Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

STILL hotter than the hubs…

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My GAWD!!!!  Ruby and I: just back from our morning perambulation of the park. By 7:30, it was SOOO HOT and SOOO WET out there, the human was literally drenched. Horrible!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, in the sun-scorched sand by the waves of the Persian Gulf. Gawdawful place!!!!  So glad to NOT be there.

And in fact, if my son weren’t here in (un)lovely Phoenix, you can be sure I would NOT be here. Between the ever-urbanizing, ugly city and the truly ugly summer weather, this would not be where I would choose to live.

Well, one nice thing about this morning: the nasty weather kept most of the air-headed dog-walkers indoors. So Ruby and I didn’t have to dodge a lot of out-of-control pooches, for a change.

Why are people soooo stupid about their dogs???

Anyway, what we did get to see was an almost brand-new baby being pushed along in a carriage by his spectacularly proud dad. That was cool!!!

Metaphorically speaking…

Tooling along thinking…man! I’ve gotta get a lawyer to replace the very late and once great Mike Kimerer. We need to be sure all the wills and paperwork and debts and whatnot are set up for M’jito. I don’t want to surprise him by croaking over and leaving some kind of unholy mess for him to plow through, instead of an orderly estate.

Nobody’s there at Mike’s office: apparently his partners (office-mates may be more like it???) just shut everything down and threw out his files. My will was in one of those files…

I guess I’ll try to reach the ex-husband (high-test lawyer, retired) to see if he can refer me to someone to be sure all that stuff is in order.  Failing that:

????

 

 

 

And now: Eeeeeeps!

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WTF? 

Something there is about that sky that is giving this old bat the Serious Creeps. 

Further creepifying: I dunno what the “something” is. 

What we have out there is…hmmm….

heat

high, fat cumulus style clouds

heat

mugginess

heat

high, thin  web-like clouds drifting in with the cumulus clouds

heat

mugginess….

WTF? What IS it trying to say to us?

****

My guess is that we’ll find out along about 9:00 or 10:00 tonight. And the utterance will be KERR-BOOOOOOM!!!!!

Yeah. Looks to me like quite the desert storm a-drifting in.

Wunderground, au contraire, predicts a 6% chance of precip.

Yeah. Right, guys. Didja accidentally drop a zero next to that six?

{Gasp!} {Pant!!}

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Lordie, it is HOTTER THAN THE HUBS OF HADES out there. Two o’clock in the afternoon and it’s 100 degrees in the deepest dark of the back-porch shade structure. Or… 105 degrees, according to Wunderground.

So much for any bright ideas I might have had about making a run on the corner Fry’s or the Sprouts a few blocks down the road.

Non-negotiable!

This summer does indeed seem hotter than normal. But it’s really not that hot: 100 degrees is par for the course…if anything, it’s a little cool for an August afternoon.

But it’s humid (in Arizona terms…that ain’t very). Some clouds are coming up around the horizon…and hereabouts, any moisture in the air makes the air seem hotter than it is.

At any rate: so much for any planned junkets to the nearby stores. I ain’t a-goin’ out in THAT stuff!!! Those stores open as dawn cracks, so it should be possible to shoot into the Fry’s and out before the real heat comes up.

Oddly, it seems a little hot for late August in lovely uptown Phoenix. That’s because the wildest of the monsoon season normally strikes in August: billowing thunderclouds, crazy rainstorms. The rain will usually cool the temperature into the 90s before sunset. Maybe.

We shall see. 

Glub!!!!!

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You thought Arizona has “a dry heat,” right?  HAR HAR!!! Just now it feels like Ras Tanura did, when we lived there on the shore of the Persian Gulf: HOT and WET, WET, WETTER THAN WET.

Ugh. Ghastly morning!

Ruby and I: just back from circumnavigating the hood, through this very soggy doggy day. Ugh! Indeed.

M’hijito is gallivanting around the Midwest on business. No idea when he’ll be back: presumably in a couple of days. Looking forward to his return…and am curious to learn how things went for him there.

Traipsing traipsing doggy-traipsing...around the park. Past the house that’s having to be completely rebuilt after the previous owners trashed it. Through the ‘Hood: a pretty place to live.

Every time I walk around this place, I thank my lucky stars that I stumbled upon a Realtor named John Shackleford. He’s the one who brought me to this place, when I was looking for a house of my own after having escaped marriage. It really is a nice area; North Central but not North Central: therefore not North Central prices. That’s how I was able to afford to move here.

