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Pets

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!

Hotter than the Hubs…

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Surely Hades was never this hot and soggy! 😀

Ruby is guzzling water (again!), panting, choking, gasping for breath. The human is hurting, hurting, and hurting some more: this peripheral neuropathy is no joke.

But at least we got our morning perambulation…  And ohhh my! Lest you ever feel sorry for yourself, all you have to do to perk up is to look around at other people.

This morning we passed a crew of laborers working on the renovation of a large house in Lower Richistan. Yeah: in the heat. In the humidity. Dear lord! What a job!  Hard physical work in absolutely ghastly weather.

At times like this, (un)Lovely Phoenix reminds me of Ras Tanura, the American outpost where we spent ten years next to the Persian Gulf while my father worked for Aramco. Just about the most gawdawful place to live on the planet! Hot, wet, miserable…and hostile to Americans.

My mother’s health was ruined out there — she came down with amoebic dysentery — and I was sick all the time.

Most of my “sick” was play-acting, a strategy to keep me out of the damned school and away from the horrid little brats who inhabited it. If you were “different” in any way (I was a girl who wanted not to grow up wearing ribbons and frills but to work as an astrophysicist), you were tormented, tormented, and tormented some more. So I was constantly trying to persuade my mother that I was too sick to go to school. About half the time, she fell for it.

And well she might have, since she was sick at least half the time; probably more.

Ohhh gawd! There goes the dawg again: choke choke choke CHOKE GAAAG!  Got to get her to a vet…but how to do that without a car beats me.

My son, despite having made off with my car (he thinks I’m too old to be driving!), cannot take time away from his job to schlep me to stores and the dog to veterinary hospitals. So exactly what I’m supposed to do here, isolated in (un)lovely North Phoenix, escapes me. Even though a doctor has said there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be driving, Dear Son is determined to keep me out from behind a steering wheel.

This, I assume, results from what he’s seen in his job as an insurance adjustor. You can bet he’s shuffled his way through some horrific car wrecks. And yes: it’s undoubtedly true that elder drivers with slower reflexes and weaker vision are more vulnerable to accidents than are the Young and the Alert.  Surely, though, there ought to be some way to test you to see whether you’re safe to be driving. My own doctor says there’s no reason I shouldn’t be driving…but the kid ain’t listening to him.

At any rate: the result is that I’m stuck here in the house and can’t even take my poor sick little dog to a vet.

Not.
A.
Happy.
Camper.
!!!!

A Rasty-Nasty Day

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Rasty Nasty…so glad to be gone!

Today’s weather is what my father used to call “rasty-nasty,” after Ras Tanura, the dreadful ARAMCO company town where we lived for nine years, perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf. It was a hot, soggy, miserable place.

Today’s ugly morning is hot and soggy, for sure. The sky dark gray with overcast, rain varying from drizzling to pouring.

Directing matters toward Hell, Ruby has  something wrong with her sinuses…or something. She keeps gasping and wheezing…hork  hork hork hork! Damned if I can tell what the matter is.

So I need to get her to a vet, but without a car, I can’t imagine how to do that through this unholy weather. I’d have to pick her up and carry her eight or ten blocks…and migawd!! Just now I’m so sick I can barely carry her around the house!

A guy across the street drives for Uber…but somehow I doubt he’ll agree to carry a sick dog in his cab.

Yesterday’s junket to the Mayo Clinic was just gawdawful! What I need today is to sit down, hassle-free, and be quiet all day. Doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, though. Afraid to ask my son for a lift…yesterday he and I were at each other’s throats. Plus…he has — of all things — a job! He can’t be knocking off half the day to schlep me and my dog to a vet.

In related sylvan fields, I need to find a decent doctor who does NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic, halfway to Bisbee. Dealing with a doctor — especially when you’re a woman, Gawd help you! — is dreadful enough, without piling on a 45-minute drive each way. 

And “find a decent doctor” is no small task these days. Our wonderful old docs from the law-practice days are long retired, after having repaired to the Mayo some years ago (dragging us with them). And of late the quacks I’ve met there have ranged in competence from bird-brained to spectacularly arrogant; half the time when you describe your issue, they’re not paying the slightest bit of attention. Their minds are made up, and they don’t care be distracted by any damned facts, thank you.

Lawyers tend to know which doctors have been sued and which haven’t. That’s why you should seek a recommend from a lawyer, whenever you’re in the market for a new doctor.

Now that my lawyer hubby and I have been divorced for some years, I no longer know a lawyer to ask. Most of our friends are now retired…I haven’t seen a practicing lawyer in for-freaking-ever.

***

Blech!!! It’s getting still uglier out there! How it’s possible, I do not know…but the sky has turned even darker than it was.

I give up! Back to bed with me and the hound!

July 4 Moron Frolics…Jeeez!

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The evening has barely begun — it’s only 8:35 p.m. — and of course, it being the Fourth of July, every moron within earshot is out there with their bang-bangs.

LOL! It sounds like half the city is exploding… BOOM! bam BAM BAM bang bang whiiirrrrr (helicopter buzzes over) BAM! boomp boomp boom BANG….

On and on and on…. 

We can expect this racket to continue until a little after midnight. Phoenicians love to play with fireworks. And the things are easy to obtain, Mexico being just a few miles to the south of us.

Ohhhhh shee-ut! Some idiot just exploded a fukkin’ BOMB outside the back fence — probably in our alley. Scared the bedoodles out of the dog. 

Y’know, I can understand how idiots think it’s fun to set off bang-bangs. But things that explode like a nuke? Not so much. Fireworks? Okay, okay…the cops can’t ride herd on dozens of nincompoops. But forgodsake, folks: at least TRY to engage your brain a little when playing with these toys!

Report from the Hub of Hades

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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. 

Good Morning, Dogmerica!

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WHY, oh why are people SOOOO STUPID?

Just back from the morning (almost typed “moroning”….talk about your Freudian slips!) hike around the park. That’s a mile or so of trotting along  behind a very bossy corgi, dodging fellow dog-slaves around a lovely, grassy expanse.

Well. It would be lovely if my fellow humans could manage to cling to just a smidgeon of their brains.

Idiots.

The ones who take the proverbial cake are the nitwits who imagine their dog “just wants to pwayyy” with my dog.

Me: Please keep your dog back.

Nit: It’s OK. They just want to pwaayyyy…

Me: No, stupid. My dog just wants to eat your dog!

God, but I’m tired of stupid! 

Apparently we have a bottomless supply of it, though. Don’t seem to be able to escape it.

Please. When you’re out with your dog…

a) Keep your dog on its leash (!!!); and
b) Refrain from imagining that every other dog you encounter wants to be your doggy’s little pal!!!!!

Some of your fellow human idiots are mightily tired of being dragged into dog fights!