Coffee heat rising

No Title?? How about…”How they came, how they went”…

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How he must have suffered.

That’s what I think, when I recall my mother’s dying…in their marital bed, in the bedroom of their beloved little house in Sun City.

My mother smoked herself to death.

Yes.

She knew: she knew smoking would kill her, and she did it anyway. She smoked. And she smoked. And she smoked. Every conscious moment, she had a goddamned cigarette in her mouth.

Did she care that it would kill her?

Apparently not.

But more likely, she thought the whole “fatal smoking habit” thing was some kind of scam. A fraud perpetrated by Big Brother, whose motive was to control our behavior.

She told me she started smoking when she was just 16. And she was 60-something when the habit brought her to her bed. So…really…it was reasonable (in its way) to believe the whole “Smoking Causes Cancer” Thing was Big Brother trying to tell you what to do. And what not to do.

Far as I’m concerned, she was murdered. Killed by greedy thieves who wanted nothing other than to get her to trade her cash for their filthy weed. They got their way. And she died.

Horribly.

He was amazing. He cared for her, lovingly and kindly, through hour after hour and day after day and week after week of horrific suffering. Suffering that was inflicted as much on him as on her.

Tales of the Hood…

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Argh! Started to write this and then discovered I was typing away in the middle of y’day’s post. Trying again…

Sunday morning
8 a.m.

Temp: 92 degrees
Humidity: 28%
Predicted high: 108 degrees

Just back from the daily junket around the park. I’m soaked. Ruby just drank half a (large!!) bowl of water. Fluffy white clouds still float abcove, though not as colorfully as y’day’s.

Oh, well. The sticky weather does cut down, at least a bit, on the Dog Parade over at the park. Only counted six dogs over there, none of them off-lead (for a change).

Trudged past the (still vacant, still wrecked) home of the neighbors whose son got in trouble with the law.

This was the guy I hired to prune the (now defunct) tree in front. He supposedly had taken a course in tree care and pruning at the Desert Botanical Garden, potentially a BFD.

Well. If he did, he wasn’t payin’ any attention in class. 🙁

He pretty much trashed the tree, which I eventually had to have removed. How was I pi$$ed? Let me count the ways….

Those poor people eventually lost the house, where they’d lived while their kids grew to adulthood. My guess is, they were original owners. But their son’s escapades bankrupted them…so out they went.

Some fly-by-night contractors bought the place. They’ve  been poking away at it for the past two or three years. It’s still a wreck…the pool empty and trashed, the backyard a disaster area, the front yard churned-up dirt and dead trees. Jayzuz!

The neighbors must love it…

The place is, one must allow, an inauspicious investment. It’s right on Feeder Street North-West, which carries traffic inbound from the working-class west side all the way to downtown Phoenix. So that means everybody who works in the high-rise office buildings down there, everybody who has a blue-collar job  in the yards to the south of downtown, every lawn dude driving his truck and crew into town to mow and trim some richerati’s yard: they ALL HEAD SOUTH ON THAT STREET. Five fine mornings a week.

Well. And back north in the evening.

So the house is noisy and bathed in exhaust fumes, every rush hour. I guess some people don’t mind that, because Feeder N/W is lined with rather nice homes. The shack on the corner is the only one standing vacant.

Tbis is what happens, in lovely Arizona, if you happen to have a kid who gets in trouble with the law. It doesn’t just wreck the kid’s life. It wrecks yours, too.

A friend had that happen: her son got caught diddling a barfly who was three days (!!) under the age of consent. Her mother, having lost patience with telling her darling daughter to quit bringing men home and jumping into bed with them, called the cops and had my friend’s son arrested. Child molesting, y’know.

Yeah. He ended up serving a prison sentence, unable to get a decent job, living with his mother.

Fortunately, she’s a very smart and resourceful lady. She converted an old garage behind her historic home into a handsome studio, where her son dwells in peace.

But most people don’t have a fall-back like that. Apparently our former neighbors did not.

Hence, another tale from the ‘Hood…

Soggy Doggy Glorious Day…

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WHAT a spectacular morning!

High clouds make for a glorious sunrise as Ruby the Corgi sets out to drag the Hu-mann around the neighborhood. Oh, my: it’s just gorgeous out there.

And damp. And sticky… Very humid: 31%.

What really, dear Wunderground, does that mean? Are you saying that 31% of the atmosphere we’re trudging through is water?

😀

Could be, I reckon. But Ruby doesn’t mind. She charges ahead, a little furry brown rocket. We fly through the ‘Hood, around Upper Richistan, up toward Gangbanger’s Way. Past Marge’s house, apparently unoccupied (????) but not for sale yet.

