Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Who’d’ve Thunk It?

by

I’m gunna say something here that will sound totally off the wall given the L.A.-style city that I live in. Hang onto your hat!

I could probably do completely without a car of my own.

None.
No car.
No wheels.
No insurance bills.
No maintenance bills.
No gas bills.
None. Zero. Zilch.

CAN you imagine?

A week or three ago, I sure couldn’t have.

My son, who grows more paternalistic as the days pass, decided I shouldn’t be driving from pillar to post. Or even from the front yard to the garage door… 😀

So he has pilfered my car, leaving me with…oh yeah: an empty garage. 

After I got over the urge to grab him around the neck and throttle him (that took awhile…), it began to dawn on me:

Y’know what?
If you live in Phoenix, you don’t really need a car.

That assumes you have half a brain and can figure out how to use Uber and how to use the public transit system.

Here’s why:

* The ever-annoying City of Phoenix did one UN-annoying thing: it created a usable public transit system.

* Buses now show up on time and are no longer haunted by bums and lunatics.

* And the city installed, of all things, a light-rail system that passes within a block of my house and will take you to Tempe (where Arizona State University resides) to the downtown commercial district through the mid-town Yuppie precincts through uptown ritzy-titzyville and then onward to the middle-class suburbs to the north and west.

How’s about that, eh?

The present fad for running do-it-yourself taxi services complements that handsomely. A guy who lives right across the street from me(!!!) is doing exactly that. And I think a few others here in the ‘Hood are doing the same. Once I have a list of these worthies’ names and phone numbers, I may never have to ride another bus again. Or drive another car of my own!

Hmmmmm…

Just imagine never having to drop another $20 bill into a gas tank! Never having to haul the contraption to the local repair garage for its regular maintenance. Never having to fart with getting a driver’s license from the state.

LOL! I probably will keep on with the driver’s license nuisance, because a plastic card bearing your photo is a key, standard piece of identification. Can’t cash a check without one, eh?

But otherwise….about 87 gerjillion nuisances and expenses are about to go away. 

How about you? If you could get rid of your car, would you?

Hotter Than a By-God

by

Crimmineee. It’s only 2:00 in the afternoon, and the temp in the shade of the back porch is 104. 

Welp…I had things I needed to do. But I ain’t goin’ out in that!  Especially not without a car.

Should’ve gotten off my duff at 7 or 8 this morning, when the local shops opened. If they opened then. Some of them stay closed until a more traditional 10:00 a.m.

What a place! Why do I stay here????

Well, the main reason I stay in Arizona is that the kid is here.

Secondarily, I dunno where else I’d go.

Locally: Arizona just ain’t that glamorous a venue. There really isn’t anyplace else much better to live around here. Outside of AZ… back to California, maybe?  Helle’s Belles! I sure can’t afford to live in the East Bay, whence my family emanated. Hate Southern California and would rather put up with Arizona’s 100-degree-plus temps than go back there.

Ya can’t win for losin’, eh?

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the possibility of moving into an old-folkerie called the Beatitudes. Very nice place. Brain-banging expensive: basically, you fork over everything you have in exchange for their promise to care for you through your last years.

It’s just down the road, though, so it’s no further from M’hijito’s place than the Funny Farm is.

But…ugh! I’ve never been into communal living. And I don’t figure I’d get used to it now. Sure don’t wanna try. 😀

Seriously: I really dislike an institutional environment!

As places to live go, Arizona is overall kinda ugly. Unless you want to live in the Grand Canyon, I guess. Mostly it’s dusty, dreary desert or shaggy, under-watered forest land. Or Southern California style urbs and suburbs.

So…no reason to move out of the city, which at least sports a few decent grocery stores.

Where WOULD I ‘druther be?

Well, the San Francisco Bay Area, I reckon. 

My mother’s relatives emanated from the East Bay: Berkeley and waypoints. I did love those parts, for sure. But no way in Hell could I afford to live there these days. Or any days…

Trying to imagine what it would be like to live with Ruby in the hotel-like environment of the Beatitudes. Heh! I can tellya: that dawg would have a rabid sh!tfit every time anyone walked past in the hallway. Holyeee mackerel, would she go batsh!t in that place.

