Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

Hotter Than the Hubs…Still

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Seven in the morning. The dog and I are back from the Morning Trudge. She’s taken up her position in the cool cave under the toilet. The human is desperately swilling iced tea.

Ugh! What an AWFUL morning! Hot and sticky and swampy…feels like hideous Saudi Arabia, there on the shore of the Persian Gulf where we lived for ten years. That was an awful place then. And this is an awful place just now.

We walked by our transplanted neighbor J’s house. It used to belong to SDXB, until he got spooked by Tony the Romanian Landlord and ran away to Sun City. In his panic, SDXB merrily sold the place for a pence to the City of Phoenix, who gave it away to a welfare case.

That lady is a sweetheart and a nice person to have as a neighbor. But she has neither the experience nor the cash to maintain an aging upper-middle-class house. Sooo…. the place has more or less gone to pot.

And of course, that affects property values for all of us.

Thank you, Big Brother! 

😀

Occasionally I think about moving down into M’hijito’s neighborhood. Centrally located, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store, madly gentrifying, steps from a bus line….  But…

But GAWD, do I hate moving! Even if the cost were irrelevant (which ain’t the case anymore!), packing up four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a dining room, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a two-car garage is more than I care to contemplate. Just. Too. Much. Work!

But…hmmm….  It might be worth it.

Just depends on which way the wind blows.

If the city continues to give away houses here, property values will tank. In that case, I won’t be able to get enough for this house to move into a comparably middle-class neighborhood, and when M’Hijito inherits this place, its value will be nil. So…

Could be worth selling out now and jumping to a more stable district.

My neighborhood is “less stable,” shall we say, because we are the next one south of a dangerous slum. The low-income district to the north of us is notorious, and it took some nerve (and maybe some stupidity?) to buy into our area.

Because of that neighboring blight, I was able to afford much nicer housing than I could have hoped to buy anywhere else in the central city or the East Valley.

Our area has stayed stolidly middle-class since I moved in — a good 15 years ago. But it’s beginning to look like that may not be the case much longer. The accursed city ran a train line up Main Drag West, conveniently bringing every bum in town up to our neighborhood. The nearby grocery stores are getting old…the infrastructure is getting old…everything is getting old. So…

It may be time to start thinking about moving elsewhere. Or consigning myself now to the inevitable old folks’ prison.

At any rate: for the moment…yes. The place is still pleasantly tidy and blandly middle-class. But how long will that be the case?

Anyone’s guess…

NOW what???

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Wooooooooooooooooooooo…….

1:20 in the morning and a weird noise is coming from….where?

I think it’s coming from the neighbor’s house. Possibly their air-conditioning? (Yes, in Phoenix you DO need to run your AC well into September…)

* Trudge outside. Explore around the yard.
* It ain’t my pool
* It ain’t my air-conditioner

Not much else on my property that could be making a weird noise.

That doesn’t PROVE it’s not coming from somewhere around my house or yard. It’s the freakin’ middle of the night…pitch dark…I can’t see much out there…I’m dead tired…

Awww jeez!  Whatever it is, it’s getting LOUDER. But…better yet, I can hardly hear it when I go outdoors, but inside: it’s resonating through the bedroom window.

No, it’s not the bedroom ceiling fan.

WTF?

Welp: forget getting any more sleep tonight.

If I’m right that it’s coming from outside, then it’s likely to be an expensive fix…unless, with any luck at all, it’s coming from the neighbor’s house.

Uh oh…. The AC unit just clicked off, so commanded by the thermostat. Hmmmm…. And guess what? No woooooooooooo.

Yeah. That suggests, o’course, that it IS coming from my place. That it’s probably emanating from the air-conditioning unit. And that my bank account is about to be cleaned out.

Ohhhhhh goodie!

****

Waitaminit… NOPE! The wooooo is back, but my AC is still off. A miracle! The noise, whatever it is, is NOT coming from my gear.

Apparently it’s coming from the neighbor’s house, or from some damfool thing off in the distance.

Hmmm… Pray for the best, then.  For me, that is…not for whatever poor wretch owns the freshly busted machinery.

Phoenix: garden spot!

Another Unlovely Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all NOT enjoy it.” 

Ugh. Not yet 9:00 in the morning and it’s 100 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Some asshole has messed up my watering system. Spent altogether too much time trying to undo that fiasco and get water going on the plants. (Any amount of time on that mess is too much time…). Time spent in ungodly heat.

Goddammit! I hope it wasn’t Gerardo or one of his guys who did this! If I find out that’s the case, he is sooooooo fired!

