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Good grief! It’s Bankruptcy Day at the Funny Farm!

😮

Actually, I can’t complain. Or at least, shouldn’t complain. Much.

The other day, the garage door opener — cry the beloved garage door opener! — gave up the ghost.

Died on the vine. Kaput.

Though the door can easily be opened and closed manually, given the Garden Spot we live in here, a functioning garage door opener is not an optional luxury. Whatever is inside that place — from clothespins to car — will eventually be stolen or vandalized if a sturdy door isn’t closed and locked. And heaving it open and closed and then securing it closed with a couple of concrete blocks is less than desirable, as daily habits go. An electric door opener gadget shuts the door behind you and securely locks it.

So today I had my preferred garage door mechanics come and install a new opener. Admittedly, it was a Job. Took them half the morning.

And admittedly, the thing works wonderfully now: smoother than it did, quieter than it did, snazzy all around. They did an excellent job (far’s I can see), and the new unit has THE best lights on it: they light up the whole interior of the (formerly dim) garage, bright as day.

But…

But…

But then we have the bill…

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS!!!!!

Holeee shee-ut.

Well…okay… I hafta say, it took two guys who clearly knew what they were doing a good two hours to install the thing. And it looked like a bitch of a job. So…despite some grousing…I think that’s probably not an unfair price. Much.

I’ve been in this house a good 12 or 14 years, and that unit was far from new when I moved in. So if we’re looking at a brand-new gadget that’s likely to last 15 to 20 years, is a PITA to install, and protects your car and your home from theft…it’s prob’ly a bargain.

I guess.

But wouldn’t it be nice to live someplace where you didn’t have to count on the locals roaming into your garage, stealing you blind, and maybe even strolling into the house thru the kitchen door?

Yeah. Just imagine!

Ultimately (speaking of home updating/improving/whatnot) I did order the linen lampshade from Amazon. Let us hope — sincerely — that it’s as described.

Drove all over the damn city yesterday  and NOBODY had a lampshade even vaguely resembling the one my mother bought back in the Dark Ages. Local retailers had junk, pricey junk, and spectacularly overpriced junk. But not one simple linen lampshade for a living-room-sized table lamp.

So I ordered one up. Jayzus! Delivery included: EIGHTY-TWO DOLLAH AND FIFTY CENTS!!

Ohhhhh well. If it lasts long enough for my son to inherit it and then survives (as this one did) another 15 years after that, I guess it’ll be worth it.

arrghhhhh

Stop the effin world! I wanna get off!

boyoboy, am i lazy!!!

Seriously. What kind of loafer bellyaches because she has to get off her duff to pick up her messy house so the Cleaning Lady from Heaven can come in and work herself half to death scrubbing the place down?

That would be moi.

But truth to tell, I just do not feel like getting up and putting all the junk away.

Today is gonna be a whole day of don’t-wannas.

• Don’t wanna pick up the mess.
• Don’t wanna traipse to Best Buy and get them to explain why I can’t back up the laptop, and maybe with any luck get them to fix it.
• Don’t wanna drive so much as down to the end of the block, to say nothing of over to the most crowded, hectic stretch of hateful Camelback Road.
• Don’t wanna try to find out what happened to Pool Dude, who seems not have surfaced this week. So far.
• Don’t wanna go over to the Toyota shop and argue about whatever the latest recall is about.
• Don’t wanna traipse to AJ’s and stock up on dog and human food…again.
• Especially don’t wanna have to order this damn thing, to the tune of $84 plus shipping.
  • Wait, i take that back. Because i have Amazon prime, i don’t have to pay for shipping…assuming i play my cards right.

Yeah. Somehow the large, expensive lampshade on the brass lamp that stands near the front door got ripped. I think because I gently touched it…

The shades are so old that their linen has kinda turned to tissue paper.

Seriously: my mother bought these lamps in San Francisco, when she and I came home from Arabia to stay — and several months before my father arrived. That would have been about in 19 and aught-57…

Since he wasn’t here to stop her, she went all out with the home decorating frenzy. Bought stuff in very nice stores in the City…read “very expensive.” Macy’s. The Emporium. City of Paris. I. Magnin. The White House….

Gosh, those were the good ole’ days! 😀

He would never have allowed her to buy these things. His idea of “pricey” was Price Club, a predecessor to Costco. The concept of spending a little (or a lot…) more to buy a quality product, one that wouldn’t fall apart every time you turn around, was lost on him. He was so cheap, he wouldn’t even shop in Costco, once it established itself. After she died, he bought a junk lounge chair at a low-end furniture dealer called John F. Lawhon. “Junk” was an understatement…

She never told him how much she’d paid for the stuff. He’d have divorced her if he found out.

