Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Update on Yesterday…

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LOL!  It got stupider and stupider. I sweartagawd!

So today’s proposed old-lady babysitter never showed up. AWWWWWW!  What a shame!

She probably went to the neighborhood street labeled “Lane.” I’m on the street labeled “Way.”

Josie, the occupant of the “Lane” house, lives alone and dwells in fear. She will NOT open the door to anyone she doesn’t know. So if the wannabe babysitter went to her place, she rang the doorbell and…nothing happened.

Awwww….what a shame!

Welp, I ain’t about to do anything about it. Just gunna lay low. I do NOT like people lurking around underfoot — especially not strangers. If I need or want someone here to keep me company or fend off the sh!theads, I’ll call someone of my own choosing.

M’hijito dragged me out to the Mayo today. After some inspection, the doc didn’t seem to find anything drastically wrong. So with any luck, I should be free of further harassment from that quarter, at least for awhile.

The Mayo Clinic is on the freaking far side of the galaxy from our neighborhood: located, not surprisingly, in one of the Upper Richistans. So any time we have to visit our doctor(s) out there, we face one helluva drive. As for me, I’ll make one or two appointments a year, just to stay on their rolls. If you don’t show up, they drop you…and then when you do need a really first-rate doctor, you don’t have a snowball’s chance.

What a place we live in!

Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda…

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Stumbling around the ‘Hood through a superheated afternoon exercise walk, I happened to think of a long-ago near-miss in the Department of Real Estate. Videlicet: years ago — yea verily, a couple of decades ago — I very nearly bought a house in a distant suburban development called Fountain Hills.

It’s a pleasantly ritzy-titzy town — I would (and do) call it a suburb — clinging to the far east side of Scottsdale. My son had not yet moved back to Phoenix, and so the distance from central Phoenix wasn’t a concern. In fact, it was closer to where I was working — Arizona State University — than where I’m living  now. So, in some ways it would have been a practical move. And it would have put me into a piece of real estate whose value was headed for the stratosphere.

By random serendipity, I decided against that move.

And a good thing that was, since there was no way my son would have settled halfway to Payson at the time he moved back to Phoenix.

And by serendipity, too, SDXB bought a house in North Central Phoenix, just as we were becoming an Item. Consequently, I bought a house a block from his new place, and now…here I am, basically within walking distance of the kid’s house, altogether within walking distance of three major grocery markets, a doctor’s office, a dentist’s office, a computer store, a hair stylist’s, and…on and on and on!

I ended up in the middle of everything, happy to be here, and surprisingly close to my son’s place. What more could anyone want, eh?

But sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I’d gone ahead and bought a place out there on the far side of Scottsdale.

* It would have been within walking distance of my best friend’s house: she who worked prominently and successfully at Scottsdale Community College.

* Between her influence and the that neighborhood’s relative proximity to Scottsdale Community College, I almost certainly would have landed a full-time job there.

* In Maricopa County (where we dwell), the community colleges pay exceptionally well — usually more than the university does.

* For a non-tenurable employee of the university (graduates of ASU or the UofA are ineligible for tenure in the state universities), the community college’s pay would have been much better. And a job at one of those colleges would have been much better better endowed with upward mobility than my job at ASU was.

No doubt by now I’d be retired from any such job, and living happily ever after.

* And if my son had been willing to subject himself to his freshman and sophomore years in junior college courses (not bloody likely!), I could have gifted him with two years of tuition-free college credit.

So…on reflection, one can see that moving into the community colleges would have had some substantial — even huge — benefits.

Ultimately, though…I think I’m glad I stayed with Arizona State University, glad I drifted into this neighborhood, glad I floated along here until retirement. I really do like this province of Phoenix, and like this specific part of the city. 

Good(?) Morning, America!

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NINETY-FIVE DEGREES in the shade of the back porch, at 7:00 in the morning!  Hoooleeeee shee-ut!  How hot IS it supposed to get today?

Hmmm….  Saith Wunderground: 108 degrees, with 23% humidity.

Dog and Human are just back from our morning stroll — around the park and through the hood, the air so thick you could swim through it. Yea, verily: it’s mighty hot and sticky out there.

Ohhhh well: at least we’re exercised. After a fashion.

What new horrors are on the calendar?  Checking…

Hmmmm… Doesn’t look like anything. One can only hope…

What I am hoping is that my son doesn’t have one of the housekeeper/babysitters slated to descend on me this morning. What a NUISANCE those women are!

Not through any fault of their own. It’s my eccentricity that creates the problem. I strongly prefer my aloneness. I really, really don’t like people underfoot. And especially not strangers. Not hired help.

Oh, well. If one of the poor dears shows up, I’ll make her drive me to the Sprouts and the Albertson’s. That’ll soak up the better part of her morning, anyway. Then maybe I can pretend to take a nap, which will extract an hour or two of relative privacy.

At any rate, at least the little dawg is exercised, and we got out before the pavement could burn her feet. If there’s any question in your mind about whether this place is a precinct of Hell, all you need to do to resolve that question is to visit in June, July, or August.

I could brain my father for dragging us here when he retired. Too late, though: his brains have been reduced to a pile of ashes. 😀

Seriously, I assumed that we would stay in San Francisco, near my mother’s relatives. Or at least in Southern California, where my parents had lived before we decamped to Saudi Arabia.

Jayzuz! TEN YEARS in that Middle-Eastern Hell-Hole. Can you imagine?

