Coffee heat rising

funny

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Hotter than a three-dollar cookstove…

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…as my father used to say about the lovely weather in the garden spot that was Saudi Arabia.

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer claims the temperature is 108 in the shade.

Yeah. That’s degrees Fahrenheit.

Ye gawds! It makes Arabia look balmy.

But…but…seriously: it’s 12:30 in the afternoon. Earlier in the day — shortly after the local grocers and farmacias opened, our li’l thermometer was already registering 102.

And yes, that does make Arabia look pretty balmy.

Fortunately, we have actual air-conditioning, rather than the gummy swamp-cooling that Aramco installed in its residents’ homes in Ras Tanura. Even then, it’s damn hot and sticky in here.

Nevertheless, the brain continues to run on overdrive. 

All sorts of original, clever, and…uhm..weird ideas are drifting through my overheated little mind. And in particular, the most significant ones have to do with my son’s adventurous liberation of my car.

Yes.

The garage remains empty.

And y’know what?

I’m finding I just…don’t…give…a…damn. 

This neighborhood is overrun with guys who wanna get rich quick driving for Uber. A nearly brand-new train runs down Main Drag West, one that would drop me off six safe and quiet residential blocks from my son’s house, if I chose to ride it. And the city busses cruise right past the intersection of the nearest feeder street and Central Avenue, which would take me to the front door of the beloved AJ’s market. Or let me off a block from the kid’s house.

Personally, I’d choose Uber if I knew they would show up reliably.

That doesn’t appear to be the case…but…but…yeah. I haven’t tested any such thesis. I will, in the future…probably the slightly cooler future. But if I do find they show up when they say they will, then…well…

Wanna buy a nice used Toyota Venza?

Yeah. Y’know what I think about this caper? That kid did me a huge favor. He’s helping me to get rid of a tank that needs to be serviced (expensively) every six months, that needs to have $3.00/gallon gas pumped into it every time you turn around, that takes up space in a garage that could be used for any number of better purposes, that pollutes the air, that….

Uhm…and how am I gonna get the dog to the vet, in an emergency?

Uber.

Or the kid. He still has his car. If Ruby has to be rushed to a veterinarian, he can come up here and collect her.

Or on foot. A 24-hour veterinary hospital is right down the road: about six or eight blocks, on foot. She weighs all of 25 pounds: I can easily pick her up and carry her there.

Meanwhile, check out these contraptions! I happen to have one of these. As we scribble, it’s now all tricked out with cardboard panels, the easier to haul stuff without dropping anything.

Here in the ‘Hood, we’ve got not one, not two, but three major supermarkets within walking distance: a Fry’s, a Sprouts, and an Albertson’s. I can do most or all of my grocery shopping on foot, without ever leaving the neighborhood. And right across the street dwells an Uber driver. Matter of fact, we’re told the ‘Hood is over-run with Uber drivers.

Heh! I haven’t tested that hypothesis. But it wouldn’t take a mob of wannabe cab drivers to provide plenty of transportation to the nearby shopping. 

Summertime, And the Livin’ Is…

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…the livin’ is sauna-like!

😀

You should be here to enjoy a fine, humid 102-degree day… Uhm…well, no…maybe you shouldn’t.

Seriously: it’s like a steam-bath outdoors just now. Hotter than the proverbial hubs, and SOGGY.

It puts the eefus on my plan to walk over to the nearby Sprouts and raid their fruit and veggie bins. I may hire the Uber guy across the street to schlep me over there…but…hmmmm…..  

Don’t think so. The hound and I have plenty of food. The fridge is more than adequately stocked. We surely can wait a day or two.

Besides, what I’m MOST interested in is learning about the new(ish) delivery services of late offered by most of the major grocery stores around here. By way of experiment, I may call the Albertson’s and order up some chow.

Main drawback to that scheme: Americans are not fresh-food folk. Most of us eat packaged or frozen chow. As a result, we have NO CLUE what a decent zucchini squash or head of lettuce or ripe peach is supposed to look like. And since I eat mostly fresh foods (I know how to cook! Isn’t that weird?!?), I’m reluctant to pay to have someone shop for me.

