Coffee heat rising

Reporting from the Hubs of Hades…

by

6:45 p.m. and it’s 109 on the back porch. In the shade. Under a shade structure, inside the canopy of a hefty ficus plant.

****

And now, f’rhevvinsake it’s 7:54 p.m. and…and…what have I done to make an hour and 10 minutes disappear without a trace?

* Unloaded the dishwasher
* Reloaded with the current set of dirties
* Fed the dawg
* Sprayed hose water over all the backyard plants I could reach
* Intercepted a fraudulent-looking email supposedly from a church friend
* Clued church friend that her name and email are being taken in vain
* Heard back from friend: “This was not me.  I’ve even had this one sent to me in the past.  Not sure how they got my address but passwords are changed.  What a pain.”

Wondrous.

******

Fell asleep. It’s now 11:45 p.m. Awoke with a choking fit. Dayum! Thought this effing covid horror was about over! Dunno whether this episode was actually choking, or in fact another covid coughing fit.

Don’t see how that scamming attempt could indicate that the b*stards have any of my passwords. But tomorrow I suppose I should run down to the tech guys and have them help me change the Apple ID password. That really WILL be a PITA…of the first water.

And it’s unclear to me how a fake email purportedly coming from a friend indicates that anyone has any of my passwords.

On the other hand, I assumed the perp got my email from my website, since it uses my FaM address.

Ohhhh well. At midnight, I’m not up for fussing over that fragment of madness.

Why I quit shopping at Costco…

by
{sigh} This is sad…because I love shopping at Costco. It’s like visiting a Renaissance fair: vast quantities of food, jeans that actually fit, doodads, gizmos, and endless bottles of cheap wine.
 
And I do understand that Costco, for whatever reasons suit its business plan, needs to limit its customers to “members.” So no, I don’t mind carrying a Costco card around and flashing it at the door and again at check-out.
 
But the new demand that we ALSO flash our driver’s license when paying up? Uhhh nope. Sorry, Costco. That’s a yard past the edge of the pale. You already have my ID in the form of a Costco card bearing my photo. Enough’s enough.
 
I carry my driver’s license hidden in my car. This is because I have exactly ZERO desire to tote a purse around with me, and most women’s clothing does not accommodate bulky wallets and such. When I go into Costco, all I take with me is an endless shopping list, a credit card, and my Costco card. I do not carry these in a wallet; I do not tote them in a purse.That’s why jeans have pockets, after all.
 
I simply loathe having to carry a purse.
 
So, I don’t: I minimize the amount of junk I have to carry, and once you’re down to a couple of cards and your keys, you can fit all you need into your pockets. Even when you’re wearing women’s clothing.
 
But add ANOTHER nuisance card, and then I’ll have to haul the stuff around in a bag or a wallet. And ya know what, dear Costco bosses? I ain’t a-gunna. First I’m not going to risk losing my driver’s license as I tote it around your store, and second, I really don’t enjoy putting myself at risk of theft by prancing across a parking lot with a purse dangling from my shoulder.
 
Just now I’m on the way out the door to buy a bunch of Costco-esque items…dishwasher detergent, Q-tips, doggy stuff, this and that. If I were going to Costco, I would as usual succumb to Impulse Buy Mania and no doubt buy a bunch of stuff I don’t need. Instead, I’m gonna buy all that at Walmart.
 
On one level, it’s annoying. I love to shop at Costco — it’s like a medieval fair, a riot of impulse buys. On another, more practical level, though, it’s a GOOD thing. Because…
 
* Shopping at the nearby Walmart saves gas. Costco shut down the centrally located store a few minutes from my house. To get to the nearest outlet, now I have to traipse across the city, risking my life, diddling away gasoline, and feeling annoyed by the time I get to the store.
 
* It saves money. I don’t much enjoy the Walmart: it’s in a shady neighborhood, so trudging across the parking lot feels unsafe. Nor do I enjoy the Albertson’s and the Safeway in my parts: the two stores practically clone each other; they tend to be overpriced, and they’re boooooring places to shop. As a result. I tend to get in there and out as fast as I can, and not dawdle over the impulse buys. That is: I buy only what I need when I go in there, and THAT’S IT.
 
