Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

This, That, & the Other

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Hotter than the Hubs out there...and wetter than the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Seriously: it is SO hot and SO humid, you step out your (soggy) front door into a corner of Hell. Or…more likely, into a corner of Lovely Saudi Arabia.

Today and yesterday have been weirdly reminiscent of the balmy old days beside the Persian Gulf.

There, the air would get so wet that sometimes rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky. We’re not that bad…yet. And I sincerely hope we don’t get there.

Ugh! Gotta go to the store. Get stuff for me and the hound: stuff that can’t wait. Then another errand…while I’m running around, I prob’ly SHOULD run by the mid-town Best Buy and get another power cord for this li’l computer.

Because…AS YOU AND I BOTH KNOW….wherever you are, you can’t get there from here. Whatever room I happen to be in, when the power runs low on the MacBook, the power cord is on the other end of the house!

😀

Ogling real estate in Moon Valley, a sprawling Mittel-America tract where my friends La Bethulia and La Maya moved. Look at this shack, for example. It’s on the high side of houses out there: not the best available, but far from the tackiest. I’d say it’s comparable to my current hovel, in style and size and maintenance.

Guess if I wanted to run away from the Romanian Landlord, that would be a likely candidate. It’s not quite as large as my house…but truth to tell, my shack is one bedroom too much.

Relatively pretty, as tract houses go.

But…y’know…so is mine. And my house is closer to M’hijito’s, by some miles. And click through the photos to see that thing next door to it. That’s a weird lash-up, isn’t it? It looks, for all the world, like a commercial structure with an underground garage.

?????

Not likely, in a suburban middle-class tract. But…weird, isn’t it?

Dunno that I could live in Moon Valley: too much emotional baggage.

A dear friend of mine: her husband died out there. He had cancer, and he died excruciatingly. And…well…her behavior left something to be desired. So did mine, come to think of it. We should never have been socializing in the kitchen while he was dying in the bedroom.

Horrible.

After he passed, I never heard another thing from her. She sold the house in Moon Valley; moved to Scottsdale. Then, apparently as she herself sank into decrepitude, she moved back to the Midwest, where her adult kids lived. And that was the last I knew.

Moon Valley is a bland tract of bland, throw-’em-together stick-and-drywall huts. For my purpose, it’s kind of a sentimental journey, cruising the Web and eyeballing the overpriced ticky-tacky. But in fact, my house is far nicer: block construction, real walls that keep out the burglars.

Seriously: a good-sized man could break right in through a wall out there, simply by delivering a good-sized kick. When my friends moved into that house, I went out to help her paint and fancify the place. You would not have BELIEVED the ticky-tacky construction!

No kidding: you could break in with swift kick to an exterior wall. The walls, which were pretty much all stick-and-plaster, were so poorly insulated that as I stood on the tile floors painting the living-room (she had the whole house tiled before they moved in!), I could feel the HOT heat under my feet. You don’t even wanna know what their power bills must have been.

***

Here I am at the neighborhood doc’s office. Waiting. And Waiting. And Waiting.

What I wanna do is ask him if he’ll refer me to the Alzheimer’s facility at Good Samaritan Hospital, in downtown Phoenix. That’s about a 10-minute drive from my house…as opposed to an hour’s trudge to get out to the Mayo.

Also, quite frankly, I want a second opinion. The Mayo is halfway to Payson from my house. Good Sam is straight down 7th Street: outside of rush hour, an easy shot. Soooo….we’re talkin’ two advantages here:

  • If the staff at Good Sam do indeed appear to be competent, then we have excellent doctors within easy reach; and
  • Good Sam is right on the route to my son’s house and to a dear friend’s house! Thereby producing an excuse for visiting. 😀

*****

Didn’t get far with that scheme. Oh well: I’ll have to keep at it.  A little peripheral neuropathy isn’t gonna kill me. Soon. And if my brain has turned to Swiss cheese, there ain’t much anyone can do about it.

 

 

 

Heah Come de Storm…

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Eeek! We’re looking at a serious storm a-rollin’ in, right this minute. Wunderground expects our lovely weather to chill down from the present 106 degrees to a crisp 86, with thunderstorms, a few of which may be “severe.”

Ya don’t say, Jose?

Jeeminee, you should see that sky!