So would I. Truly, I do loathe, hate, and despise communal living.

Jeez. What a depressing day: what depressing prospects.

Ruby and I could stay here in the Funny Farm until I get to the point where I truly can’t manage it anymore. (That won’t be much longer, to tellya the truth…)

Or we could move to the Beatitudes, a secure but deeply depressing old-folkerie.

We could move into the old-folkerie where my father chose to live after my mother died, a single-story spread called Orangewood. Worst food you’ve ever had in your life…and you’re required to eat in their dining hall, so they can check you off their rolls and be sure you haven’t croaked over during your hours in your dreary little apartment.

Or…

I could sneak out and Ruby and I could run off to the backcountry of northern Arizona, maybe head up into Utah. Wonder how long we’d get away with that?

Ugh. None of these are attractive options. The least dreary, I think, is to stay right here.

And good luck with that…

SDXB moved to Sun City, where he has taken up happily enough with New Girlfriend. It’s not a bad option for an elder, especially one with stuffy tastes. My parents liked it there. I never cared for it…but then, I wasn’t an old bat at the time.

Honestly…I can’t think of anyplace much more depressing to live than a ghetto for old folks. WhatEVER, though.

Ohhhhh Freakin’ MG!!!!!

Just stumbled in from the mailbox, where I found an obese envelope full of old reports from the Mayo Clinic. Mygawd, there’s over 500 pages of this stuff!!!!! 

Why in the name of hevvin did they send this crap to me??  And what on earth do they think I’m gonna do with it?

Jayzuz. Just what I needed to cheer up my afternoon.

Backcountry. Northern Arizona. Utah boondocks. Lookin’ better and better!

She Knew. Oh, Yes: She Knew.

by

Dunno why, but for some reason my idle thoughts seem focused on my parents, and on their marriage.

My father was deeply, passionately in love with my mother. She was a good, obedient wife, and yes: I do believe she loved him as much as he loved her.

They met in California, where my father – a Merchant Marine officer – shipped out of Long Beach. After they married, he got a job in Saudi Arabia: a handsomely paid one. He figured the salary would allow him to retire good and early. And so off we went to the shore of the Persian Gulf, where we spent ten years in Hell.

During all this time, she smoked.

She didn’t just smoke. She smoked constantly. She smoked and she smoked and she smoked and she….on and on and fukkin’ on. You knew when she woke up in the morning, because you could smell the stink of her first cigarette of the day. She would light up before she even lifted her head from the pillow.

And all the rest of the day, anytime you were in the house, you would have the stink of her cigarettes up your nose. The AC system, the furniture, the carpets, the walls: everything stank of fukkin’ cigarettes.

He smoked, too. But nothing like she did. He might have taken in a half-dozen cancer sticks a day. She smoked constantly. She was never awake when she wasn’t puffing on a fukkin’ cigarette. Made her kid sick? Tough. Puff puff puffety. Word came down that smoking tobacco causes cancer? Nahhh: that’s just Big Brother trying to control us. Puff puff puffety. Made the walls, the AC vents, and the furniture stink to high heaven? She didn’t even notice. Puff puff puffety puff puff puff…..

I’d say it was incredibly stupid – especially after we knew  that for sure, smoking causes cancer. But no.

No worries: just Big Brother trying to control you.

Not surprisingly, the habit killed her. Hideously, we might add. The cancer those fukkin’ cigarettes induced put her in the hospital and killed her in a slow, ugly, agonizing way.

****

The frustrating thing is that she wasn’t a stupid woman. She wasn’t an educated woman, but she wasn’t at all stupid.

She had simply made up her mind that she wasn’t gonna give up her cigarette habit, and nothing anyone said was gonna change her mind. And it literally was true: she smoked constantly. Nor did the fact that I was sick all the time make the slightest bit of difference to her.. She smoked and she smoked and she smoked and then she smoked some more. The first thing she did in the morning, before she lifted her head from the pillow, was light a cigarette. The last thing she did in the evening, before she turned out the bedside lamp, was puff one last cigarette. All. The. Way. Down. To. The. Filter.

