Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Old Age Creepin’ Up…

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LOL!  I swear-ta-gawd, the whole “old age” cliché gets closer and closer to reality the more years you spend on this earth.

Just up the road from the Funny Farm — really, within walking distance on a temperate day — stands an aging shopping mall called Metrocenter.

It used to be a hangout for young folks, back in the day when I was a young pup. Several huge department stores, yes; but also a passel of cute little shops and fast-food eateries and ice cream shops and…on and on. As the morning sun glows here in the Funny Farm’s front patio, I was just thinking I’d like to run over there this afternoon and grab some ice cream. Maybe do some shopping in the fancy little shops or the big, gorgeous department stores.  But…

Uhm…

Noooo…wake up, dearie! Metrocenter is no more. They’re tearing it down and turning the site into a fancy residential project, complete with its own shopping center. Looks like it’s probably going to be private, or pretty close to it.

That’s too bad. It was a fun place to hang out. Makes one feel bad, because you realize you’re the one who is no more! 

Hotter than the Hubs

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Ruby and I must have gotten a later start on the morning’s neighborhood stroll than I thought, at the time we set out. Lordie, it’s AFTER 10:00 A.M. Not good, on a “spring” (hah!) morning in lovely uptown Phoenix.

Holeee doggerel, is it hot out there. 

Y’know what job I’d most NOT like to have, here in lovely uptown Phoenix? ANY job that requires you to work outside!

This morning we passed a crew of guys who were gutting out and renovating the Alleged Molester’s house. This, actually, is a handsome middle-class home backing right onto the park. It was occupied by a family whose son dated some girl who was a few days under the age of consent. Hopped into the sack with her…and they were hard at it when her mother came home and caught them in the act.

The mother called the cops, and the young fella was arrested for statutory rape. He went to prison. His parents lost their shirts. They ended up abandoning the house, which turned into a wreck and has been standing decrepit on that corner for upwards of a year.

Well, someone has gotten ahold of it, apparently, and they’re shoveling it out and renovating it. You don’t even wanna know what that project must cost. The pool was drained and allowed to stand dry for well upwards of a year, so it’s ruined: basically ha$ to be rebuilt. The roof has been redone. Workers inside the house seem to be pulling out and replacing almost everything.

If they put it on the market, it’ll be interesting to see how much they try to get for it.

Two lots to the east, another house is being gutted out and renovated. Another huge project: who can even imagine the cost?

Well, if and when the speculators put those houses on the market, we shall see what they do for the price of real estate here in the ‘Hood. The other properties on that street are pretty upscale, so I imagine we’ll see the whole area go through the financial roof.

UN-Be-LIEV-able!

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Literally unbelievable, as it happens today.

This afternoon, in came a hustling piece of snail-mail, trying to get me to Send Money Now and HURRY to sign up for that wondrous product. It looked like BS to me…sort of. But..but…sort of NOT.

Actually, it seemed to be trying to say my homeowner’s insurance is expiring and I need to renew a policy…right now!

Fortunately, the WonderAccountants were home. They live right across the street.

So I took the wad of paper over there. They looked at it and shortly decided it was a scam. Out with it!

Actually, it took them a few minutes of studying the thing to come to that conclusion. You can be sure that if they were given pause, I would never have been able to figure out that it was a scam.

Lordie! This stuff just comes avalanching in on us! When you need a professional to assess the validity of a piece of junk mail…ohhhh gawd! What kind of world DO we live in???

What incredible luck that those two wonderful folks moved into the house across the road! They’ve saved my tail feathers more than once!

Hummer Vandals

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Okay, so I lost patience with replacing or repairing the stolen/damaged hummingbird feeders in front. Took them down. Refilled them, hung them from eaves in the back yard. Behind an eight-foot concrete wall and a set of locked gates.

What a shame!

You can’t even have a stupid little decorative bird feeder hanging from the front-porch eaves of your house.

Seriously: what IS the matter with people? Stealing every damn bird feeder some idiot homeowner hangs out on her front porch?  Is that REALLY so much fun that you do it over and over?

It begins to make the (hideous) prospect of moving into an old-folkerie look better and better. You can be sure no one is going to steal a bird feeder from a balcony on the sixth floor of The Beatitudes.

Depressing as Hell, ain’t it?

Turned Upside-Down in Space?

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Holeeee maquerel! WHAT is going on here?

Just tried to call my son, thinking it’s about dinnertime — around 6:30 in the evening.

But…

No….

No, folks: it’s breakfast-time!

It’s not 6:30 in the evening. It’s 6:30 in the morning!!!! 

Understandably, he was pretty peeved at being rousted from the sack at this hour.

And I’m pretty scared.

Scared that I’m so turned around and so goddamned confused that I don’t know whether it’s morning or night!

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How terrifying!

Well. I guess this is a signal. And that signal’s meaning is pretty obvious:

Time to sell the house and move into a holding pen for the elderly. 

Guess I’m headed for the Beatitudes, a “life-care community” that stores you during the last months or (God forfend!) years of your life, as you rot away into senility.

Dear Lord! How I would ever so much rather be dead!

Seriously: I just abominate institutional living. Hated hated HATED living in the dorms in college. And now…goddammit! Now I have to end my life that way?

Time to look into alternatives. I simply cannot wind up my life locked into a dormitory for the senile. If I weren’t already crazy when they hauled me off to such a place, I would soon be stark raving insane.

There’s gotta be a better way to go. Let’s find out what it is. And…exit, stage left. 

And I stay here…WHY?

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Jeez.

Lift the dawg onto the bed: Happy Dawg!

Turn on the heating pad, get it warmed up. Happy Human!

Climb into the sack, apply hot heating pad to spavined hip. Happy spavined hip!

Fire up the computer, start to explore the Local Gnus, and….RRRRROOOAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

Goddamned cop helicopter blasts over the house.

Presumably in pursuit of an even more goddamned perp…

What a garden spot!

Sick and tired of the unholy racket and crime and nuttiness and shit-headedness here in Lovely Uptown Phoenix.

Truly: if I could move away from here, I’d do it today.

But…but…where on earth would I go? Is there really any place that’s any better, and quieter, any less looney toons than this place?

Frankly, I think not.

One resident, for example, was attacked and apparently kidnapped from one of the most upscale suburban districts in the state. Like the cop said after my own neighbors were grabbed, tied up, and thrown in their bathtub so a pair of home invaders could clean out their house: “They’re everywhere. You can’t get away from them.”

Yeah: I’d remarked to one of the cops that I thought maybe I should sell my house and move to some quieter venue, and that was his response. “Don’t do that! They’re everywhere!”

Ugh.

I need to get Ruby a roommate in the form of a 90-pound German shepherd and me a new toy in the form of a .38…enough is enough!