Coffee heat rising

aging

Argh! What next, Lord?

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Why does everything crash on your head at once?  Ever notice that? Let one thing go wrong, and EVERYTHING ELSE goes haywire!

Just now I’m trying to cook a piece of salmon on the grill…and not having much luck. Appears the gas burners are on the fritz.

They seem to be burning..but…on “low as low can go.” Can’t fire the thing up enough to actually COOK the meat.

This, …

  • While my son has purloined my car, so I can’t get to a repair shop
  • While it’s so hot you can hardly breathe out there
  • While the babysitter my son hired to supervise my every moment (and prevent me from sipping a glass of wine…) hasn’t shown up — and probably went to the home of a neighbor whose street number is the same as mine (just one block north)
  • While I don’t have anything else in the fridge and so need that grill to work…or else will have to cope with a giant mess in the kitchen

Yep: the grill is definitely busted. I’m probably gonna have to buy a new one. And that’ll set me back a couple hundred bucks. Or more.

Uhhhhh….

Waaait-a-minute… The damn thing is set on “Low”!  Whaaa????  No wonder it won’t cook the fish!

That’s a mistake I’ve never made before…not in a good 50 years of outdoor grilling!!!  Senility: it’s sneakin’ up!

Or maybe it’s galloping up….

 

Egad!! No Doggy-Walks Here…

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Get this! Wunderground says today’s high is supposed to be 111 degrees. You saw that right: a hundred and eleven degrees! 

Where does this damn place think it is? Saudi Arabia?

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer reads 110 degrees…in the shade of the north-facing back porch. A covered porch. A ventilated covered porch…

Holeee sheee-ut!

We do have salmon and shrimp and accouterments that can be cooked up on the barbecue today. But tomorrow…well… Tomorrow I’ll have to walk(!!!) to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts to restock the supplies. And that will be a challenge.

I may see if I can get the neighborhood Uber driver to tote me over there…but…whaddaya bet that guy won’t feel any enthusiasm for getting on the road as dawn cracks?  And I sure don’t wanna be slamming around in the heat.

Let’s see…what time do these worthy retailers open?

  • Albertson’s:  6:00 a.m.
  • Sprouts: 7:00 a.m.
  • El Rancho: 6:00 a.m.

Hmmmm…  The El Rancho is closer. But the Albertson’s is a far better store for a middle-class shopper.

If I leave the house at 5:45, I could get to the store just as they’re opening. Grab the loot. Pay up. Gallop out the door…and maybe get back here by 7:00 a.m.

Or so…

Actually, that might not be too bad. Except that I don’t wanna start charging around at that hour. And toting groceries six or eight blocks through questionable territory doesn’t sound like much fun.

Also, one thing I’ve discovered over the kerjillion years that I’ve lived here: there’s a route through the neighborhood that comes out on the back side of the Albertson’s shopping center. That would allow me to get down there and yet dodge the jerks screaming obscenities at me.

Hm. They open at 6:00…okayyy… I might get back here by 7:00 — surely no later than 7:30. It would still be hot outside, but not yet hotter than Hell.

Dare not walk down there in the evening. For one thing, it’ll be hotter than the Hubs, all right: after a full day of Arizona sun blasting. But more to the point: whatever the weather, it’s just not safe. Too many jerks, assholes, and predators roam around between here and that shopping center.

Been there, done that, ain’t doin’it again!!

Really: what a place to live. If my son weren’t just down the road, I’d pull up stakes and head for either north Scottsdale or (un)lovely Sun City. Sure wouldn’t stay in central or north Phoenix: it truly isn’t safe.

I don’t wanna live in Sun City. Been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again. BUT…at least in a ghetto for old folks, you don’t have a$$holes screaming obscenities at you as you walk to the nearest grocery store.

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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Hot, humid, NASTY day. Back-porch thermometer says it’s only 98 degrees out there. (This: at sunrise!)  Add another 10 to that, and you get a feel for this morning’s balmy temperature.

