Coffee heat rising

Angst

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!

*****

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. 😉

 

Waaah! I want my doggie!!

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Dayum! Ruby is at the vet’s, getting her teeth cleaned. A-n-n-d…that occasions an unnerving discovery:

Thanks to the plague, I have become so isolated that a little dog is just about my only companion.

She’s only been gone about four hours, and already I feel so lonely I’m freakin’ about to lose my mind!! Seriously: I want my dog back!!!!! 

This, I fear, is not a good thing.

Okay, it’s nice that my dawg loves me and I love my dawg. Sure, sure: very cute very sweet. But the fact that I’m now so separate from other human beings that in the absence of a bossy 35-pound dog I’m developing the heeby-jeebies?

No. Not good.

And…it does bring to the surface a lurking question: what next?

What am I going to have to deal with in the next phase of my life? What should I be doing now to get prepared for that phase.

Make no mistake about it: I am NOT prepared.

What am I not prepared for?

  • 24 hours a day of uninterrupted isolation (except, I suppose, for the computer and the yard man)
  • Getting food and other supplies into the house when I can’t or won’t drive through Phoenix’s homicidal traffic
  • Paying utility bills that are already approaching the outer layers of the stratosphere (how, for example, will I keep that pool full of water when I have to pay for water and everything else on Social Security?)
  • Filling the empty hours when just about any kind of volunteer work holds the promise of exposure to a potentially fatal virus
  • Endlessly soaring inflation, pushing up living costs even now…in a few years, even the cost of food may be unaffordable.

And I’m especially not prepared for the day that Ruby the Corgi will leave this doggy plane, once and for all.

{sigh} I want my li’l dogger!

Looking Forward (NOT!) to Another Lovely Day in Uptown Phoenix

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Ugh! This is gonna be a horrible day.

Up, as usual, at 2 in the morning with old-lady insomnia. Kinda sorta got back to sleep, dozing lightly on and off, around 4 a.m. Then up at 6 a.m. to drive the Ruby the Corgi to the vet, there to have her teeth (expensively!) cleaned. Have to leave here around 7 to get there “between 8 and 9.”

This guy is the best vet in town, IMHO. If anyone will do her teeth without ripping me off, this guy will. But…

Well.

Yeah.

Her teeth stink, indicating she has a gum infection. Her mouth is so narrow, it’s impossible for me to use the contraptions they’d like one to use to clean a dog’s teeth. So yes. Her teeth no doubt are very dirty. Yes. To clean her teeth you have to anesthetize her to knock her out, a spectacularly expensive step that is just Step 1. And yes. He no doubt will have to pull out some of her teeth. So yes. This is going to be a bank-busting day.

La Maya and La Bethulia have a pair of mini-dachshunds. That breed also has a long, narrow muzzle…just like a corgi’s. The “long narrow” part is the operative issue. The mouth is so small and so tight, you can’t get a gadget in there to clean the dog’s teeth…especially not when the dog puts up the Fight from Hell every time you try.

I had stopped taking Ruby to Dr. Bracken (best vet in town) because his office is in the Arcadia district — a LONG way from the crime-ridden fringe of Sunnyslop, where we live. It’s an unpleasant drive under the best of circumstances. But during the rush hour? Ohhhhhh gawd!

To get there requires turning left out of the ‘Hood onto a main or semi-main drag. But Our Honored City Parents have set up all the major north-south routes out of here so that YOU CAN’T TURN LEFT DURING THE RUSH HOUR!

So, before I even reach the Arcadia district (where you may be sure that once again I’ll get lost), I’ll have to drive around and around and around and around Robin Hood’s Barn just to turn east in his direction.

Yes. To turn east out of the’Hood, you have to turn right, then turn right again, then turn right a fourth time. You have to overshoot the main drag that you need travel on. Go down to the next through street. Turn in the opposite direction from the way you need to travel. Then at the next main drag turn right in the direction from which you came. Then turn right onto the first north/south road. Then turn right again onto the desired main drag. Once you’re headed eastward, then you just sit back and drive and drive and curse and drive and drive.

It’s a bitch of a process, and not one I’m looking forward to.

If I have to pick her up at any time after 4 p.m. (i.e., during the afternoon rush hour), I’ll have to repeat the process.

And THAT is why I quit going to Dr. B. and hooked up with La Maya’s vet.

