Coffee heat rising

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Yipe$ My mother would faint!

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Seriously: my mother believed that when gasoline went over $1.00 a gallon, we would have so-o-o-shal-ism! No kidding: she actually said that, back in the day when about 30 cents a gallon was a lot. Today? Its $5 a gallon! Up by $1.35 over the past month. 

The poor woman would faint dead away if she could see this stuff today!

Well…y’know what? My dear son did me a favor by kiping that car of mine! That’s 87 berjillion bucks a tankful that I’m NOT paying. And y’know further what? I’m not having any problem getting around to all the places I need or want to go.

For one thing, my house is right in the middle of urban everything: three major grocery stores, a hair stylist, a Bookman’s, a veterinarian, a dermatologist…on and on and endlessly on. To my amazement, I’m discovering that I don’t need a car to get to about 90% of the places I’d normally go.

To gild that golden lily, a guy who lives kitty-corner across the street from the funny farm drives for Uber! For a tiny fraction of what it costs to own a car, he’ll drive me wherever I please.

So: that’s a pleasant surprise. 

Makes me feel almost like I’m back in London.

We never owned a car there, or rented one long-term. If we wanted to go someplace in the city, we just hailed a cab. And if we were up to some elaborate sight-seeing, we’d rent a car for a day or for a weekend.

Truth to tell, I would never have imagined you could get by with that in a bourgeois American city like Phoenix. But by dayum! Here we are! No car, and no problem!

Seriously: weeks have merged into a months, and to my amazement I’ve found no need to own a car over that time. 

Uber forms a major part of that: if I need to go to an appointment or whatnot, the guy across the street drives me there. My son still has his car, too; if he isn’t otherwise occupied (he usually is), he could drive me from point A to point B.So far, we haven’t had much need for that, though.

It’s convenient to own your own chariot, of course. But really: no more convenient than renting one. How convenient is it, anyway, to have to schlep the car to a maintenance garage every few weeks? And with a rental, someone else owns the thing, pays the registration & taxes on it, and covers the upkeep.

Hotter Than the Hubs. Again.

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Thursday afternoon, late in March. This ain’t no spring day: as we scribble, Wundground says it’s100 degrees in the backyard. Hotter than the Hubs of Hades, and then some!

Being stuck carless in Gaza makes a 100-degree day a bit of a problem. Though in theory I could walk to the nearby stores, doing so in the blasting sun through ambient 100-degree temps is…well…pretty much out of the question.

Gotta ask you: can you believe that? ONE HUNDRED DEGREES in freakin’ MARCH!!?!

Hauled the last hummingbird feeder around to the side yard — the only one our clandestine visitor hasn’t yet stolen or busted up. Since I can lock the side gate, we at least have a shot at keeping our hands on that one.

It really is so maddening that it makes me think seriously about selling up and moving someplace else.

Problem is, “someplace else” is gonna be some dreary old-folkerie. And y’know, THAT will be the end of me. I can’t live like that, and I won’t. Stick me in one of those places, and before long I’ll select the Final Exit.

So…what to do, what to do?   Hmmmm…

One thought is to install some hidden cameras in the front and side yards. Hide them well enough, and sooner or later they should provide a clue to who or what is raiding my home. But…then what?

Speaking of old-folkeries, I learned that the venerable Beatitudes old-folks home will send people to your house to take care of you! Called this afternoon to have someone come over and tell me about it.

Now, THAT would solve a big problem.

Truly, I hate loathe and despise institutional living. That’s why I just DON’T want to move into one of those places. But…if they’d send someone to you….well…now we’d have a whole ‘nother story.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady does a great job of keeping the shack clean, but she’s only here once every two weeks. Another worker would put someone in the house once a week, which, as I trudge further into decrepitude, would be HUGE.

Also, if I could get someone here once a week, they might be persuaded to schlep me to the grocery store. And THAT would truly be huge. Especially in 100-degree heat like we’re having now. It would relieve M’hijito of at least some concern, too: between Wonder-Cleaning Lady and a weekly visit from the old-folkery, two days a week would be covered by someone physically coming here to check on me.

Might be able to hire some other babysitter, too. Or at least arrange that I call M’hijito at a certain time each day, so he’ll know I’m more or less in one piece.

***

Meanwhile, the spavined hip seems to be s-l-o-o-w-l-y healing, a micrometer at a time. Today I can walk up the hallway without having to hold onto the walls — haven’t done that in a couple of weeks. Still hurts, but nothing like it did at the outset.

