Tag Archives: Heat

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

Cereal Addict

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I went to clean my apartment yesterday and found there wasn’t much to do. Mostly everything looked clean already except for some stains on the floor. Other than that, there wasn’t much to do but vacuum and mop. I hate cleaning, but that’s normal.

The weather was too hot for any work around the home, a hundred and eleven degrees in the afternoon. My air-conditioner, which was brand new, was running all day and every day. I never turned the thing off, so my Edison bill for the past two months came to almost five hundred dollars. My parents received a bill for a little less than that, and they live in a big house–big for me at least, maybe small to some. I nearly fell down when I saw the price of the bill. The heat is supposed to drop to double digits next week, like ninety-nine degrees. Sounds like paradise. I can’t wait. I might actually wear pants, but I can’t guarantee I will. Just as long as the night is cooler, I won’t have to walk around sweating before the sun comes out and I’m drenched.

I walked back from the coffee shop yesterday with my backpack on, and my back had soaked my shirt. I’d walked for only twenty minutes, about a mile from the coffee shop. I walk everywhere to get exercise and drive only when I need to, one or two days out of the week. I got in my car on Saturday and discovered that I’d left my light on, the little light right above my head near the windshield, and I worried about the battery being drained. I imagine not too much because of how small the light was. But for a whole week? That’s not good.

I wonder what today will bring. My gut tells me a long one. I sure hope not. I have to go grocery shopping tonight after work, something I’m not looking forward to. I’ve grown to hate the grocery store. Shopping there takes me about a half hour or more out of my day. The heat is too unbearable for me to walk back with all of those groceries. I bring my own bag to the store, one from Urban Outfitters, the size of a trash bag that can hold three weeks of groceries. I look like Santa Claus with a bunch of gifts after I leave the store. But because I live alone, I don’t have to carry too much, just a week’s worth of stuff that I’ll need. And then about eight days later, I’ll have to go back.

I also have to cook tonight, which I’m not looking forward to either. I cook about once or twice a week, and then I reheat the leftovers. Cooking isn’t my strong suit. I don’t know how to cook much. I used to try to with a meal program where the company delivered the food and sent me the recipes. And they were strange things like crab cake sandwiches. I had to be careful or else I would’ve ruined the whole meal. I cooked fish tacos and something with tarragon, maybe turkey but I’m not positive. The service was called Blue Apron, and I had them delivered for about six months before cooking burned me out and I went back to the microwave. Besides, I spent about fifty dollars a week on three meals. That was over fifteen dollars per meal if my math is correct. Couldn’t keep up anymore. Now I spend about eighty dollars a week on groceries. Some people spend over two hundred, but they have families to feed. I like to be simple. I stand behind people who fill their shopping carts with a lot of junk. I’m talking cereals and several boxes of canned sodas, cans of food, stuff I wouldn’t consume.

I haven’t eaten cereal in over two decades, but I used to be a cereal addict when I was a boy. The best was Fruity Pebbles, and the worst was Frosted Flakes. The milk would make the flakes too soggy. At least with Fruity Pebbles the milk would taste sweet after the pebbles were gone. The same with the chocolate pebbles. The milk would turn it into chocolate milk. But the time came when I realized how bad for me the cereals were, and I would overeat them, sometimes helping myself to a second bowl before I realized the box was empty, and I would have to beg Mom to buy some more, and she wouldn’t. Then I would get angry and slam my bedroom door and throw a fit. I wouldn’t talk to her until she bought me more. I could’ve lived off cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I chose.

Anyway, those simple days are gone. I eat eggs for breakfast. Now I skip lunch and eat dinner and dessert. Lunch isn’t necessary for me. It used to be in high school. I had the unhealthiest diet: cereal in the morning (usually the sugary kind), Frito boats for lunch–which was made of Fritos, chili, and cheese–before I had a driver’s license, so my friends and I would eat at different fast food joints like Taco Bell, Jack-In-The-Box, Wendy’s, and Carl’s Jr., and then whatever my mom made at night which was healthy, which I didn’t like, and she would feed me small portions. But two out of three meals weren’t bad.

Non-fiction

Life in the Desert

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It’s half past six in the morning in the Coachella Valley, and it’s already eighty-five degrees. The heat will climb to one-seventeen in the afternoon today. I walk in this oppressive weather every day to get exercise. It doesn’t fail to make me sweat. I had to wash my shorts on Sunday because they were drenched. People must’ve thought I’d wet myself.

I walked for two miles yesterday and had to stop for water at a liquor store at Palm Canyon and Vista Chino. They sold water for four dollars. I remember when water was close to free, and drinking fountains were everywhere. Now I find them only at the gym when I go.

