Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…

by

Ever look back on some damfool thing you should have done or, more to the point, shouldn’t have done and think…”coulda, shoulda, woulda,” all the while kicking your idiot self in the metaphorical tuchus?

The past couple of days have been haunted by that less-than-charming state of mind:

When my father and his late-life lady friend came to me and ostentatiously asked for my permission for them to marry, What the F**K was the matter with me that I didn’t jump up and down hollering NO, DON’T DO THAT!??

What was the matter with me that I didn’t say, as calmly and rationally as possible, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!

Why the HELL didn’t I say Wait! Just WAIT six months and see how things shake out then?”

Why didn’t I say to my father, DADDY, RUN AWAY!

Welp. Some of us are just plain plug-stupid. And evidently I’m among that number.

Dunno why that episode has come back to haunt me of late. But yeah: over the past week or two I find myself reliving the (annoying!) episode when my father and the Dragon Lady came to me like a pair of 16-year-olds and begged my permission to marry.

WTF was I supposed to say? They were both adults. They both had been married before (twice, in my father’s case). They both knew what they were getting into. And they both knew that since in their 60s they were unlikely to spawn any offspring, it fukkin’ DIDN’T MATTER whether they married or lived in sin.

Well. Of course, about all I could do was give them my daughterly blessings.

Dayum! I must have been smoking something especially toxic that day.

The upshot of this little circus performance was misery. Years of misery for my father.

He was afraid to divorce the Witch. “SHE’LL GET ALL MY MONEY,” wailed he. Nevvermind that his daughter’s husband was a senior partner in one of the most powerful lawfirms in the Southwest. Ohhh eeek! SHE’LL GET ALL MY MONEY!

Holy shit. Some things matter more than all your money.

Why didn’t I tell him so?

I dunno.

Just stupid, I guess.

Been there… Yow!

by

Holee mackerel!

I can remember smelling the smoke from fires like this when my parents and I lived in Long Beach — back in the Dark Ages. Quite a few ages have passed since those days…and now, here we are again.

Five major fires around L.A. and Malibu… What a horror show! Some estimates claim 11,000 buildings have been torched. Sure am glad I’m not there, these days.

Welp…I guess that yes, I’m glad I’m out of California. It doesn’t say much, though. Arizona is full of forest land, too, equally vulnerable to fires. So far, we’ve been (relatively) lucky. Almost surely, though, as the climate gets hotter and drier, we’ll see more and more fires like this: here, there, and everywhere.

Just look at this stuff. Among the many things that strike you: your dog will have to go to a special animal shelter: you can’t bring him or her with you!

Well…I’d be sleeping on the side of the road with the dog, thank you. But…it strikes me that if one doesn’t have relatives someplace within a far-stretch drive of where one lives, one should make arrangements well before the event for where to go and where to take one’s sidekick. Or always have camping gear stashed in your vehicle, so you and the critters can get up and get out, fast.

Another thing that strikes you: You should keep your gas tank at least 3/4 full. Probably better than that, if at all possible. It means you’d be traipsing to a gas station every time you turn around…but that would be one helluva lot better than running out of gas while you’re on the run from some catastrophe.

Probably also should keep a kit of your regular and emergency medications at hand — either in your car or right by the door you’d go through to get into the car.

Good times, eh?

Wow! Clo$e call…

by

Sometimes you accidentally do things that redound to your benefit….or magnificently against your benefit.

Check this out: I almost bought a condo right in this area. Smack in the middle of rapidly redeveloping downtown Phoenix. Now, our honored leaders are about to insert TEN HIGH-RISE APARTMENT BUILDINGS there.

Can you imagine what a zoo that place is gonna be?

All very stylish, no doubt. But crowded, hectic, noisy, and expensive. Very expensive. If you’ve ever lived in, say, San Francisco’s apartment/condo districts, you know whereof I speak.

Mercifully, just in time I recalled that crowded apartment living is not my cuppa tea (been there, done that!). A zoo like that would drive me out of what little remains of my mind.

So I decided against it…probably one of the smarter moves I’ve made of late. Property values here in the ‘Hood are going through the proverbial roof. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to stay here as the taxes rise. I want to leave this house to my son, but am kind of flummoxed about how to pull it off, especially if I have to go into an old-folkerie.

If the slum apartments across Conduit of Blight Blvd gentrify — as they almost surely will, in due time — property taxes in our neighborhood will hit the stratosphere. Don’t know that I’ll be able to afford that kind of annual hit.

