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Update on Yesterday…

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LOL!  It got stupider and stupider. I sweartagawd!

So today’s proposed old-lady babysitter never showed up. AWWWWWW!  What a shame!

She probably went to the neighborhood street labeled “Lane.” I’m on the street labeled “Way.”

Josie, the occupant of the “Lane” house, lives alone and dwells in fear. She will NOT open the door to anyone she doesn’t know. So if the wannabe babysitter went to her place, she rang the doorbell and…nothing happened.

Awwww….what a shame!

Welp, I ain’t about to do anything about it. Just gunna lay low. I do NOT like people lurking around underfoot — especially not strangers. If I need or want someone here to keep me company or fend off the sh!theads, I’ll call someone of my own choosing.

M’hijito dragged me out to the Mayo today. After some inspection, the doc didn’t seem to find anything drastically wrong. So with any luck, I should be free of further harassment from that quarter, at least for awhile.

The Mayo Clinic is on the freaking far side of the galaxy from our neighborhood: located, not surprisingly, in one of the Upper Richistans. So any time we have to visit our doctor(s) out there, we face one helluva drive. As for me, I’ll make one or two appointments a year, just to stay on their rolls. If you don’t show up, they drop you…and then when you do need a really first-rate doctor, you don’t have a snowball’s chance.

What a place we live in!

Another Icky Day Comin’ Up the Pike….

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LITERALLY icky: Just got back from a humid walk with Ruby the Corgi. It is so hot and so wet out there that literally, the air feels sticky. Feels like Saudi Arabia: a hot and wet outpost of Hell.

Now some woman that my son hired to babysit me is supposed to show up pretty soon. Goodie gumdrops!

Not to say dayum! 

He thinks I’ve advanced enough into senility that I shouldn’t be left alone. Ohhhkayyy….

Meanwhile, I am a very private person. I don’t enjoy people lurking around me, and I especially don’t welcome strangers hanging over my shoulder. But the next stage, as you no doubt can intuit, is going to be locking me into an institution. And…well…I’d rather die, thank you.

So if a babysitter lurking around will forestall that horror, let’s do it.

Ugh!

It’s after 8:00 and the babysitter hasn’t shown up. Probably went to the wrong house. The resident there, a woman named Josie, repels all boarders. 😀

Seriously: she will NOT answer the door unless she knows the person who’s out therel.

We have identical street numbers on adjacent roads with nearly identical names: Erewhon Road and Erewhon Lane. So delivery people and assorted newbies invariably get lost here.

Meanwhile, Josie lives in terror. She got the house — which belonged to SDXB until he went into battle with Tony the Romanian Landlord and fled to Sun City. At that point the city purchased it for a song and GAVE it to her.

Yeah. The city was building an airport extension, which would place her house smack in the middle of a runway. So our honored civic leaders  bought SDXB’s house and gave it to her in exchange for her shack in South Phoenix.

More power to her. But…well….if you’re gonna live in a middle-class neighborhood, you need to learn middle-class customs.

😀

Speaking of the which…ohhhh gawd! The other day Josie reported that a pipe under a sink in the kitchen burst. FLOODED the entire kitchen, laundry room, dining room, and living room!!!!!

Holeeeee maquerel!

One of the advantages of being on the city’s dole, though, is that they cover little catastrophes like this. So apparently, other than being put out for a few days and maybe having some furniture damaged, this misadventure isn’t going to cost her much.

What a horror show…

Speaking of horror shows, mine has yet to start this morning. As I mentioned, M’jito’s proposed babysitter has yet to show. She’s a half-hour late. Was supposed to have been here at 8:00; it’s after 8:30 now.

Maybe I got the time wrong? If she was slated to surface earlier than 8:00 a.m., she missed me.

Well…frankly, I’m not up for a quarrel with my honored son, so I reckon I’ll refrain from calling him and asking about her. Later…but not right this minute.

Okayyyyy….I’ve got on my calendar that I’m supposed to go to the dentist today. Was he going to take me? Was this babysitter supposed to take me? No clue. Emailed to ask: so far, no response.

Maybe I should call and cancel the dentist’s appointment? I really can’t afford to pay for a missed appointment.

Here’s a yesterday’s email from him saying “expect me tomorrow.” Presumably that refers to this morning’s junket. So presumably he’s driving me to the dentist.

Goodie gumdrops.

Dayum! I don’t wanna do this today!

On the other hand…I don’t wanna go to the dentist any day. So what difference does it make?

 

Hotter than the Hubs…

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Ninety-eight degrees in the deep shade of the back porch, according to the thermometer out there. Wunderground says it’s 97, with a predicted high of 103. Ohhhhkay….whatEVER: just now it’s hotter than the proverbial Hubs of Hades. Google puts the humidity at 12 percent.

Hm. Well. Yeah. I could prob’ly believe that. It is, yes, hot enough to melt your hair out there. Yep.

