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And again…and again…and again….  Not even eight in the morning, and this has turned into One of Those Days! Nothing you try to do goes right!  Right?

Human & Dog are just back from a seemingly endless walk through a swampy morning. Around the park and through the ‘Hood. The air is so wet it feels soggy. Other folks are walking their pesky dogs, too. Here comes some clown with not one but TWO pit bulls, towing him down the street.

Cross over to the other side of the road.

Pass the house where the scion of the family got into trouble with the law, f*cking some under-age chickadee. Wrecked their lives. They seem to have lost their home. And whoever bought it is just letting it sit there. They’ve done some upgrades, in a passing way…but…there it sits. An abandoned mess.

Trudge and trudge and trudge through the wet morning. Evade two other dog-loving folk of the “they just wanna pwayyyy” variety. Godlmighty, WHY are people so STUPID? Get past them without a dog fight: that’s refreshing.

Racket from Luke Air Force Base roars through the morning air, adding to the (un)lovely ambience. Reminds me of my mother…

My, how she loved Sun City. So much so that she included the blasting of jet engines in the purview of her love. She actually liked to sit out on her screened back porch and listen to that endless R-R-O-O-A-R-R emanating from Luke Air Force Base, a few miles west of their home.

Every. Goddam. Morning.

To give you a clue: here at the Funny Farm, we’re a good twenty miles away from Luke, and that racket sounds like it’s just down the road.

“It’s the sound of freedom!” she used to simper.

Nooo, Muther. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Why are people so damn stupid?

Seriously: it never seemed to occur to her that ONE bomb could wipe out her pretty little home, her shopping centers, her L.A-style city, and…her.

****

Upwards of an hour has passed. Not only is it NOT getting lighter outdoors, it seems to be getting DARKER.

I need to get off my duff, walk down to the Albertson’s, and get the covid booster that’s about to be massively overdue. How do I not wanna? Let me count the ways…

Yup. This is going to be one of those days. 

Holeeeee maquerel, is it hot out there! In the shade of the patio shade structure, tucked away among the leaves and branches of the big old ficus plant, the thermometer measures 108 degrees.

My excellent son charged out into the blasting heat and returned with a pile of chow and treats from the Sprouts — sparing me from having to hike over there or do without. “Do without” being the most likely operative term… So now Ruby and I are well fed and loafing on the big bed — very late in the afternoon, early in the evening, it being 5:30 p.m. and still hotter than the Hubs.

Hubs outside, Hubs inside: it is just plain HOT, every which way you turn.

And lookee here what just popped up on the ever astonishing Internet! If this true (the ever-nagging if, eh?), it may cut off the pending Alzheimer’s in its tracks! Lithium is pretty easy to acquire: you can order it from Amazon!

Clearly we’re very early in that game, though. Don’t think I’ll be ordering the stuff from the Internet until we see what, if anything, it really does.

Interesting, though….

Nasty weather here in (un)lovely uptown Phoenix: hot and wet!

No, it’s not raining (yet). As we scribble by the 8:30 light of a stuffy dawn, the back porch thermometer registers a balmy 90 degrees. But Wunderground predicts a high of 108 — ah, lovely! Humidity: a mere 12%.

Things could be worse, as we well know. But still…it makes Prescott look damn good. San Francisco looks even better.

Hey! I can’t complain. We do not get snow here! Very rarely even a few minutes of hail. I’ll take a 108 degree day in trade for 32 degrees…any time!

Interestingly, when it’s customarily this hot, 12 percent humidity seems downright soggy. And that’s the case today: yep, t feels downright soggy out there!

By 7:30 the he hound and I had circumnavigated the neighborhood’s spacious local park — a stroll of bout two miles, I’d estimate. Ruby will take a doggy-walk over a loafing human, no matter what the heat or humidity.

Once again, some A-hole jangled me out of bed before 7:00 this morning, trying to subject me to a telephone sales pitch. I told him where to shove it, as I always do. That doesn’t seem to affect the jerks. Need to get a whistle or an air-horn to blast the ba*tards with.

