Coffee heat rising

Shopping

Hubs of Hades Central!

by

LOL! Yesterday I reported that it was hotter than the hubs of Hades here. And yea, verily: so it was.

BUT…we hadn’t seen Hades yet, by yesterday afternoon. Today it’s handsomely HOT and stickily HUMID. Ick!!!!

Seriously: I’d planned to walk over to one of the three nearby grocery stores and pick up a few food items this morning.

Uh…no. Nope, noooo indeed.

Fortunately, we have plenty of dawg food: enough to last a good week or ten days.

Human food: likewise. Plenty of frozen salmon, pieces of steak, pasta, veggies, and whatnot.

Shouldn’t have to raid a grocer for at least ten days; probably two weeks. Amazon will ship the dog food. Human food also: to a degree….but personally, I like to see and examine my own chow before I buy it. This, however, should not be a problem. Just get out of the house about the time a store opens, and it should be easy to dodge the soggy heat.

My neighbor was out front pruning shrubbery when I trotted past his house. Man of steel, I’ll tellya! You couldn’t pay me to do that in this weather. BUT…it does have to be done…and hiring some hapless wretch to do it for you is likely to bankrupt you.

At any rate, as I frolicked  past, he assured me that he would drive me to a store if need be.   🙂

The supermarkets nearby (three of them!) open at around 7:00 a.m. So if I roll out of the sack at sunrise, I’ll be able to walk over to a nice store and stock up on whatever I need, before it gets too hot. But seriously: I don’t think that will be necessary for awhile.

PLUS: the other day a neighbor invited me to visit the nearby Sprouts with her. She drove us over there. That was nice…AND it was fun. So I may be able to talk her into a repeat trip.

And a variety of professionals and service providers operate within walking distance:

* ophthalmologist
* veterinarian
* computer store (2 of ’em)
* drugstore/pharmacy
* supermarkets (2 huge ones), each with its own pharmacy (a third lurks across Main Drag West)
* hair stylist

On and on and on, actually…. Truth to tell, there really is no need to go outside the Funny Farm’s immediate neighborhood to get about 98% of one’s standard needs done. Especially with Amazon filling in the gaps!

Y’know, this is how it was when DXH and I lived in London for several months, while I worked on the Robert Sidney book. We never needed a car, unless we took it into our heads to go sight-seeing in the country. I suppose that means Phoenix has “grown up” as a city: it now functions as a genuine metropolis.

WhatEVER: just now I feel pretty confident that I’ll be able to live here at the Funny Farm for at least a couple more years — maybe longer than that. Especially if I can hire someone to come in and take care of the house, drive me to requisite destinations, and generally ride herd on me.

We shall see if that proves to be true! 😀

Another Gray Day in Arizona…

by

Leave us all enjoy it!

LOL! A Phoenix radio station, extant some years ago, used to have a talk-show announcer who would start the day with his trademark greeting:

It’s another beautiful day in Arizona!
Leave us all enjoy it!

This particular illiteracy was apparently some sort of Midwestern dialect.

Today is another muggy, damp day in Arizona. No clouds to speak of, but the air is just plain soggy.

Just back from trudging around the park with Ruby the Corgi. Absolutely positively NOT in the mood for a morning stroll through air as thick as Jell-O. But now we’re home (at last!). The coffee is steeping. The dog is flopped on the hallway floor; the human is flopped in its favorite easy chair.

My son wants me to compile a grocery list for him. He doesn’t get the picture — and won’t, no matter how desperately I try to explain. To wit: I don’t do grocery lists! 

Nope. I know what I need, and when I get to the store, I patrol the aisles…grabbing whatever I see that needs to be replenished. Ask me face to face what those needs are, and…I dunno. 

So that will start the day with an annoyance, both for me and for my excellent son, who proposes to haul me to said store. Pore guy!

Day-dreaming while hiking this morning: remembering the Moon Valley home of a now long-gone friend. When she and her husband moved into the house, it needed a lot of superficial fix-up work. I went over there to help them: paint, drywall repair, window caulking…

It was kinda fun, though it quickly devolved into boring work, and more work than I’d had in mind doing.

