Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Bashed!

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Seven ways from Sunday!  Not only physically, but apparently my feeble little brain has decided to quit working.

No kidding:  I just wrote this post, and now it’s GONE.  A draft was saved, but that’s gone, too. 

SHEESH! Ya can’t win for losin’!

Been a losing day today, more or less. Most recently: I bashed the bejayzus out of my left big toe while in the park this afternoon. Limped back into the ‘hood and presented myself at the WonderAccountants’ house — they live right across the street from the Funny Farm. Figured to have to ask them to drive me to the E.R., since my son has kindly purloined my car.

Just what I need: to have to limp around with a cast on my foot for gawd only knows how long….

But by the time I sat down and started to chat with my warm and friendly neighbors, the pain began to fade, and we could see I could walk on it. So…we’re assuming I didn’t break anything, and that it should be OK in a few days.

I hope. 

Interesting… Kindness makes pain go away. 

Another Icky-Sticky Day

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Need to walk(!) down to the nearest supermarket to restock supplies. But… At 7:30 in the morning it’s pushin’ 80 degrees out there. And overcast! In Arizona, that makes for a hot and sticky morning.

Ohhhh how do I not feel like trudging down there?

Actually, there’s a closer supermarket-like affair in the corner commerce just to the north of us. But they target Latino shoppers from the mercado just to the north of us. Not a bad store, but they stock items that I would never buy, and don’t stock items that I regularly use.

Walking down to the Albertson’s will entail dodging through the neighborhood — adding steps on steps — in order to avoid the sh!theads on 19th Avenue who scream obscenities out their car windows at every passing woman. Even a doddering old bat!

Guess they’re so stupid they think that’s funny. I don’t: I think it’s damned annoying.

There isn’t an easy way to reach either of the corner shopping centers on foot from the neighborhood. Because several tracts built at different times stand between here and those markets, you pretty much HAVE to walk down Main Drag West to get to the stores.

The prospect of doing so in melting heat and sticky humidity does not appeal.

Nope. Not a-tall.

Ay, señors y señoras! I do believe we’ll be shopping latino today. That (mostly) Mexican supermarket carries about everything I really need, and it also has some fun stuff to experiment with. And it’s only about a ten-minute walk to the north of us. It would help a lot if I’d contrived to make myself fluent in Spanish during all the years I’ve lived in the American Southwest. But…never too late, eh?

In fact, maybe it would be worth taking a year of introductory Spanish at one of the community colleges here. If I could figure out how to get a ride to said institution.

Hmmmm….  This is innaresting:
https://www.thespanishexperiment.com/review

Since I’m fluent in French and can stumble around in Italian, an online course in Spanish just might do the trick. Bet I could learn enough to navigate the local commerce.

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s past time to learn Spanish!

Malicious Meandering??

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This morning, by early light of day: contemplating the unmistakable fact that SOMEONE — not me — turned off all the watering systems that my yard plants depend on to stay alive. That would be…

* the bougainvilleas
* the roses
* four bearing citrus trees
* the olives in front
* the ornamental trees in front…

…on and on.

This would have required them to turn off more than one faucet. In the back yard alone, they would have had to manually turn off water for a dozen individually irrigated trees and plants! And that doesn’t count the front yard and the east-side yard.

It may rain today — one can hope. We have a 61% chance, according to Wunderground. Not great…but better than 0%. So that would get the yard’s plants through a day of summer heat. Maybe…

At any rate, I’ve turned the system back on  — as best as I can, since that is not my métier. Yard Dude is the one who rides herd on the automatic watering. Hope I can catch him the next time he’s here…won’t he be pleased to be asked to check and fix everything!

The thing that I’m concerned about is…well…the perp may be another of my employees, one who does not like me (I didn’t hire her! my son did…) and who has already pulled another malicious little trick. At least, I’m pretty sure she’s the one who did it.

If I can catch her the act — or round up some convincing evidence — she’s gonna be fired instantly. But…she’s a pretty slippery character, and so I’m afraid it’s unlikely that I will catch her.

