Coffee heat rising

Report from the Hubs of Hades: Last Day of July

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Sleep. All I want is sleep.

Whatever that is, it’s in short supply. For sure!

Pool Dude is supposed to turn up about now. Ruby, who’s in love with him, has been standing guard at the windows, watching…watching…watching…  No sign of the guy.

Given the way things have been tooling along — “whatever can go wrong will go wrong” — this tardiness has several possible explanations…

* His truck is on the fritz
* Some other customer has a gigantic headache in their pool, slowing him down
* He’s been arrested and carted (back?) to the slam
* He’s sick or injured

It’s pretty clear that Pool Dude is an ex-con. A couple things he’s said indicated…shall we say, wisdom born of experience. And one of my friends has a son who (unjustly, IMHO) ran afoul of a (ridiculous!) law and spent several years at the prison in Florence. There’s a kind of style one develops that’s not hard to recognize. Plus of course, once you’ve enjoyed the state’s hospitality, it’s damn near impossible to get a decent job; so, you end up trying to build a business out of incidental, catch-as-catch-can work. That would be tree trimming…yardwork…pool cleaning…  Yeah.

If that’s the case with Pool Dude, it offers one potential explanation for his absence (if absence it is; not lateness): he may be back in the slam. {sigh}

Heh. In theory, you might make a pretty good living at pool cleaning. I pay him $80 a month for the basic routine clean-up & maintenance. He comes once every two weeks; that would yield $960/year per pool. Let’s say he does four pools a day, which could reasonably be as many as he could handle, when you add in the driving time. Working one day a week for four clients would give him $3840/year. Say he actually does this as a full-time business and so works five days a week: $3840 x 5 = $19,200/year.

That’s not very much, given that he supplies the chemicals — which ain’t cheap! — and has to deal with fuel and maintenance for his truck. Subtract those costs, and you get seriously not very much.

Hmmmm….  Well, I’ll give him til 10:00 a.m.  If he hasn’t shown up by then and he still isn’t answering the phone, I’ll drive over to Leslie’s and ask for a referral to one of their customers. Also put out a query on the neighborhood Facebook page.

The guy has been doing an incredible job.

a-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-d….

True to today’s Pattern of Frustration, OF COURSE… I go to look up  how much I’ve been paying him and see normally I pay him $110 a month. (Where did I get $80????? Ain’t senility grand? ) But the last time I gave him a check, it was for $40.

Huh??????  Why?

Jayzus! If I shorted him that much, no wonder he hasn’t shown up today!

Oh gawd what a mess!!!!!!!!!

The credit union’s website won’t let me into my online account. Apparently the password I have in my records is wrong. So I can’t get in to see whether I actually paid him a third of what was owed, or or whether I entered an error in my checkbook register.

Now I’ll have to wait till the credit union opens — 10 a.m. Schlep across town to get ahold of a live human being. Explain the predicament. Find out if I really DID pay him a measly forty bucks.

If so, I’ll have to grovel like mad. But if I did pay him his usual $110, then I’ll have to demand to know where the hell he is.

If he’s quit because I shorted him obscenely, then I’ll have to find a new pool dude.

Ohhhhh gawdlmighty! Just what I needed to make my day!

******

Hallelujah! It’s a miracle! For a change the mistake I made was in Sanity’s favor, not Satan’s.

Stan the Pool Dude on the phone: yes, I did pay him $110, not cleaning-lady wages. In fact, the $40 probably was for Luz, not for Stan.

Maybe the CU will tell me who that check was written to. If not…no huge hurry. I won’t have to fly over there like a rocket and arrive at their door the instant they open. That’s something. I guess.

Heh!

It’s only 8:00 in the morning. Whaddaya suppose is gonna happen NEXT?

An Untitled Blog Post!

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Lookee here! Y’day I hit “Publish” for this thing. Never noticed before this morning — 6:53 a.m.! — that it had no title.