The air outside is so wet it almost feels like Arabia….and where we lived was right on the (icky, sticky) shore of the Persian Gulf. No water dripping off the eaves, though. Out there, that was a phenomenon we used to wake up to, when the air was like this.

Too gummy outside to take the dawg for a walk. So…we’re becalmed in the house, loafing in the breeze of an electric fan set to “high.”

Once again, I’m brought around to the Classic Question of my daily living: Do I really want to stay here for the rest of my conscious life? 

Well…. 

The answer is yes, primarily — maybe only — because my son is here. If he were to move on, I probably would pull up stakes, too.

Where would I go?

Ideally, back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

But of course, I can’t afford that. {chortle!} Even back when I had a job, I couldn’t afford it.

Hmh. Think o’that: A Ph.D. and umpty-umpteen years of university teaching experience will not get you into a home in the place where you want to live! 

Jeez.

Why am I here?

Because my dear parents spotted Sun City as we were driving through the state one day. Oh my! They were so thrilled!!  Imagine: a whole, gigantic housing tract with NO KIDS.

Seriously: my father hated kids, especially when they were tearing around outside during his daily nap. Why he let his wife have me…that’s a question that escapes me. I think it was because my mother’s grandmother nagged them into spawning a child: she wanted a grandchild, and she thought my mother should absolutely positively NOT go childless.

At any rate, we’re here because Sun City banned children: a brilliant innovation, to my father’s mind. As soon as he could retire, he dragged us here. I was sent off to Tucson — to the University of Arizona — and they settled into stodgy retirement.

And the place was de facto strictly segregated. My father didn’t want any n*****s around him…no way, no how. And apparently that still holds, out there on the (un)lovely west side. One of my friends — who happens to be of the dusky persuasion — bought a house out there. He lasted about six months before he was hounded out!

Lovely Uptown Phoenix is not the only moderately desirable place to live here, though. If M’jito were to go back to the Bay Area — which I decidedly can no longer afford — I would probably move either to a suburb in the hills outside of Tucson or to a tract of standardized housing on the east side of Scottsdale. Both districts have better weather. And my guess is, the crime rate is probably lower in either place.

Sun City? Not my style! {heh!} A suburb built on Hate. 

Just groovy.

Gone Good Ole Days

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You know you’re too old when the “Good Old Days” appear, in your mind, to be infinitely better than the BS we encounter nowadays.

Example at hand: Today my son is dragging me out to the Mayo Clinic for some sort of annoying consultation with one of their quacks. Nothing was said to me about this until THIS MORNING. So now I have to clean myself up and get dressed and figure out what on EARTH to say to the quack of the day (no two are ever the same out there). I have no idea why this appointment was made, and exactly no desire to waste a third to half the day driving halfway to Timbuktu, sitting around their waiting room, mumbling on to some doctor who neither knows nor cares what (if anything) ails me, and then trudging all the way back across the Valley to get home.

In the “Good Old Days,” the Mayo Clinic was right up the road from our neighborhood. It was a ten-minute drive to get to their parking lot, and a five-minute stroll into the building. Now we have to traipse to east Scottsdale for a consult.

The doctors there weren’t a lot less patronizing than the ones we now encounter on the far east side of Scottsdale. But my good old “Doctor in the Wild” (as the Mayo set calls doctors who work elsewhere) has moved to Sun City, of all things. So he’s lost me. Because…

a) Sun City is halfway to California from here. If I have to drive an hour each way, it’s gonna be…yeah…to a Mayo doctor, not to some guy practicing “in the wild.”

b) My son thinks the Mayo quacks can do no wrong. So…whatever they say — no matter how far out in left field — elicits no argument from his precincts. That…I suppose…is a good thing.

c) And in my (horrific!!!) experience, doctors who practice in Sun City can do no right.

The horror show that visited my mother when my parents’ bastardly, incompetent Sun City doctors attended her through her (hypochondriacal, we were told) death throes….oh, my! I wouldn’t go near another doctor who practices out there: not even the beloved Young Dr. Kildare.

