Coffee heat rising

G*d-D***ed PHONE

Y’know, I’m just about at the point where I can imagine not having a phone at all. Not ANY phone!

These days a phone — especially a land line — is more of a nuisance than a convenience. This morning the f*kin land line jangled for the third time — BEFORE 9:00 A.M.! — with a**holes trying to hustle me. Last time, I took a DEEEEEP breath and SHRIEKED INTO THE GODDAM PHONE as loud as I could manage:

G-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-H…..

The convicts hired to hustle you over the phone are wearing headphones.

So when you SCREAM into the phone at the top of your voice, that actually hurts the bastards’ ears. And interestingly, the SHRIEK-a-thon technique has cut the number of pestering nuisance calls. Quite a lot: I’d say by about 80 percent.

Telephone soliciting should be against the law.

But that would put a dent in our “freedom of speech,” right? Free to bug you and me….

Seriously, though: if you blast each ba*tard who calls with the loudest noise you can muster, that DOES bite into the flood of phone solicitations. An air horn would do the job, if screaming is not your preference.

Many of the jerks calling you in the early hours of the day (and all the rest of the hours…) are calling from inside prisons.

Yes. Phone soliciting is a prison enterprise. Check it out: just google phone soliciting prison industry, and you learn all about a gigantic scam tailored for convicted scammers and other criminals.

Hey…you’ve got a crew of crooks. Why not put ’em to work doing what they do best?

Morning Has Broken…

Like the first day…
Blackbird has spoken,
Like the first bird…

Actually, we don’t have blackbirds here in the lovely Sonoran desert. We have telephone solicitors.

The ba*tards start calling you as dawn cracks. Ringy-dingy-dingy Ringy dingy dingy ringy…. If you have any fantasy about sleeping in, fuhgeddaboudit!

We’re told phone soliciting is a prison industry. Apparently, a large portion of these nuisance phone calls are coming from convicts, placed from inside local and regional prisons. Makes you wanna just hurry right out and buy whatever they’re peddling, right?

I used to blast a horn into the phone whenever the ba*tards would jangle me up. Now…well..that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And really: if the job is being done by people who are forced to it by their prison guards, I suppose it’s not every nice to try to blow out their eardrums.

I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not very nice to jangle me out of bed by dawn’s early light, either.

I’d disconnect the phone at night, if I felt safe doing so. But…I don’t. I’m here by myself, and if anything happens that I need to call 911, then…yeah: I’ll NEED to call 911. Now, not after fiddling indefinitely with the damn phone.

What a gorgeous morning!! 

Guess Ruby and I had better head out on our morning walk, before the day heats up. And so…

A-WAAAAYYY

The nightmares never stop

O Gawd!  There really IS a point when it’s time to hop off from the merry-go-round that is life!  WHAT a flickin’ nightmare just living has become.

My poor son — make that my HEROIC son — has been dragging me from pillar to post: doctors, therapists, thisses, thats, and whatnots. Seems to be no end to it: we just go on and on and ON.

This evening we’re back from the physical therapist,  where what I accomplished was to spavin the hip even worse than it was already spavined. Ohhh my GAWD does this stuff hurt. 

No kidding: I hurt; I hurt; I hurt; and then I hurt some more. And frankly: I ain’t gonna be able to handle a helluva lot more of this!

JAYZUZ!  Just get sat down, and ringie dingie dingie ringie dingie dingie… a clear and present phone solicitor.

But with all the sh!t that we’re going thru just now, there IS an outside chance that this could be a real call from a real person.

Human Answers: Hullo. How may I help you?

Scam Artist Answers: Hullo. May I speak to Mr. or Ms. Human.?

Human replies: GET THE F*** OFF MY PHONE, GODDAMN IT!!!! Shrieked as loud as humanly possible into the phone.

Dammit. 

Need to get an airhorn to blast at the bastard phone solicitors. Hmmm…wonder if those things can be had from Amazon?

****

Mwa ha hah!  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. There’s a whole collection of “air horns loud” 😀

Ohhhh yeah! Gotta order up one of these.

Hmmmm… Wonder if there’s a way to blast the phone solicitor without deafening oneself…  Yeah…

Suppose you got a sturdy wooden or steel box, set the phone receiver down in that along with the air horn, closed the box, and then let the air horn have at the ba*tard.

Hmmmm…that doesn’t look very promising. There’s gotta be a way, though.

Let us think on this…

Free!! (??) I hope….

Woo HOOO! It looks suspiciously like this is NOT cleaning-lady day!

The wonderful Luz (Cleaning Lady from Heaven) is not parked in front of my neighbor’s house (she visits those neighbors before descending on me). It’s almost noon!  So…unless that dear woman picked up another client and has enjoyed scrubbing yet another shack before coming here, I’m FREEEEEE from having to pick up the pig-pen.

Mwa ha hah! Sure do hope so…

Isn’t that awful?  SOOOO lazy that I don’t want to be bothered to shovel aside the litter so she can get at a surface or three to clean!

The other day some obnoxious and nosy financial dudes visited the Funny Farm. This, supposedly for a bland chat…and…yeah. Transparently to nose around in my house and see how I live and probably to see if they can get me committed to an old-folkerie if I dwell in stacks of litter.

Fortunately, because the ineffable Luz was slated to come by in the near future, I had picked up the place and put all the dishes in the washer and stuffed the dirty clothes in the laundry and…voilà! It looked almost like someone civilized lived here.

That was lucky!

{whew!}

If I’m going to be spied upon like that, presumably by my son’s hired help, after this I’m gonna have to make the bed and pick up the clutter the minute I roll out of the sack.

