Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Excellent Day from Hell!

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Hell is right…It is hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. And, to gild that fricaséed lily: overcast and humid. Ugh!

Just back from a (hot! wet!) stroll to the corner grocery store. One of the Unexpected Consequences of M’hijito’s scheme to make me crazy by stealing my car is the astonishing discovery that, by dayum, I don’t need that damn car. 

And worse yet: I don’t want it. 

No kidding. I’ve totally lost my desire to drive a car down to the corner Albertson’s or up to the big ole’ El Rancho a few blocks’ stroll to the north.

{chortle!}

Seriously, if I’d gotten off my duff this morning — when I should have! — the grocery-store stroll would have been a pleasure and a joy. I do love our neighborhood, and I get the biggest kick out of the passers-by and the passers-through. If you’re gonna live in Phoenix, this is the place to be!

Seriously: if you were stuck in this burg, where else could you live this pleasantly and this conveniently?

hmmmm

Well, OK:  I’d say the Encanto District.

DXH and I lived there a good 15 years or so. And I will say, I did love it. “Quiet and safe place to live”? So one of the city’s websites has it…  Well, one could dispute that. If one loves the melody of fire engine and ambulance sirens, 24/7, well then…yeah. oh so quiet. Uh huh! 

If one lives with a German shepherd who chases a midnight intruder out the back door (poor guy!),, then…sure. oh so safe.

You couldn’t pay me to go back there. But then, no one is paying me here to live on the southern edge of Phoenix’s (un)lovely Sunnyslope district. And I feel neither more nor less safe than we felt in Encanto.

“Safe” is not a term that applies to a big city. 😀

***

Anyhoo, truth to tell, the proximity of several upscale fancy-dan grocery stores and two top-level hospitals and a veterinarian beyond belief and…on and on and on…makes this neighborhood a highly desirable hideaway.

One of these days, I hope to be able to leave this house to M’Hijito. At that time, he’ll have to decide whether he likes these environs or not. But y’know…enough folks out there will think they do like these environs that he’ll be able to sell this place for a chunk of cash that will fill his pockets.

If he chooses not to do so, he’ll have an exceptionally pleasant little house surrounded by exceptionally pleasant neighbors in the middle of a lovely middle-class commercial district.

And that, my friends. will be enough to please my ghost. 

😉

BING BONG!

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Amazon Dude! He/She/It just left a bag of fine, overpriced dry dog food on the doorstep.

M’Hijito was supposed to take me to the local supermarket to pick up…the same. I’d forgotten I’d ordered the stuff online.

He hasn’t shown up yet. So….that gives me a paroxysm of Motherly Worry, but on the other hand, it relieves me of one last hassle of the day.

M’Hijito works out of his house, mostly online and on the phone for his vast employer. This keeps him ludicrously busy (as in it would drive me crazy!). So I expect he’s rassling with his bosses’ clients just now. WhatEVER: this delivery means I don’t have to traipse to the hated grocery store. Ruby has her food and my feet are comfortably ensconced on the hassock.

😀

I think what I’ll do, by way of strategy, if we find he’s not able to come over and schlep me to the store for the other stuff, is just put that chore off until morning. They open at 6:00 a.m., which provides a good shot at walking over there before it gets too hot. Got about a dozen items to buy…

But, this new roller-cart I bought is just the business! The thing makes it possible to grab a week’s worth shopping items and ROLL THEM HOME. Free of hassle. Free of the damn car. Free of everything except the occasional nuisance sh!thead.

Think I’ll wait, though, until tomorrow, partly to dodge the day’s-end heat and partly to dodge the legions of sh!t-heads. If I get to the store as dawn cracks, I should be able to get home before the panhandlers hit the streets.

Jeez. What a place we live in!

 

Jayzuz! STOP THE WORLD!!!

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Problem is, stopping the world and jumping off prob’ly won’t do me much good today….  If I touch it, it goes SPRRROOOOOINNNGGG!!!

What a mess. literally: everything I touch is what a mess. 

Well…the computer is letting me type…sorta. We’ll see if it saves to disk, and we’ll see if it lets this post go online.

How do I doubt it?
….and….
How do I doubt it?

Oh, well.  On the brighter side, my son has kindly volunteered to make a grocery-store run for me.

On the dimmer side…by myself, I couldn’t get to the store for love nor money. To say nothing of to the store and back home. This business of kiping my car puts me in one helluva bind!  Whatever I need to get done, I can’t do. Wherever I need to go, I can’t get there.

Whinge!!!

Y’know…an annoying aspect of this fiasco is that my great-aunt and her mother, my great-grandmother, lived in Berkeley for decades and never had — or needed — a car. Sooo…why do I feel I can’t survive without a vehicle?

The aunt worked in San Francisco, a top-level functionary at Crocker-Anglo National Bank. She walked a block up the hill from her home, hopped on a light-rail train, and rode into the city. Hopped off practically in front of the bank.

The great-grandmother used to walk up that hill every day or two to shop at the neighborhood grocery store and drugstore. Then she’d haul the groceries two blocks back down the hill.

They both lived well into their 90s, with no ailments that they ever complained about. Now…they were Christian Scientists and so they didn’t complain about their ailments. Prayed them away, right?  But truth to tell: they appeared to be in the pink of health right up to their end: in their 90s.

