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Okay, okay! {grrrrrrr!} I take back this morning’s grousing about the lost lawn chair cushions, a crab-fest to which, mercifully enough, Funny’s readers were not exposed. Just a few minutes ago I found the “stolen” cushions in a back bedroom’s closet, where I’d tossed them to get them in out of the elements. And where, o’course, I’d find them easily, right?

/eyeroll/

Gorgeous, gorgeous afternoon! Sunny. Cool, but not quite cold. Even fairly quiet. It’s a miracle.

***

One of the joys of Old Age is that you forget things. Helle’s Belles, I’d forget my name if I didn’t see it just about every day. And this morning I forgot where the Helle I stashed the outdoor cushions.

Oh well. They’re found, and now I’m parked on one of them.

***

On the way home from this morning’s escapades, I once again took it into my feeble little head that maybe, just MAYBE, I’d like to move to some other neighborhood…

• Further away from the crime-ridden Sunnyslope district
• Further away from the accursed light-rail
• Closer to the beloved AJ’s grocery store, or
• Closer to the community college that will hire me if I wave my eyelashes in their direction
• A bit (tho’ not much) closer to M’Hijito’s house
• Closer to a dear friend’s house
• A very(!) short ambulance ride to not one but two first-rate hospitals
• And so on, damn near ad infinitum….

Soooo… It was out the door and into the Dog Chariot, therein to cruise lovely North Central Phoenix in search of open houses. And y’know what?

I did not see ONE HOUSE that was any better than this house. Most of them didn’t even come up to the level of this place, in terms of design, construction, and location.

What that’s tellin’ ya is that to get to a comparable or better house & neighborhood, I’d have to move to North Central or the Arcadia district. Neither of which I could even vaguely afford.

Sooooo…. It looks like either I’m stuck here for the duration, or I’m going to have to accept a sh!tload of undesirable compromises to move into a desirable centrally located neighborhood.

Guess which one is NOT gonna happen….

You know you’re gettin’ old when a passing remark on a website evokes a twinge of memory and sentimentality.

This morning I stumbled upon a mention of the late (now long late) San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen.

Oh, my: he was wonderful. Could that guy write! More to the point, he could report. My mother loved his stuff. And we subscribed to Chronicle because of Caen. Otherwise we would have been getting the rival paper, the Examiner.

He passed in 1997, it sez here. {sob!} Herb! How could you leave us?

My, it was great fun living in San Francisco for those three years or so after we came back from Saudi Arabia. I was in junior high school — early teens. There was no such thing as drugs in public schools — at least not in middle-class schools. It was safe for a 13-year-old to walk and ride the public bus to campus.

LOL! Speaking of “memory”: 21st-century building materials don’t have much…

Just now, a crew is out in the yard digging up the entire irrigation system. The plastic piping installed when I moved in here has rotted out and much of it needs to be replaced.

This is something I’ve known for awhile…though my son thinks I’m being taken advantage of. So of course that led to a lovely dust-up.

It’s a very expensive job, and I’m having to transfer money from investments to cover the bill. This, as you can imagine, does little to make my day… But in the absence of reliable watering, the landscape plants and citrus trees are dying, so the job has gotta be done.

This is the sort of thing that makes moving to a high-rise apartment look good.

It would look a lot better if I didn’t have a dog….  To live in one of those places, I’d have to litter-train Ruby (yes, believe it or not, a dog can be taught to use a cat box) and also take her downstairs and outside several times a day. Neither of those are appealing prospects.

Then you have the lovely racket of apartment living. We used to live in a high-rise apartment in San Francisco. It actually was better built and better sound-proofed than modern-day structures…but still, when the upstairs neighbor wore high-heels, you could hear her march click-click-click-click-click across the parquet floors. And listening to the neighbors’ TV shows does NOT appeal to me… 😀

Yes. Where my father used to live in his dotage, you could hear the neighbors’ TV sets nattering on. Where he parked his car, it was always at risk of break-in and theft.

Ugh! That is not how I wanna live again.

Here, the car is secured inside a closed, locked garage. I have my very own pool with a tall fence that no one can peer over. I do not have to overhear anyone else’s choice of television shows.

On the other hand…I sure could do without having to hire someone to come in, dig up the irrigation system, and repair it. This is going to cost gerjillions of dollars, which offends my Tightness Tendencies.

 

On the road. Exiting the Lowe’s, having failed to find the security door I coveted. But while walking around in there, I do discover… I’ve lost my metal card holder containing every ID and credit card to my name…

• Not in any of my pockets.
• Back into Lowe’s: Not turned in to lost & found.
• Back to the HD departments I’d visited: noooo clue.
• Could I possibly have brought my purse and just forgotten I was hauling it around? Apparently not.
• Not in the car’s ashtrays (a favorite hide-hole)
• Not under the driver’s seat.
• Or under the passenger seat.
• Or in the glove compartment.
• Or stashed in the sunshade flap thing.
• Or in the back of the car.
• Found it: in the house. On the kitchen counter. Huh?

Ever notice that inanimate objects know when you’re panicking? Especially traffic lights! Traffic lights are highly attuned to human emotions.

