Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

April 22

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Ungodly racket from the damn air base, way on the FAR side of Sun City. At least a good 29 miles away: roar roar roar roar ROAR. Don’t understand how people living out there can tolerate it, even for a few hours in the morning.

My mother used to sit on her back patio there in Sun City, serenaded by those blasting plane engines. She would simper over her morning coffee, “Ohhhhh, it’s the sound of fweedom!” 

Right, Mom, I dared not say: It’s the sound of World War III coming your way. 

Oh, well. At least we got Ruby’s doggy-walk out of the way, and before it has started to get hot out there. She’s gone off to the back bedroom, there to loaf. And…I suppose blogging is a form of loafing, too.

The (very sweet!) lady who inherited SDXB’s house by welfare-agency fiat is enjoying a fine predicament: The plumbing under the kitchen sink busted open and flooded the house!

Lordie! WHAT a mess.

So she and a daughter were trying to mop up, and trying to get the City to send a repair crew. One of those fine nightmares that none of us needs, eh?

Before SDXB came along and bought the place for a song, it was owned by some very flakey, very feckless folks who let the place go to rack and ruin. He fixed it up handsomely…and then practically gave it away as he fled our quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord.

Actually, he had lobbied me earlier to move out to Sun City. I’d lived there before with my parents, and wasn’t bloody well about to go back. So when things intensified here and I still refused to move out, he just sold up and headed west, leaving me behind.

Whatever excuse you need, eh?

Shortly, the Tony quarrel settled down, and now he and I are actually rather friendly — walked around the park together just the other day.

Must decide what (if anything) to do today. The dawg and I are in full-out Lazy Mode: it’s too damn hot out there to do much hiking, and without a car, I can’t even get to the grocery store without hiking through the heat.

Actually, I can: ask the guy across the street who drives an Uber. But…what? Pay someone to drive me 8 or 10 blocks? Gimme a break!

😀

There’s a corner shopping center much closer, I must admit. But the neighborhood over there is a little shadier: you’re likely to get hustled, and as a woman alone I don’t feel very safe in those conditions.

So…yeah: maybe I should have followed SDXB out to (un)lovely Sun City. But….no. Nope I truly hated living out there with my parents.

Been there.

Done That.

Ain’t doin’ it again. 

Whew!!!!

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BACK ONLINE!

We’re in one of those idiot moments. You know…when you can’t remember your name, to say nothing of your website’s password?  😀   Yeah: like that.

Fortunately, this isn’t my first Senior Moment. By way of heading off these events, I kept a record of the site’s password…and stored it on MY OTHER computer!  So…,mirabilis! Here we are back in Funny about Money.

How long this will last remains to be seen…

Hotter than the Hubs outside. Just came in from hiking through sweaty, nasty heat. For reasons unknown: wired to the teeth. 

Think it’s because my car has been kiped, thanks to the idiots at the Mayo Clinic.. That plus absolutely positively NOTHING that I need to get done works! 

The MayoQuacks put the eefus on my driver’s license, at my son’s behest. Note that I have not been in an accident in years — and that one wasn’t my fault. Nor have I had any tickets. Or any complaints about my driving. Or…whatnot. What I do have here is a royal screwing…the upshot of which: my son came down here, snatched my car out of the garage, and drove it off. I now have no car and no sane way to get around town.

And in a Los Angeles-style city like Phoenix, that IS a problem. Yeah: a BIG problem.

Apparently it’s a Hexed Day for everyone. 

Josie, the lovely lady who glommed SDXB’s house from the Welfare folks when he moved to Sun City, is having one of those, too.

Ohhhmigawd, Josie!  In a highlight of her day, apparently the kitchen plumbing jammed and…basically exploded, from what I can tell. Pipes leaking all over the place. Nothing working. And yeah: just TRY to get a plumber over here on short notice.

Last I saw, she’d managed to shut off the water into the house and was trying to mop up the tidal wave. What a horror show!

Yeah: every time things are bad for you, remember: they’re worse for someone else!

