Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Swampy-Dampy Day!

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Ugh!!!  The morning looks like dank, icky Saudi Arabia, where we lived on the shore of the endlessly soggy Persian Gulf.

Ruby has done her daily chore of dragging the human around the neighborhood…today hauling through wet, gray, threatening air. Wunderground predicts a 50% chance of rain…and a high of 114 degrees.

Garden spot, eh?

The sunrise, though, was utterly spectacular!  One of the most gorgeous sunrises or sunsets I’ve ever seen. So I guess that was worth a soggy-doggy morning.

As we scribble, though, the sun has gone behind a layer of dark gray clouds. Presumably those will soon be dumping water on us. Hot water…

 

Whew! Funny Is B-a-a-a-ck! And So Is Gerardo…

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Wow! For awhile there, WordPress wouldn’t let me back into the Funny about Money site…and…well… I wuz beginning to think Funny was about to be a thing of the past.

Ohhh well….  Here we are, back online…uhm…I think. We’ll find out after I go to post this squib.

Gerardo the Miracle Yard Dude and his cohorts are out in the yard, working like animals in Arizona’s UNGODLY summer heat. August is our worst month. But, for reasons I can’t imagine (most likely he has bills to pay, hm?), he volunteered to prune the (overgrown!) paloverde tree on the west side of the house.

Not a good time to hack up a tree, that’s for sure. But…you can be sure he wouldn’t have offered to do it if he didn’t need the money. Damn near killing your crew with heat exhaustion is not a normal strategy.

Let’s just hope this exploit doesn’t kill the tree. It is on the west side of the house, after all…so it serves its purpose in savings on air-conditioning bills.

On the other hand, even I could tell that it presented a serious risk of falling on the roof and doing some major damage. The amount Gerardo is charging for this venture (which he didn’t tell me beforehand…otherwise I wouldn’t have let him do the job) is fukkin’ ruinous…but a fraction of what it would cost to chop down the tree and then repair the roof and the attic if it fell on the house in a storm.

So I can’t complain too much.

On the other hand…that doesn’t make me like it.

And yes: trees.  MY GAWD, the man charged me FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS to prune that weed tree off the roof and away from the yard.

He said, though, that he’d talked to my son. And he claimed he told my young Hero (and Keeper…) how much he was gonna charge. So…one can only hope that was true. Because if M’hijito is blind-sided by a $450 landscaping bill, he is gonna be ENRAGED. Seven ways from Sunday.

Ohhhhh gawd! Never get old,, whatever ya do!  First off, you lose control of your life. Then, you’re assaulted by one hassle and one headache after another — none of which you personally can do a damn thing about. The person in charge of your bills has to do all that…and you may be sure, he won’t appreciate it.

***

Ohhhh well. I truly do like Gerardo and his guys. They’re all such nice men, each and every one of them. To say nothing of gentlemen who work like oxen (!!no exaggeration!) Seriously, you’ve never seen anyone work as hard and as steadily as those guys do. Just…freakin’…jaw-dropping!

They do hard work and good work. Whatever they apply themselves to, they do a great job on it. And they apply themselves to A LOT!

Amazing guys. No question of it. 

Afternoon Report from the Hubs of Hades

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{Chortle!}  And now, comin’ up on 4:00 p.m., the outdoor thermometer registers 105º in the darkest shade of the back porch.

Garden spot, eh? Dontcha wish you lived here?

Oh, you do live here? My sympathies!! 😀

If my father were still living, I’d brain him for dragging me and my mother to this unholy place. Ohhhhhh well! Too late! 

She loved it, though. She even loved the unholy roar of the fighter jets from Luke Air Force Base, just outside of their home in Sun City. “Ohhhh,” she would simper,” “it’s the sound of freedom!”

Well. No, muther. That’s the sound of World War III, headed our way. 

Ohhh well. Whatever chimes your bells.

She did love Sun City, and incredibly, she did love the sound of those gawdawful war planes. Or at least, so she claimed. 😀

****

Hey! PRESTO CHANGEO!  Amazon just showed up at the front door with a package of wonderful Bigelow teabags. SIX BOXES of them!!!

Who’d’ve thunk it?

Now I won’t have to buy tea for a good year! One fewer hassle, eh?

Y’know…that isn’t something that I would’ve thunk, at the time I moved into this house here in (un)lovely Central Phoenix. But y’know… Amazon is some kinda Godsend.

By now I can’t even count the number of trips that outfit has spared me, traipsing around overheated, batsh!t Phoenix. I hate driving around this city, and you may be sure I like walking around it in 110-degree heat even less. Now that my son has kiped my car, Amazon’s deliveries pay for themselves many times over.

Without that car, at this time of year I’d have to make shopping trips at 6:00 in the morning, the instant the Albertson’s opens. And frankly, walking back and forth to the local stores, with our honored passing drivers hollering obscenities at me, is NOT what I wanna do at any time of the year.

If my son weren’t here, I would be SO GONE from this place. If I stayed in the Valley: probably to Fountain Hills. If not: to points in California, Colorado, or the Mogollon Rim. You couldn’t keep me here: not on a bet.

But…he IS here in lovely central Phoenix. So here I am, too.

