Coffee heat rising

Pets

We’re IN! Not to say FED UP….

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SURPRISE!!!!!  Our honored computer let me into our blog site! It’s a miracle! 

Gray, muggy day. Reminds me vaguely of life in Berkeley, where my relatives dwelt. Only considerably warmer than the East Bay, which was usually pretty nippy.

Dog and Human traipsed around the park, by the light of a dawn best described as “dim.”

Grrrr! Afraid I’m going to have to stop taking Ruby to the park — her paws-down favorite venue! — because of the a$$holes that habituate the place. This morning we had some jerk hollering obscenities at me — AN 80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN! — as we strolled across one end of the park.

Swear ta gawd!!!  What IS the matter with people?

Looks like we’ve got three choices:

* Stay out of the park, now and evermore.
* Get someone, preferably a large and male someone, to walk with us.
* Adopt a German shepherd to accompany us.

None of those appeal:

* Ruby’s little doggy heart will be broken if she can’t ever go into the park again.
* I don’t know any bodyguard-shaped men any more, and even if I did, nothing about little old(!!!) me would motivate such a fellow to traipse around the park with me, flexing his biceps.
* And I’m past the time of my life when I can handle a 90-pound protection dog.

So…it’s pretty annoying. Frustrating, as a matter of fact.

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Here we are in Coyote Hell again. 

Actually…I get a kick out of the coyotes and do not consider their presence to be Hell-making. But ooooh my, how they terrorize the local gringos. Get on the neighborhood Facebook Page and it’s oooohhhh eeeeeek aaaaawkkkk eeeeek ohhhhhh!!@!!! Squalls of terror from all directions.

Humans sure are stupid, aren’t they? Especially the ones that live in cities…  😀 Nary a one of our FB correspondents seems to register that a coyote is more scared of you than you are of it.

Just now — the loveliest cool of the day, when Mr. Coyote is likely to be out taking the morning air, I would not leave Ruby to roam the backyard alone. She is, after all, a tempting little morsel.

But let the heat come up, and Mr. Coyote will repair to the shade of the shrubbery and the trees. And he will not bestir himself to chase after a ludicrous thing like a corgi.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is here. She likes to have the back door open while she’s working. So Ruby is out on the patio, loafing in the shade. For the nonce, none of her wild cousins are visiting, and so I reckon she’s safe enough. Hope so, because just now I’m altogether too lazy to get up and establish myself out there.

Mmmmm…. I figure the best thing about pain is that it reminds you that you’re alive. And just now, by damn, I am SOOOO ALIVE! 

The spavined right hip joint is particularly lively… HOleee shit, does that hurt!

***

Just now, if I were a responsible human bean, I’d get off my duff and stroll over to one of the three(!!!) grocery stores within reasonable walking distance. But really, I do suspect that I’d find myself crippled by the time I got halfway to the nearest one.

{heh} Good excuse, ain’t it? 😀

I may ask WC-L to drive me over to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s.

Or maybe not.

***

What a weird thing it is, to realize that now — today, here in Two Thousand and Aught-Twenty-Six — I cannot remember off-hand what I wanted to buy at the grocer’s. Am I that superannuated, that worn-out that I can’t remember a grocery list of two or three items????  AUGH!

😀

When I first moved into the “Hood,” lo! these decades ago, I was a young pup surrounded by aging, long-time North Central Avenue residents. Now I’m the Old Bat — the historical relic — and all the neighbors look like they were born about ten days ago.

And oh! How can you not love them! Our beautiful young people: the handsome young marrieds, their adorable children…gosh, what a joy!

I wonder if the old ladies who lived here when I moved in — the dignified and historically experienced Mrs. Wilson, the lively and eccentric Fran, the great old gals on the street behind us — enjoyed us as much, when we moved in here as a wave of Yuppies.

Oh, well. I’m old now. Tomorrow they will be. So it goes.

Glorioski!

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Truly: what a GLORIOUS afternoon!  

Weather:

cool but not too cool
sunny but not hot

Neighbors:

Sittin’ around their front yards with the kids out
Kids: cuter than cute, having a great time running around

Ruby the Corgi:

Snoozing in the back bathroom
NOT lost, after all!

😀  As you may have deduced: a small surge of panic. Dog disappeared. Dog declined to come to call. Human could not find Dog anywhere in the house. Human about fainted in terror.

But eventually said Dog did materialize: yea verily, from the back bathroom where she likes to loaf, and where I didn’t see her while I was banging around looking for her.

If I had a little more ambition (and if my right hip weren’t quite so spavined), Ruby and I would walk over to the park, explore a bit, and then wander home.

This is the sort of time when I most miss the ineffable SDXB. He, as you may recall, moved to staid and stodgy Sun City, where he took up with the lively and charming New Girlfriend. 😀 I’ve lived in Sun City, thank you — that was where my parents settled after my father retired, dragging me there with them.

