Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Eeeek! Worser and worser!!

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{chortle!} If you were watching this space, you’ll recall that earlier this morning I was bellyaching about the heat.

THAT WAS NOTHING!!!

Yeah. As we scribble — at 1:23 in the afternoon — it is ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN DEGREES IN THE SHADE OF THE SHELTERED BACK PORCH!!!!!

Noooo kidding!  111º in the shade! 

Garden spot, eh?

Let’s see what our favorite weather site, Wunderground, has to say about that…..

Hmmmm…. Our thermometer understates! Wunderground says we’re enjoying 114 degrees, with 116 forecast!

Eek, I say to that…eeeeek! 

This is expected to go on for SEVERAL DAYS, with extreme heat forecast all over the Southwest. Holeee doggerel!

Well. So much for my proposed afternoon stroll! Silly of me, eh?

It also will cancel Ruby’s evening stroll. Even after dark, the superheated pavement will burn her little feet.

It may be OK to take her out as dawn cracks tomorrow morning. But pretty clearly she ain’t goin’ out at any other time.

Jayzuz! Highs of 115 degrees (Yes! you read that right: a hundred and fifteen!) are supposed to go on through the weekend.

Horrors! What a place!

Truth to tell, I don’t remember it ever getting this hot when we lived in Saudi Arabia — which was a certifiable hell-hole. Right now, as a matter of fact, it’s only 93 there.

Gawdlmighty, I do hate Arizona. Thank you, Daddy, for dragging me to your retirement paradise…you chucklehead! I should move away from here…but probably won’t, because I’m not leaving my son behind. As long as M’hijito is here, I’ll be baking here, too.

Welp…about all we can do right now is stay indoors and hope to God the air-conditioner holds up!

Brrr! A Brisk Day in Dumb-Ass Arizona!

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Brrrr! It’s a brisk 103º out there in the shade of the back patio.

A cold day in (un)lovely Arizona.

What a place! WHY do people choose to live here?

I’m here because my parents dragged me here when I got into the University of Arizona a year before my planned high-school graduation. My father wanted to retire, and he didn’t give one thin damn about the effect it would have on my education, my career choices, or my life. Yeah. No: he did NOT care what yanking me out of school would do to my future.

How would I rather be in California, where I belong? Let me count the ways….

Oh, wait! I can’t count that high! 😀

This is a horrible place to live — particularly if you don’t have pocketloads of money. The weather stinks. Politics are grim at best. The education system leaves a lot to be desired…like, for example, education.

No kidding: I had students in my junior- and senior-level college courses at Arizona State University who did not know what the Declaration of Independence was about.

Arizona: the Land of the Ignorant and the Home of the Dumb. Maybe not so much now as then…but then, that was what we ran into. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Arizona without lifting a finger, because I hardly needed to crack a book open to get an “A” in an undergraduate course. Just show up in class and look kinda like you were listening to the instructor, and voilà. Semester grade: A.

Google “has quality of education improved in Arizona”; skim the results; and you’ll get a real good idea of how well we educate our kids here. HOOOlee maquerel.

When my parents dragged me to Arizona so my father could take early retirement, I was a National Honor Society student in an upper-middle-class Southern California high school. Not surprisingly, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a Phi Beta Kappa key in hand…without having to lift a finger on either hand.

No kidding. I just sat through my college courses staring at the instructors as I daydreamed, faking them out so they would think I was paying attention to them. Any student who seemed to be listening to what the “professor” was saying most certainly would get an “A” — or at worst, a “B” — in the course. Phi Beta Kappa: What a joke! 

Is this place any better than it was back then?

To a degree (heh!). Today, if I had to move a family here for a job, I surely would put my kids in private schools for K-12. On the college level, carefully investigate the quality of the majors. Some of them are pretty good. Some are pretty bad. If your kid won’t enroll in a decent program at the University of Arizona or Arizona State University, then send him or her to an out-of-state college with credible standards.

Couldn’t pay me to come here now, if I were under retirement age and could get a decent job in a state that respects educational attainment. RUN AWAY!

Another Soggy Doggy (Nitwit-Infested) Day!

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Whew! Just back from the early-morning doggy-walk. At this time of year, we have to get out the door no later than 6:30 to get our daily exercise walk in. Even then, it’s a bit on the too-goddam-hot side to be traipsing around out there.

But here we are, back by 7:25. The Human is soaked in sweat. The Dawg has guzzled down half a (large!) bowl of water and is now flopped on the cool (heh!) tile floors, panting. The day is wet, soggy, icky, and hot. Thank the gods we were born in the era of air-conditioning!

That notwithstanding…

Have you noticed that we are surrounded by morons? 

Yes. Freaking, raving, bird-brained IDIOTS. And somehow — idiotically — we end up hiring them on our payrolls!

Next time I hire someone, I’m making them take an IQ test to qualify for the damn job.

This morning I grab a plate of leftover grub out of the fridge, something to cut the hunger pangs. Stuff a forkful of the stuff into my face…

Turns out the STUPID WOMAN that I hire as a cleaning lady has spiked the food with a load of chili pepper!

The damn stuff sears my mouth and throat!! Like I swallowed a forkful of burning coals!!!!

My gawd!  For a minute or more, I couldn’t even breathe!

