Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Over the Hills and Through the ‘Hood…

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Beautiful morning!  Edging on to 10:15 as we scribble: a warm mid-morning, “hot”by some standards. Hmmmm….  Wonder what the mechanical opinion is?

{tap tap tap…Enter...}

Gosh! It’s only 82 degrees out there! Feels a LOT warmer than that.

Which implies some humidity is lurking around… Oh, yeah: 20 percent!

Whew: A fifth of the atmosphere you breathe in as you stumble around the streets is…water!

What a kick, though: roaming through the reaches of the ‘Hood! I’ve lived here for one helluva long time. I think SDXB and I had been here around 10 years by the time he decided to move out to (un)lovely Sun City. Having lived there before, with my parents, I refused to go. To my mind SC defines “miserable place”….

And it defines “static”: as in unchanging and unchangeable.

The ‘Hood, however, has evolved. 

When SDXB and I moved here…what?15 or 20 years ago, maybe? — this was a mid-middle class collection of look-alike ticky-tacky tract houses.

Today?

My goodness...what a difference!

Over the past decade, the homes here have been gentrified, re-gentrified, and mega-gentrified. These 1960s plugs of boredom have been updated, fancified, and turned into”classic” — even “historic”– houses. Lawns and trees have spread across the gravel landscape. Ticky-tacky Nineteenth Avenue has taken on the spiffy, ultra-modern light-rail trains.

And now…what a place it is! I dunno what these houses are worth today, but you can be sure none of them will go for the hundred grand SDXB and I paid!

Well, hell! We have the freakin’ Internet to tell us what the thing is worth now. Let us look up the Shack’s address…

holeeee mackerel!

The “Zestimate” for the Funny Farm is $522,700.

Seriously?

And my old house, a block east of Conduit of Blight Blvd???

Gasp! Zillow thinks one of ém is worth $568,700. It’s the SAME MODEL, the SAME SIZE as our first house here!

And how much does Zillow think that place,located handsomely where you can be serenaded by car, bus, and train noise 24/7, is worth? $522,700. 

Most recently sold for a mere $389,000.

Good grief.

And yet, it must be admitted: as the area has matured, it has grown more handsome. Hiking up and down the old avenues was a pleasure. The houses have been well maintained. The city has kept up the streets.

And that fact alone: the place has gone uphill, not downhill; at the worst stayed steady in quality and value — that has gotta be worth A LOT. 

My father would faint dead away, if he could see these prices.

Y’know, when he retired (for the first time…) in the early 1960s, he figured a savings pot of $100,000 would see him and my mother through the rest of their lives in solid, middle-class comfort.

By the time I graduated from college — just four years later — he had to go back to sea. That’s how much the dollar’s value fell in just four years!

Makes it damn hard to plan for retirement. Or to figure you’ll ever really be able to afford any retirement.

How, really, do younger people manage to afford any kind of life at all, long-term? Really, today in calculating for retirement, you’d have to figure you just weren’t gonna retire. Not until you were hopelessly infirm, anyway.

Welp! I can’t stand it another minute! Gotta pick up the Funny Farm’s litter collection. Then fall face-first into the sack for a stupefied nap.

And…A Different Viewpoint

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The other day I was holding forth about my puzzlement over my parents’ loathing of my undergraduate boyfriend. And yes, they did hate him, and hate is the operative term. That post speculates that it was because of his Eastern European ancestry.

Could be.

But this morning it occurs to me that there was a different reason. A better reason.

Paul was the one who introduced me to the use of alcohol. Make that the daily use of alcohol. (I was about 17 years old at the time…)

You understand: my parents were no teetotalers. They generally had a cocktail or two before dinner, and they were known to get extravagantly sh!t-faced on the bootleg booze passed around at gringo parties in Saudi Arabia. But they didn’t give it to me, nor did they invite me to join them in their informal pre-prandial whiskey-swilling, not even as an adult.

Yes: they did drink whiskey, a variety of which we could distill in lovely Araby. My father had a still on the stove and a couple of huge jars in the janitorial closet for that purpose. This was vastly against Saudi law. But nothing was done about it, presumably because the Kingdom was making too much money selling oil to the apostate gringos to make a fuss over their drinking habits.

