Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

And speakin’ of real estate…

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…as we were saying yesterday, briefly, Zillow claims my li’l middle-class house is worth (hang onto your hat) $563,000!  And change.

What????????

Over half a million dollars for an aging tract house within walking distance (easy walking distance) of a dangerous slum? Seriously????

And horrors!

****

I return to the idle thought that maybe I ought to think about moving out to Scottsdale — more specifically, to the district known as McCormick Ranch. Once a very fancy-Dan tract, McCormick ranch is now a mid- to upper-middle-class suburb, filled with ticky-tacky construction set in seas of Bermuda grass. The area is relatively safe. Of course, no place in a big city is “safe,” but McCormick Ranch is far more so than the swaths of North Phoenix that border the alarming Sunnyslope tract, where I live now.

This proposition presents its challenges. The main one: I very much doubt I could get anywhere near that much for this house. And houses out in Scottsdale are pricier by far than the ones here in North Central on the edge of Sunnyslop.

To get into Scottsdale housing, I’d probably have to move into an apartment. And I don’t wanna.  I love my house and all its roominess. I love my swimming pool — my pool and no one else’s. I love the trash pickup service from the alleys. None of these appertain to apartment living.

And another important adjunct to this issue:  unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding, it doesn’t look like it would be worth moving unless I could get into a better area.

McCormick Ranch is not a better area than North Central Phoenix. The two districts are about on a par. Fairly affluent. Relatively low in crime. Close to upscale shopping. Attractively built middle-class homes. Decent schools. Sooo….

Why would I want to live there? 

* It’s ten minutes from the endlessly importuning Mayo Clinic. The gawdawful drives to see MayoDoc would go away, once and for all.

* Shopping is excellent, ranging from the high side of middle class to the high side of very much upper middle class.

* Proximity to lots of great restaurants.

But…but…waitminit here. 

* I don’t go to restaurants. I can cook lots better than that…for lots less change!

* These days I do about 75% of my clothes shopping online.

* I should base where I’m gonna live on the proximity of a doctor’s office? Uhhhh… don’t think so…

* The Ranch is a long way from my son’s neighborhood. If I moved out there, I’d hardly ever see him!

* I dunno if the Cleaning Lady from Heaven would be willing to drive way to Hell & Gone to clean the Funny Farm if it were in North Scottsdale.

***

Hmmmmm….  To my mind, the “Waitaminits” outweigh the benefits by about ten to one. Seriously: there aren’t enough positives to convince me that I should pull up (expensive!) stakes and move to the far side of Scottsdale.

So…one is led to apply that Fine Old Saw: When in doubt, don’t!

  • Doubt, indeed. There’s just not enough there to persuade me that I would benefit from moving. Benefit: in any way…
  • Socially (I know one! person who lives out there.)
  • Financially (Any benefit from moving to a tonier area will be outweighed by the costs of selling, buying, fix-up, and moving.)
  • Comfort-wise (My house is a luxurious palace; noplace on McCormick Ranch is any better, and most are not as good.)
  • Gasoline and mileage savings (I probably drive out to the Mayo Clinic no more than once a month. That’s hardly a motive to pull up stakes!)

So unless my son decides to move someplace else — say, he gets a job in another city — there’s really no reason for me to even consider buying a place in McCormick Ranch.

If he did move out of North Central Phoenix, I might move out, too. Either to follow him or to put some distance between me and the gangs. But as long as he’s in these parts…well, so am I!

Movin’ Movin’ Movin’….

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LOL! This morning I happened to find myself contemplating my lifetime on the move. In the years since I was born to life on this planet, I have moved house twenty-five times. 

That’s just the places I can remember. Without a doubt, several others occurred when I was too little to know or remember much of anything.

My parents and I lived in…where?

* Richmond, California
* Long Beach, California
* San Francisco, California (several places, several times!)
* Long Beach, California (again, years later)
* Down by the docks near Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
* In Ras Tanura (a company town), Saudi Arabia (2 houses)
* Sun City, Arizona
* Tucson, Arizona
* Phoenix, Arizona (several places!)

