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Family

Sole & Separate: Keep It That Way

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Stumbling through the afternoon heat, out and about on the neighborhood streets. Not one of my brighter ideas eh?

Man! Speakin’ of stupid ideas: as my brain cooked, my mind wandered to my father’s ill-fated marriage to the hair-raising Helen: the woman he took up with after my mother died.

You wanna talk about mistakes? Lemme tellya MISTAKE!

Couldn’t have been much better for Helen, either: the two of them must have been magnificently miserable after they moved in together. But him? My gawd! What a dragon lady that woman was! 

He had been unendingly happy with my mother: for decades. They were deeply in love. She was a compliant and loving woman. And they tended to think along the same lines…or at least, if they didn’t, she stifled her thoughts and made herself agree with him.

Helen, au contraire, was a woman of strong will and her own opinions. No one told her what to think, and no one told her what to do. Particularly not some guy. 😀

He was utterly bereft after my mother died. The result: after he met Helen at the old-folkerie where he moved, he stupidly proposed marriage.

Guess he imagined one woman was much like another. That, as we know, is far from true. The result: several years of utter misery for my father.

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

I was too stupid to come up with a counter to that. I should’ve said Daddy! Your daughter is married to one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. She’s not gonna get all your money…or any of it! 

But no: nary a word from me.

That, to produce an excuse for me, came after years of having had the sh!t beat out of me. True: I was kinda afraid of my father, even as an adult. So I wasn’t inclined to gainsay him. If he thought she’d get all his money, well…no doubt she’d get all his money. Right?

Big mistake. I should have advanced my dainty little foot and spoken up. But…well…I figured that even if he heard a word I said, he wouldn’t be swayed. He would do what he would do because…that was what he did.

As a practical matter, with that lawyer in the offing he probably would have listened to me. Or at least have taken an afternoon to meet with said lawyer and discussed the matter. So…because I kept my mouth shut, he lost a substantial part of his shirt. My bad, eh?

Well, anyway: after decades of prior marriage for each of them, they didn’t think of looking at new  matrimonial arrangements in any unconventional way. So…off they went to the altar in the typical manner: blending all their worldly goods as community property.

Don’t do that, folks.

What you want in a second (or later) marriage is sole and separate property. And you want to keep it that way!  Talk with a lawyer BEFORE you tie the knot; understand what you’re doing and be sure your lawyer reviews things properly.

If my father had done that — well, to be fair: if the two of them had done that — their lives would have been a lot happier and a lot calmer than they turned out to be. And they could have untied the knot fairly easily, with lots less pain. 

Robin Hood’s Barn: Round & Round!

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Hotter than the hubs outside. Ruby and I have circumnavigated the’Hood…and circumnavigated it…and circumnavigated it…and….WHEW! 

We’re finally back at the Funny Farm. The Human is pooped. Apparently the Dawg is, too: she’s flopped on the cool tiles, looking like she figures it’s nap-time.

Thinking…thinking…thinking of long-lost friends who are SO missed.

Really, Your Godship, did you have to arrange to leave me to last, for the great exodus to the sky?

My friend Jo-Ann: oh, how I do miss her! We met in the church choir and held forth there until we had nothing left to hold…  After we each left that group, Joan and her husband Lee moved to Colorado, where her daughter lives. And that was about the last I heard from her.

Recently, we got word that Lee had passed away. Not surprising: he was a superbly elderly man. But sad: because he was a wonderful man.

So apparently Joan must have moved in with the daughter. Which would be good: very good. I gather the daughter has a spacious home in a pleasant area. And nothing could be better for Joan than to be close by a family member.

Hm. That kind of defines life, eh? You start out, trot along the path. and ultimately (if you live long enough) go round and round and round…often coming back to where you started from. Or mighty close to it.

Strange Arizona Afternoon

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Saturday. 

Overcast and gray. 

Hot and humid.

Betcha didn’t know Arizona could get humid, eh?

Well…yeah, it sure can. Sometimes even damp enough for rain to congeal out of a clear sky!

That’s not the case just now: it indeed is overcast. Not raining yet, but feels like it sure would like to rain.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the neighborhood before the sky could make up its mind about that. So…gray and dank as it is out there, we at least didn’t get rained on.

This is the kind of day that reminds you of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. Hot, gray, and dank pretty much described most of the summertime there!  How CAN I say how glad this human is to be back in the United States?!?

It is, though, the kind of day that makes me wish I were still dwelling in the San Francisco Bay Area, whither my mother’s family. My great-grandmother and her daughter — my great-aunt — lived in Berkeley, in a little Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired bungalow. So very pretty!! I do miss it.

But of course I can’t afford to live in the Bay Area…so forget that daydream. 😀

Some days I love living in Arizona. Others, I rather hate it…  Today is not a “love living here” day. 😀

But it’s not a “hate it” day, either. The sky is decorated with fluffy, floating clouds. A pair of black birds march around the back patio. Ruby, having marched all over the ‘Hood, is conkered out at the foot of the bed. A table fan blows tepid air at us. And I’d be asleep if I could be asleep. Which I can’t, not at this time of day.

Just invited my son to dinner, via email… He likely will decline: he’s less than thrilled with running around town after a full day of work. But it was nice to try, eh?

Chances are, too, that’s he’s put in a substantial numbers of work hours: Saturday notwithstanding. But chances are, too, that he’ll have something better to do with a Saturday evening than spend it with his muther. Oh, well: at least he’ll know I’m thinkin’ of him! <3

 

 

Hubs of Hades Central….

