WonderAccountant and I planned to get together this afternoon: meeting at her place. This would entail my having to walk over there…through 108-degree heat, according to the back porch thermometer.

Well. Ruby the Corgi and I have already traipsed through the heat, thankyouverymuch, and I can tellya: assuredly I don’t want to walk across even the one blacktop road between here and the WonderAccountants’ place!

Mercifully, when I called to arrange this forthwith, she suggested we put it off to another day.

YES!!!!!

Not to say HOOOOORAAAHHHH!

Yah: this was a chore that I absolutely positively was NOT in the mood for today. Any task that involves anything even remotely resembling math (of any variety) is over my furry little head. That’s why I hire WonderAccountant to handle my books, and it’s why M’hijito rides his stallion behind her to check on it and keep himself aware of what’s going on.

So: that was escaped.

And so was the (very short) trip across the broiling asphalt between our houses. Ugh!

Honestly, I’m coming to dislike living in Arizona more and more as the seasons turn. Spring and summer here, taken together, form a variety of Hell, so unholy is the heat. Just walking across the street entails armoring your feet with thick-soled shoes.

Where would I go, if I could escape this place?

Well. The San Francisco Bay Area would be my first choice. Either Parkmerced, where my mother and I lived when we first came back from Arabia and my father (a Merchant Marine deck officer) shipped out of the East Bay, or Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

Of course, I couldn’t afford to live in either of those places…but it’s something to daydream about.

Failing that? Well…here in Arizona: we have Prescott, an upscale college town to the north of us. Or the Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson.

Otherwise? In general: meh! There aren’t many venues that are better than this place. Summers here suck, but the rest of the year, the climate is lovely. The district where I live is solidly middle-class, ringed with pleasing stores in easy walking distance of my house.

Truth to tell, I’d just as soon live out the rest of my life right here!

No kidding: as we scribble — at quarter to 11 in the morning — the back porch thermometer reads 111 degrees. 

Sheeee-ut!!!!! This place is almost as hellish as Saudi Arabia…a venue whose weather defined Hell.

Just back from a stroll around the ‘Hood with Ruby. 

Nooooo….of course I wouldn’t have taken her out if I’d realized we were headed into an oven.

But by the time that reality dawned on me, we were halfway around our course. So we had to keep going: turning back would have been six of one, half-a-dozen of the ‘tother.

We did make it back to the Funny Farm. But…now my hair is drenched, crown to collar. Shirt is wet with sweat, too. But…I ain’t changing clothes or washing hair until the fans here in the family room get the body cooled down.

Today’s balmy climate is reminiscent of what we endured — for ten endless years — in Saudi Arabia. Soggy, brain-banging heat IS summer on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

At least here, the phenomenon will disappear after a few days. It’ll still be hot, but it won’t be steam-room hot.

Gawd, but I hate this kind of Saudi weather.

Seriously: HOT and WET was what we endured for nine seemingly endless years on that shore of the Persian Gulf.

How my mother, an Upstate New York girl, survived that monstrous interlude puzzles me to this day. She didn’t, really: by the time we left that garden spot, she was hideously sick. Amoebic dysentery, as it developed. She spent weeks in a hospital back in San Francisco and…really…never fully recovered from it.

Passed a small crew of lawn dudes, sitting in the shade of a tree partaking of liquids and food. Stopped to chat.

How the HELL do those guys survive working in this unholy heat and humidity? They must be made of asbestos!

At any rate, if I didn’t have Gerardo on the string already, I might have inquired as to whether they wanted a job.

WonderAccountant wants me to go over to her office this afternoon. Why? That escapes me. Seriously: after that stroll, my brain is SO FRIED that I can’t remember why we’re getting together.

Really, it’s just not that hot: high clouds have now cooled us down to only 100 degrees on the back porch. But it’s so humid out there that it feels like lovely Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Humidity is 32% just now. Chance of rain: 34%.

Ugh! WHY do I stay in this unholy place?

Pleeeze, God! Take me back to San Francisco, where I belong!

Have you noticed that people no longer can follow directions that include words like “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west”?

No kidding. Many, if not most, people do not know which way those are. If you tell someone to “turn north” at a four-way intersection, they really and sincerely do not know which way to go.

Once again, I explained to some babysitter whom my son had hired to ride herd on me that to get here she needs to come west across Neighborhood Lane, turn south on Innumerable Road, and then come one block down to Erewhon Alley. And by golly…once again the person could not find Erewhon Alley. BECAUSE she did not understand which way is west and which way is south.