Welp, as much as can be battened is battened down. The BBQ is secured (…i hope…). Pool level is about 1/2 inch low, so if we get some serious rain it shouldn’t overflow much of anything. Gerardo’s gents have kindly pruned the palm trees, so we ought not to get too much of that kinda debris in the drink. Ruby is in the house and perched on the bed, where she presumably will feel safe…or as safe as a dog feels in any wild-a$$ed storm.

It’s dead still out there right now…never a good sign right before the thunder starts to roll.

a-a-a-a-a-n-d… Here’s another good reason to live in Arizona, not in other sylvan vales of our great nation…

Hotter Than the Hubs…

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Places I’m glad I’m not:

No. 1: Butte County, California

Egad! This is not all that far from where La Bethulia and La Maya live. CAN you imagine????

Makes 100 degrees in the shade and no tinder within reach look pretty good, eh?

And yep: 110 is just we have out on the back porch just now.

Truth to tell, I’ve always loved central and northern California and would’ve loved to retire there. But Dear XH would have none o’ that. He being no fool…

If it’s blindingly hot here (as you may be sure it is!), it’s excruciatingly hot over there, too. But a 110-degree day ain’t likely to burn your house down, or trap you at the end of a country road.

No. 2: Central California

This is the general area where La Maya’s folks come from. I gather they’re more farm folks than anything else, so it’s to be hoped that most or all are out of harm’s way. But still: eeeek!

Ohhhh man! Those Santa Ana’s…I remember them well! Awful time of year. And when we lived there, they weren’t blowing conflagrations across the landscape;.

A-n-n-n-d…how glad AM I that I don’t live in the Middle East anymore? It was a species of Hell then, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better. What a bunch!

 

 

 

Soggy Doggy Day

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Just back from a morning doggy-walk, waiting for the water to heat up enough to make coffee. Wunderground says it’s 93 degrees out there; 15% humidity; expected high: 113.

Wouldn’tcha know it: M’hijito and I have to traipse to the FAR SIDE of north Scottsdale to go to another brain-numbing, BOOOORING get-together of the mentally challenged. Since everyone but me has decided that I’m now non compos mentis, I have to drag out there and listen to these people go on about how they forgot to pull up their underwear or forgot to eat their breakfast…on and on and endlessly on.

What an agonizing waste of time. Two hours trudging back and forth, and then a good three hours listening to old buzzards tell us what they forgot. Forgodsake. I know, already, that I forget things!

  • I know, already, that it’s normal for old people to forget stuff that they never would have spaced ten years ago.
  • I know, already, that there’s precious little anyone can do about it.
  • I know, already, to keep lists of upcoming appointments and to-do’s.
  • I know, already, to make notes on important tasks and meetings and events.
  • I KNOW, ALREADY, GODDAMMIT!!!!!!!

And I do NOT need to kill five hours traipsing back and forth to listen to a bunch of old folks complain about being old. That’s five hours of time I need to spend on a client’s current book project.

Well, speaking of killing time: I’d better quit bellyaching and fix some food and coffee, so as to be fortified before the kid gets here. Ugh!

This is gonna be a bi!ch of a day!

112 degrees and…and…

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FOGGY?????

Great Galloping Gods! No kidding: it’s 112 in the shade of the back porch, and lurking to north of us is a low cloud bank that looks for all the world like fog.

W?

T?

F?

Just got back from galloping around town in the heat. Dropped by the mechanic’s to describe the car’s latest eccentricity. She (yep: she ) wasn’t unduly concerned. She described what to watch for. Explained if and when to come back.

Over to Sprouts. Of COURSE they didn’t have what I wanted.

Through the heat to the Albertson’s. If the air is 112, what is the temperature of a parking lot’s asphalt?

Wunderground says the ambient air is 114º; predicted low tonight: 92º. Balmy.

This would not be an out-of-the-ordinary summer temperature…except…the real problem is, it’s humid out there. Hence: the fog-like stuff. It feels like effing Saudi Arabia.

How on earth my harbor-pilot father managed to work 8-hour shifts on those docks just mystifies me. How did ANY of those guys survive?

Frazzling up some chicken and some French fries on the grill. Hope the damn thing cools off enough to throw the plastic cover over it before that storm comes rolling in.

Must feed dog, so she’ll be wrung out (with any luck) before said storm comes rolling in.

 

Hot Day, Hot Stove, Hot Dog….

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Out the door at the crack of dawn: get Ruby her shot at a doggy-walk before it gets seriously hot.

Not much chance of that, though. At 6:30 this morning, it was muggy as an Alabama day:  27% humidity a “dry heat” does NOT make. And it’s supposed to hit 117 today.

