Ayup! It’s another gray, soggy morning in (un)lovely Arizona.
Hot
Muggy
Stuffy
Dim
Whatever you touch goes HAYWIRE
Why is that? The Haywire Effect, I mean. Most of the time, life the universe and all that goes along peaceably enough. But nay verily! Not today!
It truly is an unpleasant morning. Hot and overcast. The air: just sticky.
Ruby and I need some grocery-store loot. But what with His Lordship having kiped my car, I would have to walk to the nearest store, a quarter-mile or more from the Funny Farm. And weirdly enough, I do NOT want to traipse around out there in that wet, soggy heat.
Blech!!! I may call our Uber guy a little later…see if I can persuade him to schlep me to a grocer and then sit around twiddling his thumbs while I traipse through the store. Just think how well THAT will go over.
Oh, well. Later. Some things will wait until later.
Much later.
I had planned to pester M’hijito this morning by jangling up his phone and inviting him to visit the Old-Folkerie of my father’s choice, Orangewood: now much spiffed up since his day. And, you can bet, much increased in price. They gave it a pricier-sounding name, too: The Terraces. La de da!
How can I count the ways I do not want to live in an institution?
Almost as many ways as I don’t want to live in an ordinary, noisy, boring, annoying apartment house.
Ohhhh well. The Funny Farm continues in excellent shape. It’s paid for. The neighborhood is relatively safe (except for Gangland Central, a couple miles to the north). All that’s lacking is a car (my son having extracted mine)…and given our location, the truth is that you don’t need a car here to get by just fine.
Frankly… I’m now thinking that it would cost a whole lot less and and annoy me a whole lot less to hire workers to come in and provide the services that you get from an Orangewood-style old-folks’ warehouse.
Roof over head…much nicer and much more generous than one through which the folks upstairs are blasting their TV set and tromping around.
Proximity — as in “walking distance!” to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR top-notch supermarket and gourmet grocers.
A neighborhood doctor’s office, just sitting there by the sidewalk. Dang! Goodbye to those hour-long drives to the Mayo!
These are perks of living in the middle of a large, middle-class metropolitan area. Most of what you need is within walking distance.
What help would you have to hire?
* Cleaning lady — already have one of those
* Driver — one lives catty-corner across the street. And he’s among a half-dozen who live in the ‘Hood.
* Yard guys — have those. Have hired them for years.
* Handyman — the guy across the street will do little fix-it tasks for me. But when I tire of imposing on him, the place is swarming with people who will repair and build things.
* The usual array of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and the like — already have them all on the string.
* Someone to supervise these folks — Heh! This is why we have a son, right? 😀
****
Hafta say… It really never occurred to me, before this, that I really do not need a car here. This ain’t San Francisco, after all.
But…apparently while I was paying no attention, the place has taken on more and more characteristics of a large, sophisticated city.
“Sophisticated” will never fit Phoenix as an adjective. But “car-free” surely could. The roads are laid out in a standardized grid pattern, north-south streets intersecting and overlaying east-west ones. So wherever you are, you certainly CAN get there from here. With rather little effort!
As long as you can walk (admittedly, not everyone can…and I won’t be able to, not for much longer), wherever you’re goin’ you indeed can get there on foot…with surprisingly little effort.
What will I do when I seriously can no longer walk five or six blocks?
Well….an Uber driver lives right across the street. Several more live in the neighborhood. I figure their phone numbers will be saved to my iPhone. And when I need a ride, I just press a button and roust one of those guys out!
Not only that, but the major grocers nearby — Albertson’s, Sprouts, El Rancho — have taken to delivering groceries!!! All you have to do is call up a web page, charge up a passel of products, and stand back. Shortly, they’ll appear at your door with a week’s worth of food and household loot.
Et voilà. Conveniences like these will — I think…I hope — delay having to move into an old-folkerie for several years. Yeah…
I hope.
Now, I ain’t a-gunna say that I don’t miss a nice beer right about now — come 4:20 in the afternoon. But neither am I gunna say that I’ll keel over in a faint without it.