Ruby and I: just back from circumambulating the ‘Hood, having left the house for that venture rather tooooo  late in the morning. It’s supposed to reach 113 today, if you buy the local newscasts. So much for Wunderground, eh? 😀

As nothing compared to lovely Saudi Arabia, where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. There, the air got so wet that you could be loitering outside and find yourself standing in pouring rain that fell out of a clear blue sky. That’s right: no clouds. It was just so damn humid that rain would coalesce out of the air around you.

Yech! I do find myself wishing I didn’t have to stay here. Given my choice, I’d move right straight back to the San Francisco Bay Area: either to Berkeley, where my aunt, great-grandmother, and cousins lived, or to Sausalito, where my very brilliant uncle and his equally intellectual wife lived.

No, I don’t hate Phoenix. But it surely wouldn’t be my first choice of places to live. Alas, though, I couldn’t even begin to afford the “first choice”: Berkeley, of course.

My parents dragged me here when they took it into their pea brains to retire to Sun City.

They loved it.

You couldn’t pay me to live there: I thought it was just revolting, with its extreme right-wing politics and its atmosphere of hate and those damn jets roaring out of Luke AFB starting at six in the morning.

But whatEVER. Once they got me here, I was pretty much stuck: four years at university; then a job; and thence marriage to an established Phoenix lawyer.

Could I have left?

Probably. Wouldn’t have been easy, though: with a husband and a kid here and a career started and my parents parked out in the boondocks. No…didn’t want to take that on then, and reckon I don’t wanna take it on now.

Even with my parents gone and the husband out the door: My son is established here. I happen to think he’s The Best, and so I have exactly zero craving to move away from him.

No, I don’t like Phoenix and would not choose to live here. But with Dear Son engaged in a career and set in a nice house, I ain’t leavin’…

***

One the things that makes the Valley of the We-D0-Mean Sun damn near unlivable, to my taste, is the unholy summer heat. Back in the Dark Ages, when Gringos first set out to live here, we didn’t have air conditioning. So people who chose to work in the Phoenix area, for whatever reason, kept summer homes up on the state’s central plateau, locally called the Rim. “Cool” might not be the term you’d choose for the June/July/August temperatures there, but it was a helluva lot more tolerable than the sizzling heat in the lower-altitude Valley of the Sun.

Horrible place.

Yeah: if my son moved to someplace I could afford, I’d be out the door in an instant. But he has a good job, and I rather doubt that he’d take off into the urban boondocks somewhere else.

Heh! If he ever does, though, it’s outta here for the Old Bat!

😀

Ohhhhh CRIMINEY!  Save me, Lord!

Here’s the Wonder-Cleaning Lady at the front door! Now she’s started to charge around the house, flinging stuff and moving stuff and dusting stuff and cleaning stuff and changing sheets and washing things and MY GAWD HOW ON EARTH DOES THE WOMAN DO IT???????

No kidding. This amazing lady cleans several houses the size of mine (and larger) in one day.

I would drop dead on the floor if I tried to do that. Seriously: just cleaning my own house is as much as I can cope with in one day.

O’course, one reason for that is that I deeply, passionately HATE house-cleaning. Which is the single reason I do pay this marvelous lady some stupefying amount of (well-earned!) cash to come in here and bang around and thrash around and scrub around half the day.

How she stands it: mystifies me. The only explanation is that she’s a woman of steel.

At any rate: she just came from the neighbor’s place. My having spaced the fact that this was a Cleaning-Lady Day, the ambition to loaf atop the bed all afternoon just went straight down the drain. Darn it!

***

Look!!!!
A MIRACLE!!!!!

Just found a book of current checks! 

WhoEVER would’ve thunk it? Thought I was out of checks, and have been sitting here wondering how on earth to pay WonderCleaning Lady without begging her to drive me to the credit union.

Now all I’ve gotta do is persuade my son or the neighborhood Uber driver to schlep me to the credit union to get more checks before this new pile runs out. 😀

$$$$$

Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda…

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Stumbling around the ‘Hood through a superheated afternoon exercise walk, I happened to think of a long-ago near-miss in the Department of Real Estate. Videlicet: years ago — yea verily, a couple of decades ago — I very nearly bought a house in a distant suburban development called Fountain Hills.

It’s a pleasantly ritzy-titzy town — I would (and do) call it a suburb — clinging to the far east side of Scottsdale. My son had not yet moved back to Phoenix, and so the distance from central Phoenix wasn’t a concern. In fact, it was closer to where I was working — Arizona State University — than where I’m living  now. So, in some ways it would have been a practical move. And it would have put me into a piece of real estate whose value was headed for the stratosphere.

By random serendipity, I decided against that move.

And a good thing that was, since there was no way my son would have settled halfway to Payson at the time he moved back to Phoenix.

