Coffee heat rising

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 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! 

Morning Has Broken…

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Like the first day…
Blackbird has spoken,
Like the first bird…

Actually, we don’t have blackbirds here in the lovely Sonoran desert. We have telephone solicitors.

The ba*tards start calling you as dawn cracks. Ringy-dingy-dingy Ringy dingy dingy ringy…. If you have any fantasy about sleeping in, fuhgeddaboudit!

We’re told phone soliciting is a prison industry. Apparently, a large portion of these nuisance phone calls are coming from convicts, placed from inside local and regional prisons. Makes you wanna just hurry right out and buy whatever they’re peddling, right?

I used to blast a horn into the phone whenever the ba*tards would jangle me up. Now…well..that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And really: if the job is being done by people who are forced to it by their prison guards, I suppose it’s not every nice to try to blow out their eardrums.

I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not very nice to jangle me out of bed by dawn’s early light, either.

I’d disconnect the phone at night, if I felt safe doing so. But…I don’t. I’m here by myself, and if anything happens that I need to call 911, then…yeah: I’ll NEED to call 911. Now, not after fiddling indefinitely with the damn phone.

What a gorgeous morning!! 

Guess Ruby and I had better head out on our morning walk, before the day heats up. And so…

A-WAAAAYYY

Nothin’ Better to Do….

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Jeez. Can you imagine? The locals have got nothin’ better to do than to sneak onto my front porch and steal my bird feeders!  They did it again this afternoon.

What bastards!

Welp: after this, the birds will have to repair to the back yard — behind locked, six-foot-high gates — to snack on their birdseed and their hummingbird juice.  Guess I could booby-trap the front patio with cameras…but really…. That does seem like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Literally: even if I catch them in the act, the cops aren’t likely to do much (or anything) about it. Like there weren’t better things to fill a police officer’s time?

It’s stupid and it’s petty. But it sure pisses me off!

CAN you believe it?

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Ten in the morning…the dawg and I prepare to hunker down and loaf around the front courtyard half the morning. And…and this is when I discover that not one, not two, but ALL THREE of the hummingbird feeders have been stolen from the south side of the house.

Can you imagine? The greedy bastard (or bitch) ripped off ALL THE HUMMINGBIRD FEEDERS from the front yard.

I kinda incline not to replace them.

Yes, the hummers are endlessly charming. But the feeders actually are a bit of a PITA to clean and refill and rehang every few days.

Jeez. What would possess you to steal a stupid little bird feeder? Like…you’ve got nothing better to filch?

Welp…getting new ones will require ordering them from Amazon or traipsing six or eight blocks to the nearest outdoor store. Am I gonna do that?

Probably not.

Think I’ll make a couple of cardboard signs showing an erect f***-you finger and hang that from the empty feeder hooks.

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.