Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Good Morning, America! And…

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…DUCK FOR COVER!

LOL! 8:00 in the morning, and you can hear those damn fighter jets from Luke Air Force Base all the way over here in North Central Phoenix! 

What

A

Racket!

Yes, the Sound of Death is no lullabye. That’s for sure.

People who live in Sun City bitch nonstop about the noise from Luke, right up the road from the Old Folks’ Ghetto. That actually creates SDXB’s job out there: as a semi-retired PR guy for the Air Force, he volunteers to staff the phones in the base’s public relations office. Every morning, rafts of Sun Citizens call in to bellyache about the roar from the jet plane exercises.

Hilariously, my mother used to LOVE that racket. She’d sit on her back porch, there in Sun City, and take her morning coffee to the lullaby of F-16s taking off and landing. “It’s the sound of freedom,” she would coo.

There’s a wild-eyed right-winger for you!  😀

By a weird coincidence, my house was built by the same outfit that built out Sun City. And, although it’s designed for more than two people, it bears a weird resemblance to my parents’ Sun City house:

* gray slump-block walls
* aluminum-framed sliding doors and windows
* asphalt shingle roofing
* sloping roofs over attics

Well, at least we have actual garages. Webb apparently felt a place to put a car was unnecessary for an old f*rt…presumably the new residents would be too old to drive, right?

Well. No. Out there, the houses have cheesily built lean-to carports. STEAL THIS CAR! that sign says…. 😀

Actually, what the local thieves used to do was climb on top of the car, reach up to the carport ceiling, and slide open the door to the attic. From there, they’d hop into the attic, walk across the beams to the living-room or kitchen area, saw a hole in that ceiling, and drop down into the house. From there, they’d steal you blind.

Lovely.

Here, my dowdy li’l Sun City-style house does have an actual garage with an actual garage door. 

LOL! If I’d known this subdivision was built by the same outfit that built Sun City, I wouldn’t have bought a house here. Not on a bet.

But that prejudice notwithstanding…it’s not a bad little shack. Not at all. Construction is sturdy. Design is sensible. Lots are large enough to put plenty of space between you and the neighbor. Alleyways are included, and they’re lined with 8-foot-high block walls.

Sun City has no alleys, and no backyard walls. Take your morning coffee in your backyard, and you can watch your neighbor do the same as the jets scream overhead.

They scream overhead here, too…occasionally. But at least they’re far enough away to put some distance between the natives and the racket-makers.

Ugh!! This is gonna be another beautiful day in Arizona: 28 percent humidity under clear (hot!!) skies.

In the Department of Jobs You’re Glad You Don’t Have, Mr. and Mrs Wonderaccount (right across the street) have hired a team of painters to spiff up their shack. I need those guys over here, too. But…well…luring them to my house would require me to get up off my duff. And I ain’t about to do that!

Snoop Snoop Human

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Here we are on Truthfinder, searching out dirt on an old neighbor and sorta-friend of mine. Their “search” is in-freaking-terminable! On and on and on and on….  And, as we all suspect, very probably a waste of time.

This lady was married to a prominent lawyer here in town, at the same time my own husband was a prominent lawyer. Had a bodacious daughter who was given to using weed and generally getting into mischief. And a cute young son who wasn’t yet old enough to create much trouble.

Ohhhhh lookee here! They make you sit through INTERMINABLE computer clicketymumbledypeggedy and then, after 15 or 20 minutes of this, they tell you they have all sorts of miraculously scandalous information about your victim…uh…subject…and want you to pony up cash to see it!!!!

Eff that, dear Truthfinder. You might consider presenting the “truth” of your business model up front, before your victims spend half the morning waiting for you to gag up data.

Hmmm…. Looks like my old pal moved to Tempe.

SPECIAL OFFER!!!!
DOLLAR TRIAL!!!!!!
PONY UP JUST A DOLLAR TO GET STARTED!

Bye, Truthfinder.

God, I get tired of Internet rips. “Information is supposed to be free!” Remember that?

And I for one do NOT pay for DIY data searches.

A-n-n-d…by now wouldn’t you think I’d be smart enough to recognize an Internet rip when I first lay eyes on it?

😀

Ripped!

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…and ripped off?  

Criminey! Just had to order a new set of queen-sized sheets. The pair I’ve been using ripped up the middle (that’s a new one on me!!). Forhevvinsake: FIFTY-FIVE BUCKS for one set of cotton sheets!

This, because the G.D. Mayo Clinic took away my driver’s license, so I can’t in any sane way get to a department store to buy the damn things.

Is this weird (not to say infuriating)? I have never had a sheet RIP right out from under me. It looks like probably a toenail somehow got caught on it, so that in moving around in my sleep I pulled the fabric apart.

Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!  

Yes, I do have another set of sheets. But only ONE such set. Those quacks at the Mayo have invalidated my driver’s license(!!!), so I can’t even drive to a store to select a new set.