* Costco offers a wide variety of middle-class goods, which has a drawback: It’s an impulse-buy carnival! Every time I go in there, I come out with something I didn’t plan to buy. By contrast, the Sprouts in my neighborhood is all very nice, but a little too environmentally, socially, and health-wise “correct.” The goody-two-shoes tendency limits one’s choices, even though it also leads the store to offer some things you can’t get anywhere else. Albertson’s & Safeway are booooring: nothing to see there, so you tend to stick to your shopping list. And that, over time, saves a whole lot of money.
 
So I guess I should say “Thanks, Costco, for unwisely driving a customer away: it’s saving me a lot of time and money.” But I’m still gonna miss it.

Quick (HOT) Trip to the Park…

by

A crisp 99 degrees at 7:30 this morning. But this balmy figure was besmirched by the humidity: almost 30%. Yeah: that’s thirty percent.

Ruby and I set out for the requisite doggy-walk around 5:30 or 6:00. Hoping the park would be free of its usual dog-and-human horde, we went in that direction, since she dearly loves to walk around in the park.

And yeah…there were fewer people. BUT the usual morons who ignore the law were there chasing their dogs around off-lead.

What is it about a sign that reads

DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH

that’s hard to understand?

And do people who feel entitled to ignore that law (it’s a county-wide leash LAW, not a local park rule) seriously believe that other people and other people’s dogs just loooove to have their pooches come bounding up to them? Is it really possible that NONE of these ninnies has ever landed in the middle of a dog fight? Or are they just too stupid to imagine the scene in the ER when they’re carted in? Or the scene as their dog lays on the ground bleeding out, after someone’s German shepherd gets done with it?

Ruby is fairly harmless, as she weighs only 35 pounds.

But the late, great Anna the Ger-Shep most decidedly was NOT harmless. And…her life’s goal was to rid the earth of other dogs. To that end, she had developed a strategy:

When an idiot’s dog would come bouncing up to her, she would assume a goofy grin. This would cause the idiot to imagine she wanted to play with his dog. No amount of hollering at him to KEEP YOUR DOG BACK! would make a dent on the nitwit’s stupidity. Some of them would reply, “oohhh it’s all right! They just want to playyyyy!”

Yeah. If eviscerating your dog and scattering its guts across the park is “play,” I guess so.

This is why I tend to stay away from the park: it’s a magnet for the Dumb and the Feckless.

But today Ruby was determined to trot over there. Why not? thought I…

Well, we didn’t have any Dog Incidents (despite several nitwits’ off-leash dogs). But my gawd! The HEAT!

It was just too hot to make the full mile’s circuit around the park.

So we walked down to the southwest corner, where the house that the aging owners apparently lost is under construction…and under construction…and under….  They’ve been trying to restore that place for at least a year, and finally have given up. Saw an ad recently that they’re selling it as is.

And “as is” is one, unholy, deconstructed mess. Whoever buys it (if anyone is foolish enough to buy it) is gonna have to tear it down and start over. That will include rebuilding the swimming pool, too.

How you could possibly sell it for enough to cover the repair and reconstruction costs escapes me. It’s right on the corner of an east-west feeder street and a road that goes from the northernmost border of North Central all the way south to the state office building complex. So….commuters in the know who have jobs or business in that complex ride that street all the way south in the morning and all the way north in the evening. You’d be crazy to choose to live in a house on that road! Especially in that specific lot…

I met the son of the couple who own(ed) the place. And I suspect he was a guy with a prison record and so couldn’t get a decent job.

At one point I wanted to hire an arborist. I’d heard about this guy via the neighborhood Facebook page…and it appears that some of the glowing recommends offered there were, uhm…slightly exaggerated. He did an OK job, but — frankly — not great. Gerardo and his boys would’ve done a better job, and Luis certainly could have. But ohhhhh no! Nothing would do but what I had to hire an “expert.”

My suspicion is that the guy was an ex-con who couldn’t get a hired job, and so had to start his own little low-talent “business.” Friend of mine has a son who was (for ridiculous reasons IMHO) clapped in the slam, and he has had one bitch of a challenge getting paying work, now that he’s “paid his debt” to society.