Not that it’s a bad thing to tidy up the place the minute your feet hit the bedroom floor. But that it’s a damn nuisance…and an invasion of one’s privacy.

And it makes me wonder, seriously, if I should pack up and move out of the city.

But….where? 

That mystifies me 

First, because this neighborhood is about as ideal a neighborhood as I can imagine. The house is within easy walking distance of not one, not two, but THREE major (gourmet-style!!) grocery stores, a veterinary, a computer store, a hair stylist, and a Target.

Seriously: I don’t have to travel more than about five or six blocks to get everything needed for day-to-day living here. Truth to tell, I don’t even need to own a car to live here comfortably and conveniently.

Second, because the neighbors are very nice, very friendly. Even Tony the Romanian Landlord has mellowed out! This makes it a pleasant place to live.

Third, because a major regional hospital is about a four-minute ambulance ride from here. Dial 911, and the rescue guys (and gals) show up forthwith.

Fourth: because the crime level — not nil, of course — is surprisingly low for an urban neighborhood. Yes, of course I have fierce burglar-resistant screen doors on all the entrances, and of course they’re kept locked. But I don’t feel especially at risk, sitting here in the Funny Farm. In another neighborhood where we lived, I surely did.

Hmmmm……

Having those two clowns show up here and nose around was…disturbing, to say the least. I may have to hire the cleaning lady to come by once a week. Right now, I surely don’t do that…can’t afford it.

But…let’s think about that: I can afford weekly cleaning help one whole helluva lot better than I can afford to be locked up in a prison for old folks. That would make it easier for Luz to keep the place spotless, and also I could probably put her up to driving me to various retail stores.

So….

I think I should make a few minor changes to my routine: ones that would create the effect of major changes in my day-to-day lazy lifestyle:

  • Forgodsake MAKE THE GODDAM BED the minute Ruby and I roll out of the sack. Be sure the bedroom and bathroom are all tidied up.
  • Pick up the kitchen and stash the dirty dishes in the washer the minute I finish breakfast. Never leave stuff laying around the kitchen or dining room. {How lazy am I? Let us count the ways…}
  • Get in the habit of picking up the house before going to bed, rather than in the morning.

Hm. That probably would do the job, since I do not habitually lay around like a total slob. If some namby-pamby showed up here, assigned with the task of inspecting my living arrangements, they’d think I live like a cleaning lady. 😀  😀  😀

Seriously: pick up the clutter first thing in the morning, and no one who shows up later in the day will get any ideas about senility affecting my lifestyle.

Is it an invasion of my privacy?

Damn right! But nothing like the invasion of (nonexistent!) privacy that would be inflicted on me in one of those prisons for old folks.

A-n-d…here we have another December…

More to the point, soon we will have another nuisance workman here.

Two of them are slated to show up. Neither has surfaced yet.

To add to the aggravation, my pore ole’ son is coming over to supervise at least one of these worthies. (Meaning, in the Department of Aggravation, that he has to drop his paying work and traipse over to my house, whereinat to waste half the afternoon.)

Arrrrghhhh! STOP THE WORLD! I WANNA GET OFF!!

😀  😮  😀

Further to the point, y’know…apartment living is beginning to look ominously good.

True, I was never fond of dwelling in rabbit warrens. But…at least the rabbit-warren owner had to deal with all the fixits and the upgrades and the endless episodes of BS.

Today we have a plumber and an air-conditioning guy on the menu. I can hardly wait.

😀

Weirdly, the thought did enter my mind — where it came from, I know not — that maybe I would rather be renting, so that a landlord or an apartment-house manager would be running interference with the endless flow of workmen.

LOL! In the Department of Weird…

How d’you like the sign I just posted on the front door?

NO SOLICITING OR PETITIONS!

Occupant is ill and will not buy from you or sign your papers.
Please do not ring the doorbell.
Please go away quietly.

We’ll see how well that (doesn’t…) work.

*****

Ugh!!!!!  We get people here EVERY DAY jangling the doorbell, hustling this scam and that scam. Or pushing this politician or that politician. Or trying to get you to sign this petition or that petition.

Hmmmm….. I seem to have dorked up the formatting for this post. Let’s wrap it up, attempt to post it, and see what happens next…..

No, Thank You!!! And it works!

Okay, so now we’ve posted a fresh new edition of our front-door message:

Please be kind enough not to steal this sign

NO SOLICITING, PLEASE

NO PETITIONS, PLEASE

Kindly do not jangle the doorbell.

Occupant is ill and does not wish to yak with you.

Occupant does NOT buy from solicitors.

Astonishingly, I’ve found this little poster actually works to discourage nuisances and idiots from leaning on the doorbell or pounding on the screen door in their efforts to peddle stuff. These days, I hardly get ANY hustlers at the door!

Before I came up with this thing, I’d get at least one pest every two or three days — often one or two a day.

Frankly, I really am amazed that it does work. I seal it inside one of those transparent plastic binder sheet holders. This keeps it dry and seems to protect it pretty well from the ravages of the sun — although it’s in the shade most of the day, anyhow.

LOL! I guess they figure if you’re gonna go to that much trouble to make a sign to shoo them off, you’re not gonna buy anything from them or stand around listening to their political gab. First time I made one of these things, I figured they’d just steal it.

But amazingly, no! Never have had one stolen(!!). And the nuisance doorbell-jangling has fallen to nil. That’s why I know it’s working: we get rafts of those pests.

You do have to put it inside a plastic binder sheet, partly because if they can tear down a piece of paper, they will take that, and partly because the plastic cover nicely protects your sign from rain and blasting sunlight.

Gawd. What a world, eh? Where you have to erect weather-proof signs to keep people from pestering you in your own home!