My son has a decent job, so if and when he inherits the Funny Farm, he should be able to afford to stay here. If not, he can sell the place and pocket a nice chunk of dough. Or pay off his own house and move to a better place of his own choice.

He has remarked that he’d like to move to his father’s hometown: Grand Junction, Colorado. It’s the largest…uh…metropolis (heh!) on the Western Slope. And really: it is a pleasant place to live, if you like a slower pace. His grandmother lived in Grand Junction until the end of her life, at an advanced age, and she was very happy there. She lived to be 106.

I’m not sure he understands quite what that means. Small-town life is distinctively different from big-city life…which is what we have here in Phoenix. On the other hand, Grand Junction is not exactly Payson: it is a large small town, no doubt of it. His grandmother managed to keep herself busy all the time I knew her, engaged in state-wide politics. So…I guess if you work at it, you can build an interesting life in a place like that.

At any rate, speaking of “interesting,” I sure am glad I’m not in a downtown Phoenix condo just now. The place is already more “interesting” than one would like. Multiply that times ten and…well…it does make Grand Junction look good!

WHY restaurant food???

by

As those who have followed Funny about Money for awhile know, dear Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend (SDXB) is a gifted and renowned cheapskate. The guy doesn’t diddle away money — any money — on much of anything. If the result ain’t worth the price, he ain’t spendin’ his cash.

Early on in our relationship, I learned that this principle applied to eating out. Dear Ex-Husband (DXH) and I ate out all the time, partly because over the years I had  become exceptionally bored with cooking and partly because it was somehow ever-so-much less annoying when the Kidlet refused to eat someone else’s cooking, as opposed to some damfool thing I’d spent half the afternoon preparing.

After I escaped our Home Sweet Home, I landed in an apartment complex where SDXB, his mother, and one of his daughters lived. And that was when I learned, to my astonishment, that he would not go out to eat restaurant food unless there was some dramatic special occasion for it.

Said he:

I cook better than about 95% of restaurants do.

  • Restaurant food is horrifically overpriced.
  • A nice home dining-room beats the ambience of a noisy, crowded restaurant, any day.
  • Why drive across the city when you can fix a better meal in your own kitchen?

Hmmmm… Well, thought I…yeah. But: anything to avoid work, eh?

Welp, over time I came to see the light. In fact, tossing a steak, a few French fries, and a veggie on the barbecue is one helluva lot less hassle than driving across the city to be serenaded by screaming brats, dreary Muzak, and a barrage of chatter while trying to communicate with some poor overworked waitress.

These were all in force the other day, when a couple friends of mine and I went out for lunch in a popular suburban restaurant here. And….

That was when SDXB’s lessons in fine cuisine came back to light and were mightily reinforced.

😀

WHAT a circus.

First thing you’ve gotta say about eating in restaurants: be grateful, be mightily grateful, that you are not an employee of any restaurant, especially not a worker of the “waitstaff” variety.

Migawd! Those women were working like the proverbial horses. Ambient noise was freakin’ unholy. The customers’ squalling, restless brats were terrible. The crowd, amplified by people waiting to be seated, downright defied belief.

Next thing you’ve gotta say: REALLY, truly…most of the time you’d do about 110% better to fix your meal at home. Or at least to buy take-out from a grocery store or maybe(!) a competent restaurant.

Next thing you can say: the food left a lot to be desired. Like…say…food. The mediocrity of what they served up: Good Gawd!

I could have prepared a meal out of a box that would have had more flavor and more interest than the puréed cardboard we received.

So…yeah. It’s true, what SDXB says: Better to eat at your own table, any day, than to trudge to a restaurant for a meal.

Scared Witless

by

Nope. There really is no other explanation for my mother’s behavior and habits than that she truly was scared witless.

Yeah. I kinda knew it, largely because part of her motherly teaching was that I should be extremely cautious and yes, always, always, ALWAYS lock all the doors and windows before going to bed at night.

To a degree, if you’re female, that’s just common sense.

But…no. Her terror went way beyond that.

She was convinced, for example, that some guy was going to stroll into their carport one evening, climb up on top of the car, hop through the attic opening, crawl across the rafters, take out a saw, cut a hole in the ceiling, and jump down into the house — there to have his way as he pleased. One evening, it became evident that this was real fear and not just some silliness she picked up out of a women’s magazine.

She showed up at my house to stay overnight on the TV room sofa. What did she bring with her?

A .38.

No kidding.

We get the bed made and, after watching TV half the evening, shut off the idiot box and head into the night. And out of her purse she pulls this GUN.

Y’know… You wouldn’t do that unless you were terrified. And you certainly wouldn’t do it in front of your daughter. In your daughter’s home.

