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Gone Good Ole Days

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You know you’re too old when the “Good Old Days” appear, in your mind, to be infinitely better than the BS we encounter nowadays.

Example at hand: Today my son is dragging me out to the Mayo Clinic for some sort of annoying consultation with one of their quacks. Nothing was said to me about this until THIS MORNING. So now I have to clean myself up and get dressed and figure out what on EARTH to say to the quack of the day (no two are ever the same out there). I have no idea why this appointment was made, and exactly no desire to waste a third to half the day driving halfway to Timbuktu, sitting around their waiting room, mumbling on to some doctor who neither knows nor cares what (if anything) ails me, and then trudging all the way back across the Valley to get home.

In the “Good Old Days,” the Mayo Clinic was right up the road from our neighborhood. It was a ten-minute drive to get to their parking lot, and a five-minute stroll into the building. Now we have to traipse to east Scottsdale for a consult.

The doctors there weren’t a lot less patronizing than the ones we now encounter on the far east side of Scottsdale. But my good old “Doctor in the Wild” (as the Mayo set calls doctors who work elsewhere) has moved to Sun City, of all things. So he’s lost me. Because…

a) Sun City is halfway to California from here. If I have to drive an hour each way, it’s gonna be…yeah…to a Mayo doctor, not to some guy practicing “in the wild.”

b) My son thinks the Mayo quacks can do no wrong. So…whatever they say — no matter how far out in left field — elicits no argument from his precincts. That…I suppose…is a good thing.

c) And in my (horrific!!!) experience, doctors who practice in Sun City can do no right.

The horror show that visited my mother when my parents’ bastardly, incompetent Sun City doctors attended her through her (hypochondriacal, we were told) death throes….oh, my! I wouldn’t go near another doctor who practices out there: not even the beloved Young Dr. Kildare.

At any rate: back to the Mayo. I cannot think of anything I’d LESS rather do than traipse all the way across the Valley (a 45-minute drive each way) to sit there and try to communicate with a doctor who assumes I’m a nit-wit.

Seriously: any which way you turn, it’s damned hard to find a doctor who is

a) competent;
b) humane;
c) not patronizing;
d) willing to pay attention to you;
e) can actually hear what you say;
f) and practices within reasonable driving distance of where you live.

And these are the reasons I’ve learned to loathe going to doctors. They don’t like women; they don’t like educated women; and they especially don’t like older women.

Soggy Doggy Day!

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Echhh, is what I say to that!  Ruby and I foolishly went out for the routine morning doggy-walk, under a sky padded with thick, high gray clouds.

“Thick”? The air itself is thick! And no: I exaggerate not. It actually feels like you’re breathing something that’s not quite air and not quite water. Ewww!

So after several blocks of trudging, we turned around and came back.

Can’t tell that the dog is exasperated: she may have been as close to melting as her human was.

Speaking of humans, we passed a fine young gringo professional wheeling his beautiful little adopted Black boy up the sidewalk. Oh, my! What a cutie!!!!  The kid, I mean.

One wonders how an African-American child fares, over the course of 18 years, when adopted by a White family. Dollars to donuts, this one will do pretty darned well…he’s landed in a very upscale neighborhood, served by the best public schools in the state. To say nothing of the very fancy private schools that also thrive here.

Anyway, it was a delight to see the ole’ man and his adopted kidlet. 😀

Now the Human is half-starved, but too lazy to get up and thrash around fixing breakfast. So we’re faced with a conundrum:

  • Whether to stagger into the kitchen and dig something to eat out of the fridge; or
  • To go back to bed.

The latter is a sore temptation. 😀

But…

Coffee

Must…Have…Coffee

And so, away!

July 4 Moron Frolics…Jeeez!

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The evening has barely begun — it’s only 8:35 p.m. — and of course, it being the Fourth of July, every moron within earshot is out there with their bang-bangs.

LOL! It sounds like half the city is exploding… BOOM! bam BAM BAM bang bang whiiirrrrr (helicopter buzzes over) BAM! boomp boomp boom BANG….

On and on and on…. 

We can expect this racket to continue until a little after midnight. Phoenicians love to play with fireworks. And the things are easy to obtain, Mexico being just a few miles to the south of us.

Ohhhhh shee-ut! Some idiot just exploded a fukkin’ BOMB outside the back fence — probably in our alley. Scared the bedoodles out of the dog. 

Y’know, I can understand how idiots think it’s fun to set off bang-bangs. But things that explode like a nuke? Not so much. Fireworks? Okay, okay…the cops can’t ride herd on dozens of nincompoops. But forgodsake, folks: at least TRY to engage your brain a little when playing with these toys!

July 4? Really? And…then what?

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Here we are on our nation’s birthday. Strolled through the neighborhood, basically to pass the time and to eyeball the neighbors’ homes. And…well…

It’s overcast and gray and wet out there. Not raining…yet. But I reckon it will be, soon enough.

So much for watching the fireworks, eh?

Usually, a bunch of them are visible from our parts. A large housing tract to the north of us puts on quite a show. Neighbors here in the ‘Hood customarily blast the sky for a couple of hours. And the City (or some such entity) expends money and gunpowder on a big show in the central part of town.

