Coffee heat rising

A Rasty-Nasty Day!

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Whew!!!  It is BEYOND hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there!! In the deepest shade of the back porch: a hundred and eleven degrees! 

My father would have called this a Rasty Nasty Day, after Ras Tanura, the hideous American oil outpost where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Twelve long years in that unholy dive!!!  He had figured he’d make enough to retire, if they saved every penny, in eight or ten years. Yeah…

Well…he almost made enough to retire on.

He wasn’t a real educated fella. Inflation, for example, was kind of an alien concept for him…  So, when he made his calculations for how long he’d have to work out there before he could retire and take us home to the States, he missed his goal by some six years.

About the time this projection unwound, my mother came down with a horrific case of amoebic dysentery. The doctors out there told her she needed to go back to the States –ASAP — to be treated for that fine ailment. This gave her an excuse to grab me and flee back to California, where her relatives lived. It also accelerated his retirement plans: he stayed for another year and a half, until his current contract ended, and then came back to join us in the States.

So that was a blessing (big-time!) for me and my mother. Couldn’t have been great for him, but at least she and I got out of that Hell-hole.

At any rate, where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf, the climate was hot, muggy, humid, and hotter than the Hubs. Just a HORRIBLE place, certainly for the gringo set. As a little kid, I didn’t know any better. But my mother, raised in Upstate New York, suffered terribly — from the climate as well as from the endemic disease.

And now, here on August 23 of Two Thousand and Twenty-Six, I indeed have been around long enough to know better. And believe me: if my son weren’t here, I would not be here in steamy Arizona. No how, no way!

But he persists, because his dad is here. His dad  persists, because Dad’s job planted him here…and because his present family is also planted here.

Well. Arizona ain’t as grim as Saudi Arabia was. But…it does have its trying moments.

And right now, we’re in the middle of them! 

Yucky-Ducky Day

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EWWWWW!  It is SO humid and SO sticky and SO hot outside that it feels like a good old hideous day in Ras Tanura, the seaside colony where I grew up in Saudi Arabia.

Seriously: it feels like it could start to rain out of a clear blue sky…something that, yea verily, I have seen in Arabia. But there’s neither clear nor blue out there: the sky is draped in ugly, thin gray clouds.

Haven’t heard from my son today. Hope he’s getting through this balmy day all right. His house is in a historic district and was built when every home was “cooled” (heh!) with something called “swamp cooling.” This was an early form of evaporative cooling. Worked fine when the weather was dry. Give it some humidity, though, and “swamp” would be the operative term, all right!

Even if you replace the evap unit with a modern air-conditioning unit, the result is not very effective. That, I reckon, has to do with the way the ductwork is built. Or…something.

***

I should call him up and pester him. But frankly, just now I’m reamed steamed and dry-cleaned, and so do not feel like speaking to any human beings. Today the new housecleaners he hired to replace the beloved Luz surfaced. Meeting them and introducing them to the shack and whatnot was surprisingly tiring. I just don’t do well with new people….and when the New Person is expected to work for me (the poor soul!)…well…it’s a trying experience all the way around.

Not sure whether they’re expected to surface once a week….or what. That’s one of the questions I need to pester him with. 😀  Poor guy! He must think I’m totally non compos mentis. And…hmmmm…with every month of advancing age, I seem to drift further in that direction.

Unclear whether that’s really so, or is only a time-enhanced illusion. I asked my beloved Doctor in the Wild about this. (A “doctor in the wild” is one who does NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic). And he insisted that no, my marbles are still intact and I should quit worrying about that.

Nice to think so. But o’course…he doesn’t see me every hour and every minute of every day. This marble-loss business seems to come and go, depending on stress levels, time of day, and whatnot.

Ohhhh well...  The dinner chow is hot! (Hoorayy!) And the  human is ambling off to bed whenever she finishes scarfing up that stuff.

And so, away!

Lookin’ Up!

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Things are looking up — way up — from yesterday afternoon’s gloomy view.

Amazon finally delivered the dog food. Thank GAWD! There’s a trek to the grocer that I don’t have to make.

The crazy-making peripheral neuropathy, while still present, has fallen back some. It’s much milder.

A couple of babysitters….ahem! housekeepers hired by my son are slated to show up this morning. If in fact they do surface, I’ll have them take me to the store.

This, alas, means I should not be scribbling blog posts but instead should be compiling an elaborate shopping list.

Meanwhile, I desperately need a haircut. If the babysitters do show up today, I’ll have them take me to the salon down by the neighborhood grocery store. Since I can walk there (would druther not, in this heat…but one does what one has to do), I’ll make an appointment for the “cool” (hah!!) of another morning.

And I guess we need to go into a store to buy some sugar.

That did get ordered…but it has never surfaced. Problem is, we have two parallel streets with almost identical names here: Erewhon Road and Erewhon Lane. Delivery people regularly confuse the two. And when they drop something off at the house on Erewhon Road, the residents there just steal anything that is misdelivered.

