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House & Yard

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all enjoy it!”

LOL! That was the buzz-phrase of a long-time local radio personality here. He had a morning show, and every day he opened with that little theme-phrase.

“Beautiful” is not the word I’d use today…especially if you have to go outdoors in it! Yes, it’s clear and sunny. Yes, at this hour it’s pretty quiet. But… ugh!

It is soo humid!!! Wet and hot.

Back in the Day, most of the mornings were “beautiful days.” Not so much anymore. The place is no longer semi-rural: it’s all built up with commercial strips and vast oceans of ticky-tacky houses. Every one of those structures runs large air-conditioning systems that suck in the air, drain the moisture out of it, and emit it back into the atmosphere as hot, dry, stinky exhaust. This makes the developed areas even hotter (by far!) than they would have been in the absence of humanity.

It was sort of a pleasant place to live, back in the day. Now…?  Well…ick. If you like Southern California — crowds, noise, heat, insane traffic, smog — you’ll love this place. If you prefer a quieter mode of living…hmmmm…

Where would I go if I could escape?  Well…hmmm indeed…..

  • Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Berkeley, California
  • Certain suburbs of Tucson, Arizona
  • San Francisco
  • Paris
  • Parts of Rome

Ohhhh well.

Ruby and I walked by our old (literally: elderly) friend Garnett’s place this morning. She’s long gone. The classic old ranch house is vacant, and has stood vacant for several months.

This morning we walked up and peered in the windows: looks like they’ve finally removed the furniture.

She told me she wanted to leave the house to her son — and so I expect she did. But he clearly has exactly ZERO interest in moving to Arizona. Certainly not in living a block from one of the busiest, loudest main drags in the city.

She loved that house. Loved the neighborhood. He? Not so much. He’d made his escape to California years ago. And clearly he has no desire to move into his mother’s manse.

Why he hasn’t sold it escapes me. I imagine she must still be living, locked up in one of those horrible old-folkeries. He’s probably waiting until she passes to get rid of her beloved home.

Either that or he’s too damn lazy to get off his duff and do something with the real estate she left him.

Who knows?

If I manage to hang onto this house until I croak over, my son will get the place. It will be a handy asset for him: either a pleasant venue to live in a fairly decent, in-town neighborhood, or something he can sell for a half-million bucks. Whichever he selects, he’ll profit nicely.

These days I feel like I must be the New Garnett of the ‘Hood: traipsing through the upscale realms behind a cute little dawg, every morning. Saying hello to the passers-by. A conspicuous landmark, hm?

But I’m not as friendly as Garnett was. At heart, I don’t like people, having been mistreated royally during the ten years we lived in Saudi Arabia. God, how I hated that place! And how I hated the kids and the idiot teachers and my father’s cruelty and the institutionalized ignorance…just about everything there.

It was in the nick of time when my parents decided to come back to the States. I had become almost hopelessly misanthropic by the end of the fifth grade, and come the sixth grade, simply hated people. Especially people in their “kid” phase. That changed when we got to San Francisco, where the new classmates didn’t know they were supposed to scorn me, and the teachers — some of them, anyway — possessed measurable IQ’s.

Heh! I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if we’d stayed out there even another year. Not that I would have brought a machine gun to school and shot up the place — though similar antics crossed my little mind. But that another year with no friends, another year as the butt of all the other little darlins’ scorn and hate, another year with a teacher who measured her IQ in the single digits…Jayzuz! If a kid could have a nervous breakdown, I sure would have.

😮

A Hundred WHATS????!!??

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HOLEE DOGGEREL!

Gerardo the Lawn Dude’s guys just finished blowering and raking the front and back 40. His head dude knocks on the Arcadia door and asks to be paid.

“How much?”

“$100.”

HOLEE SHEE-UT!

That’s up from the $80 they usually charge. Forgodsake: we’re not talking about any extra work here. Nothing special. Just blower up the leaves and wind-blown debris and trim whatever few plants need to be trimmed.

Once again: here’s a “house” thing that makes life in a high-rise apartment on North Central Avenue look a whole lot better.

Well.

It would look better if I didn’t have the dog.

Ruby would have to be paper-trained or litter-trained (did you know you can train a dog to use a cat-box?). That amounts to more hassle than I care to engage. For what?

