Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Hotter than…

by

HOLEE doggerel! It literally is hotter than the Hubs of Hades outside. Ruby and I set out, along about 20 or 30 minutes ago, to circumnavigate the dawg’s beloved neighborhood park.

Mistake! We didn’t even get all the way over to the park, it’s soooo hot out there. And humid, we might add: feels like hideous Saudi Arabia out there…sautéeing on the sands of the Persian Gulf. I’m soaked with sweat. The dawg is flopped on the tiles, panting.

Horrible morning!

And…to frost that donut…we’re expecting my son’s nuisance babysitters to show up this morning. Just what I need: a busybody or three sticking their noses into my private life.

Ugh! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!

This is the problem with life as a lone wolf: most of the time, what you truly do want is just to be left alone. Altogether fukkin’ ALONE.

Ohhh well…by the time the poor souls show up, maybe I will  have cooled down enough — physically and psychologically — to behave myself. As much as I ever do…  😉

I do need to take a bath or a shower, after that little junket. But…not now.

Ruby looks like she’s fried. She’s still laying on the tiles, panting frantically.

Shouldn’t have taken her out in that heat…but truth to tell, I really did NOT realize it was that hot and muggy out there.

***

Y’know, Arizona does have its charms. But about half the time, I hate it here. And highly resent my parents for having dragged me to this place and dumped me in the University of Arizona (a year before I graduated from a California high school).

I was slated to go to UC Berkeley. And I’ll tellya: the UofA Cal-Berkeley does not make.

Oh well. It allowed me to pocket a Phi Beta Kappa key without expending any effort. That’s…uhm…something. I guess….

hmmmm…

Where would I go if I could get away from here?

Berkeley — whither my California relatives — is…

…expensive
…aging and largely decrepit
…full of termites
…cold much of the time
…built up and down steep hills that leave you panting by the time you walk a block
…awash in crackpot liberals that are even loonier than me…

Ugh. No…don’t wanna go back there.

Hmmmm…waitminit here…looks like I’ve got the wrong day for Babysitter Lady. This is Thursday! She was here yesterday. Proof positive: the furniture has been dusted.

😀

Wow! That’s senility for you: can’t even remember what happened yesterday!

Was that absurd woman here yesterday?

{chortle!}
{Nope}

She was here the day before yesterday.

So, see? It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember what happened yesterday.

😀

Matter of fact, it really doesn’t. Every day is the same.  They all blend together into one timeless pudding.

That issue would resolve if I could go back to singing in the choir. But…without a car, I can’t drive to the church. So…no…I can’t belong to the choir.

Basically, everything that was interesting or fun in my life has come to an end. The life itself is the only thing that hasn’t arrived at that stage. And, I suppose, it’s about time for that to happen. When you have nothing left to do, why hang around doing nothing?

“Another Lovely Day in Arizona…

by

“Leave us all enjoy it…”

That was the by-word of a prominent radio announcer who worked here in lovely uptown Arizona for years.

Ugh. With lovely days like this, who needs…arsenic, eh?

Hot, wet…soggy. As we scribble — come 8:30 at night — it is 103 degrees out there.

The AC pounds away and pounds away…hope it doesn’t give out.

Meanwhile, the heat sets records on the East Coast: be glad you’re not there. At least here it’s the famous “dry heat.” So freaking dessicated you can’t even feel it….

Report from the Hub of Hades

by

6:40 a.m. Dear Gawd, it’s HOT out there, and hideously WET.

Just back from the morning DoggyWalk. The weather is so nasty out there that I am literally DRIPPING wet.

No, it’s not raining. Nary a cloud in sight. Just hideous, Saudi Arabia-style humidity, so thick you’re practically walking through water. Horrible, horrible weather.

And purely NOT typical of Arizona. Dry is typical here. This kind of hideous humidity is so rare as to be regarded as nonexistent.

But…heh! It ain’t non existent…not today, anyhow!

What an ugly day. 

Worrying about my son. He lives in an older house, originally air-conditioned by what was called “swamp cooling.” That method sucked outside air into the ventilation system and (sorta..kinda…) cooled it by running it over vents bearing tap water. Better than nothing…but as you can imagine, there was a reason that everyone who could manage it decamped to the high country all summer.

Even though a real air-conditioner is now attached to his roof, the allegedly “cooled” air has to pass through the antique ventilation system…less than halcyon, shall we say.

Anyway, because the morning is so ugly, Ruby and I escaped running into any idiots with crazed, out-of-control dogs. That’s something, anyway.

I must say…at times I hate living in Arizona. If my parents hadn’t dragged me here when my father took a spectacularly early retirement, I’d be in California right this minute. Where I came from, and where I belong. This is truly NOT my place.

My place was San Francisco. There, we lived in an apartment development called Parkmerced…just a gorgeous place. My mother got herself and me in there when we came home a few months early from Saudi Arabia, leaving my father in Hell to finish out his contract with Aramco. I just loved the place — Parkmerced, that is: certainly not Arabia!

My father was just FURIOUS when he got back and discovered she’d signed a lease on a place that cost about eight times more than he was willing to pay. He flew into quite the little rage. 😮

After he went back to sea (he was a Merchant Mariner), she got a receptionist’s job in the Parkmerced front office. Pay was hardly enough to pay the exorbitant rent, but at least it defrayed the cost a little. And shut my father up…a little. She quickly moved us into a cheaper apartment, out of the elegant tower where we’d started. Not enough to smooth his feathers, but at least she tried.

At any rate…I miss Parkmerced. I miss my relatives’ home in Berkeley. I miss the houses and apartments around the junior high school I attended.

Arizona is really not my Thing…but I’m stuck here now. Not going anywhere else. 

