Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Holiday Confuse-a-Bat

by

😀  Ohhh-kayyy….  It’s Christmas Eve. WHAT am I supposed to be doing today?

Seriously: if we had a plan, I failed to enter it on the calendar. And since nothing can be entered with any certainty in the agèd brain, natcherly I cannot remember whether m’hijito and I had something up…or not.

I assume he’s going to his dad’s or to his friends’ place. His pals usually have a nice holiday shindig. But I don’t recall being invited to it this year…which doesn’t mean I wasn’t invited: only that I can’t remember.

DON’T get old, whatever ya do!!!!!

I kid you not. 

In the Department of Old Age, at this point of course (as you who have moved homes a time or three must know), you’re no doubt living in your last own-it-yourself home. Next one will either be a motel room in an old-folks’ institution or a box in the ground. Or maybe a nice urn for ashes.

But…gee! The other day Ruby and I were walking on the northerly fringe of Upper Richistan, along the bank of the canal bordering that tony district. And what should we see but…wow! THE coolest little tract of very pricey-looking patio homes, laid out along the river-like canal, below a view of the North Mountains. 

Hm.

It’s in a walled development, suggesting a well organized (yeah: expensive) homeowner’s association that takes care of the grounds and amenities.

Gosh.

Walk past, southeasterly.

On the way home, walk past it again, northwesterly.

Could we afford that????

Consider: no more monthly bills for the pool cleaning. No more monthly bills for Gerardo (Yard Dude) and his crew. Your monthly HOA bill no doubt would cover regular security guard service as well as the pool and grounds care.

Hm, indeed…

Very innaresting. I may go back and look at that place more closely; maybe watch for the next “For Sale” sign.

On the other hand…  My house has no nuisancey homeowners’ association to cope with. My yard and pool guys do what I ask them to do, not what they’re assigned to do by the local HOA. And from here I can walk (not have to drive) to not one, not two, but THREE very fine grocery stores, a computer store/repair shop, a Best Buy, and (as if I cared) an excellent restaurant.  If Ruby flies into a yap-fest, few of the neighbors can hear her, and none of them will belly-ache about it.

Hmmmm…

Yeah: no. I reckon this place is going to be the shack M’hijito inherits. If he wants to live here, bully for him. If not, he’ll net about half a million bucks for it. Between that and the value of his shack, he should be able to buy the Great Mansion of the Western World. Looks to me like the best strategy just now is to lay low and cling to my dollars.

And go skinny-dipping in my very own backyard pool! 

😀

Still Pre-Xmasing

by

M’hijito called and offered to drive me to the stores. Convenient, since my car has been glommed and apparently I’m never gonna get it back.

So this is one shopping jaunt I don’t have to make on foot. Would be nice if I could remember what I need to buy…  Ohhhh well…

He, then, presumably is on his way over here.

Ruby the Corgi seems just fine today. She must have eaten something that made her sick yesterday: probably some bug or some human detritus lurking in the yard.

Human: less fine. Hip still hurts so much I can barely hobble around. Oh well. Thass overrode, swa maeg thisse.

Well, hafta say this: I’m so glad I don’t live in Sun City, an hour’s drive away from the young man’s house. My present castle is only about 10 minutes from his place.

This allows me to impose on him with regularity. Today, for example, he’s schlepping up here to haul me to a grocery store.

Others who can be imposed upon do exist here. A guy catty-corner across the street drives an Uber cab for example. He’ll come trotting right over if you pester him.

Turns out we have not one, not two, not three but SIX Uber drivers residing here in the ‘Hood! Can you imagine? We never have to call an actual taxicab!

Weather is a little less spectacularly gorgeous than it was yesterday. Some humidity has rolled in, so the sky is a bit overcast — enough to be kinda gray — and the air feels a bit sticky. Not enough to bellyache about…but not Arizona’s usual spectacular winter weather.

Uh oh…here he is.

And so, AWAAAYYY….

Pillar to Post…and Back Again!

by

What a hoot! For unknown reasons, I got all revved up and launched on a Hike That Would Not Stop this afternoon.

Seriously: I’ve been walking for a good three hours. Pillar to post and back again… And highly entertained by that which is the same and that which has changed around the ‘Hood.

