Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Good Morning, Dogmerica!

by

WHY, oh why are people SOOOO STUPID?

Just back from the morning (almost typed “moroning”….talk about your Freudian slips!) hike around the park. That’s a mile or so of trotting along  behind a very bossy corgi, dodging fellow dog-slaves around a lovely, grassy expanse.

Well. It would be lovely if my fellow humans could manage to cling to just a smidgeon of their brains.

Idiots.

The ones who take the proverbial cake are the nitwits who imagine their dog “just wants to pwayyy” with my dog.

Me: Please keep your dog back.

Nit: It’s OK. They just want to pwaayyyy…

Me: No, stupid. My dog just wants to eat your dog!

God, but I’m tired of stupid! 

Apparently we have a bottomless supply of it, though. Don’t seem to be able to escape it.

Please. When you’re out with your dog…

a) Keep your dog on its leash (!!!); and
b) Refrain from imagining that every other dog you encounter wants to be your doggy’s little pal!!!!!

Some of your fellow human idiots are mightily tired of being dragged into dog fights!

GORGEOUS Evening!

by

Oh, my! WHAT a beautiful evening!

Just got back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: for the first time in living memory, without the dog dragging me around. Lovely! Absolutely LOVELY.

The air is soft and delicate. No heat. No cold, either.

No one else was around, so the way was quiet and peaceful, just as gentle as gentle can be. I’ve not had as pleasant a walk in as long as I can remember!

So. After this, the Dawg gets her hike the first thing in the morning. Then I get my stroll last thing in the evening. That way, I get twice as much walking in. Ruby misses out on nothing. And I get to enjoy this lovely neighborhood.

Gosh, I hope the evenings stay this pleasant for a good long time: ideally, into and even through the summer.

That’s a forlorn hope, o’course: come late June and July, it’ll be hotter than the hubs of Hades out there.

But for the nonce, I can build a habit of a daily walk. And then when the summer blast fires up, Ruby and I can follow the same route first thing in the morning, before the sun comes up. That’ll leave only about three weeks when the summer heat makes the place truly non-navigable.

Quite a stroll it was, too. Not a single bum. No weirdos. No undue racket from the main drags. Unusual, one could say.

Arrrgh!!!! I hate computers!!!!!

by

Round and round and round and ROUND Robin Hood’s Barn trying to get back online and back into Funny about Money.

WHAT an AGGRAVATING time suck!!!!!!!

Dammit! Now I’m so frustrated and so upset, I’ve forgotten what I was gonna write about!!

LOL! I hate computers. 😀

Ohhh well….  On the subject of nothing much: Ruby and I hiked all over the ‘Hood this evening. Beautiful night. Beautiful houses. We’re incredibly lucky to have landed in this tract.

We walked by one especially lovely house that until recently was occupied by a gentleman who used to sit out in the front yard and putter. He was a sweetie! Apparently he and his wife moved, though…or, more ominously, one of them passed away. No sign of either resident lingers.

They are much missed.

As for their handsome house: it’s for sale.

Too close to Main Drag North for my taste — the noise would be interminable and obnoxious. So, even if I could afford it, I haven’t inquired. And believe me: that house, I could not afford! 😀

Most of the ‘Hood is well outside my price range. Ruby and I live in the low-rent precinct, which is on the top end of what I could afford. Actually, values have shot up since I bought here: what were once normal, middle-class tract houses are now priced on the high side of ridiculous.

Oh well: we’re brought back to the long-range goal: to pass this house along to M’hijito. If I can hang onto it…if I don’t get consigned to some prison for the elderly…he will inherit this paid-off shack, lock stock and proverbial barrel. That will present him with some appealing choices:

* To stay where he is (he has a nice, centrally located house) and sell or rent this house, thereby collecting several hundred grand

* To sell  his own place, get completely out of debt and move into this paid-off castle

* To sell his place, invest the proceeds in the stock market (or some such), move in here, and watch his investments grow

* To sell it all and RUN!

Interesting….

Let Us Try Again…

by

So…ahem!  What happens if we post another test entry? Or…what the hell: a WHOLE, REAL entry for Funny about Money???

Okay: testing, testing! 

****

Today we’re enjoying another Day from Hell. 

My poor son is so frustrated with me and so mad at me that he can barely manage to be civil. Yea verily, at times he can’t rise to that stratospheric height.

And I don’t blame him. Forgodsake, I can hardly remember my  name. I keep getting things confused. I keep fu*king things up. Everything I touch or even so much as think about goes KERFLOOIE!

And I’m starting to get really scared. Like, REALLY scared. 

Never before has the entire goddamn world gone bzzzzzzzz for me. Everything is confused. I can’t remember things. I lose things. I forget to pay bills. It’s a freaking ASTONISHING mess.

***

Wonder Cleaning Lady is here, wrestling with the pigpen. She’s a truly delightful and amazing person.

Honestly: at this point I don’t know what I’d do without her!

I  need to go to a grocery store, but dare not traipse through 100-degree heat on foot: eight or ten blocks each way. I probably could order something online…but in the past have discovered that is not a real successful way to get what you want.

Americans don’t eat a lot of fresh produce. When you order a delivery, you have to ask for packaged stuff: things that a person doesn’t have to pick out. Ask for fresh vegetables or fruit, and what you get is ick. Yeah: inedible ick.

So the only way I can get the kind of food I normally eat — largely fresh produce — is to go to the store and pick it out myself.

