Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

Weirdness!!!

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Jayzuz!  Last week ended weird and today — Monday — starts weird!

No clue what’s going on, but whatever it is…it’s weird.

We’re coming up on 8:00 a.m.  I’ve been charging around since dawn, searching for the source of weird noises.

One of these is a strange thump-thump thump-thump that sounds like it may be coming from the plumbing (?????????). In fact, I suspect that’s not its source, but I can’t echolocate on the damn thing…unless it’s coming from the roof, which would suggest the HVAC system is the source.

But I don’t think so.

Whatever it is, it’s definitely coming from somewhere in the house.

At least…I think so. 😮

Now it has stopped. So…uhm…is it from the central heating unit? that’s gone off. Hmmmm…that would tend to support the suspicion that the HVAC system is out of whack and emitting some sort of weird noise.

Uh oh…there it is again, and the unit’s not on.

***

Okay, the vent is turning around. No wind to speak of. AC is off. Why it would rotate at all is a mystery. But that NOISE! Whack-whack whack-whack whack-whack…  Helle’s  Belle’s!

Who to call to get it fixed? It’s 8 a.m. now…I need to find a workman ASAP.

***

Okay, I call my handy-guy. NATURALLY he’s not answering the phone. Probably driving to a job, or to breakfast.

Meanwhile and just to make everything perfect, I’ve put my right hip out. Must have slept cattywampus during the night…and Man, does that HURT!  

Holeee shee-ut, it hurts!

And naturally, because I’ve left word with Handyman Dude, now I can’t hear the crazy noise.

Heh…

This is gonna be One of Those Days, ain’t it?

Here We Go Again…

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Speaking of the glories of the Middle of Nowhere (as we were yesterday), this morning a fine cop copter is buzzing the low-rent district just to the north of us — right across Main Drag North.

Nine times out of ten, these little dust-ups (“copter-ups”?) amount to nothing. It’s the times when they chase the guy into your yard, where he tries to break into your house: that’s the tenth time out of ten. And it’s what makes the Middle of Nowhere look good.

Seriously: if we were out on the ranch and some jerk were running around out there, the mule and a couple of horses would be charging nervously around the corral. The ranch dawg would launch into Full Assassination Mode. And we would have plenty of time to get our shotgun.

😀  O’course, because the ranch was the Middle of Nowhere, chances are the perp would not be running around out there. He might run through the MofN, but believe me: he’d keep on going. Especially when he got the glimpse of our blunderbuss.

Very, very tired of Big-City Life. Gosh, but this stuff is tedious. Seems like some stupid Event occurs almost every day.

The wee corgi figures I’m gonna give her a piece of the cookie I’m munching for sorta-breakfast.

She’s right, o’course: I wanna live.

Weird, hazy, icky day, the sort of weather the newspaper climatologist calls “partly cloudy.” Clouds?  Well, OK, if you say so…  But I’d say not. I’d say “icky.”  Or “let’s go back to bed.”

Y’know…I’ve about reached the point where I’m sick and tired of life in Lovely Uptown Phoenix. Spare me the daily (hourly?) cop fly-overs, the poor neighbor terrorized because he saw (ooo gawd!!) a coyote ambling across the park; the whitey-white neighborhoods (no coloreds need apply…); the crime-laden school and apartments across the road; the endless ambulance and fire sirens, the…how long does one have to go on?

I fear I was not born to live in the Big City. 😀

Which Phoenix decidedly was NOT, when my parents moved here and dragged me along with them.

What is it now? Decidedly urban, we might say.

And y’know…I don’t much like it.

Yes, I truly loved living in San Francisco. {But San Francisco, Phoenix ain’t…)

And yeah, I tolerated living in Long Beach, within reason. (Yeah, this place is ticky-tacky in a way reminiscent of Southern California, but…California it ain’t.)

Phoenix, weirdly, is another matter…for reasons that aren’t altogether clear.

It is very Southern California. But really, it’s…what?

* architecturally dreary
* culturally boring
* intellectually…nonexistent
* too hot for life in the summer
* too smoggy for life in the winter

Given half a chance, I’d escape to points west, north, east, or south. In an instant!  But…I ain’t leavin’,  because my son is here. And besides, it’s too darn much work to pack up the castle; tote a lifetime’s worth of furniture, dishes, clothing, artwork, and whatnot across the country; unpack it all; and find new places for all that junk.