As a practical matter, a surprising amount of the landscape has evolved: newer, different, maybe even a little more upscale. Yet a lot remains in full plus ça change plus ça reste le même mode. It was just plain fun to walk through shopping strips and parking lots and clusters of stores that I’ve visited for years and yet hardly even noticed…so much are they part of the landscape.

Got some good exercise, and really enjoyed the long hike.

During all this, considering: DO I want to pack up and move back out to Sun City, there to join SDXB and his girlfriend? Would I feel safer a whole long way from the traffic and the homeless vagrants and the burglars and the whatnot?

Ultimately, as my feet took me back up the driveway to the front door, the thought that came to mind was Well, no! No, I do NOT want to move to Sun City. No, I wanna stay here. 

I love our neighborhood. I love our neighbors. I love the kids playing in the yards and streets. And I even love the cars and busses and trains rumbling up and down the surrounding main drags.

This is a fun, cool, down-home middle-class urban neighborhood: the sort of place where I feel right at home. And…I ain’t leavin’!

WOOT!

The Ole Guy…The Ole Neighborhood

by

Took a hike up to the corner shopping center, there to pick up some not-very-necessaries and socialize with the locals. On the way home, I walked through the  northwest corner of the ‘Hood, an area that SDXB and I used to frequent when he lived here in Phoenix (before he made his escape to Sun City). At the time, I dwelt closer to noisy, crime-ridden Nineteenth Avenue. SDXB and I used to walk all around in that quarter, just about every day.

One house we passed almost every day belonged to a fella we called “The Ole Guy.” What a nice man he was. He and his wife had lived here forever, and by the time SDXB and I came on the scene, they were gettin’ on in years. She was usually indoors, but he liked to putter around in his yard and with his car, and so he would often be out in front. SDXB and I would hang out with him for awhile as we made our rounds of the’Hood.

Well, of course as you know (if you read FaM much), SDXB decamped to Sun City, chased off by the noisy new light-rail and the blossoming crime rate.

My house is far enough from the damn trains that I can’t hear their racket. And as for the murderers, rapists,, and burglars? Make. My. Day, Gentlemen! 

Plus I had lived in Sun City, hated it, and never ever wanna go back there again. Any day I’d rather have crime than stodgey. 😀

So I stayed.

So did the Ole Guy — for awhile. But soon enough, he had to deposit his wife in a nursing home, pretty much trashing his life and his joy. He disappeared from the scene — believe he moved into the same old-folkerie — and the house was sold to some anonymous suburban types. Dunno that I’ve ever even seen the present owners.

If owners they are: they could be renters, for all I know. 😀

But oh my! I do miss the Ole Guy. What a nice man he was: to my mind an emblem of the neighborhood and all that’s good about it.

And I do miss SDXB, who seems to be living happily ever after in Sun City.

Not “happily” enough to lure me back out there. For one thing, SDXB has a lovely new girlfriend, and I surely wouldn’t want to intrude on that relationship. And for another….ohhhhh boy, did I ever hate living in Sun City. And I ain’t a-goin’ back out there, no many how many old friends of mine have decamped to the place.

So…dayum! I feel like I’m the Last Vestige of the Old Neighborhood.

Which is silly, of course. There are no vestiges: just people who move in and people who move out.

But I suppose the ironic and kinda funny thing about it is that nowadays I’m the equivalent of The Ole Guy. Yeah: the ancient resident who’s lived here since the pyramids were built: that one.

Why stay?

* Too much work to pack up and decamp. (Can you spell laziness?)
* Kids. Migawd, I do love the sound of kids playing! Why would you want to live in a mausoleum where no kidlets are allowed?
* Centrality. We are smack in the middle of everything. The main reason I was trotting around on foot is that M’hijito imagines an old bat shouldn’t be bucketing around the homicidal streets of Phoenix (NEVER have a kid who’s an insurance adjuster!), and so he has protectively purloined the Dog Chariot and  locked it up in his garage. B…F…D…, say I: my house’s location is so superbly central that I don’t need a car to get to several grocery stores (one or two of them damn fancy), a doctor, a dentist, a vet a..this, a that, and another thing. A train line and two bus lines go by right up the street. And an Uber driver lives two houses down from me.
* Upper-middle-class upper-middle-itude. The place is upscale but not upscale. Handsome, cleanly cared for, moderately priced. It is, in short: just my speed, when it comes to real estate.