Jeeeminy! At least 13 or 14 different houses and apartments before I came of age. Then, after I grew up , left my parents’ home, and got married:

* Tucson, Arizona (4 years; 4 different domiciles
* Phoenix, Arizona (my own li’l apartment, ALL MINE!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (first place with hubby)
* Phoenix, Arizona (downtown: gorgeous historic home)
* Phoenix, Arizona (uptown: move to get away from the crime) (har har!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (leave marriage; move into apt.)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move into apt. where boyfriend lived)
* Phoenix, Arizona (escape apt.; buy house)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move to a quieter house, further from main drag)

And here I am. Hmmmmm…. That would be twenty-two different homes — 22 moves!) in one piddly little lifetime.

And that doesn’t count the number of times my mother had to move, following my father, before I was born. Ball-park guess: at least four places. Probably more.

This rumination came about after I had visited a friend and his wife’s home in Scottsdale — in a tony suburb called McCormick Ranch. VERY nice place in a pleasant, upper-middle-class tract that has that low-on-crime look. 😀

But…but…

Well, but… It’s TINY. Small but decent kitchen. One living/dining room. One small master bedroom upstairs. And a guest bedroom/study. Cramped, walled-in patio in place of a real yard.

Still: one could live with that. Ever so much less space to have to clean, right?

Well, but…  It’s WAYYYY far away from my son. He lives in North Central Phoenix, and he ain’t about to move away from his dad’s outpost. Nor is he about to sell his pretty little brick house, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Incredible Gourmet Grocery Store, to move to the crassly bourgeois precincts of North Scottsdale.

So. Nope. Ain’t trading my son’s company for a set of steps. 😀

There, of course, is the decisive element. The kid, that is; not the steps.

But even if Young Caligula weren’t living in my present parts, still…I don’t see the prospect of moving as worth the cost. 

As you know, moving house is a financially bracing proposition. And…what would I be getting in exchange for several tens of thousands of dollars?

* Supposedly a better neighborhood. {Though I have yet to see proof of that: North Central, where the Funny Farm resides, is about as good as it gets in the Valley.}

* Proximity to hordes of excellent restaurants in several price ranges. (Uhm...but I rarely eat out, because I prefer my own pretty damn excellent cooking…)

* Relative proximity to Arizona State University. (BFD: I ain’t teachin’ there any more…and I’m not about to go back!)

* Proximity to the Mayo Clinic. (What could be more cheering than living right down the street from your doctor’s offices? :-o)

Ohhhhh well.  Movin’ on (as it were):

***

Last night I had the weirdest dream. 

In this wacky somnolent universe, SDXB  and I had a fight and I stalked out of the house. The setting was right here in the neighborhood, so I marched out onto handsomely paved streets that run past our homes and past our friends’ houses.

That notwithstanding, I wandered into one of the alleys. And there…oh, yah: I got lost. 

Understand: this is even more somnolently wacky, because a) the alleys here run in parallel rows, so you can’t get lost in them — certainly not if you’re even vaguely sober. And I’ve lived here so long that I know the layout of the neighborhood — its yards and its trees and its sidewalks and its alleys and its fences — even more neatly than I know the layout of the back of my hand.

Well. That notwithstanding: in the Dream Universe I can’t find my way home…or even out of the alley that I’ve wandered into.

Stumbling up that alley in a state of weird confusion, I come across two (handsome!!) cops in a cop car. Ohhhhhhboy!!! And hot diggety!

Turns out the neighbors have noticed me roaming up and down the alleys and, all worried, have called the cops. Meanwhile, SDXB has also called them, since I haven’t come back after our squabble.

So the cops and I chat for awhile. They, recognizing a random nut case when they see one, desist from any plan they might have had about running me in. Au contraire, they drive me to SDXB’s house, where he acts all happy to see me and I just sit there obediently.

Eventually the officers give up and go on about their business. SDXB and I take up our lives as usual.

WTF???????

Do I have a clue what that l’il nightmare was about?

