Coffee heat rising

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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Hot, humid, NASTY day. Back-porch thermometer says it’s only 98 degrees out there. (This: at sunrise!)  Add another 10 to that, and you get a feel for this morning’s balmy temperature.

The air outside is so wet it almost feels like Arabia….and where we lived was right on the (icky, sticky) shore of the Persian Gulf. No water dripping off the eaves, though. Out there, that was a phenomenon we used to wake up to, when the air was like this.

Too gummy out there to take the dawg for a walk. So…we’re becalmed in the house, loafing in the breeze of an electric fan set to “high.”

Once again, I’m brought around to the Classic Question of my daily living: Do I really want to stay here for the rest of my conscious life? 

Well…. 

The answer is yes, primarily — maybe only — because my son is here. If he were to move on, I probably would pull up stakes, too.

Where would I go?

Ideally, back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

But of course, I can’t afford that. {chortle!} Even back when I had a job, I couldn’t afford it.

Hmh. Think o’that: A Ph.D. and umpty-umpteen years of university teaching experience will not get you into a home in the place where you want to live! 

Jeez.

Why am I here?

Because my dear parents spotted Sun City as we were driving through the state one day. Oh my! They were so thrilled!!  Imagine: a whole, gigantic housing tract with NO KIDS.

Seriously: my father hated kids, especially when they were tearing around outside during his daily nap. Why he let his wife have me…that’s a question that escapes me. I think it was because my mother’s grandmother nagged them into spawning a child: she wanted a grandchild, and she thought my mother should absolutely positively NOT go childless.

At any rate, we’re here because Sun City banned children: a brilliant innovation, to my father’s mind. As soon as he could retire, he dragged us here. I was sent off to Tucson — to the University of Arizona — and they settled into stodgy retirement.

And the place was de facto strictly segregated. My father didn’t want any n*****s around him…no way, no how. And apparently that still holds, out there on the (un)lovely west side. One of my friends — who happens to be of the dusky persuasion — bought a house out there. He lasted about six months before he was hounded out!

Lovely Uptown Phoenix is not the only moderately desirable place to live here, though. If M’jito were to go back to the Bay Area — which I decidedly can no longer afford — I would probably move either to a suburb in the hills outside of Tucson or to a tract of standardized housing on the east side of Scottsdale. Both districts have better weather. And my guess is, the crime rate is probably lower in either place.

Sun City? Not my style! {heh!} A suburb built on Hate. 

Just groovy.

Movin’ On! Or is that STAGGERING On?

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LOL! So the Human took it into its pea-brained head to walk down to the nearby supermarket to pick up some stuff for itself and for the dawg.

That was what we call “Not Too Bright.” For godsake, as we scribble, the thermometer mounted in the deep, dark shade of the back porch reads 110 degrees. 

Really? What d’you suppose Wunderground thinks?

Yep: the same. A chilly 110. 

Welp! It’s a good thing I grew up in Saudi Arabia, there on the fringe of Hell. This kind of weather was par for the course there. Most of the time….

My guess is, this afternoon I survived BECAUSE the Arabian desert acclimated me to it.

So… As we’re staggering through that heat, our thoughts turn to…what if?  As in what if we dwelt somewhere else? Somewhere more civilized, someplace where humans were adapted to live?

Ohhh…kayyyy…. So, where would we go?

My cousin, a lovely and brilliant young woman, lives with her family in a suburb called Fountain Hills, over on the east side of the Valley. The area is somewhat elevated, enough to be noticeably cooler than my parts. Yea, verily: in the wintertime they’ll actually get snow.

Whatever THAT is.

It’s a bitch of a long way from my son, though. If he didn’t live in Central Phoenix, I might very well be in Fountain Hills as we scribble. But…f’r hevvinsake! It’s an hour’s drive from there to his house!

Nope. Not doin’ that.

SDXB moved to Sun City, in the wake of our brain-banging quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord. He tried to get me to go out there with him. But having lived there with my parents, I wasn’t bloody well about to go through THAT again! So…I felt bad to lose his companionship….but frankly, I can deal one helluva lot better with Tony than with roaring jets, bigoted neighbors, cheesy construction, and grocery stores that don’t carry real food.

Yea, verily! Here’s a terrifying revelation: I’ve come to rather LIKE ole’ Tony the Romanian Landlord. In addition to being the single hardest-working man I’ve ever known, it turns out he’s remarkably intelligent. This is One…Smart…Dude. And that, alas, is a character trait that strongly attracts me.

So, here we are in a state of détente, quietly and slowly drifting toward truce. And maybe toward — hang onto your hat! — even friendship. We shall see what develops…and hope a move to Sun City is NOT that development. 

Gone Good Ole Days

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You know you’re too old when the “Good Old Days” appear, in your mind, to be infinitely better than the BS we encounter nowadays.

Example at hand: Today my son is dragging me out to the Mayo Clinic for some sort of annoying consultation with one of their quacks. Nothing was said to me about this until THIS MORNING. So now I have to clean myself up and get dressed and figure out what on EARTH to say to the quack of the day (no two are ever the same out there). I have no idea why this appointment was made, and exactly no desire to waste a third to half the day driving halfway to Timbuktu, sitting around their waiting room, mumbling on to some doctor who neither knows nor cares what (if anything) ails me, and then trudging all the way back across the Valley to get home.

