Coffee heat rising

Scams & crooks

The Great Clothespin Caper

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Well, I finally got a box of wooden clothespins ordered up.…received, and hidden inside the garage. So that little caper is resolved.

Yeah: Believe it or not, some a$$-hole actually STOLE THE BAG OF CLOTHESPINS that hung off my clothesline. No kidding!

The clothesline resides in the shelter of the side porch, on the west side of the house. Some sh!thead workman who was at my house lifted the clothespins and made off with them the other day.

Thank the Heavens for Amazon!  Since I’m no longer allowed to drive a car, I would be out of luck, since there’s no way I could walk to a local dime store or Target to buy another batch of clothespins. Can you imagine?

This new collection will have to reside inside the garage, adding another small layer of inconvenience to the Hassle Factors that now, more and more, characterize my daily life.

But just think of that: I actually have to hide my clothespins to keep some clown from stealing them!

Y’know, it’s the kind of thing I would have expected when we lived in Saudi Arabia. There, Americans (and Europeans…and any other aliens) were regarded as depraved and godless heathens. The locals felt entitled to steal anything that wasn’t red-hot or nailed down. But here? In the land of the free, the home of the brave? Clothespins???? 

Jeez. If you’re gonna steal something, steal something that’s worth some cash.

{chortle!} Speaking inconveniences inflicted by the army of workmen: One of the turkeys, for reasons I cannot imagine, hauled my gas barbecue off its brick stand, hauled it out into the middle of the backyard and LEFT IT THERE, parked in the dirt.

Well…it’s already 6:30. Ruby and I had better get going on the morning’s dog-and-human walk. Pretty quick, we’ll have another army of nuisances at the front door…and if I don’t get a mile of walking in every day, this damned spavined hip freezes right up. Speaking of nuisances… 😮

Don’t get old, kids…whatever ya do!

{Bellyache Bellyache…}

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Migawd, those poor people who have to work outside in this UNHOLY heat and humidity. This morning it’s a swamp out there. And yeah, that’s the only way to describe it.

But as Ruby and I swam around the block through the soggy air, we came across one yard dude after another slamming around in this heat: pushing lawnmowers (or, if they were lucky, riding them), through heat and humidity thick enough float in. Horrible, horrible morning.

Walk in the door at 7:30 a.m. Ringy dingy ringy dingy ringy dingy…. Goddam phone solicitor!

Me to A**-hole, at high volume: GET OFF MY PHONE AND STAY OFF MY GOD-DAMNED PHONE!!!!!!

God, how I hate that. Really, I should disconnect the phone when I go to bed at night. But I’m afraid if some emergency comes up, M’hijito won’t be able to reach me. Or I may not be able to reach him.

Phone soliciting, though, really should be illegal. In these parts, though: far from it. Here, it’s a prison industry.

No kidding. When your phone jangles with a nuisance call, chances are there’s a convict on the other end of the line.

Even if he or she weren’t serving a term for some fun crime, I’d still rather not talk with them. Especially not over the phone. Especially not at 7:00 in the morning!

Red-Hot or Nailed Down….

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That was what my parents used to say about the locals where we lived in Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf: “If it’s not red-hot or nailed down, they’ll steal it.”

Uh huh.

Well, now you can say that about the Yankee set.

Honest to gawd. ANYTHING that you carelessly set down out of your sight or out of your house is GONNA get stolen.

***

This afternoon a UPS guy showed up with a package.

My hip still being somewhat spavined, I hobbled out to the curb on my hiking stick. It looked kinda like this…  Or this…

Got back inside the house. Went to pick up the stick, to put it away…and… Yeah. Gone. Nowhere to be found.

Couple of hours later: I still haven’t found it. 

So I must have dropped it by the guy’s truck and he took it, or else I dropped it on the ground out there and some damn passer-by grabbed it. WhatEVER: it’s gone. 

Replacing it via Amazon will cost about $30 to $50, and nothing there looks as nice as the one I had.

