Coffee heat rising

Hotter than the Hubs…

Along about 7:15 in the evening: that’s where we are. And where we are is HOT and Humid. Feels like accursed Saudi Arabia used to feel.

Well. Almost. No humidity is dripping off the eaves, anyway. That was a frequent occurrence over there.

Still, it’s hot and sticky out in back. The grill is running and in a couple of minutes I’ll toss on a blob of hamburger. Hungry, but not hungry enough to feel like eating on this damp and gummy evening. Still: gotta stuff some food in.

Or else.

Friends and relatives have absented themselves: probably no more anxious to cavort around in this weather than I am. Jeez….I don’t even hear the neighbors’ cute li’l kids frolicking the the backyard tonight!  THAT is somethin’!

LOL! I do love the sound of their adorable young voices and their crazy carryings-on. Nothing like little kids to make a neighborhood….a neighborhood! 

Seriously: that’s a major reason I do NOT want to be locked up in a prison for old folks…uhm, I mean, a retirement “home”: I do love the music of children playing!

We have a nice tribe of kids here on the street: three houses nearby have little ones living there. And often the families bring the kids’ friends over, so we’ll have a whole circus going on out there. 😀

More fun than Carter has oats…

Seriously, I never could fathom why my parents — or SDXB — wanted to live in dreary, mausoleum-silent Sun City. Well…for my parents, I did know: fundamentally neither of them liked kids. Why they had me, I never understood: think my mother’s grandmother nagged her into it.

Anyway, as soon as I was old enough to shovel out the door and send down to the university in Tucson (a year before I graduated from high school), they moved right into Sun City. They liked it. Dreadful place, to my mind. But whatever lights your fire, eh?

The ‘Hood is reminiscent of Southern California: warm year-round (well…most of the time); a spread of single-story homes, grocery stores and other incidental shops within walking distance. I feel incredibly lucky to have found this place — brought here years ago by a savvy Realtor. And can’t imagine living anywhere else. Not in the Valley, anyway.

* San Francisco: yeah.
* Berkeley: yeah.
* Paris: maybe.

But what the heck: this place suits the ole’ lady just fine!

Another Day, Another…????

GORGEOUS morning. Sky is clear, if a little fuzzy. Ever-so-slightly fuzzed-up dawn sunlight glows down into the back patio. Temperature is cool and soft…. Just wanna take the dawg and go for a walk.

Actually, what I want to do is finish this mugful of coffee and go back to bed. Preternaturally sleepy this morning…for reasons unknown. Slept well last night: no excuse for feeling like I’ve been up for the past 12 or 14 hours.

‘Tother thing I’d like to do is stroll across the street and ask our excellent new Uber driver if he’d like to Uber me to my favorite grocery store — some miles on into town. But that does seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

The theft of my car (by an honored family member…/eyeroll/ ) means I have to walk everyplace I need to go: to the grocery stores, to the veterinarian, to the Walgreen’s, to the…on and on and endlessly, painfully on.

In theory, I could walk to the nearby Albertson’s, Sprouts, or El Rancho. It’s a gorgeous morning, a perfect day for walking a couple miles.

But…I spavined a foot, and truth to tell, it hurts just to walk around the house. Sure don’t want to take a chance on getting a mile or so from home and finding, all of a sudden, that I can’t put any weight on that paw.

My son stole my bike, too: so that obviates bicycling to the store. In that department: thinking about buying another one from the second-hand store up the road, and then asking said neighbor to store it in his garage or backyard. Problem there, of course, is that any time I need to use it, I’ll have to roust him out of the house and retrieve the thing from him. If he’s not home, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.

*****

{chortle!}

JUST got sat down in the front patio and it’s

BRRRRRRRBLAAASSSTTTTBRRRRRRR!

Neighbor’s yard guy out there with his weed-whacker.

One should know better, right? What on earth would make me imagine I should be allowed to enjoy a gorgeous, cool, sunny morning? How stupid of me, eh?

So…Dog and Human are back in the house, barricaded in behind heavy steel doors, closed tight.

Y’know, this is when (& where) I need SDXB in his (former) abode a block up the street. He would keep my bike at his house, no question of it. He’d probably keep it some place where I get at it even if he weren’t at home. So at least I’d have been able to get to the grocery store this morning.

How stupid IS this stuff, anyway?