Guess you can’t complain about what you can’t complain about…

Evening in the ‘Hood

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Dusk, with high thin clouds floating over the ‘hood. Wow! What a GORGEOUS evening as Ruby and her human stroll around.

This neighborhood gets tonier and fancier and more spectacularly expensive-looking by the day. If I manage to stay here until I die, my son is going to inherit the Asset from Heaven! Seriously: worth Gawd Only Knows how much more than I paid for it.

Gosh, I hope I’ll be able to hang onto this place until then. Really, that only needs to be another eight or ten years. As we scribble, Zillow claims this place is worth about five times what I paid for it. My first house here is supposedly worth some four times more than I paid…and it’s almost two blocks closer to the spectacularly noisy Main Drag West.

And frankly, I can’t see a single sign that this area is likely to slide downhill anytime in the near future, barring a catastrophic recession. Which I kinda doubt is gonna happen.

The area is relatively safe, crime-wise.  And we’re within walking distance of three major supermarkets, a medical clinic, a veterinarian, two first-rate public schools, at least one good private school, a well-respected hospital, a beautiful neighborhood park,…on and on and on. Meanwhile, the county has run a swell new light-rail line up the west side, and busses zip up and down all the major main drags.

If things stay reasonably stable or, God and the Taxpayer willing, continue to improve in quality and public services,  M’hijito will inherit one HECK of an asset.  By then, it should be solidly ensconced in the tony district known as North Central, even the public schools (now a shade wanting…) brought up to par and beyond, and the property values hovering near the stratosphere. He’ll be able to claim a more-than-decent house in an upscale district, or else sell it and move to the retirement venue of his dreams, out in Colorado.

Nice thing to daydream about...as day fades into dusk…

😀

…And Day Fades into Evening

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My son will soon be over here to drag me over to the (hateful!!) physical therapy studio. Ohhhh  gawd how could I do without that place and its mindless routines?

Said routines do nothing to help the spavined hip and back. What helps, apparently, is Time and the River Flowing. And walking, walking, walking, walking…

Trotted up to the northside shopping center this afternoon. A beautiful afternoon, we might add. Enjoyed schmoozing with the employees. Eyeballing the weirdos who live in the slum apartment complexes across the road. Strolling around the rest of the mall. Headed back to the Funny Farm…

On the way, passed by the Ole Guy’s house.

The Ole Guy was a retired gentleman who lived in a corner house just to the northwest of our part of the ‘Hood. And he was on in years: I’d guess he was in his late 70s or mid-80s.

SDXB and I would march around the neighborhood every morning, by way of exercise. And generally he would be out puttering in his yard when we passed by. WHAT a nice man!!

His main concern, as the weeks and months passed, was for his wife. He felt she was no longer able to stay in the house unassisted. Wanted to put her in a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie called the Beatitudes.

She was having none o’ that!!

The quarrel…uhm, discussion…went on for months.

We would see him every day; say hello as we passed; get the current neighborhood and family gossip.

But..yea verily. One day he was no longer there. The only way he could get her locked up was to lock himself up with her, o’course. And so when the time came, they both disappeared from our parts.

Much missed, we might add.

Dunno who lives there now: one never sees them outside

Ruby the Corgi and I are outside in front just now…as befits old folks, I guess?  Ruby is telling every passer-by how the proverbial cow ate the proverbial cabbage. I am…umh…loafing

And waiting for my son to show up and tote me off to the endlessly annoying physical therapy gym.

My gawd, how I hate that place. Its exercising hassle truly IS the biggest waste of time I can imagine, other than solving algebra problems for your ninth-grade math class….

So this will blow away the evening, a pretty evening when Ruby and I should be strolling from one end of the ‘Hood to the other.

One night I got pissed off with the frustration and the time wastage and sneaked out the door. Took off down the road on foot.

M’hijito had gone home, I think (or somewhere), to wait out the time with less boredom.

He was mightily annoyed when he showed up there to collect me and discovered I’d escaped.

😀

So now he won’t leave. He brings something to read and wastes his own goddamn evening sitting there while nothing useful is being done to me.

Make it stop, God!

Okay okay…sooner or later He will. But…wouldn’t it be nice if that “sooner or later” time could pass without endless annoyance?

😀

Hmmm…  A neighbor’s fire alarm seems to be on the fritz. It’s going quack!….quack!….quack!…. 

Ah…apparently it either ran out of juice or somebody came along and shut it off.

