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No Escape from the Mayhem…

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This just in on the local news wires: a woman hiking in the desert around the residential tract near the Mayo Clinic was attacked and murdered.

Jayzus!

Every time I think about how much I love my house but hate the marginal area where I live…how much I dislike Tony’s Home for Delinquent Boys and Girls across the street…how much I hate the constant cop flyovers, the noise from Conduit of Blight Blvd and Gangbanger’s Way, the transient bums, the need to keep every door and window locked…I daydream about moving to Fountain Hills.

The Mayo, replete with the best medical doctors in the county, is located right at Fountain Hills, a suburb of (un)lovely Phoenix. The houses are blandly handsome enough in appearance but cheaply built and elbow-to-elbow — don’t even ask how much it costs to air-condition one of those fine cardboard huts. There is a shopping center out there, but it’s pretty basic: you’d have to drive a ways to go to a first-rate supermarket or Costco or a specialty store of any kind. When my car got a flat while I was at the Mayo, I couldn’t find a gas station with a repair shop out there, not for love nor money.

The truth of the matter, I’m afraid, is what my friends say it is: you can’t get away from the mayhem that characterizes this part of America. Or maybe characterizes all of America. You’ll put yourself at considerable expense to try to escape. But you ain’t a-gunna escape.

And the prices in my favored part of town — a district called North Central — are just crazy! Even given that I could no doubt get a crazy price for my house, moving would cost enough to send me to the poorhouse.

Lookit this thing! That’s not a house: it’s a patio home. It’s smaller than my house. It’s a block from Seventh Street: noise, noise, and incredibly more noise, especially during rush hours. It has no yard. It has no pool. It’s not as nice as my house. It doesn’t have a real stove: just one of those glass-top hot plates.

Very nice, I’d say…if you don’t mind being smushed on top of the neighbors. Anything in the North Central area that’s truly in the same ball park as my house, in terms of size and quality, is waaayyyyy beyond my price range.

The houses in my present tract are cheaper because we’re bordered on the north by Gangbanger’s Way (the southern edge of Sunnyslope, a dangerous slum) and on the west by Conduit of Blight Blvd, also known as the Bum’s Highway. The homes and the neighborhood are quite desirable…but the areas around it ain’t!

SDXB moved to Sun City. He’s happy there. I’ve lived out there and don’t wanna do that again. It’s as far away from the central city (and my son) as Fountain Hills. Where Fountain Hills gets noise from jet passenger planes roaring in to Sky Harbor Airport, Sun City is blasted by racket from fighter jets flying out of Luke Air Force Base. And both venues are too, too far away from where my son lives.

And my son is very strongly opposed to my moving beyond shooting distance from his place.

For that matter, so am I. Of course I like living near where lives. And I like living in the North Central area.

But most of the centrally located neighborhoods are absurdly expensive. My area is within reason only because of the proximity to Conduit of
Blight Blvd (and now that damned train running up and down it!), to blight-ridden Sunnyslope, and to rackety Gangbanger’s Way. Despite those (considerable!) disadvantages, the houses are significantly newer than other structures in North Central (older houses are difficult and expensive to air condition, have weary wiring and leaky plumbing, and hordes of termites hiding inside the walls).

It’s crossed my mind to suggest that he and I trade houses. Then HE could deal with the Romanian Landlord and his disruptive delinquents. But he’d also have to deal with the pool (not bad if you hire a guy to ride herd on it, but my son is not the hired-help type) and the aging air conditioner and the aging landscaping… On the other hand, we could easily borrow enough against this house to pay off his mortgage (though it might be better to have me paying “rent” on his house, thereby making maintenance and repairs on that place at least somewhat tax-deductible….).

Heh! Here’s a thought: I rent his place from him, and he rents my place from me. This makes a WHOLE lot of costs tax-deductible for each of us! And I could still swim in the pool. Hmmmmm…..

Wow! Virusified!!

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Welp, the Beloved Laptop is at Best Buy to be decontaminated (we hope!). It was zapped by a virus along about noon and rendered basically nonfunctional.

This came from an e-mail ostensibly from a choir friend, whose subject line invited me to see a recently posted display of her photos. Soon as I clicked on the link, ZAP!!!

So now my laptop is trashed, and I’m writing this from the ancient desktop. Since my hips hurt like Hell when I have to sit in a desk chair, not much is gonna get done….