Marge was (is?) well into her 80s. She wishes, more than anything, to evade being stuck into the Beatitudes or Orangewood or any other such holding pen for the elderly. But there’s no sign she’s living in the house. So…I fear the worst.

She said she had willed the place to her son — meaning she willed him about half a million bucks worth of real estate. He doesn’t live here, so…as soon as title to the house passes to him, he presumably will put it on the market.

It’s a pleasant old 1970s ranch-style house. Not to my taste, and now needing a bunch of repairs and upgrades. But still…lots of people would fall all over themselves to get it.

I actually might be among them, if it weren’t so nerve-gratingly close to Gangbanger’s Way. The traffic racket there would be just unholy! It’s a drag strip for the local delinquents, so all night you get ROAR ROAR ROAR from the brats. And it’s a main drag into town from the west side, so every rush hour you get ROAR ROAR ROAR from the unholy mobs of commuters trudging to work. And let’s not forget the hospital up the road on Gangbanger’s, bringing you WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO from the ambulances racing toward the emergency room.

{sigh} I do miss Marge, who had become my morning walking buddy. I’m afraid she probably fell — or else had a heart attack or stroke — and ended up in one of those horrible prisons for old folks. She dreaded that fate even more than I do. Truly: I would so rather be dead. If she had passed on, surely her son would have sold her house by now (he lives in some other part of the country). She probably landed in an old folks’ slam and asked him to hang on to it lest she somehow manage to escape.

Oh well.

The spectacularity of the sunrise has now passed, and what we have are high, pale gray clouds. Not the rainy type…just the humid type.

What do I hafta do today?

* Pick up the office.

* Call Cox. Demand that they send paper bills. (They’re shifting to “paperless bills.” No, thank you!!)

*Figure out, come to think of it, whether Cox is auto-paid now, or whether I have to send the ba*tards an e-payment or check every month. I think the latter, because I don’t trust Cox.

* Make a grocery store run.

* Argue with my son over medical bullsh!t.

Hmm…. Actually, I could physically go to the credit union and have one of their staff check on the autopays for me. This, while it entails an annoying drive, would take me past THE best Sprouts store in the Valley. And that would allow me to stock up on a pile of outstanding foodoids.

***

Cleaning out the e-mail in-box. OVER 500 NUISANCE E-MAILS, just in August!

Can you imagine? Hope I’m not deleting anything important. I just don’t have the patience to check every goddamn one of those things — not even looking at the email but just checking the subject or sender line. So WHAM! They all get deleted.

But even that is a nuisance. After hitting mass-delete after mass-delete, there are still A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX junk-mail messages sitting there waiting to be sent to trash. And that doesn’t count all the real messages from outfits like Amazon and from my client whose work I’m not in the mood to do…

Crazy-making!

Heah Come De Rain!!

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Wow! The Ruby and I just dodged inside in the nick of rain-time!

Failing to realize how fast the storm to the north was barreling our way, I fired up the ‘Cue and stacked my dinner on the grill.

Not one of my smarter moves.

Pressed for time, we got the chow inside — Ruby darting back and forth through the wind and around the lightning and thunderclaps.

Bolted (heh!) dinner.

Back outside: the grill was JUST….BARELY cool enough to close and cover with its plastic veil.

I hope…

But oh my… SO hot! SO humid!! So windy!!!

Something evil this way blows….

….

…and now the wind has stopped.

All is still.

Thunder rolls in from the north.

When you are a small dog. you hunker on the human’s bed and pretend you have no clue anything is up. When you are a small dog’s human, you hunker on your bed and hide under the covers.

😮

And the thunder rolls again…

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…”

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“…Leave us all enjoy it!”

LOL! That was the radio signature of a long-time talk-show host here in the earlier times of Arizona. He would sign on to his program and then crow,

It’s another beautiful day in Arizona!
Leave us all enjoy it!

LOL! Right: if 100 degrees and humid is beautiful, this morning is just GORGEOUS. 😮

Actually, it’s only 81 out there just now, at 7:20 ayem. So it’s not very hot at all. Objectively speaking. But it’s so damp that after circumambulating the park, my hair is wet!

That little jingle was the signature doodad of Jack Williams, who became mayor of Phoenix and then governor of Arizona. He was a pretty amazing guy, all things considered.

Arizona is — always has been — a strange place. Strikes you most when you look at its history and consider the characters who feature in that history. Jack Williams…good grief! Barry Goldwater…he actually was a pretty interesting guy, in person. Bruce Babbitt was cool — we knew him and his wife, Hattie.

Oh well. If hot, partly overcast, and muggy are characteristics of “another beautiful day in Arizona,” it must be pretty spectacular out there.

Let’s see…it’s mid-August now. So we’ve got another month or six weeks of this stuff. Ugh!

Gaaahhhh!

