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What could be better….?

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…Than a neighbor’s kid?

😀

The young lesbians catty-corner across the street are outside with friends, along with a couple of absurdly adorable small children. EGAD, but I love other people’s kids!

Migawd, kids are wonderful!  But they’re particularly wonderful when you don’t have to put them to bed. Or haul them out of bed in the morning and drag them off to school.

LOL! This is why I absolutely positively would NOT want to live in Sun City, not ever again. True: I don’t want to work like a horse, ever again, taking care of the offspring. But I do get a hoot out of kids…especially the ones that belong to the neighbors.

One of the reasons my parents chose to retire to Sun City in fact was that my father hated the sound of children playing. He liked to take an afternoon nap (because he regularly worked a swing shift)…and few things annoyed him more than being kept awake by kids hollering.

And it wasn’t just that he disliked kiddie noise. He really, truly didn’t like kids. It’s kind of surprising that my mother was able to persuade him to have even one brat. But she insisted I was dearly, desperately desired.

Apparently that was so…yea verily, she had a series of miscarriages before I popped out. But after that, she seems never to have tried again.

Hmmmm…..

She was severely malnourished as a child growing up in New England. As  an adult, she had skeletal deformities that resulted from poor nutrition and lack of sunlight. So my guess is that she in fact did have a difficult time carrying a pregnancy to term.

I wonder to what extent (if any) her malnourishment as a child affected my development as a child and/or even my own pregnancy. Apparently a wide variety of effects occur, and many last for a lifetime. {sigh} Makes me feel horribly sad to think that my mother suffered the consequences of malnutrition because her grandparents lived on a dirt farm and couldn’t afford the amount or types of food needed for a kid to grow into a healthy adult.

At any rate… Other people’s kids, eh?

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Wiley Comes a-Visitin’

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Urban coyote

The ‘Hood is one of the northernmost outposts of a Phoenix district locally called “North Central.” The place consists largely of single-family homes on lots ranging from 1/4 to 1 full acre, with large lots watered by the city irrigation system installed when the former farmland was transformed into ticky-tacky.

LOL! Actually our houses are not ticky-tacky in the sense that more recent builds are. Mine, for example is not drywall and plaster but solid block: difficult to air-condition but too sturdy for an enterprising burglar to shove his fist through a wall.

{No kidding! That is how the burglars break and enter homes in newer tracts: they walk up to the front door; ring the doorbell; and then if no one answers, they just take their fist and shove it through the drywall. Reach in. Unlock the door. Make yourself to home!}

We have a different type of burglar hereabouts, though: a four-legged variety. We border a desert mountain preserve, and that place hosts families of coyotes. So unafraid of humans are they that we could almost call them “semi-domesticated.” They consider stray cats and cute short dogs to be gourmet fare. So…if you leave your 30-pound corgi out in the yard, she’s likely to turn up as breakfast for a distant furry cousin.

Just now, the neighbors — some of whom grow hysterical at the mere glimpse of a coyote — have been madly reporting sightings. And because neighbors — being only human — are remarkably stupid, they often fail to clean up the banks of shrubbery that serve handsomely as coyote hotels. We have one of those about four houses up the street.

No amount of heavy-handed hinting by neighbors haunting the local Facebook page has persuaded the couple on the corner to trim their shrubbery in front by way of evicting the four-legged tenants. Meanwhile, other idiots don’t grasp the concept of Cat As Gourmet Feast, so they leave their delicious kitties outside to call in the cat-loving coyotes.

Honestly. HOW has our species survived this long?

At any rate… I’ve set up a kind of coyote barrier along the top of my cinderblock backyard walls: strapped lengths of carpet tacks to the decorative block on top. This keeps the neighbors’ cats out nicely: they learn forthwith that when they jump over the wall, they get their feet punctured.

As for Wiley? Not so sure about that. In the first place, a coyote is a helluva lot tougher and smarter than a domestic cat. And…that notwithstanding, if Wiley tries to jump the wall, finds himself clinging to a length of nails, jumps down, and lands inside the yard…well, jumping back out will be highly aversive.