For a box in the sky. No yard for Ruby to run around in. No peace and quiet for me. No private pool where I can go skinny-dipping…

Barf. 

Okay, okay…settle down! And let’s consider the things we imagine DO make the proposed Box in the Sky look good.

Bear in mind: I have lived in high-rise apartments, and in fact rather enjoyed them. But..that was a long time ago and I was a lot younger and my parents dealt with the management and they paid the rent and…. Today, to tell the truth: I don’t wanna. 

{sigh} Well…unless you’ve got someone to run interference with Life, The Universe, and All That, you’re always gonna have these hassles, right? And you’re always going to be paying for the hassles.

So…quitcher bellyachin’ … right?

Heh…  Another thing “I don’t wanna” is to take care of that damn yard in this heat. Gerardo’s boys earn their pay and earn their pay and earn their pay some more. A hundred bucks — let’s get real — is a bargain to get four guys slamming around in the heat for an hour.

Because he’s not just paying them for an hour of work. He’s paying for an hour of work x 4 … that would be FOUR hours of work. And he’s paying for the gas to run his truck over here (and the wear & tear on the truck). And for gas to run the blower and the mower and the tree trimmers and the shrub trimmers and the weed-whackers…. Arrrghhhha!

How am I glad I don’t own a yard-care business? Let me count the pestiferous ways…

****

On the ‘tother hand…

What with my son having purloined my car, I was gonna walk over to one of the nearby stores — maybe the Sprouts — and pick up some chow and assorted junque. That ain’t a-gonna happen now.

It’s 102º in the shade just now. And I’ll tellya…that does NOT inspire me to hike 8 or 10 blocks (x 2: make that 16 or 20 blocks, round trip) for the privilege of buying lunch and some ice cream!

The local grocery stores have recently announced that they’ll deliver. I haven’t looked into this offer yet…but need to do so.

In the Department of the Stuff of Nightmares…

Last night I found myself dreaming of visits to the terrifying Mayo Clinic. Auuugh! Arrogant doctors who presume that because you’re old you must be stupid. Endless waits in dreary waiting rooms. More waits in the doctor’s office. Wasted breath trying to explain yourself to said doctor, who’s only half-listening to you. And when a visit or three has happened recently, it’s a challenge to tell the difference between a memory and a nightmare.

Spare me, Lord!

It’s a bit of a drive over to the Mayo from the Funny Farm. Must say: more of a drive than I’d like to make. But the doctors and the facilities closer to home? Huh-uh!

My relationship with the adorable Young Dr. Kildare came to an end when I went over to his place shortly after a visit to the far, far-away Mayo Clinic. Figured I could get what ailed me treated there without having to drive halfway to Nevada for the privilege.

Yeah…I could. If I didn’t mind having him treat me for the wrong ailment! 

Hilariously so: he misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and misdiagnosed with élan. Understand, this was something that not only had been seen by the Mayo but also by the high-powered St. Joseph’s, in mid-town Phoenix, added to a couple of lesser issues about which he simply made mistakes.

YDK has now moved to Sun City. The medical care out there is one of the main reasons you couldn’t pay me to live in Sun City. My mother’s terminal illness was horrifically mismanaged by the quacks out there.

No doubt she wouldn’t have survived the cancer that was filling up her innards. But she didn’t have to suffer the way she did. Telling her it was all in her fuzzy little head increased her suffering massively. And my father’s: he was at home trying to treat her as she lay dying of her “imaginary” ailment. And that IS the specific reason I would never buy a house in Sun City or Youngtown. Horrible!

One would like to hope that medical care out there has improved. But get real: we know what Americans think of the elderly. We know how elders are treated in this country. Why take a chance when you can stay in town and at least have a shot at decent care?

BBBRRRRAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKK!

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LOL!  Here’s something you need to learn to do in your dotage:

Get used to people (what sometimes feels like mobs of other people) roiling around in your space and in your face, making a racket and making a nuisance of themselves.

😀

Usually this nuisanceferizing happens with THE best of intentions. Your grousing about it because their presence/uproar/demands for payment does not change the facts that they’re doing their job, the job is something you often can’t do without, and about 98% of the time they’re doing a better job than you could do.

Just now, here I am practicing my new skill — loafing — when in fly Gerardo and his boys. And what do they do?

Roar.

That’s what they do.