When we got back to the States, my parents continued their pre-dinner-hour swiggling. At that point, they were never getting drunk. They were just having a cocktail with food and cigarettes, unwinding before dinner.

Meanwhile, though…back at the college campus: Paul and I drank all the time. We would start when classes were over — often as early as 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon — and tipple until we tipped over into the sack. That that meant he and I were drinking a lot more than my parents were, and we were doing it every day.

Once I got quit of Paul, I did quit drinking that much. I continued to have wine with dinner, but I rarely drank hard liquor, and I didn’t swill wine all afternoon.

However, to this day I still pour a glass or so of wine with dinner.

And…Lookee Here!

Turns out chronic alcohol use can lead to neuropathy.

No wonder my hands and feet and lips tingle!

If that article is accurate, my case must be pretty mild. But the booze habit may very well be the source of the buzz in the paws!

Of all those melodramatic symptoms, the only one I’ve encountered (so far) is tingling in the hands, feet, and lips.

Hmmmm…  It looks as though you can make this ailment remit — at least to some extent — simply by going on the wagon. This may or may not work…but apparently for some folks, it does.

I’ll be damned…think o’that!

And how hard would it have been for one of those MayoDocs to simply ASK me how much I drink and then suggest I climb onto the wagon?

Pretty clearly, the treatment is to quit swilling booze every day. 😀

Whether this will stop the current tingle-fest is unclear. But apparently if you quit boozing, you can at least block the neuropathy’s progression.

LOL! Welp, my dear late parents didn’t have the right reason for disliking pore ole’ Paul. But they were right that I should have gotten quit of him as a boyfriend. No booze-swilling boyfriend: no booze-swilling.

😀

Why Did They Hate Him So?

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It was in the summer of my sophomore year that I took up with my college boyfriend. We met at the University of Arizona’s swimming pool, where we each had taken to hanging out when we weren’t attending summer-school classes.

Paul was eastern European. I wanna say he was Bohemian or Slovakian. What he was, though, was American. His family had been here for a couple of generations, and he grew up in Chicago

Nothing about him shouted ALIEN!!! If no one had told you his predecessors had immigrated from Eastern Europe, the idea would never have crossed your mind. If it did and you had stared carefully at him, you probably would have thought his background was middle European or maybe British. English, that is.

But…

I brought him home from school one weekend, so as to proudly show him off to my parents. Little did I know…

They were shocked and dismayed, I tell you: shocked and dismayed. Seriously: it was instant hate…the minute they saw him.

I knew my parents were wracked with racial hatred. They would have disowned me if they’d caught me dating someone of the African persuasion. Or Chinese. Or Japanese. Or…apparently anyone even faintly different from themselves. My guess is, British was the desired ethnicity, and American the only acceptable nationality. My mother’s antecedents were English with some French thrown in. My father’s: Germanically English.

I met Paul in the summer between my sophomore and junior years. After having spent my first college-age summer at the new parental home in Sun City, I realized living in a ghetto for old folks was not for me. So, the following summer I engineered the opportunity to stay in Tucson and go to summer school. There, I used to hang out at the campus swimming pool. And that’s where Paul and I met.

How he triggered my parents’ racist instincts mystified me. And it escapes me to this day: he was as white as I was. The damning difference was that his family came from Eastern Europe.

Whaaa?

They had trained me up effectively to hate racial groups that were Not Us. But European nationalities? Huh?????  I had no idea we were also supposed to hate people who came from certain regions of Europe.

WhatEVER…. /eyeroll/  They were just abhorred when I brought Paul home one weekend. And from that moment on they launched a campaign to get rid of him.

I was madly in love with the man, myself. He was handsome, smart, fun to be with…what more could a college kid want? And as for our family’s tradition of rock-solid racism: to my eye, he was as white as me.

Having seen The Enemy and realizing he was about to be Us, they set out to get rid of him. I resisted for quite some time, even though I understood that if I married Paul, I might never see my parents again.

