Hot City Diary: Day 55

Midnight gardening. It's cold outside. Must be in the low 80's. Weather.com says it's 87. Whatever. It's like free air conditioning. The plants and lawn must be watered at night so out I go. I'm stretching the 50 foot hose to it's full length and I still can't hit the mango trees in the corner. I'll have to fill up a bucket and attend to the mango trees, later. I spray the dry pieces of hay that fill up the yard. Thank god it's dark out or I'd see I'm just spraying dirt. Dirt and fire ants. Nevertheless, I still water the lawn and dance around to avoid standing on the hill and getting ant foot. It takes about half an hour and then I switch from the fountain spray nozzle to direct spray and hose down the big palm trees and some smaller palms. Then it's the buckets of water to the mango and olive trees. The bougainvillea gets a good soaking twice a week.

These plants are getting scorched.

Wonder what is happening to me?

Hot City Diary: Day 150

Indoors. I don't even dare open the shutters to let light in. My dog and I walk around in the dim light and accomplish our daily routine remembering the whole time that we must stay hydrated. Stay hydrated or go mad, then die. I open the door to grab brunas water bowl and it's like opening the oven door. I'm hit with intense heat and flinch. Whoa! 111 is hot. I yank it inside and slam the door. I carry the water bowl to the sink to fill it up and think to myself that 111 is the lowest it's been all week. That is good for an August day.

The water falling into the bowl sounds like gold coins splashing into diamonds. I close my eyes and jump into the golden gems for a swim. Diving among the jewels and floating on top of all this treasure. I open my eyes and realize that I've put my face in the doggie bowl.

I turn off the water and pour myself a glass of the filtered stuff from the fridge. Water never tasted this good. How can water taste this good? I pour myself another cup. I know I'm filling up when it comes out down my cheeks and onto my shirt. Water. Water stops the madness.

These days the sun will rise around 6:09 AM and set at 7:30 PM. I feel like a vampire without any of the cool abilities. Yesterday I did some laundry out in the garage and stepped outside and thought I got stung by a couple bees. Turns out, I just stepped into the sunlight.

Hot City Diary: Day 250

I'm a dirty, dirty dolphin.  I swim with strength and poise and can do multiple back flips out of the water.  I live here in the water.  It's too hot to be anywhere else.  Wait a second.  I'm at the beach.  My wife is smiling at me.  No, No, No, this must be another one of those illusions.  How did I get to the beach?  Oh this is so nice, though, I'm jumping around in the water like a dolphin and all my dolphin friends are here.  Wait, I'm human.  I'm just swimming around in the breakers.

The cool breeze whips across the water and I can hear my wife laughing and splashing in the water.  She must have driven me out here to the beach.  She's surrounded by sharks, but she seems to know them and they don't hurt her.

I'm never going back to the desert.  It's too hot.  It will bake your brains and then kill you.

I wake up on the filthy white faux leather couch in my living room.  I'm not at the beach.  Maybe I'm already dead.  This must be the moments when you flashback before the blood and oxygen stop going to the brain.  I trip over something on my way to the kitchen and open the barn door to let out the cows.

It's cold inside the barn.  That's where I want to be.  I see a flash of food and beer and realize I've opened the refrigerator door.  The illusion stops for a moment.  I reach inside and drink something, anything, I think it's cranberry juice because there's red juice pouring down my chest.  I hope it's cranberry juice.

The moment I close the door it turns back into a barn and my dog is barking in the distance.  I don't have time for this.  I'm a dolphin.  Dolphins don't live in barns, unless you're a country dolphin, and I'm sure as hell not one of those.

I make my way to the light.  The burning light.  It takes me outside where I'm torched and flip and flop until I find myself in the green pool.  This is where dirty desert dolphins live.  In a dirty algae filled pool in the desert.

This is the life for me!!!

Hot City Diary: Day 9

It's getting hot out.  Really hot.  We've turned on the air conditioner to keep things at a cool 70 degrees inside the house, but it's really unbearable outside.  It must be the third or fourth day of 90 degree heat.  I'll have to put more chlorine in the pool and cover most of the plants outside.  I know I was moving to a desert but I guess I didn't plan for this.  My wife says she's leaving for Italy if it continues to get this hot.  I don't blame her, I want to leave for Italy, but I've got to stay in town and look for a job and hopefully score one and then keep it.