Just now they’re out in back with their arsenal of gasoline-powered blowers and trimmers and whatnot, going R-R-O-A-R-R.

This is the noise you make when you blast dry leaves and debris into the freshly cleaned pool water, right?

😀

Oh…there’s one of the boys…he’s purloined the pool leaf net and is trying to fish out the junk he just blew into the drink. 😀

How glad AM i that i’m not a lawn dude? Lemme count the ways….

And speakin’ of real estate…

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…as we were saying yesterday, briefly, Zillow claims my li’l middle-class house is worth (hang onto your hat) $563,000!  And change.

What????????

Over half a million dollars for an aging tract house within walking distance (easy walking distance) of a dangerous slum? Seriously????

And horrors!

****

I return to the idle thought that maybe I ought to think about moving out to Scottsdale — more specifically, to the district known as McCormick Ranch. Once a very fancy-Dan tract, McCormick ranch is now a mid- to upper-middle-class suburb, filled with ticky-tacky construction set in seas of Bermuda grass. The area is relatively safe. Of course, no place in a big city is “safe,” but McCormick Ranch is far more so than the swaths of North Phoenix that border the alarming Sunnyslope tract, where I live now.

This proposition presents its challenges. The main one: I very much doubt I could get anywhere near that much for this house. And houses out in Scottsdale are pricier by far than the ones here in North Central on the edge of Sunnyslop.

To get into Scottsdale housing, I’d probably have to move into an apartment. And I don’t wanna.  I love my house and all its roominess. I love my swimming pool — my pool and no one else’s. I love the trash pickup service from the alleys. None of these appertain to apartment living.

And another important adjunct to this issue:  unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding, it doesn’t look like it would be worth moving unless I could get into a better area.

McCormick Ranch is not a better area than North Central Phoenix. The two districts are about on a par. Fairly affluent. Relatively low in crime. Close to upscale shopping. Attractively built middle-class homes. Decent schools. Sooo….

Why would I want to live there? 

* It’s ten minutes from the endlessly importuning Mayo Clinic. The gawdawful drives to see MayoDoc would go away, once and for all.

* Shopping is excellent, ranging from the high side of middle class to the high side of very much upper middle class.

* Proximity to lots of great restaurants.

But…but…waitminit here. 

* I don’t go to restaurants. I can cook lots better than that…for lots less change!

* These days I do about 75% of my clothes shopping online.

* I should base where I’m gonna live on the proximity of a doctor’s office? Uhhhh… don’t think so…

* The Ranch is a long way from my son’s neighborhood. If I moved out there, I’d hardly ever see him!

* I dunno if the Cleaning Lady from Heaven would be willing to drive way to Hell & Gone to clean the Funny Farm if it were in North Scottsdale.

***

Hmmmmm….  To my mind, the “Waitaminits” outweigh the benefits by about ten to one. Seriously: there aren’t enough positives to convince me that I should pull up (expensive!) stakes and move to the far side of Scottsdale.

So…one is led to apply that Fine Old Saw: When in doubt, don’t!

  • Doubt, indeed. There’s just not enough there to persuade me that I would benefit from moving. Benefit: in any way…
  • Socially (I know one! person who lives out there.)
  • Financially (Any benefit from moving to a tonier area will be outweighed by the costs of selling, buying, fix-up, and moving.)
  • Comfort-wise (My house is a luxurious palace; noplace on McCormick Ranch is any better, and most are not as good.)
  • Gasoline and mileage savings (I probably drive out to the Mayo Clinic no more than once a month. That’s hardly a motive to pull up stakes!)

So unless my son decides to move someplace else — say, he gets a job in another city — there’s really no reason for me to even consider buying a place in McCormick Ranch.

If he did move out of North Central Phoenix, I might move out, too. Either to follow him or to put some distance between me and the gangs. But as long as he’s in these parts…well, so am I!

Movin’ Movin’ Movin’….

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LOL! This morning I happened to find myself contemplating my lifetime on the move. In the years since I was born to life on this planet, I have moved house twenty-five times. 

That’s just the places I can remember. Without a doubt, several others occurred when I was too little to know or remember much of anything.

My parents and I lived in…where?

