Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

The Great Clothespin Caper

by

Well, I finally got a box of wooden clothespins ordered up.…received, and hidden inside the garage. So that little caper is resolved.

Yeah: Believe it or not, some a$$-hole actually STOLE THE BAG OF CLOTHESPINS that hung off my clothesline. No kidding!

The clothesline resides in the shelter of the side porch, on the west side of the house. Some sh!thead workman who was at my house lifted the clothespins and made off with them the other day.

Thank the Heavens for Amazon!  Since I’m no longer allowed to drive a car, I would be out of luck, since there’s no way I could walk to a local dime store or Target to buy another batch of clothespins. Can you imagine?

This new collection will have to reside inside the garage, adding another small layer of inconvenience to the Hassle Factors that now, more and more, characterize my daily life.

But just think of that: I actually have to hide my clothespins to keep some clown from stealing them!

Y’know, it’s the kind of thing I would have expected when we lived in Saudi Arabia. There, Americans (and Europeans…and any other aliens) were regarded as depraved and godless heathens. The locals felt entitled to steal anything that wasn’t red-hot or nailed down. But here? In the land of the free, the home of the brave? Clothespins???? 

Jeez. If you’re gonna steal something, steal something that’s worth some cash.

{chortle!} Speaking inconveniences inflicted by the army of workmen: One of the turkeys, for reasons I cannot imagine, hauled my gas barbecue off its brick stand, hauled it out into the middle of the backyard and LEFT IT THERE, parked in the dirt.

Well…it’s already 6:30. Ruby and I had better get going on the morning’s dog-and-human walk. Pretty quick, we’ll have another army of nuisances at the front door…and if I don’t get a mile of walking in every day, this damned spavined hip freezes right up. Speaking of nuisances… 😮

Don’t get old, kids…whatever ya do!

Swampy Dampy Day

by

Uch!  Just back from an attempted doggy-walk. That was a serious FAIL!!!

The air is thick with moisture….literally. Feels almost like you’re walking through Jell-O out there. No exaggeration!

The human needs to make a grocery-store run…but that ain’t gunna happen today,  not without a car. My dear son, as you recall, managed to confiscate the Dog Chariot, so I am stuck here in the ‘Hood, on foot, with no viable means of transport other than paying for a cab.

No, don’t even ask about the public (heh!) “transportation” here.

An Uber driver dwells across the street…but no, I’m not about to trot over to his house and lean on his doorbell at 7:30 in the morning.

You can arrange someone to deliver groceries. But that’s a pretty hilarious joke! Americans don’t eat decent food and they don’t cook. So when you ask some poor soul to pick up a pile of groceries on a list, you get…  Well… Something between har har and ugh! 

This leaves me with having to walk six or eight blocks (each way!) to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts or the Fry’s, or else trying to mooch a ride with a neighbor. Or paying through the schnozola to get a cabby to drive me back and forth.

At any rate, I ain’t about to walk to any of the local stores through this grim weather. So…hope for the best in the freezer! 😀

Lovely Sodden Walk!

by

Ohhh, my goodness!  It’s SOOO HUMID out there — hideously reminiscent of sodden, ugly Saudi Arabia — that after a few blocks of idle strolling through the morning doggy-walk, I came back to the Funny Farm absolutely DRENCHED!

Drenched in sweat? Drenched in dew from the humidity?

Dunno. All I know is it’s hot, it’s wet, and I’m soaked from head to foot.

Walked past our new  friend Josie’s house: she of the recent homeowner’s disaster. She’s the one who moved into SDXB’s house after he moved to Sun City: the county actually gave it to her! It’s a very nice house…or…uhm…it was. As we passed, we saw all the carpeting pulled out and dumped, higgledy-piggledy, in the yard.

Yeah. A pipe under the kitchen sink sprang a leak. By the time Josie noticed it, water had POURED out and flooded the kitchen the  laundry room, the dining room, and the living room.

Basically, the house was ruined.

Presumably, though, Big Brother in all His taxpayer-funded generosity will cover the repairs. Sure hope Our Benefactors will buy her some new carpeting, too.

***

This sort of thing leads me to wonder, every time some such fiasco occurs, if I should move somewhere else. Maybe where the houses are newer, or at least not so cheaply built? Maybe someplace further away from a dangerous, crime-ridden slum?

I dunno. Unless you decamp to Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, or Sun City, anywhere in Maricopa County is gonna bring you elbow-to-elbow with the high-crime set. And frankly….I’m just too lazy to pack up a four-bedroom shack and move 20 or 30 miles across the Valley. Nor do I want to end up that far from my son.

Yet…yeah, maybe I really should. 

But where would I go that I could afford and that would also take me away from the High Drama? And how, after all, could one live through the boredom without Tony the Romanian Landlord, all our pet burglars, the drag races six blocks to the north, the oglers and the rapists in the central park,…seriously! How boring!

