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And Another Lovely Evening…

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THIS evening made all the lovelier by the absence of perps fleeing cops in helicopters. 😀

Ruby and I perambulated our part of the Hood, plus Lower Richistan and Upper Richistan. What a hoot, right before Christmas.

The locals LOVE to decorate these old houses and their half-acre yards with their mature, beautiful trees. Kids are playing outside. Parents are puttering. Trees and shrubs and eaves and roofs are gussied up with colored lights for Christmas. It’s just a delight to walk around here at dusk.

A December evening in central Arizona really is lovely, except in the (unlikely!!) event of rain. The dusk sky glows in radiant shades of blue and orange. The air is sweetly temperate. The old 1950s houses are graciously handsome. And the kids are….

OHHHH! CORGIIII!!!!!

LOL! Here comes another kid!

My goodness, how the local urchins adore short, plushy, pointy-eared little dogs! Fortunately, she adores them back. So an evening walk can easily morph into a 45-minute love-fest.

That’s life in the ‘Hood. 😀

Eeeek! Duck for Cover!

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Ah, another lovely evening in beautiful North Central Phoenix.

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room. The back door is hanging open to let in the lovely, cool evening air.

…when,..

…suddenly…

ROAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Cop copter shoots over the house like an angry MIG. Chasing a perp, evidently. He roars over, then circles around, a block or two to the north of us.

Jump up: RUN to shut and lock the back door (and its security screen). Fly around the house checking to be sure other doors and windows are closed and locked.

By the time we finish that, whatever is going on has settled down a bit, at least in our immediate precinct. The cop flies away, in due time.

And now Ruby and I are perched, together, on the bed in the master bedroom, having seen to it that all the doors and windows are locked.

What

A

Place

Why do I continue to live here?

Well, mostly because there isn’t anyplace much better to live. Sun City would be quieter (most of the time). But then so is the tomb. My son’s house is not far down the street: wouldn’t take him more than 10 minutes to get here. A police station is just up the road.

Everyplace else in the urban area is about like this. Or worse. Much worse.

I’d say I wish I still had the ranch. But…no. I don’t. Out in the middle of nowhere, ten miles over dirt roads from the nearest town? Don’t think so…

What I do need, though, is a double-aught six. Have been lazy about tracking one down…but think tomorrow maybe I’ll go up to Shooter’s World and see what they have on hand these days.

Enough is freakin’ enough.

Sittin’ on the dock of the…uh…pool…

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Staggeringly gorgeous weather. This is one of the best times of the year in Phoenix…and most times of the year are exceptionally good. 😀

Thinking about…

* My father retiring.

He figured he had it made: their little house paid off plus enough in savings to carry him and my mother through the rest of their lives, even after they paid for my college education.

Heh…he didn’t understand about the vagaries of the stock market.

Poor man! He about had a coronary when the market crashed. As far as I could tell, he didn’t understand that if he just held steady, eventually the market would rally and all would be well. And yea verily, that did happen…but not until after he’d expended a great deal of adrenaline. And lost quite the pile of cash.

* The Mayo Clinic and how much I’m coming to distrust it.

They do a blood test on me; then come back to me (and the highly vulnerable son) squalling EEEK EEEK!! You have diabetes! EEEK!!!!!

No, I don’t. Been here, done this…let’s do it again…

Now I present myself to another doctor. “Will you please check me for diabetes? It’s in the family.”

JAB! STAB!! Test test test…

“No. You don’t have diabetes. You have prediabetes, which may possibly some day evolve into diabetes. Or not. This is why you should have annual physicals and they should indeed include testing for diabetes. But so far, you’re not very close to Death’s door.”

Uh huh. Same wind I’ve heard blow before.

* The beloved Young Dr. Kildare

Awww, poor babe. He’s fled the profession again. Come to find out, he’s no longer at the practice where I found him most recently, just up the road in suburban Sunnyslope. They ain’t a-tellin’ about where he’s gone.

My guess is, it’s far, far from the practice of medicine, and pretty damn far from Phoenix, too.

*****

Time passes a bit

****

It’s only 6:00 p.m., but my! What a beautiful — even glorious — evening.

A beautiful and gracious dusk elides into darkness, the room-temperature night air holding steady through the hours.

Arizona: what a place!

 

Kissy-Wissy…icky wicky???

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Bangin’ around, looking for a church whose choir someone of my modest skills could join. One whose customs and thinking do not make someone of my modest religiosity nuts.

Far’s I can tell, if any such institutions exist, they’re few and far between.

The choir at the Episcopal church where I sang for some years first dissolved (after the choir director left) and the came back much morphed into…what?????? Nothing I could sing for, thankyouverymuch.

The choir at the Unitarian church where I’ve been known to hang out is all very…{urk}…lovey-dovey. Ohhhh how we love each other. Just keep your hands to yourself, dammit! Love love lovey-dovey and NO, I am NOT gonna kiss you, for godsake!

Baptists are…well…you know: Baptists.

Catholics? I’ll never make the traditional desiderata.

So. Far’s I can tell, I’m done with choral singing. One option, I suppose, is to take a voice class at one of the local community colleges. Do I really wanna do that? And pay for the privilege? And once I have an AA in music — heavy on communal voice — THEN what?

Makes me sad. Very sad.

 

AUUUGGH!!!

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It
Just
NEVER
Freakin’
STOPS!

Now Google won’t let me into my G-mail account. And NO, I didn’t change a password. NO, I didn’t do anything weird.

So presumably that account has been hacked. Ducky.

Dammit. Now, come ten o’clock this morning, I’ve got to schlep across the city to the computer store and beg them to try to get me back into my email.

Either that or…what? Create a whole new G-mail account?

Uh huh…and how do I go about informing all the people and companies that have my current G-mail address?

Well. I guess this is a whop upside the head with a bit of (OBVIOUS!) practical advice: Keep a list of every email address for folks you do business with and folks you socialize with. PRINT IT OUT. Keep burning paper and ink every three or four weeks to print out new updates.

Gaaawwwd how sick AM i of life in the glorious new 21st Century?

Wow! Sprouts: OUTTA THERE

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Okay. This evening tore it: I ain’t a-goin’ back to our Sprouts, no way no how!

How many times do you have to be hustled over your plastic grocery bag to get sick of it?

How many times do you have to be panhandled in the parking lot to get sick of it?

How many times do you have to tell the cashier NO, you’re not paying for a plastic bag, before they’re allowed to be free?

Gaaaahhh!

Out the door, headed for the parking lot….there to be intercepted by a female panhandler. She ain’t takin’ “no” for an answer. I have to charge and push my way around her to get to my car. Manage to dodge into it, start the engine, and drive away from her, irked.

Yeah.

The plastic grocery bag: NO, I am not paying for a plastic bag. Therefore, NO, my groceries don’t get bagged. Therefore, packing the groceries out of the shopping cart into the back of my car delays my escape from the hustling panhandler.

True: we do not live in the greatest of neighborhoods. And true: the Sprouts parking lot is crawling with nuisances. (Not so much, the Albertson’s lot across the road: not since they hired an armed security guard to stand out there and watch the comings and goings.)

Should I know better than to shop at that Sprouts?

Yes.

But… It’s a drive to the next closest Sprouts; it’s coming onto dusk; I don’t wanna drive across the city in the dark to buy a few minor items. Yes, I could buy the stuff at AJ’s, just down the road or the Albertson’s across the street: for about three times what Sprouts charges.

Yet… {sigh} I’m afraid that after this I’ll be burning gas to shop at the Walmart on Dunlap, at the Sprouts on 20th Street, at the AJ’s on Camelback. Enough, after all, is enough.