Coffee heat rising

Common sense

The Evolution of Car-Freedom

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Another (un)lovely day in Phoenix. Leave us all FLEE it…

LOL! That’s a take-off on the daily pitch of a guy who, back in the Day, was probably Phoenix’s all-time greatest morning talk-show host.

He’s long gone now. But anyone who’s  been in the Valley for a lifetime or so remembers his daily greeting:

It’s a beautiful day in Arizona…
Leave us all enjoy it!

Yeah. Arizonans were that illiterate, back in the day. 😀 He was much beloved, though…and frankly, much missed.

Truth to tell, it’s hotter than a by-gawd out there just now.

“A beautiful day,” it ain’t.

So far, quite to the contrary.

Oh…really, though…. Look at it through the right lens, and it’s funnier than a crutch.

****

My son has decided that I should get off the sauce. My terrifying drinking habits have led him to believe I’m a lush!  And he wants me to swear off.

What are those terrifying habits?

-> Swilling down a couple of glasses of wine with the large meal of the day. “Dinner,” most Americans would call it, except that I partake of this pile of chow at noon, when most of us are eating what we would call “Lunch.”

This latter feast, as you no doubt know if you live on this half of the globe, is taken at mid-day and is usually a light meal.

Okay. Being a little weird (and having grown up in an entirely different country…), I stoke up the barbecue along about noon and sizzle myself a portion of meat (steak, lamb, pork chop, fish filet, or the like), a starch (potato, pasta, beans, whatnot), and a green or yellow vegetable (broccoli, asparagus, green beans, carrots, corn, etc.). This makes a large meal: large enough to soak up whatever wine I decide to lap down with it.

A few hours later, at what most FaM readers would call “dinner time,” I have a much smaller, lighter meal, usually without benefit of booze.

Well.

Observing me chow down on what I call “the big meal of the day” (i.e., lunch in your jargon), and seeing me swill down a glass of wine with it, Wonder Cleaning-Lady concluded that I am a lush.

Yes. She decided that because I was drinking an alcoholic beverage at mid-day — along about noon — I must be a drunk. 

{Understand: a “glass” of wine in my house is a wine glass…one of those bubbles atop a stem. Filled to the top, it holds about a third of what a standard US-style glass holds…and it’s never filled to the top.)

To make things worse…ooooohhhh gawd! Get this:

She was here on a day after I’d been awake the better part of an insomniac night.

I’d had almost no sleep the night before she showed up here. And all the time she was banging and roaring around the house, what I most craved was just to go back to bed. 

Not an option, of course.

So…stupidly…ooooh HOW stupidly!… I put my noon meal on the table. Sat down to eat it, accompanied by the usual partial glass of red wine. And feeling soooooooooo tired that I pushed the plate aside, laid my head in my arms on the table, and promptly FELL ASLEEP.

No kidding.

So what does she do?

She whips out her little camera (we all carry a camera with us, everyplace we go, right?) and snaps photos of me with my head in my arms on the table, a half-full glass of red wine sitting there next to my noggin.. 

These, she soon displays to my son, telling him that I was so drunk I fell asleep at the dinner table while she was here.

Yes. I did fall asleep.
No. I did not pass out in a drunken stupor.

But o’course, he couldn’t tell that from a snapshot. And nothing I could say would persuade him of what really happened.

So now the Kid is on High Alert at all times. He thinks I’m a drunk, and he thinks I’m pirating wine to swizzle at every opportunity.

I know: it would be funny if it weren’t so damn stupid!

Funny or stupid — or even serious, if you prefer — it has created a shopping-bag full of trouble for me.

At this point, I can’t persuade M’hijito that I’m not a lush and that I do not loaf around the house all day swilling booze.

So convinced is he that he raided my kitchen and stole the two bottles of sinful wine it contained: a bottle of red and a bottle of white. He also made off with my car, because he imagines I cruise around the city three sheets to the wind!

Hm.

I really SHOULD fire the cleaning lady, shouldn’t I? The woman has created a gigantic kettle full of trouble for me. How to get out of that kettle escapes me at the moment.

But that poses its own little headaches:

* Good cleaning ladies are notoriously hard to come by. And you may be real sure I don’t want to clean this four-bedroom palace myself.

* If I can her, will that not just damn me by my own actions? It will look like I’m firing her because she knows I guzzle down the vast kegs of wine at noon that she reported to my son.

