Coffee heat rising

Angst

Crime Central Comes a-Visitin’

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You think I’m kidding, don’t you, when I call Sunnyslope, the venerable slum to the north of us, “Crime Central”….

Heh. Well, no. A joke it ain’t.

The place is aswarm with thugs, thieves, swindlers, murderers, and wannabe-all-of-the-aboves. When they’re not sticking up pawn shops, peddling dope. smoking up, or stealing cars, they come down into the ‘Hood and nearby tracts of upper North Central for the purposes of burgling and an occasional rape.

One of the neighbors reported, on the local Facebook page, that some dude (or dudette?) broke into their home while they and their dogs were there:

They went through the back gate, broke through garage door, went in the house quietly (did not wake any of our multiple dogs) and took purse, wallets, AirPods and collector sports items. Within a few hours they used all debit and credit cards at places like QT, Circle K, Light rail, water filling station, 7-eleven, Taco Mich. High end criminals…

Yeah. You see what I mean by Crime Central. That was a very practiced burglar.

To circumvent him, you’d need to have alarms on every door and window in the house. And I’ll tellya, that is a nuisance!

I speak from experience. For awhile I had little squealers, yes, literally on every door and window. It means you can’t open a door — ever — without remembering to turn the thing off. It means you can’t open a window, either, without turning the damn thing off. THEN you have to remember to turn them all back on when you close the window or door. So you get to live with a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week nuisance on the chance that you might be burgled!

Well, I figured one of the dogs would fly into a high yap-fest if a burglar tried to come in a window or door. But as you can see from that neighbor’s report…NOT SO! Apparently their burglar managed to get in without disturbing the dogs.

My house has heavy-duty security screen doors with deadbolts on every entrance, including the side door to the garage. But…those deadbolts are just ordinary locks: if you know how to get past one, you know how to get through those security doors.

But dayum! I guess with a cat burglar like that around, I’d better buy a new set of squealers and put them on all the sliding doors and windows. Again.

Online! It’s a miracle…

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Been offline for a few days, thanks to some kind of screwy computer thing. Noooo idea what it was.  A Best Buy tech came over the afternoon and banged around and banged around —  very rushed, obviously running late and overworked. He seems to have gotten the thing working again. We’ll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, the Human crashed, too: fell into the sack around 7 p.m., a ridiculously early hour. But I was sooooo tired I just couldn’t stay awake another minute after we got back from the evening doggy-walk.

Come 8:30, the Human is awakened by a familiar melody: urp urp urp urp urp a-a-a-a-a-a-c-k!

The chorus: Ohhh godDAMMIT!!!!!!!!!

Dog barfs all over the bed.

Fortunately, the Human has smartened up a little bit over the years: to keep the dog hair off the bedding, we lay a splendidly washable knock-off serape over the quilt. Exactly like this one, as a matter of fact. We have several of them, in various gaudy patterns…and the one Ruby defiled a few minutes ago is now running through the washer. Mwa ha ha!

The hour is still ridiculously early as we scribble: 8:47 p.m.

My belly feels like there’s a rock in it, speaking of bilious bellies.

Kulawahed, though. It looks like the MacBook is back online. At least it seems to be downloading the email. We’ll find out when we go to upload this post.

Come dawn, I’ve got to pay American Express…at least I think so. A $5500 bill came wafting in (!!!). Was going to have WonderAccountant help figure out what caused that, but at this point I just can NOT deal with any more conundrums. My plan is to pay it and then just not charge ANYTHING for the next couple of months.

Heh.

We’ll see how THAT goes, eh?

So much paper has piled up on the tables, though, it’ll be a God’s Miracle if I can find the damn bill. But I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, cruising the national and local gnus…

CAN you believe Americans voted this ogre into the effing White House? One who thinks he has a right to insult and cuss out everyone around him?

Welp. We’ve failed to educate our people, and this is what we get for our non-efforts: grown men and women who don’t know any better. My apologies if you’re one of those who was suckered into voting for the guy…but the truth is, THAT thing is not now and never was Presidential material.

