It is SOOOOOO wet out there that all you have to do is stand outside to raise a sweat.
wait wait! That’s true of standing inside, too!
Where does this city think it is? Dankest Georgia? Right now the sky is overcast — seriously overcast, as in “gimme 45 minutes or an hour to deliver the rain” — and we’re enjoying 90 degrees on the back porch. Wunderground says it’s 95, with 35% humidity…and I could buy that
Pool Dude surfaced this morning, shortly after dawn. I’d about lost hope…thought he’d disappeared from the scene. But nooo…here he is!
Did a nice job of cleaning the already pretty clean hole in the ground into which to pour money. Repaired some stuff. Chatted…sweet guy, IMHO. Probably a serial killer, but he can hold a nice conversation. And he’s cute. 😉
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A-a-a-an-d…. O’course I pick the most miserable hot day of the year to generate an Adventure in Frustration.
Hoooleeee sheee-ut!
The eye that had the cyst in it, lo! these several months ago — the eye that we thought was HEALED, ooohhh thank you gawd and billy graham — started itching and hurting. Again.
Can’t see anything in there. Apply the long-ago-recommended Refresh brand eye drops.
Nothing: no effect.
Wait a day or two, hoping Nature will take its course.
Nothing: no effect.
Hurts itches itches hurts hurts itches…and so on to infinity….
So I call the Honored Eye Doc. His staff directs me to trot out and purchase an over-the-counter product called Ivisia: eye drops of provenance unknown to me.
And, as it develops, unknown to about every retailer in the city.
Walgreen’s doesn’t have it.
Albertson’s doesn’t have it.
Walmart doesn’t have it.
Finally, after what feels like driving…driving…driving for hours through the 110-degree heat, I stumble into a Safeway. Stagger to the pharmacist’s counter. He points me to a stack of shelves down an aisle 15 or 20 feet from the his counter.
And lo!!! THERE IT IS!
Grab. Trudge to checkout. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand…pay up.
Back in the car.
Heat makes Arizona drivers crazy. We shouldn’t find that surprising, though. Everything makes Arizona drivers crazy.
Trudge and dodge and dodge and trudge and finally make my way home. If the present discomfort didn’t make this thing feel ever so slightly urgent, I would’ve just come home and ordered it from Amazon.
Honestly. I don’t know how local retailers even begin to compete with Amazon. The hassle factor entailed in schlepping around the God Damned City to find ONE STUPID LITTLE ITEM is sooooooooooo aggravating, that given just a little more motivation, I would’ve succumbed to common sense and ordered it online.
But…the eye hurt, and I really really did NOT want to wait two days for delivery plus run the risk of our pet porch pirates stealing the stuff before I can find it.
Ohhhhh well! Now we have it.
****
I sweartagawd, it feels just like lovely Ras Tanura out there. That desiccated corner of Eastern Hell on the shore of the Persian Gulf…summertime was sauna time.
Seriously: I can remember waking up in the morning on those hot summer fucking days and seeing water dripping off the eaves. And no, it had NOT rained during the night.
I can remember standing in the front yard under a clear blue sky and watching RAIN condense out of the hot, cloudless air.
Like that: that’s how it feels.
My poor mother. How on earth did that hapless little Upstate New York orphan survive even her first 16 or 18 years on this pitiless earth, to say nothing of 30+ years of marriage to my globe-trotting, tightwad father? In her place, I would have died long before I gave birth to the first lifeless baby, to say nothing of the second one and the third brat that survived.
To say nothing of the man who dragged her to Hell (seriously…) and back again. She was, when you think about her, an amazing woman.
Damn! I wish I’d appreciated that while she was still living.
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Seriously: when I say it’s an inexplicable wonder that local retailers are surviving Amazon — if they are — I kid you not.
- There were hardly any customers in the Walgreen’s.
- Hardly any in the Albertson’s.
- More in the Walmart, but not enough to keep a large retail enterprise alive.
- Naught but a bunch of yuppifed egotists in the Safeway, creatures that were buying one or two items apiece…nary a week’s worth of groceries in evidence at any check-out stand.
- Now consider what a hassle it was to get ahold of this magical mystery eye salve in person, from a brick-and-mortar retailer….
- Why on earth would anyone want to go through that?
You may be sure that in the future I will remember. And when I can, I will order all the little necessaries online. Occupying a fricasseeing hot afternoon schlepping from place to place through nasty traffic is not something I want to do whenever I need this or that little retail item.
Now that you’ve got me to thinking about it… the last few times I’ve hit Walmart this year, it hasn’t been that crowded. Also, I just don’t go there on a regular basis anymore, mainly because it’s too far out of the way. Remember, this is the state where the empire was founded!
I guess more and more people just want to order from Amazon or have their groceries/sundries delivered. Can’t say I blame them, especially since we are having such a hellish summer.
Speaking of hellish, I had a minor asthma attack at work last night. The younger co-worker who was carted off to the ER on Independence Day? She was hospitalized for two days. Returned to work last Friday and had to leave after an hour. I hope she’s looking for another job.
Well, yeah: I also feel that way about our Walmart: it’s JUST enough off my beaten path to justify paying a dime more at Safeway or 20 cents more at Walgreen’s or 50 cents more at Sprouts.
Driving around this city is aversive. The more you do it, the more you don’t wanna do any more of it. If it’s that way where you are, then…well, one could argue that it actually DOES make more sense to order goods from Amazon or Instacart. If you limit the delivery services to, say, one per week or 10 days, you’re probably not spending any more on the go-to’s schlepping that you would on gasoline. Especially if you have to take time off from paying work to do that schlepping.
Good grief!! I hope the asthma adventure has passed. Do you think it’s set off by something at the jobsite? If so, I’d sure clue the boss to that…they don’t need the lawsuit that could ensue (heh!) if people are getting sick on the job from something that might be avoided. With TWO employees having Adventures in Medical Science that are possibly related to the workplace, the bosses need to wake up and look into this!