Quarter to eight in the morning. Hot. Sticky. Yucky out there.
The balmy weather blocks all but the balmiest of dog owners from circumnavigating the park, so Ruby the Corgi and I had the place almost to ourselves.
Traipsed down Main Drag Central. Eastward across Fancy-Dan Street South. Back north along Palm Row…passed the lady who HATES me because I asked her to please quit shoving junk-food “treats” in Ruby’s mouth.
Some people just flat refuse to believe you. Ever notice that?
Gosh, but humans are stupid. As animals go, that is.
The house once occupied by the young guy who got in trouble with the law and bankrupted his parents with legal bills (he still ended up in the slam) is vacant. Those poor folks lost their shirts!
Apparently a speculator bought the house. The pool is all torn up and it looks like the same is true of the interior. But then whoever got the place abandoned it. So it just sits there. Hideously.
The neighbors must just love it.
Eastward, eastward…that street reminds me of the exceptionally tony Palmcroft district, one of the Fanciest-Dan neighborhoods of Phoenix.
We used to live in a lesser neighborhood just to the east of Palmcroft — I could walk over with the dawgs to that park and its surrounding Richistan, and did. Still very nice. Still highly unaffordable for the likes of moi, today.
We moved out of our beautiful historic house there just in the nick of time. About six months after we escaped, the city bought a house right behind ours and turned the damn thing into a FIRE STATION!
Yeah! WEEEEE-UUUU WEEEEE-UUUU WEEEE-UUUU…all hours of the day and night.
Couldn’t believe it…y’know, there were plenty of commercial slots on the surrounding main drags where the city could have parked that thing. And the huge regional hospital with a gigantic parking lot that could have accommodated a fire station. And a defunct shopping mall with its own huge parking lot: perfect for a fire station. But ohhhhhhh no! The city has to stick the thing next door to or across the street from NINE residential lots!
Natcherly.
Honestly, I really think the City Fathers deliberately work at downgrading the quality of living in the beautiful old central neighborhoods. My guess is, the developers who build out the surrounding suburban tracts fund election campaigns for their stooges, to get them on the City Council and into county government. Once there, these sleazeballs work actively to trash centrally located neighborhoods, so they can be converted to commercial properties and generate $$$ for their sponsors and emptied of less-profitable private households.
I love my present neighborhood, though. And would like to stay here until I die.
Exactly how to pull that off kinda escapes me.
My son wants to consign me to a high-rise old-folkerie called The Beatitudes. Ugh!!! Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl.
I hate, loathe, and despise institutional living.
* No, I do not want to listen to your effing TV blatting away all day and half the night.
* No, I do not want to eat disgusting foodoid dumped out of cans and boxes into steam tables.
* No, I do not want to have to pretend to be nice to you as I hover, disgruntled, over a plate of disgusting foodoid.
* No, I do not even faintly care about your Ailment of the Day.
* Yes, your bird-brained politics make me want to bite you.
One thing is for sure: I wouldn’t last long in a place like that. I would die of depression, if nothing else.
Speaking of the Joys of Old Age, my son is dragging me out to the damned Mayo Clinic again this afternoon. Why, I do not recall. Just now, whatever Blessing of Age was afflicting me seems to have gone away. And frankly, I don’t even remember what I might have been whining about that would have led him to make an appointment.
Ugh!