And…if I can’t do that, I’m in a pickle.

An inedible pickle!

Might ask her to drive me to a store…but that seems a little much. She’s spent hours cleaning this place….and now I want her to chauffeur me around?

Don’t think so….

WHOA!!!!! 

Lookee here! Sprouts opens at 7 a.m.!!!!

Holeee shee-ut! 

Even in the current weather, at that hour the air will be cool enough that I could get up there and back without succumbing to a heat stroke.

Jeez! Who knew?

Okay, let’s think about this….

If I left here at 6:30 — maybe more like 6:40, actually — I could get there just as they open. I do have a little-old-lady’s rolling cart(!!). So if I dragged that over there, I could load the groceries into it, get out of the store by about 7:30 a.m., and reach the house at 8:00.

It would still be on the low side of unbearably hot by then: no question of it. But…it wouldn’t be suicidal yet! I probably could get a pile of food and household stuff and get back here before the heat would be enough to make me sick.

Looks like temperatures are expected to be around 79 to 82 degrees at that hour.

Yeah. That’s tolerable. But yeah: I will have to shoot out of the house at dawn.

Goodie.

And as we scribble?

A hot, heavy wind has blown up. It’s roaring around out there.

That is NOT something you wanna be strolling around in. So that obviates trotting to the store this evening…even if that was something I wanted to do. Which I sure as Hell don’t….

So…hmmm…. Will I be able to BBQ tonight? Wanted to cook up the salmon my son bought for me a couple days ago.

Doesn’t look like it. But…one never knows.

Wait until Wonder-Cleaning Lady leaves and then decide, I guess.

And if this weather obviates grilling? Hmmm…  Well…there’s pasta…that’ll do the job, I reckon.

***
AUGH!!!!

Just to make everything perfect, Wonder Cleaning-Lady reports that the damn vacuum cleaner is busted.

I fiddle with it. I dork with it.

Yep. She’s right: it’s not working.

With no car, tomorrow I’ll have to DRAG it to the appliance store. Won’t that be fun!  While I’m dragging a shopping cart, too.

Okay. Let’s tempt a little fate and see if this post will go online….

 

 

Hot Day in the ‘Hood

by

Augh!  It’s just NOT that hot out there!  A piddling 92 degrees, at a feeble 7 percent humidity. But I stumbled in the house SOAKING wet, sweltering like I’d  come in from the 6th level of Hell.

Holy mackerel, is it sticky and hot out there!

Just returned from perambulating the neighborhood. True: I might have refrained from going out at 3:00 in the afternoon. Ohhh well: no IQ left.

Fortunately, I left the little dog home. She’d have been fried by now. Really: If you’d asked me, I’d have estimated about 95+ degrees: more like pushing 100.

Gerardo the Miraculous Yard Dude presented me with a new $20 gouge on this month’s bill…which now, as I gasp for air here in the A.C., I cannot find. Wouldn’tcha know?

Well, it’ll surface. What the Hell!

Interestingly (so I think, anyhow), the ‘Hood has maintained its quality, despite its advancing age and central urban location. My goodness. I’ve been here a good 15 years or more…and if anything, our streets and homes look BETTER than they did when I moved in.

This leaves me hope for my plan to leave the house to my honored son. I really would like him to have this pleasant, well built place…but that will be useful only if the neighborhood holds its value. Just now, it appears that’s exactly what’s happening!  In fact…if anything the place may be improving in maintenance and cosmetics.

 

Jobs We’re Glad We Don’t Have!

by

Egad!!!!!  It’s a chilly 100 degrees out there: rather cooler than it feels. As we loaf in the shade, who do we see across the road but a crew of men flinging themselves around in that unholy heat. Actually, they have a flatbed truck and a large hoist, with which they’re hauling a whole-house air-conditioning unit onto the neighbor’s roof.

And migawd, WHAT a job!

Definitely, indisputably one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have!

LOL! Another job I’m mighty glad I don’t have is wrangled by my excellent neighbor straight across the southerly street: He drives a cab for Uber.

HOLEE mackerel! In this heat!! And in Phoenix’s unholy L.A.-style traffic!!!

It’s almost too horrible to contemplate.

Seriously: Phoenix traffic really is gawdawful. Drivers here roar around like lunatics. Add the heat and the crowded conditions, and you have a freakin’ nightmare.

So…one COULD, with some degree of logic and sanity, argue that my son did me a favor by purloining my car.

As a practical matter, I’m discovering that I don’t need to own a car(!!!): this neighborhood is swarming with Uber drivers! That’s above & beyond the guy who lives right across the street. We’re told that a half-dozen hold forth just in the few nearby square blocks.

If that’s the case, then there really is no reason to own a car!

And that is something this ole’ California driver finds just plain downright astonishing.

What DXH and I used to find truly astonishing was that in London, we truly had no call to own a car. When we got over there for the three-month period we dedicated to the research I was doing for the Robert Sidney book, we discovered that between the Underground, the city busses, and the local taxicabs, we didn’t need to rent a car at all!

That saved us a ton of money…to say nothing of vast stores of aggravation. Driving in London is almost as much fun as driving in New York City.

***

Whew!! The guys across the street got the AC unit back on the neighbor’s roof. Looks like they’re gonna have to re-lay some or all of the shingles. Doesn’t THAT sound like fun, in 110-degree heat!

LOAFING: The best of all possible occupations!