One needs two sets, so that one set can go in the wash while the Cleaning Lady from Heaven is making the bed with the already clean set.

And yes, I surely should feel grateful that Amazon exists. Ordering the things online is less than perfectly desirable (one would like to see and examine a purchase before dropping $55(!!!!!!!) on it. But it appears that I don’t have much choice.

There is a store within walking distance where you can buy linens. But it ain’t the kind of place where I’m used to buying that kind of stuff, and frankly it gives me pause. So does Amazon, of course: either way, you can’t be sure of the quality you’re getting.

Well…I hope this doesn’t turn into the disaster that I’m expecting. Rather little hope, I must say: when you have to buy something sight unseen, you pretty well guarantee a nice little fiasco for yourself.

A nice expensive fiasco!

A Revelation in Transit

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Y’know… Over the past few days — “weeks,” really, is more like it — a kinda startling revelation has occurred to me. Hang onto your hat, now: What with the proximity of key retail stores, the new lightrail running up and down Conduit of Blight Blvd., and a fleet of shiny new busses, I don’t really need to own a car. 

Oops: should’ve warned you to sit down before reading that…  😀

But seriously…  Without the little catastrophes of the past two or three weeks, this idea would never have entered my fuzzy little mind. BUT…oh, yes, but: the fact is, between the lightrail, the shiny new busses, and the Uber cars swarming all over the neighborhood, I actually may not need to have an expensive pile of metal and glass sitting out in the garage.

Yeah. Seriously!

I can get from Point A to Point B with very little more trouble than it takes to climb in my car and drive between those points.

We have several Uber drivers living here in the’ Hood. They’re delighted to take you wherever you imagine you want to go. And if they’re not available, Phoenix still hosts a fine fleet of standard taxicabs. Call a Yellow Cab and it’ll be at your door in minutes. An Uber driver lives right across the street from me! He can be here in seconds, not minutes.

But…but…what does it take to walk from here to most of the fine emporia where I shop and loaf?

A lightrail line runs across Main Drag North, turns south on Main Drag West, swerves southerly toward Central, goes right past my son’s street, and proceeds to a stop in front of the Beloved AJ’s Grocery Palace.

So…uhm….. {ahem!}

Why on earth would I imagine that I want a car, here in the ‘Hood??

Consider: AJ’s is indeed a drive away. BUT…within a ten-minute walk, we have these fine emporia:

  • Albertson’s: a huge supermarket
  • Sprouts: the beloved hippy-dippy peddler of nominally organic chow
  • Walgreen’s: huge drugstore
  • Bookman’s: bookstore, music, whatnot
  • El Rancho: supermarket
  • Fireworks store (!)
  • Post office
  • Doctor’s office
  • Beauty salon
  • Independent pharmacist
  • Veterinarian
  • Coinstar

And on and on and on… there really is little need to drive anywhere. Certainly not on a regular, day-to-day basis.

Do I need a car to get to the Mayo? Yeah: I wouldn’t want to hire a cab or Uber to schlep halfway to Payson. But I sure don’t go out there often. And for that matter, we’re within walking distance of a major regional hospital…I could extend my little self so radically as to take up with a doctor who practices there. (The one I had there moved to $un ¢ity awhile back, having seen the dollar signs on the wall of the new hospital out there….)

But if you’re considering how much it costs to keep a car — taking into account insurance, regular servicing, repairs, gasoline, parking, and whatnot — the tab for maintenance, repairs, taxes, storage, and the stuff so routine that most of us never even think about it anymore very probably comes to more than it would cost to hire Uber or a taxicab to get around town. A LOT more…

Truth to tell, something over 90 percent of the places I go are within walking distance, or within a reasonably priced cab ride.

And given that amazing little factoid, one could argue — quite reasonably — that a person living in this location really has no need for a car. Especially if that person doesn’t commute to a job.

What the heck: not only that, but walking to the destinations around here comes under the heading of good exercise. When the weather is sane — which, believe it or not, is most of the time — you can walk to any of those places without putting yourself out much.

So…frankly, I’m beginning to think more & more that my son did me a favor by absconding with my car. Who needs it???

Re: Paul the Romanian Lover

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Oh! how my parents hated him!!

They hated him for racist reasons — in their minds, Romanian wasn’t quite “white.” But…truth to tell, they were right, only in ways they didn’t understand.

P. had no compunctions about theft. Or about cheating on one’s wife.

First time this came to my attention, he and I had gone to the campus bookstore to buy a semester’s worth of textbooks. He’s wearing a student-looking fake letter jacket…right? You know whereof I speak: leather sleeves, university logo on the jacket’s body.

We’re standing in line with a couple piles of books, when quietly he slides two of them under his jacket and pulls up the zipper.

Uhm…what?

Shortly — after we’ve escaped with $40 worth of textbooks (in those days that was a lot of money: the equivalent of $70 or $80 today), he tells me he does that all the time. It’s one of his ways of funding his education!

Eep! Maybe my parents were right!

