Coffee heat rising

Common sense

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!

How Did They Live That Long?

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Old age is creepin’ up, y’know. Where the heck did THAT come from, eh????

Welp…as I get older, I do find myself wondering…

* How DID I get this old?
* How much older will I get? and
* Do I care?
* What can I do to stay in my home until I croak over: to avoid being locked up in an old-age prison?

My father thought old-age homes were The Business. He tried to persuade my mother to move out of their pretty little house in Sun City to enter an institution called Orangewood, here in north Central Phoenix.

She would have none of it. And she succeeded in resisting until she croaked over from the cancer brought on by her incessant tobacco-puffing: right at about the age of 65. The minute he got her urnful of ashes installed in the local mortuary, he was out the door! 

Sold their sweet Sun City house and moved himself into that Orangewood prison and felt mighty proud that he’d done so.

His best friend there shot himself in the head. You’d think that might have told him something, wouldn’t you? Maybe it did, but he had the sense not to articulate the lesson out loud.

He married the Wicked Witch of the West there…apparently in an effort to revive his reasonably content life built, over 32 years, with my mother.

That didn’t work.

The evil bitch made him utterly miserable. But he was afraid to divorce her, because, he moaned, she’ll get all my money.

The idea that some things may be more important than money was beyond him. Besides, he apparently was afraid to make a move in that direction, partly because the new wife was extremely popular at the Institution and divorcing her would have made him a pile of sh!t in the other inmates’ estimation. He didn’t feel he could afford to move someplace else…and he probably was right.

So he stayed horribly married to her.

At any rate, my mother died fairly young, partly because of her incessant cigarette-huffing; partly because of malnutrition while she was growing up; and  no doubt because of the amoebic dysentery she caught while we were in  Saudi Arabia and the unholy treatment for it that she was subjected to.

This left him alone in Sun City…and for a guy who had spent his entire adult life in institutional settings, “alone” did NOT make it. So he moved out of the house and into the old-folkery within weeks of her death.

What a nightmare!

Well, I”m not up for rehearsing all that here. Just bear in mind: when your spouse dies, don’t be in any hurry to find a replacement!

My mother died within days of turning 65. He was 84 when he died — not bad for a male who had a bitch of a hard life. But…that left him with some 20 years without the the love of his life.

Rather promptly after moving into the Old Folkery, he married the Dragon Lady. Big mistake. She was one of the great Bitches of the 20th Century, and she made him utterly miserable.

But he refused to divorce her, because “she’ll get all my money!”

Arrrrghhhh! Daddy, some things are more important than money. 

But as a practical matter, that old saw did not apply, where he was concerned. He’d worked like an animal all his life to accrue that money, and as a practical matter, there really wasn’t anything more important to him than his money.

Nor did he seem to understand that, with my husband a partner in one of the Southwest’s most powerful law firms, the Dragon Lady was not about to get all his precious money. He never did get that message, so between what he perceived as social pressure and his fear of losing his savings, he stayed in what can best be described as a nightmarish marriage.

I wish I’d had the nerve to tell him that the witch was not gonna get all his beloved money, because his daughter — moi — was married to a lawyer who would crush the old bat like a cockroach. But I didn’t.

So he stayed married, miserably. Died, miserably. Left me with about half the money he had come away with at my mother’s death. That precious money.

/eyeroll/

None o’ my bidness, eh?

Well, anyhow… Sometimes I do wonder how, given the gawdawful stress my father faced at the end of his life, how on earth he survived into his 80s. Poor man! How he must have suffered…

I, thanks to him and thanks to good luck, am not suffering. And hope not to, between now and the looming end of my life. Keep the hassles away from my son, and leave all the cash and property to him as his inheritance. Just let me live out the last few years, weeks, and days of my life in peace.

If there is any such thing….

HOW do dogs know????

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Doggy telepathy, right?

