Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Back at the Ranch…in the nick of time

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GAAAAAHHHH!  Go ahead: just try to sit down while the coffee steeps!

Hah. we say to that. Hardy-har-har!

Comin’ on to 8:00 of a VERY soggy morning. Thunder rolling. Clouds lurking. RRRR-O-O-A-A-R!!!! Just made it back in the house from this morning’s doggy-walk….

How can I count the ways…?

Seriously, this is one weird morning. We’re right at 8:00 a.m. and it’s so dark out there you’d guess it was around 6:00. Water all over the back porch: it must have rained during the night, ’cause it missed us while Ruby and I were traipsing around the ‘Hood.

Somebody’s burglar or fire alarm was wailing away…they must be out of town. Or all dead, presumably murdered by their alarm’s visitor. WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU !!!! What a racket! 

Inside our house, we can’t hear that serenade, though. Just the KER-BOOOOOOOM! of the present thunderstorm.

Man! It’s really roaring away out there! Wunderground predicts a high of 86 with a 98%chance of precip. That would seem to translate to HOT AND WET. 

Uh oh. Lawn blower racket. 

Puuuleeeze, Gawd! TELL me that’s not Gerardo’s boys banging around the yard!!!!!

Nope: they’re across the street, lucky guys. Thanks, God!

How would you like to be trying to mow and blower up a 1/4-acre yard as the sky is roaring at you? Sometimes even the most crabby-making days look just fine compared to someone else’s fine day….

And now…Friday Afternoon

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LOL! The Dawg and the Human dodged some very soggy bullets this afternoon. Doggy-dodgey???? 😀

You should SEE the wonderful, fantastic storm that’s pouring outside the bedroom window, from the inside of which  — mercifully — Ruby and I are watching the weather.

Hardly any wind. The rain is pouring straight down. And pouring down is the term. Man! It’s whaling down like a fire hose! Fortunately, we who are the mammalian set are hunkered inside, under what appears to be a good, sturdy roof. No sign of any leaks…not that I can see, anyway.

If a leak were gonna happen, it would be there now. What a freshet! 

The street out front is flooded from curb to curb. Fortunately, the front and back porches slant ever-so-slightly away from the house, In front, we’ve got a little lake out there: must be two inches deep, at least. Maybe more like three, right outside the front door.

In back, it’ll be a good two weeks before the swimming pool evaporates enough to add more water from the hose.

And the thunder rolls….

…and rolls…and rolls…and ROLLS. And so do the clouds.

It’s something to see, that’s for sure. 

************************

Whew! Time passes: The Weather Drama is letting up a little bit. Still pouring rain, that’s for sure. But not something to make Noah proud….

The pool level is now up to the lip of the Cool-Deck. But…hmmm…I don’t think it will overflow unless we get enough rain to raise the water level another two or three inches.

If we do…well…overflow may be the least of our problems.  Still…we’d have to get an actual tornado to bust up the house or the roof. Or knock over those big trees on the west side. So I reckon we’ll be fine, real-life tornadoes not being the sorta thing you tend to see around here.

We can get some lively windstorms, but not the kind that go round and round! 😀

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Ah HAH HAH HAH!!!!!!!

Lookee here what I found: a gift from our honored son. A bottle of premium alcohol-removed wine!!!

JUST what I need to soothe my jangling nerves!!!!

😀 😀 😀

What could be better, eh? Or, we might add, more hilarious.

Hmmmmm….  Let us inspect….

(The house, that is: not the fake booze…)

*********

Okay….I don’t see, offhand, any serious damage out there. Roof looks OK, as far as I can tell. That doesn’t mean it is OK: only that I can’t see any alarming damage. Trees are still upright…no serious breakage there.

Testing M’hijito’s fake wine…

…a-n-n-d-d…

It’s just as ridiculous as you would expect!!
😀  😀  😀

Fully devoid of flavor. ANY flavor.

{chortle!!} Welp, one more thing’s for sure: I ain’t walkin’ up to the store through the puddles to pick up a bottle of real wine. 😀

T0morrow, maybe?????

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hmmmm…. We’re told a low-pressure zone over Southern California will keep the rainy weather here for a few days. eeeek eeeek! FLASH FLOODS HEAVY RAIN HAIL STRONG WINDS DANGEROUS LIGHTNING eeeek eeek! 