What on earth I did to hurt myself like this utterly escapes me. I haven’t fallen. Haven’t injured my leg  (that I know of). Haven’t done anything to myself.

Only thing I can figure is I must have twisted that joint in my sleep…and done so hard enough or long enough to inflict some lasting damage.

Wouldn’t you think that would have hurt enough that I would have noticed it? Even if I was sleeping, you’d think it would have waked me up. But if anything like that happened, I sure don’t recall it.

Ohhh well.

Helicopter is circling…and circling…and circling to the south of us. Can’t tell if it’s a cop copter, or just a traffic copter. The latter, I think: no other action is evident just now. It’s almost 5:00 pm., so the thing is almost certainly watching traffic. So that’s good: we can do without yet another cops-&-robbers drama.

Where Are Ya Gonna Go?

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So the question of the day is…AM I gonna stay here, in my middle-upscale house in moderately affluent North Phoenix? Or am I gonna sell the house and move into some dreary old-folkerie?

Once again, this morning some sh!thead vandalized a hummingbird feeder in front.

REALLY??? You seriously have nothing to do but sneak onto a neighbor’s front porch and dork with her bird feeders?

Sheee-ut!  What IS the matter with people?

I love my home and I love my neighborhood — by and large love my neighbors, too — and I do NOT want to move into a holding pen for old folks waiting to die.

Yeah, I know: I’m an old folk myself, and yes, I’m just sittin’ here waiting to die, myself. But at least I’m doing those things on MY terms, not according to some institution’s rules.

Speaking of the’Hood, my GAWD, what a gorgeous day! And how do I not want to sit on a 5’x12′ balcony overlooking a parking lot while I sip my morning coffee? Nooooo thankee!

And ohhhh, that little dog! Sitting there with her funny corgi ears upright, soaking in the splendid morning…why would one live where one could not enjoy corgi company?

LOL! What an outrageously gorgeous day!  I should get off my duff, walk over to the Sprouts, and load up on some more edible loot.

But y’know, I’m just too plug-lazy! Seriously: right this moment I can’t work up any enthusiasm for springing to my feet and hiking over to the store. Or for calling the Uber-driving neighbor and putting him up to schlepping me over there.

No. The important order of the day is to loaf. Loafing, loafing, serious loafing!

And y’know: we now have a mechanism that makes that important chore possible. It’s called AMAZON. 😀  Truth to tell, I don’t have to trudge or to taxi to a grocery store or a drugstore. All I have to do is call up Amazon on the laptop, pick out whatever loot I desire, and have it delivered to my front door.

Amazon — seriously — has saved my tail when it comes to living in my home through my dotage. Time after time, now, they’ve sent stuff to me that I would have had to hire a cab to buy, or that I probably couldn’t have found in any store anywhere near my house, here in (un)lovely North Phoenix. Hardly a week goes by anymore that I don’t order something from Amazon.

So the question is: “Where are you gonna go”?  

And the answer is: Right here. 

I’m gonna stay right here in my shack until I keel over face-first, dead as the proverbial doornail. Until that day, if I need someone to help me day-to-day, I’ll hire someone to come in to the house.

Matter of fact, it develops that Wonder Cleaning-Lady has done that in the past. So…I may even be able to hire her! No one new to get used to…no poor soul having to figure out my eccentricities…what could be better?

Sprinkler-Mania!!!

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Well…and Old Bat Mania!  😀  Don’t get old, whatever you do!!!!!

In today’s episode of senility…ohhhhh, this is tooo good! Hang onto your hat! Today’s moment of what planet am i on entailed losing the lawn sprinkler. One of these cute little fellas:

These tiny metal numbers are about my faves, because they are quite small. You can fit them just about anyplace you please, but they emit a grand fountain of water spray, allowing you to water a quarter or half your yard in one swell foop.

But by this afternoon, the one I use all the time was GONE.

So I went to order one up from Amazon. They only cost about six bucks, so in theory this should be no big deal.

Except…every step along the way turned into a SPROOOOINNNGGGGGGG! 

No kidding. Whatever I touched, whatever I tried to do: I screwed it up!  Whaaaa???

FINALLY, after what seemed like endless dorking around, I got the damn thing ordered. Hope I didn’t screw that up… Amazon says it’ll be here tomorrow.