No, that is not an exaggeration.

What did in poor ole’ Paul for me was this:

His best buddy — closest male friend on this earth — was married. This guy’s wife was advanced in pregnancy. So much so that she could not accommodate him sexually. Determined to get what he believed was his by right, he took up with a bar maid, whom he met one evening while out drinking with his pals.  So now he’s having grand fun fu*king this chippie and bragging about it. Paul thinks that’s just hunky and dory.

No kidding: Paul saw nothing wrong in his pal’s philandering with a chickadee the guy picked up in a bar!

Because, after all, his wife couldn’t “give him any.”

This episode removed the scales from my li’l teenaged eyes: my parents’ racism aside, the guy was an immoral lout. So I dumped him.

Years have gone by — a lifetime of years, eh? He went back to the Midwest and became a university administrator. Had a successful career. Photos on the Internet show a handsome man; reports indicate he did well for himself. And incredibly, for awhile he was working in the president’s office at the Great Desert University. That was during the time when I was working on the campus editing a research publication for the graduate college.

I had no idea he was there. I must have stumbled across his path now and again, but never noticed him or heard his name uttered. Did he know I was there? Dunno. Probably: he was smart, and that publication did ultimately come out of the university president’s office. But…possibly not: there was no reason he would have known my married name, which I was using by then.

On reflection… Today, I think my parents were right, in a way. Given his morals — or lack thereof — he would have made an undesirable husband. At least, for me…

Chaos in Hevvin…

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Well… {ahem}…one wouldn’t exactly call Conduit of Blight Boulevard “Heaven.” But it’s not too bad, as Phoenix-area main drags go.

Apparently some new catastrophe has taken place, though, amid the fine rush-hour traffic. Sirens have been yowling up and down Blight Blvd for the past half-hour. Probably a moron drove or stepped out in front of a train.

Conduit of Blight is one of the main routes for the accursed light-rail road-blocks….uhm, “trains.” They get in the way of everything and slow traffic on the main drags inexcusably.

This being Arizona — Home of the Rabid Driver — morons dart around the things and out in front of them and…HOOOlleee mackerel! You wanna talk about traffic hazards? Egad!!

That’s why I won’t drive on 19th Avenue, Camelback, or Central Avenue: not  along any stretch where the accursed light-rail trains run. Those fine politically correct conveyances have turned all of those main drags into clogged messes.

This adds considerably to the congestion and the frustration factor. Basically, to keep from tearing out all your hair, you have to drive anywhere from half-a-mile to a full mile out of your way to avoid the tangles along CofB .

Hmmmm… Speaking the local road-morons…someone just cruised up the alley behind our backyard. Sounded like they stopped at the trash cans or nearby. So…did they dump their trash outside my gate (again)? Fill up the freshly emptied garbage can with a gigantic pile of debris (again)?

Can’t tell by peering over the wall.

And so…awayyyyyyy!

Nope! If they dumped it in any of the other trash cans, it wasn’t here.

And speaking of trash accumulation:

Arizonans are now required to replace their (perfectly valid…) driver’s licenses with a new annoyance called a “Real ID.”

Jayzus Aitch Keeeerist! If the card with  your photo on it, acquired by taking a test and standing in line a good 40 minutes, does not suffice to show you’re who you say you are, then NOW what is?

***

That notwithstanding…

It’s an incredibly BEAUTIFUL day. Clear, with a few fluffy, cottony clouds drifting overhead, and cool.

Yea verily, I’m even thinking of getting off my duff and trekking around the nearby North Mountain Park.

Maybe.

But maybe not. The last couple of times I went hiking up there alone…well… I swore never to do that again. At one point I had to dodge down into an arroyo, tuck my  bright blue backpack underneath me and lie down on it, and pray the jerk who started following me didn’t see where I went after I ran around a bend.

No kidding. The guy stood on the trail a good ten or fifteen minutes, scanning the landscape and altogether too obviously searching for me.