Well. Every time those women took their dachshunds to that vet, the woman was wanting to knock them out and clean their teeth. And every time she cleaned their teeth, she extracted some more teeth. And every time she did that, she presented them with a thousand-dollar bill!

No kidding. Every time you turned around, it seemed, La Maya was getting another thousand-dollar hit upside the head from that woman.

Fine when you both have decently paying jobs.

I, however, am now “retired”: another term for “unemployed.”  And I can NOT afford bills like that. So, as I will explain to Dr. B when I see him this morning, locking me into a cycle like that is going to mean I’ll have to put Ruby to sleep.

And that, I do NOT want to do.

So one of the highlights of this horrible day is going to be BEGGING him not to bankrupt me with the doggy dental gambit. And of course since vets have their own bills to pay, I’m not gonna get far with that.

Welp…it’s getting late. Better get up and start getting ready for the Endless Drive…

Where Ya Gunna Go?

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So I’m visiting the Albertson’s down at the corner of Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South. Normally I won’t go in there because I don’t enjoy being panhandled in the parking lot (once I had a bum actually chase me, at a dead run, across the parking lot). Yesterday, though, I wanted a roll of masking tape and, the Albertson’s being a huge general store as well as a grocery store, figured I could find it there.

Plus the store (or maybe the mall owner) has hired an armed guard, who’s posted outside the market’s front door. So I feel fairly confident that if I park close to the front door and walk directly in — and do not carry a purse slung over my shoulder! — I’m probably going to get in and out with a minimum of pestering.

My father would’ve liked that Albertson’s. Because it’s fairly huge, it carries a vast array of products, from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, to house and auto care products, to…of all things…food. But I can tell you for sure he wouldn’t have shopped there, because of the number of black folks who habituate the place. He was, as he liked to crow, “a bigot and proud of it.” The vast blocks of working-class apartments across the street are very similar to the ones where we lived in Southern California…well, except for the black folks. My mother would’ve been outta there like a rocket the instant the first dusky face surfaced. Whereas my father openly bragged about his expertise as a hater, my mother generally kept her mouth shut about her bigotries. But like him, she also lived by them. She wouldn’t have moved into our lily-white neighborhood because of the number of African-Americans dwelling right across the huge main drag that separates the ‘Hood  from the apartment blocks up here.

So as suggested, my father would’ve loved that store…it would have appealed to his workin’class genes. But my mother?… She probably would have thought of it as I do: fine in a pinch, but lacking in some aspects that one would like to have for shopping on a regular basis. Nevertheless, neither of them would have shopped there (or lived here, we might add…) because of the number of black folks among the customers.

My problem with that store, though, is that even though it’s huge and even though it carries most things you’d like to have, its offerings are kinda boring. Prepared foods are by and large additive-laced schlock. AJ’s, it is not. And…if there’s something you want right now and you went there because you were pressed for time and didn’t want to drive halfway to Timbuktu to get it at a Walmart or the Safeway, you can be sure they won’t have it.

On this particular trip, what I wanted was a roll of masking tape.

How hard is this? Masking tape.

Searched from pillar to post.

No masking tape. Picked up a couple of incidental items, though — a chunk of cheese, some fresh produce. But having found no masking tape I was flying down an aisle toward the checkout where…hallelujah! There on a bottom-most shelf next to the floor was one, count it (1) roll of masking tape. Not the blue type that I favor. But was I going to drive across the city to score a role of BLUE masking tape?

Grab!

Out the door, much relieved not to have to schlep to the paint store.

Albertson’s armed guard lurks outside the door, where he oversees the customers’ and the bums’ comings and goings. This is a considerable improvement — in fact, it is THE reason I will go into that store these days. Once a panhandler actually chased me across the parking lot there, at a dead run. With a hired cop-like creature out front, that kind of thing is a lot less likely to happen.

Though…well…yeah. The last time I was there they had a shooting in that parking lot, in front of the block of buildings that houses the T-Mobile store.

Guess you can’t have everything, hm?

Key Shopping Accessory

Change…for the better?

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The other day I dropped my beloved, oft-used bread slicing knife on the tile floor. The darn thing broke apart, and I couldn’t glue it back together in any functional way. So, dayum! I needed to buy a new bread knife.