Substituting “left” and “right” presupposes that the errant driver is going in a given direction as she approaches the ‘Hood. But…after she gets on the desired entry street, she could be coming our way from any of three directions!

So…once again, yesterday’s babysitter ended up in NeverNever Land. And I never ever did see her.

It can’t be THAT hard to figure out which way is left and which way is right; which way is north and which way is south. Almost all the repairmen find the place with no problem. Then I realized: these women are driving their own private cars. A guy whose job is to drive all over the city, going to addresses where he has to fix air conditioners or barbecues or plumbing, probably has a GPS in his truck.

Questionable whether a woman whose job is to sit in a chair all day and watch you sit in a chair all day is bright enough to learn how to use a GPS. But measurable IQ or no measurable IQ, without a doubt the problem is that most of them don’t have a GPS in their car. 

Geez! Problems of the 21st Century, eh?

Just now I’m trying to cook a piece of salmon on the grill…and not having much luck. Appears the gas burners are on the fritz.

They seem to be burning..but…on “low as low can go.” Can’t fire the thing up enough to actually COOK the meat.

This, …

• While my son has purloined my car, so I can’t get to a repair shop
• While it’s so hot you can hardly breathe out there
• While the babysitter my son hired to supervise my every moment (and prevent me from sipping a glass of wine…) hasn’t shown up — and probably went to the home of a neighbor whose street number is the same as mine (just one block north)
• While I don’t have anything else in the fridge and so need that grill to work…or else will have to cope with a giant mess in the kitchen

Yep: the grill is definitely busted. I’m probably gonna have to buy a new one. And that’ll set me back a couple hundred bucks. Or more.

Uhhhhh….

Waaait-a-minute… The damn thing is set on “Low”!  Whaaa????  No wonder it won’t cook the fish!

That’s a mistake I’ve never made before…not in a good 50 years of outdoor grilling!!!  Senility: it’s sneakin’ up!

Or maybe it’s galloping up….

G*ddammit! I just went out in back to tidy things up,

It’s out of reach of the gas canister, so I can’t even turn it on to grill a piece of hamburger.

And it’s way, way, WAY too heavy for me to heave around!

What the F*CK is the goddam MATTER with people?

Seriously: WHY would a person do anything so stupid?

The only thing you can figure is deliberate maliciousness. Haul the thing away from where it belongs and make the Bitch Homeowner drag it back all by her birdbrained little self.

Goddammit. Now I’ve got to find a male neighbor or worker to come over here and haul the thing back into place.

If I knew which yard worker or pool worker pulled this stunt, I’d call them on the phone and FIRE them. RIGHT NOW.

But of course, I have no idea. We have…

• Pool Dude
• Three or four landscape maintenance guys
• Possibly some guy I called to work on the Que (don’t recall just now)

Goddammit!!!
And further goddammit: the link to the ‘Cue image suddenly doesn’t work!

******trying again*******

Okay….I shanghaied the neighbor —  who works out of his home — to come over and drag the grill back into place. Being male and pale — and about 100 pounds bigger than me — he was able to do this without too much trouble. Other, of course, than the interruption in his day.

Anyway, he was kind enough to traipse over here with me, reposition the BBQ, and make sure it works. It does seem to be operating the way it’s supposed to (…i hope), and so in a few minutes — after my rage settles down — I’ll go out and grill a piece of salmon and some frozen French fries.

Wish I knew which worker caused this little snafu. He’d be looking for another customer… But I haven’t a clue. 

• Hotter than a by-gawd
• Hotter than a two-dollar cookstove
• Hotter than a three-dollar pistol
• Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk

On and on…. He was a good Texas boy, a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, and he had a suitcase full of little sayings like that.

Who knows what he’d pull out today, if he were still among us! Thermometer in the shade of the back porch reads 103.  And yeah: he’d regard that as passing warm. Wunderground says we’re supposed to reach 109 today, though.

Me: just back from a dog-free stroll around the ‘Hood. No doubt not my wisest move of the day….

Probably ought to take a shower to cool down. But…well…I’m too lazy just now to regard cleaning the bathtub afterward as a lovely way to spend time this morning. And o’course, you fail to wipe down the plastic walls after a shower…at your peril. A giant scrubbing job is NOT what I want to tuck into the cards.

Meandering up the sidewalk, I passed workmen at a couple of houses — guys who looked like they were engaged in carpentry or painting. LORDIE! Can you imagine doing that kind of physical work in 110-degree heat?

And yes, it soon will be 110°…at least. Just now, it’s only 10:30 in the morning!

WhatEVER possessed my parents to drag us to Arizona???

