Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Soggy Doggy Day

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Wow! Is it ever WET out there!!!

Nope: no rain. Just air so soggy it feels like rain could coalesce around you as you’re walking up the sidewalk.

Ahh…but, the Young People out for their exercise walks are no more discouraged by this stuff than Ruby and I are.

Me, I  absolutely must get in a mile or more of stalking around. Otherwise the hip freezes up like it was made of steel. Very painful steel.

The young people, on the other hand, appear to fall more into the category of true health nuts. Plus some of them, like the Human, are just out walking their dogs in the park.  In any event, you can’t help but love ’em.

The pleasant architecture, the central location, the relative safety, and most of all the adorable young professionals are what make this neighborhood a delight.

How, I found myself wondering, can I engineer a way to stay in my home until the last cat is hanged?  I do NOT want to be hauled off to one of those horrible old-folkeries, like the (rather nice) one where my father spent his last years. Please, please, PLEASE, Dear God: let me drop dead first!

One strategy, I figure, will be to hire a live-in keeper.

Turns out Wonder-Cleaning Lady used to do that. Apparently you can hire them from some of the old-folks’ holding pens around here: the Beatitudes, the Terraces, and the like.

How you’d vet such a person’s qualifications escapes me. Plus…we have my prickly personality: ever since I was a little kid, I’ve infinitely preferred my onliness to the company of other humans. And evidence suggests the feeling has been mutual…

In the Doggy Day category: Ruby is choking every time she laps up a sip of water. She’s GOT to go to a vet, but I can’t get her to one without the car that my son purloined.

What exactly I’m gonna do about that remains to be seen. My son is already in trouble with his employers for the time he’s had to take to transport me back and forth to the Mayo Clinic. Yes: that’s even though it’s against the law to zap your employees for taking time off to haul a relative to the doctor.

Hmmm….  Might be able to talk Wonder Cleaning-Lady into schlepping us to a vet…but that would require coordinating an appointment with her visit. And that will be trickier than it sounds. She does three houses in a day, and so she can’t just trot over here whenever some vet decides they’ll see Ruby.

Ohhh well. Nothing I can do about it at this hour. Sooo…breakfast-time!

Why Do I Hate Arizona?

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LOL! Truth to tell, I probably don’t. “I hate Arizona” is a jingle that intrudes into my dainty little mind any time anything here annoys me, inconveniences me, overcharges me, or makes me wish I were back in Northern California.

That’s a fair amount of jingling, to tell the truth. 😀 But the reality is…well…I don’t exactly HATE it. At least not most of it; not most of the time.

Let’s think about this…

What do I like about Arizona?

* Clear blue skies
* A swimming pool in every yard
* Warm winters
* Horses
* Two above-average universities: the University of Arizona and Arizona State University
* The Grand Canyon, and its hiking trails
* Sedona and its amazing scenery

What do I madly dislike about Arizona?

* Ubiquitous extreme right-wing politics
* Mediocre grocery stores
* Heat that’s enough to roast a pork loin
* Piss-poor public schooling
* Public transit that leaves a lot to be desired
* Phoenix
* Tucson
* Enough blacktop to coat half of Southern California…
* Too damn many people

This morning I really needed to take Ruby to the vet who practices about six or eight blocks down the road. But…

* I can’t take her on a bus.
* The pavement is WAY too hot for her feet to walk on.
* Basically it’s too hot for me to walk on, come to think of it.
* As we scribble, the ambient temperature outside is 104 degrees; headed to 107.
* I need some groceries, but what with Dear Son having purloined my car, I can’t get to the nearest market to buy those groceries. It’s just too hot to walk that far.

So, yeah. I hate Arizona. If I could get outta here, I would. And…well…come to think of it, I may.

 

Another Soggy-Doggy Day

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Glub!!  It is SO WET out there under the a.m. cloud cover, you feel like you’re walking through a bathroom where the shower has been spraying.

Truly an  unpleasant Arizona day.

Ohhh well. Such is life, eh?

The poor little dawg has developed a reaction to her collar. When she drags (as she often does), it tightens on her esophagus and gives her a CHOKING FIT No kidding:

ack ack ack gag gag ack ack eck eck eck gasp aaaaack!

People must think I’m hauling her up the sidewalk by her leash. But that’s not the case. Our normal doggy-walk stroll has her trotting along beside me, dawg and human on the same slab of any given sidewalk. No, she is NOT dragging me up the road. No, I am NOT dragging her, either.

Well. We do have a harness, which we’ll have to use after this.

It’s extraordinarily inconvenient to use, and Ruby drags like crazy when she has that thing on. Plus she goes after every other dog she spots. That’s why the collar and leash — used humanely — seem to work better.

*** hmmmm….   What does Wonderground predict for this extraordinarily balmy day?

  • 86 degrees Fahrenheit at 7:30 in the morning
  • 78% chance of rain
  • High of 106 degrees predicted
  • Low of 87 tonight
Their house in Sun City

Ugh! WhatEVER possessed my parents to drag us to this place, make me skip my senior year in high school, and warehouse me at the University of Arizona in Tucson so they could live in dreary Sun City? This has got to be one of the most gawdawful places on the planet to dwell!