Not a coyote

So I’ve got to be careful every time Ruby goes out in the yard. Whenever I open the back door to let her out, I need to walk out there and look around, to be sure she’s the sole occupant. When you’re in the middle of fixing breakfast or dinner, that’s a PITA…

A Seller’s Personality

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Yes, I do love driving around and around, looking at real estate...occasionally even getting out of the car and touring an open house.

It’s a trait I seem to have inherited from my mother. She also loved to look at open houses — in Southern California, before we moved to the desiccated spaces of lovely Arizona. Great fun, it is: to look at what’s selling for how much, and how the other two-thirds live.

She could have been exceptionally good at the Realtor’s job, because she did have a saleswoman’s personality: friendly, empathetic, interested in other people.

My house: perfect for two people. Good for two people and one or two kids. Probably tolerable for two adults and as many as four kids. Six would be pushin’ it…but an enthusiastic parent could do it. I suppose.

There’s so much good fun to look at, here in the ‘Hood.

Just got back from Ruby’s evening perambulation. We have to walk around the large central park, which encompasses several acres. This evening as we traipsed past, we got to watch a couple of serious soccer games in progress.

Several Latin American leagues show up at the park, come evening. These appear not, by and large, to be Mexican, but probably clubs from South America. They play soccer, they play soccer, and they play soccer…with élan. Great fun to watch them. If I had no dog in tow, if I had nothin’ else to do…I’d stop and watch a whole game. Could I converse with them in Spanish? More or less. But Portuguese? Prob’ly not so much. But oh my: they’re fun to watch.

What does that have to do with selling houses? Prob’ly nothing…except, I suppose, you have to like people and you have to engage their doings in order to persuade them to buy things from you. Especially expensive things.

All He!! Breakin’ Loose

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So there we are, Ruby the Corgi and I, strolling around the park, when we hear WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO melodramatically wailing from Conduit of Blight Blvd. Now what?

The choices are richly manifold:

  • Apartment building on fire
  • Single-family home on fire
  • Business on fire
  • Major car crash on one of the three-lane slabs running north and south
  • Even more major car crash in an intersection
  • Car cuts in front of light-rail train, gets crushed
  • Moron walks out in front of light-rail train, gets smushed
  • Bus crashes into light-rail
  • Bus crashes into some other vehicle
  • Mugger or some such criminal gets caught in the act; cops are called

Blech! So many other potentialities, one hasn’t the patience to list them.

Speaking of potentialities, my calendar says M’hjito is supposed to come over for dinner tonight. Dunno whether that’s the case, though: we haven’t talked about it today. And I dare not call him now, at quarter after four, while he’ll be mired in telephone hassles related to his job. Guess I should wait until after 5:00 to inquire.

Hope he is planning on it, though…’cause I’ve got piles of gorgeous things to feed him, marvels for his choosing: giant shrimp and fresh salmon steaks and on and on. If he has other ideas, though…well…all the more prawns for me, eh?

*****

Nope! Bowed out. he did.

Okay. I got shrimps. And shrimps. And shrimps! Mwa ha ha!

*****

Just made a little discovery: tinnitus — ringing in the ears — can be caused by alcohol.

Do I have tinnitus? Is the Pope (etc.)?  The ears ring and whistle and whistle and ring and ring and whistle and whistle and ring and ring and whistle and whistle and ring and ring and whistle and whistle and ring and …. Ad infinitum, not to say ad nauseum.

Well…uhm…ahem! I drink wine every day! I have one to two glasses of wine every day. Sometimes more than that, depending on what I’m eating and who I’m with.

So, as of this minute: we’re back on the wagon again….

It’ll be interesting to see if tee-totaling works.

Found! {sort…}

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Okay, okay! {grrrrrrr!} I take back this morning’s grousing about the lost lawn chair cushions, a crab-fest to which, mercifully enough, Funny’s readers were not exposed. Just a few minutes ago I found the “stolen” cushions in a back bedroom’s closet, where I’d tossed them to get them in out of the elements. And where, o’course, I’d find them easily, right?

/eyeroll/

Gorgeous, gorgeous afternoon! Sunny. Cool, but not quite cold. Even fairly quiet. It’s a miracle.

