Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Ruminations on Ruination

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door…NOW!

Seriously: the Dawg and the Human just sat down to take in the morning slack — coffee mug in hand, computer atop lap — and it dawns on the Human: Do not sit there with the back door hanging open, dammit!!!  Nay verily, not even if the screen door is closed and locked.

‘Cause, as we know, any clown and his/her little brother can kick or yank that screen open.

Sounds paranoid, eh? But I do hafta say: it feels more and more unsafe to me, living here in lovely Arizona. Especially in its (un)lovely cities.

Day or two ago, a Tucson woman was murdered at her home, apparently by a nut case. So…sitting around your house or patio taking in the morning air is decidedly NOT advised. Surely not around here.

So many of our fellow citizens are off the rails here in this crazy-making 21st Century — and it’s so easy for them (and us) to stock up on firearms — that really: You’d be nuts to loaf in your family room with the back door hanging open.

I never used to feel especially unsafe in my home, certainly not in the daylight hours. But lately that has changed…and I don’t think the change is a function of age.

No. It’s a function of the steadily growing insanity and violence around us. Not that humans haven’t always been crazy…but really, it does seem a lot more pronounced than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Sometimes I think I should move out of uptown Phoenix — surely the suburbs would be safer. When I mentioned that to a cop during the great home invasion adventure, he remarked that there aren’t any places in the Phoenix metropolitan area that can be regarded as safe.

Really…when you re-read the post I put up at Funny after that little adventure, you hafta ask yourself: Why am I still living here???

What the HELL is the matter with me that I haven’t moved somewhere else? Somewhere far, far from here! Really: this house should have been on the market the next day after that episode…

But…but…WHERE would I go that’s any better?

Sun City, that fine mausoleum on the west side? 

Well, no: this kind of stuff happens out there. My mother lived in white-lipped terror all the time she and my father owned their Sun City manse. And I’m not interested in living in a ghetto for the aged and the cranky. No, thanks.

A box in the sky? One of the high-rise apartments along Central Avenue or in Scottsdale?

Well…I’ve lived in such a place. And…no thanks. Don’t wanna do that again. I’m just not in to communal living.

No communal living, eh? Well, then: how about back out to the ranch, just outside the wide spot in the road called Yarnell? Right up on the Rim…cool weather, lots of cows and sheep, plenty of room for the burglars to spread out comfortably?

Hm. Yeah, I did love the ranch. BUT: we didn’t live there 24/7. It was more of a weekend retreat for us. And y’know: I don’t think I would want to live out in the middle of nowhere 24/7. Besides, if a burglar/rapist/murderer can visit you in your city subdivision, what’s to keep him from visiting you on your remote ranch?

Basically…where there be humans, you be not safe.

Yeah: I’m afraid that’s a fact.

Or, alternatively:  I’m afraid. That’s a fact.

😀

 

 

Securing the Security…

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Lookit this hair-raising tale! 

This charming incident happened just down the road, in Tucson. Holeee shee-ut!

The victim is a famous person — or near famous, connected with the Today show. But y’know…it could be any of us. You or me or…who knows?

It’s a good reason to be sure you secure your exterior doors. And I do mean seriously secure them. Make it damn hard for anyone to push their way inside when you go to answer the doorbell.

One way to do this is to install heavy-duty security screens with similarly heavy-duty deadbolts. This is what I’ve done at the Funny Farm.  Mine are of this ilk, easy to get at Home Depot and to hire someone who knows what he’s doing to install them.

There’s a lot of choice out there, though. Look around for one that suits your taste, if you have nothing better to do. For me, the trick was to find something simple and clean-looking, reasonably priced to install, and as close to impregnable as possible.

Perps, I figure, don’t want to spend a lot of energy and effort on breaking in; so, when they see something like this, they’ll move on to the next house.

Annoying as Hell, in my not-so-humble opinion, to have to fortify your doors like they belonged at Fort Knox. But…better that than letting some jerk break his way in.

One of this thing’s benefits, too, is that on a  nice day it lets me leave the front door open (with the security screen closed and locked, of course). Fresh air flows in: perps stay out.

I have one on every exterior door to the house, plus one on the side door to the garage. Nothing, of course, is absolutely perfect…but these things do go a long way to make you feel safer and more secure, here in the Big and Ugly City.

