Coffee heat rising

Rainy-Day Monday

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About as un-Arizona a day as you can get!

😀

DepositPhoto; Rainy Weather © dnaumoidThe sky is gray, a soft wind is blowing, and it looks for all the universe like rain is y-cumin’ in. Wunderground says it’s 76º out there, cloudy, with 100% chance of rain.

Ya don’t say, Jose?

Seriously, it’s quite a beautiful day, in its style. Far as I can tell by the calendar, my son has NOT slated me to trudge to the Mayo today. Thank the heavens!

Also in the Thankful department, apparently no babysitter is scheduled to come here and supervise my every living, breathing moment. No one has showed up at the door, anyway.

C-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-C-K!
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE… 

Eeek!  What IS God trying to say to us?

My goodness, what strange weather. Just now it’s raining…sorta. Not, for sure, in the torrents one would expect to accompany a symphony of blasting thunder. But…water falling out of the sky is always a remarkable event, here in lovely uptown Arizona.

Well…I sure am glad M’jito and I are not on the road, traipsing traipsing traipsing to the Mayo Clinic on the far east side. I do hate that drive! Even when someone else is behind the steering wheel. Endless awful traffic.

Oh, my! Now we’re getting a wonderful TORRENT of rain pouring straight out of the sky. Wind, to the extent that there was any, has quit, and so the water is dropping into the yard and the pool, unmolested.

After 10 a.m. None of the babysitters my son has hired to ride herd on me have shown up. Thank the heavens!

Probably thank the rainy heavens… Driving through the traffic from those dreary eastside commuter suburbs where the women live is no fun under the best of circumstances. And believe me: you do NOT want to do that under pouring rain and blasting thunder.

Hmmm…a check of the storage cabinets and shelves shows we have plenty of food — dog & human — for the next several days. So we absolutely positively do NOT have to go out in that weather. 😀

Whenever it settles down, I’ll make a run on the Hispanic market to the north of us — a short, easy walk — and stock up on some more easily stored chow.

And Ruby and I should be set!

Dispatch from Torture Central

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Here we are at the Mayo Clinic again, whereinat for me to spend another afternoon with another damned needle in my arm.

M’jito, ever empathetic, has lost patience with my looniness and stalked out of the torture room, presumably to lurk in the waiting area…as far from his bi*ch mother as he can get. Comforting as Hell, eh?

😀

Even though this procedure is painless, I can’t even begin to describe how much I hate it. And, when I venture to think about it, how pointless it seems.

Forgodsake, I’m 81 years old. Ten of those years were spent in a Third-World country, during a time when sanitation was a foreign word. Thanks to flurries of immunizations, I got out of there without contracting a serious disease. My mother nearly died of the amoebic dysentery she caught; difficult to treat in those days…but…it did get her and her little girl out of that Hellish place.

So I don’t have that many years left. Probably no more than I would have if I were left alone to moulder away and die in peace. Sometimes I think I should get on a horse and ride off into the desert. Never to come back. Why spend any part of those years in a hospital being tortured?

Or annoying my poor son to the point where he can’t stay in the same room with me.

What, really, IS the point of staying on this earthly plane after you reach 80 or so?

None, I think.

None.

 

Swampy-Dampy Day!

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Ruby just dragged her human back into the house, after a circumnavigation of the ‘Hood. Gosh!  What an icky morning!

Be glad — be very glad — that you don’t have to work outside in Arizona’s heat and humidity. It is just sticky out there right now.

Ohh well. Ruby and I successfully traipsed around the neighborhood, with little ill effect. Wunderground says we’re enjoying 56% humidity…egad! Does that REALLY mean more than half the air out there is water?

😀  Hope not. But sorta suspect that’s the case. We have 81 degrees with rain showers predicted for this morning.

What, dear Gawd, is on the calendar for today? (Gets up and traipses back to the office…)

Nothing! Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Hmmm…it’s Sunday. Thank goodness I no longer have to get up, throw on some decent clothes, and fly down to the church to sing half the morning.

No kidding: I do miss the choir. A lot. But on a day like this, I’m mighty glad not to have to go out into the traffic and the weather.

….ohhh goodie! Just to make the morning, my son sends an email reminding me that we’re traipsing out to the Mayo Clinic (again!!!!!!) tomorrow morning. 

Boyoboy, could I do without those junkets! No doubt he feels even more strongly about that: the Mayo is a good 40-minute drive from here, meaning a trip out there and an hour wasted talking to doctor about essentially nothing consumes half his working day. And since he’s contrived to get my driver’s license negated, he ends up having to drive me out there.

To me, it feels like such a waste of time. (Imagine how it feels for him!!) Their doctors never have anything to say that makes the slightest bit of difference for my condition….whatever that condition may be. They seem to have no clue. Basically, they’re charging me for getting old.