Obviously, Ruby can see me sit down. Get comfortable. Open the computer on my lap. Start playing with it. But how does she know the exact moment when really, truly, I do not want to drop everything, get up, traipse across the house, open the back door, and let her out?

She does know. Absolutely.

And there will be no loafing for the human when this dawg is around. No chance!

Let her outside? Next chore is to wait around till she’s finished patrolling the backyard and then let her back in.

😀

Yuch! It is hot and wet out there. Not yet 9:30 and the weather is already ungodly. Way too hot and humid to leave the back door open so she can come back in at her whim.

The coyote issue is getting a bit more intense, too. As our local wild canids get more tame, I grow more reluctant to leave a 20-p0und corgi toddling around the backyard by herself, unobserved and unguarded.

****

Amusement 0f the day, later on, will be testing a new wine M’hijito showed up with. Uhm…make that “wine,” quote-marks included.

Understand: I have my main meal of the day between noon and 2:00 p.m. And because yes, I do like a glass of wine with a good meal, that is when I snort down my daily dose of what he regards as booze.

He gets all worried about this. Apparently he thinks I’m a lush, and that I’m swilling down half a bottle or more. Every day.

This is somewhat distant from the truth. Yes, I do snort down wine with lunch. I usually have a glass — at most a glass and a half — of wine with that mid-day meal.

Shocking, ain’t it?

This is a habit I picked up from an old boyfriend, a guy with European origins who did, indeed, start tippling his wine along about mid-day. Because…that was what his own people did.

Since it looked very much like I was going to marry this guy, “his own people” were fast evolving to become “my people.” And I wanted to fit in.

Lemme tellya: my parents about had 15 shit-fits. 

Not that they didn’t drink themselves. They did, indeed. In fact, my father could (and did) brew his own.

Long story short: after some months, it became clear that if I married our guy, I would never see my parents again. They just hated the man, partly as a matter of racism and partly because they genuinely thought he was a jerk.

I deep-sixed that relationship…but did not deep-six the wine. 😀

And so, over the decades (and that’s what it’s been: decades), I’ve been in the habit of swilling a glass or two (or three…) of wine every day.

Shocking, eh?

Well, my son pretty much abhors this habit. And I will say…he probably has somethin’ there. It can’t be good for you to be gulping down a couple of glasses worth of wine every day.

No! Baaaaad basselope!

So I can’t get irked over his resentment of my swilling habits. But…neither do I feel much enthusiasm to knock them off….  😀

He has tried to reform my evil ways. No luck, poor kid.

So now he’s found a new tack: deflect my boozing onto non-alcoholic booze!  

Don’tcha love it?

Seriously, if this stuff is drinkable, you may be sure I’ll be switching over to it.

He just showed up with it a day ago, so I haven’t tried it yet. But this afternoon I will, with dinner. Should be innaresting to see (uhm…taste?) what happens.

{chortle!}

The real truth is, what I need to switch over to is iced tea. Or iced water.

This would require me to behave like a grown-up. And we know I have a moral objection to that, right?

😀

And…you thought “hotter than the hubs” was hot?

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Hah! we say to that…

{chortle!}  7:19 a.m.: Just back from the morning Dawg Walk.

It seems hotter than the Hubs of Hades. But in fact…it’s not. In fact, it’s only 90 degrees out on the patio.

That seeming, I expect, is occasioned by the fact that it’s a bit damp out there. The air is hazy: not overcast, but…kinda fuzzy-looking.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the neighborhood, from the upper reaches of Richistan to the humbler, Sun City-style bungalows that characterize our parts. Indeed, my house was built by the same developer who brought us that sylvan ghetto for old folks. And once you know that, you can see the resemblance. Kinda.

WhatEVER. Even though it’s not hot outside by Arizona standards, it’s mighty cozy by ordinary human standards. Yes: Hubs of Hades.

And what have we here? A wind seems to be coming up. Rain in the offing maybe, later today?  Innaresting.

