Coffee heat rising

funny

This post may be a paid guest contribution.

Now What???

by

In a moment of misguided chumminess, I lent my laptop to a business acquaintance. This is a guy I’ve known for years, outwardly very professional, a successful chiropractor by trade.

Bad move! Among other antics, he contrived to break the computer, rendering it nonfunctional. My son has taken it to a computer store, in hopes of getting it fixed…but that hope ain’t one I hold out.

Can’t afford to buy another one. That unit was tax-deductible, purchased when I used it mostly for the editorial business. Now that I’ve pretty much retired from that gig and from teaching, I get no break on its cost. And my son is more than ever convinced that I’m crazy, largely because of long-standing friendship with Mr. Computer Vandal.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago my car was trashed, when I rear-ended some woman on a dark, wet, rainy road.

Now I’m banned from driving (by the Kid) and so have to walk to the stores. I do still have a driver’s license…but no vehicle! He has glommed it and stashed it at his house…rather too far to reach without a car.

Luckily, the ‘Hood is richly endowed with neighborhood stores and chains: Sprouts, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Walgreen’s, Bookman’s, and a cute little liquor store in which to feel righteous by “buying local” when scoring a bottle of wine.

Dunno which way to jump just now. I could sneak around and rent a car. But frankly, that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. In the first place, I don’t want to go behind M’hijto’s back, no matter how unreasonable I think his driving ban is. Plus…about three houses down the street, a neighbor has gone into the Uber business. If I would get off my duff long enough to contact him, I could probably get him or one of his colleagues to drive me just about everywhere I need to go.

One damnfool thing after another, eh?

Yet to decide whether to pursue the scheme to convert the garage, now empty, into an art studio. Probably not: sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Still…hmmmmm…. I do like it as an idea.

 

{click!} On Cars: WHY have I never figured this out???

by

My son, in the midst of a peculiarly annoying quarrel, grabbed my keys and made off with my car.

Yes. The only car I have.

Oh eek! Oh augh! Ohhhh gawd, what’ll I do?

Right?

Welp…maybe not.

Maybe, just maybe this is an occasion for celebrating. Because, incredibly enough, it has brought about an Insight of the first water.

Know what? Here in the Big City, I don’t need a car. Occasionally I do need access to a vehicle with four wheels and an engine. Very occasionally. In fact, those occasions are so rare and the alternatives to owning a motorized beast  are so inexpensive that, f’rgodsake, I could afford to rent a Mercedes whenever I feel in the mood.

Seriously.

There are three major grocery markets within easy walking distance of my house. Add to those a hardware store, several restaurants, a computer store, a bookstore, a wine shop…on and on.  And also a place where I could rent a car, if absolutely necessary. A train line runs north and south, with a stop about a block from the house. And Uber drivers are standing by to sell you a ride, too.

WHY have I been spending all that money on owning and insuring a rolling tin can?????

Yes, it’s convenient to have a car outside your kitchen door. But a phone call will bring an Uber right to your front door. Just now we’re coming up on the hottest season of the year in Phoenix. But at 8:20 in the morning, it’s balmy enough outside. Right now I could walk to the Albertson’s and back without raising a sweat.

Admittedly, I do own a rolling cart. This allows me to transport bags 0r boxes of groceries without having to lug them in my hands. Admittedly, the potential for PITA is there…  But…but…a rollee cart is one helluva lot cheaper than a gas-guzzler. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate. And you don’t have to insure it.

Somethin’ to think about, ain’t it?

What would I do with that vast two-car garage?

One idea is to convert it into an art studio.  Year-round: it’s air-conditioned. Or I could rent it to someone who wants to give art lessons. A half-dozen friends could draw and paint in that space.

Of course, the space could always be used for storage. Problem with that idea: I don’t have much junk to stash.

Leave the side door to the backyard open, and lo! It becomes the biggest dog house in the nation. Ruby the Corgi will love it. So will the coyotes, I expect.

😀

Seriously: getting rid of the car just might not be that bad, as ideas go.

  • It would save a ton of money.
  • It would repurpose part of the house.
  • It could create an income source, in the form of art studio rental.
  • It could open the door to new friendships.

Interesting…

Glorious Morning in the Gorgeous ‘Hood

by

Well. It ain’t exactly “gorgeous.” But it’s exceptionally pleasant: a big green park, irrigated lawns in every direction, handsome 1950s and 60s ranch houses punctuated here and there with newer stately mansions. Inviting enough.

