I’ve been in Phoenix for one week, during which time I’ve consumed more than four gallons of iced tea.

Yep, it’s hot.

But more on the weather later. First I want to tell you how to enter to win a $25 Amazon card.

My favorite cash-back shopping site, Mr Rebates, is giving away the $25 Amazon card. Entering to win is easy:

 

Sign up to follow @MrRebates on Twitter. (I do!)

Next, visit this Twitter URL to share your “most brag-worthy” shopping trip ever: https://twitter.com/MrRebates/status/898258141284052993

Include the hashtag #MRGC in your tweet. (Don’t leave out this step; it’s how the person doing the drawing will find you.)

That’s it! You’re entered.

Do this by the end of the day Sunday, Aug. 20. Good luck to all my readers, and if you win I hope you’ll let me know.

 

Insurance quirks and Phoenix heat

 

True or false: It’s possible to sell a permanent life insurance policy if you’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Learn the answer to this and other “life insurance quirks” at a quiz at HealthIQ.com. I provided the raw material for the quiz, which is short and easy to take – and may teach you a few things.

Here’s what I’ve learned this week: Phoenix gets hot in the summer! Carrying dead couches and other discards from the garage to the curb in 105-degree makes you even hotter! And carrying that furniture somewhere else the next day makes you hottest of all!

Phoenix had been offering its quarterly “all junk considered!” pickup service. (Although the city waste management department did stipulate it wouldn’t pick up garbage that was “bigger than an SUV.”) After more than an hour of sorting through stuff in the garage, we identified things to be taken to the curb, including two couches and a bunch of boxes. Heavy boxes.

We dragged, shoved, carried and cursed until we’d built our smaller-than-an-SUV pile out front. By then Abby, Tim and I were pretty beat: me because I’d flown overnight and slept not at all, and them because they both have chronic illnesses. But we were done, thank goodness.

Except that we weren’t: Late the next afternoon, a guy knocked on the door to tell us the items were supposed to be out back, by the dumpster. He wasn’t from the city, but rather a junk reseller out prowling for items he could flip.

Bless him for being a good Samaritan, even though his news made me go into the guest room and say a long string of bad words. I was still tired and my arms hurt, and we had a very short window of time to get that stuff out back. At the same time, I knew that if I felt crummy then Abby and Tim must have felt much worse.

Back out we went, and found that getting the couches et al. around the corner and down into the alley (again at 105 degrees) was a lot harder than moving them down the driveway. Some of the stuff fit in the car, luckily, so I drove it around the corner and a little closer to the dumpster. So much broken glass decorates the alley that it would have been dicey to drive the rest of the way.

 

 

The #momvacation life

 

Neither day was much fun. But now it’s finished. And so am I: Tomorrow I go home.

Although I’d hoped to do a reader meet-up, my time has been taken up by three things: deadlines, binge-watching “Madam Secretary” and what Abby calls my #momvacation tendencies.

About that last: In addition to the couch-moving, I’ve managed to fit in quite a few chores. Among them:

Staining three door-sized gates in the wall surrounding the property (although Abby did help with that one), in the morning when it was “only” 88 degrees or so.

Cooking, despite the heat – just two entrees, albeit made in giant amounts because leftovers and freezing some for later.

Cleaning the bathrooms, which are notorious for their hard-water stains.

Laundry. Lots and lots of laundry, and lots and lots of folding. (Call me weird, but I actually like doing the wash.)

Sweeping. Lots and lots of sweeping. I don’t understand how either pet has any hair left on its body, given how much gets shed daily. I’d sweep in the morning and walk past drifts of fur in the hallway by late afternoon.

Cleaning the igloo catbox*, a very involved chore. First I emptied the giant amount of litter into a trash bag. Then I scrubbed off the caked urine inside and on the bottom of the unit (toward the end of her life the late kitty had some trouble hitting the target every time).

Next I rinsed with jug after jug of water carried from the sink (no outdoor faucet), then sprayed the thing with vinegar. An hour later I rinsed with more jugs of water, then let it dry and dumped in a pound of baking soda and almost 20 pounds of new litter. You’re welcome, Josie the pussycat**.

Touching up the paint. In a couple of places the dark green of the living room walls was marred with white paint after a minor remodeling job; in another a termite tunnel showed up as a tan squiggle and the treatment for that infestation, a series of small holes drilled in the wall, looked like white dots.

Miraculously, Abby found some paint left over from her original coating of the walls – and even more miraculously, it hadn’t dried up in the Phoenix heat. Masking the areas took longer than touching them up. It’s amazing the difference that a few daubs of green made.

 

How hot is it?

 

Wish I could figure out how the paint didn’t dry up, because I’d like to use that tactic myself. Four gallons of tea and I’m still cotton-mouthed. After all, it’s 50 degrees warmer than the place I left. Some areas of this arid state are even hotter, but Phoenix is hot enough for me, thanks.

Phoenix in the summer. On purpose. Good plan, huh?

I burned my elbow on the inside of the car after getting in. An empty soda can left in that car seared my fingers. Dogs start panting the instant they step outside. (So do some Alaskans.)

Heat lightning flashes against the nighttime sky, and a short time after the rain you can’t tell where it fell – everything’s back to sand. Water stores (water stores!) are everywhere.

Lots of secondhand stores, too. Stirring tales of thrift: I got a box of Reynolds oven bags (turkey size!) for 38 cents and two unused books of Mad Libs for the same price, plus an unopened package of cheesecloth for 75 cents. If those prices seem odd, blame “everything is 25 percent off” day at the Arizona Humane Society thrift store. At another thrift store I found the shirt I’m going to wear at our FinCon 17 panel.

Despite muscle ache and dishpan hands, I’ve had a good time. And I couldn’t beat the price: $181 round-trip thanks to a buddy pass given to me by a friend. The more expensive leg was from Anchorage to Seattle, not from Phoenix to Anchorage. A lot of people visit Alaska in the summer, and this time of year the airport is as crowded at 2 a.m. as it is at high noon.

As far as I can tell none of my fellow passengers joined me on the second flight, though. Apparently they were wiser than I. Phoenix in the summer. On purpose. Good plan, huh?

*It’s actually called a Booda Dome, and it’s pretty awesome: contains the odors and kicked-out litter, and keeps you from having to watch the cat do its business. Abby highly recommends them.

**Cartoon and “Riverdale” fans will see what I did there.