* And yeah: I do hate cleaning house! So much so that I’m inclined to let this stupid flap go, just to hang onto the woman.

The latter is itself probably pretty stupid, eh? 

I mean, after all: If she’s going to squeal on me to my son because I dared to swill a glass of wine with lunch, what other trouble will she make for me? 

* People in a given trade tend to know each other. So let’s say I do can her and hire a new cleaning lady: next thing we know New CL will also think I’m a lush, having been told so by the present incumbent.

****

{sigh} I’m brought back to my periodically recurring thought: that I should sell this house and move out of Phoenix.

Just. 

Get. 

Away.

From.

Here.

But y’know…I don’t wanna!

* I love my house.
* I like my neighbors.
* Even the Romanian Landlord and I are acting like friends of late.
* The house is paid for.
* I could walk to my son’s house from here.
* I don’t wanna move away! 

So here we are: I’m living in a lovely house with a huge, EMPTY garage. My son has absconded with my car. I’m not about to get into a fight with him over that damn thing.

And we have an army of Uber drivers in this neighborhood…

We have a busy and efficient light-rail system running right up the west side of the ‘Hood…

The neighbors and I are getting along fine of late…

It’s (relatively!) safe here…

And, gilding all those lilies, just about all of the grocery stores and household marketers are within reasonable walking distance.

So no: I don’t wanna move away from here!!!!

And I ain’t a-gonna. 

Which Way to Jump? If Jump at All…

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So this morning I’m idly thinking of walking down to the Beatitudes (since my son has kiped my car) and looking into how much it would cost to move into that old-folkerie.

A lot, I can tellya.

After my mother died, my father moved into one of those places. It cost just about everything he had — and he had a lot, for a workin’-class boy.

All the proceeds from the sale of their home in Sun City plus most of his retirement savings went to buy him into that place.

For me, that would be like paying someone else to get outta my way so I could commit suicide. But having gone to sea since he was 17 years old, he was used to institutional living. If anything, he preferred it to living on his own.

Most of the old-folkeries around here — “life-care communities,” eh? — range in quality from good to very nice, indeed. My problem with them is simply that I loathe communal living. 

No, folks. I do NOT WANT to live elbow-to-elbow with an army of other old farts. Nor do I want to be required to take at least one meal a day in a dreadful mess hall. Or to have to listen to some half-deaf soul’s TV set blaring away at all hours of the day and night.

That pretty much puts the eefus on moving into one of those places.

But I have to allow: it’s highly questionable whether I’ll be able to stay here in my home — hired help or no — until the last gasp. Or even anywhere near the last gasp.

Because Old Folks are something less than second-class citizens in American society, the only way you’re going to keep a grip on how and where you will live is to make those decisions before you need them and then to get yourself settled in acceptable accommodations before you need them. And since I’ve pretty well arrived at croak-over age, that means I need to make said decisions now and get things set up for them now. 

So…what can one do? A few possibilities do present themselves:

* Hire someone — the cleaning lady, maybe? — to come in daily:

  • Check on you
  • Take you shopping if need be
  • Gas up the car
  • Bring the groceries home and help put them away
  • Prepare at least one balanced meal in your kitchen; serve it or store it in the fridge for you
  • Clean up the kitchen
  • Clean the bathrooms as necessary
  • Water the outdoor potted plants
  • Check that the pool is working properly; note any problems observed and report them to Pool Dude
  • Negotiate with Pool Dude to be sure he knows what (if anything) needs to be fixed
  • Walk the dog
  • Drive you to appointments
  • Ride herd on Lawn Dude. Be sure he knows what needs to be done this week, and that he does it.

Yeah…sure. What fun, eh?

And what d’you suppose it costs to hire someone to cover all the details of your daily life, every day? 

* Another possibility: Put up your adult kid to ride herd on the hired help. Also put him up to doing some of the noxious household chores.

Won’t he just love that!  And realistically: Our grown offspring have their own very full, very hectic lives to manage. They can’t be spending hours taking care of our affairs.

Arrrrghhh! So I’m awfully afraid I’m not gonna be able to evade having to go into one of those old-folkeries…simply because I won’t be able to afford to hire someone to cover all those chores, nor, as I get older, will I be able to ride herd on them. Once I reach that point…well…realistically, I’ll no longer be able to stay in my home.

