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What WERE we thinking?

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Ever look back on events in your life and think…well…

WTF?

And wonder…

Why did I do that?
Why didn’t I do this?
Why didn’t I wait?
Why didn’t I hurry up?
Why didn’t I do b instead of a?
What the HELL was I thinking?
Or was I thinking at all?

Here I am, today, diddling away the morning playing pointless computer games: the mind on autopilot. And while the brain roams pointlessly, yea verily on true autopilot through the empty silicon labyrinths, various memories and various long-gone puzzlements come to mind.

The weirdness of it, Life: the very weirdness of it.

Quite possibly the weirdest experience that comes to mind was the time my father and his bit*h wife (then a.k.a. the sweet, socially active, nice church-going future wife) showed up in our living room to share some Big News with us.

They wished, said they, to get married. (My mother hadn’t been dead a year…but that was OK, because at 70-something my father didn’t have all that much time to waste.) Would I give them my blessing?

Uhhhh….

If he had come to me or called me on the phone and said i’ve met this woman here at the Institute [by this time he’d sold my late mother’s and his home in Sun City and ensconced himself in a brand-new life-care community] and we get on really well. To make it legal and forestall any gossip, we’re gonna get married, I would have said “Fine! Congratulations! Good for you, and many happy years for both of you.” And I would have thought that was all I could say, because what he chose to do was none of my business. And I knew he would have thought it was none of my business.

But PLOP down on the living-room sofa and ohhh here we are in love, may we have your permission to get married?

W-h-a-a-a?

I was so nonplussed, I didn’t know what to say. All I could think of was “Congratulations! May you have a long and happy life together.” Even though I strongly suspected the whole idea was stump-dumb stupid. I barely knew the woman — if I had known her better, I would’ve yelped Are you crazy??!!???” But that was outside the realm of experience just then.

Today, from the vantage point of experience (a goddamned Mont Blanc of experience!!), I know what I should have said.

Ohhhh I’m sooo happy for you! Congratulations. And…uhm, by the way…

Why don’t you wait a year? You’re still relatively young. Why not just be an item for a year, so you can get to know each other better before you make the giant leap to living together…and, forgodsake, to making it a legal contract?

But of course that’s not what I did say.

What I said was “Duhhhhhh…. Yeah, sure, that’s cool. Congratulations. How wonderful for you both.”

Jayzus! Pass the bong, willya?

What WAS I thinking then? I wasn’t thinking anything. No. Nothing.

In the first place, of course, I didn’t know the bit*h in question. If I had, I might have registered some response. This was only the second or third time I’d met her.

In the second place, I did not then and would not today consider it to be any of my business to advise my perfectly rational father on his personal life. But if he’d asked and I’d had a clue and I’d possessed about 10 years’ more life experience, I suppose I would have hollered RUN, DADDY! RUN!!!”

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down,
And still somehow
It’s clouds’ illusions I recall.
I really don’t know how…
At all.

 

 

Arrividerci, Costco

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B’bye!

Welp, I’ve pretty well decided that I’m done with Costco.  The reasons: various.  They range from the microscopic — personal experience, mostly — to the macroscopic: the plague and the cost of gas.

Let’s start with the last…

Costco shut down its centrally located store some time ago.  This means that everyone who lives in the North Central, mid-town, Encanto, and Coronado districts has to drive halfway to Timbuktu to get to a store. There’s one store that’s sort of central, at Grand and about 33rd Avenue, but that’s a LONG way from my house, and it’s in a dangerous part of town where I would prefer not to drive at all, to say nothing of getting out of my car and walking across a gigantic parking lot. Plus it’s a “business” outlet, leaving one wondering how much of the regular housewifely products are available there. The two stores that I’m most likely to visit are equally remote from the North Central area: one in Paradise Valley and the other up the freeway halfway to freaking Prescott.

Driving in Phoenix, as I’ve no doubt groused here more than once, gets more and more miserable as the roads get more and more crowded. The place is Southern California Redux, only drivers here don’t drive as well as California drivers do. Every time you get in your car, it seems, you watch someone do something breathtakingly stupid — and they’re aggressive about it. Road rage is commonplace, apparently because so many people drive around hopped up on drugs. And, no doubt, because driving in the Phoenix area is an intensely frustrating activity for everyone, stoned or sober.