It’s really not my style, and truth to tell I hated being stuck out there during the four years of my university sojourn. So…soon as I finished school and got a job in Phoenix, I moved into town. Never EVER to move back to Sun City.

SDXB, himself the staid and stodgy type, bought a place and decamped out there a few years ago. He tried to get me to go with him, but…been there, done that, ain’t a-doin’ it again! He loves it, though, and shortly took up with a very nice New Girlfriend…for whom, quite frankly, I wish the best.

WhatEVER. Moi, I dearly love the kids playing outside in front. Just came in from a stroll and a visit with parental set: the young people and the toddlers and the dog or two…what more could one want?

😀 Really, it is a lovely neighborhood.

Why on earth would you want to live someplace where no kids are frolicking around?????

Are We Still Online?

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Looks like once again I’m back in to Funny about Money, despite the last week’s hijinks.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! That’s surely some kind of little miracle.

It’s a gray, drab morning: 8:30 and no brighter than about 7 a.m.

Harvey the Beloved Pool Cleaner appears to be on the fritz. Looks like he’s stuck on on the bottom of the Hole in the Ground Into Which To Pour Money. I’m not sure whether this is Pool Dude Day — he comes around every week or so. But I’m unstuck in time and so have no clue whether this is one of his days.

If I stay here waiting for him, that will put the eefus on Ruby the Corgi’s doggy-walk.

****

Ah HAH!  His glorious convict-like Cuteness arrived! Pool Dude is here! Out back and puttering away with the dratted…uhm, beloved swimming pool. And when we say DOG JOY, we do mean dog joy. 

Yes: many of these guys are convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the trades for which prisons in Arizona train inmates. So, chances are pretty good that our beloved Pool Dude has seen the inside of a concrete cell.

That notwithstanding, he is a sweetie-pie. Just a very nice, very personable man. And he does a great job! So whatever he did in his previous career…I don’t much care.

As for Ruby: he could be Jack the Ripper and she’d still adore him.

 

Rain, Wet Dog, Cranky Human

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As predicted, water is falling out of the sky now, along about 9:00 p.m. And, as predictable, Ruby the Corgi decides nothing will do but what she must go outside.

Of course. I expected a unicorn?????

Drag dawg off bed, stumble to the back door, stagger out into the soggy darkness.

For a change, Ruby performs promptly. But it’s wet enough that she IS a soggy doggy by the time she trots back in the house.

Weather reports imply that it’s likely to rain all night. This would suggest an even soggier morning.

arf!
😀

Hope she stays down all night, ’cause I yam not in the mood to stand around in the rain at two or three in the morning.

***

Gosh… Just ran across — quite by accident — the obituary notice my not-quite-relatives posted after the death of the woman my widowed father married. LOL! Just as obnoxious as she was in person. They list her relatives, including those on my father’s side…and leave my name and my son’s name out.

Cute, huh?

They hate my branch of the clan because we’re LIB-uh-rulls. My former husband was president of the ACLU’s Arizona chapter and was on the Civil Liberty Union’s national board. This, to their minds (well, to the extent that they have minds) proved that he and I were COMM-you-nists! 

No kidding. If you’re anywhere to the left of Adolf Hitler, you’re a commie.

Gosh, I get tired of narrow-minded stupid stuff. Don’t you?

When You Are a Dog…

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You most certainly do know how to loaf!

LOL! Ruby the Ineffable Corgi has been practicing her loafing skills all day…and by golly, it’s quarter after 1:00 in the afternoon!

And..there will be no distractions from the Ridiculous Human, by golly! 

It’s heavily overcast and just a bit chilly: 60 degrees or so. Rain predicted today and this evening; thunderstorms tomorrow.

Do we wanna go out and trot around the ‘Hood?

Hm. Prob’ly not. Normally, this cool, shady day would make a fine strolling occasion. But the agony in the right hip most certainly would not! OUCH! Dunno what on earth I did to hurt myself, but whatever it was, it inflicted a fine spavining job on the hip joint.

So I think rather than taking a chance on aggravating that — or on getting stuck several blocks from home, in the rain(!) — we will medicate ourself with heavy doses of loafing. Highly therapeutic, eh?

Boyoboy, is it ever gray out there. You just know, dontcha, that if we’re dumb enough to start hiking (heh! or limping) around the park, the heavens will open and dump BUCKETS of water on us. It’s supposed to rain today, tonight, and tomorrow, with thunderstorms tomorrow. So saith Wunderground.

This means we won’t be able to grill any of the meat that’s sitting in the fridge. However, and mercifully, my wonderful son bought several packages of delicious-looking prepared chow at the nearby Sprouts. So we have two or three days’ worth of meals sitting in the fridge!

Arf! we say to that.

Ruby is conkered out and seems not the slightest bit perturbed at the fact of missing out on the daily hike. I wonder if dogs realize that heavy clouds mean rain, and rain means (ugh!!!) getting wet?