People have to drink fancy water because they can’t handle water from the tap like they used to. They deem it unsafe. I don’t think it’s going to kill them. It’s advertised on the bottles now: 9.5 Ph alkaline water. Kind of like the protein argument. Just how much protein should a human consume in a day? How much alkaline does a person need?

I used to drink nothing but that type of water. I would drive through noisy traffic in Hollywood for several miles just to pick it up from a health food store on Sunset Boulevard, but I stopped doing it after a while. It wasn’t necessary. Grocery stores started selling all sorts of alkaline water. Now I think it’s a bunch of nonsense and buy any old water. I don’t even look at the brand except Aquafina: something is wrong with that water. I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, I carried my four-dollar water another two miles back to my apartment in Palm Springs, past a few homeless people in this town. One of them slept on the sidewalk. The cement could cook a steak, and he was sleeping on it. I thought his shoes were missing, but as I walked past him I saw that he was using them as a pillow. I didn’t have any change to give him, but it wasn’t change he needed. He needed a bed and a pillow, which I couldn’t offer either, but he was doing just fine without them.

If someone lives in the desert long enough, they adapt to the heat like a lizard. I made it home and took a cool shower. My air conditioner was still running. The thing won’t turn off because it’s set to AUTO at seventy-six degrees. It shuts off when the apartment cools to that temperature. The problem is it never gets that cool. It’s that hot outside. I should raise it to seventy-eight. Only then might it shut off, but I doubt it.

My bill for last month was over three hundred dollars. It could be worse for July. The weather is hotter now than it has ever been since I’ve lived here. I can’t wait until September when it might start cooling down. It’s supposed to lower to one hundred degrees by next week. That would be like spring all over again if it happens. I might actually wear pants.

Non-fiction

Cheat Day

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I have the proclivity to wake up and not want to get out of bed at five in the morning, but I also don’t want to stay in bed either. It’s a tug-of-war with myself on a Monday, but I made it to the coffee shop. Everything is well and good. The baristas are loading boxes of materials onto a dolly and carrying them back as I sit by the window and watch the sun rise.

I ate a lot yesterday. I started in the morning with a bacon, egg, and gouda sandwich and an iced espresso with cream and olive oil. It’s my favorite drink. Then I went for a two-hour walk after I finished reading and writing. It was 116 degrees, and I traveled by foot for almost six miles, sweating all over. When I got back to my apartment, I saw in the mirror that my shorts were drenched from heat. It looked like I had pissed myself when in reality the sweat was on the backside. I had to wash them in the evening. I drank a Big Gulp of Coca-Cola through the walk, and then I went back to the coffee shop to continue writing. I drank a berry juice to hydrate myself and another iced espresso with cream and olive oil.

I walked back home and ordered Five Guys to be delivered. Five Guys might be the best fast food burger out there, although I can’t overlook In-N-Out Burger. It has been so long since I’ve eaten a Double-Double. Their menu is so simple: a hamburger, cheeseburger, French fries, milkshake, and soda. They have a secret menu as well, and sometimes I have ordered from it. It includes animal-style fries and an animal-style burger that I believe is made with Thousand Island dressing and grilled onions, but don’t quote me on that. I’ll still go with Five Guys because of recency bias.

Anyway, I ended the night with a treat of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Sundays are my cheat day. Everyone needs to have one before they continue their week on a strict diet of limiting carbohydrates as much as they can because carbs are what make them gain weight, and no one wants that.

Today, I have to walk to the dentist to have a filling replaced, and I believe that’s it. I could spend several hours there like I did last time. I had to wait for ninety minutes just to see her. It was a nightmare, sitting in the waiting room. I had to watch daytime television, which is torture with low-budget soap operas and depressing commercials about smoking and lung cancer. They do that on purpose so people will desperately look for jobs because no one wants to see that.

But anyway, I hope the appointment goes well and hope the heat doesn’t bring me down to hell. I’ll have to finish editing my manuscript before I send it off to my editor. It’s not altogether perfect. I keep coming across loose ends in the stories because it’s a collection of shorts that all take place in the same town, and I’m just looking for inconsistencies. It helps when I’ve been editing and rewriting a gazillion times. I’m getting sick of it. Whenever a writer asks me when their stories are ready for an editor or publication, I say it’s when they’re sick of it. That always seems to ring true.

Anyway, I’m waiting for the summer to end, so it can get cool again. I keep having dreams like the one last night, where my aunt laid the ground rules for throwing a party: no alcohol, no smoking, no ESPN either. I had an argument with her about it until I woke up and was thankful it was just a dream. I run across that situation a lot after a dream. I guess that makes it a nightmare because I’m glad it was over or that it wasn’t real, but I don’t know if I should label it a nightmare, just a bad dream because Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t chasing me with scissors like he has in the past.

