Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

She’s B-a-a-a-c-k…

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You lucky souls! 😉

What can I say? Apparently earlier efforts on my part to get back into FaM  failed because of my superb dork-up powers. Our wonderful Web guru, Grayson Bell, has not only put Funny about Money back online but even managed to teach its proprietor how to get back in.

Probably. We shall see as soon as we hit “Publish.”

One nightmare hassle after another in these parts. Wrestling with the state driver’s license office…over, from what I can tell, absolutely nothing. Finally got them to issue the current driver’s license, replete with a hideous photo. Mercifully (…i guess…) it doesn’t have to be renewed again until 2030. By then I’ll no doubt be driving around Heaven with the angels.

This afternoon, my poor beset son is dragging me clear across the Valley to see a neurologist about the stubborn case of peripheral neuropathy that’s been haunting me for the past several weeks. NATURALLY, as soon as one gets in a doctor’s door, the ailment disappears. The buzzing, tingling, and burning are, as of this minute, about 90% or even maybe 95% gone. Left to my own devices, I’d cancel today’s appointment. But since he’s been worried about this…thing, whatever it is…I’m quietly hunkering down and letting him haul me out there.

Understand: we’re talking about a 40-minute trek (one-way!) through horrible traffic. If that doesn’t set off your nerves, nothing will!

Ohhh well… Just now we loaf on the back patio, soaking up a spectacularly beautiful morning. High cirrus clouds wisp across a gorgeous blue sky. North Mountain, a favorite hiking venue, looms above the neighbor’s house. If I had any sense, I’d be up there on a trail now, racking up an hour of exercise time. But…as we know, I haven’t any sense. 😀

New Day in the ‘Hood

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Come 11:00 a.m. out there on the sheltered streets of the ‘Hood…it’s really quite lovely. Today will tend toward the Warm side…but just now it’s pleasant enough: not too hot. People and their adorable kids are out in their front yards.

Two of the Adorables were attracted by Ruby the Corgi, who’s kinda adorable herself. They had to dote upon her and walk along with us for a ways. 😀  And so another friendship was made in Heaven.

Meanwhile, my calendar is a mish-mash of conflicting notes. At one point, it appears, the ineffable VC and I planned to meet today. Apparently we changed that to tomorrow morning, but I can’t tell from my scribbles whether we’re supposed to meet at 9:45 or at 11:30 a.m. or…what?????

No clue which is correct. I’m sleepy and do not feel like wrestling with the email to get this right. I’ll try to call her this afternoon; failing that, then compose and send a query by email.

Ugh! Don’t get old, whatever ya do!

 

 

 

Real Estate…Run Amok!

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!Jayzuz!!!  Just look at the INSANE prices for houses in our old neighborhood! Just a few lots down the street from our place: $1.3 MILLION.

We paid 30 grand for our house there — the first home we co-owned with a bank — and thought that was just outrageous. Lookit that, for 1900 square feet! Our house was 3,300 square feet…

These shacks are all within walking distance of our old house:

Good lord!!

Well, I guess I’m damn lucky to have this house up in a North Central district. And to have it paid off. By the time we’re ready to sell it, the thing will be worth enough to purchase the moon.

Actually, I hope I’m able to stay here until I croak over. Then M’jihito will get the house — and presumably the proceeds of its sale — which will allow him either to pay off his own house or to sell it and move into my paid-off shack. Or to move wherever he pleases.

Not sure he even wants to stay in the Phoenix area. He’s talked about moving back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a little hickish for my taste…but if he could get this kind of money on the sale of my house and his, he could live like a king there.

Is There a Place for Me?

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{sigh} As I grow to hate the noise and the crime and the loony toons more and more, I wonder: IS there a place for me in (un)lovely Central Arizona?

Quite possibly not.

North Central Phoenix, where the Funny Farm presently resides, is…what?

* Aging

* Cheaply built, by and large (okay, okay: but better than most newer districts)

* Crime-ridden (no, I would not live here without a pistol and a dog. Why do you ask?)

* Spectacularly noisy

* Low on decent schools (you have to put your kid in private or parochial school if having them learn anything matters to you)

* Segregated (but so is everyplace else around here: Arizona is, after all, a Southern state)

* Hotter than the Hubs: essentially unlivable during the summer, for many folks

So… If I weren’t here in Noise Central, where would I be?

Sure wish I was at the ranch, yea verily even as we sit here and contemplate the local lunacy.

La Maya & La Bethulia moved to the Monterey area in California. Beautiful spot.

But…I can’t afford to live in California, not even (like them) in a trailer. Nor do I especially want to: habitable parts of that state are crowded, noisy, hectic, and spectacularly expensive.