Well, they thought Sun City was about the greatest innovation the human race ever devised: “No kids screaming outside my window when I’m trying to take a nap,” my father intoned, with pleased awe.

Adding to that bit of charm, Sun City was then and is now as whitey-white as  you can get. To my parents, that was a positive trait of the first rank.

That was in 1962: sixty-four years ago! 

Even today: an African-American friend of mine — a business professional — had the brazen nerve to buy a house out there. He was literally HOUNDED out of the place. Within six months, he sold up and moved out.

I suggested he buy the house for sale across the street from the Funny Farm. He declined. Apparently felt moving his blackness into our neighborhood was not a kind thing to do. Or maybe he didn’t care to dodge bullets flying down from the slum to the north of us… 

We are, after all, parked in lovely Sunnyslope: a crime-ridden slum of the first water.

No kidding. Parts of it — such as our neighborhood — are on the high side of upper-middle class. They qualify as North Central Phoenix, a tony district, indeed. But get six blocks to the north of us, and…hang onto your (hard-)hat!

Lordie! What a place!

It is SO SWAMPY out there that by the time the Dawg and I got back from the morning neighborhood stroll, I was just drenched in sweat and dew. What a horrid morning!

Now the question remains: what to do with the rest of the day?

Not much, I’m afraid. My son has purloined my car. He claims my driver’s license has been invalidated, with the collusion of those idiots at the Mayo Clinic. Yeah: the ones who do not or cannot listen to you when you describe what’s going on with a health matter.

So in this heat, I can’t even so much as go to the corner grocery store. It’s just too hot and swampy to walk that far.

Do I want to stay here?

Or do I want to jump the gun and move into one of those horrible old-folks’ prisons before I’m utterly forced to do so?

My son is pushing at the “forced to” just now. But the truth is, no one can prove I can’t take care of my self and my home just now. In another six months or year: yeah, that may be the case. But for the moment, I can effectively fight being dragged out of the Funny Farm. And you may be sure that I will.

The Cleaning Lady from Heaven was here a day or so ago. The place is spotless. So: one thing I need not bother to do is clean house.

Dog and I have already made the daily doggy-walk trip. She’s sitting on the cool (sorta) tiles and panting her little head off. So…clearly…more doggy-walking (or human-walking) is out of the question today.

Strolled past Josie’s place, where SDXB used to live. The city confiscated her previous house to build an airplane runway — she lived right under the flight path at Sky Harbor airport, a huge and busy monstrosity. She must feel like the gods smiled on her (at last!!) when our honored leaders gave her SDXB’s place.

Unfortunately, they didn’t give her the information or the funds to maintain it….

A pipe under the kitchen sink sprang a leak. By the time she noticed it, water had FLOODED not just the kitchen, but also the dining room and the living room. The place was trashed!

So…fortunately, because she’s a welfare case, the city is sending people in (supposedly) to fix the disaster area. But meanwhile…where is she supposed to live? Camping out in the backyard???

SDXB vacated the house when he moved to Sun City. He’s merrily happy out there, having found New Girlfriend and feeling pretty pleased with the tract house he bought.

My parents lived in Sun City. That’s how I ended up in Arizona: they dragged me here when my father retired. He quit his job a year before I graduated from high school, because my grades were so high he managed to persuade the University of Arizona to accept me that much early.

Stupidest thing he could have done for me. I needed that high-school diploma and that fourth year at the prison for teenagers. But Nooooooo…..nothing would do but what I had to drop out of high school, enroll at the UofA, and move to Tucson.

As a person under the age of 50, of course, I was not allowed to live in Sun City. So they told the authorities that I was living in Tucson. Ugh!

Not that I would have wanted to live in Sun City. Sooo totally NOT my style!

But my mother was thrilled. She just loved the place. And…well…unknown to either of them, she didn’t have long to live. The cancer brought on by her obsessive smoking habit did her in shortly. So…despite fuc*ing up my life, Sun City was a good thing for her: gave her a couple of years of happiness before it was time to trudge off to the Next World.

So…here I am in (Un)lovely Uptown Arizona, enjoying another swampy morning and wishing I were…somewhere, anywhere else. But really, there is no “else” anymore. I can’t afford to go back to the Bay Area…and none of my relatives there survive to this day, anyhow. My son is here, and I don’t wanna move away from him. (Lucky him!) The house is paid for, it’s a nice house in a comfortable upper-middle-class neighborhood: it would be insanity to sell and move. I’m stuck here.

In many ways, it’s a nice “stuck.” But it’s still stuck. 