Non-fiction

124 Degrees

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The Coachella valley reached a record high this week of 124 degrees. I sweated all over when I went for a walk, and it stung my eyes. I couldn’t see where I was going along the sidewalk on my way back home. Supposedly the heat will last for weeks. July is meant to be that way. How will I make it to September when it will cool down? At least that’s what I expect. My parents said it’s usually the case.

Another Sunday has me feeling bored. I don’t know what to do with time. Perhaps I’ll wash my clothes. It doesn’t matter what I do. I still must see the dentist in the afternoon tomorrow, but at least I’ll miss work, the last place I want to be. My boss joked about me preferring to get my teeth pulled over having to go back to work. I didn’t laugh with him. I took his words seriously. So yes, I would rather have a root canal than go to work any day this week, or any week it seems because my job is torture. Angry people on the phone are constantly complaining, cursing, too, as if the problem must be me, not them.

I miss vacation time. I won’t go on another one until September since I like to break it up into every three months to keep my sanity. Imagine if I didn’t take those days off. I would be a wreck come Thanksgiving. Who am I fooling? I’m already a wreck. Work has kicked and slapped me. It’s hard to focus on anything else. I carry work with me after my shift when I take my walks. Does that make me a workaholic? I guess so.

Anyway, the summer is too long these days. It used to be short when I was a kid who played in the backyard. Now I don’t even have a backyard, just a pool that I share with all the other tenants.

I’m at the coffee shop, and a guy keeps turning around and looking back at me from his table. He’s watching horseracing on his iPad. I know because I peeked at it. He’s getting on my nerves. Thank God he just left.

A lot of tourists have entered today. It’s 10:30 a.m. The busy crowd has left the store. Now it’s just us regulars and a family of tourists at a long table.

I stare out the window and see the different shops across the street: Sinfulicious Body Care, Balboa Candy, Crazy Shirts. I’ve been inside the candy store before but never bought anything.

It has been quiet in downtown Palm Springs because of the heat. No one wants to go outside except for me. I can handle the heat.

I’m going through a crisis with this writer’s block. We all go through it as writers. No one is immune to it. We run out of important things to say. Otherwise we’re just repeating stories or ideas. Richard Hugo said to write about our obsessions. I’m obsessed over several things. He also said to focus on the subject that isn’t the subject. For instance, if I was writing about knives, the real subject wouldn’t be the knives but something else. I don’t know what that something else is. I guess it comes to me naturally after I’ve been writing for a while. I don’t know a single writer right now.

I knew a few screenwriters when I lived in Hollywood. Some of them were moderately successful. One of them moved to Texas a long long time ago. I wonder whatever happened to Michael. He was a sweet man. I also met screenwriters who never wrote. They called themselves screenwriters I guess to adapt. Michael was working with several producers at the time I knew him. I was in my late twenties or early thirties. I can’t quite remember. He always sat outside of the coffee shop and stared off into space when he wasn’t waving at people. He would tip his fedora at the ladies. His mouth was crooked. Something awful had happened to him, but I never asked him what or why. We would smoke cigarettes together in the coffee shop patio back when that was allowed. Now I don’t think people can even sit and hang out at that coffee shop anymore. I never thought it would come to that, but it’s here. I hope Michael is doing okay for himself in Texas. He belongs in a better place. Anyway, I’m wishing for the best this Sunday, but I don’t have high hopes, and I’m wishing for the best this week. I hope it doesn’t kick my ass too much.

Non-fiction

Hotter than Bejesus

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I’m on fire as I’m writing this. It’s only six a.m., and the room is hot. It’s supposed to be over one hundred degrees in the desert today. My father said it was supposed to be 111. I can’t believe it.

I burned my ass yesterday on the curb when it was 107 at four in the afternoon. It was as if I was frying out there. It’s going to stay that way in the summer before the fall comes. Summer has just begun today. It’s supposed to be the longest day of the year, I heard. But how can that be? Anyway, I’m used to the heat. I’ve been living in hot climates for most of my life, so it’s nothing new to me. But the heat gives me a headache. I’ve been waking up with headaches every day this week, and I haven’t been able to go sleep very well.

At least I’ll go out of town tomorrow and stay in Goleta before I drive to Avila Beach where it’s cool and I can wear jeans. Otherwise, I’ll just keep burning. It’s miserable. Misery follows me like that kid in grade school who would follow you and you couldn’t be rid of him. He just tagged along and got on your nerves. What would I be without it? What would I be without worry? I have to worry constantly or else I’m out of control. And that’s no good.

The heat has followed me, too. My brain is fried. I wonder how it is in Maryland. What kind of heat are they facing? I know there are tornados in the country sweeping up cities, and I’m thankful I don’t have to live through that.

But damn this heat.