For that reason, driving halfway across the city’s increasingly crowded, annoying, and dangerous roads to buy a few household and grocery items grows increasingly counterproductive as the days go by.

Driving gets increasingly expensive, too — as it no doubt does everyplace else. This morning we’re told the average price of gas here is $4.44 a gallon. A month ago it was $5.04. At that rate, it’s prohibitive to drive outside your neighborhood for errands that can be accomplished locally. Personally, I don’t think you save all that much in buying at Costco — in fact, sometimes you probably spend more there than you would at other stores. But when you add in five bucks a gallon for the privilege of fighting your way across the city, the drive alone becomes prohibitive.

So the question arises: why drive halfway to Timbuktu when you can buy the same or similar products at the Sprouts, the Walmart, the Safeway, or the Albertson’s right in your neighborhood? Or order the stuff online?

For that matter, you can order Costco merchandise online, thanks to a local shopping service called Instacart. Set up an account with them, and all you have to do is go to their website, pick out the loot you want, upload payment, and voilà! Within a couple of hours, a runner shows up with the loot you ordered — and they’ll even haul it into the house for you.

For the nonce, I’ll probably keep my Costco membership and order through Instacart. This will allow me to continue to buy tires and the like there…maybe. Most everything else, though, will be purchased closer to home, at Sprouts, Albertson’s, Safeway, Walmart, and AJ’s.

The immediate cause of my rage at Costco just now is the fact that they suddenly decided to decline my debit card.

Costco won’t accept American Express, my credit card of choice; Instead, they force you to use Mastercard or Visa. I’m not interested in juggling any more mailed-in statements and payments than absolutely necessary, so I use ONE charge card. And that card is AMEX, because of the superior service they provide. Mastercard will drive you bonkers just trying to reach a human being, and the effort will get you nowhere. American Express hires, at least for the time being, actual humans who know what they’re doing.

So when I’m in Costco, I have no choice but to use a debit card — or, I suppose, to write a check.

But I no longer carry a purse around, largely because of the risk of theft in the parking lots at shopping centers near my house, and because hauling a purse from place to place is a damn nuisance. I carry a metal case of cards that will fit in a pocket. Period. Since women’s clothing generally has minimal pockets, hauling a checkbook and a pen everywhere I go is next to impossible.

So: don’t take my card, and you don’t take my money. How hard, dear Costco, is that to understand?

The last time I was there, I killed an hour roaming around the store, dodging crazed fellow shoppers and filling up a shopping cart. Waited in line at the checkout (and, as usual, waited and waited and waited and waited). Finally got up to the checkout. Forked over my debit card, and was told it doesn’t work!

Huh????

They threw me out with no purchases, all that time utterly wasted.

Furious, I drove straight to the credit union, which happens to be on the way toward my house from that far-flung Costco outlet.

The CU staff studied my debit card, looked it up, and said nothing was wrong with it. They had no idea why Costco would reject it.

So, apparently there’s not a thing I can do to fix that.

Other, of course, than buy merchandise elsewhere, thankyouverymuch.

And, though it’s going to be a nuisance to buy things I normally buy in bulk (such as paper products) at places like Sprouts and Walmart, the truth is local stores do carry most of the products I habitually get at Costco.

And then some. Sprouts has freshly prepared meals — mostly made with real, whole foods, not canned and frozen junk. The Walmart Neighborhood Store has the paper goods and cleaning products. AJ’s carries the dog’s food as well as top-of-the-line fresh produce and gourmet items. The Safeway has everything else, albeit at premium prices.

I may keep the Costco card so that I can send Instacart runners to pick up the (very few!) things I can’t get elsewhere. But that won’t last long. You don’t really know what Costco carries unless you visit the store fairly often. So within a few weeks or months, Instacart won’t be an effective option for buying there.

While Costco has more than enough customers to keep itself in business even after I quit spending vast oceans of money there, one does wonder: what is the point of deliberately driving buyers away?  Why make it hard to buy from your stores?