Be scared. Be very scared. 

Garden Spot!!!

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So saith the beloved Wunderground, as we scribble: 103 degrees(!) with a 15% chance of rain…  Glub!!!

Seriously: It feels like (un)lovely Saudi Arabia out there: Hotter than Hell and as humid as the inside of an active shower stall.

We’ve got pretty clouds fluffing their way across the sky…so I’d suggest (being the expert weatherperson that I am!) a bit more than a 15% chance of rain. Whaddaya bet that by sundown tonight, we’ll have not a CHANCE of rain but REAL, PALPABLE water falling out of the sky?

😀

Fluffy clouds or no, it’s hotter than the hubs out there. Vaguely, I’d planned to stroll over to one of the neighborhood markets (what we have here, within walking distance, are an Albertson’s (same as a Safeway), a Sprouts, a Walgreen’s, and a Fry’s. Plus some smaller stores of diverse varieties.

Not in this heat, though!

If it cools off enough, the Ruby and I can assay another stroll around the park. But…I kinda doubt it. This sort of humid heat, when found in (un)lovely Arizona, doesn’t cool down real quick, even after the sun sets. The streets will remain too hot for her li’l feet until well after nightfall.

So it looks like our next Doggywalk will be put off until dawn tomorrow (and not later than that!).

She doesn’t seem to mind: she’s conkered out on the sack just now. Canine response to heat, I reckon.

Y’know…  Phoenix — the Valley of the Sun — never used to be like this. It didn’t get this humid.

Yes, it did rain. But when the air got as wet as it is now, that’s when the rain would coalesce out of the sky. 

No kidding. Back in the day, it never felt as soggy and muggy as Saudi Arabia used to feel. But now? Yeah: for some period during the summer, you’re gonna feel like you were perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf. The joys of urbanization, eh?

And this is what makes me miss the San Francisco Bay Area, where my relatives dwelt before my parents took off for distant parts. Damp? Sure. But damp and hotter than the Hubs? Nope.

Ohhhh how I wanna go home!!
😮

 

Dawgy Walk…Through the Swamp

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Blech! That is hardly an understatement. 6:30 in the morning and it feels like a freakin’ sauna out there! What a horrible day!

It’s 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch. 8:30 a.m.  Truly does feel like a freakin’ SAUNA out there, it’s sooo hot and soooo WET. 

I’ve seen days like this in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia when the air was so wet that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Presumably the only reason that isn’t happening now is that we’re not parked on a beach next to the freakin’ Persian Gulf. Yech!!!

But…I’ll bet if we were much closer to the Sea of Cortes, that sky would indeed be spitting rain on our heads.

DXH is in Chicago, for some sort of business meetings. I forgot….and called him as dawn cracked this morning. Thereby interrupting him and annoying him royally.

Jeez. Don’t get old, whatever ya do!!  😮

Don’t have much to do today…I don’t think this is Cleaning Lady Day. If that guess is correct, then there’s no need to race around the house picking up litter.

Hmmmm… Found a roadside doctor practicing next door to the Albertson’s shopping center. I’m thinking I should try to build a doctor-patient relationship with the guy…not because he seems so wonderful, but because he’s so convenient. The Mayo, where our docs practice, is a good hour’s drive from here. I can walk to this guy’s office. So it would be good to have him on the string for ailments that would benefit from a doctor’s attention but that clearly are not terminal….

That would help a lot.

The MayoDocs are great when you have something wrong that’s real and that’s significant. But driving to the other side of Timbuktu to have every little sniffle checked? Not so much. 

This is one of the great things about living in the thick of a major metropolitan area: you don’t HAVE to drive from pillar to post to get things done. In fact, just now I don’t have to drive anywhere: everything I need and do is within walking distance. Failing that, though, we have an Uber driver living across the street — one of half a dozen who inhabit the ‘Hood. I can hire him to schlep me around the Valley.

I’m pretty sure I can get this new doc to overrule the Mayo quacks’ opinion that oh dear oh dear I mustn’t be driving. But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to be bothered. The main thing just now is that I need the driver’s license to serve as identification. Driving per se is beside the point. Cashing a check is the point.

So I need New Quack to help me retrieve my driver’s license. If he will.