Hey! How hard can it be to trim trees, right?

Well…hard enough to surpass that guy’s skills, that’s for sure.

Presumably, his business went nowhere, and I’d put money on it that the parents’ Social Security and savings weren’t enough to support all three of them, even with a paid-off house.

If it was paid off. They may have had to borrow against it, either to start the guy’s business or, if my speculation is right, to pay his lawyers’ fees and fines.

WhatEVER, they vacated the house, and the contractors who bought it for renovation labored for months and then just gave up. So it’s sad and yet kinda morbidly interesting to walk by there and watch the construction efforts.

My guess is, they’re trying to sell it to someone who will level the building and start over from scratch. Which probably should’ve happened in the first place.

 

 

Despatch from the Hubs of Hades

by

As we scribble — 5:40 of a balmy early evening — the thermometer nestled under the slatted patio cover and amongst the leaves of the hefty potted ficus tree reads 115 degrees.

Consider, for a moment, how much cooler that is than the temp out in the direct sunlight.

Eeeek!

The AC, pounding along all afternoon, has managed to bring down the thermometer in the coolest room in the house to a chilly 81 degrees.

The Wunderground crew is not optimistic about prospects for moderation in the near future. They seem to think these fine balmy temperatures will last at least until the end of this week.

ohhhh gooodie!

It’s been a good ten or twelve years since we last had a weather adventure like this.

The worrisome thing, in my precincts, is that the air-conditioning in my son’s house doesn’t work well. It’s an old red brick house, very pretty and quaint and all…but hey…we don’t need no steeenking insulation! Even with the AC blasting full-on, the thing can’t cool the house especially well.

I’m inviting him to come over and sleep here, if he likes. But knowing my son — a superb and proud example of Maleness and Paleness — he likely will demur.

Burned my feet in the few seconds it took to run out, grab the backyard hose, and spray water on the potted plants. Ouch!

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty slow news day…probably because one can’t get up much mischief in weather like this.

The stuff the eye doc told me to use on my own marginally infected/irritated/lwhatever-the-heck eyes — a liquid called iVisia, works — lo!! — on the dog’s dry, red eyes too!

The vet had told me to wipe her eyes with a wet rag. But when the eye doc came up with this stuff, I dared to think…hmmm….Why not?

And indeed, wiping her eyes with a tissue impregnated with those eye drops really DOES work. Which the water treatment does not… This evening she’s much better than she was yesterday.

And so am I…eye-wise, that is.

Burned the soles of my feet walking over the Kool-Deck bare-footed. Apparently “Kool” is not what you get when the stuff is baked all day under a broiling sun! 😮

Natcherly, too, I pick a season with one of the hottest days on record to let my hair grow long. BRIL-lyant! As if it weren’t hot enough in here without a freakin’ fur collar around my neck.

It’s not long enough to pull up or to clip back. So…yeah: fur collar.

The AC is still set for 78. Here in the coolest room in the house, the thermometer continues to insist it’s 81.

Ohhhhh well…that’s a helluva lot better than 112.

I guess.

A Balmy Evening…

by

…for the balmy, that is…  At 7:10 p.m. the thermometer on the back porch reads 109 degrees.

Hey! Ya can’t shovel heat!

Nary a sign of the summer rainstorms known in these parts as “monsoons.”

But it’s still a bit early for them. I think of monsoon as an August phenomenon. F’rhevvinsake, it’s only July 17.

These are the times that make the humans think 12 months of swimming-pool expenses are soooooo worth it! 😀 Into the drink this afternoon. Hop out. Shampoo hair in the hose. Return to the shack’s interior, where the AC system labors to hold the temp (in the coolest part of the house: the hallway) down to 80.

What a day!

Started with Ruby flushing Ratty out of the marjoram bed. Dayum! She almost caught the poor critter!

Later on: the Great Termite Project.

Exterminator came by. He didn’t think the infestation was too bad…yet. He sprayed the little gals where they were evident, and then laid down one helluva barrier all around the house’s foundation. I decided we should have him come back at regular intervals to harass the critters. Whenever the weather cools some, I’ll try to get him up into the attic (you’d have to be suicidal to go up there in this heat!). He didn’t think the girls have invaded there yet…he did show me where he believes them to be, and provided a pretty convincing argument to that effect.

