Coffee heat rising

Hotter than the Hubs

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Ruby and I must have gotten a later start on the morning’s neighborhood stroll than I thought, at the time we set out. Lordie, it’s AFTER 10:00 A.M. Not good, on a “spring” (hah!) morning in lovely uptown Phoenix.

Holeee doggerel, is it hot out there. 

Y’know what job I’d most NOT like to have, here in lovely uptown Phoenix? ANY job that requires you to work outside!

This morning we passed a crew of guys who were gutting out and renovating the Alleged Molester’s house. This, actually, is a handsome middle-class home backing right onto the park. It was occupied by a family whose son dated some girl who was a few days under the age of consent. Hopped into the sack with her…and they were hard at it when her mother came home and caught them in the act.

The mother called the cops, and the young fella was arrested for statutory rape. He went to prison. His parents lost their shirts. They ended up abandoning the house, which turned into a wreck and has been standing decrepit on that corner for upwards of a year.

Well, someone has gotten ahold of it, apparently, and they’re shoveling it out and renovating it. You don’t even wanna know what that project must cost. The pool was drained and allowed to stand dry for well upwards of a year, so it’s ruined: basically ha$ to be rebuilt. The roof has been redone. Workers inside the house seem to be pulling out and replacing almost everything.

If they put it on the market, it’ll be interesting to see how much they try to get for it.

Two lots to the east, another house is being gutted out and renovated. Another huge project: who can even imagine the cost?

Well, if and when the speculators put those houses on the market, we shall see what they do for the price of real estate here in the ‘Hood. The other properties on that street are pretty upscale, so I imagine we’ll see the whole area go through the financial roof.

ARF! we say….and GLUB!

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Loafing on the front porch this gorgeous morning…waiting for a workman to confront the day’s catastrophe.

Boyoboy, am I tired of catastrophes. This stuff makes a box in the sky down on Central Avenue look good! Nice aspect of apartment living: someone else takes care of the damned repairs.

This morning the irrigation system sprang a leak. I found out about it only because the neighbor across the street, one of the WonderAccountants, came over to tell me the road between our houses was flooded from curb to curb.

Looovvveeeleeeeee….

So now we’re waiting for an irrigation plumber to show up. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

He probably has several other jobs to attend to this morning. So it’ll be half the day before I can go on about my business. And by then, waaayyyy too hot for Ruby the Corgi’s morning walk.

Contemplating: Maybe SDXB was right to sell up and move to Sun City. 

Even though he still ends up with a free-standing house to take care of…a gravel yard presents almost zero maintenance issues. Taxes out there are lower. Burglars are pretty much uninterested in you. Two hospitals — neither of them very good, but neither of them much worse than most of the others in the Valley — await your next stroke or heart attack. Not a bad deal, overall.

If M’hijto weren’t here in town — conveniently located to both me and to his father & stepmother — I might very well have followed SDXB back out to the far, noisy west side.

Or not.

I did hate living there when my parents owned their end-of-life home…ah…here’s our plumber!!!!!  Awayyyyyy…..

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A-a-a-n-d… Now the plumbers are here. They’ve dug up the yard around the side gate. Hevvin only knows how much they’ll charge for this little adventure!

I sure don’t wanna know.

Ohhhhhh man! What a job! Wayyyy up there in the Department of Jobs You’re Glad You Don’t Have!!

Seriously, though, these guys have amazing skills. Not only did they figure out the problem within a few minutes of attacking the watering contraption, now they’ve taken it apart and are merrily (uhm…welll…) reconstructing it.

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JAYZUZ! Two hundred and seventy bucks!  To repair a leaking pipe!

Sheeeee-ut!

Well…to be fair, they had to dig up a corner of the yard. Excavate the equipment that regulates the water flow on the west side. Install new parts…in the mud…

Gawd only knows how much this little cavort will run up the water bill. Literally: the road was flooded curb to curb before Tom (neighbor) noticed  and called me.

Honestly, sometimes I do think a box in the sky would be a better habitation for an old bat. But…then I remember living in one.

My parents and I lived in a box in the sky in San Francisco, in a tract called ParkMerced. It actually was a cool place to live: I loved both of the apartments we occupied successively: first a high-rise and then a pleasant little two-story garden apartment.

But…y’know… Apartment developments are crowded. They can be noisy. And expensive: monthly rental can add up. And add up. And add up. Here the only payments I make — on four bedrooms plus a diving pool and two patios and four citrus trees — are for taxes and utilities. This house really is about as ideal as it can get, for an old bat and her dawg.

Hmmm…. Yep! Count up the blessings of a high-rise apartment, the blessings of a cheaply built tract house out in Sun City, and the blessings of this house…and this house wins, paws down.