And if I can’t?  It leaves me with two choices:

  • Fire ALL the hired help and recruit new household and yard workers.
  • Or sell the house and move into the horrible old-folkerie.

Neither of those is an appealing option.

I’m afraid the first looks better (to me, anyway) than the second. Actually, for my workers it’s six of one, half-a-dozen of the 0ther: if I have to move out of my home, they’re all going to lose their jobs here, anyway.

ohhhhhh keerap!

BING BONG! 
BING BONG!!

Now what? 

Trot to the front door. City of Phoenix: they’re turning off the water in the neighborhood, for some sorta water system project they’re doing.

No sh!t, Jose?

Race around the house and yard. Turn off the outdoor faucets that were running on the landscape plants. Fill a big coffee pot with water…  Fill the Brita coffee filter pot with water….

Should have enough water for me (not the plants) to last all day. I hope.

This development raises another question:

Is it possible that whoever turned off all the watering systems in the back yard was NOT an annoyed and malicious cleaning lady, but THOSE guys?

Hmmmmmm…..  Not likely. City workers wouldn’t be suicidal enough to just barge into your backyard to get at your water panel, not with legions of guard dogs lurking around this neighborhood. Plus they don’t have a key to the gate, which is kept locked.

No. Whoever turned off every watering spigot in the back yard was someone who could access that back yard and who did the job maliciously. And I have a pretty fair idea who that someone was.

And if I catch her on camera as she’s up to whatever her next antic will be, she’ll be looking for another job.

Besides, it couldn’t have been the City’s guys! I was able to turn on all the watering zones less than an hour ago. If the men had turned off the water to the house, those zones wouldn’t have been working (so I could test them).

Nope. Coincidence notwithstanding, what has happened here is that some a$$hole came into my yard and, in 100-degree heat, and cut off the water to ALL of my plantings. That was probably done yesterday or before. This morning I went out to turn it back on in time to water the trees and shrubbery before it really gets hot today, and in doing so discovered that the whole system had been turned off.

Those guys wouldn’t have come into my yard and turned off my system, certainly not without my permission. Besides, if they’d turned off the water from their end, I wouldn’t have had any water coming into my yard to turn back on. What they were doing was asking me to turn it off. So…no…  Obviously, they didn’t pull that stunt on me.

Not Gettin’ Very Far…

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Tried to call the electrician to ask him to come over and fix whatEVER was done to the backyard lights. No answer. Left word.

So…that’s not very promising.

Guess I should call around until I find a craftsman who will come over — preferably today! — and fix those lights. But truth to tell, I do NOT feel at all good. And do not by any means feel like trying to chase down a new electrician.

Honestly: I’m so under the (very hot!) weather that I just can’t even contemplate doing battle with this stuff. The lights aren’t the only issue. We also have the watering system and the gate locks and…on and effin’ on.

No kidding:  It’s 9:30 in the morning, and we’re coming on to 100 degrees on the back porch. Make that in the shade of the back porch.

{chortle!} What do you suppose the temp is in San Francisco, whence I emanated and where I would very much like to go back? Hmmmm….

Jeez. Sunny and 67 degrees. They expect a high of 72.

***

WHY am I here in this God-forsaken place? 

Oh, yeah: Because the kid is here. 

What Next, Lord?

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It’s now an hour and a half later than when I wrote this morning’s post. I take it into my feeble little noggin to walk up to the nearby Albertson’s grocery store to pick up a few minor necessaries. Right….

Step out the front door and….

ROAR!!!!

Cop helicopter blasts overhead. Circles the neighborhood: round and round he goes, clearly searching for someone.

Someone you may be sure we do not want to get to know…

Back into the house. Lock the doors behind me. Double-check that all the other doors and windows are locked.

See why I find myself thinking, almost obsessively, about moving someplace else?

Ugh!

I really do begin to think that if I’m going to stay in a single-family home, I need to move down into my son’s neighborhood. Houses there are within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s overpriced market, plus a nearby aged shopping center hosts a large Fry’s supermarket.