Work! It’s bad for your health!

 

AUGH!!!

by

Comin’ right on to 7:00 p.m.  No sign of my excellent son. He’d said he would make a grocery-store run and bring a bunch of stuff by here. {chortle!} Apparently, the “run” turned into an expedition! 😀

Seriously: I do hope he’s OK. If he’s gone to the slum market to the north of the ‘Hood, that place ain’t very safe. It sure isn’t a venue one would want to visit in the dark. Or near-dark.

Well…we’ll find out, soon enough.

Hotter than the hubs out there: dusk or no dusk.Walked about six houses down the block to drop a misdelivered piece of mail into a neighbor’s mailbox. Ugh! Not only hot, but humid!

No clouds, but the air feels like a sauna.

Oh, well. The envelope (with its contents) is now in the correct mailbox. The human is back in its house. The dawg is snoozing in her favorite hideaway: under the toilet. And…I wonder where my son is! 

Gosh, I hope he’s OK. If his car is crapped out, I’ll have to hire the Uber guy across the street to schlep me over to wherever the kid is. That, as we know, is because my son has purloined my car, in the belief that his superannuated muther needs to quit driving.

Well…I’ll give him another half-hour or 45 minutes and then pester him on the phone. (Won’t he be pleased?)

What a yucky afternoon/evening!!  Hot, hot, HOT. Humid. And now dark.

Y’know…I’m coming to really dislike living in Phoenix. 

* Driving around this place is a freaking nightmare.
* Walking ain’t any better.
* Where once I rarely felt unsafe, now I get the willies every time I walk to the grocery store.
* The Albertson’s grocery store staff has conceived its own willies! They’ve decided everyone who walks in the door is a shop-lifter, an assumption that does not make for a fun shopping experience.
* The Fry’s ain’t much better…  And it’s a longer walk away, through a shadier neighborhood.

Considering the possibility of moving out to the far, far east side, where my cousin lives in an upper-middle-class tract. Problem is, it’s a LONG way from my son’s present home: damn near an hour’s drive through Phoenix’s bat-sh!t traffic. He sure ain’t gonna move out there because I do: his dad and New Wife live here in the ‘Hood.

So…I reckon as long as he’s here, I’m stuck here. Could be worse, o’course: lots worse. This is a nice neighborhood, very centrally located, with three major grocery stores in easy walking distance and a train and a raft of busses and…on and on. Dunno where I’d go that’s any better.

***

Ah hah! Got him on the phone. He was (audibly) in a restaurant, apparently with his Dad and New Wife. That’s good!  Sorry to pester him…but happy to hear he’s with loved ones and glad he’s not out there driving around the dark. 😀

Never a proverbial dull moment….

Beerless in Gaza…

by

Well, that was one of the weirder junkets I’ve made in the past few years. 😀

It went like this:

* Out the door
* Wander up Main Drag West past the Prod church
* Stroll on through the Albertson’s, planning to buy…
*…to buy?
*…to buy WHAT?
*How’s about picking up a six-pack of beer?
* Bah! Too much bother to carry home
* Exit Albertson’s, empty-handed
* Stroll around shopping center
* See exactly nothing of interest
* Walk back to Main Drag West toward the house
* Pass Prod church again
* Enjoy kids playing outside in their yards
* Hike up toward the Funny Farm
* Arrive back at the Funny Farm
* Shouldn’t I have bought a six-pack of beer?
* Bah! What on earth for? I’m gonna hike six blocks, then  turn around and hike six blocks back home, to buy…to buy…what? A bottle of beer?

I’m crazy. but I’m not THAT crazy. 😀

Seriously: It was a pleasant short hike on a beautiful afternoon, to buy…NOTHING. 

Yet there was something strangely pleasing about having gotten out of the house, strolled a half-mile down to the store, strolled another half-mile home, and spent NOTHING on anything! 

Meanwhile, there in the yards we have kids playing, grown-ups puttering, pooches frolicking, soft wind blowing…what a perfect afternoon!

This, I need to do more often!

YOWCH!!!!

by

Ouch, every which way from Sunday! In the hip. In the feet. In spavined fingers… Every goddamwhich way from Sunday!