So…really, this is almost as good as San Francisco used to be for me and my parents, where we never moved our car out of the garage more than once or twice a month.

I figure I can live here until I drop dead, or until I simply cannot walk a block or so. Whichever comes first.

LOL!

But it does have to be said: when you’ve lived in a place for a long time, you do miss your old neighbors and you do miss the good-ole-days. Someday, no doubt, someone will miss me and my funny-looking corgis. But until then…

Well. I intend to reign supreme!

😀

 

Free!! (??) I hope….

by

Woo HOOO! It looks suspiciously like this is NOT cleaning-lady day!

The wonderful Luz (Cleaning Lady from Heaven) is not parked in front of my neighbor’s house (she visits those neighbors before descending on me). It’s almost noon!  So…unless that dear woman picked up another client and has enjoyed scrubbing yet another shack before coming here, I’m FREEEEEE from having to pick up the pig-pen.

Mwa ha hah! Sure do hope so…

Isn’t that awful?  SOOOO lazy that I don’t want to be bothered to shovel aside the litter so she can get at a surface or three to clean!

The other day some obnoxious and nosy financial dudes visited the Funny Farm. This, supposedly for a bland chat…and…yeah. Transparently to nose around in my house and see how I live and probably to see if they can get me committed to an old-folkerie if I dwell in stacks of litter.

Fortunately, because the ineffable Luz was slated to come by in the near future, I had picked up the place and put all the dishes in the washer and stuffed the dirty clothes in the laundry and…voilà! It looked almost like someone civilized lived here.

That was lucky!

{whew!}

If I’m going to be spied upon like that, presumably by my son’s hired help, after this I’m gonna have to make the bed and pick up the clutter the minute I roll out of the sack.

Not that it’s a bad thing to tidy up the place the minute your feet hit the bedroom floor. But that it’s a damn nuisance…and an invasion of one’s privacy.

And it makes me wonder, seriously, if I should pack up and move out of the city.

But….where? 

That mystifies me 

First, because this neighborhood is about as ideal a neighborhood as I can imagine. The house is within easy walking distance of not one, not two, but THREE major (gourmet-style!!) grocery stores, a veterinary, a computer store, a hair stylist, and a Target.

Seriously: I don’t have to travel more than about five or six blocks to get everything needed for day-to-day living here. Truth to tell, I don’t even need to own a car to live here comfortably and conveniently.

Second, because the neighbors are very nice, very friendly. Even Tony the Romanian Landlord has mellowed out! This makes it a pleasant place to live.

Third, because a major regional hospital is about a four-minute ambulance ride from here. Dial 911, and the rescue guys (and gals) show up forthwith.

Fourth: because the crime level — not nil, of course — is surprisingly low for an urban neighborhood. Yes, of course I have fierce burglar-resistant screen doors on all the entrances, and of course they’re kept locked. But I don’t feel especially at risk, sitting here in the Funny Farm. In another neighborhood where we lived, I surely did.

Hmmmm……

Having those two clowns show up here and nose around was…disturbing, to say the least. I may have to hire the cleaning lady to come by once a week. Right now, I surely don’t do that…can’t afford it.

But…let’s think about that: I can afford weekly cleaning help one whole helluva lot better than I can afford to be locked up in a prison for old folks. That would make it easier for Luz to keep the place spotless, and also I could probably put her up to driving me to various retail stores.

So….

I think I should make a few minor changes to my routine: ones that would create the effect of major changes in my day-to-day lazy lifestyle:

  • Forgodsake MAKE THE GODDAM BED the minute Ruby and I roll out of the sack. Be sure the bedroom and bathroom are all tidied up.
  • Pick up the kitchen and stash the dirty dishes in the washer the minute I finish breakfast. Never leave stuff laying around the kitchen or dining room. {How lazy am I? Let us count the ways…}
  • Get in the habit of picking up the house before going to bed, rather than in the morning.