Are We Still Online?

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Looks like once again I’m back in to Funny about Money, despite the last week’s hijinks.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! That’s surely some kind of little miracle.

It’s a gray, drab morning: 8:30 and no brighter than about 7 a.m.

Harvey the Beloved Pool Cleaner appears to be on the fritz. Looks like he’s stuck on on the bottom of the Hole in the Ground Into Which To Pour Money. I’m not sure whether this is Pool Dude Day — he comes around every week or so. But I’m unstuck in time and so have no clue whether this is one of his days.

If I stay here waiting for him, that will put the eefus on Ruby the Corgi’s doggy-walk.

****

Ah HAH!  His glorious convict-like Cuteness arrived! Pool Dude is here! Out back and puttering away with the dratted…uhm, beloved swimming pool. And when we say DOG JOY, we do mean dog joy. 

Yes: many of these guys are convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the trades for which prisons in Arizona train inmates. So, chances are pretty good that our beloved Pool Dude has seen the inside of a concrete cell.

That notwithstanding, he is a sweetie-pie. Just a very nice, very personable man. And he does a great job! So whatever he did in his previous career…I don’t much care.

As for Ruby: he could be Jack the Ripper and she’d still adore him.

 

Here We Go Again…

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Speaking of the glories of the Middle of Nowhere (as we were yesterday), this morning a fine cop copter is buzzing the low-rent district just to the north of us — right across Main Drag North.

Nine times out of ten, these little dust-ups (“copter-ups”?) amount to nothing. It’s the times when they chase the guy into your yard, where he tries to break into your house: that’s the tenth time out of ten. And it’s what makes the Middle of Nowhere look good.

Seriously: if we were out on the ranch and some jerk were running around out there, the mule and a couple of horses would be charging nervously around the corral. The ranch dawg would launch into Full Assassination Mode. And we would have plenty of time to get our shotgun.

😀  O’course, because the ranch was the Middle of Nowhere, chances are the perp would not be running around out there. He might run through the MofN, but believe me: he’d keep on going. Especially when he got the glimpse of our blunderbuss.

Very, very tired of Big-City Life. Gosh, but this stuff is tedious. Seems like some stupid Event occurs almost every day.

The wee corgi figures I’m gonna give her a piece of the cookie I’m munching for sorta-breakfast.

She’s right, o’course: I wanna live.

Weird, hazy, icky day, the sort of weather the newspaper climatologist calls “partly cloudy.” Clouds?  Well, OK, if you say so…  But I’d say not. I’d say “icky.”  Or “let’s go back to bed.”

Y’know…I’ve about reached the point where I’m sick and tired of life in Lovely Uptown Phoenix. Spare me the daily (hourly?) cop fly-overs, the poor neighbor terrorized because he saw (ooo gawd!!) a coyote ambling across the park; the whitey-white neighborhoods (no coloreds need apply…); the crime-laden school and apartments across the road; the endless ambulance and fire sirens, the…how long does one have to go on?

I fear I was not born to live in the Big City. 😀

Which Phoenix decidedly was NOT, when my parents moved here and dragged me along with them.

What is it now? Decidedly urban, we might say.

And y’know…I don’t much like it.

Yes, I truly loved living in San Francisco. {But San Francisco, Phoenix ain’t…)

And yeah, I tolerated living in Long Beach, within reason. (Yeah, this place is ticky-tacky in a way reminiscent of Southern California, but…California it ain’t.)

Phoenix, weirdly, is another matter…for reasons that aren’t altogether clear.

It is very Southern California. But really, it’s…what?

* architecturally dreary
* culturally boring
* intellectually…nonexistent
* too hot for life in the summer
* too smoggy for life in the winter

Given half a chance, I’d escape to points west, north, east, or south. In an instant!  But…I ain’t leavin’,  because my son is here. And besides, it’s too darn much work to pack up the castle; tote a lifetime’s worth of furniture, dishes, clothing, artwork, and whatnot across the country; unpack it all; and find new places for all that junk.

Guess you can’t complain about what you can’t complain about…

Evening in the ‘Hood

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Dusk, with high thin clouds floating over the ‘hood. Wow! What a GORGEOUS evening as Ruby and her human stroll around.