Then we have the lovely local gnus: I was up in this area just a few days ago, very likely as this woman was being murdered. The cops claim to have caught the perp…but how that could be possible escapes one.

Hiking around the local mountain parks — a popular activity among the fit set — is riskier than it looks. Not only because you can slip and fall, requiring the cops to come extricate you with a helicopter, but because of this sort of thing. A surprising number of creeps are crawling around out there. I was hiking on a trail near North Mountain, when I noticed some guy following me by a couple hundred yards. When I tried to dodge him, he followed. Managed to hop down into a little arroyo where the trail curved around a little hill. Slipped off my bright blue back back, tossed it in a ditch, and hunkered down on top of it, hiding under a creosote bush.

Sure enough, along he came. I could see him stop and peer all over the area, searching for me. After about ten minutes of eyeballing the landscape, he turned around and headed back in the direction he came.

Thank God!

I don’t go out there alone anymore. And no, little Cassie is not enough dog to negate the “alone” definition: in the Dog Department, you’ve got to have something the size of a German shepherd. Best not something that looks like a lovable golden retriever, either.

Ugh! The 21st Century…what a time we live in! What a place we live in!

Speaking of the which, it looks like the city is going to try to spiff up the defunct Metrocenter Mall, once the largest shopping center in the land. It’s abandoned now.

Heh heh…good luck with that, folks…

With its acre on acre on acre of (now empty) parking lots, it will be a major stopping place for the new lightrail system: one end of the line, at least for awhile.

This, we can only hope, will carry the bums on out of our neighborhood, dropping them in someone else’s lap.

Just now the end of the line for the damn lightrail is right here at the top of the ‘Hood, about four blocks north of the Funny Farm. The bums ride for free — no tickets are required to get into a car, so all you have to do is step into a car and then, if you see a cop getting on at a stop (there are no conductors — clever, eh?), hop off before he can ask to see a ticket. Then just hop back on the next train that comes along.

So the ‘Hood is overrun with drug-addicted derelicts, just deee-lightful. Another good reason to carry a pistol when you go out. 😉

Seriously: that’s why I wouldn’t even think of walking to the nearby grocery stores or Walgreen’s. You’d be nuts to do that.

Anyway, if the accursed lightrail carries the bums, the pickpockets, and the rapists all the way up to Metrocenter, our neighborhood may get a little safer. Maybe.

No Escape from the Mayhem…

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This just in on the local news wires: a woman hiking in the desert around the residential tract near the Mayo Clinic was attacked and murdered.

Jayzus!

Every time I think about how much I love my house but hate the marginal area where I live…how much I dislike Tony’s Home for Delinquent Boys and Girls across the street…how much I hate the constant cop flyovers, the noise from Conduit of Blight Blvd and Gangbanger’s Way, the transient bums, the need to keep every door and window locked…I daydream about moving to Fountain Hills.

The Mayo, replete with the best medical doctors in the county, is located right at Fountain Hills, a suburb of (un)lovely Phoenix. The houses are blandly handsome enough in appearance but cheaply built and elbow-to-elbow — don’t even ask how much it costs to air-condition one of those fine cardboard huts. There is a shopping center out there, but it’s pretty basic: you’d have to drive a ways to go to a first-rate supermarket or Costco or a specialty store of any kind. When my car got a flat while I was at the Mayo, I couldn’t find a gas station with a repair shop out there, not for love nor money.

The truth of the matter, I’m afraid, is what my friends say it is: you can’t get away from the mayhem that characterizes this part of America. Or maybe characterizes all of America. You’ll put yourself at considerable expense to try to escape. But you ain’t a-gunna escape.

And the prices in my favored part of town — a district called North Central — are just crazy! Even given that I could no doubt get a crazy price for my house, moving would cost enough to send me to the poorhouse.

Lookit this thing! That’s not a house: it’s a patio home. It’s smaller than my house. It’s a block from Seventh Street: noise, noise, and incredibly more noise, especially during rush hours. It has no yard. It has no pool. It’s not as nice as my house. It doesn’t have a real stove: just one of those glass-top hot plates.