The corgi and I set out at dawn to circumnavigate the park and then traipse through the northerly flange that comprises Upper Richistan, the pastures, and a tract of what must once have been a toney suburb.

Drifting northerly, up toward Gangbanger’s Way, we come to the long cul-de-sac where our dear elderly friend and co-hiker used to live. Apparently the house still belongs to her, tho’ she’s gone: nowhere to be seen. As she sank deeper into the sands of Old Age, she was consigned to a “life-care community” — read “nursing home.” Exactly the fate, as she told me many months ago, that she hoped to evade.

I think she must still be living (if being stuck in one of those places can be called “living”), because the house stands there vacant, its furniture (visible through the front windows) still just as she left it.

Her plan was to leave the house to her son, who lives in another state.

Why did she believe he would want it? He doesn’t live in Arizona! She must have thought it would make a good investment for him. He apparently thinks otherwise…but oddly, has not disposed of the place. Months after her disappearance, it stands there vacant. I’m afraid that detail — vacant, not sold — indicates the worst: she’s infirm but not free of these earthly chains. Locked up in some nursing home or old-folkerie. God help her!

The little street makes for a nice neighborhood. But alas, that extends only to the visual aspects. It’s a block south of Gangbanger’s Way, where motorcyclists and hot-rodders roar back and forth into the night.  Even where my house is — at least a half-mile away, probably more — the racket is so crazy-making you can’t leave a window open at night.

People get used to that noise. My first apartment stood right on the curb of a hectic main drag called Thomas Road. My mother couldn’t understand how I could bear to live there — whenever she visited, the traffic noise would about drive her bats. But I didn’t even notice it!

So, I imagine that must have been the case for Garnett, too.

Meanwhile, closer to home: Some developer is building a passing huge mansion over in Lower Richistan. It’s unclear to me whether this lumbering (heh!) structure is to comprise two dwellings — i.e., a pair of townhouses — or whether it’s going to be one house. The latter, I think. They’ve got the frame up and have installed most of the fire-proofing. This morning they were applying brickwork and drywall over that.

Won’t the neighbors be thrilled?

 

Over the Hills and Through the ‘Hood…

by

Beautiful morning!  Edging on to 10:15 as we scribble: a warm mid-morning, “hot”by some standards. Hmmmm….  Wonder what the mechanical opinion is?

{tap tap tap…Enter...}

Gosh! It’s only 82 degrees out there! Feels a LOT warmer than that.

Which implies some humidity is lurking around… Oh, yeah: 20 percent!

Whew: A fifth of the atmosphere you breathe in as you stumble around the streets is…water!

What a kick, though: roaming through the reaches of the ‘Hood! I’ve lived here for one helluva long time. I think SDXB and I had been here around 10 years by the time he decided to move out to (un)lovely Sun City. Having lived there before, with my parents, I refused to go. To my mind SC defines “miserable place”….

And it defines “static”: as in unchanging and unchangeable.

The ‘Hood, however, has evolved. 

When SDXB and I moved here…what?15 or 20 years ago, maybe? — this was a mid-middle class collection of look-alike ticky-tacky tract houses.

Today?

My goodness...what a difference!

Over the past decade, the homes here have been gentrified, re-gentrified, and mega-gentrified. These 1960s plugs of boredom have been updated, fancified, and turned into”classic” — even “historic”– houses. Lawns and trees have spread across the gravel landscape. Ticky-tacky Nineteenth Avenue has taken on the spiffy, ultra-modern light-rail trains.

And now…what a place it is! I dunno what these houses are worth today, but you can be sure none of them will go for the hundred grand SDXB and I paid!

Well, hell! We have the freakin’ Internet to tell us what the thing is worth now. Let us look up the Shack’s address…

holeeee mackerel!

The “Zestimate” for the Funny Farm is $522,700.

Seriously?

And my old house, a block east of Conduit of Blight Blvd???

Gasp! Zillow thinks one of ém is worth $568,700. It’s the SAME MODEL, the SAME SIZE as our first house here!

And how much does Zillow think that place,located handsomely where you can be serenaded by car, bus, and train noise 24/7, is worth? $522,700. 

Most recently sold for a mere $389,000.

Good grief.

And yet, it must be admitted: as the area has matured, it has grown more handsome. Hiking up and down the old avenues was a pleasure. The houses have been well maintained. The city has kept up the streets.