* Richmond, California
* Long Beach, California
* San Francisco, California (several places, several times!)
* Long Beach, California (again, years later)
* Down by the docks near Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
* In Ras Tanura (a company town), Saudi Arabia (2 houses)
* Sun City, Arizona
* Tucson, Arizona
* Phoenix, Arizona (several places!)

Jeeeminy! At least 13 or 14 different houses and apartments before I came of age. Then, after I grew up , left my parents’ home, and got married:

* Tucson, Arizona (4 years; 4 different domiciles
* Phoenix, Arizona (my own li’l apartment, ALL MINE!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (first place with hubby)
* Phoenix, Arizona (downtown: gorgeous historic home)
* Phoenix, Arizona (uptown: move to get away from the crime) (har har!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (leave marriage; move into apt.)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move into apt. where boyfriend lived)
* Phoenix, Arizona (escape apt.; buy house)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move to a quieter house, further from main drag)

And here I am. Hmmmmm…. That would be twenty-two different homes — 22 moves!) in one piddly little lifetime.

And that doesn’t count the number of times my mother had to move, following my father, before I was born. Ball-park guess: at least four places. Probably more.

This rumination came about after I had visited a friend and his wife’s home in Scottsdale — in a tony suburb called McCormick Ranch. VERY nice place in a pleasant, upper-middle-class tract that has that low-on-crime look. 😀

But…but…

Well, but… It’s TINY. Small but decent kitchen. One living/dining room. One small master bedroom upstairs. And a guest bedroom/study. Cramped, walled-in patio in place of a real yard.

Still: one could live with that. Ever so much less space to have to clean, right?

Well, but…  It’s WAYYYY far away from my son. He lives in North Central Phoenix, and he ain’t about to move away from his dad’s outpost. Nor is he about to sell his pretty little brick house, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Incredible Gourmet Grocery Store, to move to the crassly bourgeois precincts of North Scottsdale.

So. Nope. Ain’t trading my son’s company for a set of steps. 😀

There, of course, is the decisive element. The kid, that is; not the steps.

But even if Young Caligula weren’t living in my present parts, still…I don’t see the prospect of moving as worth the cost. 

As you know, moving house is a financially bracing proposition. And…what would I be getting in exchange for several tens of thousands of dollars?

* Supposedly a better neighborhood. {Though I have yet to see proof of that: North Central, where the Funny Farm resides, is about as good as it gets in the Valley.}

* Proximity to hordes of excellent restaurants in several price ranges. (Uhm...but I rarely eat out, because I prefer my own pretty damn excellent cooking…)

* Relative proximity to Arizona State University. (BFD: I ain’t teachin’ there any more…and I’m not about to go back!)

* Proximity to the Mayo Clinic. (What could be more cheering than living right down the street from your doctor’s offices? :-o)

Ohhhhh well.  Movin’ on (as it were):

***

Last night I had the weirdest dream. 

In this wacky somnolent universe, SDXB  and I had a fight and I stalked out of the house. The setting was right here in the neighborhood, so I marched out onto handsomely paved streets that run past our homes and past our friends’ houses.

That notwithstanding, I wandered into one of the alleys. And there…oh, yah: I got lost. 

Understand: this is even more somnolently wacky, because a) the alleys here run in parallel rows, so you can’t get lost in them — certainly not if you’re even vaguely sober. And I’ve lived here so long that I know the layout of the neighborhood — its yards and its trees and its sidewalks and its alleys and its fences — even more neatly than I know the layout of the back of my hand.

Well. That notwithstanding: in the Dream Universe I can’t find my way home…or even out of the alley that I’ve wandered into.

Stumbling up that alley in a state of weird confusion, I come across two (handsome!!) cops in a cop car. Ohhhhhhboy!!! And hot diggety!

Turns out the neighbors have noticed me roaming up and down the alleys and, all worried, have called the cops. Meanwhile, SDXB has also called them, since I haven’t come back after our squabble.

So the cops and I chat for awhile. They, recognizing a random nut case when they see one, desist from any plan they might have had about running me in. Au contraire, they drive me to SDXB’s house, where he acts all happy to see me and I just sit there obediently.

Eventually the officers give up and go on about their business. SDXB and I take up our lives as usual.

WTF???????

Do I have a clue what that l’il nightmare was about?

Well. No. Other than embroidery of memories from a decade ago. Essentially, it was a re-run of a long-ago episode.

