Angst

¡CENSORED!

My honored son disapproves of what I posted an hour or so ago and demanded that I delete it. {sigh!} Not being even faintly in the mood to argue, I capitulate.

Okay okay okay
DELETE DELETE DELETE
{grind teeth grind teeth grind teeth}

The implication, one suspects, is that he hasn’t read enough posts to realize I commit that particular crime every time my fingers flash over the keyboard. And I have yet to be burgled (at least, not by anyone who knows what a blog post is), and yet to have anyone raid my bank account, and yet…to be treated like a grown-up.

SDXB on the phone from lovely Sun City. He’s still having a gay old time with New Girlfriend, even though (shhhhh!!!!!) just now she’s out of town. She’s very lovely, very politically conservative, and perfect for him.

In her absence, he sounds mighty bored, though. That was pretty much how I felt about life in Sun City: b-o-o-o-r-i-i-n-g!

Interesting to note that both my father and his brother moved out of Sun City as soon as their wives died.

My father’s escape was not surprising.

Before my mother fell sick from tobacco poisoning, he had already begun to lobby her to move into a life-care community called Orangewood. She would have none of it, though. She dearly loved their little house in Sun City, and she had NO INTENTION of moving into a holding pen for old folks, thereinat to await the arrival of the Grim Reaper.

He capitulated. But the instant she died, it was out the door with him. He sold that house and moved into dreary Orangewood within weeks after her corpse was disposed of.

Worth noting, though: He had spent his entire adult life living on ships — first in the Navy and Coast Guard, then in the Merchant Marine. He was richly accustomed to a confined, institutional lifestyle, and…well, if anything, he actually liked it. My guess is, he liked it more than he did living independently in one’s own house.

I, on the other hand, simply cannot bear that kinda thing. I HATED living in the dorm. Hated, loathed, and despised it. Soooo…I feel pretty confident that life in a “life-care” community would drive me forthwith to suicide.

However, it has to be allowed: at some point, you’re not gonna be able to take care of a free-standing house. Maybe not even an apartment.

HOWEVER however… Recently I learned from Wonder-Cleaning Lady that the State of Arizona runs an agency that farms out home care workers to the elderly!

She used to work for it.

*****

11 :06 a.m.

Sooo… Here we are at the dermatologist’s, miles and miles and miles and miles away from my shack. Their office used to be right around the corner from the Funny Farm — if I’d wanted to chat with panhandlers, I could have walked there.

Now, their digs are way, way, WAYYYYY out on the west side. A long, long, unholy long drive from the ‘Hood, nestled in a sea of houses.

“Sea of houses” is not an understatement. This place is Southern California Redux. Each time I come out here, I feel more like I’m in Orange County.

Which was not, we might add, ever my favorite place.

Developers have been building (and building…and building…and building) out here for the past several years, producing no mere proverbial sea of houses, but a freakin’ OCEAN of houses. Ticky-tacky cardboard-looking structures packed eave-to-eave, mile on mile on mile

One fails to see the advantage of living in a tiny cardboard house stacked on top of four other tiny cardboard houses over living in an apartment.

Seriously: apartment living looks a lot better to me, for several reasons:

• You don’t have to take care of a miniature “lawn”
• If you have a pool, someone else takes care of that (a biggie!!)
• You probably don’t have a neighbor’s dog yapping at all hours of the day & night
• In some places, you don’t have their brats hollering and running around
• The landlord handles repairs

Why on EARTH would you choose to live in one of those ticky-tacky mini-houses?

A lot of folks do, as we can see: these instant slums sprawl on and on and on and on.

And…one suspects that “instant slum” is no hyperbole. Cheap construction like this is bound to start falling apart within a decade. In fifteen or twenty years, these developments will be vast swathes of junk.

Ohhhhh welll…. That’s the young buyers’ problem.

For me and for M’jito, the practical consequence will be that decently built, centrally located houses will skyrocket in value. That’s already happening: our houses are worth half a million bucks now. In my case, that’s four times what I paid for my first home, one block to the west and two to the north.

So…if the area known as “North Central Phoenix” doesn’t fall to rack and ruin, when I croak over and my son retires, he’ll be able to live like the King of Sheba in some tony suburb of Tucson, Santa Fe, or Santa Barbara — on the proceeds of the sale of our two houses.

***

12:54 p.m.

LOTS more to say. Much entertainment in gadding about West Phoenix. Just now: GOTTA get some food.

Watch this space…