Aaaah senility! Ever entertaining!

***July 30, 2023***

Six p.m. and Wunderground tells us the balmy summer afternoon has cooled to 109 degrees.

Hmmm…oh yah? Let’s see what the real-world thermometer says on the real-world back porch: a balmy 111.

Well. That’s not so far off.

It’s enough that the back bedroom — what we might call the “master” bedroom, where the queen-sized bed resides — is down to 80, which is about the same as we’re getting for the “guest” bedroom, where Ruby and I have hunkered down on the twin bed. Until this evening, it’s been running at about 82 back here. Yes. At night.

A twin bed is hardly enough room for a human and a bossy dog. One of us is always at risk of being tossed on the floor. That room has been a little cooler than the back bedroom, partly because it’s smaller and partly because it’s right under the AC duct as it comes direct out of the rooftop unit. By the time the AC blast gets to the back bedroom, it’s gone another 16 feet through the superheated attic, meaning that the “breeze” coming out of it is noticeably warmer than the air that reaches the guest bedroom. Until this evening, actually, there’s been about a two-degree differential between the rooms. And trust me: when you’re feeling baked, 82 degrees is noticeably warmer than 80!

This evening, though, it seems a little cooler: I’d say the two rooms are about the same. So the hound and I are repairing to the “master,” where at least there’s a little more elbow room on the bed.

Jumping in the pool presents no solution to the fricaseeing issue. That water is  seriously as hot as bathwater. No kidding. And yes, I do like my bathwater hot.

The weather service has been promising rain all day.

Har har hardy har-har! 😀

We did have some light cumulus clouds late in the morning and for a short while this afternoon. They’re gone now, though. Now what’s up there are high, thin stratospheric clouds, the type that do NOT speak of rain.

That’s another way of saying it’s humid on top of the 110-degree-plus heat.

With any luck, it’ll be cool enough back here that I won’t have to position a table fan to blow directly on us. Turns out that when Ruby is loafing in front of a blasting fan, the wind dries her eyes out!

Ouch!

So the poor little dog has dry, red eyes that look awful and could not possibly feel much different. I’ve been dosing her, at the vet’s suggestion, with my own eye doctor’s expensively recommended eyedrops, stuff called iVizia.

It’s pretty good stuff. It helped my eyes significantly and quickly, and it seems to be doing the same for the pooch.

Weather service says that tomorrow we have a 47% chance of rain. Yeah: we’ll believe that when we see it, too. Temp is supposed to reach 106.

What. A. Place!

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A-n-n-d…it’s 7:30 in the morning. Ruby and I are back from our regular one- to two-mile peregrination. Temp on the back porch has chilled down to a crisp 89 degrees. Brrr!

One nice thing about the present heat wave: we didn’t have to navigate around many other dogs. Usually it’s a zoo out there: everybody and her little brother, sister, and mother-in-law are out walking their livestock before time to leave for work. We encountered just one dog-wrangler…and that was just as we hit the road: one of the gay guys down the street, walking their two cute little pooches.

It’s overcast and extremely muggy. Surely we’ll get rain today…maybe even this morning. That is much to be hoped.

Wildfires are still raging around Rio Verde, a sub-suburb next to Fountain Hills. Back when I was working on the ASU Main campus, I seriously considered buying a place out there. It’s remote and very quiet (uh…well…except they don’t tell you that it’s right under the path of commercial flights coming in to Sky Harbor…), and yet despite the apparent countrified remoteness, it’s a straight shot down to Tempe.

Heh! Sure am glad I’m not out there now. Neither is anybody else: they’ve evacuated the area that I coveted…if I’d bought the house I admired at the time, I’d be writing this post from some motel room!

If we get rain this weekend — as it appears we will — that should break the heat wave, at least for awhile. August is always a bear in Arizona’s low desert, and we’re not even there yet. But even a few days’ relief will make the rest the summer more tolerable.

***

Half-past noon.

