Coffee heat rising

Jumping on the Wagon!

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Once again, as happens occasionally here at the Funny Farm, I take it into my head that I need to abjure alcohol. Once and for all. Onto the wagon, and don’t jump off!

😀

Seriously: my mother’s family were tee-totalers (far from what my parents were!). But come the next generation, she and my father enjoyed swiggling so much that they learned to make their own booze while we lived in Arabia (where alcohol was verboten), and then continued to brew their own after they moved to Sun City, Arizona.

Do I believe I drink too much?

Well…no, not of late. In the past, without doubt I have. But these days, I never drink more than one or two cocktails or glasses of wine in a day.

Now that I’m getting old, though, I’m thinking even that is too much. So, these days I’m do believe it’s time to knock it off altogether.

Let us see, then, if we who are the funny-looking human can make that happen!

Count: 1
Today is the first 100% booze-free day of the current effort!

Watch this space!

Cleaning Lady/Babysitter???

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Quarter to two in the afternoon, and no visitation from the honored cleaning lady: she who (so I was led to believe) has been hired to babysit me on the side.

Her car is still in front of the WonderAccountants’ place, straight across the street. And you know what that means, right? The poor woman is over there working her butt off! 

Speaking of jobs we’re glad we don’t have….

At any rate, it also means that well over half the workday has passed and I remain free of supervision. HOOray!

My son will not be pleased if he finds out he’s paying her to be here several hours a week and she’s not showing up. But…far be it from me to tattle, eh?  😉

Heh…he’ll have to read this blog to find that out.

😀

Seriously: of course I’ll let him know if she doesn’t surface. But she probably will…because she’s honest, sweet, and brain-banging hard-working.

If it weren’t so searing hot, I’d walk to the Sprouts and pick up some incidental chow. But at 1:30 of an Arizona June afternoon, indeed it IS searing hot. Walking over there would be suicidal…and whatever I need from that place, I don’t need it so much that I feel like hassling with hiring a driver to get there.

If Wonder Cleaning-Lady fails to surface this afternoon, I’ll have an Uber cab deliver me to the Sprouts. This neighborhood is saturated with Uber drivers — a good dozen of them live right around here. So it should be easy to get some poor wretch to drive me wherever I want to go.

Which, in this heat, is…into the living room. Thankee.

Morning in Lovely(?) Arizona

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The Corgi is out back, sniffing every corner of the yard — her daily task, right? The Human loafs, feet on the hassock, computer on the lap. All is quiet…for the nonce.

Not looking forward to this morning, though. M’Hijito has hired a babysitter to come in and supervise me, forgodsake. Today, as I understand it, is to be her first day on the job.

It’s only a little after seven, and so we presumably have an hour or two before she surfaces.

Once the poor soul is welcomed into the Funny Farm and has a chance to look around, we’ll have to try to get to know each other. And since Funny is in fact One Weird Chick, …heh!!  We’ll see how long she lasts!

😀

Seriously: I am a strange little broad and always have been, since I was a little kid. As a child, I had hardly any friends, because I did not and could not fit in with the crowd.

Over half a century of life on this earth indeed has taught me to keep my mouth shut. But that’s easy enough when the victim…uh…companion isn’t living with you. When you’ve got someone in your face all day long…well…that’s a whole ‘nother story.

So, truth to tell, even though I’m interested to meet this new person, I’m sure not looking forward to it.

By now Ruby and I would have circumambulated the ‘Hood on our morning walk. Instead, we’ve had to sit here and wait for the babysitter to show up. Of course, she has not done so, and because June is one of the hotter months in lovely central Arizona, our chance for a doggy-walk is already lost.

Since it’s unreasonable to ask some poor underpaid soul to surface before 7 in the morning, I’ll have to go over to the locksmith’s shop and have him make another key, to give to this lady. That will allow her to get into the house while Ruby and I are out junketing around the neighborhood.

Just what I wanna do: hand out front-door keys to all and sundry…

Meanwhile, my office looks like a bomb dropped in there. WHAT a mess! Instead of loafing here playing with the computer, I should be back there shoveling out that room.

Ugh! Grand way to start the day, eh?

This is part of what makes my character weird: I don’t like people telling me what to do with my life or what to do with my time. 

Ever has it been thus. So…school was a PITA. Organized sports: PITA. Church activities: PITA.

Huh….  What happened over the years to incline me to dislike other people so?

Hmmmm…

Well: my earliest memory is of the time I was playing in a sandbox with a neighbor’s two brats. I was under three years old, because this happened before we left for Arabia…and we arrived in that sylvan realm a day before I turned three.

We’re sitting there in a sandbox in front of the house my mother had rented in Berkeley, California. The neighbor’s two brats are there, too, playing with me.