On the other hand:  I must say that hiring people to come in regularly and do the scutwork of homeownership is working exceptionally well. Just now, anyway.

I never have to lift a finger to keep that damn swimming pool running, for example. And it’s always sparkling clean and running perfectly. Useta be: I had to work on that thing every. single. day.

Not since I slipped on the kitchen tiles and busted myself up have I had to clean the 1800 square feet of tile flooring in this house. Or scrub the kitchen. Or scour the bathtub. Hiring someone to do that has worked exceptionally well.

While that fine someone is here, she also dusts the furniture and cleans the bathrooms.

The cost of hiring these folks comes nowhere near what it would cost to live in an old-folkerie like Orangewood or the Beatitudes.

And…well…I still get to live in my place. 

Still More Existential Agonizing

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My poor son is freaking out because — with some reason — he thinks I drink wayyy too much booze.

And y’know…the truth is, even a glass or so a day is prob’ly too much.

My parents always had a cocktail or two before dinner. And as I reached the Drinking Age, I came to join them. Actually, my college boyfriend at the time got me started on swilling a cocktail or two a day. So it was pretty easy to just blend right in with the family custom. 😀

Has that custom grown into an exceptionally bad habit?

Hmmmm…..  One could argue so. 

Yeah, I do have a whiskey & water or a glass of wine every afternoon, before dinner. Then a glass of wine with dinner. And yeah: it makes sense to say that’s too damn much. Especially for the girlie scion of a good Christian Scientist family. 😀

So now, dammit….I’ve decided to climb on the wagon. 

Ugh, what a way spend the late afternoon, right?

😀

But truth to tell, I think we’ll all be better off if the old lady quits lapping her li’l cocktail every afternoon. How booooring!

My parents always had cocktails before (and sometimes with) dinner. The difference was that they didn’t drink wine. So they didn’t have that nightly swill of cabernet or Sauvignon blanc with dinner. Instead, they generally lapped up a whiskey and water or two beforehand. And that was it.

My son, having noticed how much wine I’ve taken to slurping down (doubt if he’s noticed the disappearing whiskey…), has asked me to knock it off. And truth to tell…I think he’s right.

So here we are, riding the wagon again. 

Matter of fact, I hadn’t noticed until recently how much booze I’ve been lapping…and y’know, I do believe he’s right. I need to quit that! 

One of the li’l problems that arise when you get in the habit of regular boozing is that you don’t realize how much you’re spending on your swilling. If you buy a bottle of wine or whiskey only when you go into the store to buy food, that cost gets blended in with the grocery bill, and unless you’re paying close attention, you simply don’t notice that the grocery bill is hovering near the stratosphere.

And in fact, that is pretty much what’s happened here. Recently I realized that holee maquerel! I’m spending an obscene amount on food. 

Well.

No.

Sorry. Cabernet is not food. Neither is Sauvignon blanc. Nope. Not food. But it sure as hell is jacking up the grocery bill.

So. No. Quit it!

As of this evening, we’re guzzling iced tea or water with dinner. Ugh.

Oh well: we’ll survive. And probably be the better for it. 

 

Dog & Human & Heat & Humidity

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8:25 in the morning. Back-porch thermometer says 95 degrees in the shade. And WET. Wet as fukkin’ Saudi Arabia. Wunderground says a mere 11% humidity…but I wouldn’t believe that. It is plain downright SOGGY out there in back.

Wanna fix coffee and food, but don’t feel like ingesting anything: it’s just too hot!

Ruby and I hiked around the park, through the neighborhoods to the east and south of it. Did not envy the workmen who had arrived in their pick-ups, preparing to heave, haul, prize, and hammer at one house under repairs & upgrades. Ugh! Physical work in this heat? Spare us, Lord!

Got a dentist’s appointment this afternoon. Will have to hire an Uber to drive me over there, unless I can persuade my son to knock off the job for the purpose. He’s the one who stole my car…so I guess he’s the one who oughta drive me to appointments. I may just cancel, though: I’m not up for dental hassles today.

Guess I need to call Financial Dude, extract a few thousand dollars, and go buy a car. This time, too, purchase a padlock for the garage door! Can you believe my kid stealing my car? Uhh…“protecting me from myself”….?

Real protective, trekking around on foot through 110-degree heat, eh?

