain like He!! this evening. That’ll cool things down a bit.

But until then: 109 and humid is no joke!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where my parents dragged me to live for nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf. You ain’t seen heat and humidity till you’ve enjoyed a summer in those parts.

At any rate, Wunderground is forecasting 100% chance of precip, with thunderstorms to rage into the night. Goody… 😮

 

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona”

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Okay, it’s “only” 96 degrees out there, at 8 o’clock in the morning. So saith Wunderground. Whatever: it’s HOT and it’s MUGGY. Ruby and I just staggered in from an hour’s walk…one of those excursions that leaves you wondering why on earth anyone would ever choose to live in this place.

Well. No snow in the winter. I guess.

But I’ll tellya: we used to live in San Francisco. And I’ll take fog and cold air over air so soggy at 8:00 in the morning that you can barely breathe. If my son weren’t here, I’d have shot out of here the minute my father died: yea, those many years ago.

Weather like this brings to mind the Good Ole Days in Saudi Arabia. You wanna talk about chez pitz? Jeez!!!! You’d wake up in the morning to a clear blue sky and see water dripping off the eaves, like it had just rained. HIDEOUS place!

After we left that garden spot — my father sent me and my mother home after she came down with a roaring case of amoebic dysentery and damn near died from it — we landed in San Francisco, where I went to junior high school.

Would that we could have stayed there! But ohhhhh nooo… After a few years my father landed a job shipping tankers out of Southern California. So it was off to lovely /s/ Long Beach.

I had been born in Long Beach, so my mother was familiar with the place. She was never a complainer: always looked at the positive side of things. But…ugh!!! Compared to the San Francisco Bay Area, it was chez pitz with a vengeance.

Oh, well. That’s there, not here. 😀 Here, it’s hot, it’s wet, it’s bourgeois, it’s icky. If I could move outta here today, I’d be on the road right now.

But alas, that ain’t gonna happen.

My son is established here. His dad and New Wife are living happily ever after here. I’m retired and would like never to see another university campus again. And so…here is where we are. 

 

Hotter Than the Hubs!

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No: I kid you not: it really IS hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there on the front sidewalk. Hotter than that on the asphalt pavement.

Fortunately, we still have enough of our marbles to stay off the ashphalt! 😀

Just back from circumnavigating the neighborhood. Spavined a tendon in an ankle a couple days ago. It’s getting better…and  now  needs to be exercised gently with some regular walking.

So…out the door, with our kewl Walking Stick in hand.

Excellent! No strain, no pain on the sore paw. Well…except for the extravagant heat. Wunderground claims it’s 108 out there just now…but waddaya bet Wunderground’s thermometers are not sitting on an asphalt road?

Thinking, contemplating to pass the hiking time…. Would I, Could I like to be back in San Francisco?

Well, yeah. Actually, I’d like to be in Berkeley, where my late relatives used to live. Pretty little suburb. Nifty gourmet grocery store up at the top of the hill, next to the tunnel where the light rail came in from the East Bay. Miss it.

Miss it a lot. But…

* Realistically, I couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area.
* Realistically, my son is here and I ain’t movin’ away from him.
* Realistically, I couldn’t afford California income taxes.
* Realistically, I couldn’t afford the nice warm clothes one needs when living there.

So…get used to HOT! 😀

O’course, I’m already used to hot, having grown up in lovely Saudi Arabia, and having been planted in Arizona at the age of 17.

So: kwitcher bellyachin’ lady. You ain’t movin’ anywhere!

😀

Exceptionally Yucky Day!

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Yes: I stupidly elected to take the Li’l Dawg for a walk, along about 8:00 a.m.  When we say “stupid,” when it came to that maneuver, we DO mean “stupid”!

Exceptionally unpleasant day. Hot. Humid. The air so thick you could swim through it. About as ugly a morning as you can imagine.

No one at the park this morning: other locals having better sense than I. Ditto the neighborhood streets. All the other humans and their dogs are holed up in their air-conditioned digs.

Reminds me of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. Where we lived — on the shore of the Persian Gulf — we got days like this all summer. Hot. Muggy. Ugly.

My mother, an erstwhile Upstate New York girl, was unutterably miserable there. Me: I didn’t know any better. I was only a little kid. That place — that hideous place — was just life, the universe, and all that.

***

Hope we’re not slated to do anything today. Don’t see anything on the calendar.

That, alas, doesn’t GUARANTEE that we’re free of jaunting, junketing, and time-wasting.

Ugh. I cannot deal with another pointless doctor’s appointment. Nor can I deal with another 40-minute drive to the Mayo Clinic.

It’s too hot to walk to the grocery store (my son having purloined my car).

Too expensive to visit my favorite computer store.

Too far to walk to the Phoenix Mountain Park, there to climb hills through the scorching heat.

Too hot to climb hills anywhere through the scorching heat.

My son was going to put the new pool vacuum equipment together. That didn’t get done over the weekend. If I had my act together, I’d call Pool Dude and ask him to do that. But…act? what act???

When Pool Dude visits — as he does once a week or so — he cleans that pool himself. As long as we don’t get a dust storm (which also includes leaves and debris), the pool stays clean between his junkets. So I feel little urgency to jump up and down and nag my poor son to get over here and put that vacuum into action.

***

Daydreaming of my college boyfriend, an Eastern European fella. Well, he had been born and raised in the US, and so as far as he and I were concerned, he was a 100% red-blooded American boy. My parents, chauvinists to the core, thought otherwise. They considered him a foreigner, an alien, most decidedly not a candidate for the fatherhood of their grandchildren.

My, how they hated Paul. I adored him, and if they’d kept their mouths shut, we undoubtedly would have married.

They didn’t, though — keep their mouths shut, that is. They complained and griped and hollered and threatened….  Yeah: they threatened to disinherit me if I dared to marry the guy.

I finally folded and sent him on his way.

Found him on the Internet. He looks happy! And I surely hope he is.

He became an administrator at the University of California. Had we married, I would have landed a mighty fine sinecure there, or failing that (conflict of interest, y’know), would have found a tenure-track job with one of the state colleges. But when it became evident that if he and I married, I would never see my parents again, I sent him on his way.

Was that a wise thing to do?

Dunno. To this day, I do not know. I dearly loved the man. His sites on the Internet show a happy-looking family man…if I were the wife in one of those photos, I’d be happy-looking, too.

Oh, well!