We’ll see how that goes tonight, depending on the weather.

***

Meanwhile, today’s sight-seeing stroll suggests the ‘Hood’s property values are holding strong….and probably rising. What I saw this afternoon, hiking from pillar to post, makes me feel very glad that I did not move out to Sun City when SDXB made his escape.

These houses — and this whole neighborhood — are looking better and better. Homes are not only being maintained handsomely, they’re being upgraded, enlarged, fancified. And you can bet their value is upgrading like crazy, too.

It would appear that, as predicted some time ago, the presence of the recently installed light-rail train has indeed jacked up the appeal and the value of the ‘Hood. If that continues, by the time my son inherits this house, it will be worth a sh!tload of money. He’ll be able to sell it and invest the proceeds; or sell his own home and move in here free & clear; or sell both houses and move to…where? San Francisco?

For sure.

Or, I suppose, he could turn one of the two houses into a rental and use that real estate to generate a steady income.

Interesting, eh? 

Humdidity!

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Just back from a walk around the immediate neighborhood: really, not more than five or six blocks, all told. It is SO HOT out there — under cloudy gray skies — that by the time I got back to the Funny Farm, I was just drenched in sweat.

Well…sweat or humidity. It’s VERY wet out there just now: reminiscent of (un)lovely Ras Tanura, the gringo housing camp perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf, there on the edge of Saudi Arabia. That was where we lived during the 10 interminable years that my father worked out there.

Hmmmm…  Just now, Wunderground claims the humidity is 67 percent under cloudy skies, at 87 degrees.

Yuch! No  wonder it feels so balmy out there… As in you’d be balmy to stick your nose out the door!

Truly an unpleasant stroll.

Said stroll took me, as usual, past SDXB’s old house, where he dwelt before Tony the Romanian Landlord scared him so much he moved to Sun City. He — SDXB — tried to get me to go out there, too. Having been there & done that, I declined.

But…hmmm…of course every time I walk by SDXB’s old place, every time I miss his companionship, I wonder: DO I want to move back out to (un)lovely Sun City?

And…well…the answer is invariably NO. Been there, done that, don’t wanna do it again.

My parents dragged me to Sun City when they retired (in their first attempt…) and installed me in the cute little house they bought out there.

  • I hated it.
  • I hated it.
  • I hated it.
  • And I hated it some more….

Seriously: living in a place where a whole class of people is openly declared unwelcome is…just not what I wanna do. Can’t think of anything or anyplace more unpleasant.

  • I was hated.
  • I was unwelcome.
  • I was considered weird.
  • I had to drive way to Hell and Gone into the city to go to work.
  • I loathed the racket from the Luke Air Force Base war planes roaring over our house, starting every day at 6:00 a.m.
  • I detested the ubiquitous gravel landscaping.
  • And I hated it that they didn’t have a decent grocery store out there. Apparently old folks don’t cook and don’t eat fresh food. Right?

Sooooo glad to be away from there!!! And you may be sure: I ain’t goin’ back. SDXB or no SDXB!

Ohhh well. That’s more there than here. In more immediate circumstances: yea verily! It’s hotter than Hell outdoors, right here in the ’Hood, even though the sky is solid gray from horizon to horizon. And yes: it’s amazingly humid.

Not as spectacularly so as some days could get in Saudi Arabia. But still: the air is soggy and your clothes are wet when you stagger in the door.

Garden spot, this…

Soggy Doggy July 4!

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Wow! Is it ever hot and wet out there!

The Hound and the Human just got back from cirucmnavigating the park. 😀  All sorts of July 4 shenanigans are going on over there. WHAT a hoot!

Hot and overcast: Thermometer reads in the 90s…under the shade of the back porch! Patchy gray clouds loom overhead. To the east: high, streaky white clouds look like they were applied with a paintbrush.

The park: more fun than life!  You never so SO MANY adorable little kids running around, shooting back and forth around their handsome young parents. A small band is banging out clichéd music. Dogs are frolicking. Cops are loafing.

Too, too good.

Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such icky weather here. Normally, when we say “it’s a dry heat,” we ain’t kidding. Today, though: it looks like Saudi Arabia out there: hot and dripping wet! The sky: coated with gray overcast. The air: like a steam bath. And it’s supposed to hit 116 here this afternoon.

Well…guess I can be glad I’m not still in Saudi Arabia, where this kind of weather was par for the course during any given summer day. Rasty Nasty’s weather report for today predicts 57% humidity; no rain; temps in the low 100s.

Garden spot!

My father worked down on the docks of the oil camp where we lived. He was a harbor pilot: steering tankers and freighters in and out of their parking spots. Surely a job exceeding “horrible.”

At any rate, he was on track to accruing enough capital to retire and move us all back to the States when my mother came down with amoebic dysentery. That did in his beautifully laid plans. He had to send her and me back to San Francisco, where she was locked up in a hospital for weeks. The doctors (probably at her behest…) told him she was NOT to go back to Arabia. He took a job in the Bay Area, shipping out of the East Bay. And so we escaped that horrible place.

Thank God!

ARF!