Weird Weather…

…portending what is going to be a bitch of a week. Along about 5 p.m. the dogs and I were rousted from a little nap by the sound of thunder. Got up to let the corgis out before it starts to rain. It was 112 degrees out there, black clouds, gusting wind.

{ugh}

Temp has dropped 12 degrees in the half-hour since then: down to 100. So it actually could rain. Normally rain will not hit the ground here if the air temperature is above 104. The weather service has one of its hysterical-sounding “WARNINGS” posted: Severe Thunderstorm Advisory. Apparently they think a storm cell down in the southeast Valley is capable of winds of up 60 mph.

LOL! Rain is SUCH a bizarre rarity hereabouts, that the local news stations fill the airwaves with photos of it. Eeeek! What is that?

Apparently 7,000 people have already lost power.

Ruby has to go to the vet’s to be spayed on Tuesday. (Ruby’s Tuesday…lovely) (sorry) (couldn’t resist that) I was supposed to take her in tomorrow afternoon and leave her overnight. But after that was arranged, the Mayo called and announced that they had unilaterally decided I will show up at 1:00 tomorrow and spend the entire afternoon having lab tests, more mammograms, EKGs, and on and on. Because the Mayo is an hour’s drive from my house, this will absorb the entire afternoon. I won’t get home before the vet’s office closes — and the vet is a half-hour drive from my house.

So that means I’ll have to show up at the vet’s at 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, eventuating an hour’s drive through rush-hour traffic over a circuitous route to escape endless no-left-turn signs, speed bumps, and roundabouts.

Of  course, the cleaning lady is supposed to show up Tuesday morning. So to get her in the door, I’ll have to hide the key at  a neighbor’s house. I don’t have the cleaning lady’s phone number, so that means I have to call the neighbor who hooked me up with her and have her call the cleaning lady to let her know where the key is. Oh, cripes.

The vet wants to keep the pup overnight, presumably by way of inflating the bill. So I’ll have to schlep over there again through the rush hour on Wednesday. Then what we will have is a sick puppy to take care of for the next week. As though we hadn’t already had enough sick-puppy care in these precincts…

Thursday morning is the SBA meeting: another rush-hour drive across the Valley.

I have not started working on our new client’s project, mostly because I haven’t heard back from them about a question asked. This project will require coordination of sub-editors, since when I’m not too busy I expect to be too sick to do much editorial work over the next few weeks.

So next week is shaping up to be a whirlwind tour of some of the things I hate most, in descending order of hateworthiness:

• boob X-rays
• needles in the arm
• time wastage
• sick puppy
• city driving through rush-hour traffic
• city driving not through rush-hour traffic
• cleaning lady hassle
• stiff vet bill

It’s taking a calculated risk, this spaying thing: if any complications happen to the dog, we are gonna be in deep doo-doo. And you just know, don’t you, that this is going to blow up in my face… If anything happens to her as a result of the spaying surgery, she’s going to have to be boarded at the vet while I recover from being surged myself.

On the other hand, it’ll be just as much of a nightmare if she comes into heat when my son is here, trying to take care of me, with Charley in tow. Just imagine THAT circus!

Really, I still don’t know which chance is the worst risk to take:

• that the pup won’t come into heat for another couple of months (she’ll be 7 months old on August 10; I’m surged on August 7); or
• that she won’t have some untoward reaction, infection, or complication from the spaying surgery.

Holeee mackerel, what a pain in the tuchus!

* * *

A member of the church’s pastoral care team just called to offer moral support. She’s also on the choir, a very dear and lovely woman. Isn’t that nice? She offered to help out with running around or just to socialize, as desired.

I can always use socialization. 😆

The storm is over. We didn’t get a drop of rain here. She said they had rain downtown, where she lives, but it’s blown past there, too. It actually never blew in to our part of town. It’s dark, 100 degrees, and humid out there. Ruby took off after a paloverde beetle, apparently mistaking it for a gigantic specimen of her favorite snack, the cockroach. Besides killing your paloverde and citrus trees, the damn things pack a fierce bite.

There’s what I need to make my day: for the pup to get bitten by a four-inch-long beetle capable of bringing down a large paloverde tree.