My first house here, which I shared with SDXB, was less than a block from the dratted light-rail line. That thing made a lot of noise and, not surprisingly, imported a less than desirable population. SDXB eventually moved out, but bought a house in the neighborhood — actually, just a block from my present palace.

Eventually, I decided to move out of the place we’d occupied — after our idiot city fathers installed that light-rail up Conduit of Blight Blvd, the noise and the human trash from the thing made for an unpleasant place to live. I’d planned to move out of the neighborhood — probably to Scottsdale, East Phoenix, or back to the Encanto district. But this place — a block from where SDXB had moved, came up…far enough from the horrid light-rail to be reasonably quiet, just a block from Lover-Boy, and handsomely renovated by the sellers.

SDXB subsequently moved to Sun City, where — being a stodgy sort — he’s very happy. I’d lived there with my parents and just hated it, so refused to follow him out there.

Soooo…here I am, ensconced happily enough on the edge of unholy Sunnyslope (you don’t wanna know!) and within a few short minutes’ drive of my son’s house. It’s incredibly convenient:

  • 3 major supermarkets (one of them a Sprouts) within easy walking distance
  • a doctor’s office, in the same realm
  • a Walgreen’s: same precinct
  • a veterinarian within walking distance
  • a train running up a main drag, but far enough from the house to avoid noise
  • armies of busses running up the two main drags to the east

One thing is for sure: you don’t need a car here. And that’s good, since my son filched mine…for my own good, dontcha know.

😀  I don’t happen to agree with him that I shouldn’t be driving — that’s BS. But truth to tell, in this location I don’t have to drive! Everything I need is within easy walking distance, even including a doctor and a vet. To gild that lily, a guy across the street is driving an Uber cab.

Seriously: if Uber stays in business, it will be several years before I’m forced to move into a horrible old-folkerie. With any luck, indeed, I’ll die before that happens. And so I will live out most or even all of my last few years in my own calm, quiet and pretty little place. With my own swimming pool, my own yard, and my own funny little dog.

What more could one ask?

The Joys of Living in Phoenix

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10:52 p.m.

What a fukkin’ ZOO this place is!

Rousted by the dog: got up to let her out to do her Thing. Spotted a cop copter buzzing the neighb0rhood.

Managed to urge the dog along and then dodge back in the house. Cop is still buzzing around over Main Drag West…essentially right over my old house’s roof.

Oh…hold that statement. Here he comes over here.

Here at FaM, Main Drag West also goes by the name Conduit of Blight. That’s pretty much what it is: a thoroughfare that brings criminals, delinquents, and pursuing cops into the ‘Hood. Tiresome as hell!!

Speaking of tiresome, I yam TIRED and wish to go back to sleep. Looks like that’s not gonna happen for awhile.

What. A. Place!

Amor de Amazon…

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How do I love Amazon? Let me count the ways!

Here we are loafing on the bed with the dog, watching a fierce-looking storm come a-rolling in. And what have we done that’s even faintly useful?

Well: one real useful thing! We just ordered a leaf-skimming net from the beloved Amazon.

This gadget is a device much needed for maintaining the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money…and with delivery to the front door, it’s only eleven bucks!

JOY!

So tomorrow we’ll be able to lift out the leaves that blow into the drink tonight. Pool Dude will be happy: our old net was plumb wore out. And the price was beyond right!

EEEK!

and Wow! What a storm!  You should see the wind, the flying dirt, and the sailing plant matter! And the neighbors’ yard decorations. 😀

How glad are Ruby and the Human to be inside and watching this storm from the comfort of our bed? Let us count the ways!! 

Let’s see what Wunderground sez:

Active Warning! Severe Thunderstorm Warning!

Heh!!! Ya don’t say?

Eeek, we say to that. Eeeek! 

Hmmmm…Loookit there: raindrops the size of quarters! That’s a bit of a phenomenon.

But oddly, not very much of this slug-sized rain is falling. Huh…barely enough to get the pavement wet.

Weird. But then….Arizona is always weird.

Hope my son has battened down his hatches. He’s out of town for a business meeting. But…he does know enough to secure the place before fleeing.

Now it’s SERIOUSLY pouring: large, fat raindrops, in gay profusion.

Well, one thing’s for sure: we won’t have to add water to the pool tomorrow! 😀

But we will have to add a sh!tload of chemicals. Hope we have enough.

Dunno if Pool Dude really is supposed to surface tomorrow. He’ll have his hands full tomorrow, so may not be able to get to everyone’s place in one day. We shall see….

Jobs we’re glad we don’t have, #1,368…