Our neighbor across the street laughs and laughs when I tell him it's hot.

"This is nothing! Wait until we're into the third month of the heat wave.  Temperatures typically stay over a hundred for a couple months!"  He throws in the obligatory "You'll get use to it!"

I don't want to get use to this.  This isn't normal.  I come from the Los Angeles Basin where the temperature is always a nice 70 degrees.  This isn't right.

It's not only the heat but the sun stings.  I've got to invest in a large hat and sunscreen or else I'm doomed.  It's only the second week in April and it's over 90 degrees.

What was I thinking of investing in a house in the desert with all this talk of Climate Change.  If things continue like this, there won't be a Coachella Valley within a hundred years.  Unless of course the sea rises and brings all kinds of water back over there to the Salton Sea.  Then maybe.

Stupid Desert living.

Hot City Diary: Day 7

The Desert is like some strange time warp.  Maybe it's the idea that Palm Springs is a vacation destination and everything slows down when you're on vacation.  I can dig that.  I like it slow.  After the fast pace of Los Angeles and the Go, Go, Go feeling when you're forced to get up and get your shit done hourly, it's nice to be able to relax and take it easy for a while.  The problem is that I'm looking for a job and every resume I've sent out has yet to be addressed.  It's not like I've got a shitty resume either.  I've worked at some of the top hotels in Los Angeles and you'd think that employers would be pretty happy to interview me.  Well, I guess that I'll just take this time to enjoy my swimming pool and fix up some things at the new house.

Dirty Dan, the previous owner, and we call him "Dirty Dan" because he left the place in shambles and all kinds of dirt streaks on the walls and the carpet in the bedroom looks like somebody just rolled around in dirt outside and then rolled all over the place in a drugged induced haze, so Dirty Dan is going to get a strongly worded letter from me and my Realtor about some cleaning fees that he needs to pay.

So time floats by on the gentle winds that sway the jacaranda tree.  The small palms list this way and that.

It's a little bit hotter today than it was yesterday, but nothing that can't be remedied from a dip in the pool and some air conditioning.

Hot City Diary: Day 5

Wow.  Some of these Desert Rats (indigenous people, not the indians, but the white and brown trash) are horrible people.  I thought I was getting away from all that shit when I left Los Angeles.  Well,  I guess there are a few bad apples everywhere.  Most of the people out here in the desert are either over 70 or gay, and those two sets of people are typically pretty nice.  They're referred to as the Gay and Grey set.

Whatever, so, I'm making a left turn and I'm hitting it at maybe 30 miles per hour because I wanted to make the green arrow, so I gunned my little ford escort, and some shithead coming the other direction makes a right on a red without stopping and we almost ram into each other.  His huge fucking truck would have demolished me and my car, but somehow that doesn't stop me from pulling up beside him once we get down the road and rolling down my window and asking him if he typically drives like an asshole, or if he just started today.  He flips me off and then follows me around for the next ten minutes honking and yelling and causing a scene while I drop off my mail in the drive-by post office blue boxes and then even follows me into the supermarket parking lot and blocks me into my space and continues to cuss me out and tell me how he's gonna get all his homies to get me.  I ask him why can't he do it by himself, while I make sure he see's me write down his license plate number and then I walk into the pool store to get some chlorine and acid and by the time I come out, he's gone. That fucking jerk.  That's no way to welcome somebody to your new city.  Another thought on the subject is why did he seem like he was in such a big hurry and blasted thru the red light where we almost collided and then had ten minutes to follow me around.

I moved away from Los Angeles to avoid some kind of Road Rage incident.  I think I'll carry my machete in my car from now on.

Also, the pool people made me buy like 3 other things that I don't think I need.  What the fuck is conditioner?  Do I need pool shampoo also?  

Not feeling the love today from the Coachella valley.

Spring Break

Hot City Diary: Day 243

I'm still underwater. It's so nice and refreshing down here. I swim around like a seahorse, dither this way and that. Moving with the tides.