If you get an email inviting you to view a display of a friend’s images, DON’T OPEN IT! The subject line says “pictures posted by [name of friend].”

Thank goodness I signed up for Best Buy’s fancy customer service contract. This is the second time it’s been well worth it! You might want to check it out, if you have a BB in your parts.

Whoops! Here’s a new message from Connie the Long-Haul Trucker: she says she got a similar message!

Wow! If you get anything like this, let your friends know not to click on it.

Hee! Do the Days from Hell NEVER Stop?

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Today — here in late April — the weather is supposed to hit 100 degrees, for the first time this year. Yep: first Weather Day from Hell of the year. First, you may be assured, of many.

Six in the morning, I roll out of the sack after the usual Old Lady Insomniac night. Not too bad in that department, actually. Though the internal alarm did go off at 3 a.m. sharp, for reasons unknown I somehow got back to sleep. Usually that doesn’t happen — the getting back to sleep part, I mean.

Stumble into the bathroom by way of preparing to take Ruby on our 1- to 2-mile stroll through the’Hood, do my thing, and…and…yeah. Wouldn’tcha know it: the damn toilet clogs!

Haul the plunger in. Plunge plunge plunge plunge plunge plunge… Nothing. Doesn’t work.

It’s freakin’ SATURDAY! No chance of getting a plumber over here for another two days.

Fortunately, the house has two bathrooms. And fortunately, the head in the back bathroom is still functioning. Otherwise, I’d be doing my bidness out in the backyard with the dog.

*****

Holeee mackerel!

So I call the plumber — Maloney’s Plumbing, for those of you who live in lovely Phoenix — figuring that if anyone answered the phone (which surely they would not, right?) maybe I could arrange to be first in line for a service call on Monday morning.

No.

Incredibly, not only did someone answer the phone, but they sent a guy right over! He was in the house and out the door by 9:30! And he was an extremely nice gentleman.

So. Yeah.

I guess Days from Hell do stop!

It’s a miracle!

*****

And speaking of adventures in Days from Hell, I’m sitting here, 20 minutes to 5 on this Saturday afternoon, next-to-last day of the month, when a random thought wafts into my sweaty little brain…

Ohhhh holeee shee-ut!
I forgot to renew my driver’s license!!!!!!

You can do this online here nowadays. But I completely blew it off.

Run out to the garage, dig the piece of plastic out of the car, look at it to see what and where to do what and and when, and see…good grief! It doesn’t have to be renewed until 2025!

Who knew?

Last time I renewed this thing was three years ago. And to do so, all I had to do was go to a random desk in a random privately run post-boxes office and fill out a form.

This means that people who are driving on the Arizona road do not get tested or asked any significant questions for periods approaching a decade.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

New Day from Hell a-Dawning

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Yep: today is slated to be a fine and true Day from Hell.

A cold day in Hell…

Yesterday, I got a call from the vet’s office saying the $550 check I wrote to cover the dog’s dental work BOUNCED!

What???  There’s well over 4 grand in that account. And…between you’n’me and the lamp-post, I have never bounced a check in my entire life.

So I’m royally pi**ed about this.

Whenever it gets to be 9 a.m., I’ve gotta start driving driving…over 60 blocks through killer traffic. Make that 120 blocks, round-trip. First, to the credit union branch downtown, there to demand an explanation for why they bounced my check and to obtain a pile of money in cash. Then, out to the vet’s office on the east side: another sixty or more blocks in the opposite direction. Pay the guy in cash, offer up whatever excuse the credit union has come up with (which probably will be “no request for a payment was made”: my guess is they somehow confused the name I go by — my middle name — with my bizarre first name, which was my parents’ earliest act of child abuse. But even then: both stupid names are printed on my checks, and so there should be no cause for confusion.

Whatever…it’s effin infuriating! I’m 78 years old (??? wait what: really??? 😮 ), I’ve had bank accounts since I was 16, and never once have I bounced a check. So…just what I want to do: spend half the day charging from pillar to post and arguing with factotums.

Huh. Think of that… Seventy-eight years old. Me!

My mother died at 64. Reasonably enough: she smoked herself into the grave.

My father made it to around 80, despite a hard life and his own smoking habit. He, at least, didn’t puff away through every conscious moment…my guess is that he smoked far less than a pack a day.

Heh heh… As my mother lay dying, out in their house in Sun City, my poor father had to do the grocery shopping. One day he called me up to report on the ongoing nightmare.