And she apparently didn’t care that her miasma of stinking smoke made me sick. I was sick all the time I was growing up, until I left the house to go off to college.

I’d like to believe she didn’t know better – that she didn’t know she was wrecking my health. But she did. You couldn’t miss it.

No: the facts were published in every magazine, every newspaper, on every TV news show. Smoking causes cancer. Smoking makes you sick. Smoking makes your kids sick.

She just didn’t care.

I’ve long thought her smoking behavior was deliberately suicidal. She might not have understood how long it would take for the habit to kill her. Or how much it would hurt to die of that tobacco-related cancer. Or just how much and what kind of Hell it would put my father through. But she certainly knew that smoking would eventually kill her. You couldn’t miss that. Not even back in the 1960s, when everybody who wasn’t a Mormon smoked as a matter of course.

She had watched her mother die of a different self-induced cancer. She knew the agony that cancer can cause, and she knew that smoking was likely to bring it on.

She knew. Of that, you can be sure.

And we need this…WHY?

by

Herein lies the question:

My son, the redoubtable M’hijito, got mad the other day and stole my car. Just now it resides at his house, all the keys stashed inside his shack. In 110-degree heat, it’s too far and too hot for me to walk down there and steal it back. And so…just now I have an empty garage.

Heh! To tell you the truth, a lovely empty garage.

😀  😀 😀

Seriously: It’s clean, tidy, uncluttered, and un-stinky. It extends the house’s usable square footage under roof by about 560 square feet.

No kidding!! That space is 20 feet x 28 feet…yes, that’s 560 square feet!!

Yeah:  FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY square feet whose sole purpose is to keep a tin can out of the elements and out of reach of the local thieves.

And…and…we’re doing this…WHY?????

So, here’s the question of the moment:

What if I never took the car back? What if I just left it at his house? Neglected to re-up its registration and insurance. In a word or four: LET HIM HAVE IT.

Well. The what-ifs would be as follows:

  • I would never again have to cough up the insurance to cover a rolling hole in the ground into which to  pour money.
  • Nor would I have to refill the gas tank anywhere from two to four times a month.
  • Or have it serviced every three or four months.
  • Or pay to fix whatever craps out on it next.
  • My son would get a nice Toyota van that he could choose to keep or choose to sell.

Truth to tell, I don’t travel around the Valley much any more. Most of my automotive destinations are actually within walking distance…

  • The Albertson’s supermarket
  • The Sprouts hippy-dippy organic grocery store
  • The Fry’s supermarket
  • Those that aren’t…well, they ARE within easy train or bus-ride distance. Or Ubering distance…

Except for the 110-degree heat, one does have to wonder…WHY AM I DOING THIS?

And THAT question is given some heavy-duty salience by the new presence of Uber cabs run by, of all people, the neighbors. Yeah: for a fraction of what it costs to buy, insure, and run a car, I can get someone else to schlep me to stores and doctors’ offices. When I can’t, I can walk a block and a half up the road and rent a damn car.

So…hmmmmm…..  It strikes me more and more that it’s stump-dumb stupid to keep that car. If Dear Son wants to keep it and pay the taxes on it and cover the ever-more-stupefying costs of maintenance, let him have it. 

What Next, Then?

by

Okay…no sign of Pool Dude. That’s not surprising, though. We’ve arrived at a Saturday in one of the hottest months of a Phoenix year. If you were a Pool Dude, would you be busily running from backyard to backyard?

So presumably, it’ll be Monday before the mess gets cleaned up. At the soonest: that calculation depends on the assumption that he hasn’t decided to can his freelance pool-cleaning business. The mess: remains of palm fronds, with their accompanying burden of dust and dirt, dropped into the drink when Gerardo’s boys climbed up there last week to prune the accursed palm trees.

My neighbor drained her pool. It’s been empty since she moved in, several years ago. And y’know…hmmmmm….it’s a thought.