We didn’t see the much-beloved Pool Dude this morning — Monday is his day to come around. We probably missed him while we were indulging in the dawn doggy-walk. The pool is positively pristine this evening, which it assuredly would NOT be, in this heat, had he not surfaced at some point today.

Wait, I know how to tell: did he retrieve the new pump pot filter basket I bought?

Checking….

Whoa!!! He did NOT!

Holee mackerel! That means His Cuteness never surfaced here today!

He must have had car trouble. Or the world collapsed on his head.

Fortunately, he’s done such a killer job on maintenance over the past few months that the damn thing looks clear and clean. So from a selfish point of view, that’s good. But..gosh…  I hope he’s OK…

Back to the subject of infestation: The roof rats are back.

One of them was actually brave enough this morning to shoot right across in front of me.

Cute little fellas. Too bad they carry such nasty diseases. Too bad they do rather more damage than one would like to cope with.

So I set out the traps. When last checked, they were no more successful than they’ve been in the past. But…that was checking their daytime performance. We shall see, come morning, how they worked during our little tenants’ night-time maneuvers.

Awwwww crapola: Cop copters buzzing around overhead.

Check that all the doors are locked. And…hooleee shee-ut! The front screen was NOT locked.

Ohhh well. Now we’re barricaded in: two deadbolts engaged on every exterior door.

Four-legged rats. Two-legged rats. Six-legged rats. What a place we live in!

WHY….?????

by

Does EVERY GODDAM THING happen AT ONCE?

Holee mackerel!

It’s not even 6:30 in the morning and already I’ve had to deal with a new rat infestation; with a sick, angry, scared dog; and a new plumbing leak…UNDER the side deck!

Won’t be able to get the plumber on the phone for two or three hours.

Meanwhile, it’s hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there: Hot and Wet with a Vengeance.

Oh, and to frost those cookies? It’s Cleaning-Lady Day!

Arrrrghhhhhhhh!  I know this sounds callously ungrateful, but Cleaning-Lady Day drives me nuts…especially when everything else is going to Hell on the Proverbial Handcart. It means the Mess has gotta be picked up — fortunately there isn’t much mess this week.

Except of course that Ruby and I have been sleeping in the middle bedroom, because it’s right under the AC unit and so is the only halfway cool room in the house. That will confound her… Now I’ll have to explain why that bed is a mess — and, I remind myself, find a set of clean twin-sized sheets. If there is one. Since I don’t use that bed much, I prob’ly don’t have two sets. 😮

That will add ANOTHER layer of hassle: strip that bed, wash the sheets, and get them dry before she gets here. gaaaahhhhhhhh!

Meanwhile, I step out to the west side porch to start setting rat traps around the yard, and LO!

Water all over Satan’s do-it-yourself deck.

Since that thing is an amateur job (a pretty good job, but still….), that means the deck will now have to be repaired or replaced. Ohhhhhhh gooodie!

Someone seems to have pulled out all the steel wool I stuffed into the cracks around that goddamn thing. Gee thanks, Gerardo! So now I’ll have to get out there and stuff new steel wool in, allllll around that lash-up.

WHY do workers think you do things if you don’t WANT them done that way? WHY do they feel called upon to undo all your little do-it-yourself stop-gap (heh! literally!!) measures?????

Not sure enough steel wool is left to go all the way around the deck. If not, then I’ll have to drive to Home Depot and buy some more of that. Gooooodie!

Maybe I can get it at the hardware store. That place is about a quarter of the distance one has to drive from here to the Depot. That would help a lot.

Ruby has an eye infection. (So do I, come to think of it.) I’ve been dosing her with the OTC stuff the eye doc told me to put in my own eye. It’s hard to find and it’s expensive as Hell. Since we’re both …

…………………………………………………………………….

Gawd DAMMIT!

……………………………………………………………………

Now the damn computer dies!!!!!!

It’s out of juice.

Plug it in…. Nothing

Fight with computer cord

Fight with extension cord

Fight with plug-in outlet

Finally,  weirdly it comes back on.

Ohhhhhhh yeah. This is gonna be one of those days!