Coffee heat rising

Arizona weather

Gasp! Huff! Puff!!!

by

Just back from about two miles through 105-degree heat. HOLEE shee-ut! Not only hot out there, but passing muggy. If I had any sense, I’d plunge into the pool. But…

a) No, I have no sense; and
b) It’s 107 in the shade out there on the back porch

Jayuz, it’s almost as miserable as Arabia.

And THAT, my friends, is bloody miserable.

On the way to and from the shopping centers, I walk past these blocks of apartments that my mother wanted me and DXH to move into when we first explored this part of town.

WHY in the NAME of God would your mother want you to move into a ticky-tacky pile sandwiched between a freeway on-ramp and one of the busiest, loudest surface streets in the Valley???

Never did understand her enthusiasm for those dumps, except that they superficially resembled apartments she and I inhabited in Southern California.

Ugh. Long Beach Redux. Who would choose to live in such a place?

Oddly, though, our Realtor found us a development to the east of the freeway, a tract that amounts to a pleasant middle-class neighborhood with a nice park, plus some distance between most of the houses and the traffic racket. And the structures in it are HOUSES, not tumble-down apartments.

Phoenix is kinda weird that way. Ticky-tacky tracts interspersed with reasonably decent middle-class developments wrapped around upscale neighborhoods. That’s our garden spot.

Ohhh well. 

It seems unreasonably hot out there. Just now, Wunderground tells us the temp is a balmy 110 degrees. Lovely.

Passed a truck driver in one of the parking lots, loading boxes — by hand — into his semi. Ugh!!!! Some people’s jobs, eh? Offered to help, but mercifully he declined.

Finally made it home and now am  loafing in the air-conditioning.

You don’t even wanna KNOW what the power bill is gonna be this month. My guess,, though, is around $300.

Summer bills run upwards of $200 here. But then, in the winter they’re practically nil…so it all levels out.

Welp…at least we don’t live in Texas. Have you seen the horror shows emanating from that place? Floods that wash people away, drown folks hiding in attics...augh!

That’s whence my father’s family emanated. I can remember my uncle relating memories of times when he and my aunt stood on their wooden porch and watched tornadoes sail past on the prairie. Never did understand how they escaped those storms…guess the weather must have been off in the distance.

Argh! As my father used to say: Texas is a good place to be from…as far from it as you can get. 

Here Comes the Sun…

by

Into the third day of a passing storm. It’s supposed to clear tomorrow…today the sun peeked through for several hours, but then the sky clabbered up again and more rain fell with abandon.

Think (hope!) the bronchitis may be starting to clear up. too. In the morning it feels almost like an ordinary cold. But of course, that’s after I’ve been sequestered inside a closed-up bedroom with two hot steamers running for 10 or 12 hours.

In fact, this morning it seemed improved enough to assay a doggy walk. For day after day, poor little Ruby has been trapped in the house by the rain and by the Human’s ailment. Alas, by the time we got to the outskirts of Upper Richistan, the threat of more rain had escalated to a promise. So we had to cut our expedition short and hurry home — just reached the front door when more rain began to pour down.

Thought we’d try again as the weather cleared but then decided I’d druther go back to bed. Plus as I was peering out the front door to check on the downpour status, I spotted a shady pair trotting past the house, transparently stealing and garbage scavenging, almost surely homeless (read “drug addicts” in these parts). On the way home we saw another sketchy fellow going through a garbage bin in the alley behind Josie’s house. In the rain. Uh huh: N.G.

Back at the Funny Farm: yesterday’s extra CPR Call Blocker coding seemed to have had an effect. The number of nuisance calls dropped to two. I thought I’d found the key to blocking nuisance calls from “Name Unavailable,” but another got through. Called CPR’s excellent customer service; the guy there says blocking “Name Unavailable” doesn’t block “Unavailable” calls, each of which has to be separately, manually blocked. Now I’m thinking the only way to deal with this constant harassment is to tell everyone who needs to reach me that the only way to get in touch is by email, and then unplug the phones. Or cancel the service.

As the day passes, the apparent improvement in the epizoõtic backtracks, and by mid-afternoon it again feels like I can’t draw enough air into the lungs to sustain life. So it was back to bed in the confines of the closed bedroom filled with steam.

This is the kind of sh!t that makes you doubt the entire premise of “Aging in Place.” Really? I’m on the far end of being able to drive around the city when I don’t feel well. What is gonna happen when I’m 80 and I come down with this kind of crud? Or something worse? How will I get food? How will I care for myself? Will I die on the floor with no one to notice till my skeleton has been cleaned by the ants?