No kidding: periodically he would threaten to divorce her if she didn’t quit spending “his” money.

My son still has her dining room table. I glommed the matching chairs, which reside in my dining room. And the handsome bureau drawers and nightstands. And I still have five of the pricey lamps she bought. Wish I still had everything…

One of the lamps, which resides in my office now, is made of Venetian glass. It’s a gorgeous thing. Others were solid brass. And it’s one of those brass lamps that needs a new shade.

The old shade just fell apart, so ancient is it. I’m thinking I’ll order this overpriced thing from Amazon…having spent several hours yesterday traipsing around the city looking for a credible replacement.

Welp…better get up and start shifting around…

😀  Honest to GAWD!

WHY??? Why is it that EVERYTHING I WANT OR NEED TO DO has gotta be done the hard way?

This, as you may instantly have surmised, is one of those days.

You know: the kind of day when everything you touch, everything you want to do, everything you have to do goes ker–SPRROOOOIIIINGGGGGGGG!

Look crosswise at it, and it flies apart.

Immediate case in point: The Mayo has assigned me to some new doc I never heard of. Last I talked to them, I got the impression she’s at the hospital up the freeway off 56th Street. That’s a long way away, but nowhere near as far as the one in Scottsdale, which is halfway to freakin’ Payson.

So I go to look this woman up…hmmm…  No luck there. Call the hospital to confirm my suspicion: NO ANSWER!  This is a freakin’ holiday!

Yeah. Labor Day.

Like those of us who don’t work know it’s another blank day on the calendar, hm? And NO ONE is answering the phones over there.

Got that?

A huge institution with a hospital and two large office buildings and an army of doctors and staff plus a nationwide telephone network, and not one person is fielding phone calls.

IS there a question of whether we live in a Third-World country? If so, whence any such question?

***** 6:09 p.m. *****

Wow!

The day went straight downhill from there.  And wouldncha know: it’s Labor Day, so there’s no help any way you look!

Okay, so the Labor Day phenomenon explains why NO ONE is answering the phones at the Mayo. Like…they can’t afford to pay one minimum-wage receptionist overtime for ONE DAY to answer the effing phones?

Y’know…when you don’t work, there are no holidays. Every day is a holiday.

JAYZUZ!

What a day from Hell!!!!!

Out in the backyard, I’m futzing around the pool. And…and…wondering why the cascades of cat’s-claw vines that cover the back wall and pile up high enough to keep passers-by from peering into the pool areas are all dried up and dying.

Yes. The vines appear to be withering away.

So more futzing..futz…futz…futz…a-a-a-n-d WHOA!!!!!!!

What should I find, while batting around in the shrubbery, but that the soaker hose that I ran along the base of that wall in behind the shrubs, the hose that’s been on a timer for all these years, has been CUT!

Say what???

Climb around climb around climb around the poking, stickery shrubs…and…and…yeah.

That hose has been SLICED IN TWO!

What…

The…

FVCK!!!!!

No wonder the plants have been withering away.

They’re pretty xeric shrubs. So they’re still marginally alive, despite not having any city water for God only knows how long. They’re as close as they can get to dead without being dust-to-dust…but I think they’ll come back if they’re liberally watered.

But…ohhhhhh the fishiness of it.

In the first place, that hose is way back against the wall underneath the thick plants. The only way you could get at it to slice it in half — and that’s what we’re looking at here: a clean slice, like a knife cut — would be either to climb under the plants or to pull it out. From the look of it, the perp apparently climbed under or through the shrubbery to get at it.

So…I think Gerardo may just have gotten fired. We shall see…but it’s going to depend on whether I can find another yard guy, and if so, what kinda yard guy.

Speaking of events in the Back Yard, I took the New Harvey up to Leslie’s to get whatever is wrong with it fixed.

The guy told me it was on the warranty — that the work would be free.

Yesterday when I got home from the store, I realized…hey, waitaminit here…they charged me 45 bucks!

This afternoon, drive back up there, march up to the door, and…yeah. They’re closed.

Of course. It’s Labor Day.

So tomorrow I’ve got to lay siege to those clowns. But I won’t have time to do that because I have to trudge up to the Mayo to see a new MayoDoc, and that will soak up the better part of the day.