Hm. That probably would do the job, since I do not habitually lay around like a total slob. If some namby-pamby showed up here, assigned with the task of inspecting my living arrangements, they’d think I live like a cleaning lady. 😀  😀  😀

Seriously: pick up the clutter first thing in the morning, and no one who shows up later in the day will get any ideas about senility affecting my lifestyle.

Is it an invasion of my privacy?

Damn right! But nothing like the invasion of (nonexistent!) privacy that would be inflicted on me in one of those prisons for old folks.

Colder than a By-Gawd…

by

Yes: It’s quarter to ten in the morning and 55 degrees out there on the back porch.

Now, in the large scheme of things, that ain’t very cold. Especially not for mid-December. But for mystical, unknowable reasons, it seems damn cold! As my father used to say, Colder’n a by-gawd.

What exactly a by-gawd was (some sort of pagan deity???) and why a by-gawd was expected to be extra cold, I dunno. Or extra hot: it was possible for the day to become “hotter’n a bygawd.”

Arizona’s dry air does tend to mess up your perception of ambient temperature. In the summer, 100 degrees doesn’t seem all that hot. But in the winter, 55 degrees seems oddly chill.

The roar from the blasting fighter jet engines at Luke Air Force Base — just a few miles outside of Sun City — echoes all the way down here to our parts. And that’s a good 20 miles. WHAT a racket.

My mother, an inveterate patriot with a capital P, used to sit on her Sun City back porch in the early mornings and simper, over her coffee, “ohhhh, it’s the sound of FWEEDOM!”  

Yeah.

Well. No, Mom: it’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way.

Fortunately, WW III hasn’t quite made it to the back yard. Yet…

But that Air Force Base is one of the several top reasons that you couldn’t get me to move back to Sun City. The racket from those bombers. The hatred of anyone whose skin wasn’t dough-white. The dislike of young people in general (no, do NOT move in with your parents over summer vacation!!!). The mediocrity of the grocery stores. (Hey: old people’s taste buds are dead, so why try to sell them decent food?). Horrible place!

SDXB and New Girlfriend are still holding forth out there. The place is just his speed, of course. She was already there when they met, so I assume Sun City must be to her taste, too.

Last I heard, SDXB was mightily sick. N.G. was trying to attend to him, but she’s even more superannuated than I am, so that job may be beyond her. She’s such a nice lady: I hope she doesn’t lose him…now or anytime in the foreseeable future.

***

Welp, pretty soon now I should get off my duff and trot up to one of the nearby grocery stores. Yes: that is one the several ways in which this district excels over (un)lovely Sun City: we have not one, not two, but THREE excellent grocers within easy walking distance of my house.

* An Albertson’s
* A Sprouts
* A Fry’s

Plus an automobile mechanic, a hair stylist, a pet store, a veterinarian, an optometrist, a computer store, a Target, a drugstore, two sit-down restaurants and unnumbered fast-food joints…on and on. WHY would anyone want to live anywhere else?

😀 Okay, okay: it’s true. SDXB refuses to eat in restaurants, so for him, that detail counts for nothing toward our neighborhood’s livability quotient. He doesn’t keep pets….okay: no vet needed. He has virtually perfect vision…grrrr!  So it’s not hard to see why he fails to regard the ‘Hood as in any way superior to (un)lovely Sun City.

As for moi: I feel like I absolutely fell into it when my Realtor brought me to this place. It simply could NOT be better for a middle-class singleton living in a free-standing house.

The apartment blocks across Main Drag West have, it is true, pretty much filled up with some less-than-desirable neighbors. A cop was shot in the hallway of one of those buildings over there. So…yeah: I do have to keep the possibility of moving elsewhere in the back of what passes for my mind.

And…I do think that if I end up having to move because of real estate deterioration, it’ll be closer to M’hijito’s house. He lives within easy walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Market. So I can imagine buying a place down there. Also, a couple of pretty Fancy-Dan high-rise apartment buildings reside in that direction…right on the lightrail line.

So….if I felt like economic & social pressures would dictate that I’d better move before I start to lose a lot of money on this house, I probably would move down into his district…assuming it looks like he’ll stay in those parts for a good while longer. If he moved to some other part of the Valley, I’d prob’ly trail after him. If he left the Valley…???  I dunno: in that case, I might move into one of those high-rises.

Maybe.