Makes Christian Science look better and better….

Life: Which Direction to Take?

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Not toward the liquor store, evidently.

😀

Imagining that I craved a glass of wine, along about 4:00 p.m. this afternoon I blasted out of the house and sailed toward the little booze store in the shopping center on the northern edge of the ‘Hood.

Got about two blocks along the way to the place and found myself thinking Why the f*** am I doing this????

Seriously: What on earth did I need a bottle of wine for? Or a fifth of whiskey? Or whatever I imagined I was gonna buy…

And, to my infinite surprise and delight, I found myself headed back to the house, empty-handed.

Yes. Turned around and came straight back to the Funny Farm: sans booze purchase.

For reasons I don’t clearly understand, my brain has decided it does not want its human to consume any more booze!

How weird is that, I ask you?

Truth to tell, I don’t think I drink to excess…at least, not by the standards of the crowd I run with.

My parents always had a cocktail or two before dinner: usually Canadian Club. Yes: every afternoon. After I came of age and was home from college, I would join them.

All my boyfriends guzzled merrily.

Dear Ex-Husband and I had a daily bourbon and water before dinner and wine with dinner. And that was for years. 

After he and I parted, the subsequent gentleman friends continued that tradition with me.

Understand: we weren’t getting sh!t-faced. We were just having a tipple or two.

After I found myself living in singletude, I continued that tradition: would break out the whiskey or the wine before dinner and pour a swiggle. Sometimes more than one swiggle….

Then one day it struck me that any more than one of those swiggles was making me…well…not high as a kite, but for sure, mildly inebriated. Maybe even more than mildly. And that was not good when one was loafing around the house all by one’s self.

So I decided to knock it off with the afternoon cocktails. Which I did.

But I continued to have a glass of wine (maybe a glass and a half) with dinner.

Time passed. Eventually it struck me that ANY swiggling was probably NOT a good thing. Dinnertime or no dinnertime.

So I quit. 

Yeah: cold turkey.

Have not had an alcoholic drink in some weeks.

And y’know… I don’t miss it!

That, I consider to be weird. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it was just time to knock off the swiggling and climb aboard the wagon.

Weird or not, it strikes me as a good thing. An exceptionally good thing, come to think of it. Because enjoyment or not, I do think consumption of alcohol — in any incarnation and in any amount — is not a good thing.

The Mormons and the Christian Scientists have got it right: booze in ANY amount just ain’t healthy! And the best thing you can do for yourself, if you’re a drinker to any degree, is to knock it off.

So…that’s what I’ve done. And the weird thing is…I don’t miss it!

Earlier efforts along these lines have indeed left me feeling deprived. But now? Not so much. For reasons I do not fully understand, I really, truly do not have any craving for a swiggle before dinner. Or a glass of wine with dinner.

So…yeah. This is a bit of a new direction for me.  We shall see how far I can travel in it. 

 

 

BEAUTIFUL Evening!

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Gosh, it is SO gorgeous out there this evening! Ruby and the Human just returned from circumnavigating the ‘Hood…  A little hot and damp out there for the purpose, but not too awful. 😀

Ruby is now fed and the Human has a giant cup of iced tea and here we are loafing on the bed, peering out the back window at the beautiful sunset.

Dinnertime, alas…so we didn’t see any cute kids playing outside under the watchful eyes of their wonderful young parents. They’re a prime attraction of this neighborhood, IMHO. They come out to play, and it’s great fun to watch them frolicking as the Dog and the Human are trotting up the sidewalk.

High, wispy clouds this evening. Not so wispy that they won’t make for a spectacular sunset, though! So we lurk by the bedroom window waiting for the light show.

Eeek! Not to say ARF!

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Egad!  Ruby and I (foolishly, it develops) started our early-morning stroll…not realizing how thick that cloud cover up there is!

Thundering. Celestial threats. “Egad!” is an understatement.

We veer back toward the house and head home at a trot.

…RRRRUUUMBBBLE…

Dart in the door just as it starts to rain, lightning sparking all around us.

Whew! Just in time!

Now we’re loafing on the sack, watching the threatening weather and listening to the thunder serenade.

Gosh. I didn’t realize it was this close to raining.

That ain’t just rain out there, though. THAT is a gathering storm, galloping in from the north.

Hmmmm…  Let’s see what Wunderground has to say about it, if anything…

76 degrees. “Active weather warning”…. Y’don’t say? 😀  43% chance of rain, isolated thunderstorms this morning…”  I charged up my computer for this?

How funny! Ruby is already conkered out on the sack! Darned if she isn’t snoring!  Dogs…what entertaining critters…