Thank HEAVEN for Amazon! Honestly: I have NO idea how on earth I would cope if somehow I had to traipse to the store for everygoddamthing the dog and I need. Just walking up the hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen hurts, HURTS, and then HURTS some more!

At any rate, now we have a new bag of dawg food ordered. Yes: WITHOUT having to pay for an Uber ride, WITHOUT having to hike four blocks (+++) to the stores, WITHOUT damn near crippling my idiot self to retrieve a couple of ordinary, boring daily items.

So, now we’re set for several more days. Much is it to be hoped that by then I’ll be recovered enough from whatever ails me to negotiate the neighborhood shopping.

We can’t easily get fresh food by ordering it on Amazon. But…really, that only needs to be purchased about once a week. And we’ve discovered a fine GODSEND here in the ‘Hood: a guy directly across the street(!!!) is driving an Uber cab!!!!

Wow: what incredible luck, eh?

At any rate, now all I have to do is stumble over to his house and beg him to schlep me around, and voilà! Problem solved.

Great galloping ZOT, am I tired of hurting. 

Long as I’m laying on the bed, the body seems sorta OK — but o’course, wouldn’cha know: that’s an illusion. The instant I get off the sack...ohhhhh my gawd! The back hurts. the hip hurts, the feet hurt, the…everygoddamthing hurts.

Well…it doesn’t seem to be terminal, anyway. With any luck, in a few days Whatever This Is will settle down, and then the Dawg and I can go on about our dog-‘n’-human business in our wonted fashion.

In the meantime… Kid, don’t get old. Gettin’ old freakin HURTS!

Tromping, Endlessly Tromping…

by

For reasons unknown to The Olde Bat, this afternoon my right hip is spavined. And Boy! Does it hurt! 

No idea why: don’t recall slipping or tripping or sleeping cattywampus. All I know is…I can barely hubble up the damn sidewalk!

Needed to make a grocery-store run this afternoon. The Albertson’s is close: only a few blocks down the road. But man! By the time I got there, scooped up a bag of loot, and headed out of the store, it felt like I’d traipsed halfway to China and back. And I still had to get home!

Finally made it…after seemingly endless limping and limping and limping and limping… Whew! 

So here we are, hunkered in out of the rain (water hasn’t started falling out of the sky yet, but it soon will), chowing down in the company of the Hound, and thinking it will be tomorrow morning before we hobble into the kitchen to load up the dishwasher.

Hmmm…  Here we have news of some monster Gmail hack. Helle’s Belles, I don’t even know what they’re talking about, much less understand what to do about it. Afraid I”m gonna have to shut down all my google mail accounts. And that’ll be the end of that.

{sigh} No question of it: I’ve come unstuck in time. And so I no longer live in our society, with our contemporaries. Not only can I not follow this kinda kee-rap, I don’t want to. That, I think, is the operative feature: I just no longer want to hassle with whatever new monster headache is rolling up the pike.

Y’know what I’d like to do? 

Go way to hell back into the boondocks and buy our ranch back from whoever has it in their grimey hands now. Shut down everything in the flickin’ city. Pack up the car and the clothes and the riding boots and the little dawg and MOVE BACK into the FLICKIN’ MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.

Yes.

The Middle of Nowhere looks better and better with each passing day.

* You don’t need a password to get into your mail, because your mail lands in a tin box on a stake at the entry to your ranch.

* You don’t need to hike half your life with a bag of groceries, because you drive into the next town up the road to get to the store.

* You don’t have to keep up with the latest brain-banging technology, because in reality you’re living in the late 19th Century.

* You don’t have to deal with a crazy-making Mayo Clinic staff or a berserk solo practitioner, because there are no damn doctors out there in the middle of nowhere.

* You do not have to cope with a swimming pool that will have to be cleaned (again!!!) tomorrow morning after tonight’s pending storms, because no one in their right mind would have a pool on a ranch in the middle of Wonderful Nowhere.

* You don’t have to figure out how to drag your dawg to the vet, because the only vets out there deal with cows, not corgis.

Gawd spare me, Lord!