Less Is More…or at least better

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Holy mackerel! Did any of your doctors who wanted to put implants in your boobs (or your lady friend’s boobs) happen to mention this little detail?

Boyoboy, am I glad I decided to go flat after the Great De-Boobification Adventure!

Confirms my suspicion that less is usually more. And conversely, the more surgical treatment you can do without, the less risk you run.

With the exception of one older, highly experienced breast surgeon, every which way I turned I was pressured to have these things stuck into my chest. One quack actually had the nerve to tell me that if I refused to have fake boobs inserted, within six months I would be suicidal.

No joke: that’s exactly what he said. Or is that $aid?…

The old guy — the Valley’s Grand Old Man of breast cancer doctoring — told me that his experience was that most women are better off without implants, because sooner or later the things cause trouble. Then you get to have MORE surgery.

Make that “more unnecessary surgery”….

In a profit-oriented health-care system, you have to advocate for yourself, consider and double-check everything that is said to you, and never take anything as Received Word from On High. Every statement that’s made to you, you have to regard with skepticism.

Doctors hate that attitude, of course. They expect to be taken as The Authority on whatever ails you, and they don’t want to be gainsaid.

I can understand that. But…I’m also very sure that if I’d allowed myself to be pressured into cosmetic surgery that was totally unnecessary, I’d be unhappy or at least very nervous by now. Not being in the market for a man, I have no reason to have fake boobs hanging from my chest. And I also happen to know that any woman over about the age of 45 is essentially invisible, and so I do not CARE whether I do or don’t have chunks of flesh sticking out under my clothes.

IMHO, where medical care is concerned, less is more.

That doesn’t mean go all Christian-Science and stay completely away from doctors. No.

Get regular medical care, of course. Get your immunizations — all of them. Establish a relationship with a sane G.P. (if you can find one). Get a regular physical once every year or two.

But on the other hand, when treatment is called for, always get a second opinion!

B’bye, Costco!

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One last view…

ENOUGH, already, with shopping at Costco. I’ve had it, and I’m NOT goin’ back there!

Whaaaa? ask ye who are familiar with Funny’s Costco love affair.

Well, I do hafta say that my patience with Costco wears thin every now and then, and yeah, every now and again I vow never to return. But this time, it’s stickin’…bigawd!

Only two exceptions:

1. To buy gasoline (sometimes: if I happen to be in the vicinity and the lines don’t stretch halfway to Yuma)
2. To keep access to their tire shop

Otherwise, I…yam…DONE. Not going into the store ever again, and never, ever again making a special traipse across the city to buy gas.

Whither this withering insight, you ask?

Well. This morning I took it into my dizzy little head to go in and talk with their CSRs about the screwup I experienced there a couple weeks ago. I’d gone into the store in Paradise Valley, wasted some unholy amount of my priceless time roaming around the store and collecting a basketful of goods, wasted some more time standing interminably in a checkout line, and stood there while the (excellent! all their staffers, by the way, are beyond excellent) cashier racked up a couple hundred bucks worth of purchases, and then handed over my debit card.

The same debit card with which I always pay for Costco purchases.

You need to know that Costco does not accept American Express, which is my credit card of choice. Both the business and the personal charge accounts are with AMEX. When this charming decision came down, I acceded to signing up with their Visa or Mastercard (don’t recall which, after all this time), and that devolved into a headache of Brobdinagian proportions. Canceled that annoying card and resorted to using my debit card, which is issued through my credit union.

This worked fine until a week or so ago, when the check-out clerk said she couldn’t take my credit union’s debit card — it was no good!

Ohhhh yeah?

So now I shoot down to the CU, haul the card in, tell them this sad story, and ask them WTF?

Their answer is, indeed, WTF?

They have no idea why Costco has suddenly decided to quit accepting a debit card on a checking account that has, shall we say, a balance that measures in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Maybe they just don’t believe than anyone who’s not a scam artist would deposit a year’s worth of spending money in their checking account? How might that be any of Costco’s bidness, anyway?

The CU’s agent says there’s nothing wrong with the debit card and hands it back.

Eventually I decide to traipse over to the Costco on the west side, barge up to their customer service desk, and ASK them what is their problem. That’s when I get the suggestion that I should kill some more of my time farting around in their store and repeating the fiasco that I would like to have resolved.