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Well…no. It’s not exactly hotter than the Hubs of Hades out there this morning. More like the outer fringes of that garden spot.

Dog and Human flew around the park, shortly after dawn: best time of day to be there.

Ruby dearly loves the feel of grass under her little doggy feet. The human loves the openness of the place and the young parents rolling their beautiful little babies around in strollers. What fun!  {heh!} Especially when you don’t have to get up at dawn to feed the cute líl things!)

So that’s always a pleasant excursion.

Contractors are working like proverbial horses, rebuilding a corner house that went to wrack and ruin in the hands of the previous residents. Rebuilding the pool. Installing a block wall around the back. Endlessly wrestling around inside.

It is, without a doubt, going to be converted from a “nice” house to a “wow!” house. It has even occurred to me to covet the place…briefly.

Very briefly. When common sense creeps back in…of course I would not want to live in a house that backs onto a public park and stands on the corner of the neighborhood’s main feeder street and a busy cut-through. Darn!!

That main mini-drag pumps commercial traffic through, plus all the local residential traffic, workmen’s cars & trucks…on and on. During the rush hour, drivers in the know use it as a short-cut between two seven-lane commuter roads, dumping a ton of traffic in there and serenading the locals with noise.

So. No. Pretty as the house is and kewl as the neighborhood is: not even faintly interested in buying it.

Lately, as I may have noted here (don’t recall exactly where & ain’t lookin’ it up right this minute), I’ve contemplated following SDXB out to Sun City, a senior citizens’ ghetto on the west side of the Valley.

But no. Don’t think so.

First off, because I happen to like the sounds of kids playing and teenagers carrying on. We get plenty of those, right here in the ‘Hood.

And second off, because I do hate the roar of F16s charging in and out of Luke Air Force Base: a serenade that starts every morning at 6:00 sharp. Luke is just a few miles down the road from Sun City.

LOL! My mother used to revel in  that racket. She’d sit on her back porch as the planes thundered back and forth, swilling coffee. “It’s the sound of fweedom!” she’d coo.

How could I have inherited a 160-point IQ from a mother who had damn near zero common sense????

Anyway, where it comes to that blasting racket, here in the ‘Hood we’re pretty well out of range. That’s one of the reasons I stay here.

Hurts Like Hell! Down through the ages…

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No kidding. It’s 6:00 in the evening, and the hip pain has been holding forth all day. Not any better as the sun goes down.

Seriously, this thing DOES hurt like the dickens. Won’t say I’ve never had anything hurt this much…but it’s close. Very close.

Contemplating the ancestors and the family history… 

Here’s my grandmother, who never met me and never met her fine Arizona grandson. That, as it develops, is because her cancer killed her before either of us came along. Apparently her promiscuity (so we’re told by the more prudish set in the family) was what did her in: fu*king every guy who came along gave her cancer. Right?

Or not: Ancestors.com tells us she died in 1979…

WHERE do people come up with this stuff? 

At any rate, no matter what caused it or when, my mother’s story was that the woman’s gut filled up with what apparently was a reproductive cancer, and that was the end of her. My mother, then a young teenager, was made to attend her on her deathbed, an experience guaranteed to instill horror in the kid for the rest of her life.

Didn’t stop her from smoking, though….

I incline to believe her story about Olive’s death over the one on Ancestors.com. After all, my mother was not an Internet page. 😀

But seriously: her recollections of what she saw and did while tending to Olive were vivid and gawdawful, not something she would have made up. At no time was it necessary to invent some wild story about being present at the woman’s deathbed — all she had to do was say, in the simplest of phrasing, that her mother died of uterine cancer. Period.

That’s quite horrifying enough.

But…BUT…. It gets a whole lot more horrifying when you contemplate the possibility that my mother may have been lying about Olive’s death. Altogether. That Olive did not die of cancer in the 1930s and that she may have been living when I was born. Yea verily: she could have still been living when my son — her great-grandson — was born.

And that, my friends, is what we call bizarre….

Rain, Wet Dog, Cranky Human

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As predicted, water is falling out of the sky now, along about 9:00 p.m. And, as predictable, Ruby the Corgi decides nothing will do but what she must go outside.

Of course. I expected a unicorn?????

Drag dawg off bed, stumble to the back door, stagger out into the soggy darkness.

For a change, Ruby performs promptly. But it’s wet enough that she IS a soggy doggy by the time she trots back in the house.

Weather reports imply that it’s likely to rain all night. This would suggest an even soggier morning.

arf!
😀

Hope she stays down all night, ’cause I yam not in the mood to stand around in the rain at two or three in the morning.

***

Gosh… Just ran across — quite by accident — the obituary notice my not-quite-relatives posted after the death of the woman my widowed father married. LOL! Just as obnoxious as she was in person. They list her relatives, including those on my father’s side…and leave my name and my son’s name out.

Cute, huh?

They hate my branch of the clan because we’re LIB-uh-rulls. My former husband was president of the ACLU’s Arizona chapter and was on the Civil Liberty Union’s national board. This, to their minds (well, to the extent that they have minds) proved that he and I were COMM-you-nists! 

No kidding. If you’re anywhere to the left of Adolf Hitler, you’re a commie.

Gosh, I get tired of narrow-minded stupid stuff. Don’t you?