In the course of conversation, he says to me — the sound of horror ricocheting through his words — that he’d noticed they seemed to be buying an awful lot of cigarettes. So, says he, “I started keeping track of how much we were buying.

“Did you realize she’s smoking six packs a day?”

No kidding, Daddy. You just now noticed?  Well, you’ve only been married 32 years, so why would you notice a thing like that?

My grandmother supposedly died of uterine cancer and was wheeled off in a corpse-mobile in her mid-40s. However…in the Department of Weird, I’ve found some credible evidence that she did not die (dramatically, in front of her teenaged daughter) but instead was still alive in 1979. It would appear that in fact she faked her death and may have married a prominent businessman in San Francisco. If that’s the case, then she was as long-lived as her mother and her sister, both of whom lived well into their 90s. This grandmother was quite the wild hare — my mother was an accidental side effect of her early sex life…after that episode, grandma learned how to use birth control and where to get abortions. 😀

At any rate, if that critter really did hang on through nine decades, it means longevity is firmly imprinted on the family genes. Her mother and her sister were both Christian Scientists who, despite never once visiting a doctor, lived into their (very active!) 90s. So…presumably I’ve got at least another 10 or 12 years. Assuming I’m not creamed while I’m traipsing around the roads this morning.

Well, that assumes I survive today’s three hours on the homicidal roads of Phoenix.

{gronk!} Dawdling away the day…

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ohhhh B-A-A-D HUMAN! 

I’ve dorked away the ENTIRE MORNING playing time-waster computer games. Things that needed to get done?

We ain’t got no steenking things to get done! Eh?

No. The dishes are not washed. The blog post is not written. The run on the credit union and then on the d**ned Costco remains to be done.

Yes…the credit-union run, to be followed by the Costco run, two things I do no, not NOT wanna do.

For the second time in human memory, Costco refused to take my debit card.

Costco wants you to use its MasterCard, of course. And I’ve tried.

Tried and found their MasterCard service just as wanting as the service from past MasterCard accounts I’ve (not) enjoyed. All that was proven was that Mastercard’s service sucks.

Whereas American Express’s service proves itself excellent, top-flight, beyond amazing…EVERY TIME one deals with MasterCard, one has an issue.

To force you to use their MasterCard, Costco quit accepting American Express. You can pay in cash, presumably you can pay with a check, or you can pay with MasterCard. You cannot pay with AMEX.

I do not carry a checkbook around with me. I do not carry cash. The reason, as you may have perceived if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, has to do with Wild-West character of the parking lots and strip malls around here. One thing no sane woman would do is walk across a shopping center with a purse hanging from her shoulder. Especially not a purse containing anything resembling a negotiable instrument. I’ve had guys try to steal my purse as I walked into grocery stores (not once, but twice! Slow learner…). A neighbor was shot by a guy who thought she was resisting when he ripped her purse off her shoulder as she tried to shield her daughter. You would be effing CRAZY to carry checks, cash, or anything that contains ID that can be used to steal from you.

This happened some months ago: I presented my AMEX card and Costco’s machine rejected it. No one else’s machine rejects it. Just Costco’s. All the time I spent roving around in there loading up the cart was wasted. All the stuff I’d piled up to buy was rolled off to be stacked back on the shelves.

So the last time I went to Costco — last week — I whipped out my debit card and was  once again was told it wasn’t valid.

This is the second time Costco has pulled that stunt. Last time, I drove straight from the store to the credit union, where staff assured me nothing was wrong with the debit card.

I’ve about lost patience. Today is gonna be my last try. Today I will return to the CU and ask them what’s wrong with the debit card. If they say “nothing,” I will try to persuade them to put that in writing.

Then I’ll move on to the Costco up the road, and when they pull their usual stunt I’ll show them the evidence from the credit union.

Give me any more BS, and that, right then and there, will be THE last time I ever go into Costco. Well. Except maybe for their tire shop. 😉

 

Dog Back; Human Unraveled

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Whew! WHAT a Day from Hell!

If you’re ever (un)fortunate enough to land in (un)lovely Phoenix, remember this survival tip: never, EVER drive around this exquisite city in the rush hour. And bear in mind that evening rush hour extends from about 3 p.m. to something after 6 p.m. Morning? Make it 7 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. At least.