This has become such a problem since the City moved those idiots into the house there that I seriously  have considered selling my house and following SDXB out to Sun City.

That’s serious, indeed….  I loathed living in Sun City with my parents, and most decidedly do NOT want to move back out there. But I can’t afford much else within the Phoenix city limits, other than an apartment. And I’m not fond of living in apartment buildings, either.

Yea, verily: I love my home, I love my neighbors, and I love my neighborhood. And so no, I sure as Hell do NOT want to move away!

Hotter than the Hubs!!!!

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Welp….that was stoopid!  

Took it into my little pea-brained head to tidy up the pool….along about 3:00 in the afternoon.

No IQ, that’s for sure!

Very little needs to be done: take the net — the one that’s attached to the long, LONG metal wand — and scrape the loose leaves off the bottom of the pool. In the same visit, scoop up the loose leaves that are floating on the water’s surface.

Sounds easy, eh?

Well. No. Not in 108 degree heat: heat that Wunderground claims “feels like 111.”

Where the f**k does this place think it is? Freakin’ Saudi Arabia??

We used to get heat like this — plus much, much more generous humidity — when we lived there on the shore of the Persian Gulf. But we did get a breeze off the water most days. It certainly did not feel like a crisp 111 degrees out there. Wunderground suggests the temp out there just now is 93 degrees. “Feels like 112.”

LOL! Make that “Feels like 112 and soggy…”   😀  WHAT a place!

So…at least, thank all the Gods and Goddesses, I don’t have to live on the shore of the sizzling Persian Gulf anymore.

Just now… I do need to restock a few staples: mostly sugar and a bag of dry dog food.  Hmmm…waitaminit…we have BOTH OF THOSE slated to arrive today from the Beloved Amazon Prime!

Hot diggety dayum!

Well….it’s 3:30 p.m. now. If the stuff hasn’t arrived by 6:00 p.m., at least I can walk to the nearest grocery or pet food store without having to trek through the worst of the blazing sun.

Orrrr…. I could walk over to the Sprouts when they open — 6:00 tomorrow morning — and grab the loot before it gets too hot outside.

But….LOOKEE HERE! Sprouts delivers!    

Hmmmm….  Their service looks kinda invasive: they demand a bunch of private information that I’d just as soon not share. But…I guess if push comes to shove….

But meanwhile, Amazon will deliver the stuff overnight! By 8:00 a.m. And they don’t ask for personal data that’s none of their damn business… Hmmmm…that’s probably because they already have it, eh?  Since I use Amazon delivery all the time. 😀

What I need to do, I suspect, is invent a bunch of fake “information” to share with snoopy vendors. Keep a record of it close at hand, so I can enter it in online order forms. Then maybe I could get stuff delivered without having my privacy invaded.

***

Okay. It is SCALDING hot outside. And I don’t feel like dorking around with hiking to Sprouts or the Albertson’s to get a few bars of bathroom soap. So…we’re springing for some STUPID amount of money to get an order of the stuff. As we scribble, the temp outside is 108 degrees, with 15 percent humidity.

So…much as I do resent it, I reckon paying for Amazon delivery is better than risking my life trudging through that kind of heat.

Sprouts, alas, has got a complicated hoop-jump for you to perform in order to get stuff delivered. Plus they demand personal information that’s none of their goddam business.

Arrrgh, what a PITA.

Now we have sugar, dog food, and soap slated to be delivered; the soap & the sugar tomorrow, and the dog food today.

We shall see…..

Don’t you just KNOW this is gunna amount to a fine fuck-up? 

Here’s how:

We have two streets side-by-side here: Erewhon STREET and Erewhon ROAD. I live on (let us say…) Erewhon Road. The lady who lives on Erewhon Street, incredibly enough, steals every goddam thing that is misdelivered to her house!

No, she will NOT forward it.

And if she spots me when I ring her doorbell to demand my delivery, she won’t answer the door.

{sigh}

What I should do is ask the folks across the street — straight across from my house — if they’ll accept delivery of Amazon packages. They do not steal.

On the other hand, having to field my deliveries — of which I’m now ordering more and more — would be an unacceptable nuisance for them. So…dayum! 

I dunno how to cope with this.

Later. I’ll figure it out later!

Walk Right In, Sit Right Down…

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This morning, for reasons unknown, my feeble little  mind cast itself back over one of the gooniest experiences of my life. And it was an experience we went through because neither my young husband nor I had the nerve or the common sense to utter the word “NO.”

Back in the day, he and I lived in a gentrifying historic neighborhood that occupied a tract of beautiful old houses in central Phoenix. And our house was a beautiful old house: it dated back to the 1930s. We loved the place. To this day I miss it…though I sure am glad I don’t have to take care of it anymore.

