Gosh. A whole post was almost done here, dated July 4. And…egad! Apparently I never published it.
Out it goes.
Far as I recall, it wasn’t a truly horrible evening. Often July 4 is truly horrible here, with idiots setting off their bang-bangs way-y-y into the night.
The reason for this: Our honored civic leaders, in their Passionate Patriotism, legalized fireworks in Arizona, undoing a years-long ban on sales of the damn things. Of course, people used to smuggle them in across the Mexican border and over from neighboring states…but not every numbskull and his mentally retarded brother, sister and cat glommed the damn things every Fourth of July. Now, everybody can get them — any kind of them — and so nitwits blast them off all over the city and the state. So we get BAM BAM BAM BAM WEEEEEEEUUUUUUUU BAM BAM all. night. long.
Understand. It’s not that I hate fireworks. We had a friend — now a late friend — who used to get a license to shoot the things off. He would throw an annual party, and he had professionals who knew what they were doing fill the air over his neighborhood with lights and noise. That was fun. And it was OK, because the fireworks were overseen safely, and because his Paradise Valley home was not surrounded by flammable trees and grasses.
The people who put on that show DID know what they were doing. They weren’t putting people’s homes and yards and pets at risk.
What I hate is fireworks in the hands of flaming morons.
And that’s what we have now.
Last night I ended up standing on the street all evening, keeping an eye on the doings in the alley. To my amazement, two young gentlemen who have taken up residence across the street came out and kept me company!
Can you imagine?
I sure can’t. At any rate, we ended up socializing for the better part of an hour. After the loony toons settled down, we went back into our respective palaces, and that was that.
LOL! Truth to tell, I seriously did consider putting the dog in the car and heading out to the desert, there to camp until dawn. That was NOT the way I wanted to spend the night, but it sounded a lot better than dodging nitwits all evening.
But for a change, not too much nitwittery went on, at least not in the immediate vicinity. Probably, I think, because those two guys were standing out there.
Well, not too much nitwittery except for the drunk driving. Lushes killed one person and injured two on the accursed freeway up the road. Honestly.
It makes Sun City look good…if only that place weren’t such a mausoleum.
At any rate, today we’re back to normal: Hotter than the hubs of Hades. Just now we’re down to a chilly 111 degrees, according to Wunderground. And yea verily: that’s exactly what the thermometer on the back porch reads.
Pool Dude — the guy I hired to come around and take care of the Hole in the Ground Into Which to Pour Money — has about paid for himself in sheer labor savings. The damned pool is sparkling clean: not a sheet of green to be seen anywhere. He’s expensive, but IMHO paying for his service beats leaving the thing empty.
Because, after all, there is no “empty” with a swimming pool. It doesn’t have a drain that you leave open, like a bathtub. If you don’t actively keep it drained, it hosts a puddle in which to grow algae and breed mosquitoes. My next-door neighbor does that.
Other Daughter, who lives in the next house down from that neighbor, leaves her windows open at night. (Don’t ask!!) Result: the mosquitoes got into her house, chewed her up, and gave her a raving case of encephalitis. She almost died. For a while, the doctors thought that even if she survived, she would never walk again.
She’s one tough lady, though. Not only did she live through it, but yea verily, she’s trotting all over the ‘Hood again.
At any rate, this particular stupidity means, for me: keep the doors and windows closed. Keep screens on all the doors and windows. Do not leave a door open for the dog to come and go at will.
Isn’t having to make allowances for neighbors’ idiocy fun?
To my mind, this was the beauty of the ranch: living out in the boondocks, two or three miles from the nearest neighbor, meant you were pretty much out of reach of the idiot neighbors’ frolics.