Hmmmm… Uber…Uber…Uber…  I’m beyond fascinated with the whole Uber phenomenon. It reminds me, richly, of our ten-year experience in Saudi Arabia, where Saudi drivers ran a fleet of taxis. They would come right up to your back gate (front yards were bounded by sidewalks and hedges), whisk you down to the commissary, then drive you home and help you haul your bags of groceries into the house.

Not that I would expect an American driver to help haul grocery purchases. But the experience would be similar in many other ways. If it could happen. 😀

And all these years I’ve been paying…for WHAT?

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Thanks to my son’s recent sh!tfit, I’ve made a huge discovery:

For lo! these many years, I’ve been paying through the schnozola for that damn car sitting out there in the garage, little guessing that in truth, I can get wherever I want to go in lovely uptown Phoenix for less than it costs to own a car… No, make that For one HELLUVA lot less than it costs to own a car!

Owning a car ain’t cheap, here in the Big City. Especially if you’re a person who does not know how to service your own car: change its oil, charge its battery, rotate its tires, whatnot whatnot and whatnot.

What if…yeah, what if? 

You rent a car only when you need it? Take it back to the rental agency when you’re done with it, and they change the oil and fill the gas tank and see that the windshield wipers work and test and fill the tires and…on and freakin’ ON. They pay for the licensing. They pay for the annual inspection…

Hmmmmmm…. What HAVE we been missing in this picture?

A lot. A whole lot, my friends. And the Kid’s recent revenge maneuver — kiping my car and locking it into his garage — has suddenly made those missing details blindingly clear.

Suddenly, if I want to go someplace right this minute, all I’ve got to do is tell the Uber driver who lives across the street that I need a ride. If he can’t take me where I need to go, he sure can make a ride materialize.

Huh. Think o’ that. Imagine not having to pony up a chunk of dough to have the car serviced. Or to register it with the state. Or to run it through the car wash. Or whatEVER.

I knew that kid was brilliant, but this is ridiculous!

😀

Seriously: What he’s done points in a VERY interesting direction.

What if you stopped driving your car and rode the bus or streetcar instead? Would that not leave you plenty of spare change to afford a taxicab for occasions when you need to be someplace reliably at a specific time? Like…PLENTY of spare change!

Yea verily: how much money have we wasted, you & I, on buying, owning, and running cars? 

How much more does a tank of gas cost than an Uber ride across the city, from (say) the ASU campus in Glendale, Arizona, to the main university campus in Tempe?

And…can a city kid get by without owning a car?

***

My mother and I lived in San Francisco for two or three years after we came back from Arabia. She rented us a place in an apartment development called Parkmerced.

My father would never have been without a car — it was one of the things the man lived for. But he went to sea: was regularly gone for weeks at a time. And…hmmmm…WHERE was his vaunted Chrysler?

Yeah. On the sixth floor of Parkmerced’s underground garage, that’s where.

About the only things we used that car for were to drive to the docks to pick up my father when his ship was in, and to drive across the Bay Bridge to visit my mother’s family in Berkeley or Sausalito.

So…I think this history brings up the same question that M’hijito has raised:

  • DO you really need a car when you live in an urban setting?

And that question poses a whole slew of other interesting queries…

  • Could you not do just as well riding in Uber cabs or on busses and trains?
  • Do you really need to ride any conveyance when you’re going to a store three or four blocks from your front door? Why?
  • Over the course of, say, a month, how much does it cost to walk to a store or ride a bus, compared to maintaining a car during the same period?
  • How much are you paying in taxes to keep that rolling tin can in your garage?
  • And how much in insurance bills?
  • And in gasoline?

Maybe, just maybe, the kid has got something. Eh?

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all enjoy it!”

LOL! That was the buzz-phrase of a long-time local radio personality here. He had a morning show, and every day he opened with that little theme-phrase.

“Beautiful” is not the word I’d use today…especially if you have to go outdoors in it! Yes, it’s clear and sunny. Yes, at this hour it’s pretty quiet. But… ugh!

It is soo humid!!! Wet and hot.

Back in the Day, most of the mornings were “beautiful days.” Not so much anymore. The place is no longer semi-rural: it’s all built up with commercial strips and vast oceans of ticky-tacky houses. Every one of those structures runs large air-conditioning systems that suck in the air, drain the moisture out of it, and emit it back into the atmosphere as hot, dry, stinky exhaust. This makes the developed areas even hotter (by far!) than they would have been in the absence of humanity.