Well. No. Other than embroidery of memories from a decade ago. Essentially, it was a re-run of a long-ago episode.

Hafta say: I really doubt that I could find a better neighborhood than this one. Certainly not one that I could afford — or would want to afford. And most certainly not one that’s centrally located.

Yeah.

I like this neighborhood. And love my house. And yes, I very much do want to leave the house to my son.

How exactly to make that happen kinda escapes me. It’s going to depend, I’m afraid, on raw luck + a healthy dose of genetics.

Women in my family — those who didn’t f*ck themselves to death — lived deep into ripe old age. Ninety to ninety-five was typical of those who lived what you and I would think of as “clean” lives: hold the alcohol, hold the promiscuity.

I do drink, no question of it. Though not much lately, because without a car on hand, it’s too much of a PITA to haul bottles of wine or beer back to the house…and you may be sure I’m too much of a cheapskate to have that stuff delivered.

Still: over the decades I surely have swizzled down enough to do me in. No question of it. So far, no symptoms. But we can expect they’ll show up sooner or later.

At any rate and nevertheless, the probability that I’ll live into my late 90s remains high.

And that notwithstanding: I really do want M’Hijito to have this house. Or at least the proceeds from its sale.

So…that kinda militates against moving into an old-folkerie, or into a resort-like condo.

7:00 a.m.: The Moron Hour

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Why IS it that every  moron on the planet turns out of their house at 7 in the morning? With their dog, o’course!

Just back from the morning DoggyWalk. Nasty morning: hot, overcast, and wet. Back porch thermometer registers a mere 85 degrees.

Days like this, sometimes rain just coalesces out of the air. Don’t even need clouds to make it rain!

Welp, that doesn’t seem to be happening today…not yet, anyway. Wunderground predicts a 15% chance of rain and just now registers an ambient temperature of 85 degrees. Not very hot. But yeah: damp, that’s for sure.

Ruby never seems fazed by a soggy atmosphere. Maybe the thick furry coat protects her, to some degree from the elements: whether cold and wet or hot and wet.

At this hour, everybody and their little brother, sister,, and grandmother is out tromping around with their dawg. And they just don’t seem to get it that “they just want to pwaaaayyy” doesn’t apply to your dog. No, stupid… my dog just wants to rip their dog’s throat out. 

After you tell them to please keep their dog back and they refuse to do so, they get all peeved when your dog goes in for the kill.

Speaking of dogs, M’hijito bought a puppy yesterday, to replace his beloved old white golden retriever who croaked over a few days ago.

Oh, my, what a little cutie! And the parents were also white retrievers, so this one will grow up to look a lot like the Late, Great Jake.

I should call him — the kid, that is, not the dawg — and see if he’d like me to bring something over for lunch from the AJ’s deli. That would be pleasant…and an excuse to see the new pup. 😉

***

Meanwhile: ugh!  My hip is spavined and hurts like Hell.

Years ago, the Late, Great Dr. Daley — one of the finest GPs ever to walk the surface of the Earth — told me that someday I’d have to get surgery on that hip. Looks like the Someday has arrived.

Just what I need: surgery, and then weeks in the hospital recuperating and going through endless physical therapy. Whee…I can hardly wait.

Could I even walk from AJ’s to M’jito’s just now? Probably: once I get going, the gait seems to move along OK. The problem, I think, would be trapping a bus, getting down to Central & Camelback, and then hiking to the Kid’s place.

Dunno. A guy across the street has taken up the Uber business. I may ask him to drive me down to the store…and maybe for a few extra bucks he could be persuaded to stick around long enough to schlep me from the AJ’s to the Kid’s house.

The Uber thing looks like quite the little Godsend. I’ve only tried it once, but it really was The Business! The guy showed up at my house right away, schlepped me across the city, and then showed up again at the dentist’s office to schlep me home.

Truth to tell, it really may be that Phoenix has turned into enough of a Big City that you could live here without owning a car. M’hijito would like to get rid of mine — apparently he thinks that at 80 I’ve reached such a state of decrepitude I’m not safe to be driving. And I’ll tellya: if I knew for sure that a car would show up when I call for it — and show up in a timely manner — I’d agree with him.