That was the point at which I realized she wasn’t play-acting. She was genuinely frightened.

Had something happened to her in the past that made her that scared?

I kinda doubt it. If so, she would have said so. Oh, hell: she would’ve gone on at length about it.

No. She didn’t hide things like that.

Whether it was the ambient fear in our culture — which is real and does affect many women’s thinking — or whether something had happened to her, I do not know. But there’s no question that she was terrified. She wouldn’t have pulled a stunt like that if she weren’t scared half to death.

My parents’ house in Sun City did have a carport, not a garage with a door you could close. So that meant, of course, that your car and anything in that carport were exposed to the evening air…

AND…that carport’s ceiling had a hatch-type door, whose purpose was to let workmen in to fiddle with the wiring, the plumbing, the insulation, and the drywall in the attic.

She was convinced — apparently because she’d read about this happening to some other Sun Citizen — that somebody was going to climb on top of the car, open that door hatch,  hop into the attic, make their way to the living room, saw a hole in the ceiling, and drop down into the house.

The better to rape some nubile 65-year-old, right?

Yeah. That’s what I grew up with.

That kind of thing has to affect you, over the long term. I don’t feel terrified. No: if I did, I wouldn’t live here alone in a four-bedroom house a mile south of a crime-ridden suburb and two blocks east of some very alarming apartments.  But yes: I do remember it. I remember it as not just strange, but as fundamentally alarming.

As for my mother?

There really isn’t much explanation for the chronic terror that afflicted the last couple decades of her life.

* Don’t know if she was similarly scared when she was a young thing

* Don’t know if she’d ever been attacked, and so might have suffered the aftereffects.

* Yes, I do know there are a lot of sh!theads out there, but not so  much as to require you to cower in terror behind locked doors and windows, with a pistol in hand.

And as for the local creeps, crooks, and nut cases?

* Dudes! Make. My. Day!

Puffing Her Way to Hades…

by

It’s hard to understand, for me, how my mother could have failed to grasp that she was killing herself with her incessant cigarette-puffing habit.

Matter of fact…I think she did know it, and that she quite deliberately killed herself. Yeah. With tobacco.

She’d had a difficult life, although my father doted on her. But…before he came along, her upbringing as an unwanted child was less than an ideal way to establish residence on this earth. Her grandmother’s dying of diabetes couldn’t have helped — this was the mother of her useless father, the one who, like the useless mother, made it sterling clear that he didn’t want a brat around to crimp his style. The first 12 years or so of her life were spent out in the middle of nowhere, on her paternal grandparents’ dirt farm in upstate New York — today it would be about the equivalent of growing up in the most remote boondocks of Nevada or New Mexico.

{jeez????!!! Did I post this thang without finishing it?????}

{Let’s start over here, where I intended to go next!}

Ay vai! So there she is, a young teenager in the poverty-stricken remoteness of Upstate New York.

Her poverty-stricken farmer grandparents — the paternal set — glommed her [WHAT IS THE WORD?] mostly because they lived in upstate New York and the (far more affluent, far better educated) maternal grandparents lived in California, thereby proving themselves, before a local judge, to be worthless wastrels. Hm?

So the poor little girl grew up in the backwoods of upstate New York until her paternal grandmother finally died of diabetes. This gave her grandfather an excuse to get rid of her: he shipped her off to the maternal grandparents in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There her fortunes changed. The California relatives were moderately affluent (not wealthy, by any means; but neither were they dirt-poor, in the mode of the New York relatives). She got a halfway decent high-school education and ended up with a job that would put a roof over her head and food on her table.

But…uhhhh…

What did stylish, even moderately “loose” women of those times do?

They smoked, that’s what they did.

Result: she developed a virtually inescapable addiction to nicotine. Even if she’d wanted to quit smoking (she certainly did not!), she probably could not have done so.

And the resulting result: She was murdered by the tobacco manufacturers. Eventually she died of tobacco-induced cancer.

A real fine way to go. Yeah.

Some time before she actually got sick from the habit, the word came down that smoking tobacco could kill you. By then, though, she’d learned that anything she didn’t want to hear was BS emanated by Big Brother.

And you be sure that “quit smoking” was NOT something she wanted to hear.

So she puffed her way into the grave.

DID she commit suicide?

I kinda doubt it. I think she just refused to differentiate between bullshit, propaganda, and accurate science. And because she couldn’t or wouldn’t make that distinction…well…she died.

On the other hand…. You could argue that willful ignorance of the facts is a form of suicide.

Yep.