In the “Good Old Days,” the Mayo Clinic was right up the road from our neighborhood. It was a ten-minute drive to get to their parking lot, and a five-minute stroll into the building. Now we have to traipse to east Scottsdale for a consult.

The doctors there weren’t a lot less patronizing than the ones we now encounter on the far east side of Scottsdale. But my good old “Doctor in the Wild” (as the Mayo set calls doctors who work elsewhere) has moved to Sun City, of all things. So he’s lost me. Because…

a) Sun City is halfway to California from here. If I have to drive an hour each way, it’s gonna be…yeah…to a Mayo doctor, not to some guy practicing “in the wild.”

b) My son thinks the Mayo quacks can do no wrong. So…whatever they say — no matter how far out in left field — elicits no argument from his precincts. That…I suppose…is a good thing.

c) And in my (horrific!!!) experience, doctors who practice in Sun City can do no right.

The horror show that visited my mother when my parents’ bastardly, incompetent Sun City doctors attended her through her (hypochondriacal, we were told) death throes….oh, my! I wouldn’t go near another doctor who practices out there: not even the beloved Young Dr. Kildare.

At any rate: back to the Mayo. I cannot think of anything I’d LESS rather do than traipse all the way across the Valley (a 45-minute drive each way) to sit there and try to communicate with a doctor who assumes I’m a nit-wit.

Seriously: any which way you turn, it’s damned hard to find a doctor who is

a) competent;
b) humane;
c) not patronizing;
d) willing to pay attention to you;
e) can actually hear what you say;
f) and practices within reasonable driving distance of where you live.

And these are the reasons I’ve learned to loathe going to doctors. They don’t like women; they don’t like educated women; and they especially don’t like older women.

Soggy Doggy Day!

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Echhh, is what I say to that!  Ruby and I foolishly went out for the routine morning doggy-walk, under a sky padded with thick, high gray clouds.

“Thick”? The air itself is thick! And no: I exaggerate not. It actually feels like you’re breathing something that’s not quite air and not quite water. Ewww!

So after several blocks of trudging, we turned around and came back.

Can’t tell that the dog is exasperated: she may have been as close to melting as her human was.

Speaking of humans, we passed a fine young gringo professional wheeling his beautiful little adopted Black boy up the sidewalk. Oh, my! What a cutie!!!!  The kid, I mean.

One wonders how an African-American child fares, over the course of 18 years, when adopted by a White family. Dollars to donuts, this one will do pretty darned well…he’s landed in a very upscale neighborhood, served by the best public schools in the state. To say nothing of the very fancy private schools that also thrive here.

Anyway, it was a delight to see the ole’ man and his adopted kidlet. 😀

Now the Human is half-starved, but too lazy to get up and thrash around fixing breakfast. So we’re faced with a conundrum:

  • Whether to stagger into the kitchen and dig something to eat out of the fridge; or
  • To go back to bed.

The latter is a sore temptation. 😀

But…

Coffee

Must…Have…Coffee

And so, away!

July 4 Moron Frolics…Jeeez!

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The evening has barely begun — it’s only 8:35 p.m. — and of course, it being the Fourth of July, every moron within earshot is out there with their bang-bangs.

LOL! It sounds like half the city is exploding… BOOM! bam BAM BAM bang bang whiiirrrrr (helicopter buzzes over) BAM! boomp boomp boom BANG….

On and on and on…. 

We can expect this racket to continue until a little after midnight. Phoenicians love to play with fireworks. And the things are easy to obtain, Mexico being just a few miles to the south of us.

Ohhhhh shee-ut! Some idiot just exploded a fukkin’ BOMB outside the back fence — probably in our alley. Scared the bedoodles out of the dog. 

Y’know, I can understand how idiots think it’s fun to set off bang-bangs. But things that explode like a nuke? Not so much. Fireworks? Okay, okay…the cops can’t ride herd on dozens of nincompoops. But forgodsake, folks: at least TRY to engage your brain a little when playing with these toys!

July 4? Really? And…then what?

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Here we are on our nation’s birthday. Strolled through the neighborhood, basically to pass the time and to eyeball the neighbors’ homes. And…well…

It’s overcast and gray and wet out there. Not raining…yet. But I reckon it will be, soon enough.

So much for watching the fireworks, eh?

Usually, a bunch of them are visible from our parts. A large housing tract to the north of us puts on quite a show. Neighbors here in the ‘Hood customarily blast the sky for a couple of hours. And the City (or some such entity) expends money and gunpowder on a big show in the central part of town.

We’ll see how that goes tonight, depending on the weather.

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Meanwhile, today’s sight-seeing stroll suggests the ‘Hood’s property values are holding strong….and probably rising. What I saw this afternoon, hiking from pillar to post, makes me feel very glad that I did not move out to Sun City when SDXB made his escape.

These houses — and this whole neighborhood — are looking better and better. Homes are not only being maintained handsomely, they’re being upgraded, enlarged, fancified. And you can bet their value is upgrading like crazy, too.

It would appear that, as predicted some time ago, the presence of the recently installed light-rail train has indeed jacked up the appeal and the value of the ‘Hood. If that continues, by the time my son inherits this house, it will be worth a sh!tload of money. He’ll be able to sell it and invest the proceeds; or sell his own home and move in here free & clear; or sell both houses and move to…where? San Francisco?

For sure.

Or, I suppose, he could turn one of the two houses into a rental and use that real estate to generate a steady income.

Interesting, eh?