I see My Beloved Employer, the Great Desert University, whose administrators are always on the lookout for a way to generate another million bucks, are building an old-folkerie for self-styled intellectuals, to house the aged on the campus. Lots of stuff to do. And you even get to go to classes on the campus!

Whoop de doo.

Well, so let’s look at that with the least jaundiced eye we can manage.

Okay. In theory it looks like a good idea. A lot of stuff is going on at the campus. You would be surrounded by young adults, and if you were ambitious enough and influential enough, you might even be able to engineer some activities that would allow you to interact with the critters. Usually a healthy enterprise, this.

However…truth to tell, Tempe is Chez Pitz. Despite the presence of the university, it’s a bedroom community that doesn’t even faintly appeal to me as a place to live. “Old” is the New N*, particularly among the Millennial set: your chance of engaging with the (mostly commuter) students on the Great Desert University campus is almost nil.

Lovely Tempe

However-ever, one would be to some degree — nay, to a large degree — insulated from the overall Southern California-style ticky-tacky of the East Valley suburban lifestyle.

But.

Yes. But. You would be housed in a multi-story apartment building: a rabbit warren.  No yard. No privacy to speak of. No distance between you and your fellow inmates. And not just any apartment building, but a storage bin for old folks.

What would I do with my little dog in a place like that?

Well. You know exactly what I would have to do with my little dog: find some other home for her. And I would never be able to get a dog again.

Sorry. but a goldfish a substitute for a dog does not make. Life is not life without the companionship of a dog. That is fact.

Thus, quite possibly, a life proctored by protectors who will be there to call 911 if you fall and you can’t get up may not be a life at all.

Tomorrow the weather in lovely uptown Phoenix is expected to be “sunny along with a few clouds.” Let’s hope that’s true. And let’s hope it applies to Life, the Universe, and All That…

HOLY Good Morning, America!!

by

Dog and I were rousted out, along about 6 a.m., by a mighty blast of lightning. Holy mackerel! Because it was prefaced by an ominous rumble, I thought it was an explosion at first. Another meth lab bites the dust? But quick enough you could see the blue flashes of lightning flickering through the draperies.

Will, our neighborhood town cryer, noted it on the ’Hood’s Facebook page. A whole slew of followers commented. One woman thought a plane had hit the house. Another brilliant soul went outside to check it out (forgodsake — why not wear a TV  antenna attached to the beanie on your head, too?)

Covered the BBQ, but the kite-like wicker chairs on the side porch were still outside, so I had to race out and drag those in the house. Not much wind came up, though, and just a spattering of rain. Wunderground reports a 60% chance of rain today, dropping off tomorrow, and then back to a noticeable level over the weekend. Should be innaresting.

And the pool dude just came and went…yay!  That gent has turned out to be a large success. Very, very nice man — and pleasantly chatty, which is nice when the person is only around for 20 minutes or so. Even though I haven’t lifted a finger since he started working here, the pool looks gorgeous — ALL the time, not just for the 10 minutes after it was cleaned. Dunno how he’s doing that, but I think he’s worth every penny he charges.

Now I’m going to be forced to get up off my duff and drive to the grocery store, it being after 9 a.m. so I can turn left out of the ’Hood. The bronchitis seems to be letting up, just a bit, and so I’m hoping it will be about gone in another week or two. Even after two 15-hour nights of sleep, plus another 9 hours last night before this morning’s little freshet, I still feel so tired I can barely stumble around. Driving the car seems contraindicated, but there’s no other way to get food. Soooo…

The low-cholesterol diet regime is, IMHO, just about as obnoxious as the bronchial infection. It’s darned hard to think of anything to eat for breakfast that I want to eat, that is low in fats, and that tastes good. The guacamole scheme was a FAIL, as of course is anything spread on bread, which makes me blow up like a balloon. A couple pieces of grilled fish reside in fridge, but…yuch. A chunk of cold halibut is not what I want to greet the day with.

While I’m out today, I’ll have to drive down to the big Sprouts downtown to look for free-range, air-cooled chicken. I really dislike factory-raised, saltwater-infused chicken — just vile! — and so I don’t eat it, because I have to go way, wayyyy out of my way to get unadulterated poultry.

Ultimately what I may have to do is just take a chance that getting rid of the daily cheese-laden breakfasts will do the trick. But…honestly, I really don’t want to argue with YDK the next time I drag in there to be pestered with this stuff. Nor do I care to drop dead of a heart attack or stroke anytime soon…