Y’know, I hated living in Southern California: crowded, crass, ego-driven, ticky-tacky junky dumps every which way you turned. Shopping was annoying, time-wasting, and often fruitless. People were so focused on themselves they didn’t even notice the other humans around them. Driving was a horrid, hectic, miserable hassle. Neighborhoods were bland, faceless grody collections of ticky-tacky apartments and cheaply built houses.

Chez Pitz.

Welp. Gotta say: I feel approximately the same about this place. The only difference between Phoenix and unlovely Long Beach is that Phoenix gets one helluva lot hotter in the summertime. In all other respects, the two garden spots echo each other when it comes to the…uhm…graces of living. Dump A and Dump B: one smeared up and down the Pacific Coast, the other oozing across the Sonoran Desert.

Started out the day perusing real estate online, briefly. Just in the past few months, housing prices have exploded.

We have, for example, this garden spot. The place is smaller than my house. Jammed closer to the neighbors. And when you come down to it, situated in a neighborhood that’s about the same as mine in terms of quality, economics, social class, and crime rates. The thing is on the market for a good $200,000 more than my place is worth (Zillow claims my house is worth $540,500…and here I thought I paid way too much at 235 grand…). That would be because it’s located in darkest Arcadia, rather than on the top end of North Central. It’s been on the market for two hundred and sixteen days and still hasn’t sold.

That, I would offer, suggests the asking price is WAY too high.

First thing this morning it was off to the vet’s, there to get her smelly teeth worked on. The vet is way to Hell & Gone over in the Arcadia Lite district, a good 30-minute drive under the best of conditions. Make it 40 to 50 minutes in the accursed rush hour.

Leave the poor terrorized little dog there. Traipse back home, still navigating the horrific morning rush-hour traffic, and mope around all day in the absence of my furry friend. Worry, worry, and worry some more about a) the state of the pooch’s health and b) the staggering amount I figure Dr. Bracken is going to charge for yanking rotten teeth and scraping the rest of them clean, presumably under full anaesthetic.

Back at the Funny Farm, wrestle with the finances, wrestle with the busted garage door, wrestle with the pool, fart around fart around fart around fart around. Study real estate ads, thinking…really…I do need to get away from the accursed Tony situation. Calculate how I could buy a new house without cluing the bastard to where I’ve moved. Not difficult, really. 😉

Waste an inordinate amount of time on these and similar ventures.

Along about mid-day, call — yes, I can come get the dog.

Back into the traffic, this time plugging into the early afternoon rush hour (wherever you need to turn left, you can’t!). Drive and drive and drive and drive and…and…huh?

OVERSHOOT the street where the vet’s office resides.

Whaaa???????

Now I’m LOST in darkest Arcadia.

Drive around drive around drive around drive around…can NOT FIND HIS STREET!

Pull into a parking lot, walk into a business, and ask them if they know where Meadowbrook (his street) is. They do not. They pull out a cell phone, look it up, and decide I prob’ly passed it some blocks to the north. This: puzzling, since their phone seems to be showing the map in an east-west layout.

Drive around drive around drive around drive around…STILL cannot find his street!

This is weird, because I’ve been going to this vet for a good 20 years (with a hiatus or three) and yes, I DO know where Meadowbrook Drive is.

Go into another shop. This place is close enough that the clerk can say…oh, yeah: it’s three streets up that way.

Drive around drive around…FINALLY find the vet’s place.

All this driving around is happening as the afternoon oozes on and the traffic thickens. And thickens. And thickens.

Retrieve the little dog. Staff tells me not to feed her and not to let her drink too much water.

Right. Don’t know much about corgis, do ya?

Amazingly, though…unlike the avaricious vet here in our part of town, the one who proposed to extract several of Ruby’s teeth, to the tune of something over a thousand bucks, Dr. Bracken has not yanked out even ONE of Ruby’s fangs…all of which are now shiny and white.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive, the better part of 45 minutes: through heavier and heavier traffic, dodging up side routes I happen to know about, admiring the very expensive and fancy real estate in Paradise Valley (is there any way I could afford one of these palaces?), scrabbling past a couple of chronically congested intersections…at last, make it into the ‘Hood.

Get the dog out of the car. She is PARCHED. Let her drink some water but try to keep her from drowning in it. Not an easy task.

Refrain from feeding the dog. Piss off the dog.

Reheat some left-over grocery-store pasta…bolt that down. Yech. Why DO Americans eat this stuff?

Reflect on how horrible Southern California was as a place to live in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Reflect on how much lovely Phoenix has come to resemble that scene. Want to go someplace else.

Anywhere else.