By that hour, the crazy-making Dog Parade was well under way. Everybody who has a dog AND a job shoots outdoors at dawn in an effort to get their pooch walked before they have to go to work. So the park and its surrounding sidewalks are mobbed by dogs and their dog-loving humans…and many of the latter are — dare we say it? — just not very smart.

They can’t seem to get the concept that dogs are not kids. Dogs do not think like children, because dogs are NOT children, because dogs are a different freakin’ species. I can’t count the number of idiots who could not grasp the idea that Anna the German Shepherd did NOT “just wanna pwayyyy” with their pooch. What she “just wanted” to do was remove their dog’s idiot head. After that, she probably would have mopped up the mess with the idiot human’s remains.

So…I do try to evade the mobs of dog-infested humanity that swarm through the neighborhood in the hour or two before work starts. Evade: often without much luck.

Today was OK enough in that department, probably because it truly is hotter than the Hubs out there. Wish I lived in SDXB’s former neighborhood. The houses are no better than mine, and the noise level couldn’t possibly be any better. But the entire area is mid- to upper-middle class, making it at least feel a little safer for walking around.

Nevertheless…

Our ‘Hood is bordered on the north by a dangerous slum, and anchored on the west by a decrepit apartment-house development that was nice when it opened, graced by a lovely golf course, but that declined rapidly. Now that area is just plain crummy, full of low-end types. Not so long ago, a cop was shot as he knocked on a door in one of those dumps. The golf course, once a point of pride, has gone to rack & ruin. The school over there…ugh! A few weeks ago, kids going to that school were greeted by a dead body — a murder victim — laying on the sidewalk outside the campus’s entrance.

My son has asked me not to sell this house, because…he wants to inherit it.

While it is newer and better constructed (in some ways) than his place, and it does have a pool (which you, too, can take care of 12 months a year so  that you can swim during three months), it does have some serious disadvantages compared to his place.

One is the proximity to Sunnyslope — said dangerous slum. Where my son lives, he can sit in his living room or front-of-the-house office with his front door hanging wide open. No need for a steel security screen; no need for a hardened heavy-duty deadbolt lock. I wouldn’t leave a door open without a locked security screen here, not on a bet! And no, there’s no chance in Hell I’d leave a window open.

So…because I don’t quack about that fact all the time, it’s unclear that he understands how risky this area is.

***

In other sylvan fields: Checking out the market for pr0pane stoves.  Our honored civic leaders want to force Maricopa County residents to replace gas stoves with electric models. To that end, they’re jacking up the cost of natural gas…through the stratosphere.

I probably can afford it…but highly resent it. The main reason is that I like to eat (well!!) and I like to cook. And an electric stove decidedly does NOT make it in the “like to cook” department.

You can get a propane grill with one (count it, one) cooking hob, but they’re not very efficient. It’s hard to regulate the heat on one of those things. And yes, ONE is the operative word. If you really cook, you normally will have a couple of burners in play when you’re making a decent meal.

On the ranch, we had a propane stove. The burners and the oven ran on propane. Come to think of it…I think the fridge was powered by propane, too. WhatEVER: the stove worked just like a natural gas stove. If you had that installed, none of our nosey city parents would have a clue that you weren’t running your whole kitchen on gas.

My house has a countertop stove with four gas burners. The oven is not part of it: that thing is built-in to a set of cabinetry. And it is electric.

I hardly ever use the oven, though: most of the time it serves as a storage cabinet.

So…hmmmm… I’m thinking now is the time to look in to the availability of propane stovetops here in the (un)Lovely Valley of the sun. Turns out even Home Depot has the things…and the price is reasonable. In fact, it looks like most, if not all of these things will run on propane. That suggests that maybe my beloved existing gas stovetop will run on propane, too.

So then the question would be…how do I get propane installed, and by whom? And how the hell much is THAT gonna cost?

Apparently a gas stove can be converted to use propane. It looks like a hassle — possibly an expensive hassle. May be cheaper and smarter to just replace the stove I’ve got with a propane model.

Now is the time to look into that, I’m afraid. Because you know what’s gonna happen, right? The instant the county forces this change, EVERYBODY AND THEIR LITTLE BROTHER is gonna be hiring workmen to convert their gas stovetops to propane. And that will mean a huge traffic jam…and a wait of Gawd Only Know how long before you can get your stove working again.

Never a dull moment, eh?