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One of the problems w/ being unemployed…uhmm, “retired”…is that your schedule (such as it is) is out out whack with everybody else’s.

11:30 a.m.

JUST ready to draw a bath, get dressed, and head out for errands. This, after loafing all morning playing computer games.

Arise from my leather throne. Stumble toward the back bathroom, reach for the tub faucet. And…

RRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

WHIRWHIRWHIRWHIRWHIR!!!

RRRR  RRRR RRRR!

oh holee sheeut!

Gerardo’s guys are out there cleaning up the unholy mess that is the yard.

Could he have told me they were coming today? Maybe even have let me know they were on the way?

Course not. What else does the Li’l Retired Woman have to do but sit around and twiddle her thumbs?

So now I can’t jump in the shower and get dressed.

Because as you know, the minute my clothes are off and my hair is sopping wet, it’ll be BING BONG!

Now I can’t prepare for the meeting I have with a client, because RRRR  RRRR RRRR! BLAST BLAST BLAST! THUMP WHUMP THUMP! is remarkably counterproductive to thinking through a problem.

Now I won’t have time to run by the store before the client gets here, because I’ll need to sit here and wait till the boys exit, stage left.

Now I’ll have to think through the stuff Client and I need to discuss…to the symphonic roar of weed whackers and leaf blowers.

Now I won’t have time, on the way to the grocer’s, to go by the office complex where the dermatologist’s office supposedly resides and try to find his place. (Yesterday’s expedition was a FAIL!)

LOL!

Isn’t it wacky that all it takes is ONE thing like that to dork up your entire damn day? At least half the things I needed to do this afternoon are not gonna get done.

😮  huh  o-:

Y’know, it doesn’t seem to me that, when I was younger, I used to have this problem. Yes, I would be annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of something I’d planned to do. Yes, it would (or at least could) dork up my schedule. But it didn’t bother me all that much.

It didn’t leave me feeling inconvenienced and pi$$ed.

Strange that I’d feel that much different about it, now that I’m old.

😮

Ohhhhhh sheeeUT! They had to replace a strip of piping: $120!

And, trotting around and inspecting, I see they had to replace a bunch of smaller stuff, too. Ugh!

That whole irrigation system needs to be rebuilt. I had it installed when I moved in here…what? Ten years ago? More than that???? And now, it all being plastic, it’s pretty well shot.

Question is: is it worth having the system dug up and replaced? That will be a several-thousand-dollar job.

And…well…y’know… I’m probably not gonna be here that long. Surely not long enough to recoup the cost of digging up and rebuilding the whole system.

One of three things is gonna happen:

  • I’m gonna drop dead (if I’m lucky).
  • I’ll survive a stroke or a heart attack and end up rotting away in some care home.
  • Or decrepitude will force me to sell the house and move into an old-folkerie.

Arrrrghhhh! What a golden, shining future!

Seriously…

If I were certain my son would move into this house when I’m gone, I’d have that system replaced right now. Then it would be a gift to him (of sorts…paid out of his future inheritance…). It would keep the yard running smoothly, and that would be one fewer headache he’d have to attend to when he moves in here.

Or sells it. If you know the irrigation system is cattywampus, you’re pretty well gonna have to get it fixed before you put the house on the market.

But…the future. Ahhhh the future. How DO you plan for something you can’t really know?

If I dropped dead tomorrow, my son could figure these things out at his leisure, and pretty easily. He being one of the brighter pennies in the Coin Collection of Humanity.

But dontcha just know that ain’t a-gonna happen? Women in my family who haven’t fu*ked themselves to death or smoked themselves to death have lived well into their 90s…with no medical care! They were Christian Scientists! Since I don’t smoke and I don’t frolic with strange men, the chances that I’ll last well into my dotage are pretty good.

Better yet: my Berkeley relatives stayed in their homes right up until the end.

Well, no; that’s not correct: my  great-aunt allowed her son to persuade her to move to an apartment in downtown Berkeley. Smart move, that: the cute little Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff house she lived in was infested with termites. Even though the neighborhood was still a galloping fine investment, it was one that would cost homeowners more and more as those houses aged, aged, and aged some more.

But…but…ahem! About those termites….

WHY DIDN’T GREAT-AUNT OR COUSIN KNOW ABOUT THEM?????

Possibilities:

* Good cousin told his mother to have the place inspected, and she blew him off with a fib to the effect that she had the job done and no termites were found.

* He clued her, but she blew him off with “yes, dear.”

* She had it inspected and got a “no bugs” report.

* She had it inspected, was told it needed an exterminator, and blew it off.

* Neither one of them thought of having the place inspected.

See what I mean about “GAAAH”?

Just stop the damn world so we can get off.

Seriously: I don’t want to leave conundrums like this to M’jihito. Not even one just conundrum.