That card-holder thing contains every card to my name: every ID card, every membership card, every gummint ID (driver’s license included) every credit card, every debit card…AUUUUUGHHHH!!!!!!!

*******

My neighbor to the west, who otherwise seems like a normal enough person, has stuck a freakin’ TRUMP sign in her front yard. So freaked was I that I very nearly jumped out of the car, charged over there, pulled the thing out of the grass, and dragged it to the garbage.

Oh well. Each to her own.

Disappointing, though. I thought Terry had a functioning brain. Each to her own, though. Yep yep yep!

*****

Found some stuff. Enough to hope Armageddon is not, after all, headed this way. Into the sack for a VERY frustrated snooze.

Future hassle: figure out WTF.

….if it’s figure-able at all….

 

Just  back from the fastest doggy-walk in history. We’re told to expect pouring rain…and it looks like the skies are gearing up for just such. At six in the morning, skies are overcast and water is beginning to sprinkle out of the clouds.

This meant we dared not venture out on Ruby’s favorite doggy-walk route — about a mile around the park, plus a side trip into the Richistans. Around the block is about the best we could manage.

So it looks like another Day from Hell is y-cumin’ in.

There are no appointments or other hassles on the calendar for this weekend, thank the gods. These days, if it’s not written down, I’m not gonna remember it!

A variety of medico-headaches are coming up next week, but at least this weekend should be fairly calm. Then…

• Call the dentist. Sore tooth: won’t that be fun?
• Sort through the junk mail: dozens and dozens of nuisance emails from doctors’ offices, reminding me of appointments that thankyouyverymuch i KNOW about already.
• Figure out how to feed myself on this rainy day without having to drive through traffic and without having to fire up the barbecue
• Pick up the house
• Call the kid and see how he’s doing…wait until he’s had half the day to sleep in. 😀
• Get candy and assorted crap for Hallowe’en. (No hurry for that…but given my enthusiasm for that holiday, I’ll probably forget until the witching eve…)
• Play with the computer.
• Go back to bed.

And so…AWAAAAYYY!

 

…You can’t have it. Right?

It’s not even 7:30 in the morning, and this has already been One of Those Days.

Plumber is supposed to show up at 8:00…Dawg and I roll out at 6:30 or so. Feed dog. Get dressed.

Have you ever tried to deny a dog a doggy-walk?

No? Don’t even think it!

Out the door at 6:45, knowing that n-o-o-o-o-o, we will not be trekking around the park. But at least we can get …

Ahhh, the morning serenade! Reverberating merrily from Conduit of Blight Blvd: HOOOOOOONK! HONK HOOOOOOONK! HONK HONK! Some idiot must have cut off another semi-truck. Or maybe the train.

What a place!

…yesh…we can get back here before the Plumber’s appointed hour.

Dawg is highly annoyed to have her usual morning safari cut short. We approach the house. Coming from the other direction is some woman with a dog that, before our very eyes, has launched into a fight with another woman’s dog.

Fortunately, our front porch is surrounded by a walled courtyard.

Dodge in and slam the gate shut, escaping the wandering knight.

Hungry. Cranky. Not in the mood for a plumber or for anyone else.

Can’t find the coffee.

Ah! Here’s the reason! We’re almost out. Now I’ll have to traipse to AJ’s (Fancy-Dan Grocery Store) to pick up another package of overpriced coffee beans.

Reflect, as I’m boiling water and grinding coffee, that I really got ripped off the other evening, at the restaurant where VC and I went. It’s a sushi place up on North Central, in the AJ’s sh0pping center. Yes, I ordered a plate of sushi. Got some six pieces. And a beer.

They charged me thirty bucks!

Holeee shee-ut!

The ridiculousness of that hadn’t registered with me until this morning. No wonder SDXB, an accomplished tightwad, doesn’t like to go out to eat!

Well, we had a nice time. But come ON! We could’ve had a nice time at a Burger King.

Marge, my favorite neighbor, has a son who decided to start a restaurant. Apparently that’s a particularly difficult line of business in which to succeed. She abandoned her retirement to go help him run the place, so basically the whole family was hard at it. Located in a Safeway shopping center that itself was in an upscale part of town, it occupied a space where it should have seen a lot of traffic. Despite those advantages and plenty of hard work, the place still went  belly-up. No wonder restaurants have to charge so much!

That’s even though most Americans are very much into eating out. Just about any restaurant you pass is crowded during mealtime hours. But I’m more & more with SDXB: why go out to eat when you can cook as well or better yourself? Yeah: the cost is having to wash the dishes…but that’s better than thirty dollah.

one ringy-dingy…

two ringy-dingies…

Grab phone: Plumber.

Won’t be here till noon.
Translation: sometime this afternoon…

LOL! And…is there a reason I shouldn’t have expected that?

To the caller’s surprise (you can tell she’s braced for outrage), I remark that the world will not end if Our Hero doesn’t show up at the appointed minute: tell him to take his time. Astonished relief echoes down through the telephone wires.

{Yes: we still have wires here in the ‘Hood: they’re underground, but they’re wires.)