A noise emits from…where? A whack or a clonk.

Ruby goes on alert.

Understand: a corgi is basically a short German shepherd. Always on the lookout for threats to its flock: to wit, its humans.

She’s off the bed and headed for the back door like a furry rocket.

I grab the phone and a kitchen knife (GOT to get a functioning pistol!) and let her out.

She flies around the back yard, completing a circuit in a matter of seconds. Whatever or Whoever made the noise seems not to be out there. I call her into the house. Lock the door. Figure the most likely culprit is the endlessly noisy refrigerator.

Though I thought the damn thing had quieted down. WhatEVER. Don’t know who or what went clunk in the afternoon. But do wish Ruby weighed about 50 pounds more than she does.

*****

Holy God!

Sometimes reading the news is counterproductive. It’s SO horrifying that it leaves you wanting not to be more informed but less informed.

This poor woman…she’s got her family up at Lake Pleasant, a local artificial pond and recreational attraction. They’re wake-boarding and swimming, great fun in this heat.

At one point, the family was partying around. These people were experienced boat operators. The mom fires up the boat to pull one of the kids up on a wakeboard…and, God help her, she runs over her other child, a six-year-old. The kid was in the water because she had just been wakeboarding.

No emergency services responded to phone calls. Nearby witnesses helped get the child out of the drink, but she died before they could get her to a hospital.

What a horror! Poor baby…poor mother!

In less exotic realms, a bit after midnight this morning, one of our fellow homicidal drivers (you think that’s a joke, don’t you?) crashed head-on into a city bus, driving the wrong way up the road. Needless to say, he was despatched to his Maker.

The I-17 freeway northbound out of the Valley was closed for hours, thanks to not one, not two, but three wrecks. Lovely. That was part of a series of crashes that occurred within a few hours.

Once you’re on the 17, you’re pretty much stuck: you can’t get away until you come to an off-ramp, and those are pretty far-between. So a whole lot of people spent a whole lot of time twiddling their thumbs and grinding their teeth.

In another fairly routine road-rage episode, not one but two women got into it with a motorcycle rider; one of the women shot the guy and killed him.

Even in staid and boring Sun City: a golf cart collided with an SUV and shut down a major thoroughfare serving that normally motionless berg.

What a place!!

EEEK!

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Here we are at 7:30 p.m.  The sun has been down for awhile.

Just let Ruby outside to wring her out after her evening feast. Glanced at the thermometer.

Holeee shee-ut! It’s 110 out there!

Yes. That’s 110 in a spot where no direct sunlight ever hits, sheltered by fronds of ficus leaves. At 7:30 at night. Sunset was officially at 7:31, but it’s been dusky out there for awhile.

The hound and I have been hunkered indoors since we got back from the dawn doggy-walk. She can’t walk around on the pavement — especially not asphalt — in this kind of heat. I stepped out on the back porch barefooted just now…and the soles of my feet hurt! Because I go barefoot a lot — all the time that I’m not out in public — my feet are seriously calloused. Imagine if I were a nice girlie-girl who wore proper shoes most of the time!

Eeek, I say…

 

Yipes!

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It’s 10:41 p.m., pouring rain: The power went out a few minutes ago. The Internet is out…and I mean OUT out. Not a single site comes up, including Funny about Money.  (I’m drafting this in Word.)

How exactly the Web works escapes me. But…uhmmmmm…I didn’t think it depended on a local power source. Google is not in Arizona, to say nothing of not in the Phoenix area. Wunderground may be in Phoenix, but Funny about Money sure ain’t. NOTHING comes up on the Internet.

This means I have no way of making a phone call, come to think of it. Well…I do have the iPhone, but am not about to stumble around the house finding it and then to dork with it to see if it works. Just hope for the best if it’s actually needed.

Without the AC or even a table fan, it’s hotter than hell in the house, and muggy.

Sirens are wailing….sounds like an ambulance or some other emergency vehicle headed toward John C. Lincoln hospital.