{sigh} This is why every woman needs a German shepherd…

Life in the 21st Century

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Trying again: WyrdPress refused to post this, so I saved it to Wyrd. Let’s copy, paste, and see if it will go online now…

********************

THIS is life????? Who freakin’ needs it???????

Honestly. By the time we got halfway through the day, I was ready to quit. Exit Stage Left. FLEEEEEEE!

Jayzus, what a dystopic world we’ve made for ourselves.

Appears the problem is that I just haven’t been keeping up with the technology…which evolves at the speed of a galloping coyote.

***

Toyota repairman was here, charged with fixing whatever was making it impossible to…figure out how to use the car’s fukkin doors.

By the time he finished, he had spent several hours…and then he presented me with a bill for SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS.

No kidding: to get the damn doors and locks to work on the damn Venza’s damn passenger compartment.

Yep. You need a degree in nuclear engineering to make a car’s doors work these days.

That was only the most annoying of the day’s adventures. Others were similar, but not quite so high-pitched.

Welp, I’ll tellya one thing: I’ll never buy another Toyota again.

Yea verily, I may never buy another car again; at least not one manufactured after about 1967.

If we could just PUHLEEEZE have decent public transportation, I would never buy any car again.

Seriously: when my mother and I lived in San Francisco — late 1950s — it really was NOT necessary to own a car. We did have one, because not to own a Ford have been an offense to my father’s manliness. But while he was off at sea (most of the time), she and I largely rode the public transit: busses, streetcars, and trolleys. We got where we needed to go within a highly reasonable time frame. We did not have to dodge lunatic fellow drivers. We did not have to fight homicidal traffic. We did not have to pay to park or to figure out where to park. And we did not need to get a degree in freakin’ ENGINEERING to make those things happen.

Anyhoo, the Toyota guy showed up to do some minor repairs. And it was SOOO complicated that I’m not even gonna be able to use the windows and doors on that car. What an involved rigaramole!!!!!!

Oh yes: before he left, he took a good half hour (or more) to give me LESSONS on how to operate the damn car’s doors and windows.

No kidding: you need a degree in engineering to open and close a modern Toyota’s windows!!!!!

Sumbiche.

****

Can you imagine? SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS for minor puttering that did not even require me to drive the car to their garage.

***

hmmmmmm…. Whaddaya bet I can’t get that fukkin car to start?

Let’s try it out…

****

Whew!  Well, yes: it took a minute of panic, but I finally DID get the damn engine to start up.

Yea, verily: it did allow itself to be persuaded to start. But since I didn’t have a pair of shoes on, I decided to opt the test drive.

Hm.

That was stupid, wasn’t it?

Okay…let’s go track down the damn shoes…

****

Well-shod test drive.

Okay okay…I can’t bitch about the quality of the ride. Very good. Engine runs awesomely. Ride is smooth. And…but..i don’t wanna ride much of anywhere.  And…and..for the luvva gawd, I spent SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS to get a car ride strangely reminiscent of my 1962 Ford Fairlane’s?

SERIOUSLY???????????????

I’ll tellya, folks: If I lived in San Francisco or New York, I would not own a car. This is fukkin ridiculous.

 

Real Estate…Run Amok!

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!Jayzuz!!!  Just look at the INSANE prices for houses in our old neighborhood! Just a few lots down the street from our place: $1.3 MILLION.

We paid 30 grand for our house there — the first home we co-owned with a bank — and thought that was just outrageous. Lookit that, for 1900 square feet! Our house was 3,300 square feet…

These shacks are all within walking distance of our old house:

Good lord!!

Well, I guess I’m damn lucky to have this house up in a North Central district. And to have it paid off. By the time we’re ready to sell it, the thing will be worth enough to purchase the moon.

Actually, I hope I’m able to stay here until I croak over. Then M’jihito will get the house — and presumably the proceeds of its sale — which will allow him either to pay off his own house or to sell it and move into my paid-off shack. Or to move wherever he pleases.

Not sure he even wants to stay in the Phoenix area. He’s talked about moving back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a little hickish for my taste…but if he could get this kind of money on the sale of my house and his, he could live like a king there.