Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

GORGEOUS Evening!

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Oh, my! WHAT a beautiful evening!

Just got back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: for the first time in living memory, without the dog dragging me around. Lovely! Absolutely LOVELY.

The air is soft and delicate. No heat. No cold, either.

No one else was around, so the way was quiet and peaceful, just as gentle as gentle can be. I’ve not had as pleasant a walk in as long as I can remember!

So. After this, the Dawg gets her hike the first thing in the morning. Then I get my stroll last thing in the evening. That way, I get twice as much walking in. Ruby misses out on nothing. And I get to enjoy this lovely neighborhood.

Gosh, I hope the evenings stay this pleasant for a good long time: ideally, into and even through the summer.

That’s a forlorn hope, o’course: come late June and July, it’ll be hotter than the hubs of Hades out there.

But for the nonce, I can build a habit of a daily walk. And then when the summer blast fires up, Ruby and I can follow the same route first thing in the morning, before the sun comes up. That’ll leave only about three weeks when the summer heat makes the place truly non-navigable.

Quite a stroll it was, too. Not a single bum. No weirdos. No undue racket from the main drags. Unusual, one could say.

Let Us Try Again…

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So…ahem!  What happens if we post another test entry? Or…what the hell: a WHOLE, REAL entry for Funny about Money???

Okay: testing, testing! 

****

Today we’re enjoying another Day from Hell. 

My poor son is so frustrated with me and so mad at me that he can barely manage to be civil. Yea verily, at times he can’t rise to that stratospheric height.

And I don’t blame him. Forgodsake, I can hardly remember my  name. I keep getting things confused. I keep fu*king things up. Everything I touch or even so much as think about goes KERFLOOIE!

And I’m starting to get really scared. Like, REALLY scared. 

Never before has the entire goddamn world gone bzzzzzzzz for me. Everything is confused. I can’t remember things. I lose things. I forget to pay bills. It’s a freaking ASTONISHING mess.

***

Wonder Cleaning Lady is here, wrestling with the pigpen. She’s a truly delightful and amazing person.

Honestly: at this point I don’t know what I’d do without her!

I  need to go to a grocery store, but dare not traipse through 100-degree heat on foot: eight or ten blocks each way. I probably could order something online…but in the past have discovered that is not a real successful way to get what you want.

Americans don’t eat a lot of fresh produce. When you order a delivery, you have to ask for packaged stuff: things that a person doesn’t have to pick out. Ask for fresh vegetables or fruit, and what you get is ick. Yeah: inedible ick.

So the only way I can get the kind of food I normally eat — largely fresh produce — is to go to the store and pick it out myself.

And…if I can’t do that, I’m in a pickle.

An inedible pickle!

Might ask her to drive me to a store…but that seems a little much. She’s spent hours cleaning this place….and now I want her to chauffeur me around?

Don’t think so….

WHOA!!!!! 

Lookee here! Sprouts opens at 7 a.m.!!!!

Holeee shee-ut! 

Even in the current weather, at that hour the air will be cool enough that I could get up there and back without succumbing to a heat stroke.

Jeez! Who knew?

Okay, let’s think about this….

If I left here at 6:30 — maybe more like 6:40, actually — I could get there just as they open. I do have a little-old-lady’s rolling cart(!!). So if I dragged that over there, I could load the groceries into it, get out of the store by about 7:30 a.m., and reach the house at 8:00.

It would still be on the low side of unbearably hot by then: no question of it. But…it wouldn’t be suicidal yet! I probably could get a pile of food and household stuff and get back here before the heat would be enough to make me sick.

Looks like temperatures are expected to be around 79 to 82 degrees at that hour.

Yeah. That’s tolerable. But yeah: I will have to shoot out of the house at dawn.

Goodie.

And as we scribble?

A hot, heavy wind has blown up. It’s roaring around out there.

That is NOT something you wanna be strolling around in. So that obviates trotting to the store this evening…even if that was something I wanted to do. Which I sure as Hell don’t….

So…hmmm…. Will I be able to BBQ tonight? Wanted to cook up the salmon my son bought for me a couple days ago.

Doesn’t look like it. But…one never knows.

Wait until Wonder-Cleaning Lady leaves and then decide, I guess.

And if this weather obviates grilling? Hmmm…  Well…there’s pasta…that’ll do the job, I reckon.

***
AUGH!!!!

Just to make everything perfect, Wonder Cleaning-Lady reports that the damn vacuum cleaner is busted.

I fiddle with it. I dork with it.

Yep. She’s right: it’s not working.

With no car, tomorrow I’ll have to DRAG it to the appliance store. Won’t that be fun!  While I’m dragging a shopping cart, too.

Okay. Let’s tempt a little fate and see if this post will go online….

 

 

Pool Dude In! Pool Dude Out!

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Ohhhhhh my gawd!!! Two hundred bucks (plus, plus, plus) to clean that damn swimming pool and service the equipment.

No wonder my neighbor Terri just lets hers sit there dry and rotting away!

Actually, repairing the mess after you let the thing go to pot for several years would cost one helluva lot more than keeping it up every few months. But…jeez. It still gives you a gawdawful shock, every time you have to get someone in here to work on it.

And WORK is the operative word!!!  Holeeee mackerel. First off, the guy has to know HOW to work on it…which is one helluva lot more than I’d be capable of. Then he has to bang and thrash and scour and haul and carry on and carry on to get the damn thing clean, service the filter and motor, and…on and on and freakin’ ON!