Speaking of summer marvels… What the HELL is Trump doing in DC? Who does he think he is? Adolf Hitler Redux? And WHAT the Hell has happened to American voters’ brains?

Frankly, I suspect what we’re seeing there is a result of the long-term dumbing-down of America’s schools. It’s taken a few decades…but our wanna-be dictators are, indeed, winning out.

Oh well. This post is supposed to be about a dog and a human and heat and humidity. Not at all clear that Mr. Trump is human. He’s certainly not smart enough to be a dog. “Hot,” he’s not, in my book. That makes him “humid,” eh? 😀

*****

A-N-N-D… Just get yourself sat down to munch a little breakfast and swill a little coffee and it’s

R-R-R-R-R-R-O-O-O-O-O-O-A-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R!!!!!!!!!

Gerardo’s boys show up! And now they’re out back ripping and roaring and banging and crashing and hauling and dumping and….awwww geeeez!

F*ck. Now I’ll have to clean the pool. Just what I wanted to do on a 108-degree morning.

Okay, Okay…yes, I surely am glad I don’t have to mow and dig and weed-whack and trim and haul…on any morning, to say nothing of one where the thermometer reads 108 in the shade of the back porch before 9 o’clock. But how do they KNOW when all I want to do is sit down and unwind?

Really. I should sell this house and move into a North Central high-rise. Let the Kid sell the apartment when I die and figure out what to do with the dog.

****

Forked over a hundred bucks for 20 minutes’ worth of yard work. But…he had five guys out there. One of ’em a newbie.

WHAT an obnoxious job. A hundred bucks is a freakin’ bargain, I’ll tellya! Especially on a 118-degree day…

So now we’ve got a new guy…nice-lookin’ fella, fresh out of Mexico. We’ll see long he hangs around.

Honestly, I don’t understand — not even faintly — how those guys hold up under the strain of physical labor in 100-degree heat. They must be strong as horses. Or crazy as loons…

Called the kid to tell him he’ll have to drive me to the dentist. He was less than thrilled. Maybe he thinks I’m going to hire an Uber to get over there?

Well. No. Just gonna let all my teeth fall out.

😀

Deliver me the chow!

by

Okay, here we are in the 21st century, whither Yours Truly just arrived. 

As we scribble, it is hotter than the hubs of Hades here in lovely uptown Phoenix. I need to go to a grocery store: the only chow with which our shelves are well stocked just now is…yeah…dog food!

The human needs meat. It needs veggies. It needs fruit. It needs pasta. And it craves a glass of wine.

For some time, I’ve known that the local Sprouts will deliver. So, I gather, will Albertson’s. But I haven’t taken advantage of these alleged services, because…well…let’s be frank: Learning something new feels like more trouble than it’s worth these days.

My charming son has absconded with my car. Apparently he thinks that 80 is too old to be navigating the homicidal streets of Phoenix with much hope of survival. Ohhhhkayyyy…. Wanna know something? HE CAN HAVE THE THING! Because the real horror — which he seems to have overlooked — is that I don’t need that car to get around. 

Y’know… We have Uber. We have a wonderful shiny new lightrail that whizzes right up Main Drag West. We even still have old-fashioned boring busses. Dreary little hickish Phoenix has turned into a big city…and lo! These days we have big-city amenities.

Dudes and dudettes! We don’t need no steenking car!  :-D

Nevertheless, as we scribble, the outdoor thermometer reads 109 degrees in the shade of the (north-facing!) back porch. And y’know what I am NOT gonna do?

I am NOT gonna walk the two or three blocks to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s. NOT A FREAKIN’ CHANCE!  Nay verily: I’m gonna call Sprouts and order the meat and the veggies and the bottle of wine I crave.

Let’s see how they do! 😀

Americans are not good with fresh produce: they don’t know what good fruits and veggies look like. So…we shall see if Sprouts’ staff can overcome that cultural challenge. But if they can…I may never go into a grocery store again! 

😀  😀  😀  😀

Seriously: I do hate grocery shopping. If store staff can get their act together well enough to select decent produce, this ole’ lady will cheerfully hire them to do so.

The main problem will be scraping together enough cash to tip these folks — no, I do NOT carry cash with me. I put everything on charge or debit cards. And no, I do do NOT want to traipse across the city to the credit union to extract cash dollars from my bank account.