Kinda doubt it, though. He has worked here for years, and nothing like this has happened before. I reckon it must have been a service man or a prowler.

How to keep any such worthies out of the backyard escapes me, though. The guys from the power company and the city water department have to get back there to fiddle with things. They’ve never done anything like this before, and since I’ve done nothing to offend them, I kinda doubt the perp was any of those guys.

Problem is, they have to get back there to do their job. So I can’t change the locks on the gates…it will keep them out as well as the sh!thead who f*cked up the watering system.

So now I’ve somehow got to catch Gerardo the next time he surfaces here — or else call him on the phone and pester him. He’ll need to untangle that mess and get the system working properly again. And…won’t he be thrilled!

Maybe I could sneak a motion-sensitive camera back there. It would run whenever ANYone strolled into the backyard, so would rack up Gawd Only Knows how much time wasted studying the images. But at least it might catch the jerk.

Hm. Another thought: how about installing a motion-sensitive bell back there? Then anyone who walked into the backyard would cause it to ring BING-BONG inside the house…then (assuming I was home at the time) I could see who was roaming around.

Or…I could just post a sign reading “SMILE! YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA!”

Chortle! If the jerk believed it, maybe he’d stand down.

Hotter than the Hubs…AGAIN

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Or maybe make that “STILL”?

At 11:30 in the morning, the thermometer in the darkest part of the back porch reads A HUNDRED AND TEN DEGREES. 

Yeah: we’re talkin “in the shade.”

So. It’s another balmy day in Arizona…leave us all despise it. 

Seriously: I do have to say that if I could escape from this place, I would. RIGHT NOW.

Actually, I would’ve escaped some time ago…

Where would I escape to?  

Probably the San Francisco Bay Area, whither my mother and I emanated some years ago.

When my sea-faring father retired, the two of them betook themselves to Sun City, here in fricasseeing Arizona. Looked ideal to them: NO KIDS.

And yes, they did hate, loathe, and despise kids. And anyone whose skin color differed from their own.

To my mind, that communal sentiment out there makes Sun City a highly undesirable place. Hate does not seem like an ideal foundation upon which to build your life.

Ohhhh well. To each his/her own, eh?

My part of town — the North Central district — is considerably better educated and considerably more humane than [un]lovely Sun City. Hate is not the foundation upon which this part of town was built.

But still…it’s hot. It’s miserable. And it ain’t San Francisco.

If I could get back to the City, I sure would. But as a practical matter, I can’t see how that would happen: Just can’t afford it. And as a sentimental matter: my son is here and I ain’t movin’ away from him.

Lucky him, eh?  😀

***

Jayzuz! Just now we have water pouring –– and I do mean POURING– on one of the trees in front. Poor little plant looks like it’s about to keel right over.

Once the timer runs on that, I’ll have to drag the hose across the yard to another parched victim.

See what I mean when I say that I hate this place? Those trees, like all the other plants in the Funny Farm’s yard, are on an automatic watering system. Regular, timed watering is not enough to keep them alive in this f*cking heat.

That notwithstanding…you don’t even wanna know what the water bill is gonna look like.

Ugh. When I say I hate this place, I do mean I hate this place.

*****

…hose drag hose drag hose drag hose drag hose drag…

Okay, we got PART of half of the front yard watered. Meanwhile, other environs are more desperate. Sooo…

Dragged the hose into the backyard. Got it running on the paloverde tree and on one of the roses.

The rose plant is dying. I very much doubt that it’ll survive.

So much for the watering system’s timer, eh? It was set to water those damn plants every day, in this heat.

Yeah. Okay. After this, I’ll have to do a hose drag EVERY DAY until the weather cools.

  • Westside roses
  • Potted plants on the east-facing side of the west wall
  • All four citrus trees in the backyard
  • The mountains of cat’s-claw vines climbing on the north wall — vines that are struggling to survive

On and on and on. Apparently the watering system has crapped out in some way…but I can’t find the problem. That means I’ll have to hire an irrigation guy to come in, figure it out, and fix it.

Goodie.

And some moron butched up my rolls of masking tape. So, to post new charts for my guys, I’ll have to order more of that from Amazon. No, I cannot drive to the store: my son has kiped my car. No, I cannot walk to the store in 110-degree heat.  And Amazon gouges you upwards of $4 for delivery.

************************

Gaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Migawd. Nobody could have been this stupid! Nobody could have fu*ked everything up this elegantly without knowing what he was doing.

*********

Seriously: No one could have made a mess like this by accident. No. They deliberately dorked up everything in my yard!!!