This neighborhood gets tonier and fancier and more spectacularly expensive-looking by the day. If I manage to stay here until I die, my son is going to inherit the Asset from Heaven! Seriously: worth Gawd Only Knows how much more than I paid for it.

Gosh, I hope I’ll be able to hang onto this place until then. Really, that only needs to be another eight or ten years. As we scribble, Zillow claims this place is worth about five times what I paid for it. My first house here is supposedly worth some four times more than I paid…and it’s almost two blocks closer to the spectacularly noisy Main Drag West.

And frankly, I can’t see a single sign that this area is likely to slide downhill anytime in the near future, barring a catastrophic recession. Which I kinda doubt is gonna happen.

The area is relatively safe, crime-wise.  And we’re within walking distance of three major supermarkets, a medical clinic, a veterinarian, two first-rate public schools, at least one good private school, a well-respected hospital, a beautiful neighborhood park,…on and on and on. Meanwhile, the county has run a swell new light-rail line up the west side, and busses zip up and down all the major main drags.

If things stay reasonably stable or, God and the Taxpayer willing, continue to improve in quality and public services,  M’hijito will inherit one HECK of an asset.  By then, it should be solidly ensconced in the tony district known as North Central, even the public schools (now a shade wanting…) brought up to par and beyond, and the property values hovering near the stratosphere. He’ll be able to claim a more-than-decent house in an upscale district, or else sell it and move to the retirement venue of his dreams, out in Colorado.

Nice thing to daydream about...as day fades into dusk…

😀

Pool Dude!

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ARF! we say. ARF ARFETY ARF! IT’S POOL DUDE DAY!

Darned if I can imagine how Ruby the Corgi knows when it’s Pool Dude’s day to come over and shovel out the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour money. But by golly, she sure does! 

And she’s out there lurking by the gate — or in the house by the back door — waiting for him to show up.

Ohhhh how that dawg loves that Pool Dude!

So does the human… Bless’im, he relieves me of an annoying job. And, because he does the job SO much better than I can, he keeps that pool just spotless. Looking gorgeous. Free of casually growing sheets of green stuff.

Yeah: we’re both in love with Pool Dude. I’ll tellya: that guy is worth his weight in dollar bills.

Do hafta say: in the unlikely event that I were ever to buy another house, it almost surely will NOT have another swimming pool in the backyard. I do love having the puddle of cool water out there in Arizona’s gawdawful summertime. But..y’know…a shower will do the trick. 😉

Unless you have kids who play in the pool every day, owning one is hardly worth the cost. The pool really is an expensive nuisance.

It also poses a health threat that most people don’t think about: it’s a puddle spreading some very scary communicable diseases.

My next-door neighbor apparently decided she was done with maintaining and paying for her hole-in-the-ground, so she let the water drain out and then just went on about her business. Problem is: when you open the drain at the bottom of a backyard pool, not all the water drains out. 

Result: she had a nice little puddle sitting on the bottom of the plaster hole…and the mosquitos found it.

This created a fine mosquito nest, jacking up our buggy population handsomely.

Meanwhile, her other next-door neighbor, a European immigrant, had no clue about stale puddles, swarming mosquitoes, and their consequences. She liked to sleep with her windows open, and apparently had never heard of a window screen.

Next result: the skeeters flew right into her bedroom and made themselves to home, where they bit the bejayzuz out of her…and infected her with a fine case of encephalitis. She almost died from it.

Fortunately, she did recover after some time…even though her doctors had told her dad that she probably would not.

So…Ruby and I do not loaf around the backyard without being amply covered in clothing. We do have a mosquito-zapper out there. But most of the time, I stay indoors!

Therein lies one of the many drawbacks to having a swimming pool in your backyard…and it’s not even your pool!

Here in Phoenix, you’d have a hard time dodging mosquitos bred in one of the local holes-in-the-ground. Just about everybody does have a pool. You could probably evade the bugs if you lived in a high-rise apartment. But most houses…not so much.

If your pool is maintained properly, well then…no, it’s not breeding skeeters. But to take care of a pool properly is a PITA of the first water. You have to keep it steadily chlorinated. Sweep down the walls and steps. Vacuum out any debris that blows into it…. If you’re doing pool maintenance right, it’s pretty much a daily task. Or a stiff bill to a guy who comes around and beats back the dirt and the bugs.