  • Decent neighborhood
  • Low-maintenance landscaping
  • Block walls around the back & side yards
  • Orange trees
  • Lemon tree
  • Lime tree
  • Climbing roses
  • Cute little kids living all around in the neighborhood
  • Lightrail train running up and down Main Drag West
  • Two major regional hospitals — one of them within walking distance
  • One of the best public school districts in the city
  • Three middle- to upscale shopping centers within walking distance

I’m sure one could ask for more…but personally, I can’t imagine what that would be. 

UN-Be-LIEV-able!

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Literally unbelievable, as it happens today.

This afternoon, in came a hustling piece of snail-mail, trying to get me to Send Money Now and HURRY to sign up for that wondrous product. It looked like BS to me…sort of. But..but…sort of NOT.

Actually, it seemed to be trying to say my homeowner’s insurance is expiring and I need to renew a policy…right now!

Fortunately, the WonderAccountants were home. They live right across the street.

So I took the wad of paper over there. They looked at it and shortly decided it was a scam. Out with it!

Actually, it took them a few minutes of studying the thing to come to that conclusion. You can be sure that if they were given pause, I would never have been able to figure out that it was a scam.

Lordie! This stuff just comes avalanching in on us! When you need a professional to assess the validity of a piece of junk mail…ohhhh gawd! What kind of world DO we live in???

What incredible luck that those two wonderful folks moved into the house across the road! They’ve saved my tail feathers more than once!

Hummer Vandals

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Okay, so I lost patience with replacing or repairing the stolen/damaged hummingbird feeders in front. Took them down. Refilled them, hung them from eaves in the back yard. Behind an eight-foot concrete wall and a set of locked gates.

What a shame!

You can’t even have a stupid little decorative bird feeder hanging from the front-porch eaves of your house.

Seriously: what IS the matter with people? Stealing every damn bird feeder some idiot homeowner hangs out on her front porch?  Is that REALLY so much fun that you do it over and over?

It begins to make the (hideous) prospect of moving into an old-folkerie look better and better. You can be sure no one is going to steal a bird feeder from a balcony on the sixth floor of The Beatitudes.

Depressing as Hell, ain’t it?

Turned Upside-Down in Space?

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Holeeee maquerel! WHAT is going on here?

Just tried to call my son, thinking it’s about dinnertime — around 6:30 in the evening.

But…

No….

No, folks: it’s breakfast-time!

It’s not 6:30 in the evening. It’s 6:30 in the morning!!!! 

Understandably, he was pretty peeved at being rousted from the sack at this hour.

And I’m pretty scared.

Scared that I’m so turned around and so goddamned confused that I don’t know whether it’s morning or night!

****

How terrifying!

Well. I guess this is a signal. And that signal’s meaning is pretty obvious:

Time to sell the house and move into a holding pen for the elderly. 

Guess I’m headed for the Beatitudes, a “life-care community” that stores you during the last months or (God forfend!) years of your life, as you rot away into senility.

Dear Lord! How I would ever so much rather be dead!

Seriously: I just abominate institutional living. Hated hated HATED living in the dorms in college. And now…goddammit! Now I have to end my life that way?

Time to look into alternatives. I simply cannot wind up my life locked into a dormitory for the senile. If I weren’t already crazy when they hauled me off to such a place, I would soon be stark raving insane.

There’s gotta be a better way to go. Let’s find out what it is. And…exit, stage left. 

And I stay here…WHY?

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Jeez.

Lift the dawg onto the bed: Happy Dawg!

Turn on the heating pad, get it warmed up. Happy Human!

Climb into the sack, apply hot heating pad to spavined hip. Happy spavined hip!

Fire up the computer, start to explore the Local Gnus, and….RRRRROOOAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

Goddamned cop helicopter blasts over the house.

Presumably in pursuit of an even more goddamned perp…

What a garden spot!

Sick and tired of the unholy racket and crime and nuttiness and shit-headedness here in Lovely Uptown Phoenix.

Truly: if I could move away from here, I’d do it today.

But…but…where on earth would I go? Is there really any place that’s any better, and quieter, any less looney toons than this place?

Frankly, I think not.

One resident, for example, was attacked and apparently kidnapped from one of the most upscale suburban districts in the state. Like the cop said after my own neighbors were grabbed, tied up, and thrown in their bathtub so a pair of home invaders could clean out their house: “They’re everywhere. You can’t get away from them.”

Yeah: I’d remarked to one of the cops that I thought maybe I should sell my house and move to some quieter venue, and that was his response. “Don’t do that! They’re everywhere!”

Ugh.

I need to get Ruby a roommate in the form of a 90-pound German shepherd and me a new toy in the form of a .38…enough is enough!