Very nice, I’d say…if you don’t mind being smushed on top of the neighbors. Anything in the North Central area that’s truly in the same ball park as my house, in terms of size and quality, is waaayyyyy beyond my price range.

The houses in my present tract are cheaper because we’re bordered on the north by Gangbanger’s Way (the southern edge of Sunnyslope, a dangerous slum) and on the west by Conduit of Blight Blvd, also known as the Bum’s Highway. The homes and the neighborhood are quite desirable…but the areas around it ain’t!

SDXB moved to Sun City. He’s happy there. I’ve lived out there and don’t wanna do that again. It’s as far away from the central city (and my son) as Fountain Hills. Where Fountain Hills gets noise from jet passenger planes roaring in to Sky Harbor Airport, Sun City is blasted by racket from fighter jets flying out of Luke Air Force Base. And both venues are too, too far away from where my son lives.

And my son is very strongly opposed to my moving beyond shooting distance from his place.

For that matter, so am I. Of course I like living near where lives. And I like living in the North Central area.

But most of the centrally located neighborhoods are absurdly expensive. My area is within reason only because of the proximity to Conduit of
Blight Blvd (and now that damned train running up and down it!), to blight-ridden Sunnyslope, and to rackety Gangbanger’s Way. Despite those (considerable!) disadvantages, the houses are significantly newer than other structures in North Central (older houses are difficult and expensive to air condition, have weary wiring and leaky plumbing, and hordes of termites hiding inside the walls).

It’s crossed my mind to suggest that he and I trade houses. Then HE could deal with the Romanian Landlord and his disruptive delinquents. But he’d also have to deal with the pool (not bad if you hire a guy to ride herd on it, but my son is not the hired-help type) and the aging air conditioner and the aging landscaping… On the other hand, we could easily borrow enough against this house to pay off his mortgage (though it might be better to have me paying “rent” on his house, thereby making maintenance and repairs on that place at least somewhat tax-deductible….).

Heh! Here’s a thought: I rent his place from him, and he rents my place from me. This makes a WHOLE lot of costs tax-deductible for each of us! And I could still swim in the pool. Hmmmmm…..

Wow! Virusified!!

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Welp, the Beloved Laptop is at Best Buy to be decontaminated (we hope!). It was zapped by a virus along about noon and rendered basically nonfunctional.

This came from an e-mail ostensibly from a choir friend, whose subject line invited me to see a recently posted display of her photos. Soon as I clicked on the link, ZAP!!!

So now my laptop is trashed, and I’m writing this from the ancient desktop. Since my hips hurt like Hell when I have to sit in a desk chair, not much is gonna get done….

If you get an email inviting you to view a display of a friend’s images, DON’T OPEN IT! The subject line says “pictures posted by [name of friend].”

Thank goodness I signed up for Best Buy’s fancy customer service contract. This is the second time it’s been well worth it! You might want to check it out, if you have a BB in your parts.

Whoops! Here’s a new message from Connie the Long-Haul Trucker: she says she got a similar message!

Wow! If you get anything like this, let your friends know not to click on it.

Hee! Do the Days from Hell NEVER Stop?

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Today — here in late April — the weather is supposed to hit 100 degrees, for the first time this year. Yep: first Weather Day from Hell of the year. First, you may be assured, of many.

Six in the morning, I roll out of the sack after the usual Old Lady Insomniac night. Not too bad in that department, actually. Though the internal alarm did go off at 3 a.m. sharp, for reasons unknown I somehow got back to sleep. Usually that doesn’t happen — the getting back to sleep part, I mean.

Stumble into the bathroom by way of preparing to take Ruby on our 1- to 2-mile stroll through the’Hood, do my thing, and…and…yeah. Wouldn’tcha know it: the damn toilet clogs!

Haul the plunger in. Plunge plunge plunge plunge plunge plunge… Nothing. Doesn’t work.