Bye!

Enough, already!!!

WHEN did Costco forget that customer service is a key part of retailing?

Well, thought I, their gas is still the cheapest in town. I’ll keep my card so I can buy gas here.

Uhm…

Maybe not.

First, to get to a Costco store from the Funny Farm, now that they’ve closed their outlet that was centrally located in Phoenix, you have to drive way to Hell and gone into Scottsdale, or else you have to drive way to Hell and gone up the I-17 freeway, halfway to Flagstaff.

I have NOTHING ELSE TO DO IN EITHER OF THOSE PARTS, now that I’m not working at ASU West and no longer have pals living in Moon Valley. So you wanna know what I ain’t doin’? I ain’t drivin’ halfway to Flag, and I ain’t drivin’ to Snotsdale West, just to save maybe $1.50 on merchandise I don’t much need anyway. Fry’s has a mega-supermarket on the fringe of Snotsdale West, much closer to my house, which peddles just about everything Costco does.

Soooo…why, pray tell, should I keep a Costco membership that requires me to burn vast quantities of overpriced gasoline in order to spend vast quantities of cash?

Which brings us to Second: Practically around the corner, QT has not one but TWO gas stations, each generously equipped with pumps.

Are they the cheapest gas in town?

Probably not. Costco usually claims that honor.

But by the time I’ve burned a gallon or three driving up the freeway to a Costco gas station, how cheap — really — is CC’s gas?

My guess is, the price ultimately is about the same. As for the aggravation factor? Any day I d’ruther spend a few cents more at a QT than drive halfway across the city to stand in line 20 minutes and then be told my membership card doesn’t work (which is what happened the last time I tried to buy gas at Costco).

I’ve spent my last dollar in Costco. Alas!

Another Fine Day in Crime Central..

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The thermometer in the shade of the back porch actually DOES read 110 degrees. And clouds are building up all around us.

Truth to tell, 110 would be tolerable if it were really “a dry heat.” But with monsoon storms rearing up 360 degrees around the horizon, “dry heat” it ain’t.

***

Heh! Probably the sobriquet “Crime Central” overstates conditions here in the ‘Hood. But it appears I’m not the only resident in the habit of looking at things that way.

When I bop on down to the ultra-local Sprouts, on the northeast corner of Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South, I spot a Police Situation in progress: four cop cars out in front of the Walgreen’s on the corner, lights flashing frantically. It’s a couple hundred yards across the shopping center’s parking lot, though, and…and…well…i want that damn ice cream!

So, screw it: I park the car and dart into the Sprouts. Grab the ice cream and shoot back out through the checkout line. Staff there had not yet heard news of the present drama. Which, once I get situated in the Dog Chariot, I see is still fully under way. Half a dozen officers are swarming. None of the cop cars’ lights have been shut off.

Circle back north over the parking lot — in the opposite direction from the Scene of the Whatever-it-is. Slide south on Blight (the only way you can go because of the effing light-rail tracks, which are fortified with concrete borders), slither past the Walgreen’s Theater, hang a U-ie to bolt up toward the ‘Hood. Proceed north, surprisingly enough, without interference.

Now fully infected with curiosity, minutes after walking in the door, I get on the Web in search of a report as to what is going on.

  • No clue on the police dispatch site.
  • No clue on the local gnus sites.

Post a query on the neighborhood Facebook page, which is haunted by locals with powerful radars.

Got a clue what was going on at the 19th & Northern Walgreen’s this afternoon, along about 3;30 or so? At least 4 police cars were standing near the door, lights flashing.

Forthwith, get an answer:

Probably just because it’s a day that ends in “y”… in that area it’s such a common event. I’m frustrated that we have to think about a “safe” way to enter/exit our neighborhood anymore… which usually means East or south, but rarely north, and almost never west.

Heh! Well…yep!

And we’re only halfway through another weird day…

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Honestly. I”m sure reality has just run right off the rails. 

Case in point: this morning I roll out of the sack. Stumble to the back door to let Ruby out. Stagger over to the pool, figuring to take a fast dip. And…

…Whazzat?