It was sort of a pleasant place to live, back in the day. Now…?  Well…ick. If you like Southern California — crowds, noise, heat, insane traffic, smog — you’ll love this place. If you prefer a quieter mode of living…hmmmm…

Where would I go if I could escape?  Well…hmmm indeed…..

  • Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Berkeley, California
  • Certain suburbs of Tucson, Arizona
  • San Francisco
  • Paris
  • Parts of Rome

Ohhhh well.

Ruby and I walked by our old (literally: elderly) friend Garnett’s place this morning. She’s long gone. The classic old ranch house is vacant, and has stood vacant for several months.

This morning we walked up and peered in the windows: looks like they’ve finally removed the furniture.

She told me she wanted to leave the house to her son — and so I expect she did. But he clearly has exactly ZERO interest in moving to Arizona. Certainly not in living a block from one of the busiest, loudest main drags in the city.

She loved that house. Loved the neighborhood. He? Not so much. He’d made his escape to California years ago. And clearly he has no desire to move into his mother’s manse.

Why he hasn’t sold it escapes me. I imagine she must still be living, locked up in one of those horrible old-folkeries. He’s probably waiting until she passes to get rid of her beloved home.

Either that or he’s too damn lazy to get off his duff and do something with the real estate she left him.

Who knows?

If I manage to hang onto this house until I croak over, my son will get the place. It will be a handy asset for him: either a pleasant venue to live in a fairly decent, in-town neighborhood, or something he can sell for a half-million bucks. Whichever he selects, he’ll profit nicely.

These days I feel like I must be the New Garnett of the ‘Hood: traipsing through the upscale realms behind a cute little dawg, every morning. Saying hello to the passers-by. A conspicuous landmark, hm?

But I’m not as friendly as Garnett was. At heart, I don’t like people, having been mistreated royally during the ten years we lived in Saudi Arabia. God, how I hated that place! And how I hated the kids and the idiot teachers and my father’s cruelty and the institutionalized ignorance…just about everything there.

It was in the nick of time when my parents decided to come back to the States. I had become almost hopelessly misanthropic by the end of the fifth grade, and come the sixth grade, simply hated people. Especially people in their “kid” phase. That changed when we got to San Francisco, where the new classmates didn’t know they were supposed to scorn me, and the teachers — some of them, anyway — possessed measurable IQ’s.

Heh! I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if we’d stayed out there even another year. Not that I would have brought a machine gun to school and shot up the place — though similar antics crossed my little mind. But that another year with no friends, another year as the butt of all the other little darlins’ scorn and hate, another year with a teacher who measured her IQ in the single digits…Jayzuz! If a kid could have a nervous breakdown, I sure would have.

😮

A Hundred WHATS????!!??

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HOLEE DOGGEREL!

Gerardo the Lawn Dude’s guys just finished blowering and raking the front and back 40. His head dude knocks on the Arcadia door and asks to be paid.

“How much?”

“$100.”

HOLEE SHEE-UT!

That’s up from the $80 they usually charge. Forgodsake: we’re not talking about any extra work here. Nothing special. Just blower up the leaves and wind-blown debris and trim whatever few plants need to be trimmed.

Once again: here’s a “house” thing that makes life in a high-rise apartment on North Central Avenue look a whole lot better.

Well.

It would look better if I didn’t have the dog.

Ruby would have to be paper-trained or litter-trained (did you know you can train a dog to use a cat-box?). That amounts to more hassle than I care to engage. For what?

For a box in the sky. No yard for Ruby to run around in. No peace and quiet for me. No private pool where I can go skinny-dipping…

Barf. 

Okay, okay…settle down! And let’s consider the things we imagine DO make the proposed Box in the Sky look good.

Bear in mind: I have lived in high-rise apartments, and in fact rather enjoyed them. But..that was a long time ago and I was a lot younger and my parents dealt with the management and they paid the rent and…. Today, to tell the truth: I don’t wanna. 

