Coffee heat rising

Common sense

Round and Round They Go…

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And where they bite, no one knows. ARF!

Actually, this morning’s junket around the park was uneventful. Quiet. Arfifarious. Ruby declined to try to eat any of our fellow dog-walkers’ companions. (Either that, or the dog-walkers have finally wised up a bit…) Weather was hot, humid, icky — reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia.

Mornings like this remind me of oooohhhh how glad I am that I no longer live out there! What a gawdawful place!

Seriously: a swampy morning like this would be S.O.P. over there. Useta be: all summer long we’d wake to water dripping off the eaves as though it had rained half the night…under a clear blue sky. That’s how humid it was: the air SO WET that water would condense out of it and piddle off the eaves like rain.

LOL! Swamp or no, the park is always fun…or at least pleasant. This morning we encountered a handsome young father pushing his obscenely adorable baby along in a carriage. Awwwww! What could be cooler, eh? 

😀

Well. Maybe “cool” wasn’t exactly the term. But he and his urchin were indisputably charming.

Otherwise…what? Well…one “what” is that, as we hiked along a particularly affluent street in Lower Richistan, I was suddenly struck by the resemblance between the upscale section of the Hood and a historic Phoenix district called Palmcroft.

That tract is part of the larger, also highly historic area called Encanto: a place full of gorgeous old houses dating back as far as the 1920s.

Our area is much newer…but here in the 21st century, no one would dast to call it “new.” The houses are edging on to “historic” themselves, many of them very pretty, all of them handsomely maintained. The Young and the Affluent do adore “historic” houses, and they flock in here to buy them…bearing well-stuffed pocketbooks.

This pushes real estate prices up and up and up. I couldn’t even begin to buy a house down near the park — an area that I could easily have afforded a decade or so ago, when I moved in here.

Therein lies a main reason that I want to stay in this house till I croak over: if I can leave the place to my son, he’ll be able to afford to go anywhere he pleases. 

  • Fancy-Dan Scottsdale: no problem
  • Ritzy Paradise Valley: call in the movers!
  • Back to his dad’s home town, Grand Junction, Colorado: off to the scenic upscale(!) hills
  • San Francisco, where each of us privately believes we belong: California, here we come!

You name it, he can be there. Or…he may choose to just stay here and enjoy this handsome upscale tract.

And it is an exceptionally pleasant place to live. Centrally located. Handsomely built. Mature landscaping. Gorgeous park. Adorable kids. And nowadays: an increasingly awesome public transit system.

Seriously: you can live here now without a car. And, incredibly enough, I do! 

Such are one’s thoughts as one’s dog tugs its human around our park. I love it here…my dawg loves it here…we ain’t movin’…isn’t that the cutest li’l kid you ever saw!… I want my kid to get this place, lock stock & barrel…

Good Morning, Dogmerica!

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Scarfety chomp munch munch scarf scarf chomp…  Ruby’s way of greeting the morning. Arf! we say to that.

Lately back from the ayem tromp around the park. Apparently the Human tromped on an ant’s nest: Crazy-itchy spots on the feet.

Hey, stupid! Next time remember to wear a decent pair of shoes! 

😀

Honestly! Humans aren’t very bright, are they?

It is a beautiful morning, though. High, thin overcast softens the brilliant sunlight and gives it a golden cast. Ruby as usual enamored herself of every passing human.

My gawd but people love corgis. The cuteness does it, apparently.

* * *

{sigh} We may be coming up on the last few morning walks around that park. M’hijito has been talking up the glories of prisons for the decrepit such as Orangewood, a dreadful motel that my father moved into after my mother died.

It’s not actually dreadful, objectively speaking. It’s just that..well…communal living is about as not my style as anything can get.

Truly. I despise living in close quarters with other people

  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your choice of television shows.
  • No, I do NOT want to hear your toilet flush.
  • No, I do NOT want to overhear your conversations.
  • No, I do NOT want to hear your microwave beeping.
  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your favorite radio talk show.
  • No, I do NOT want to smell whatever packaged gunk you’ve heated in your microwave.
  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your dog yap.
  • No, I do NOT want you to have to listen to my dog yap…
  • No, no, no, no, and N-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!

Seriously: It’s getting harder and harder to see how I’m going to avoid being locked up in an institution for the elderly and the decrepit. And that is NOT the way I want to go out.

I hated, loathed and despised living in the university dorms. Just HATED it!!!!!

That was the way I began my adulthood. And now it’s beginning to look like that’s the way I’m going to end adulthood.

There simply MUST be a better way to pass through the tag end of your life. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is!

***

On the other hand, it does have to be said that these jails offer some serious benefits for the unattached elderly.

The staff at Orangewood were wonderful to my father. You couldn’t hope to find more caring, more skilled, and more knowledgeable prison guar…uhmmm…caretakers. I surely couldn’t have given him even a decent fraction of the attention and care that he got from them.