So….where would I go, if I could?

Dunno. The Oro Valley outside of Tucson, maybe. It’s bit on the annoyingly suburban side for my taste: not fond of driving halfway to Timbuktu to fill a grocery cart.

Prescott, a small town up on the Rim north of Phoenix, is very pretty and has its charms. Expensive, though. Lacking in the big-city amenities I’ve come to expect.

Flagstaff: Colder’n’a by-gawd during the winter. Also lacking in little amenities like decent medical care and upscale grocery stores.

Yarnell: a wide spot in the road on the road from Wickenberg to Payson, waaayyy out in the middle of nowhere. Quiet, relatively cool, pleasantly hick-ridden. Our ranch was located just outside of Yarnell.,..and boyoboy, I sure do miss it!

Fountain Hills: A pricey suburb on the northerly edge of Scottsdale. Nice, toney area. My cousin lives there: not necessarily a recommendation, since she decided, some years ago and for unknown reasons, that she can’t stand my existence.

Sun City: Hate Central. And directly under the flight path for the daily jet airplane exercises at Luke Air Force Base. Noooo, thankee!

Truth to tell, there really isn’t anyplace within reasonable living distance of my son’s place and my own stomping grounds that I can even begin to afford. I’m incredibly lucky to have snabbed the Funny Farm before real estate prices rose into the stratosphere, and certainly could not afford to buy anything comparable within reasonable traveling distance of my son’s place.

Drivin’…Drivin’…Drivin…

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Had to cruise through the district called Moon Valley y’day. It’s a sub-suburb of the North Phoenix area. A dear friend and her husband — both now Late with a capital “L” — used to live there… I drove past their house, which, amazingly enough, is still standing.

“Amazingly,” I say, because the architecture up there is SUCH sh!t…it really is hard to believe those places remain upright. 😀

What junk. At the time my friends moved in, I went up to do some repairs and upgrades — yes, my daddy DID teach me how to use a hammer, a screwdriver, and a paint brush. And I was just astonished at the pi$$-poor construction. The walls and floors were such cardboard that when you stood there painting, barefooted, you could feel the heat radiating into the structure a good three feet along the exterior walls and into the living room. You don’t even wannna know what their summer power bills must have been!

Still…despite the junk building, it’s kind of a pretty area: upper-middle-class, neat and tidy, nestled in among the desert hills.

Drove all over the tract, wondering if I’d like to sell the Funny Farm and move up there.

And…well…the answer is No. Not on your life!

While my house isn’t exactly Buckingham Palace, it’s nevertheless reasonably sturdy. Centrally located. Almost within walking distance of my son’s house. Absolutely walking distance to an Albertson’s supermarket, a beloved Sprouts fancy-Dan overpriced grocery store, a storefront doctor’s office, and a train line that would take you to the ultra-beloved AJ’s market and to the kid’s house, if you had the patience to deal with Phoenix’s public transit.

{sigh} I do miss my friends, though. They were a good 20 years older than me, so it’s not surprising that they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. But gosh. They were fun and smart and full of ginger!

Why can’t humans live forever?

Soggy Doggy Day

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Just this minute: back in the door from a 90-minute Dawg Walk. At 9:15 ayem, it’s not exactly hot out there. But it’s warm. And it’s stuffy. Jet engines roar from the precincts of Luke Air Force Base. {chortle!} If you think that racket is annoying, you ain’t heard nothin’ and you don’t live in Sun City, right beneath the jets’ take-off pattern.

We ran late enough to miss the thickest swarms of morning Dawg Walkers. So: no near-dogfights, no zig-zagging back and forth across the streets to avoid the neighbors’ affectionate (heh!!) fur-babies. That was good.

We made it all the way up to Main Drag North, a path that takes us past the former home of a dear old Arizona Highways colleague, now long gone and much missed. Jerry Jacka, his name was. What a marvelous man he was!

So much missed, indeed… those wonderful Highways days! Wonderful people, fun work, great adventures.

But…nothing lasts forever, eh?

Jerry’s house — former house, I guess: someone else has the place now — is just a couple of acre-size lots south of Main Drag North. A perfectly horrible conduit of traffic and racket now…in the good ole’ days when Jerry and Lois built up there, it was out in the country. Serious country: mostly cotton fields and citrus orchards.

I used to drive past it (little knowing then about its occupant!) on the way from my parents’ house in Sun City (waaayyy out in the country then!) to my law-office job in downtown Phoenix. This was soooo long ago that it was before my job at Arizona Highways, which itself came after the bachelor’s degree and the stint at a major law firm. 😀

Who’d’ve thunk it, eh?