Then I bump into a cactus. What's this cactus doing down here? 

All the sudden the full force of the scorching heat comes back and I snap out of my dreamy water world. I'm laying in the front yard up against a cactus. How did this happen? I look around and find some mail, a pennysaver and some advertisements scattered around the rocks and Cacti that cover my front yard. I must have gone out for the mail and the heat got me.

I crawl back over the hot stones and burning tile that leads to the front door. I can see the door handle in front of me but the whole world goes watery again. I'm flushed into the house through the door and my dog is there swimming alongside me. I smile and swim down to the couch and grab the remote control.

Some television would be perfect, but will it work underwater? Of course it works! I turn on my favorite Alaskan show and enjoy them walking, hunting, playing in the snow while my dog swims above and around me.

This is the life!

Hot City Diary: Day 242

The heat has permeeated...pemerated...peeeeeeeeme...snuck into the house. I'd turn on the Air Conditioning but it doesn't help. I play the music to get it out, but that doesn't help either. I rush to the bathroom and step into the shower. Scorched by water that's been heatin' up in the pipe. I jump out and flail about the house. Somebody is screaming. It's me. The pool is the only safe haven, so I open the oven door and make a run for it.

Waves of heat so intense I can feel the hair singeing. Who needs hair anyways. It's just making me hotter.

I slip on dog vomit. There's dog vomit all over the backyard. She's unhappy, too. Am I crazy? I need to drink more water, and obviously send my dog back to Los Angeles. I must-just-bust this feeling. Nonsense. Bain daMage. Losing my grip on things. I must make it to the pool for safety. At first look it seems like it's bubbling, but it's boiling, so I dive deep down to get to the cool water.

Splash.

A light burning feeling and as I sink deeper, I finally find relief. I swim deeper. Fathoms. Lifetimes. After what seems like 20 minutes, I wonder how I can possibly still be underwater. I don't care. I'm going to stay down here forever.

Hot City Diary: Day 1

I'm not painting the new house.  I just painted the house we're renting out to some people from NY who phoned in the rental application.   It took forever to get everything into the fucking moving van and then the drive out here from Silverlake was hell.  I should have known better to leave during rush hour.  Well, it's the last rush hour that I will ever see, because now I live in the desert.  I'm still tired.  It's kinda hot out.

It's refreshing to jump in the pool and wander around my half acre lot.  It's really nice to have so much land to run around on and it looks like my happy little doggie likes it as well.  No longer stuck in her 500 sq. ft. backyard.  I don't think the wife is happy, but hopefully she'll get use to things out here.  I'm sure a beautiful Italian girl like her will start to feel like a princess amongst all the desert rats.  There's only 400,000 residents in the whole Coachella Valley and probably just about 100 people that live up here in the Cat City cove.  It's been dubbed the Hollywood Hills of the Coachella valley and although I wouldn't go that far, it's definitely the West Hollywood of the Coachella Valley.  It's as gay as the day is long.  I think we're the only straight Italian couple.  Well, she's really from Italy, I'm just some 3rd generation mutt with a great grandmother from Sicily.  

Things will be much slower now and hopefully I can get some writing done.  Write that novel that I've always wanted to write.  I'll also hopefully leave all my vices behind.  Stupid Los Angeles and all it's glimmering hope.  Nothing but superficial people and overpriced living.  I was one of those superficial bitches.  Maybe I can change my ways out here.

There doesn't seem to be too many distractions.  I'll still have to get a job and that will take up half of my day, but that's par for the course in any life.  You have to work or else the novel will just be about living under the bridge with some kid with a compound bow & arrow and his bike and drinking habit.  I wouldn't have anything to write on either.  I'm sure whatever notepad I'd buy to write in would just be used for toilet paper.  So the job is essential.  Let's just hope it's not that taxing.

Well, I'll spend the rest of the day in the pool and figure out how to operate all this machinery that the gay couple that sold this house left for us.  Looks like they just kinda ran out on the last day of Escrow.  Leaving all sorts of stuff behind.  Gonna talk to my Realtor about that as well.