It was part of a set that I got either at Williams-Sonoma or (more likely) at a department store such as the Broadway. Phoenix’s Williams-Sonoma store resides in a venerable East Camelback shopping mall called Biltmore Fashion Square. The Broadway in that mall closed, replaced by a singularly uninteresting Macy’s. We used to have a Broadway store within walking distance of the Funny Farm, if only it were safe to walk across the freeway overpass and into that district. But…

Yeah.

If only…

…But it’s not.

And because it’s not, the Broadway over there shut down, as did virtually every other store in and around the mall. Basically, malls no longer exist, at least not in the central part of the city. And with Amazon at my fingertips, I wasn’t bloody well about to traipse to northeast Scottsdale or freaking Glendale to buy a bread knife.

What this says — IMHO — is how much our lives have been changed by the ability to order things online. We no longer have to go into a brick-and-mortar store to get this object, that doo-dad, or another clothing item. And that is changing not only the way we do things, but the way our cities are laid out.

Who would ever have thought that Metrocenter — once the largest shopping center in the land — would become a ghost mall? Who would have imagined that one day we would feel it’s not worth the effort to hop in the car and drive over to a tony, centrally-located mall to visit a Williams-Sonoma or a Macy’s?

But there it is: the nearest mall hosting those stores is many, MANY miles away: in Glendale, in Scottsdale, in Mesa. There now just two (count’em: 2) Williams-Sonoma stores within a hundred miles of my house!

So, given this fine state of affairs, online I went.

Not because I especially wanted to buy the knife online, sight unseen. But that to get it without a noxious drive, a parking hassle, a hike, and no doubt some other annoyance, you have to.

Okay.

I did find a bread knife. And a bread knife. And a bread knife.

Most of them looked nothing like the Defunct.

Many were significantly smaller.

Some looked cheaply made.

None had handles that resembled the wooden numbers on my beloved Williams-Sonoma set. Neither did Williams-Sonoma have any such things.

Obviously, stores like these can’t stay in business without a substantial walk-in clientele.

But…but…you can’t just stroll in to a store that requires a covered-wagon journey to reach! Especially if you have a job and so can’t spare the time to drive from one end to the other of the ninth-largest metropolis in the country.

Hence: Amazon.

Has Amazon has put these ole’-fashioned mall stores out of business?

Well…no. I think it’s not one way or the other, but a circular thing. Amazon exists because it’s a bloody PITA to drive through homicidal traffic to get from your home to a particular retail outlet; and also because many if not most adult women work now and can’t leave the office to junket around the city in search of a bread knife. Or whatever.

If you work downtown here, for example, it’ll take you a good half-hour to retrieve your car from the parking garage and trudge through bumper-to-bumper mid-town traffic and the crazy-making traffic signals to arrive at the parking lot for Biltmore Fashion Square or for the late, great Metrocenter. Then you have to hike from your car to the store. And back to your car. And trudge back through the traffic to your office.

That would militate, wouldn’t it, against running up to the Broadway or Williams-Sonoma to buy one (count it: 1) item, no matter how crucial that item might be.

So what’re you gonna do?

Of course, you’re gonna order online. From Amazon, because it’s easy, you have an account there, and you know 99% of the time they deliver to the correct address.

Hm.

I think what gives Amazon its edge is not the quality and selection of its merchandise (which are both pretty good, if brain-boggling) or the efficiency of its delivery service (also on the high side of good), but the fact that no one of either gender has time to traipse around the city to buy groceries and household necessities.

It’s probably why Costco is so successful, too: you can get just about EVERYTHING there, from groceries to pharmacy items to clothing to tools to appliances to gardening supplies to…everything else. You can get everything in ONE trip. Albeit an overwhelming trip…but at least you only have to traipse to one store, not all over the city.

Y’know…my guess is that all department stores will be gone within the decade.

And unless we see some fundamental change, we’ll see fewer general stores, too — fewer Safeways, fewer Walmart neighborhood markets, fewer Albertsons — and more that operate like specialty stores: Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, AJ’s.

These days, I do most of my grocery shopping at Sprouts, with the fancy stuff picked up at AJ’s. Yes, it’s no doubt more expensive than Costco or a classic grocery store. But the offerings are more interesting, they seem less likely to be laced with preservatives and sugar and artificial flavors, and they taste better.

In a way, that feels like an improvement over the Good Ole Days. But…hmmm…in another way, it seems like a de-provement: day-to-day shopping, as a result of this “improvement,” has become considerably more inconvenient and, I suspect, significantly more expensive.

Life in the Twenty-First Century…so fine and dandy!