***

One of the joys of Old Age is that you forget things. Helle’s Belles, I’d forget my name if I didn’t see it just about every day. And this morning I forgot where the Helle I stashed the outdoor cushions.

Oh well. They’re found, and now I’m parked on one of them.

***

On the way home from this morning’s escapades, I once again took it into my feeble little head that maybe, just MAYBE, I’d like to move to some other neighborhood…

  • Further away from the crime-ridden Sunnyslope district
  • Further away from the accursed light-rail
  • Closer to the beloved AJ’s grocery store, or
  • Closer to the community college that will hire me if I wave my eyelashes in their direction
  • A bit (tho’ not much) closer to M’Hijito’s house
  • Closer to a dear friend’s house
  • A very(!) short ambulance ride to not one but two first-rate hospitals
  • And so on, damn near ad infinitum….

Soooo… It was out the door and into the Dog Chariot, therein to cruise lovely North Central Phoenix in search of open houses. And y’know what?

I did not see ONE HOUSE that was any better than this house. Most of them didn’t even come up to the level of this place, in terms of design, construction, and location.

What that’s tellin’ ya is that to get to a comparable or better house & neighborhood, I’d have to move to North Central or the Arcadia district. Neither of which I could even vaguely afford.

Sooooo…. It looks like either I’m stuck here for the duration, or I’m going to have to accept a sh!tload of undesirable compromises to move into a desirable centrally located neighborhood.

Guess which one is NOT gonna happen….

A…a…n…d furthermore….

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Here’s what was going on yesterday evening, while Ruby the Corgi and I were doggy-walking and dodging bullets.

{sigh}

Y’know, this stuff is gettin’ old. I’m beginning to think SDXB was right; time to move to Sun City, where you can enjoy the Silence of the Mausoleum, day in and night out.

Having lived in Sun City when my parents moved there, dragging me with them and dumping me at the University of Arizona, I really, really do not want to live there again. So, when SDXB announced he was headed west, I refused to go with him. But sweartagod, I’m beginning to think that may have been a mistake.

At the time SDXB moved out there, it was fairly calm here in North Phoenix, for a big-city neighborhood. But…that’s not so true anymore. It feels like every time you turn around, along comes some new shenanigan. You can’t take the dog for a walk around the block without carrying a pistol with you.

But…my problem with Sun City is that I don’t wanna live in a mausoleum. And that’s what the place feels like. The silence of the tomb reigns. Plus you have that generation’s 1950s-style hatred of minority: the place is Whiteyville with a vengeance.

One of my friends moved out there from the East Valley, delighted at the prospect of living in a place designed for retirees. Problem is, it’s a place designed for white retirees…and he ain’t one of those. The locals ganged up on the poor guy and hounded him until he moved out!

Guess I should have warned him. But as a practical matter, it’s been over 60 years since my parents moved to Sun City. And frankly, I assumed the locals would have come into the 21st century by now. Wrong!

That notwithstanding, I find it a dreary and depressing venue. Weirdly enough, I like the sound of children playing. And even of an occasional teenager blasting the car radio as they cruise up the street. That, plus it’s a 40-minute drive into central Phoenix, where my son lives. I’d never see the guy again!

Well. You don’t have to move to a ghetto for old folks to escape the constant whiz of flying bullets. Other areas of the city are reasonably quiet and safe.

Problem is, they’re a lot more expensive than this part of town. Plus they’re further from M’hijito’s house.

I kinda doubt that I could get enough for this house to buy another house in points east. Might be able to get into a fairly tony North Central high-rise apartment…but then what am I gonna do with Ruby?

Plus…truth to tell, I love this house. It’s a couple of bedrooms too large, but otherwise it’s perfect for me.

  • It’s in a moderately safe neighborhood.
  • It’s close to my preferred shopping venues.
  • It’s easy to keep clean.
  • It has a nice pool…one that, for an exorbitant price, responds with Pool Joy to the ministrations of a hired pool dude.
  • It has gorgeous mature trees. And desert landscaping.
  • It has adequately nice neighbors.

Why on earth would I want to move?