Hafta say that I no longer feel safe in Phoenix.

O’course, I never did: you’d be a fool to think all was hunky and dorey in this place, wherever you live & whatever the time of day. But these days I do feel more uncomfortable than I used to.

I never used to feel unsafe inside my home, in broad daylight.

And that’s telling me it may be time to move.

But move where?

  • My son’s neighborhood? Frankly, it’s no safer there than here…in fact, it’s probably less safe.
  • Fountain Hills, whither my cousin betook herself? Very nice, very toney…but wayyyy too far from where my son lives.
  • Tempe, suburban home of Arizona State University? Meh! It’s about as bland as you can get. Does have, as one of its advantages, easy proximity to the many cultural activities at the university campus. But…how likely am I to take advantage of those things?
  • South Scottsdale, where my best friend and her husband lived for awhile after they returned to the Valley from an excursion in the Virgin Islands? No better than Tempe in the Meh! department.
  • Into an old-folkerie? The Beatitudes and Orangewood retirement “homes” await. Problem: I hate, loathe, and despise institutional living. And I’m not anxious to wind up my life in one of those places.

I can’t say that I exactly feel unsafe, here in the Hood. It feels more like…nuisanceferizing.

Yeah: one damnfool nuisance after another.

The cop flyovers are nuisances. No, I don’t feel at risk. But I do feel that I have to get up, close and lock all the exterior doors, and check the windows to be sure they’re secured shut.

Do I want to do without the cop flyovers? Hell, no! Those cops are all we have between us and a legion of sh!theads.

But…how wise is it, really, to stay here much longer?

Hotter Than the Hubs…Still

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Seven in the morning. The dog and I are back from the Morning Trudge. She’s taken up her position in the cool cave under the toilet. The human is desperately swilling iced tea.

Ugh! What an AWFUL morning! Hot and sticky and swampy…feels like hideous Saudi Arabia, there on the shore of the Persian Gulf where we lived for ten years. That was an awful place then. And this is an awful place just now.

We walked by our transplanted neighbor J’s house. It used to belong to SDXB, until he got spooked by Tony the Romanian Landlord and ran away to Sun City. In his panic, SDXB merrily sold the place for a pence to the City of Phoenix, who gave it away to a welfare case.

That lady is a sweetheart and a nice person to have as a neighbor. But she has neither the experience nor the cash to maintain an aging upper-middle-class house. Sooo…. the place has more or less gone to pot.

And of course, that affects property values for all of us.

Thank you, Big Brother! 

😀

Occasionally I think about moving down into M’hijito’s neighborhood. Centrally located, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store, madly gentrifying, steps from a bus line….  But…

But GAWD, do I hate moving! Even if the cost were irrelevant (which ain’t the case anymore!), packing up four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a dining room, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a two-car garage is more than I care to contemplate. Just. Too. Much. Work!

But…hmmm….  It might be worth it.

Just depends on which way the wind blows.

If the city continues to give away houses here, property values will tank. In that case, I won’t be able to get enough for this house to move into a comparably middle-class neighborhood, and when M’Hijito inherits this place, its value will be nil. So…

Could be worth selling out now and jumping to a more stable district.

My neighborhood is “less stable,” shall we say, because we are the next one south of a dangerous slum. The low-income district to the north of us is notorious, and it took some nerve (and maybe some stupidity?) to buy into our area.

Because of that neighboring blight, I was able to afford much nicer housing than I could have hoped to buy anywhere else in the central city or the East Valley.

Our area has stayed stolidly middle-class since I moved in — a good 15 years ago. But it’s beginning to look like that may not be the case much longer. The accursed city ran a train line up Main Drag West, conveniently bringing every bum in town up to our neighborhood. The nearby grocery stores are getting old…the infrastructure is getting old…everything is getting old. So…

It may be time to start thinking about moving elsewhere. Or consigning myself now to the inevitable old folks’ prison.

At any rate: for the moment…yes. The place is still pleasantly tidy and blandly middle-class. But how long will that be the case?

Anyone’s guess…