And that fact alone: the place has gone uphill, not downhill; at the worst stayed steady in quality and value — that has gotta be worth A LOT. 

My father would faint dead away, if he could see these prices.

Y’know, when he retired (for the first time…) in the early 1960s, he figured a savings pot of $100,000 would see him and my mother through the rest of their lives in solid, middle-class comfort.

By the time I graduated from college — just four years later — he had to go back to sea. That’s how much the dollar’s value fell in just four years!

Makes it damn hard to plan for retirement. Or to figure you’ll ever really be able to afford any retirement.

How, really, do younger people manage to afford any kind of life at all, long-term? Really, today in calculating for retirement, you’d have to figure you just weren’t gonna retire. Not until you were hopelessly infirm, anyway.

Welp! I can’t stand it another minute! Gotta pick up the Funny Farm’s litter collection. Then fall face-first into the sack for a stupefied nap.

Ohhhh Most Brilliant of Web Gurus!

by

Well, our wonderful Grayson, the guy who keeps this site online and functioning, got me back in after I forgot (lost??) the password.

God bless him!!

Geez. I must be Alzheimering out. The more I fool with computer hoo-hah, the more opaque it gets to me.

Even when I print out this kind of ditz and tape it to the computer monitor’s frame, I still cannot get reliably in to this website, that website, or the other.

{sigh} I’m awfully afraid this is part of memory loss associated with aging. As the days go by, I recall less and less. Eighty-seven gerjillion passwords? F’geddaboudit. Due dates for bills?  Gimme a break. Who borrowed my laptop? I dunno.… Nothing is distracting me. I’m not sick. With no job, I’m never harried by work tasks, office politics, and general b.s. It looks alarmingly like the brain is simply wearing out.

Then we have mundane questions like…oh, say…what time is it?

  • The computer says it’s 8:47 a.m.
  • Clock on my desk: defunct. Can’t find it.
  • Bedside clock in the other room: 10 minutes to 2:00 (huh???)
  • Timer on the kitchen stove: 8:47
  • Clock in the dining room: 8:55
  • Best guess: HUH??????

 Figure out that it’s quarter after 9:00. Reset clocks, changing battery in one of ’em.

Cute li’l clock…wonder where I got it? Oh well. If only it didn’t have to be reloaded with batteries and dorked with to show what is apparently the current time.

Seriously: I can NOT keep track of all this ditz, much less make sense of six conflicting blobs of data.

Please, dear God: next time you bring me back to this planet, would you drop me on a desert island? One with no clocks? No computers? Maybe even no other humans???

But coffee, Sire. Plenty of coffee. Pleeze…..

Another Junket Through the Hood

by

Yesterday’s little plug of sentementalia drew me onward ever onward: back out into the mid-morning heat (and in Arizona that IS heat) and into the depths of our lovely little neighborhood.

Yes, it is lovely! I was soooo lucky to stumble upon the Realtor who brought me here. The place is kind of a best-kept secret…and it is well-kept. The houses are tidy and nicely painted…the yards, whether grass or desert-landscaped, are handsome and clean…the towering trees: gorgeous gushers of shade. What a beautiful place to live!

Now that I’m old, one of my fondest wishes is to leave this lovely little house to my son, Ian the Great. I believe he likes the place…but even if he doesn’t, selling it would deliver a sh!tload of money to him. One way or another, he would profit: either a pretty house large enough for a family with three or four kids, or a highly salable place whose profit would set him up in business wherever he chose.

Sometimes I think…if I were young verging on middle-age, would I stay here if all my relatives croaked over?

Huh. As with everything, it depends.

But if I had a decent job that paid decently — my son surely does — I would think likely! Very likely.

If I needed to go somewhere else to pad the retirement fund..well…it would depend. And “depend” means an awful lot of things…

…depend on whether I had kids and where I wanted to send them to school
…depend on where the extended family lived
…depend on what the Honored Spouse wanted
…depend on future prospects for this proposed “decent job”
…depend on our idea of a desirable cultural life
…depend on whether the spouse and I could survive a 110-degree summer day…

Yea, verily! As we scribble, it’s only about 98 degrees out there — downright chilly!

Seriously: I don’t consider that very hot, having grown up in balmy Saudi Arabia and spent most of my adulthood in the Sonoran desert. But it just could be that normal humans would regard this place as an outpost of Hell.

Personally, I don’t. I think it’s frikkin’ gorgeous, an outpost of heaven. But…each to his/her own, eh?