There’s a big, round damp spot on the KoolDeck. It’s about, oh, a yard in diameter. Not a puddle. A wet spot. Perfectly circular.

I didn’t put it there: haven’t been in the drink since 10:00 last night.  It’s 110 this morning, headed toward 115. Trust me: if that water had hit the KoolDeck  before 10 last night, it wouldn’t still be lingering there. And no: nary a cloud in sight.

New Pool Dude didn’t put it there. Ruby would have gone screaming batsh!t if he’d walked into the backyard in the wee hours of the morning. Or at any hour.

Coyote? Possibly Mr. Coyote hopped the back wall (he can, pretty easily: it’s only 8 feet high, not counting the shrubbery), took a dip, climbed out, and went on his way?

If that were the case, surely there would be at least a few coyote paw prints. ALL that’s in evidence is a round, flying-saucer-shaped wet spot.

Uh huh. Martians, no doubt.

Hey! Martians like to cool off, too. right?

The pool, under the ministrations Swimming Pool Service & Repair, is sparkling, stunningly, almost frighteningly clear. Feeling good about that. Evidently what I was trying to get across to Canned Pool Dude — that the filter needed to be cleaned — was spot on.

***

Irrigation Dude  shows up shortly after dawn cracks.

He’s another highly amiable and ingratiating working-class fella.

I suppose I find these guys charming because that’s what my father and all his pals were: working-class fellas. They’re just nice guys to have around, guys who know how to do their jobs and seem to take pride in doing them well. They may hate their jobs, but they hide that sentiment well. 😀

He had a kid with him — well, a young fella in his 20s, who to We Who Have Circumnavigated the Block Too Effing Many Times looks like a kid. Irrigation Dude was earnestly teaching the craft to him.

Heh heh! Keep that young man out of the slam, sir!

Left a small lamb shank to defrost overnight. Snab that out of the fridge and set it to marinate in lemon juice (the last couple of viable Meyer lemons from the backyard tree!) and garlic and herbs. But I’m out of fines herbes, lhudly sing goddam! So this is something that needs to be purchased soon. Like…today.

Bang around thrash around thrash around bang around…eventually it’s TIME: cannot put off a grocery-store run another minute. Dayum!

Cruise down to the Sprouts at the corner of Main Drag South and Conduit of Blight. Get most of the stuff I need. But…yeah, they do have a rack of bottled spices. And noooo… NOT A CHANCE do they carry fines herbes!

Why did I not know?

Run into WonderAccountant there, at the checkout stand. So that was nice. She really is such a sweet person…WHAT LUCK, to have that pair move in across the street!!!

Okay. Surely the Albertson’s across the street — being part of a regional (maybe even national) supermarket chain — will have a jar of fines herbes.

Veer across Blight (six lanes of traffic plus the accursed train tracks), skid into the parking lot, come to light fairly near the door. Quickly find the spices…

and…

and…

you can see this coming, cantcha?

NO they do NOT carry fines herbes!!!!!!!!!

Hey! They’re right across the street from a Catholic Charities home for the elderly (very!) poor, across Conduit of Blight from a neighborhood featuring apartment houses where you dare not leave your cleaning goods (if you’re a cleaning lady) in the back of your pickup lest they be stolen while you make a quick run up to your apartment to bolt down a peanut-butter sandwich, and where a cop was shot through an apartment door by one of the fine residents. Yes, so lovely. So WHY would you expect any of their clientele to even know what “fines herbes” ARE, to say nothin’ of buying them???

I suspected as much. But hoped for the best. Wrong hope.

Decision time: Drive down to AJ’s or over to the Safeway? Or order the damn things from Amazon?

Given the price of gas (of late it’s dropped to a mere $4.88/gallon), I decide to order from Amazon. I yam peeved, but tell myself it’s just not that big a f*ckin’ deal.

Already have the lamb shank that calls out for this particular spice combo marinating in red wine and lemon juice. I reckon tarragon will do as a substitute.

Pass the goddamn cheapo wine, puhleeze!

And we’re brought back to the question of what DID leave that perfectly circular yard-wide wet spot on the CoolDeck????

Oh well. Pass the wine again, if you will.