And yeah: Amazon is one thing that makes this place more or less livable.

A Rasty-Nasty Day!

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Whew!!!  It is BEYOND hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there!! In the deepest shade of the back porch: a hundred and eleven degrees! 

My father would have called this a Rasty Nasty Day, after Ras Tanura, the hideous American oil outpost where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Twelve long years in that unholy dive!!!  He had figured he’d make enough to retire, if they saved every penny, in eight or ten years. Yeah…

Well…he almost made enough to retire on.

He wasn’t a real educated fella. Inflation, for example, was kind of an alien concept for him…  So, when he made his calculations for how long he’d have to work out there before he could retire and take us home to the States, he missed his goal by some six years.

About the time this projection unwound, my mother came down with a horrific case of amoebic dysentery. The doctors out there told her she needed to go back to the States –ASAP — to be treated for that fine ailment. This gave her an excuse to grab me and flee back to California, where her relatives lived. It also accelerated his retirement plans: he stayed for another year and a half, until his current contract ended, and then came back to join us in the States.

So that was a blessing (big-time!) for me and my mother. Couldn’t have been great for him, but at least she and I got out of that Hell-hole.

At any rate, where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf, the climate was hot, muggy, humid, and hotter than the Hubs. Just a HORRIBLE place, certainly for the gringo set. As a little kid, I didn’t know any better. But my mother, raised in Upstate New York, suffered terribly — from the climate as well as from the endemic disease.

And now, here on August 23 of Two Thousand and Twenty-Six, I indeed have been around long enough to know better. And believe me: if my son weren’t here, I would not be here in steamy Arizona. No how, no way!

But he persists, because his dad is here. His dad  persists, because Dad’s job planted him here…and because his present family is also planted here.

Well. Arizona ain’t as grim as Saudi Arabia was. But…it does have its trying moments.

And right now, we’re in the middle of them! 

Yucky-Ducky Day

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EWWWWW!  It is SO humid and SO sticky and SO hot outside that it feels like a good old hideous day in Ras Tanura, the seaside colony where I grew up in Saudi Arabia.

Seriously: it feels like it could start to rain out of a clear blue sky…something that, yea verily, I have seen in Arabia. But there’s neither clear nor blue out there: the sky is draped in ugly, thin gray clouds.

Haven’t heard from my son today. Hope he’s getting through this balmy day all right. His house is in a historic district and was built when every home was “cooled” (heh!) with something called “swamp cooling.” This was an early form of evaporative cooling. Worked fine when the weather was dry. Give it some humidity, though, and “swamp” would be the operative term, all right!

Even if you replace the evap unit with a modern air-conditioning unit, the result is not very effective. That, I reckon, has to do with the way the ductwork is built. Or…something.

***

I should call him up and pester him. But frankly, just now I’m reamed steamed and dry-cleaned, and so do not feel like speaking to any human beings. Today the new housecleaners he hired to replace the beloved Luz surfaced. Meeting them and introducing them to the shack and whatnot was surprisingly tiring. I just don’t do well with new people….and when the New Person is expected to work for me (the poor soul!)…well…it’s a trying experience all the way around.

Not sure whether they’re expected to surface once a week….or what. That’s one of the questions I need to pester him with. 😀  Poor guy! He must think I’m totally non compos mentis. And…hmmmm…with every month of advancing age, I seem to drift further in that direction.

Unclear whether that’s really so, or is only a time-enhanced illusion. I asked my beloved Doctor in the Wild about this. (A “doctor in the wild” is one who does NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic). And he insisted that no, my marbles are still intact and I should quit worrying about that.

Nice to think so. But o’course…he doesn’t see me every hour and every minute of every day. This marble-loss business seems to come and go, depending on stress levels, time of day, and whatnot.

Ohhhh well...  The dinner chow is hot! (Hoorayy!) And the  human is ambling off to bed whenever she finishes scarfing up that stuff.

And so, away!

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona”*

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It’s a Sea of Cortez day…moisture saturating the atmosphere, making for a swamp-like, Saudi Arabian, horrible morning. Weather is drifting up to (un)lovely Phoenix from Mexico just now…breeding a sticky, icky day.

Dawg and I are freshly(?) back from a swim through that air, as the morning sun hangs over the eastern horizon. This is one of several Arizona phenomena that make me want to brain my father for dragging us here from California.

Well. If he were still alive to brain. 😉

God, I hate this place. If there were a way to get out of here, I’d be soooo long-gone.

But…truth to tell…for me there is no way out. I can’t afford to move. And even if I could, at this age where would I go? Too old to get a job. Not interested in living in a “retirement” community.

Plus my son is here. I’m not about to move away as long as he’s lurking in Arizona. And truth to tell, given that he has a more-than-decent job here, there are not many other places he’s likely to go.

His dad emanated from Colorado, and M’hijito has said that he’d like to repair to those parts. But…in the first place, he’d have to get work there. And the second place, it snows in Colorado. He’s no longer accustomed to snow and ice, and I have exactly zero desire to become accustomed to them!

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*  “Another beautiful day in Arizona” was the tagline of a locally prominent radio announcer here in Phoenix, back in the day. Every morning he would open his talk-show with “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it!”

Way to turn illiteracy into PR, eh?