HOLEE maquerel! It hasn’t rained like this in years!

Hang in there, Little Roof. This is not the time to decide to leak.

Hope Josie is OK. Last I heard from her, that house – the place SDXB vacated when he ran away in terror from Tony the Romanian Gangster…uhm…Landlord – needed a new roof. I believe she had someone there patching it.

Hmmmm… A pickup just pulled up in front of Tony’s Home for Juvenile Delinquents…probably the Proprietor himself. This would make a good opportunity for one of the li’l darlin’s to make their escape. Or, more likely, for some kid to simply freak out. It is a WILD li’l storm.

And the Thunder Rolls…

and rolls…

and rolls …

and rolls….

That pool is gonna be a wreck. Hmmmm…today is Wednesday. Pool Dude comes on Mondays.

…Not…Good….

LOL! Here’s something weird! Even though the Internet connection seems to be Lost & Gone Forever, the games site that I left up last night when I went to bed is still working! [https://games.washingtonpost.com/en-us/games/word-wipe]

Wait! No…it’s not. Apparently it will let you play a game that’s in progress…it must download some data into your computer when you log on. But once that game is over, then it IS  “game over”… 😀

*******

4:47 a.m.

Well. That was quite the little freshet.

A preliminary reconnoiter reveals nowhere near as much damage as expected. The pool, amazingly enough, is not a disaster area. Didn’t spot any broken trees or limbs in the yard…though admittedly, I didn’t look closely on the west and south sides.

There will be a fair amount of damage in the ‘Hood, but with any luck, little of it will be in my yard. Not much on the local Play-Gnus…just a few stories going oooh look, the wind is blowing eeeeek eek climate change! Actual reporting evidently went out with the covered wagon.

Hmmmm…  The dog has gone back to sleep. Maybe I can catch a few extra Z’s, too….

Report from Hades North…

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As we scribble — 8:16 p.m. — it’s dark outside and 105 degrees on the back porch.

Yea verily, a balmy Arizona evening. Humidity seems a little lower than it was yesterday. That’s good in that dry air creates the illusion that the heat is lower than it is. And bad in that it fries everything in sight and probably fries any budding rain clouds within a hundred miles.

Ruby and I have loafed all day. We did get out around 5 a.m. for a (warm!) early-morning doggy-walk.

Looks like my li’l gecko escaped a watery demise in the pool. While I was swimming this a.m., I found him clinging to the tiles on the deep end. Couldn’t see any way to catch him and lift him up onto the Cool-Deck without…well, killing him. So swam away and tried to dismiss the little guy from my thoughts.

This evening, by golly, there he is, ambling up a wall in the shade of the patio lattice.

Well. I hope it’s him, anyway, and not one of his cousins. He’s very, extremely, radically cute, with his funny little ultra-miniature dinosaur feet and his elegant serpentine tail. What critters God makes!

And now it’s 80 degrees here in the “guest” bedroom — the re-envisioned TV room that was decked out with a twin bed after free TV was taken away from us. No…I will not pay to watch the schlock pumped at us from commercial TV. You can get the best of what’s available in the U.S. — i.e., PBS News, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News (if you can stomach it, after the current revelations), and a few PBS dramas — off the Internet. BBC adds nicely to that…all of it for free.

Here’s the Entertainment of the Day: the Republicans idiotically scheme to try to impeach Biden because they don’t like his son’s behavior. Brillyant, eh?

Godlmighty. This current gang makes me feel embarrassed ever to have been a Republican. Betcha Barry would have jumped ship by now, if he were still kickin’.

Gosh, how many hours I spent in this room, lounging in a big overstuffed chair while grading papers in front of the (free!) television. {sigh}

Now the TV set is long gone. My son has that nice chair. And the TV cabinet serves as an armoir to hold blankets and junk.

The house’s air conditioner is laboring away to keep the temp down to 80 degrees. Pray it doesn’t crap out!