***

Overcast, hot, and humid. And aren’t you glad you don’t live in Florida?

Gaaaah! We’re better than Florida!

No doubt of it!

Eeek!

Haven’t been there but have done that.

When I was a kid, we lived in Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Our houses — the settlement was an oil camp built by ARAMCO — were sturdy enough little cement-block numbers, very comparable to the one I’m living in right now.

One summer, a storm like Florida’s came through. My mother was in a panic. My father (who, thank the Gawds of the Sea, was not at his job down at the docks just then) was manfully calm. I was fascinated.

“Get away from those windows!!!”

“Uhm…and…why?”

Unclear whether an actual tornado came through. You couldn’t see anything through the commotion, and of course out in the middle of nowhere we had nothing that resembled a weather service.

Our house — we were about a block and a quarter from the beach — stood up just fine. We didn’t even get a leak.

Others? Not so much….

My pal Ennis’s house lost its roof. Literally, the storm lifted the roof off the house and threw it on the ground.

He didn’t seem especially fazed, in the aftermath. But then, like me he may just have been too young to understand the potential.

Plus his parents didn’t have to wrestle with repairs: all our homes were company houses, so the company came in and fixed everything.

What a place!

Ras Tanura’s “hot and humid” would make Florida’s look balmy. It was so humid there that I have actually seen — more than once! — rain start to fall out of a clear blue sky.

Right now Wunderground is predicting 145-mph winds in parts of Florida. A hundred and forty-five miles per hour!

How can we count the ways we’re glad we don’t live there? Makes 115 in the shade look good…

On any ordinary day, to tell the truth, I’m mighty glad I no longer live in Saudi Arabia…or really, anywhere in the Middle East. But these days: holy mackerel!

[oooookayyyy… WordPress won’t let me add a link. So, here it is, for the copy-and-pasting: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/czrm4k1e7d0o  Best described as egad!]

It was a horrible place to live, even for a little kid who didn’t know or understand what was going on around her. You think Americans can hate? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Where those bombs are blasting away? That’s where we used to stay during my father’s biannual two-week vacations!

The American men (married women couldn’t work for the company) signed on for two-year contracts. Between each contract, you got a month off, and in the middle of the contract, you got a couple weeks off.

During those “short leaves,” as they were called, we would go to Beirut, or to Bahrein, an island off the shore of the Persian Gulf not far from where the American camps stood.

It’s horribly sad to think of a bunch of a$$holes blowing up Beirut. Despite the poverty and the hatred for Americans, it actually was quite a beautiful city. I recall this one beach we used to visit — not far from where we would stay. It wasn’t sand, exactly: it was made of tiny, smoothly eroded glass-like pebbles. Stones of many colors. Small enough and fine enough that you could walk around on them bare-footed. And so very, very pretty.

Yeah. So…let’s drop a bomb in it, right?

I see Aramco has spiffed up the Ras Tanura beach, turned it to a sorta entertainment venue. That’s too bad: it was quite beautiful enough, back in the day, and did not need to be junked up with any man-made accoutrements.

You have to be quite the adventurer — or, as my father was, extraordinarily anxious to max out your earning power — to sign on for two years in that place.  We were there for ten endless years. These photos make it look a lot less bare-bones than it was when we lived here. But still:

• It was hotter than the hubs of Hades.
• Humid as a steam-bath
• Women were not allowed to take any decent jobs: you could be a K-8 teacher, a nurse, or a secretary. That was about it.
• You had to soak every piece of produce in Clorox water, lest the stuff give you a roaring case of amoebic dysentery.
• The school went through the eighth grade. After that you were sent to Beirut, to Switzerland, or back to the U.S. for high school. And no, your parents didn’t come with you.
• At the time, the only air-conditioning was what we call “swamp cooling” today. Damp and pretty much ineffectual.
• There were two church meetings: Protestant and Catholic. If you were into religion and one of those would suffice for you, you’d go to one of those. Not very many folks did.
• Americans were roundly hated. That’s OK, I reckon: the feeling was mutual.
• You couldn’t have a dog: rabies.
• Even if you could, jackals came into the camp at night and would rip your dog, if it was caught, from limb to limb.

My mother did catch amoebic dysentery, as a matter of fact. In our LAST WEEK in that garden spot, we were invited to the home of one of my father’s coworkers. He was a guy my father openly disdained as a moron…without a doubt that attitude had become widely known. The guy’s idiot (malign???) wife served  us a salad with greens that she hadn’t soaked in Clorox, then the only effective way to sanitize produce. Before we were ready to head to Dhahran and jump on a plan back to the states, my mother came down with the parasite.

She very nearly died from it. Had to be shipped back to the U.S on an emergency flight. There she spent weeks in a hospital, being treated with the fierce and poisonous drugs they had at the time. The stuff made her desperately sick…which must have been gratifying for MacA’s bi*ch wife.

{Seriously: I am quite certain the woman knew what she was doing. She deliberately served us unsanitized produce in an effort to make us sick. And it worked!}

Eventually, my mother recovered. Got on a plane; flew back to Rasty Nasty, picked me up, and took me off to New York.

Never have I ever been so happy to leave a place. Seriously….