Where does this damn place think it is? Saudi Arabia?

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer reads 110 degrees…in the shade of the north-facing back porch. A covered porch. A ventilated covered porch…

Holeee sheee-ut!

We do have salmon and shrimp and accouterments that can be cooked up on the barbecue today. But tomorrow…well… Tomorrow I’ll have to walk(!!!) to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts to restock the supplies. And that will be a challenge.

I may see if I can get the neighborhood Uber driver to tote me over there…but…whaddaya bet that guy won’t feel any enthusiasm for getting on the road as dawn cracks?  And I sure don’t wanna be slamming around in the heat.

Let’s see…what time do these worthy retailers open?

• Albertson’s:  6:00 a.m.
• Sprouts: 7:00 a.m.
• El Rancho: 6:00 a.m.

Hmmmm…  The El Rancho is closer. But the Albertson’s is a far better store for a middle-class shopper.

If I leave the house at 5:45, I could get to the store just as they’re opening. Grab the loot. Pay up. Gallop out the door…and maybe get back here by 7:00 a.m.

Or so…

Actually, that might not be too bad. Except that I don’t wanna start charging around at that hour. And toting groceries six or eight blocks through questionable territory doesn’t sound like much fun.

Also, one thing I’ve discovered over the kerjillion years that I’ve lived here: there’s a route through the neighborhood that comes out on the back side of the Albertson’s shopping center. That would allow me to get down there and yet dodge the jerks screaming obscenities at me.

Hm. They open at 6:00…okayyy… I might get back here by 7:00 — surely no later than 7:30. It would still be hot outside, but not yet hotter than Hell.

Dare not walk down there in the evening. For one thing, it’ll be hotter than the Hubs, all right: after a full day of Arizona sun blasting. But more to the point: whatever the weather, it’s just not safe. Too many jerks, assholes, and predators roam around between here and that shopping center.

Been there, done that, ain’t doin’it again!!

Really: what a place to live. If my son weren’t just down the road, I’d pull up stakes and head for either north Scottsdale or (un)lovely Sun City. Sure wouldn’t stay in central or north Phoenix: it truly isn’t safe.

I don’t wanna live in Sun City. Been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again. BUT…at least in a ghetto for old folks, you don’t have a$$holes screaming obscenities at you as you walk to the nearest grocery store.

Yuch!!!  It is SO HOT and SO WET out there,

To gild that soggy lily, war planes are busily roaring in and out of Luke Air Force Base. Nevvermind that they’re 20 miles to the west of us. We still get serenaded with the ominous melody of World War III, on its way to us: ggggRRRROOOAAAAARRRRRRR!

My mother used to sit on her patio, partaking her morning coffee to the melody of those damn warplanes. Ohhhhhh, she would coo. It’s the sound of fweedom! 

Yeah, Mom: the sound of Death, comin’ for you.

Why ARE people so stupid, anyway?

Ohhh well.  Ruby and I made it back to the house, finally, through air so thick you could practically swim through it. I’m now so hot and miserable, about all I can manage is sitting down and pounding on a keyboard. Had to put a throw over the back of the chair, to keep from wrecking the leather upholstery with the sweat I don’t feel like washing off myself right this minute.

I never could understand why my mother thought that jet warplane racket was some kind of sweet, patriotic melody.

Never did understand why she didn’t grasp the fact that the “melody” was a funeral ode to every civilian within nuclear bomb distance of our balmy home.

But then…I never did grasp what she thought was soooo wonderful about dreary, racist Sun City. Guess we just weren’t on the same wavelength.

Ugh!!!

Well, I’d better get up and brew a pot of coffee, before I fall down face-first on the tile floor….

You understand: it’s 8:15 at night and DARK out there.

Yeah: 110 degrees by the dark of night…

Wrung the little dog out as fast as she would go…which means she’s likely to roust the human in the middle of the night…   Oh well… At the moment, she’s loafing atop the bed again, as is her pet critter, the funny-looking human. The AC is pounding away….let’s hope it holds up through the night….and that we don’t have to call a hapless repairman tomorrow. Or anytime during this present heat wave.

Talk about jobs you’re glad you don’t have! /eyeroll/

Hope M’hijito is making out all right. His house was built in the 1950s, back before air-conditioning worked especially well here in lovely uptown Phoenix. The place does have a real air-conditioner these days —  not an old-fashioned and clunky evaporative cooler. The older places, though, were not built for modern ductwork…so it remains to be seen whether his place will be habitable tonight.

This Human, on the other hand, was not built to be awake half the night… And so, awwwayyyy… Off to bed!