Personally, I like the pool too much to convert it to a hole in the ground in which to breed mosquitoes. If I didn’t expect Pool Dude would show up at any minute, I’d be out there in the altogether, loafing in the cool water right now. Or at least sipping coffee and listening to the birds carrying on in the brush that surrounds the thing.

And speaking of those from whom we have no word: Mijito still has the Dog Chariot and is emitting no sign of returning it.

And y’know what?

Hang onto your hat….

The longer he keeps THAT hole in the ground into which to pour money, the less likely I am to demand to get it back.

No kidding.

I had no idea how easy it would be to get by without a rolling cash-burner. And that is in the middle of an Arizona summer, when it’s hotter than Hell and a bitch to move around outside. Not only that, it’s an assessment that has occurred before I’ve even started to take advantage of the new public transit system here. Two blocks from my front door we have a kewl, shiny, sleek light-rail train, gliding past silently on shiny new train tracks.

So the question arises, like Marley’s ghost slithering through the window: Why do I want to own a car?

Several times a day, that spook materializes and moans again: Why do I want to own a car?

And y’know what? About 99% of the time, I don’t have a good answer to that question.

Truth to tell: as I sit here, only about three or four things that I need to do would be majorly facilitated with a car…and that’s in 114-degree heat. Let the weather cool off, and you can cut that list to two or three.

1. I do need to go by the pool store and get Harvey fixed.

But y’know what else? I’m gonna foist that job on Pool Dude. Let him earn his pay, by gawd. Let me loaf, as I deserve to loaf.

2. I crave another bottle of halfway decent white wine.

But y’know what further else? That object can be had at the local Albertson’s (about three blocks to the south), at the Sprouts (two blocks down the street and across Main Drag West), at our vast Mexican supermarket (two blocks to the north), and at the local liquor store (a block to the north and a block to the east). So…uhm…I should own a $35,000 rolling hole in the asphalt into which to dump money?  Really?

3. If anything happens to Ruby — she gets sick, she eats an oleander, whatEVER — she will need to be seen by a vet ASAP.

But y’know what? M’hijito has a car and always will, at least until he reaches retirement age. In a real emergency, he can schlep the dog to a vet. But why break up his work day, when an Uber driver lives right across the street? Very likely that guy or one of his colleagues could whip us over to the nearest vet in a matter of minutes… Hmmm…for a lot less than 35 grand…whaddaya bet?

See what I mean? There really may not be much of a reason to own a car here in lovely North Phoenix, other than

* ego trip; and
* convenience.

The “convenience” part is balanced away by the repeated (and increasingly expensive) trips to gas stations, by the regular visits to the Toyota place for maintenance, by the taxes on the damn thing… Hmmm….

Really, you hafta wonder: why do any Americans keep their own cars? At the very least, why do any Americans who live free of commuting keep the damn things?

MORE Pool Dude Shenanigans

by

So I stagger out to the backyard to be sure Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner is working properly…as he should be, after Pool Dude got finished with the job late y’day afternoon.

Should, eh?

Shoulda coulda woulda….

The damn thing isn’t hooked up properly. Nothing is working right. The bottom of the pool is showered in black dead leaves and debris.

Goddammmit!

Hotter….Than…The…Hubs!!!!

Shut down the system. Haul Harvey out. Clean the crap out of him, as best as possible. Disconnect the vacuum hose. Lay it out flat (so it won’t sear itself into a curled-up position like an angry cobra…). Burn feet on pavement. Some guy is outside the east wall. Check on that: apparently just a random workman.

Realize the debris all over the bottom of the pool is going to have to be vacuumed out. But I ain’t doin’ that in 112-degree heat. 

Hm. It’s almost 3:30. Sun blasting away. Sheeee-ut!

Decide to leave Harvey on the deck until sunset, at which time it may be a little cooler out there. At that point, get the hose vacuum, scoop as much debris as possible, and then put Harvey back in the drink.

What fun.

Makes a box in the sky look good, doesn’t it?