Thinking, whilst hiking, about how I”m going to contrive to stay in my house until the last cat is hanged. My son wants to consign me to the Beatitudes, a prison for olde folkes.

I just HATE institutional living — hated living in the dorms, and know very well that being locked up in an old-folkerie will quickly drive me to suicide.

Which ain’t the way I wanna go out…

Recently I learned that Wonder Cleaning Lady used to take care of old bats in their homes. Whether she stayed with them overnight, I do not know…but with all the gadgets we have these days, it wouldn’t be hard to equip oneself with a call button to summon your caretaker or the EMTs. If said caretaker surfaced around 7 or 8 a.m. and stayed until after dinner, you’d be OK.

By and large.

And given what it costs to stay in one of those horrible places, you’d probably come out ahead financially.

A-a-n-n-d interestingly, I seem to be getting by just fine without a car! Dear son, who kiped mine and locked it in his garage, has driven me to a few places that I need to go, and has made it clear he has no intention of returning the chariot. But….

But…I don’t need it! 

The guy across the street is an Uber driver! He can schlep me just about anyplace I need to go. And if I can’t snab him, I can…hold onto your hat! This is radical stuff!…just call a taxi.

Yes. Phoenix still has taxi cabs. If you can imagine.

It’s interesting to think….  That you could get by without a car in a major city, I mean. Back when my mother and I lived in San Francisco, we mostly did without the car. My father’s car, that is: most of the time it was locked up in an underground garage, while he went to sea. She and I took the bus, the streetcar, or a cab. And we got around just fine.

The presence of Uber’s amateur cab drivers would hugely enhance that. With those guys on stand-by all the time…really…you wouldn’t need to own a car.

Truth to tell, though…once the weather cools a bit, I probably won’t have much use for the Uber dudes, anyway.

The Funny Farm is within walking distance of three fine shopping centers. Taken together, they house…

> an Albertson’s (giant supermarket)
> a Walgreen’s
> a computer store (new gear and repairs!)
> a Fry’s (supermarket!)
> a Sprouts (hippy-dippy supermarket!)
> an El Rancho (another supermarket!)
> a music store
> a beauty parlor
> a liquor store
> a doctor’s office
> a couple of clothing stores
…and several others that offhand I don’t recall.

Soooo…I lucked out when I bought this house here at the top end of North Central.

What it means is that I can reach any of those stores in a ten-minute walk. And with the roller-cart that I tricked out, I can carry a freaking ton of goods from place to place to home.

And what THAT means is: no need for a car!

Seriously: if I need a car, all I have to do is go rent one.

And…if Luz is representative, I can rent a caretaker, too! 😀

And Yet ANOTHER Wild-Eyed Radical Idea…

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Hmmmm…. If you read my past few posts, you’ll get the distinct impression that I’m in the middle of some kind of life-changing revelation. Changes to the left of me, changes to the right of me, wack-shit ideas pouring in from all directions. 

Well, it’s not quite that radical. But something has happened that presents the potential to make some major changes. And to save big, BIG bucks.

What happened?

My honored son pilfered my car out of my garage. Drove it off and locked it up in his garage. This apparently resulted from a) anger at me and b) some sincere concern that enough of my marbles have rolled out my ears that really…maybe I shouldn’t be driving.

Upshot: for the past two or three weeks, I’ve been doing without a car. In the 115-degree heat, we might add.

And y’know what’s happened?

Nothing. 

Got that?

Nothing. NOTHING, nary a disaster, nary even a noticeable inconvenience has happened. That’s what’s happened.

And…why hasn’t my world ended? Well…

It turns out that if you live in a sufficiently urbanized area, you very well may not need a car.

And why not????

BECAUSE… here in the city you have busses. You have taxicabs. You have trains. And you have reasonably safe streets leading to the nearest grocery and drugstores.

No kidding. Within easy walking distance, I have…

* A Sprouts
* A Walgreen’s
* An Albertson’s
* A Fry’s
* and an El Rancho

Got that? FOUR SUPERMARKETS(!!!!) and a drugstore within six blocks or less of the Funny Farm. Mostly less. Significantly less.