Well. They liked the political conservatism. And compared to California, it was cheap. Plus my father disliked kids. So the appeal of horrible Sun City was obvious.

What. A. Place!

Augh!!! The Joy of Living in Arizona

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Yeah. In the absence of a car, Ruby and I didn’t make to the vet through the 110-degree heat.

This morning she’s still squawking HORK HORK HORK! very time she laps up a drink of water. Dayum!!!!!  

It seems a little better today, though: doesn’t go on and on and on. Whatever the problem is, she may be throwing it off.

Sure hope so. I could do without another $100+ vet bill.

Arizona: what a horrible place!!!! 

My mother used to go on and on about how much she loved it here. And I suppose by comparison with Saudi Arabia, where we spent ten hideous years on the shore of the Persian Gulf, it looks…uhm…good.

To my mind, it looks like an outpost of Hell. You can be sure I’d be someplace else –– a good long way else — if my son weren’t here.

We’re here because his dad landed a job, fresh out of law school, with one of the most prominent firms in the Southwest. After 20 years of marriage to that guy, I was well established and in no position to seek a job anywhere else than in the Phoenix area. And our son had no desire to move away from where his dad and I lived.

So.

Here we are. 

Ugh.

There’s a fate for ya.

I do hate it here, and if I could escape, I’d head for the Bay Area in a trice.

But a) I ain’t leavin’ where my son lives; and b) I couldn’t get a decent job in San Francisco or the East Bay on a bet. A Ph.D. in English a decent job does not buy…

But honestly…

I hate Arizona!

Moving Crabbily On…

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As we scribble, come 6:00 in the evening it’s freakin’ hot outside. Yeah: 98 degrees in the shade of the back porch, according to our thermometer. About right: Wunderground says it’s 99 degrees out there, “feels like 102.”

😀  Is THAT all?

***

A small fiasco is under way, one that will require the attention of my amiable lawyers. So: tomorrow it’s over to their office, wherein to have a chat. Just what I need to blow away half my day.

***

Meanwhile, the poor little dawg is about fried. Now that she’s had a few bites to eat and had a chance to flop on the kitchen tiles, she seems a little better. And as we scribble, she has retired to her favorite spot on the cool tiles under the toilet…

Dayum!  I hope she’ll be OK.

Give her half-an-hour or so, and then retrieve her from the toilet cave. Put her on the bed. And let’s see how she does.

Hope she recovers fully. I’m not sure where the nearest animal hospital is…which doesn’t matter, because Caligula has kiped my car, so I can’t get her to an emergency vet, anyway. If that’s necessary, though, I hope one of the neighbors will drive us.

Really….I probably ought to chat with the WonderAccountants (they live across the street) and ASK — in advance!! — if they will please help me get Ruby to an emergency vet should that ever be necessary. Maybe beg the same (in-advance!) favor from some of the other neighbors.

***

This mother/son squabble and automobile rip-off flap has gotten SO stupid that I’m thinking I probably need to sell the house and move to some other venue: one where I can buy and use another car to get myself to key destinations.

Where to go, where to go??  Well…Sun City probably.

Yuch!

My parents decamped to Sun City. They LOVED it…because that sort of stodgy atmosphere and whitey-white exclusivity was right up their alley.

Personally, I prefer a more liberal atmosphere and a more diverse set of neighbors. Plus (really!) I do love the sound of children playing outside. In Sun City, instead you get the melody of jet warplanes blasting out of nearby Luke Air Force Base. Loverly….

***

Oohhh gawd! Now Ruby has taken to choking frantically every time she laps a few sips of water!

KEEEripes! WHAT is causing that?

Well, she gets over it quickly. Now it’s stopped…

Tomorrow morning I’ll call the vet. Maybe I can put up one of the neighbors to driving us over there. Otherwise, it’ll be a half-hour hike, each way, though gawdawful heat. Carrying the sick dog in my arms…

What next, Lord?

Rasty-Nasty Redux

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Ahh! COLD TEA!!!  What a relief!

Just back in the house after a peculiarly unpleasant doggy-walk. At eight in the morning, it is SO HOT and SO HUMID out there that it feels like a day in Rasty-Nasty, the horrible American compound where my parents and I spent nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

What a gawdawful experience that was! I can remember days when it would be so humid that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky.

Oh, well. At least we don’t have any Arabs standing around hating on us here. That’s something. I guess.

Where would I go, if I could get away from this sylvan spot?

Well…

The San Francisco Bay Area for sure, if I could afford it. My mother’s family lived in Berkeley, which at the time was a lovely suburb of the City, up in the East Bay hills…just as pretty as could be.

But of course, I can’t afford it.

Where else?

Some parts of Colorado have their appeal. Problem is, it gets too cold in the winter there.

New Mexico, maybe…but I suspect the summers there are about as balmy as they are here…

All of which is about as irrelevant as irrelevant can get. Because… As long as my son is here, this is where I’m gonna be.