So anyway….there we were, soaking up joy in the gorgeous old Encanto neighborhood, when one day this couple showed up at the front door.

They were, it developed, old friends of my husband, from college days. And, in classic hippy-dippy fashion, they had jumped in their car and taken off across the country, to craft the Adventure of a Lifetime. When they arrived in Phoenix, they looked us up, said “hello,” moved right in, and sat right down.

No kidding! They invited themselves in, and the next thing we knew they were unpacking their smelly gear in our family room, there to take possession of the sofa-bed.

They were carrying all sorts of food and crap in their car. This stuff, they hauled into the house and dumped in the family room. Half-spoiled, it stank to high heaven. That didn’t seem to bother them, though.

They hung around for a week or ten days, until I told my young husband to ask them to leave. Even then, it took some doing to shoehorn them out of the house! But eventually they moved their campsite to the downtown YMCA, and (mercifully) that was the last we saw of them.

The room stank for days after they left.

The one good thing that came of their little invasion was that my husband and I learned a good lesson: NEVER let people invite themselves into your home!!!

😀

Lordie! For awhile, I was afraid we would have to buy a new sofa-bed. Eventually we did buy a new mattress…but it wasn’t easy to find one, and it wasn’t something we were budgeted for.

I did learn a raft of lessons from that misadventure, though. Primary among them: I will NEVER allow people to stay in my home again, even if I know them fairly well. 

You just never know what kind of stupid stuff people will get up to. Or how they live their daily lives, what their hygiene is like, and how much nerve they have when it comes to taking advantage of you.

Man! Once stung, twice wary!

A Rasty-Nasty Day

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Ugh!  This morning: hot, wet, sticky. Reminiscent of an early-morning summer day in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia…where I was (un)fortunate enough to grow up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. What a hole! My father called the camp Rasty Nasty: a sobriquet that neatly describes life there.

And Lordie, I did hate living there! Not because of the Arabs or because of the eye-searing, brain-dulling scenery, but because of the nasty brats who populated the camp’s grade school. Ugh! Those creatures were truly little monsters. If you were “different” in any way, they ganged together and worked to make your life miserable.

And they were very, very good at making an outcast kid’s life miserable! If you were a girl who failed to grasp that the sole purpose of your life, other than spawning children, was to stand in the kitchen and bake cookies, you didn’t belong.

I didn’t  “belong,” with a vengeance. Back in the 1950s, when conventionality was the style of the day, I failed to grasp that I was supposed to grow up to cook and to sew clothes. Noooo…stupid me! I wanted to grow up to become an astronomer.

You know: a person with a Ph.D. and a lifetime career in astrophysics.

No. Bad, bad girl!! Females did NOT go into the sciences.

So growing up in Arabia meant nine years of utter misery for me. GOD, how I hated that place and hated those kids! The feeling was mutual on the brats’ part. What an awful time in an awful place!

Finally, when I was nearing the end of the sixth grade out there, my mother’s best friend — a camp nurse — persuaded her boyfriend — a doctor in the camp hospital — to convince my father that my mother had to be sent home, lest she die from the amoebic dysentery she’d picked up out there.

So. That got me and my mother out of that hell-hole and back to San Francisco, whence we had emanated. And it led me into a decent school where my classmates didn’t know I was the Weird Little Kid. So my life kinda sprang back to almost normal. My mother, after some weeks in a hospital, recovered from the amoebic infestation. And so there we were — at least in much better living conditions — until my father’s current contract ended and he joined us in the City.

From there we proceeded to Southern California, where he shipped out of a port down there. My mother’s dearest friend lived in Long Beach, so she — my mother — and I rented an apartment in that dreary garden spot. After several years there, my father retired and they betook themselves to Sun City, Arizona (talk about dreary!!). By then, thank God, it was time for me to enter college. Instead of sending me to Cal Berkeley, where I’d planned to go, they stuck  me in the University of Arizona.

This parked me in Tucson, the home of the bourgeois and the mediocre. But at least it was a good long way from Sun City! 😮

Rehearsing these events…well…it sure frosts my cookies! Where I had a promising start — a strong likelihood of entering UC Berkeley and then going on to graduate school from there — they got rid of that. Instead I got a bachelor’s degree from a third-rate school, and from there proceeded to marriage and graduate studies in an even lesser school.

What kind of people do that to their kid?

Well. Uneducated people, of course. They hadn’t a clue. I think they really didn’t know there was much difference between universities around the country. And they really didn’t know a Ph.D. from some third-rate school in the middle of the Southwestern desert was not the same as a Ph.D. — or any degree — from a four-year California university. And why should they? Neither of them went to college, and I don’t think my father even graduated from high school. From what I can tell, he ran away from home to go to sea before he finished his senior year.

So…yeah. I guess I managed to steer my life in the right direction. But still…I’m not fond of  being reminded of growing up in Saudi Arabia. And a wet, rasty-nasty day like today does exactly that.

Ugh!