The Sprouts on the far side of Main Drag West carries them — or it did, last I noticed. But my gawd! As we scribble, the temp in the shade of the back porch is 103…and that’s at 6:30 in the evening!

If Sprouts is selling the things for less than Amazon does, it might be worth hiking to the store through the heat. Unfortunately, their website says nothing about canes or walking sticks or anything like that. And I sure as Hell don’t wanna plow all the way over there through the heat, only to find they no longer carry them.

So…. Helle’s belles. Looks like the path of least resistance is gonna be to pay through the schnozzola to buy a new one from Amazon.

Dayum!

Lazy, Hazy, Gauzy Day of Summer

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Well: Day of Spring: it’s only April. But in Arizona, the weather will be summerish by most region’s standards.

What a strange and gorgeous day. Lovely, balmy temperature beneath high, soft gray clouds.

Normally, Ruby and I would have taken off for the park by now. But I’ve spavined a hip, so she and I loaf. She has taken over the foot of the bed, and I’ve repaired to a pile of pillows. What could be better, eh?

A-a-a-n-d…as we scribble, in comes another fake email under a friend’s name. At least two dozen of these have hit my in-box over the past year or two. She’s a fellow volunteer at the church — or was a “fellow” while I was still doing that. Dropped out of the choir and the church phone-answering job when my son started dragging me to the Mayo every Sunday morning: the end of a fun activity and the loss of a bunch of friendly associates.

ohhhh well. Anyway, I haven’t been able to shake the scamming emails, no matter what I do to try to block them. Just now, dozens of these reside on my in-box…it’s gonna take an hour or two to delete them all. What a damn nuisance!

Better get to work on that….

Here’s another one, claiming an auto-payment to Cox will be made…in the amount of $115.

Oh, yeah?  I don’t normally do auto-pays, for obvious reasons. So…scam or no scam? Do I really have to call Cox today and navigate their nuisance-y system to find out WTF this is?  And if it is a scam, how did they get my payment data???

And why would Cox be gouging me for $115, when I don’t make long-distance calls?

Godlmighty, am I sick of this stuff!!!!!!!

G*d-D***ed PHONE

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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?

Go-o-o-d Morning, America!

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Just back from a mile-plus peregrination of the ‘Hood, dragged along by my furry boss. How can I count the ways I just wanna sit down and swill a cup of coffee?

Stumble over to the easy chair. Flop down in it. And…

RINGY-DINGY-DINGY!

Goddamned phone. A Goddamned phone solicitor on the other end.

I tell him where to make his next phone call and slam down the receiver.

Honest to Gawd. Phone soliciting should be illegal. Seriously: I realize it’s “freedom of speech” and all. But shouldn’t the rest of us have something like “freedom of privacy” or “freedom of peace and quiet”?

***

The neighborhood park is so lovely! I adore this area. Beautiful, quiet, upscale, affluent, right in the middle of everything

O’course it ain’t perfect. Right across the street from the park stands a house whose occupants fled after a pair of home invaders barged in, grabbed them, tied them up, threw them in the bathtub, and proceeded to loot the house.

So. If you live here…yeah: you keep your doors locked all the time. And you do NOT answer the door unless you know who’s on the other side and what they want.

But then…come ON! No place is safe. Just the other day some sh!thead barged into a madly upscale home in Fountain Hills, a mighty swell dive. And I’ll tellya: before that happened, I would have said Fountain Hills is as staid and secure as you can get, this side of Sun City.

My mother, who was scared of her own shadow, cowered in terror all the time she lived in Sun City. She dwelt behind heavily locked doors and windows. And yet…really…she was less terrorized out there than anywhere else we lived.

Something must have happened to her. If it did, she never told me. But really: you wouldn’t act like that unless you had some reason to be scared.

Me, I find the company of a dog amply reassuring. Ruby is no German shepherd (not by a long shot!). But she does alert whenever anyone comes around.

And really, that’s about all a dog can do for you. You’re the one who has to take care of yourself: get to a safe place, grab your pistol, call the cops, whatEVER.

Ruby: the four-legged burglar alarm.
😀