Furthermore, directly across the street from the Funny Farm, we have a guy who’s driving an Uber!

So if I don’t feel like walking a few hundred feet to the nearest store, I can hire the guy to haul me over there, and carry the groceries back here in his car!

My son probably thought he was inflicting some kind of disaster on me, in the moment that led up to this scheme.

But no.

What he was doing was creating a revelation. 

To wit: in a large city saturated with public transit AND with private taxi services, you don’t need a car!

Think o’ that.

And think  how much you spend on the damn car(s) in your garage and driveway, hm?

You could rent a LOT of Uber rides just for the insurance premiums on those tanks. Add in the car payments (if you’re still coughing them up), the gasoline, and the regular servicing and…hoooleeee mackerel!

Get rid of the rolling hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money and you will save a TON of change!!!

You want a swell ride to go someplace special or take a vacation trip? Forgodsake, RENT one. There’s a car rental place less than three blocks from my house.

So. There’s the Question of the Day:

WHY HAVE WE BEEN SPENDING ALL THIS CASH ON A CAR PARKED IN OUR GARAGE OR DRIVEWAY?????

Why, indeed?

My car has been parked at M’hijito’s place for the past ten days or so. And y’know what?  I haven’t missed it!

So a New Plan is shaping up:

  • Have him sell the tank for me.
  • Bank the proceeds.
  • Convert the garage into an arts-and-craft workspace, and
  • Invite friends over to paint, draw, model clay, or whatever other artsy thing suits their fancy.

I might even rent the garage to an arts teacher to use as an artist’s studio.

From a hole in the ground into which to pour money
to
A money-making asset…
Mwa ha ha! 

Think o’ that!

Now that I’ve cleverly figured all this out (it only took…how many years??), I’m reminded that when DXH and I spent several months in London, we never bought or rented a car. We got around on foot or by public transit. Never did we feel especially inconvenienced.

Actually, that’s wrong: a couple of times we rented a car to go sight-seeing in the countryside. Never for longer than a day, though.

Why d’you suppose Americans feel we all must have cars?

Well: advertising and marketing, of course. But the truth is, going car-free may prove to be a hugely liberating experience. We shall soon see, eh?

Outta Here?

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Hmmmm…. IS it time to get outta here?

I’m thinking, the more I contemplate events of the past week or so, that it surely is time: that I need to get on the road NOW, not later. Hire a Realtor to unload the palace. Pack up the chariot. Toss the dawg in and jump in after her. And take off in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes.

This situation is NOT good. At best, we’re looking at weeks or months or — gawd forfend, more(!) — of harassment and hassle from the Authorities. Having to hire a lawyer. Putting up a fight while pretending to be on my best behavior.

At worst, we’re looking at my son being prosecuted, me being adjudicated, my home being lost to pay lawyers’ fees…holeeee shit!

Dayum.

Where would I go?

I dunno. La Maya and La Bethulia took up residence in a trailer on the Pacific Coast. I might make my way to their trailer park and try to buy a place there.

Colorado, maybe? I rather like DXH’s home town, Grand Junction. It’s a little hickish for my taste. But still…it does have its rustic appeal. With any luck, maybe it’s too far out in the sticks to attract nosy social workers.

Where else?

Mexico. Low cost of living. Balmy (often hot) weather. Awesome Mexican food! 😀

Deeper into Latin America?  Hmmm…a bit more of a Learning Experience than I care to take on at this age. But…ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I guess.

Great Britain?  Been there, done that. Not fond of being that cold. Or damp.

Moving: it really doesn’t appeal to me. Especially not moving out of the country. So that leaves, as a choice, hanging in here and taking my chances with Big Brother and his social workers.

And that DOES leave me not knowing which way to jump. Common sense tells me to get the Hell out of here while I can. But inertia tells me to lean back, prop my feet on the hassock, and relax.