And by serendipity, too, SDXB bought a house in North Central Phoenix, just as we were becoming an Item. Consequently, I bought a house a block from his new place, and now…here I am, basically within walking distance of the kid’s house, altogether within walking distance of three major grocery markets, a doctor’s office, a dentist’s office, a computer store, a hair stylist’s, and…on and on and on!

I ended up in the middle of everything, happy to be here, and surprisingly close to my son’s place. What more could anyone want, eh?

But sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I’d gone ahead and bought a place out there on the far side of Scottsdale.

* It would have been within walking distance of my best friend’s house: she who worked prominently and successfully at Scottsdale Community College.

* Between her influence and the that neighborhood’s relative proximity to Scottsdale Community College, I almost certainly would have landed a full-time job there.

* In Maricopa County (where we dwell), the community colleges pay exceptionally well — usually more than the university does.

* For a non-tenurable employee of the university (graduates of ASU or the UofA are ineligible for tenure in the state universities), the community college’s pay would have been much better. And a job at one of those colleges would have been much better better endowed with upward mobility than my job at ASU was.

No doubt by now I’d be retired from any such job, and living happily ever after.

* And if my son had been willing to subject himself to his freshman and sophomore years in junior college courses (not bloody likely!), I could have gifted him with two years of tuition-free college credit.

So…on reflection, one can see that moving into the community colleges would have had some substantial — even huge — benefits.

Ultimately, though…I think I’m glad I stayed with Arizona State University, glad I drifted into this neighborhood, glad I floated along here until retirement. I really do like this province of Phoenix, and like this specific part of the city. 

Real Estate Awe

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Wanna see something that’ll drop your jaw? 

Take a look at this mansion…

The place is in Fountain Hills, an upscale tract on the northeast side of Scottsdale.

WHAT A WRECK! And they want four hundred grand for it!

Hey. Fountain Hills is real tony and all that…and yeah, you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from there. But…good lord! EVERYTHING in this shack would have to be renovated, including the pool and the landscaping.

Well. I guess it tellsya: Rich people will let real estate go to wrack and ruin, too. 😀

***

But doesn’t it boggle your mind? I mean, when you consider what that place should be worth… Fountain Hills is one of the toniest subdivisions in the Valley — probably in the entire state.

I can’t even imagine letting a place like that…in a location like that!…go down the tubes.

Even if they used it as a rental, it’s hard to believe anyone with half a functioning brain cell would have turned it into a wreck.

Four hundred grand at auction. Hell, I wouldn’t give them four hundred bucks for it. Just imagine what it will cost to restore that place to a livable house in a radically upscale subdivision!

Clicking through the images takes your breath away, doesn’t it?  Really…the best you could do with this place is to level it and build a new house. And that would require you to get your hands on it for one helluva lot less than 400 grand.

Wow!!

Palm Tree Heebie Jeebies

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Should I have those trees taken out?

The WonderAccountants — my neighbors straight across the street — removed the palm trees that were growing along the edges of their pool. And they surely seemed not to regret it…yea, verily, Mr. W.A. was very pleased.

Whose idea was it, in the first place, to plant PALM TREES next to a swimming pool??? They don’t throw enough shade to matter. But what a mess those damn things make!!!

Every year, I’ve got to get someone in here several times per season to shovel out the palm tree debris. And once a year, someone has to climb 50 or 100 feet up each one of the damn things and prune out the dead fronds and seed stuff.

What kind of moron plants a palm tree next to a swimming pool? To say nothing of FOUR goddamn palm trees, which is what we’ve got surrounding that pool in the backyard!

Next big project, I guess, will need to be to hire a lumberjack to come in here and cut those damn things down. My neighbors across the street — the beloved and brilliant WonderAccountants — did exactly that. And they’re pleased with the result.

Accenting today’s palm tree conundrum, we have today’s unholy weather. Incredibly hot. Incredibly humid: 9 percent humidity, saith Wunderground (that, I would say, is conservative).

Truth to tell, though: I dunno that I’ll be staying here long enough to make it worth the cost of hiring someone to come in and chop down those damn palm trees. My son would like to consign me to a cringe-making old-folkerie called the Beatitudes. It’s better, as far as I can tell, than other places like it in the Phoenix area. But…it still is basically a prison.

Still…I hafta admit: it’s hard to see how I could manage staying in my home, on my own, until I reach the Last Breath. The cost of hiring someone to babysit me through these final years would be just brain-banging. Plus…who is going to ride herd on this worthy person? My son, after all, has a job, of all the astonishing things.

So he can’t be here keeping an eye on any such character.

Hm.

Here’s a thought. Wanna see me scare the bejayzus out of a young man?  😀  Picture this:

We could hire a babysitter for me, right?  Only instead of having her come here to ride herd on me, we have me and her go down to my son’s house (he works out of his home) and stay there during the week days.

Voilà! If I can be trained to stay out of his hair, he can do his work, and the sitter can fix lunch and dinner for us both and then drive me back to the Funny Farm.

Doesn’t THAT sound like fun?

😀

Mwa ha ha!