Hotter than the Hubs…

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Along about 7:15 in the evening: that’s where we are. And where we are is HOT and Humid. Feels like accursed Saudi Arabia used to feel.

Well. Almost. No humidity is dripping off the eaves, anyway. That was a frequent occurrence over there.

Still, it’s hot and sticky out in back. The grill is running and in a couple of minutes I’ll toss on a blob of hamburger. Hungry, but not hungry enough to feel like eating on this damp and gummy evening. Still: gotta stuff some food in.

Or else.

Friends and relatives have absented themselves: probably no more anxious to cavort around in this weather than I am. Jeez….I don’t even hear the neighbors’ cute li’l kids frolicking the the backyard tonight!  THAT is somethin’!

LOL! I do love the sound of their adorable young voices and their crazy carryings-on. Nothing like little kids to make a neighborhood….a neighborhood! 

Seriously: that’s a major reason I do NOT want to be locked up in a prison for old folks…uhm, I mean, a retirement “home”: I do love the music of children playing!

We have a nice tribe of kids here on the street: three houses nearby have little ones living there. And often the families bring the kids’ friends over, so we’ll have a whole circus going on out there. 😀

More fun than Carter has oats…

Seriously, I never could fathom why my parents — or SDXB — wanted to live in dreary, mausoleum-silent Sun City. Well…for my parents, I did know: fundamentally neither of them liked kids. Why they had me, I never understood: think my mother’s grandmother nagged her into it.

Anyway, as soon as I was old enough to shovel out the door and send down to the university in Tucson (a year before I graduated from high school), they moved right into Sun City. They liked it. Dreadful place, to my mind. But whatever lights your fire, eh?

The ‘Hood is reminiscent of Southern California: warm year-round (well…most of the time); a spread of single-story homes, grocery stores and other incidental shops within walking distance. I feel incredibly lucky to have found this place — brought here years ago by a savvy Realtor. And can’t imagine living anywhere else. Not in the Valley, anyway.

* San Francisco: yeah.
* Berkeley: yeah.
* Paris: maybe.

But what the heck: this place suits the ole’ lady just fine!

Idle Essay of the Day

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Hmmm….  Apparently SCREAMING into the phone does indeed hurt a nuisance phone solicitor’s ears enough that the word spreads: don’t call THAT number. 😀  It’s almost 11:00 a.m. and I have yet to receive a pestering phone call this morning.

Well. Waitaminit: can’t guarantee that. The phone has been set to block incoming calls. So…some pests may have tried to call and not been able to get through.

This is why I argue that telephone soliciting should be illegal. You and I shouldn’t have to jam up our phones and waylay calls from our friends and business associates to stop jerks from pestering us with unwanted calls.

But…with that feature engaged, my handset says it has blocked dozens of nuisance calls. I gave up counting when the thing showed call #20.

Problem is, it also blocks calls from people I want to hear from. It apparently has blocked calls from my son, for example. And no, I can NOT figure out how to change that.

Yes, I have told folks they need to e-mail me to reach me. But…why would my son have called this number when he could’ve emailed me? That sounds…ominous.

***

Nope: He reports that there are no problems on his end. Sounds like he’s working. His employer escapes the cost of office rent by making all its staff work from home. That, IMHO, is nice enough for the workers who want to make their home double as their workplace. But…not everyone does.

One should, IMHO, have a choice in the matter.

{sigh}  I was not born to live in the 21st century!

AUGH!!!

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Comin’ right on to 7:00 p.m.  No sign of my excellent son. He’d said he would make a grocery-store run and bring a bunch of stuff by here. {chortle!} Apparently, the “run” turned into an expedition! 😀

Seriously: I do hope he’s OK. If he’s gone to the slum market to the north of the ‘Hood, that place ain’t very safe. It sure isn’t a venue one would want to visit in the dark. Or near-dark.

Well…we’ll find out, soon enough.

Hotter than the hubs out there: dusk or no dusk.Walked about six houses down the block to drop a misdelivered piece of mail into a neighbor’s mailbox. Ugh! Not only hot, but humid!

No clouds, but the air feels like a sauna.