No, as long as M’hijito stays in Central Phoenix, I’ll probably keep this shack. It IS a nice place, after all, with a gorgeous pool and overall pleasant neighbors and public transit coming out the wazoo and an outstanding regional hospital within walking distance. In many ways, it’s actually better than any other place I’ve ever lived.

FOUND IT! But…..

by

So yesterday I was bellyaching because I couldn’t find my gas grill’s outdoor cover — not a cheap item. Figured one of the gerjillion workmen had made off with it.

Nope. That was ungracious of me!

Found it. But…but…

The reason it seemed to be disappeared is that some idiot stashed it away, after he had hauled the grill a good long distance from the brickwork pad where the thing resides. He left it way out on the far end of the backyard. Uncovered and open to the elements…which at this time of year are considerable.

Jayzuz!

So this morning I managed to drag the (heavy!) grill back to the patio by my little girlie self and reposition it on its brick pad. And then…

In the process, I finally found the plastic/fabric cover that goes over it: put the whole lash-up back in place, on its pad outside the fireplace chimney. (Yeah: yesterday I’d had to jury-rig a cover out of black plastic garbage bags!)

Dripping sweat by now: this is a July day in lovely uptown Phoenix. Hot, still, and humid to the point of soggy.

Tape a sign to the brickwork:

PLEASE!!!
DO NOT DRAG THE GRILL 
OFF THE BRICKS AND 
LEAVE IT IN THE YARD!!!!

What the f*ck IS THE MATTER with people? How can you  be so FREAKING STUPID that it doesn’t occur to you that maybe a homeowner placed a heavy appliance in a specific spot because THAT’S WHERE SHE WANTS IT?

Godlmighty, but people are stupid!

Honestly. This kind of sh!t begins to make an apartment in an old-folkerie look good. I’m starting to understand why retirees sell up and move themselves into institutions…where someone else takes care of most of the ditz.

***

Okay, if I’m going to stay here (a prospect that begins to look dimmer and dimmer), after this when some workman is bouncing around, I’ll have to go out there and supervise the ba*tard. 

Dayum! Really and truly, I do NOT want to live in one of those prisons for old buzzards. But…it’s beginning to look ominously unlikely that I’ll be able to cope with this kind of BS for many more years. Or even for many more months. 

Glub!

by

Hot! AND muggy. What a gummy, awful day! Pushing 90 degrees at 7:15 a.m., in 39% humidity.

Oh! There’s pool dude…speakin’ of jobs you’re glad you don’t have! How he manages to clean pool after pool after pool in this hot, sticky weather, I can’t even imagine. Just cleaning my own pool is almost more than I can cope with: on a cool, dry day.

That guy is one of the crew that makes it possible to stay in my home…and not have to move into some baby-sitting old-folkerie.

Hmmmm….  Let’s see…how many folks DOES it take to keep me here?

1. Pool Dude
2. Cleaning Lady from Heaven
3, 4, 5. Gerardo and his crew
6. Plumber
7. Electrician
8. Uber driver

At least! And that’s not counting my son, who does the work (and the thinking) of about 10 people.

No doubt there are more. Fair number of baby-sitters, eh?

Don’t know when it’s EVER been so hot-and-muggy. What a nasty morning! Definitely not a day that you’d like to spend working outdoors. 

RELIEVED…

by

…of running around in the sun!  Whew!!!

WonderAccountant and I planned to get together this afternoon: meeting at her place. This would entail my having to walk over there…through 108-degree heat, according to the back porch thermometer.

Well. Ruby the Corgi and I have already traipsed through the heat, thankyouverymuch, and I can tellya: assuredly I don’t want to walk across even the one blacktop road between here and the WonderAccountants’ place!

Mercifully, when I called to arrange this forthwith, she suggested we put it off to another day.

YES!!!!!

Not to say HOOOOORAAAHHHH!

Yah: this was a chore that I absolutely positively was NOT in the mood for today. Any task that involves anything even remotely resembling math (of any variety) is over my furry little head. That’s why I hire WonderAccountant to handle my books, and it’s why M’hijito rides his stallion behind her to check on it and keep himself aware of what’s going on.

So: that was escaped.

And so was the (very short) trip across the broiling asphalt between our houses. Ugh!

Honestly, I’m coming to dislike living in Arizona more and more as the seasons turn. Spring and summer here, taken together, form a variety of Hell, so unholy is the heat. Just walking across the street entails armoring your feet with thick-soled shoes.

Where would I go, if I could escape this place?

Well. The San Francisco Bay Area would be my first choice. Either Parkmerced, where my mother and I lived when we first came back from Arabia and my father (a Merchant Marine deck officer) shipped out of the East Bay, or Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

Of course, I couldn’t afford to live in either of those places…but it’s something to daydream about. 😀

Failing that? Well…here in Arizona: we have Prescott, an upscale college town to the north of us. Or the Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson.

Otherwise? In general: meh! There aren’t many venues that are better than this place. Summers here suck, but the rest of the year, the climate is lovely. The district where I live is solidly middle-class, ringed with pleasing stores in easy walking distance of my house.

Truth to tell, I’d just as soon live out the rest of my life right here!