What the f*ck gets into people!??  WHY would you do that to the food at someone else’s house????? And then stick it back in the refrigerator where the proprietor can get a blasting surprise when she stupidly eats it??!?

I should fire the bitch. But my son, who also employs the dear lady, will be irked if I pull that stunt.

So I guess the next time she shows up here, I’ll have to tell her to keep her hands off the food in this place.

Honestly. What IS the matter with people?

EEEEK!!!

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Ohhh migawd!  It’s 5:33 p.m., and the temperature in the shade of the back porch is 103 degrees!

Wunderground shows the temp as 115°, with a low of 91° predicted for tonight and a high of 117° tomorrow.

Jayzuz! Be scared. Be VERY scared.

Seriously: this is scary weather. Get lost wandering around out there, and you can end up in a life-threatening situation. Have your air-conditioning go out, and to survive the night you’ll need to move into a motel.

This is why one of my little chants is “I hate Arizona.”  No. I kid you not. If I could afford to move away and I could persuade my son to come with me, I would be soooo outta here! It’s a horrible place to live, between the antediluvian politics and the gawdawful heat. Truly, the main reason — more accurately the only reason — I stay here is because my son is here.

This month’s power bill is going to be astronomical. Honestly, I don’t think the AC has gone off even once since I rolled out of the sack at dawn’s early light. Betcha it’ll be two or three hundred dollars. At least. 

***

The rose vines on the west side are FRIED. Very much doubt that they’ll come back. Just set the hose to pour water to them…but the watering system was already set to irrigate them. The result: parched!

Understand: the whole yard has an automatic watering system, which should protect the jungle from drought.

FAIL!

Everything is just seared. I very much doubt that many of these plants will spring back. We’ll see, in a couple of weeks or so. But…right now, it sure looks like we’ll be installing a whole new passel of roses and vines.

Un…freakin’…believable!

 

Another Icky-Sticky Morning

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Just back from the a.m. doggy-walk. Made it around the park and through the low-rent section of Upper Richistan. Whew!!! What an icky-sticky day!!!

It’s 95 degrees out there, at 7:00 a.m.  
115 degrees predicted, with 3% chance of rain.

I’d say that’s a conservative guess: the air is damn near as soggy as the Americans’ digs on the shore of the Persian Gulf, out there where we lived in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia.  Yuck!!!  The humidity could get so high that sometimes it would rain out of a clear blue sky.

No kidding. You’d be standing there under the sun and splat! It would start to rain.

What a horrible place!

My father was getting paid in spades as a harbor pilot working out of Ras Tanura, a port on the Gulf. Money was what mattered most to him. His most heart-felt ambition was to retire as early as possible. To meet that goal, he was willing to work like a draft-horse. And he did…

We finally got him to take us home after my mother  came down (supposedly?) with amoebic dysentery. Her best friend was a nurse in the camp clinic. The two women persuaded said friend’s lover, a doctor in that clinic, to tell my father that my mother needed to be sent back to the United States. And left there.

😀

So we escaped from that little corner of Hell. My heartbroken father was forced to take a job sailing out of Northern California, and my mother and I got ourselves parked in San Francisco.

He labored on ships until he’d amassed enough in savings to justify quitting. Arizona was the proposed retirement venue, mostly because it was cheap to live here. They could buy a house in cash (he wouldn’t buy anything on time!) and bake their way through the final years of their lives.

Nevermind that it meant I couldn’t go to UC Berkeley, my target university all through high school and junior high school. Nevermind that my mother suffered extravagantly in the extravagant heat. Nevermind the endless roar of jet planes blasting out of nearby Luke Air Force Base. Nevermind the open, outright hate expressed by Sun City residents who deeply resented the presence of anyone under age 50. Nevermind that his decision permanently changed the trajectory of my life.

Oh, well. Who cares. She’s just a girl, eh?

***

So here I am, in a different corner of Hell. Arizona is decidedly NOT where I would have chosen to live.

But it’s where I ended up, where I married, and where our son grew up.

Said son decided, after graduating from a fancy private college, to take a job here in Phoenix. I’m not moving away from him. And so that leaves me here, still in lovely uptown Arizona.

What a place!

Hotter Than the Hubs….

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HO-lee maquerel!  As we scribble — coming on to 6:00 p.m. — the thermometer in the shade of the back porch reads 109 degrees.

Garden spot, eh?

Just walked over to the park and back… Couldn’t take the Ruby, because the pavements — all of them — are too hot for her feet. Couldn’t make it all the way around, either: the air is too hot for the human!

Ugh! WHAT a place!!!!  What on earth possessed my parents to drag us to this corner of Hell, lo! these many years ago?

O’course…you could ask what on earth possesses me to stay here….

Just crazy, I guess.

Actually, it’s because my son is here. He has a job here. His dad is here. And he ain’t about to go anyplace else.

So…. I reckon as long as he stays in Phoenix, I’ll stay here too. If he decamps to some other garden spot, I may follow him. If he goes someplace where I can’t follow…well! Then I’ll be on my way to the higher altitudes of the hills around Tucson or else headed for Payson or Prescott (small towns in the plateaus above the desert) or…maybe straight back to San Francisco, where I belong.

Those exigencies don’t make me like this place a helluva lot more, though. It’s fine in the fall, the winter, and the early spring — climate-wise, anyway. The overall Los-Angelization is a trait I could do without, any time of the year or the day.