😀

Gosh, I’m tired of Stupid Stuff. 

Does it not occur to you that Stupid Stuff ebbs and flows like the tide?

For a nice long time, things flow smoothly and calmly and sanely. And then all of a sudden a freakin’ FLOOD of Stupid Stuff pours down on you like an ocean wave? Just now, we’re definitely at high-tide. I feel like I’m drowning in Stupid Stuff!

And frankly, wayyyyy too much of it is emanating from those suckers at the Mayo: the ones who listen to my son bellyaching about me but never think to ask me about the cause of the bellyaching.

That, I think, is why I need to hire on some docs who a) don’t know me; b) don’t know my son; and c) have heard nothing from the opinionated set at the Mayo Clinic. Let them hear me whine about my current “symptom,” let them examine me, and let them form their own conclusions about what, if anything, ails me.

And What to Do Next?

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Hmmm…ooohhkayyy…. I seem to have recovered from the spavined hip episode. That was weird…to say nothing of startlingly painful.

Now, just a few hours later — shortly after noon — the pain is gone. As in GONE gone.

That’s weird. Dunno what made it start hurting, and don’t know what made it stop hurting.

****

Cruising the real estate listings in North Central Phoenix — the tony part of the city, that is.

Wow. Which is to say…uhm…well…wow. Truth to tell, I’m not seeing a thing that impels me to feel I must run out and buy it. Or even run out and look at it. My house is as good as any of these piles, or better. And when I croak over, M’hijito will inherit a piece of property worth some stupefying amount of money (certainly compared to what I paid for it!!) and can decide whether he wants to stay in his own palace or move into my castle. His place is maybe a little smaller than mine — certainly a little older — but both houses are well maintained, in decent neighborhoods….and worth a sh!tload of money, after all these years.

He has remarked that he’d like to move back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a nice, middle-class rural kind of town…founded by well educated engineers and business entrepreneurs. Truth to tell, it’s quite a pleasant place. And as a retirement venue, it could be downright perfect.

Because Grand Junction ain’t the San Francisco Bay Area — my own choice of retirement venues — what he’d get from selling my house and his would set him up like Colorado’s King of Sheba. So…as retirement schemes go, it ain’t a bad idea.

Why am I NOT in Berkeley, as we scribble?

Because he’s here.

Seriously: I feel no great craving to return to the Bay Area, even though I did love living there and I still miss some aspects of it. But that craving is far from enough to make me want to move anyplace where my son isn’t. If any day now he took it into his noggin to move to Grand Junction, I’d no doubt follow, shortly.

Ohhh well. What to do next?

It’s too damn hot to hike to any of the nearby grocery stores. Ruby and I are well set up for a couple days’ worth of food, even though the human lacks her favorite potables. That lack, alas, is not compelling enough to send me barreling through the neighborhood to the nearest Albertson’s, Safeway, Basha’s, or wine closet. So we will loaf.

Ruby is already loafing, having resumed her possession of the foot of the bed.

The beautiful pool is contentedly burbling away. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d be out there paddling around. But…well…the truth is, one probably doesn’t want to plunge in a swimming pool beneath the ungodly blast of sun we’re getting just now.

Later. Much later.

YOW!!! Incredible pain!

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Holeee maquerel! This morning as I was puttering around the house, my right hip went out.

As in OUT out…yow!!!! 

I don’t think I’ve ever had anything hurt that much…and I had my baby without anaesthetic because I thought childbirth is supposed to hurt more than one’s periods.

(Hint: it doesn’t.)

Could barely walk, but made it to a phone. Called the Fire Dept rescue crew.

And…of course…by the time they got here the pain was beginning to subside.

They must have thought I was crazy!

Maybe I am crazy…  ?????

They went on their way.

I limped back into the house.

And now here I am walking around with almost NO pain, a little stiffness…and wondering WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????

Ahhh, here’s a little cookie-frosting: The cops’ copter is circling around to the north.

At this hour — just coming on to  9 a.m. — that can indicate a car accident.

Or — as at all hours in this place — it also can mean a home invasion. Domestic abuse. Kid fell in the pool and is drowning (or already drowned). Car wreck. On and entertainingly on….

Welp…better get up and check that all the doors are locked. Looks like the toast is done, too.

And so, awaaayyyyy!