He doted on my mother — apparently loved her more than anyone or anything in his life — so she was cared for like a queen during the last weeks and months of her life. By the time he fell ill, though, I was running late on the deadline for my dissertation and could NOT interrupt that project to hang out at Orangewood and nurse him as he passed into the Next World. And it might be recalled that he had bestowed one beating too many on me as I was growing up, a circumstance that left me with no great desire to scotch the Ph.D. and stay at his house or at some institution to babysit him.

He had already decided to move to Orangewood — the only reason he wasn’t ensconced there when my mother’s smoking habit caught up with her was that she had flat refused to move out of her beloved Sun City house. She wasn’t in her funeral urn more than a few minutes before he was arranging to get out of Sun City and into the old-folkerie.

He liked that kind of thing, though. Institutional living would’ve made me crazy then and will make me crazy now, if I’m forced into it. How exactly to avoid it, though, kinda escapes me.

Wow! Not to Say Good Grief!!!

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Strolled down to the commercial corner at Main Drag South, there to find out if I need another covid shot…or what.

Chatted with the pharmacist at the Albertson’s. He said not. Apparently I’m now about as covid-proof as I’m gonna get.

Which, I suspect, ain’t 100%.

It is hotter than the proverbial hubs out there. Left me highly resenting my son’s having kiped my car…left me wondering how (or if) I could snare another car. Then, as I hiked off steam, I realized that if I want to be schlepped around in a car, I can call Uber…and not have to gas up, store, service, wash, and pay taxes on a four-wheeled gas-guzzler.

EGAD! INSIGHT!!!!!

Today has gotta be one of the worst days of the whole year for walking around the city streets. It’s effin’ hot and it’s effin’ humid. As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer reads 100 degrees in the shade…and no part of today’s stroll was in any shade.

And y’know what?  Walking through the heat was just not that bad. 

For one thing, I’m probably getting used to hiking around the place. And for another, all that walking is building strength and stamina. And that’s not a bad thing…it’s a good thing!

Yes. Strangely enough, as I swam through the swampy air it occurred to me that walking to the commercial parts of the neighborhood is about the best thing I can do for myself — healthwise, that is.

I’ve already built up a lot of energy…weirdly, an hour or more of hiking through unholy heat did exactly nothing to wear me out. Got home…waved to the neighbors as they climbed in their car…pranced into the house…fixed iced tea and lunch…  And thought, Well! That was no BFD!

So…yeah. That IS what I’ve about concluded: Not having a car is no BFD. 

At least not in an urbanized residential district full of shops and taxicabs… 😉

Ripped!

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…and ripped off?  

Criminey! Just had to order a new set of queen-sized sheets. The pair I’ve been using ripped up the middle (that’s a new one on me!!). Forhevvinsake: FIFTY-FIVE BUCKS for one set of cotton sheets!

This, because the G.D. Mayo Clinic took away my driver’s license, so I can’t in any sane way get to a department store to buy the damn things.

Is this weird (not to say infuriating)? I have never had a sheet RIP right out from under me. It looks like probably a toenail somehow got caught on it, so that in moving around in my sleep I pulled the fabric apart.

Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!  

Yes, I do have another set of sheets. But only ONE such set. Those quacks at the Mayo have invalidated my driver’s license(!!!), so I can’t even drive to a store to select a new set.

One needs two sets, so that one set can go in the wash while the Cleaning Lady from Heaven is making the bed with the already clean set.

And yes, I surely should feel grateful that Amazon exists. Ordering the things online is less than perfectly desirable (one would like to see and examine a purchase before dropping $55(!!!!!!!) on it. But it appears that I don’t have much choice.

There is a store within walking distance where you can buy linens. But it ain’t the kind of place where I’m used to buying that kind of stuff, and frankly it gives me pause. So does Amazon, of course: either way, you can’t be sure of the quality you’re getting.

Well…I hope this doesn’t turn into the disaster that I’m expecting. Rather little hope, I must say: when you have to buy something sight unseen, you pretty well guarantee a nice little fiasco for yourself.

A nice expensive fiasco!

A Revelation in Transit

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Y’know… Over the past few days — “weeks,” really, is more like it — a kinda startling revelation has occurred to me. Hang onto your hat, now: What with the proximity of key retail stores, the new lightrail running up and down Conduit of Blight Blvd., and a fleet of shiny new busses, I don’t really need to own a car. 

Oops: should’ve warned you to sit down before reading that…  😀

But seriously…  Without the little catastrophes of the past two or three weeks, this idea would never have entered my fuzzy little mind. BUT…oh, yes, but: the fact is, between the lightrail, the shiny new busses, and the Uber cars swarming all over the neighborhood, I actually may not need to have an expensive pile of metal and glass sitting out in the garage.