Wish I knew who “they” might be…so I could fire them.

This is, no doubt about it, purposful vandalism.

 

Whew! Funny Is B-a-a-a-ck! And So Is Gerardo…

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Wow! For awhile there, WordPress wouldn’t let me back into the Funny about Money site…and…well… I wuz beginning to think Funny was about to be a thing of the past.

Ohhh well….  Here we are, back online…uhm…I think. We’ll find out after I go to post this squib.

Gerardo the Miracle Yard Dude and his cohorts are out in the yard, working like animals in Arizona’s UNGODLY summer heat. August is our worst month. But, for reasons I can’t imagine (most likely he has bills to pay, hm?), he volunteered to prune the (overgrown!) paloverde tree on the west side of the house.

Not a good time to hack up a tree, that’s for sure. But…you can be sure he wouldn’t have offered to do it if he didn’t need the money. Damn near killing your crew with heat exhaustion is not a normal strategy.

Let’s just hope this exploit doesn’t kill the tree. It is on the west side of the house, after all…so it serves its purpose in savings on air-conditioning bills.

On the other hand, even I could tell that it presented a serious risk of falling on the roof and doing some major damage. The amount Gerardo is charging for this venture (which he didn’t tell me beforehand…otherwise I wouldn’t have let him do the job) is fukkin’ ruinous…but a fraction of what it would cost to chop down the tree and then repair the roof and the attic if it fell on the house in a storm.

So I can’t complain too much.

On the other hand…that doesn’t make me like it.

And yes: trees.  MY GAWD, the man charged me FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS to prune that weed tree off the roof and away from the yard.

He said, though, that he’d talked to my son. And he claimed he told my young Hero (and Keeper…) how much he was gonna charge. So…one can only hope that was true. Because if M’hijito is blind-sided by a $450 landscaping bill, he is gonna be ENRAGED. Seven ways from Sunday.

Ohhhhh gawd! Never get old,, whatever ya do!  First off, you lose control of your life. Then, you’re assaulted by one hassle and one headache after another — none of which you personally can do a damn thing about. The person in charge of your bills has to do all that…and you may be sure, he won’t appreciate it.

***

Ohhhh well. I truly do like Gerardo and his guys. They’re all such nice men, each and every one of them. To say nothing of gentlemen who work like oxen (!!no exaggeration!) Seriously, you’ve never seen anyone work as hard and as steadily as those guys do. Just…freakin’…jaw-dropping!

They do hard work and good work. Whatever they apply themselves to, they do a great job on it. And they apply themselves to A LOT!

Amazing guys. No question of it. 

No Matter What….

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…it’s gotta be a hassle!!!

😮

I swear-ta-gawd! Everything I’ve touched in that damn backyard today has gone SPRROOOOIIIINGGGGG!  And kindly created an interesting new hassle.

Just spent a good half-hour or 40 minutes wrestling with pool equipment, for a chore that should’ve taken 10 minutes…at the outside. I’ll tellya: if I glance at it, it goes SPRRROIIINGGGGG!!! And breaks or creates a mess.

Y’know, my neighbor Josie drained her pool several years ago and has never refilled it. And….I’m beginning to think she’s got something there.

O’course, a maneuver like that wrecks the plaster and the equipment, so the damn thing has to be expensively repaired before it can be turned back on — basically rebuilt. But…honestly. Sooooo what? The savings in Hassle Factor may be altogether worth it.

Godlmighty, though….I do hate the thought of wrecking the pool and leaving it a wreck for years, then having to spend several thousand dollars in repair bills when the house goes on the market, lo! these many years in the future.

But honestly…IS that pool giving me my money’s worth? To say nothing of my hassle’s worth? I hardly ever use it any more. I haven’t been in it today. Or this week, or, come to think of it, this month.

Maybe it just oughta be drained…..

{sigh}

If I were gonna do that, though, I think I’d want to cover it with a plank deck. If that were sturdy enough, it could be part of the patio, and a table and umbrella could sit out there. It would look nice enough (a helluva lot nicer than a plaster hole in the ground!) and could be used for parties and picnic meals.

Now, as a potential seller of this house, I see that plan as a mighty drawback. But….but what if some potential buyer comes along and is enchanted by the idea of an expensive deck that could be used as a party venue? That might not be such a bad thing…

Hm. I may ask a Realtor friend about this idea.

Sheee-ut!!  The temp out there is 107 degrees, with rain y-cumen in!  What a fukkin’ garden spot! Almost as balmy as (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where heat and humidity were linked together with hooks-and-eyes!