But there’s gotta be a way around that. We’ll figure out what it is. Maybe they’ll let me add a tip to the bill.

Heh!  Y’know, when we stayed in London, we didn’t own a vehicle. ‘Twasn’t necessary: busses and cabs would take you wherever you pleased in the city. If we wanted to take a weekend sight-seeing junket into the countryside, we’d rent a car.

Between  you’n’me, I don’t see why we couldn’t do the same here. What with Uber, why do you need to grace your garage with a hole in the ground into which to pour cash?? 

The Sprouts, the Fry’s, and the Albertson’s are no further from my house than were any of the stores in London — in fact, they may be closer. London had trains: we have trains. London had busses: we have busses. London had taxicabs: we have taxicabs. So…uhmmmm….

Yeah: at the risk of repeating oneself: why do you need to grace your garage with a hole in the ground into which to pour cash??

{Cackle!} Why do you need a damn garage at all????

Sauna City!

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It is hotter than a two-dollar cookstove outside — as my father used to say. Feels like Ras Tanura out there. That’s Aramco’s crummy little company town, perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf, about 40 miles out of Dhahran.

Horrible place. Horrible horrible place!

Damn glad I don’t live there anymore.  But sometimes I do wonder if there’s much difference…at least, at some times of year.

This is one of those seasons: hot, still, and wet. Just walked in the house from the morning doggy-walk, drenched in sweat.

Oh well: a morning like this is short on doggy-walkers. That means fewer encounters, fewer near-fights (or full-on fights), fewer morons to ask to puh-leeeze keep their dogs back. That’s something I guess.

Something else: today is NOT a day when my son is dragging me out to the damn Mayo Clinic. Thank goodness! 

What a waste of time: An hour’s drive through nasty traffic. They put me in these stupid workshop meetings where a dozen old buzzards sit around and bitch about how they can’t remember things. Is any advice offered on how you might keep track of things that you used to be able to manage?

Nooooooo. It’s just whine whine whine wine….I can’t remember where I put my shoes…. Not one person in the room — fellow whiner or medical/psychological professional — says “Well, then: get in the habit of always putting your shoes in the same place!”

Duhhhhhh!

My patience with that clap-trap is, shall we say, long gone.

Well, anywho…that frees up the day for my favorite activity: loafing. Ruby and the human are are now well-walked, and so we can loaf without guilt.

LOL! Sentimental-journeying through websites picturing Ras Tanura, the horrid company town where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Claustrophobic. Hot. Small-town mentality. Horrible place.

Mercifully, my father retired from Aramco when I was at the end of the 6th grade. My mother and I came back to the states six months ahead of him and settled in San Francisco…just in time for the big earthquake at the end of the 1950s.

My mother was absolutely terrorized by earthquakes. To capitalize on that, they stupidly rented a high-rise apartment — a very nice one — in a tony development called Parkmerced. He had gone back to sea, and so was floating around the ocean on a tanker most of the time.

Yeah: in a real earthquake, that swell Parkmerced building would sway back and forth! “How to terrorize your wife even more,” eh?

We hadn’t been there long when, during a school day, a major quake struck. I was in school — sixth grade. The teachers paraded us all out onto the playground, where flying debris and collapsing ceilings were unlikely to kill us.

Meanwhile, my mother totally freaked out. So much so, that she lost consciousness of her experience that day. Her first memory of it is finding herself in the middle of a street in front of our building, running around in circles! My father had gone back to sea at the time, so he wasn’t there to calm her down.

Ahhh, the good ole’ days, hm?

So…despite the gawdawful heat and the bat-brained right-wing politics, Arizona has a lot to recommend it. High on the list: no earthquakes. 

😀

I stay here because there really isn’t anyplace that I know of that’s any better. But primarily because my son is here. He stays here because his dad is here. And because he grew up here. And because he has a decent job here.

Actually, I can think of a number of better places. If M’hijito weren’t in Phoenix, where would I go?

* Berkeley, California
* San Diego, California
* San Francisco, California
* Paris (yeah: the one in France)
* Santa Fe, New Mexico
* Seattle, Washington
* Mexico City

I dunno. There really aren’t all that many places in the world that are much better than where I am. What would be the point of moving?

Except, maybe, to get away from the summer heat. Then you get…what? Winter cold?

Welp…the dog is walked. The human is hungry. Better get off my duff and fix some breakfast. Outta here!