We shall see… /eyeroll/

Still haven’t found the missing number… Given our recent spate of bird-feeder thefts, it may be reasonable to suspect it was stolen. So, dammit…I guess after this, everything that is normally stored outside is going to have to be stashed inside the garage. What a PITA!

Well…made considerably less so by my son’s having purloined the car. 😀 Conveniently, the garage now stands empty. So…there’s plenty of room to store junk like sprinklers and whatnot. And therefore, I reckon I can’t complain. Much.

Who’d’ve thunk it, eh?

The Siege of the Front Yard

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So the sprinkler is running in the front yard, outside the walled patio. It’s the kind of cheap little metal sprinkler that screws on to the end of a hose. So…given our late experiences with our patio thieves, now I need to wait till the watering cycle ends; then RUN out there, unscrew the sprinkler, and bring in inside.

Or at least hide it somewhere in front.

Nahhh….prob’ly bring it in will be safest.

Can you imagine??  Having to run in circles and jump hoops to keep the local morons from stealing ordinary junk like sprinklers and bird feeders?

The hummers’ feeders are now inside, or, to the extent that some of them are still hanging up, ensconced in the backyard.

I’m assuming that any idiot who would steal a hummingbird feeder — over and over and over again! — will soon come along and steal the water sprinklers off the frontyard hose. So…need to let that water run about 20 or 30 minutes; then run outside and rescue the sprinklers from the front-yard hose. Bring them inside and hide them in the garage.

I ask you: How stupid IS this?

Really, it makes living in the Beatitudes old-folkerie look good: someone else can deal with the rampant morons!

***

Y’know…this stuff is making me awfully depressed. 

Honestly: what kind of morons steal bird-feeders and lawn sprayers? And do I really want to stay here sharing a neighborhood with jerks like that? Maybe it’s time to move somewhere else!

Problem is, now that I’m old (with a vengeance!), about the only option for moving is to decamp to the Beatitudes: a dreary old-folkerie where they babysit you into the next world. And honestly: that’s not where I want to spend the last months or years of my life! 

Horrors!

Truly: I love my home, and I absolutely positively do NOT want to move into an institution. Horrors, indeed!

Yes, sooner or later it no doubt will be inevitable, unless I’m lucky and I drop dead. But I just want to put off that horrible inevitability as long as possible.

Jerk neighbors who dork with your yard ornaments and your sprinkling system sure as hell don’t make that easy! 😀

Hmmmm…..  Maybe a strategy might be to put up some small, discreet cameras out there. Let them run 24 hours or so. And see if they don’t capture our perps in the act. If I could catch them, I could report them to the police — or to their daddies — and bring a stop to the shenanigans.

 

Morning Gad-About

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Wow! It’s wet and hot over at the park, whence the hound and I just returned. Didn’t realize it was so hot and sticky out, or we probably wouldn’t have started out. Yea verily: once a Dawg has got you into the park, you’re not gettin’ outta there easily! 😀

But whatever the weather, it’s always fun to walk around that upscale neighborhood. One of the houses, harbinger of a long and strange history, is now vacant and under major renovation. They’ve gutted the swimming pool, and it looks like they’ve pulled out just about everything in the home’s interior.

It’s on an upscale and desirable street, but the problem is that, as a corner house, it faces on an east/west mini-main drag that connects with the larger main drag running north/south through  the ‘Hood. This makes for a ton of traffic and repeating serenades from ambulances, fire trucks, and cop cars. Handsome as the house is, it’s not one I would choose to buy. Or live in.

The previous occupants had a kid who got in trouble with the law, and that exploit bankrupted the family. They  lost their home, which has stood vacant for months. Apparently someone finally managed to glom it, and now it’s on its way to renovation and sale.

That young fella is not the first I’ve known to go to jail over a fling in bed with some chickadee. If you have a teen-aged son, teach him to use discretion about jumping into the sack with any female under the age of 21. The risk is just not worth the fun!

But…onward, onward: around the park. Many of those homes are on lots upwards of half an acre, so they’re spread-out and green and handsome and…expensive. It’s a tony part of the neighborhood, indeed.

Guess I’m glad I can’t afford to live over there, though. The park, not surprisingly, attracts any number of undesirables (great place for bums to sleep!), plus there’s always some noisy, nuisancy event going on. Not the best of all possible venues for a private home.