{sigh} Well…unless you’ve got someone to run interference with Life, The Universe, and All That, you’re always gonna have these hassles, right? And you’re always going to be paying for the hassles.

So…quitcher bellyachin’ … right?

Heh…  Another thing “I don’t wanna” is to take care of that damn yard in this heat. Gerardo’s boys earn their pay and earn their pay and earn their pay some more. A hundred bucks — let’s get real — is a bargain to get four guys slamming around in the heat for an hour.

Because he’s not just paying them for an hour of work. He’s paying for an hour of work x 4 … that would be FOUR hours of work. And he’s paying for the gas to run his truck over here (and the wear & tear on the truck). And for gas to run the blower and the mower and the tree trimmers and the shrub trimmers and the weed-whackers…. Arrrghhhha!

How am I glad I don’t own a yard-care business? Let me count the pestiferous ways…

****

On the ‘tother hand…

What with my son having purloined my car, I was gonna walk over to one of the nearby stores — maybe the Sprouts — and pick up some chow and assorted junque. That ain’t a-gonna happen now.

It’s 102º in the shade just now. And I’ll tellya…that does NOT inspire me to hike 8 or 10 blocks (x 2: make that 16 or 20 blocks, round trip) for the privilege of buying lunch and some ice cream!

The local grocery stores have recently announced that they’ll deliver. I haven’t looked into this offer yet…but need to do so.

In the Department of the Stuff of Nightmares…

Last night I found myself dreaming of visits to the terrifying Mayo Clinic. Auuugh! Arrogant doctors who presume that because you’re old you must be stupid. Endless waits in dreary waiting rooms. More waits in the doctor’s office. Wasted breath trying to explain yourself to said doctor, who’s only half-listening to you. And when a visit or three has happened recently, it’s a challenge to tell the difference between a memory and a nightmare.

Spare me, Lord!

It’s a bit of a drive over to the Mayo from the Funny Farm. Must say: more of a drive than I’d like to make. But the doctors and the facilities closer to home? Huh-uh!

My relationship with the adorable Young Dr. Kildare came to an end when I went over to his place shortly after a visit to the far, far-away Mayo Clinic. Figured I could get what ailed me treated there without having to drive halfway to Nevada for the privilege.

Yeah…I could. If I didn’t mind having him treat me for the wrong ailment! 

Hilariously so: he misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and misdiagnosed with élan. Understand, this was something that not only had been seen by the Mayo but also by the high-powered St. Joseph’s, in mid-town Phoenix, added to a couple of lesser issues about which he simply made mistakes.

YDK has now moved to Sun City. The medical care out there is one of the main reasons you couldn’t pay me to live in Sun City. My mother’s terminal illness was horrifically mismanaged by the quacks out there.

No doubt she wouldn’t have survived the cancer that was filling up her innards. But she didn’t have to suffer the way she did. Telling her it was all in her fuzzy little head increased her suffering massively. And my father’s: he was at home trying to treat her as she lay dying of her “imaginary” ailment. And that IS the specific reason I would never buy a house in Sun City or Youngtown. Horrible!

One would like to hope that medical care out there has improved. But get real: we know what Americans think of the elderly. We know how elders are treated in this country. Why take a chance when you can stay in town and at least have a shot at decent care?

BBBRRRRAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKK!

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LOL!  Here’s something you need to learn to do in your dotage:

Get used to people (what sometimes feels like mobs of other people) roiling around in your space and in your face, making a racket and making a nuisance of themselves.

😀

Usually this nuisanceferizing happens with THE best of intentions. Your grousing about it because their presence/uproar/demands for payment does not change the facts that they’re doing their job, the job is something you often can’t do without, and about 98% of the time they’re doing a better job than you could do.

Just now, here I am practicing my new skill — loafing — when in fly Gerardo and his boys. And what do they do?

Roar.

That’s what they do.

Just now they’re out in back with their arsenal of gasoline-powered blowers and trimmers and whatnot, going R-R-O-A-R-R.

This is the noise you make when you blast dry leaves and debris into the freshly cleaned pool water, right?

😀

Oh…there’s one of the boys…he’s purloined the pool leaf net and is trying to fish out the junk he just blew into the drink. 😀

How glad AM i that i’m not a lawn dude? Lemme count the ways….