I imagine we’re all having a good time, when the brat girl picks up a load of sand in her little kiddie shovel and SLAMS IT INTO MY FACE. 

Slams it into my EYES.

Oh, my god! Never has anything hurt so much, before or since.

And there you are, folks:

That is how I learned to dislike and to distrust other people. That lesson, we might add, has never been forgotten.

And that’s why I don’t want strangers in my home. It’s why I don’t want the babysitter my son has hired in my home. It’s why just now I do not want to sit here waiting for the woman to show up; but instead I crave to be striding around the park behind a bouncing corgi.

Humanity: God’s gift to Satan.

Eine Kleine Paranoia…

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For reasons unknown, the possibility of a major earthquake in Southern California — powerful enough to affect lovely Arizona — has been lingering in my feeble little mind for the past couple of days.

No: I’m not clairvoyant. 😀  So don’t worry about any magical prediction. Some parties have been gnashing teeth about a possible major quake over here…but that is so unlikely as to be hilarious.

The thing is, though… Structures in California are built to withstand earthquakes. That’s not true in Arizona. Because o’course we don’t have earthquakes. Right?

Upshot: a quake of any noticeable magnitude would do some serious damage here.

MEANWHILE….

It’s 109 degrees in the shade(!!) of the back porch. Vast, towering white cumulus clouds are barreling down on us from the north. Dollars to donuts, it’ll rain like He!! this evening. That’ll cool things down a bit.

But until then: 109 and humid is no joke!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where my parents dragged me to live for nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf. You ain’t seen heat and humidity till you’ve enjoyed a summer in those parts.

At any rate, Wunderground is forecasting 100% chance of precip, with thunderstorms to rage into the night. Goody… 😮

 

Hotter & Hotter

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Another balmy day in Arizona: “only” 111 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Got that right: a hundred and eleven in the shade. 

Ain’t goin’ out into the sunlight…wouldn’t matter, because I don’t have a portable thermometer.

Greater horrors await, though. 

Horrifically, indeed: the beloved WonderAccountants have just announced that they’re retiring! Of all the outrages!!!

This is a disaster for me, because I am innumerate. No: really and truly innumerate. It’s a kind of learning disability: haven’t ever been able to do basic  arithmetic. I understand the principles, but the process is just…blinding.

My father used to try to beat arithmetic into me, when I was a little girl. No kidding: he’d whip the bejayzuz out of me when I got things wrong…which was about every 30 seconds. This did nothing to enamor me of mathematical calculation. Today I can’t add up a column of figures without an electronic calculator

My son does understand about tax accounting, at least on a superficial level. So I may be able to foist the job on him…at the cost of a vast guilt trip on my part.

Truth to tell, though, I’m gonna have to find someone else to take on the noxious tax calculation task.

Well, the WonderAccountants have done this year’s tax job. That gives me a year to find some other victim to lure into the net. Sure not looking forward to it!!

So…mwa ha ha! I guess we could say things are heating up all the way around: on a literal level and on a metaphorical level.

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona”

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Okay, it’s “only” 96 degrees out there, at 8 o’clock in the morning. So saith Wunderground. Whatever: it’s HOT and it’s MUGGY. Ruby and I just staggered in from an hour’s walk…one of those excursions that leaves you wondering why on earth anyone would ever choose to live in this place.

Well. No snow in the winter. I guess.

But I’ll tellya: we used to live in San Francisco. And I’ll take fog and cold air over air so soggy at 8:00 in the morning that you can barely breathe. If my son weren’t here, I’d have shot out of here the minute my father died: yea, those many years ago.

Weather like this brings to mind the Good Ole Days in Saudi Arabia. You wanna talk about chez pitz? Jeez!!!! You’d wake up in the morning to a clear blue sky and see water dripping off the eaves, like it had just rained. HIDEOUS place!

After we left that garden spot — my father sent me and my mother home after she came down with a roaring case of amoebic dysentery and damn near died from it — we landed in San Francisco, where I went to junior high school.

Would that we could have stayed there! But ohhhhh nooo… After a few years my father landed a job shipping tankers out of Southern California. So it was off to lovely /s/ Long Beach.

I had been born in Long Beach, so my mother was familiar with the place. She was never a complainer: always looked at the positive side of things. But…ugh!!! Compared to the San Francisco Bay Area, it was chez pitz with a vengeance.

Oh, well. That’s there, not here. 😀 Here, it’s hot, it’s wet, it’s bourgeois, it’s icky. If I could move outta here today, I’d be on the road right now.

But alas, that ain’t gonna happen.

My son is established here. His dad and New Wife are living happily ever after here. I’m retired and would like never to see another university campus again. And so…here is where we are.