Hafta say: I really doubt that I could find a better neighborhood than this one. Certainly not one that I could afford — or would want to afford. And most certainly not one that’s centrally located.

Yeah.

I like this neighborhood. And love my house. And yes, I very much do want to leave the house to my son.

How exactly to make that happen kinda escapes me. It’s going to depend, I’m afraid, on raw luck + a healthy dose of genetics.

Women in my family — those who didn’t f*ck themselves to death — lived deep into ripe old age. Ninety to ninety-five was typical of those who lived what you and I would think of as “clean” lives: hold the alcohol, hold the promiscuity.

I do drink, no question of it. Though not much lately, because without a car on hand, it’s too much of a PITA to haul bottles of wine or beer back to the house…and you may be sure I’m too much of a cheapskate to have that stuff delivered.

Still: over the decades I surely have swizzled down enough to do me in. No question of it. So far, no symptoms. But we can expect they’ll show up sooner or later.

At any rate and nevertheless, the probability that I’ll live into my late 90s remains high.

And that notwithstanding: I really do want M’Hijito to have this house. Or at least the proceeds from its sale.

So…that kinda militates against moving into an old-folkerie, or into a resort-like condo.

Ugh! Through the Swamp

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Just back from this morning’s Doggy-Walk. HORRIBLE out there: it’s like a damn swamp.

Ohhh well…it cut down the number of merrie dawg-walkers, anyway. Nowhere near as many nitwits who think their dog (and your dog) are basically four-legged kids. Is there a reason people are so stump-dumb stupid?

Anyway,the dog is fed and watered and walked. I have to wait until M’hijito and I get back from the Mayo Clinic before having anything to eat. Which irks the hell out of me.

Not that I’m hungry. But that I regard today’s little diagnostic journey as a waste of time. And gasoline.

Been there. Done this. Over and over and over again. Why do we have to go through it again? 

The Mayodocs have run blood test after blood test after blood test on me, and never have been able to figure out the cause of the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy.

Is there some part of “pre-diabetes” they can’t figure out? Maybe an aspect of “inherited proclivity for diabetic conditions” that’s really, REEEEELY hard to understand?

How can you go through all those years of medical school and come out so damn stupid?

Today we have to traipse out there for ANOTHER pointless goddamn blood test. My son will be here in half an hour to drag me across the Valley for that little adventure. Every time I go out there for yet another goddam blood test, they tell me “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes!” Ask them what “pre-diabetes” is, and they can’t come up with a satisfactory definition. About the best they can gag out is “well, it means maybe you might be about to develop diabetes. Someday. Maybe.”

No kidding. This is NOT the first time I’ve been through this infinitely annoying hoop-jump.

Last time they went “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes! — a year or so ago — I went over to Young Dr. Kildare,  my “doctor in the wild” who used to practice right up the road from here.

He went jab jab test test, then called me back in to his office, and announced “No, you do NOT have pre-diabetes. You do not have diabetes. Nothing is wrong with your blood sugar levels.”

Got that? So…I expect this to be another annoying waste of time. And now that YDK has moved to effing Sun City, still more time will be wasted either traipsing halfway to Yuma to get to his office or finding another doctor, explaining all this bullshit, and talking him into re-testing me.

Spent half of yesterday out in Scottsdale, visiting a friend who lives in McCormick Ranch, an upper-middle-class suburban development nestled in expanse after expanse of grassy golf courses.

Nice little place my friend and his wife have out there. Unfortunately (IMHO), “little” is the operative word: it’s tiny. 

Cute, charming, and tiny. 

I suppose an aging couple could get used to it and come to like that aspect, though. Less space to have to keep clean. Less space to have to air-condition.

It’s a little small for my taste, though: I’m spoiled to living in a four-bedroom North Central Phoenix commuter palace. Though I’d love to live in that much tonier and safer Scottsdale district, I sure don’t want to have to downsize that much.

And really…is McCormick Ranch all that much tonier, just because it’s in Fancy-Dan Scottsdale? Really, North Central Phoenix is mighty Fancy-Dan, too. Even though our neighborhood is just a mile or so south of a dangerous slum (Sunnyslope leaves a lot to be desired in the Department of Safety), it still is a district of North Central, not Sunnyslop.

{sniff!) We’re soooo fancy, y’know!!!  😀