…and Again… Still Hotter than Hades!

by

Quickie circumnavigation of the block, by way of running off some neurotic frustration. Come 2:30 in the afternoon, the pavement out there is WAY too hot for Ruby the Corgi’s little feet. So, to her disgust, she got left home while her human sweltered its way down the road.

HOLEE mackerel, it’s hot out there! Back porch thermometer reads 109 degrees: fully in the shade! 

Ugh!  WHY do I stay in this godawful place?

Well: there’s a question…one that drives the next question: WHERE would I go other than this godawful place?

My son is here, and I have no desire to move away from him. Nor do I have any desire to move TO the alternatives.

  • San Francisco Bay Area: love it, but can’t afford it
  • Southern California: and how is that any better than here?
  • San Diego: don’t know anyone there anymore; don’t wanna start all over
  • Ft. Worth, Texas: All my relatives have moved or croaked over; don’t know anyone left there

On and on…really, there isn’t anyplace where I’d rather live than here.

Actually, Arizona has a lot to recommend it, surprisingly enough.

Phoenix is an actual big city, with big-city amenities.

When I was teaching, Arizona State University (on the other side of the Valley) paid a decent salary and hired me full-time.

This place does have a cultural life, believe it or not: two excellent museums in Phoenix alone, plus a couple of theater troupes and historical museums and three universities — one of them nationally prominent — and a plethora of historic sites, and…on and on. It’s a pretty nice and reasonably interesting place to live, to tell the truth.

And it has slews of decent restaurants — including some that exceed decent. I no longer eat out, but when Dear Husband was in the offing, we raided the local eateries a couple times a week.

****

And now it’s coming on to 6:00 p.m. Cleaning Lady from Heaven is still blasting around, bless her. Outside: 108 degrees, or so we’re told by Wunderground. Could be: it’s hotter than the hubs out there.

Talk about jobs you’d druther not have! Cleaning people’s houses: eek! 

She does an excellent job…well, actually, she’s a Godsend. This place is beyond spotless by the time she goes out the door.

And what that means, in the current short run, is that the next time the government busybodies come over here to inspect my lifestyle, they’ll think I run around cleaning my house every day.

Yes. Somebody sends busybodies to check on me. They come from some office in the State of Arizona. So far they’ve been  no worse than a passing nuisance — largely, I suspect, because of this fine woman’s work. Yes: I do clean my house…but nothing like as magnificently as she does. Last time the State’s spies dropped by, she had just been here…and so they saw…

* no dust anywhere
* freshly vacuumed and mopped tile floors throughout (the shack has no carpets)
* sparkling clean kitchen counters and appliances
* sparkling clean bathrooms
* a freshly made bed
* shiny clean windows

She’s just finishing up right now…and once again the place is as clean and organized as a museum.

I do hope Big Brother’s last inspection actually will be the last. That surprise descent upon my home was truly infuriating! Who they HELL do they think they are, nosing through my house? Out of the blue, without my invitation or permission!

Anyway, if we’ve gotten rid of those busybodies, it will be solely because of CL from H’s excellent work. 

Hotter Than the Hubs!

by

Seriously: It must be a jillion degrees in the shade out there in the back yard.

Okay, okay: hold the melodrama. Let’s see what Wunderground says the temp really is:

Brrrrr! A chilly 103 degrees in the shade!

Who’d’ve thunk it was that crisp out there? Predicted high for today: 105 degrees. Tomorrow: 107.

Lovely. Garden spot!

WHY do I stay in this place????

Oh yeah: because the Kid lives here.

Be assured: if my fine son weren’t parked in this berg, I wouldn’t be, either!

LOL! Truth to tell, I’m coming to hate living in Phoenix — L.A. East. Too hot, too Los Angelized, too grody, too damn bourgeois.

{sigh}

Given that my son is parked here, though, I guess I’m not moving away. Ain’t movin’ away from where that kid lives!

His presence, though, doesn’t make me like living here any more than I already hate it.

Ohhh well: no point in belly-aching…doesn’t do any good, does it?

Hafta say: I ain’t fond of Phoenix.

Where would I go, if I could escape?

Not Sun City, that’s for damn sure!!  😀

Actually, if I were gonna stay in Arizona, one of my residence spots of choice would be the Oro Valley, a suburb on the north side of Tucson. A little wide spot situated beneath the Santa Catalina Mountains, it’s moderately upscale, reasonably safe, and very pretty. Certainly cooler during the summer.

In the absence of my son, I’d move down there in an instant.

But…he’s here. So I’m here.

And that’s that! 😀

 

Eine Kleine Paranoia…

by

For reasons unknown, the possibility of a major earthquake in Southern California — powerful enough to affect lovely Arizona — has been lingering in my feeble little mind for the past couple of days.

No: I’m not clairvoyant. 😀  So don’t worry about any magical prediction. Some parties have been gnashing teeth about a possible major quake over here…but that is so unlikely as to be hilarious.

The thing is, though… Structures in California are built to withstand earthquakes. That’s not true in Arizona. Because o’course we don’t have earthquakes. Right?

Upshot: a quake of any noticeable magnitude would do some serious damage here.

MEANWHILE….

It’s 109 degrees in the shade(!!) of the back porch. Vast, towering white cumulus clouds are barreling down on us from the north. Dollars to donuts, it’ll rain like He!! this evening. That’ll cool things down a bit.

But until then: 109 and humid is no joke!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where my parents dragged me to live for nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf. You ain’t seen heat and humidity till you’ve enjoyed a summer in those parts.

At any rate, Wunderground is forecasting 100% chance of precip, with thunderstorms to rage into the night. Goody… 😮