Hmmm…  Speaking of front yards in the neighborhood, we could so with a li’l maintenance here at the Funny Farm. Couple of plants need some serious pruning. And a spot where another shrub died could be cleared out and replanted with something new and classy.

Well…we can pounce poor old Gerardo with that. Get him to work on it before the weather is too hot for working.

Hm,….quack! quack! quack! 

Dammit! The defunct fire alarm was not. Defunct, that is. It’s back to quacking…and quacking…and quacking.

Uh oh. Here’s the Kid. Sooo…bye!

 

 

 

 

Pool Dude!

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ARF! we say. ARF ARFETY ARF! IT’S POOL DUDE DAY!

Darned if I can imagine how Ruby the Corgi knows when it’s Pool Dude’s day to come over and shovel out the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour money. But by golly, she sure does! 

And she’s out there lurking by the gate — or in the house by the back door — waiting for him to show up.

Ohhhh how that dawg loves that Pool Dude!

So does the human… Bless’im, he relieves me of an annoying job. And, because he does the job SO much better than I can, he keeps that pool just spotless. Looking gorgeous. Free of casually growing sheets of green stuff.

Yeah: we’re both in love with Pool Dude. I’ll tellya: that guy is worth his weight in dollar bills.

Do hafta say: in the unlikely event that I were ever to buy another house, it almost surely will NOT have another swimming pool in the backyard. I do love having the puddle of cool water out there in Arizona’s gawdawful summertime. But..y’know…a shower will do the trick. 😉

Unless you have kids who play in the pool every day, owning one is hardly worth the cost. The pool really is an expensive nuisance.

It also poses a health threat that most people don’t think about: it’s a puddle spreading some very scary communicable diseases.

My next-door neighbor apparently decided she was done with maintaining and paying for her hole-in-the-ground, so she let the water drain out and then just went on about her business. Problem is: when you open the drain at the bottom of a backyard pool, not all the water drains out. 

Result: she had a nice little puddle sitting on the bottom of the plaster hole…and the mosquitos found it.

This created a fine mosquito nest, jacking up our buggy population handsomely.

Meanwhile, her other next-door neighbor, a European immigrant, had no clue about stale puddles, swarming mosquitoes, and their consequences. She liked to sleep with her windows open, and apparently had never heard of a window screen.

Next result: the skeeters flew right into her bedroom and made themselves to home, where they bit the bejayzuz out of her…and infected her with a fine case of encephalitis. She almost died from it.

Fortunately, she did recover after some time…even though her doctors had told her dad that she probably would not.

So…Ruby and I do not loaf around the backyard without being amply covered in clothing. We do have a mosquito-zapper out there. But most of the time, I stay indoors!

Therein lies one of the many drawbacks to having a swimming pool in your backyard…and it’s not even your pool!

Here in Phoenix, you’d have a hard time dodging mosquitos bred in one of the local holes-in-the-ground. Just about everybody does have a pool. You could probably evade the bugs if you lived in a high-rise apartment. But most houses…not so much.

If your pool is maintained properly, well then…no, it’s not breeding skeeters. But to take care of a pool properly is a PITA of the first water. You have to keep it steadily chlorinated. Sweep down the walls and steps. Vacuum out any debris that blows into it…. If you’re doing pool maintenance right, it’s pretty much a daily task. Or a stiff bill to a guy who comes around and beats back the dirt and the bugs.

How Lucky Can Ya Get?

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Really: just exactly how lucky CAN some little old lady get? 

The Cleaning Lady from Heaven just trotted out the front door — very likely en route to her next house. That woman works like a horse. Oh hell: make that like a Clydesdale. You’ve never seen anyone who does so much work at such high quality in such a short time. It’s 2:00 p.m. — and you can be sure she’s on her way to another house. That would be her third house of the day.

I do know she does the WonderAccountants’ house on the same day she does mine. So…no, I cannot be sure she goes to a third work site. But wouldn’t be surprised.

Finding this splendid woman was about the best thing that’s happened to me…at least in my adult life. She really is amazing, and what she charges is the going rate: the same amount other house-cleaners in North Central Phoenix charge.

Yesterday I spavined my back — don’t ask how. Today it hurts so much I can barely hobble around the house. NO WAY could I have cleaned this house — vacuumed, dusted, scoured, scrubbed, polished, changed sheets, and on and on. No matter how much ibuprofen I gulped down!

Wonder Cleaning Lady saves me from my self…and my decrepitude. Bless her!!