But…well…that is something that I don’t know. Actually, to the contrary: I do know…a cab is not gonna show up on time when you need it. Period. This ain’t San Francisco, folks: this is Phoenix.

And no: dyed-in-the-wool Phoenicians do not ride cabs.

 

Reeeel Estate!

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Gosh! Lookeee here!

This high-rise is just down the street from where DXH and I used to live, right in the center of the toniest part of mid-town Phoenix.

How kewl can you get, eh?

Seriously: I do like this li’l hovel. It’s literally right down the street from where DXH and I used to live, and smack in the middle of what is now the most stylish part of North Central Avenue.

Given just the slightest provocation, and I’d move there in an instant.

Seriously: I did love living in that district. And when I was a kid in San Francisco, I loved living in a high-rise. Betcha I could get used to this dive real quick.

Moving though….ugh! More trouble than it’s worth, I suspect.

But…hmmmmm…..  Mebbe not, eh?

Morning in Aridzona…

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Brrrrr! It’s mighty cold out there come seven in the morning: just 89 degrees.

In fact, even for lovely uptown Phoenix, that’s hot and muggy. The air is so damp it’s practically squishy.

Ruby and the Human:  just back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: over to the park, down the street that parallels the south side of the park, past the home (uhm…former home) of the folks who lost everything when their son got arrested for diddling some underage chippy, up the east side of the park: northerly, northerly into Upper Richistan.

Lovely neighborhood, that. The Richistans are occupied by folks who can afford acre-plus irrigated lots, big swell houses, and armies of workmen. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live there: been there, done that, don’t wanna do it again. Riding herd on 87 berjillion yard guys, maintenance guys, repairmen, cleaners…and on and on and on… Blech! Never again!

But still: it’s fun to eyeball other people’s overpriced, high-maintenance properties. 😀

The beloved Old Guy is no longer in evidence. He would hang out in a lawn chair parked on his front driveway, his coffee and his newspaper in hand, and greet all us passers-by. I do miss him.

With any luck, he will have dropped dead of a heart attack. More likely, though, this being Today’s Day & Age, he’s locked up in some old-folkerie, waiting for Death to come and get him.

That seems to be the fate of most of today’s denizens of the middle and upper classes. We don’t die in a timely way. We drag out dying, and drag it out and drag it out and drag it out…horribly, hideously. Parked in a dreary prison for old folks, where we rot away like so much unrefrigerated bacon.

Please, dear God: please, just let me drop dead on the sidewalk!

Y’know, before you croak over or end up in an old-folkerie, you should find out what your grown kids REALLY want you to do with your property.

You assume, quite reasonably in its antiquated way, that they will want to inherit your beloved home and its handsome yard and…all that. But consider: it ain’t necessarily so!

A lot of grown offspring have their own homes. Homes with which they’re quite satisfied. Homes they don’t want to move out of. Foist a $300,000 piece of property on them and now they’re burdened with something they’ve got to figure out what to do with. Something laden with emotional overtones that make them feel guilty when they go to sell the place.

If they can bring themselves to sell it, that is.

Now they’re stuck with it. What ARE they gonna do with it?

I’m pretty sure my son wants this house. But…before much longer, I do need to sit down with him and ask him whether he really does want it, or whether it would be better for me to sell it before I croak over and invest the proceeds in some cash instrument he can inherit and do with as he pleases. With minimal hassle, that is.

Of course, that’s one of those conversations none of us wants to have.

And as you know, we’re likely to put it off and put it off and put it off until…well…it’s too late.

***********

Speaking of selling or not selling the shack…

**********

ONE RINGY- DINGY! TWO RINGY-DINGIES! THREE….

No, I don’t recognize the caller’s number. That means chances are about nine out of ten that this is yet another goddamn nuisance phone solicitor.

Me: “And what would you be wanting?”