JUST what I wanna do with another day of my goddamn time!!

Ohhhh well. On the way back from the doc’s I can stop off at Leslie’s and do battle with them. Yay. What fun.

Meanwhile, I can’t get into my goddamn checking account…AGAIN. This, I discover in the process of trying to find out whether there’s enough cash in there to cover a $2280 (!!!!!) AMEX bill. So that means that in addition to suffering through a miserable doctor’s appointment with a new doc to whom I have to try to explain EVERYTHING all over again without sounding like a raving lunatic, I’m going to have to do battle with the credit union.

NONE of the secret codes they’ve given me will get me into my account online. So that means I have to traipse all the way over there after I get away from the Mayo and ask them how much is in my checking account. This will require me to drive halfway across the west side, adding another 50 minutes to tomorrow’s traipsing time.

ohhhhh gooodie!

It’s 6:30 at night.

Storm clouds are blowing in as we scribble.

And the back-porch thermometer says it’s 105 in the shade.

Here in the coolest room in the house, loafing in the direct breeze from an air-conditioner vent, the thermometer says we have 80 degrees.

Wunderground puts the outside temp at 109, with a crackling 15% humidity.

Lovely Arizona. Why do people choose to live here?

***

Hm… Apparently I was too fried to finish this y’day.

It’s 3:30 in the morning — the usual annoying wake-up call for the superannuated. Don’t get old, kids! It’s one irritant after another… 😮

At any rate: 3:30 a.m. and we’re down to a chilly 110, and partly cloudy. Sez Wunderground, anyway. Tomorrow — well, today actually, it being the wee hours as we scribble — we’re supposed to have a high of 116, “mostly sunny.” Ten percent chance of rain both days.

It’s that 10% that’s a killer: it means humidity will be relatively high. Truth to tell, 110 on a dry day is tolerable. But add a “chance of rain” — or even just a little humidity — and you get truly miserable heat.

August is always a miserable month, though. It being the 29th, we shouldn’t have more than another two weeks or so of this stuff. Mid-September will be hot, but not unholy hot.

**

Welp. It’s almost 4 in the morning. Just won another Outspell game (you see how bored one gets in one’s dotage…). I’m going back to bed.

I hope…

Here it is, mid-morning of an August day, high monsoon season.

We’ve been told repeatedly that (eeeeek!!) a HURRICANE is blowing in from the west and (eeeeeeek!!) we must be prepared for heavy winds and lots of rain.

Eeek.

Well. What we have is a gray, overcast, still day. But so far nary a drop of rain.

Usually if the Valley is going to get rain, our parts are first to see it. That’s because the ‘Hood backs up against a set of low mountains that marks the north end of the central part of town. Those hills collect rain clouds, so we get most of the action.

It’s plenty humid, that’s for sure. Some laundry that I set out on hangers to air-dry is still damp, after hours of hanging there. The sky is solid gray. But it ain’t a-lettin’ go of any raindrops.

The media just LOVE rain here. It’s such a rare and bizarre phenomenon that it gives local reporters (such as they are) opportunity to croon on and on and ON about…nothing…

We’re told that

• Eeek eek! Hurricane Hillary moves north!!! Aieeeggghhh!
• Omigod omigod  you’ve gotta get sandbags!!! Hurry! Yow!
• Rain! Rain, we say! Omigawd it’s gonna RAIN!!!!!
• LIVE UPDATES woweee zoweee!!!!!!!

Heh heh…The nice thing about rain predictions for reporters in Arizona is that you can fill up space without having to get up from behind your desk and doing any actual…you know…reporting.

Hm. I’m thinking I should take Ruby for another walk now, before (if) it starts to rain again. The nice thing about the cloud cover is that it’s keeping the temps down in the tolerable range.

But we went out at our usual 5:30 a.m. hour — get out much later than that, and you’re toooooo late.

And as a practical matter, my enthusiasm for traipsing over to the park and back through bathroom-level humidity is low, at best.

Wunderground, the most accurate source of weather reporting I’ve found in these parts, is also indulging in the widespread repertorial hysteria:

• Eeeek! Strong storms, rain, wind, thunderstorms!!!!
• Eeeek! Flooding, storms!!!!!
• Eeeek! 200 flights at Sky Harbor impacted!!!!

Jayzus… Guys! Teeth are “impacted.”

Airplanes are delayed.
Flights are canceled.

Just a little literacy would help a lot, when it comes to American reportage.

😮