Well, I was far from the point where I was ready to admit that possibility.

Time passed. We were in love. La-dee-dah!

Then one night we’re in the sack, chatting post-coitally. And this is when he remarks, admiringly, that his best buddy is f*cking a barmaid that he picked up while the boys were out drinking. He thinks this is a good thing — yea, verily: a brilliant thing on the buddy’s part: because the guy’s wife is some eight months advanced in pregnancy and can’t accommodate him.

No kidding.

His wife. He gets her pregnant. She’s about to deliver his baby. And he can’t wait until she presents him with his son, but feels he must go out and pick up a chippy in a bar NOW by way of getting it off!

And P. thinks that’s just great. Brilliant, if anything!

This — finally! — was enough to get my attention!

Man, when they say “love goes blind at the garden gate,” they ain’t kidding!

It took a night and a day for this to soak in. Once it fully registered with me — that he was demonstrating just what kind of a guy he really was — I tossed him out of my life.

Never regretted it.

He ended up as a university administrator — apparently did fairly well for himself, on the mid-level career level. Would have had lots of access to cute college girls, too, eh?

His career took him to a UC campus in central California. No doubt a nice place to live…and UC would have presented me with any number of appealing job opportunities. As it no doubt presented him with any number of chickadees.

Ahhh, the good ole’ days!

Tryin’to F’geddaboudit….

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Ever have memories that you seriously can NOT shake? You try to put events and stupid stuff behind you, but they just won’t go away.

That’s how I remember my childhood in Saudi Arabia, stumbling miserably through the Ras Tanura Senior Staff School.

It was a K-8 school for Aramco employees of the American variety. After you hit the 9th grade, they sent you back to the US (or to Switzerland), where you finished high school and, if you had something resembling a brain between your ears, either got a job or went on to college.

Growing up in Arabia — in a company town called Ras Tanura — I was the weird little kid.

What made me weird was that I was too damn stupid to understand that — especially as a girl! — I needed to cover up my intellect, pretend I was stupid as a post, and never EVER reveal my passion for science. Especially not for astrophysics.

Those kids in my grade were just so GODDAMN mean, and the teachers weren’t a lot better. In particular, the one I encountered when I hit the 5th grade, a Texas broad named Hatley, was just flat-out cruel. If I was sick of  b-o-o-r-i-n-g school by the end of the 4th grade, in Miss Hatley’s fifth-grade room I quickly learned to hate school — with a deep and abiding loathing.

Every now and again, I find myself musing over that time in my life. Not on purpose: the memories just bubble up like gas in some swamp.

Search the name and its variants on the Web, and a few candidates come up. She definitely existed. She definitely came from Texas. She definitely taught at the Ras Tanura Senior Staff School. But that’s about as much as you learn about her,

Probably just as well: some things, you don’t wanna know too much about!

She was a mean one, I’ll tellya…at least from my point of view. Seriously: she would actually encourage the horrid little brats in her classroom to torment me. I was the class pariah. And whenever an opportunity arose, I was reminded of that, teased about it and tortured over it.

What kind of “teacher” not only tolerates such behavior, but actually eggs it on?

Really, there was no excuse for it. I’d done pretty well in school until I reached her fifth-grade classroom. There was no reason for me to hate going to school. To hate my classmates. And especially to hate my teacher.

But hate is the word for it. I entered her class as a fairly normal kid, if one who wasn’t smart enough to keep her yap shut about what a wannabe brainiac she was. By the middle of that year, I hated school.

* Hated school.
* Hated the idiot teacher.
* Hated the mean little brats in my class.
* Hated the dim-witted, brain-numbing content that passed for subject matter.

Hated everything about it.

And then one day hated the horror of learning that the bitch who had tormented me all the way through the fifth grade was “graduating” with us to become our sixth-grade teacher.

Apparently, my mother figured out, sometime during that hideous fifth-grade year, WHY I had come to hate going to school…why I dreamed up every ailment I could possibly fake to get out of going…why I was so miserable I was passing beyond neurotic to damn near psychotic.

At the end of that school year, she announced that we were going back to the States. My father did NOT  want to come: he was working toward Aramco’s highly paid seniority, and leaving then put the eefus on that goal.

She must have told him that she and I were leaving, whether he came with her or not. He stayed behind for about six months, and then quit his job and joined us in San Francisco. My guess is, he must have reached some kind of lower-level seniority goal at that point, which made him feel he could leave without losing too very much.

It was pretty much in the nick of time, for me. I was so roundly hated by the little darlings at the school that I had no hope of ever making friends out there. And by then I had turned inward and become an odd — even weird — little hermit whose only serious interest in life was astrophysics.

Yeah. I wanted to become an astrophysicist. 😀  You see why the little darlings just loved me no end?

***

Back in San Francisco (at last! ), none of the kids at the school knew I was a weirdo. And apparently, an interest in science was not considered weird there, even for a girl. Well…and by then, I’d learned to keep my mouth shut; that no doubt helped.