Yeah. Seriously!

I can get from Point A to Point B with very little more trouble than it takes to climb in my car and drive between those points.

We have several Uber drivers living here in the’ Hood. They’re delighted to take you wherever you imagine you want to go. And if they’re not available, Phoenix still hosts a fine fleet of standard taxicabs. Call a Yellow Cab and it’ll be at your door in minutes. An Uber driver lives right across the street from me! He can be here in seconds, not minutes.

But…but…what does it take to walk from here to most of the fine emporia where I shop and loaf?

A lightrail line runs across Main Drag North, turns south on Main Drag West, swerves southerly toward Central, goes right past my son’s street, and proceeds to a stop in front of the Beloved AJ’s Grocery Palace.

So…uhm….. {ahem!}

Why on earth would I imagine that I want a car, here in the ‘Hood??

Consider: AJ’s is indeed a drive away. BUT…within a ten-minute walk, we have these fine emporia:

  • Albertson’s: a huge supermarket
  • Sprouts: the beloved hippy-dippy peddler of nominally organic chow
  • Walgreen’s: huge drugstore
  • Bookman’s: bookstore, music, whatnot
  • El Rancho: supermarket
  • Fireworks store (!)
  • Post office
  • Doctor’s office
  • Beauty salon
  • Independent pharmacist
  • Veterinarian
  • Coinstar

And on and on and on… there really is little need to drive anywhere. Certainly not on a regular, day-to-day basis.

Do I need a car to get to the Mayo? Yeah: I wouldn’t want to hire a cab or Uber to schlep halfway to Payson. But I sure don’t go out there often. And for that matter, we’re within walking distance of a major regional hospital…I could extend my little self so radically as to take up with a doctor who practices there. (The one I had there moved to $un ¢ity awhile back, having seen the dollar signs on the wall of the new hospital out there….)

But if you’re considering how much it costs to keep a car — taking into account insurance, regular servicing, repairs, gasoline, parking, and whatnot — the tab for maintenance, repairs, taxes, storage, and the stuff so routine that most of us never even think about it anymore very probably comes to more than it would cost to hire Uber or a taxicab to get around town. A LOT more…

Truth to tell, something over 90 percent of the places I go are within walking distance, or within a reasonably priced cab ride.

And given that amazing little factoid, one could argue — quite reasonably — that a person living in this location really has no need for a car. Especially if that person doesn’t commute to a job.

What the heck: not only that, but walking to the destinations around here comes under the heading of good exercise. When the weather is sane — which, believe it or not, is most of the time — you can walk to any of those places without putting yourself out much.

So…frankly, I’m beginning to think more & more that my son did me a favor by absconding with my car. Who needs it???

Re: Paul the Romanian Lover

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Oh! how my parents hated him!!

They hated him for racist reasons — in their minds, Romanian wasn’t quite “white.” But…truth to tell, they were right, only in ways they didn’t understand.

P. had no compunctions about theft. Or about cheating on one’s wife.

First time this came to my attention, he and I had gone to the campus bookstore to buy a semester’s worth of textbooks. He’s wearing a student-looking fake letter jacket…right? You know whereof I speak: leather sleeves, university logo on the jacket’s body.

We’re standing in line with a couple piles of books, when quietly he slides two of them under his jacket and pulls up the zipper.

Uhm…what?

Shortly — after we’ve escaped with $40 worth of textbooks (in those days that was a lot of money: the equivalent of $70 or $80 today), he tells me he does that all the time. It’s one of his ways of funding his education!

Eep! Maybe my parents were right!

Well, I was far from the point where I was ready to admit that possibility.

Time passed. We were in love. La-dee-dah!

Then one night we’re in the sack, chatting post-coitally. And this is when he remarks, admiringly, that his best buddy is f*cking a barmaid that he picked up while the boys were out drinking. He thinks this is a good thing — yea, verily: a brilliant thing on the buddy’s part: because the guy’s wife is some eight months advanced in pregnancy and can’t accommodate him.

No kidding.

His wife. He gets her pregnant. She’s about to deliver his baby. And he can’t wait until she presents him with his son, but feels he must go out and pick up a chippy in a bar NOW by way of getting it off!

And P. thinks that’s just great. Brilliant, if anything!

This — finally! — was enough to get my attention!

Man, when they say “love goes blind at the garden gate,” they ain’t kidding!

It took a night and a day for this to soak in. Once it fully registered with me — that he was demonstrating just what kind of a guy he really was — I tossed him out of my life.

Never regretted it.

He ended up as a university administrator — apparently did fairly well for himself, on the mid-level career level. Would have had lots of access to cute college girls, too, eh?

His career took him to a UC campus in central California. No doubt a nice place to live…and UC would have presented me with any number of appealing job opportunities. As it no doubt presented him with any number of chickadees.

Ahhh, the good ole’ days!