Coffee heat rising

Fire Central!

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Gosh…am I glad we’re not still in Southern California.  That’s where I was born, yea verily. Though I grew up overseas — in Saudi Arabia — when my father retired, we moved back to the States, where we ended up in Long Beach, part of the vast L.A. sprawl.

Never cared for Southern California, myself. Smog is not to my taste. Nor are the noise and the traffic and the overall atmosphere of Looney Toons. But boyoboy! Today those fires would tear it for me!

I imagine my mother would have packed us up — well, “us” would have been “her and me,” since my father continued to make a living going to sea with the Merchant Marine — and we would have headed up the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area. She would have barged in on our relatives in Berkeley, and there we would have stayed until the drama subsided.

They would have put up with us for awhile, I expect: a couple of weeks, probably. Much longer than that:  ????  Unknown. But I suppose if she were really scared, she could have rented a motel room for us.

Anyhow…awful glad not to be there now!!

Goin’ All Mormon!

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Actually, in my case: Goin’ all Christian Science! 😀  The tee-totalers in my family were devout Christian Scientists.

My wild-assed parents were not among them. Yea, verily: in Arabia, where we weren’t supposed to get ahold of booze at all, my parents learned to make their own.

No kidding. In Arabia — where booze was soooo naughty as to be radically illegal — my father had an old piano crate in which he housed his still. The thing was always in use.

So I grew up with the stuff all around me, and as soon as I came of age, joined the honored parents in swizzling merrily.

Years of swizzling have passed…and apparently they’ve come home to roost. Or whatever swizzling does…

I’ve developed a fine case of peripheral neuropathy: constant, crazy-making tingling in the hands, feet and lips. GAAAAA!

What I’ve eventually discovered is that if I lay off the wine and the whiskey, the buzzing lays off me. 😀

So: it looks like we’re on the wagon now: permanently.

Depressing, but hardly the end of the world.

My Mormon friends are all tee-totallers. So I’ll have good company in this new endeavor.

Too bad: a glass of wine in the afternoon after dinner — I take my big meal of the day at noon — was one of those minor pleasures that make day-to-day living worth plodding through. But…well…I guess I’ll just have to find something else to amuse myself.

Easier said than done at this time of year. It’s only May, and already the weather is hotter than the hubs of Hades. So…hiking, walking, roaming through shopping malls, whatnot…that sort of stuff is Out with a capital “O”: that leaves loafing in the house as one’s main source of entertainment.

😀

Not that swizzling bourbon was my main source of entertainment…

 

Another Fine Day in Southern California

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Holy mackerel!  THIS is going on right in the vicinity of where my parents and I lived in Southern California. Really: it’s right down the road from where our apartment building stood.

My father would have been at sea, of course — he was an oil tanker captain. But by now my mother and I would be at her grandmother’s house in Berkeley: several hours’ drive away from the present scene of the drama.

Apparently thousands of people have been evacuated from the region. Or relegated to shelters…doesn’t that sound like fun!  My mother would have been terrorized!

My father, o’course, would have been off at sea. So she and I would have been left to cower at home…or to jump in the car and start drivin’ drivin’ drivin’.

Kinda doubt she would have betaken us to a motel. Most likely she would have driven up the coast to the relatives’ house in the Bay Area, and we would have camped with them until the drama subsided.

Mighty glad not to be in that melodrama this afternoon!

Unclear how long this is gonna go on, or how much risk of a real catastrophe exists. If it were me, though, I’d be sooooo far outta there! That’s for sure!

How Could She Do That?

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Y’know… It’s one thing to poison yourself.

But another thing altogether to poison your child.

How on earth could she have done that?  Why would she have done such a thing? Year in and year out?

My mother smoked. She didn’t just smoke a little. She smoked constantly. She was never awake when she didn’t have a cancer stick in her mouth. Not even in the shower! You knew when she awoke in the middle of the night by the stink emanating from her bedroom.

And I was sick all the time I was growing up in her household. Constant, unending respiratory illness. Never stopping. Not until I got out of her house.

She smoked herself to death. And she damn near smoked me to death. Maybe she imagined it would be fitting and lovely for us to share a grave?

Yeah, I understand: it was an addiction. 

But you know, a person can beat addiction. Apply some knowledge and some will power, and you can take it down.

She knew exactly what she was doing. The word came down in the late 1950s: tobacco smoking causes cancer. And it makes the people around you sick.

Oh, yeah. She knew what she was doing. She did it anyway.

It killed her.

What a waste.

Eeeek-a-Dawg!!!

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Ohhhh my goodness!  This evening I truly thought the Pool Dude had left the side gate open, that Ruby had found it, and that she’d taken off for Yuma!

Couldn’t find her when I went to call her in for the night. 

The back door to the house, in lovely weather like we’re having now, hangs open most of the time, so she comes and goes as she pleases. Consequently, the side gate to the yard is normally closed and latched.

But…Pool Dude was here. What does he know of dogs and of gates???

This evening she disappeared from view. Didn’t come to call. Ohhhhhhh sheee-ut!

And yes, the side gate was unlatched.

Ho-leeee shee-ut!!

Called and called.

No dawg.

Went inside to put on the clodhoppers, so as to go out through that gate and trot off down the road, calling and calling and calling…no doubt fruitlessly.

Just when I got back to the side yard, though: she surfaced.

No, she had NOT run away down the road.

THANK YOU, GOD!!!!

* * * *

Whew! After this, forgodsake, REMEMBER TO CHECK THAT GATE in the wake of any workman who stumbles into the yard!!!!!

Pool Dude In! Pool Dude Out!

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Ohhhhhh my gawd!!! Two hundred bucks (plus, plus, plus) to clean that damn swimming pool and service the equipment.

No wonder my neighbor Terri just lets hers sit there dry and rotting away!

Actually, repairing the mess after you let the thing go to pot for several years would cost one helluva lot more than keeping it up every few months. But…jeez. It still gives you a gawdawful shock, every time you have to get someone in here to work on it.

And WORK is the operative word!!!  Holeeee mackerel. First off, the guy has to know HOW to work on it…which is one helluva lot more than I’d be capable of. Then he has to bang and thrash and scour and haul and carry on and carry on to get the damn thing clean, service the filter and motor, and…on and on and freakin’ ON!

That’s in the afternoon heat. As we scribble, the back porch thermometer reads a chilly 105 degrees. No joke: normally at this time of year it would be around 110 out there. And that makes our guy’s job one of those jobs you’re glad you don’t have! 

Yea verily: my neighbor does leave hers sitting empty. 

But…but… What that does is ruin the plaster and let the equipment go to pot. So…if and when she goes to move out, to get that dead pool working will cost her not one but SEVERAL arms and legs. Really: it’s incredibly stupid to just let your pool go to pot. What a mess you’ll have to repair when you sell the house!

And I have to say: I do love the pool. I swim in there several times a week. Not every day, admittedly…but often enough and with enough enjoyment to make it worth keeping the thing up.

Man O man!  What a JOB that guy did. Nothing about Pool Dude’s work is either simple or easy. Even regularly keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance, there’s no way in Hell that I could do the work that fella did this afternoon.

Anyway, whenever the sun goes far enough over the yardarm that I can jump in the drink without giving myself a roaring case of skin cancer, I’ll take a nice swim. And that will be…rewarding, I reckon.