We’re told most of those jerks are prison inmates. Apparently, nuisance phone solicitation is a prison industry. And where, exactly, are our legislators who could put a stop to that shenanigan?

Why the Hell not give these guys jobs they can do when they get out of the slam? Jobs that don’t infringe on anyone else’s privacy or business? Or…I dunno…just teach them to get better at burgling, so they have a better shot at staying out of the slam…

<<swishroar!>>

Watering system comes on automatically…odd time for it to turn on: 9:00 a.m. It normally turns on around 7:00…or sooner. Hmmm.

Ruby comes racing out of the back, demanding to go out and investigate the noise. Open the back door.

She charges outside and patrols the backyard. Finds nothing. Comes back in. Ambles back to the bedroom and flops back down.

NOT in the mood — patience-wise or finance-wise — to get the irrigation dude back here to figure that out. Sooo…what now?

Just let it run, I figure. If it doesn’t go off, I can shut the system down manually and call Irrigation Dude. But…with any luck, it will run through its cycle and then shut up.

I hope.

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

Geez, FaM’s website let me in!  I lost the log-in data and for awhile thought…well…that’s the end of scribbling blog posts! 

Whether I can get in again remains to be seen. Didn’t think the code I entered would work, so…I didn’t write it down.

Hoping that today will not be another Day from Hell. It’s overcast and muggy…gotta get up RIGHT NOW and take the dog for a walk, if we’re gonna get out today at all.

The hellish illness has eaten away at my nerves and at my son’s nerves to the point where we’re barely speaking. I don’t know what to do about it — never have been good with people, even under the best of circumstances. And what we have here appears to be about the worst of circumstances. Sooo…with social skills that rank among the bottom third, I’m kinda…fu*ked, frankly.

At any rate: awaaayyyyy!  Hope I can get back in…but if not: it was nice knowin’ ya!

The other day I enjoyed some time socializing with a business acquaintance/friend, Ken, and his very pleasant wife. They live in a planned housing development called McCormick Ranch, out in ritzy-titzy Scottsdale:  They have a nice little condo with a sweet patio verging on greenswards that make splendid hiking space.

Their apartment’s not very big — but for two retired folks, why would it need to be big? It  has a nice kitchen the size and style of mine. A handsome living-room that looks out onto a pleasant, walled-in patio, perfect for loafing of an afternoon. Or morning. Or evening. Two bland but highly serviceable upstairs bedrooms/bathrooms. Handy two-car garage.

Man! I looked at that shack and thought HOT DAYUM!  This is the place!! 

Seriously: the main reason it struck me as “the place”is that it’s right up the road from the Mayo. My son and I were slated to visit that garden spot the following day…and a “visit” to our doc’ at the Mayo entails driving driving driving…through horrid, cut-throat traffic characterized by lunatics who never should have been allowed near a steering wheel.

The Mayo is damn near an hour’s drive from our part of town. To get there from Ken’s place would take about ten minutes. Max.

Hmmmm…

O’course, that very characteristic is what makes it UNdesirable for my son and, ultimately, for me.

Those sweet li’l condos are halfway across the globe from Dear Ex-Husband’s place — meaning my son would have to drive until his car runs out of gas to see either one of us…regardless of which part of town he was aiming at. I sure don’t want to put him in a position like that. Nor do I want to have to schlep that far to get from my place to his.

So… I guess for the moment I’m stuck here in Crime Central.

***

{sigh}

Yeah. The Funny Farm is an easy target for the…uhm…locals. On the other hand, the pore li’l locals make pretty easy targets for me…especially when they set off the burglar alarm called Ruby the Corgi.

So really: I can’t very well use the Crime Situation as an excuse to drop everything and move to Scottsdale. If my son weren’t here, I’d sure think about it seriously. But he IS here, and that creates its own set of circumstances.