Oh, well. The envelope (with its contents) is now in the correct mailbox. The human is back in its house. The dawg is snoozing in her favorite hideaway: under the toilet. And…I wonder where my son is! 

Gosh, I hope he’s OK. If his car is crapped out, I’ll have to hire the Uber guy across the street to schlep me over to wherever the kid is. That, as we know, is because my son has purloined my car, in the belief that his superannuated muther needs to quit driving.

Well…I’ll give him another half-hour or 45 minutes and then pester him on the phone. (Won’t he be pleased?)

What a yucky afternoon/evening!!  Hot, hot, HOT. Humid. And now dark.

Y’know…I’m coming to really dislike living in Phoenix. 

* Driving around this place is a freaking nightmare.
* Walking ain’t any better.
* Where once I rarely felt unsafe, now I get the willies every time I walk to the grocery store.
* The Albertson’s grocery store staff has conceived its own willies! They’ve decided everyone who walks in the door is a shop-lifter, an assumption that does not make for a fun shopping experience.
* The Fry’s ain’t much better…  And it’s a longer walk away, through a shadier neighborhood.

Considering the possibility of moving out to the far, far east side, where my cousin lives in an upper-middle-class tract. Problem is, it’s a LONG way from my son’s present home: damn near an hour’s drive through Phoenix’s bat-sh!t traffic. He sure ain’t gonna move out there because I do: his dad and New Wife live here in the ‘Hood.

So…I reckon as long as he’s here, I’m stuck here. Could be worse, o’course: lots worse. This is a nice neighborhood, very centrally located, with three major grocery stores in easy walking distance and a train and a raft of busses and…on and on. Dunno where I’d go that’s any better.

***

Ah hah! Got him on the phone. He was (audibly) in a restaurant, apparently with his Dad and New Wife. That’s good!  Sorry to pester him…but happy to hear he’s with loved ones and glad he’s not out there driving around the dark. 😀

Never a proverbial dull moment….

Yipe$ My mother would faint!

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Seriously: my mother believed that when gasoline went over $1.00 a gallon, we would have so-o-o-shal-ism! No kidding: she actually said that, back in the day when about 30 cents a gallon was a lot. Today? Its $5 a gallon! Up by $1.35 over the past month. 

The poor woman would faint dead away if she could see this stuff today!

Well…y’know what? My dear son did me a favor by kiping that car of mine! That’s 87 berjillion bucks a tankful that I’m NOT paying. And y’know further what? I’m not having any problem getting around to all the places I need or want to go.

For one thing, my house is right in the middle of urban everything: three major grocery stores, a hair stylist, a Bookman’s, a veterinarian, a dermatologist…on and on and endlessly on. To my amazement, I’m discovering that I don’t need a car to get to about 90% of the places I’d normally go.

To gild that golden lily, a guy who lives kitty-corner across the street from the Funny Farm drives for Uber! For a tiny fraction of what it costs to own a car, he’ll drive me wherever I please.

So: that’s a pleasant surprise. 

Makes me feel almost like I’m back in London.

We never owned a car there, or even rented one long-term. If we wanted to go someplace in the city, we just hailed a cab. And if we were up to some elaborate sight-seeing, we’d rent a car for a day or for a weekend.

Truth to tell, I would never have imagined you could get by with that in a bourgeois American city like Phoenix. But by dayum! Here we are! No car, and no problem!

Seriously: weeks have merged into months, and to my amazement I’ve found no need to own a car over that time. 

Uber forms a major part of that: if I need to go to an appointment or whatnot, the guy across the street drives me there. My son still has his car, too; if he isn’t otherwise occupied (he usually is), he could drive me from point A to point B. So far, we haven’t had much need for that, though.

It’s convenient to own your own chariot, of course. But really: no more convenient than renting one. How convenient is it, anyway, to have to schlep the car to a maintenance garage every few weeks? And with a rental, someone else owns the thing, pays the registration & taxes on it, and covers the upkeep.

Between you’n’me… I’m pretty pleased with my son for dreaming up the idea that I need to get rid of that damn car!