Her (after a brief, awkward pause: “Would you be interested in selling your house?”

Me: “GET OFF MY F*CKING PHONE AND STAY OFF MY F*CKING PHONE!!!!!!!!!

Gawd ALMIGHTY am I sick and tired of morons calling me on the phone to hustle me.

It should be illegal to call a phone number unless you have real, certifiable business with the number’s owner.

Heeeeeeee!  What d’you suppose would happen if, when an idiot phone solicitor gets you on the horn, you were to say, “Did you make an appointment to call me”?

Them: Duuuuhhhhh… Uhm…an appointment? 

You: Yeah. you need to have an appointment to call here. What’s your name and what is your appointment number?

{chortle!} Godlmighty, but I hate these people. Wish there was a better way to bug them than by blowing an air horn into the phone.

I wore out my air horn. Guess I should order another one from Amazon.

😀

Bastards.

Did you know that many of those folks — possibly most of them — are calling from inside prisons?

Phone solicitation is a prison industry. A substantial number of the jerks who pester you on the phone are more than jerks: they’re criminals. 

San Francisco: Take Me Home

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…To the place
I belong…

Parkmerced. That’s where I belong.

Oh, my: what a lovely development, down near the shore of Lake Merced, on the southerly end of San Francisco.

My mother got us in there when we came back from Arabia: before my father came back to the States. We left the Hell-Hole ahead of him, about three or four months before he retired.

He must have had the sh!t-f!t from Hell when he found out how much those high-rise apartments cost! You don’t even wanna think about it!

After he went back to Ras Tanura, our lease ran out and she got us into one of the garden apartments. They weren’t especially fancy — nothing like the gorgeous spaces in the towers — but they weren’t at all bad. If anything, I think I liked ours better than the tower. It had its own little garden. And some kids lived across the street from us.

Oh, well. There we were.

Walking around the ‘Hood this morning: ohhhhh gawd! HOT!  HUMID!! And it’s barely dawn. Can’t say I hate this place…but I sure would rather be in San Francisco!

Passed by the vacant, run-down house once occupied by the couple whose son went to jail. That’ll bankrupt you: be sure of that!

Apparently he fucked some girl who was under the age of consent — and got caught in the act. OFF TO THE SLAM WITH HIM! 

This misadventure cost the parents everything they had. They went belly-up. Lost the house.

Who owns it now (if anyone, other than a bank) I do not know. But it is a WRECK.

Ya hafta say this about the ‘Hood, though: Overall it’s well kept up, tidy, tony-looking. A couple of sections are highly up-scale; indeed. the rest of the place is solidly upper-middle-class.

Sooo…. My house should keep its value. If my son inherits it, he’ll have a nice, debt-free place to live or, if he prefers, a salable piece of property that should land half a million bucks in his bank account.

That’s assuming I don’t have to go into the old-folkerie called the Beatitudes, which he has in mind for me. He may not realize: Those places take everything you have. If I can’t stay out of that place, that’s what will happen. Nothing will be left to pass along to my son.

Probably it would be cheaper — and surely more cost-effective — to hire someone to come in to take care of me in my home through the last months or years of my life. I hope he’ll go along with that… Partly for my sake (nothing makes me cringe more than the mere thought of institutional living) and partly for hi$.

At any rate, as this rumination implies: I ain’t a-gunna get home to San Francisco anytime soon. Surely not in this lifetime. Well… unless — Heaven forfend! — something happened to him before it happens to me. If he predeceased me, I probably would move back to the Bay Area. There really isn’t anyplace else I’d rather live.

My cousin found a lovely resort-like old-folkerie in the East Bay, where he deposited his mother for her last years. I’d be lookin’ for something like that.

Meanwhile, with this house paid off and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven in the offing, I probably will stay here as long as I possibly can — with any luck, for the rest of my life. CL from H has worked as a caretaker for the elderly and the infirm, and so maybe she can be hired full-time to baby-sit me during the final leg of my journey to the Next World. But if not, we know there are lots of folks like her, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to come in to care for me.

I hope.