At any rate: back to the Mayo. I cannot think of anything I’d LESS rather do than traipse all the way across the Valley (a 45-minute drive each way) to sit there and try to communicate with a doctor who assumes I’m a nit-wit.

Seriously: any which way you turn, it’s damned hard to find a doctor who is

a) competent;
b) humane;
c) not patronizing;
d) willing to pay attention to you;
e) can actually hear what you say;
f) and practices within reasonable driving distance of where you live.

And these are the reasons I’ve learned to loathe going to doctors. They don’t like women; they don’t like educated women; and they especially don’t like older women.

God Bless Great Neighbors!!!

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Yeah: I mean that literally. We have THE best neighbors on this street: the nicest people, and those people are willing to help a brain-boggled old lady.

Thanks to these fine folks, our brand-new vacuum cleaner is now functional (noooo..it did NOT work right out of the box…you expected a frog?). Haven’t tried to clean house with it yet — that actually is the job for The Cleaning Lady from Heaven. But I wanted to be sure it actually works before she shows up here to wrestle with it. And yeah: looks like it’s running right.

I hope.

Meanwhile, the same fine folks are, in real life, accountants. (Not vacuum-cleaner repair techs!) They ride herd on my incompetent bookkeeping — somebody has to do it. And now it looks like they’re going to be willing to work with my son to keep my money matters in order and to keep him fully informed.

And that, my friends, is HUGE. 

No kidding! As more and more marbles roll out my ears, I get less and less competent to do even the routine daily money tracking. As you can imagine, this creates some fine headaches for my son! So…if things work out the way I hope, they may be able to relieve him from a gigantic PITA, while they help to keep the finances under control.

I sure do hope it works out that way!!!

Man!!! Don’t get old, my friends!

Hotter Than the Hubs….Still….

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6:00 p.m. and the thermometer reads 101 degrees: in the shade of the covered back porch. 

Ugh!  What a garden spot we live in!

What was that I was scribbling, a day or two ago, about wishing I could be living back in San Francisco?  Where I belong….

And…what kind of worm could possibly have crawled into my parents’ brains to give them the idea that nothing would do but what we must move to Arizona?

….But what they must buy a house in ugleee Sun City, beneath the melodic roar of the Luke Air Force Base fighter jets?

….But what they must send their daughter to school at the University of Arizona? (That would be the daughter who was set to enroll in UC Berkeley…)

….And then, after she graduates, move her into their ugleee Sun City home and have her live there with them until she finishes trade school and gets a job in downtown Phoenix?

Well, I’ll tellya: for them, it was the right move. 

My mother dearly LOVED Sun City. Lived there in joy and contentment until her tobacco habit killed her.

My father evidently liked Sun City, too. He made no sign that he wanted to move out of their cute little house after she died. And when he remarried, he and the Dragon Lady lived there until they capitulated to old age and moved into an old-folkerie in central Phoenix. A prison for old folks, that was.

That place made Sun City look good, for sure. From my point of view, anyway.

My mother’s dying brought an end to the joy in my father’s life, pretty much once and for all. The New Wife did nothing to revive his happiness: she was a witch who tormented me and made him understand the value of what he had lost in my mother.

Oh well: 20 years later, here we still are in Lovely Uptown Arizona, baking away in the heat, luxuriating in bird-brained conservative politics, plodding along day by day.

As you might gather by the tone of this post, I’m not nuts about Arizona. If I could move away, I would. But as long as my son is here, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Plus I doubt if nowadays I could afford to live in the Bay Area, which really is the only place on this earth I’d prefer to live.

{chortle!} Think o’ that…  Where have I lived? 

Long Beach, California
San Francisco, California
Alameda, California
Berkeley, California
Sun City, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
Beirut, Lebanon
London, England
Tunbridge, England

On & on…helle’s belles, I can’t remember them all!

Nor, one might add, do I want to….