It’s freakin’ SATURDAY! No chance of getting a plumber over here for another two days.

Fortunately, the house has two bathrooms. And fortunately, the head in the back bathroom is still functioning. Otherwise, I’d be doing my bidness out in the backyard with the dog.

*****

Holeee mackerel!

So I call the plumber — Maloney’s Plumbing, for those of you who live in lovely Phoenix — figuring that if anyone answered the phone (which surely they would not, right?) maybe I could arrange to be first in line for a service call on Monday morning.

No.

Incredibly, not only did someone answer the phone, but they sent a guy right over! He was in the house and out the door by 9:30! And he was an extremely nice gentleman.

So. Yeah.

I guess Days from Hell do stop!

It’s a miracle!

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And speaking of adventures in Days from Hell, I’m sitting here, 20 minutes to 5 on this Saturday afternoon, next-to-last day of the month, when a random thought wafts into my sweaty little brain…

Ohhhh holeee shee-ut!
I forgot to renew my driver’s license!!!!!!

You can do this online here nowadays. But I completely blew it off.

Run out to the garage, dig the piece of plastic out of the car, look at it to see what and where to do what and and when, and see…good grief! It doesn’t have to be renewed until 2025!

Who knew?

Last time I renewed this thing was three years ago. And to do so, all I had to do was go to a random desk in a random privately run post-boxes office and fill out a form.

This means that people who are driving on the Arizona road do not get tested or asked any significant questions for periods approaching a decade.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

{gronk!} Dawdling away the day…

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ohhhh B-A-A-D HUMAN! 

I’ve dorked away the ENTIRE MORNING playing time-waster computer games. Things that needed to get done?

We ain’t got no steenking things to get done! Eh?

No. The dishes are not washed. The blog post is not written. The run on the credit union and then on the d**ned Costco remains to be done.

Yes…the credit-union run, to be followed by the Costco run, two things I do no, not NOT wanna do.

For the second time in human memory, Costco refused to take my debit card.

Costco wants you to use its MasterCard, of course. And I’ve tried.

Tried and found their MasterCard service just as wanting as the service from past MasterCard accounts I’ve (not) enjoyed. All that was proven was that Mastercard’s service sucks.

Whereas American Express’s service proves itself excellent, top-flight, beyond amazing…EVERY TIME one deals with MasterCard, one has an issue.

To force you to use their MasterCard, Costco quit accepting American Express. You can pay in cash, presumably you can pay with a check, or you can pay with MasterCard. You cannot pay with AMEX.

I do not carry a checkbook around with me. I do not carry cash. The reason, as you may have perceived if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, has to do with Wild-West character of the parking lots and strip malls around here. One thing no sane woman would do is walk across a shopping center with a purse hanging from her shoulder. Especially not a purse containing anything resembling a negotiable instrument. I’ve had guys try to steal my purse as I walked into grocery stores (not once, but twice! Slow learner…). A neighbor was shot by a guy who thought she was resisting when he ripped her purse off her shoulder as she tried to shield her daughter. You would be effing CRAZY to carry checks, cash, or anything that contains ID that can be used to steal from you.

This happened some months ago: I presented my AMEX card and Costco’s machine rejected it. No one else’s machine rejects it. Just Costco’s. All the time I spent roving around in there loading up the cart was wasted. All the stuff I’d piled up to buy was rolled off to be stacked back on the shelves.

So the last time I went to Costco — last week — I whipped out my debit card and was  once again was told it wasn’t valid.

This is the second time Costco has pulled that stunt. Last time, I drove straight from the store to the credit union, where staff assured me nothing was wrong with the debit card.

I’ve about lost patience. Today is gonna be my last try. Today I will return to the CU and ask them what’s wrong with the debit card. If they say “nothing,” I will try to persuade them to put that in writing.

Then I’ll move on to the Costco up the road, and when they pull their usual stunt I’ll show them the evidence from the credit union.

Give me any more BS, and that, right then and there, will be THE last time I ever go into Costco. Well. Except maybe for their tire shop. 😉