Actually, for my mother and me it was a mere nine years. Toward the end of his planned sojourn out there, she came down with amoebic dysentery. Almost died from it. But she did recover, at which point her doctors told my parents that she needed to get out of Arabia and come back to the States, where she could get better medical care and get away from the endemic parasites.

So, to his infinite disgust, my father had to quit the job that he figured would support him into early retirement. He sent my mother and me to San Francisco (where surviving members of her family lived); stayed in Arabia until the end of his contract (another nine months); and then got a first mate’s job shipping out of the East Bay.

Poor guy! All his plans went down the toilet. He’d figured to spend another year or two in Hell, and then retire — that’s how much Americans got paid out there. But alas, ’twas not to be!

Thank Gawd, from my mother’s and my point of view…

Anyway…the air here is not as soggy this morning as it used to be by dawn’s early light in Araby. But by comparison with what’s normal here, it’s darned sticky!

Out the Door Again….

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…And into the swampy morning. Ugh!!!! Is it ever HOT and WET and STICKY out there!

But we managed to make a circumambulation of the garden spot that is our neighborhood.

Walked by SDXB’s old house. The city GAVE it to a woman who was dispossessed of her own home by construction of an airport runway. As you might imagine, she seems kinda uncomfortable here in Upper Middle America: basically she hides inside her house. Ring the doorbell, and she won’t come out.

She will, however, purloin any packages that Amazon leaves there mistakenly. The street number is the same as mine, AND the road name is almost identical: Lane instead of Way. Even when I enter an extra line in my address for Amazon, reading “WAY, NOT LANE!” they still deliver things to her place.

Guess what I should do is have Amazon purchases delivered to my son’s house. But…what would be the point of that?  If I have to drive to his place to buy something, I might as well just walk across Main Drag West to buy it.

{sigh} Sure do wish SDXB were still living here in the ’Hood. He moved to Sun City, where he’s living (I think…some question about that) happily ever after. He quickly picked up a new girlfriend out there…meaning she’s the one who has to take care of him in what apparently is his final illness.

I’ve lived in Sun City. Hated it! Wouldn’t go back there on a bet. Not if you paid me!

  • The jet engine racket from nearby Luke Air Force Base defies belief.
  • So does the level of Hate among the locals.
  • At the time I was there, they didn’t have a decent grocery store. If frozen crap and junk food appealed, you were fine. But if you wanted fresh veggies and meat: fuggedaboudit.
  • It’s a long, LONG way from where my son lives. I’d hardly ever see him if I moved out there.
  • The houses are cheaply built. You, too, can air-condition the Great Outdoors!

The ‘Hood is centrally located, on the high end of the upscale North Central section of lovely uptown Phoenix, bordered on two sides by dire slums.

Hmmmm…looks like our software is hanging. So: outta here! 

Thank Goodness for Amazon!

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Saudi-style weather: Hot, wet, sticky. Eighty-four degrees right now, at 7:20 in the morning: 105 predicted.

Out the door with the corgi, at dawn’s early light. Everyone else has the same idea: we have to circumvent the park to evade the potential dog fights.

Cleaning lady on her way this morning. That….

wait wait wait! It’s not the cleaning lady! WonderAccountant (who lives across the street, BTW) reports that her understanding is the woman who is supposed to show up is more on the order of a babysitter…hired by Dear Son.

Ohhhhh gooooodie…  

Just what I need: someone new to poke her nose into my business…

Mwa ha ha! Today, what we’ll have her poke her nose into is a grueling trip to Sprouts!  Poor babe….

Seriously: I need a few grocery items, but not enough to justify trudging block after block through 100-degree heat. If any such person does show up, what we’ll do right off the bat is put her up to schlepping around.

Hmmmmm……  Along that line, d’you suppose Sprouts delivers? If it does…how does one engineer that?

Hmmmmm….. They do deliver, but….the process to order up stuff is brain-banging. And it’s not clear that they deliver in this area.

Anyway, I can order up the dawg food from Amazon. Fresh groceries: apparently not so much.

Well. Let’s see if the proposed woman shows up here. If she does, first thing we do to make her crazy is ask her to schlep us over to the Sprouts. From there: straight downhill, the poor child!

😀

 

GORGEOUS Evening!

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Oh, my! WHAT a beautiful evening!

Just got back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: for the first time in living memory, without the dog dragging me around. Lovely! Absolutely LOVELY.

The air is soft and delicate. No heat. No cold, either.

No one else was around, so the way was quiet and peaceful, just as gentle as gentle can be. I’ve not had as pleasant a walk in as long as I can remember!

So. After this, the Dawg gets her hike the first thing in the morning. Then I get my stroll last thing in the evening. That way, I get twice as much walking in. Ruby misses out on nothing. And I get to enjoy this lovely neighborhood.

Gosh, I hope the evenings stay this pleasant for a good long time: ideally, into and even through the summer.

That’s a forlorn hope, o’course: come late June and July, it’ll be hotter than the hubs of Hades out there.

But for the nonce, I can build a habit of a daily walk. And then when the summer blast fires up, Ruby and I can follow the same route first thing in the morning, before the sun comes up. That’ll leave only about three weeks when the summer heat makes the place truly non-navigable.

Quite a stroll it was, too. Not a single bum. No weirdos. No undue racket from the main drags. Unusual, one could say.