It’s looking more and more like SDXB was dead right about moving to Sun City — where the Younger Generation cannot follow you. That makes it about 110% more difficult for them to try to run your life.

Really, I do appreciate the many, many things M’Hijito does for me. But that appreciation fades at the line where I get told what to do and when to do it, told what not to do, dragged to doctors I don’t like…on and on.

Nothing that I need to do this morning is gonna get done, because while confined to the house I have no way to get those things done. Well…no practical way. Yes, I could walk a mile each way to a grocery store, there and back, dragging a roller cart to haul my purchases. But…well…not right this minute, eh?

If I hadn’t already spent several years in Sun City when my parents were out there, I’d be out there with SDXB right now. But…

My goodness, how I detested living in that place!!

The attitude might be different now that I’m an old bat, not a college kid. But even still…it would be hard to shake off those negative feelings, and even harder to force myself, like my mother, to pretend I like the roar of fighter jets blasting overhead from dawn to noon. Horrid!!!!!

It’s so much better here on the north end of North Central Avenue. Gotta find a way to stay here, have what I want, and not be pushed around….

Ohhh yeah: AGAIN!

Cop copter buzzes the neighborhood, as we scribble. Again.

Goddammit! What a PLACE this is. Every time you turn around: cop copters, burglars, prowlers, sh!theads… Lordie, but I am tired of lovely uptown Phoenix.

Alas, though, as one of the cops remarked after the Great Home Invasion Episode, this sh!t goes on all over the county.

I’d said to him, “Maybe I should move to Scottsdale or Fountain Hills to get away from this sh!t.”

“Don’t do that!” said he. “You can’ t get away from it. We go to these things all over the Valley.”

Ugh. What a world we live in.

Even in somnolent Sun City, this kinda crap goes on all the time. My mother lived in terror out there…and not for no reason.

I need a shotgun, not a mere pistol…

LOL! and MORE Skeetifying!

No kidding! WEIRD noise emanates in through the back window. WHAT THE DICKENS!??

Roll out of the sack, stagger out to the kitchen, throw open the door, listen….

Forgawdsake!

It’s the neighbor’s rooftop wind  bonnet, whirring around and around in this evening’s rather brisk breeze. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Jeez. Ever think of lubricating the damn thing, folks? 😀

Welp. Next time I have a roof or AC workman over here, I’ll ask if they’ll let me send him up on top of their house to fix that thing.

Meanwhile, we have tonight….which promises to be a bit on the sleepless side.

Jobs We’re Glad We Don’t Have…

Oh, my goodness!!!!!  How DO some folks survive?

Just visited by a lovely plumber, employed by the City of Phoenix. The guy is going around working on the water meters, which reside in holes in the ground in our front yards. As we scribble, Wunderground says it’s a chilly 85 degrees out there (and yeah: that IS chilly for this time of year…), overcast with a 32% chance of rain.

My water meter is installed underground. So the guy has gotta grunt and groan around to get at it. Then do the job. Then put the thing back together. Then get everything re-installed…underground.

Am I impressed by these guys? Lemme tellya impressed. 

He took the contraption apart. Did the work on it. Put it back together. I trotted out to tell him the terlet didn’t seem to be working right. He trudged inside the house. Tested everything. Saw to it that the system was indeed working. And…yeah: trudged back into the heat.

Man! Do I appreciate the work that guy does! Looks like the whole thing is now working perfectly.

Amazing!

Fried and Fricaseed!

Just stumbled in the door from a good hour and & a half of traipsing through THE most gawdawful heat!

Temp out there, actually, is just not that hot. Only 94 degrees. But the humidity is at 9 percent. When the temp is at that level, a little humidity feels like a LOT of humidity!  Whew!

Hiked up to the mall to the north of the ‘Hood, where I hoped to talk with a storefront lawyer there about some minor matter. Of course, he was long gone. So was just about anyone else.

Blech! Will have to traipse up there again tomorrow morning.

Oh, Helle’s Belles! I only just noticed this is Sunday!!! Heeeeee! No wonder no one was there!!!!!

Oh well. Got some exercise, anyway.

If the temp had been about 10 degrees cooler, it would’ve been a lovely day for a  nice, long walk. Gorgeous clear skies. Clean, clean air. Kids playing. Sun shining.

Oh, well….