Hmmmm…. Lookee here! This is Saturn’s Day! 

Hot dayum! Somehow, despite my good son’s offer to schlep to the grocery store, I had the idea we were in a weekday!

Man! Talk about unstuck in time!

Well. This is good. It means he’ll be able to kill a couple of hours on my errands, and I won’t have to risk life & limb walking (hobbling?) to the slum grocery store to the north of us.

Heh. Actually, that store is a supermarket. And a pretty nice one. But the neighborhood surrounding it is a bit…alarming. I do NOT like to go up there on foot, and most of the time, once in a car I’ll go somewhere else.

And therein lies the difference between my aunt’s transportation challenge and mine. It was not unsafe for her to walk from her house to the train stop, nor was it unsafe for her to ride across the Bay, get off in downtown San Francisco, and walk into the bank

Lemme tellya: you could not pay me to ride a bus or that damn lightrail into downtown Phoenix. Nor would I get out and walk around down there. That is NOT what any woman in her right mind does.

Phoenix is L.A. East…and that is not sayin’ a good thing.

Old Age Creepin’ Up…

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LOL!  I swear-ta-gawd, the whole “old age” cliché gets closer and closer to reality the more years you spend on this earth.

Just up the road from the Funny Farm — really, within walking distance on a temperate day — stands an aging shopping mall called Metrocenter.

It used to be a hangout for young folks, back in the day when I was a young pup. Several huge department stores, yes; but also a passel of cute little shops and fast-food eateries and ice cream shops and…on and on. As the morning sun glows here in the Funny Farm’s front patio, I was just thinking I’d like to run over there this afternoon and grab some ice cream. Maybe do some shopping in the fancy little shops or the big, gorgeous department stores.  But…

Uhm…

Noooo…wake up, dearie! Metrocenter is no more. They’re tearing it down and turning the site into a fancy residential project, complete with its own shopping center. Looks like it’s probably going to be private, or pretty close to it.

That’s too bad. It was a fun place to hang out. Makes one feel bad, because you realize you’re the one who is no more! 

Time to Move to the Old Folks’ Home?

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Stay? or flee?

Do Ruby and I want to sell up, pack up, and move? Shift our base of operations to an institution for the elderly, where staff babysit you 24/7? Or…well…stay here, keep dodging the burglars and the sh!t-heads, keep managing crews of yard guys, housecleaners, pool dudes, repairmen…on and on and endlessly on?

One advantage of living in an old-folkerie: someone else rides herd on the hired help.

Here, I do have a cleaning lady who does an excellent job. Most of them don’t: they appear not to know how to clean house, at least not to middle-class American standards. So the presence of Wonder Cleaning-Lady is a huge privilege…and very possibly a rarity.

You shouldn’t have to ride herd on a worker doing a job that your mommy taught you to do when you were nine years old. In Wonder Cleaning-Lady’s case, I don’t have to…but too dam many of them don’t even seem to know how to use a dustrag.

Move into one of those old folks’ warehouses, and (in theory, anyway) you have an employee riding the herd.

Whaddaya bet, though, that you still end up with imperfect cleaning, dust still sitting on the bookcase shelves, dust still hiding behind the sofa, grease still sitting on the stove burners…on and on and on…  Y’know…if I have to deal with that, I’d rather deal with it in my own home,  not in some unholy institution.

But…Jeez!!

This morning Ruby and I repaired to the neighborhood park for our morning perambulation. And there was some guy out there, yelling suggestive obscenities at us. Yeah: at an 80-year-old bat!!! 

You can’t get away from the bastards!

Wait…isn’t that what the cop said after the Great Home Invasion Adventure?  😀

Seriously: you CAN’T get away from them.

If I’m going to stay here and if I imagine Ruby and I are going to continue our walking routine, maybe I ought to get us a pistol. One that’s small enough to fit inside a pocket.

On the other hand, I don’t want to shoot some jerk just because he asks me if I wanna f*ck. That wouldn’t be nice, would it?

😉

We’re IN! Not to say FED UP….

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SURPRISE!!!!!  Our honored computer let me into our blog site! It’s a miracle! 

Gray, muggy day. Reminds me vaguely of life in Berkeley, where my relatives dwelt. Only considerably warmer than the East Bay, which was usually pretty nippy.

Dog and Human traipsed around the park, by the light of a dawn best described as “dim.”

Grrrr! Afraid I’m going to have to stop taking Ruby to the park — her paws-down favorite venue! — because of the a$$holes that habituate the place. This morning we had some jerk hollering obscenities at me — AN 80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN! — as we strolled across one end of the park.

Swear ta gawd!!!  What IS the matter with people?

Looks like we’ve got three choices:

* Stay out of the park, now and evermore.
* Get someone, preferably a large and male someone, to walk with us.
* Adopt a German shepherd to accompany us.

None of those appeal:

* Ruby’s little doggy heart will be broken if she can’t ever go into the park again.
* I don’t know any bodyguard-shaped men any more, and even if I did, nothing about little old(!!!) me would motivate such a fellow to traipse around the park with me, flexing his biceps.
* And I’m past the time of my life when I can handle a 90-pound protection dog.

So…it’s pretty annoying. Frustrating, as a matter of fact.