That’s in the afternoon heat. As we scribble, the back porch thermometer reads a chilly 105 degrees. No joke: normally at this time of year it would be around 110 out there. And that makes our guy’s job one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have! 

Yea verily: my neighbor does leave hers sitting empty. 

But…but… What that does is ruin the plaster and let the equipment go to pot. So…if and when she goes to move out, to get that dead pool working will cost her not one but SEVERAL arms and legs. Really: it’s incredibly stupid to just let your pool go to pot. What a mess you’ll have to repair when you sell the house!

And I have to say: I do love the pool. I swim in there several times a week. Not every day, admittedly…but often enough and with enough enjoyment to make it worth keeping the thing up.

Man O man!  What a JOB that guy did. Nothing about Pool Dude’s work is either simple or easy. Even regularly keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance, there’s no way in Hell that I could do the work that fella did this afternoon.

Anyway, whenever the sun goes far enough over the yardarm that I can jump in the drink without giving myself a roaring case of skin cancer, I’ll take a nice swim. And that will be…rewarding, I reckon.

A Little Escape…Of Sorts

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{chortle!} Looks like I escaped a nuisance that was slated to descend on me today. 😀

Mijito arranged for some woman that he’d hired for babysitting me to show up this morning. It’s now mid-afternoon: no sign of the woman.

😀

Unkind as it is of me, I’m afraid I’m MIGHTY GLAD she hasn’t shown up.

No, I do NOT want some employee bopping in here every day or so to check on me and pester me. I do just fine all by my stupid little self!

Yes, I would welcome someone to drive me to grocery stores and the like. But guess what? An Uber driver lives right across the street. All I have to do is call the Uber number here in town and they’ll send him over.

Most of the shopping I do routinely is available within easy walking distance, though. That, however, does NOT apply when the outside temperature exceeds 100 degrees. At this time of year: yeah, I do need that Uber dude. Most of the year, not so much.

Anyway, I was (as a matter of fact) figuring that whenever this new babysitter showed up, I’d have her take me to the Albertson’s (supermarket) and to the computer store. But…evidently not! 

All that means, though, is that now I don’t have to go out in 100-degree heat this afternoon!

Awwwww….what a shame, eh?

Hot Day in the ‘Hood

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Augh!  It’s just NOT that hot out there!  A piddling 92 degrees, at a feeble 7 percent humidity. But I stumbled in the house SOAKING wet, sweltering like I’d  come in from the 6th level of Hell.

Holy mackerel, is it sticky and hot out there!

Just returned from perambulating the neighborhood. True: I might have refrained from going out at 3:00 in the afternoon. Ohhh well: no IQ left.

Fortunately, I left the little dog home. She’d have been fried by now. Really: If you’d asked me, I’d have estimated about 95+ degrees: more like pushing 100.

Gerardo the Miraculous Yard Dude presented me with a new $20 gouge on this month’s bill…which now, as I gasp for air here in the A.C., I cannot find. Wouldn’tcha know?

Well, it’ll surface. What the Hell!

Interestingly (so I think, anyhow), the ‘Hood has maintained its quality, despite its advancing age and central urban location. My goodness. I’ve been here a good 15 years or more…and if anything, our streets and homes look BETTER than they did when I moved in.

This leaves me hope for my plan to leave the house to my honored son. I really would like him to have this pleasant, well built place…but that will be useful only if the neighborhood holds its value. Just now, it appears that’s exactly what’s happening!  In fact…if anything the place may be improving in maintenance and cosmetics.

 

ARF! Not to say OUCH!

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Managed to limp around an old and favorite neighborhood route this evening. Just stumbled back in the house…   OUCH!! is what I say to that! Man, did that HURT.

The whole damn stroll hurt. With every single step. 😮  I sprained my left ankle a day ago, and instead of getting better, it seems to be getting worse. Walking has become a bit of a challenge…  So, we won’t be repeating that frolic until the pain is gone, gone, y-gone! 

Adding to the joy, it feels like a swamp out there. Humidity is only 8 percent…but the air is just plain mushy!

Weird.

Ruby trotted right along with the Human, though. Not in any hurry to drag the critter up the road, but not dawdling, either. She is an amazing little dog, truly.

We saw none of our usual fellow sidewalk-haunters, though. Not even anyone on bicycles.

The beloved Ole Guy, a fine old graybeard who used to putter in his front driveway most of the time, is long gone. Haven’t seen his widow in weeks and weeks, either…so I speculate that she has moved away. Much missed, that pair!

I fear I’m the last vestige of the neighbors who held forth when SDXB lived here. He has moved to Sun City, to my mind a fate worse than rotten spaghetti. Been there, done that, ain’t goin’ there again! But more than that: he’s not answering the phone, and trying to call up his name on the Web leads to an endless come-on from a website that tries to lure you into paying for information.

Hmmm…  The weather channel tells us we can expect no rain, highs in low 90s; lows in the high 60s.  Gorgeous sunset! A veil of high, pink clouds over an aqua sky: just spectacular. That’s one of the things that characterizes Arizona: amazing sunsets.

The little cactus near the far end of the pool has blasted forth with a set of unbelievably brilliant, deep pink blossoms. Astonishingly beautiful.

***

Hah!!!! Lured the Ruby back into the house with the promise of Doggy Treats!

And now the human contemplates the possibility of crawling into the sack. Awfully early for that — only twenty to eight. But oh my…I do hurt.

Yeah…I think it’s bed-time for Bonzo and Bonzette!

Later, gaters!