Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

Morning Gad-About

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Wow! It’s wet and hot over at the park, whence the hound and I just returned. Didn’t realize it was so hot and sticky out, or we probably wouldn’t have started out. Yea verily: once a Dawg has got you into the park, you’re not gettin’ outta there easily! 😀

But whatever the weather, it’s always fun to walk around that upscale neighborhood. One of the houses, harbinger of a long and strange history, is now vacant and under major renovation. They’ve gutted the swimming pool, and it looks like they’ve pulled out just about everything in the home’s interior.

It’s on an upscale and desirable street, but the problem is that, as a corner house, it faces on an east/west mini-main drag that connects with the larger main drag running north/south through  the ‘Hood. This makes for a ton of traffic and repeating serenades from ambulances, fire trucks, and cop cars. Handsome as the house is, it’s not one I would choose to buy. Or live in.

The previous occupants had a kid who got in trouble with the law, and that exploit bankrupted the family. They  lost their home, which has stood vacant for months. Apparently someone finally managed to glom it, and now it’s on its way to renovation and sale.

That young fella is not the first I’ve known to go to jail over a fling in bed with some chickadee. If you have a teen-aged son, teach him to use discretion about jumping into the sack with any female under the age of 21. The risk is just not worth the fun!

But…onward, onward: around the park. Many of those homes are on lots upwards of half an acre, so they’re spread-out and green and handsome and…expensive. It’s a tony part of the neighborhood, indeed.

Guess I’m glad I can’t afford to live over there, though. The park, not surprisingly, attracts any number of undesirables (great place for bums to sleep!), plus there’s always some noisy, nuisancy event going on. Not the best of all possible venues for a private home.

Hotter Than the Hubs…Again…

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Don’t even wanna KNOW what the temp is out there! Let’s see what we can find out from Wunderground, thereby stoking our neurosis without having to get up and walk onto the back porch to look at the thermometer…

Ah! A chilly 106 degrees in the shade…at 4:54 p.m.

Balmy, eh?

Stupidly, I walked down to the Albertson’s shopping center a couple hours ago. Extraordinarily bad idea! Just about fricaseed by the time I stumbled back in the house.

And…and…WHY is it so freakin’ hot in here, two hours later?

Because the AC is off. Or something….it’s set to some brain-banging STUPID temperature.

Just discovered that fiasco! Turned the unit back on (WHO the hell turned it off, and why?????). Set it for 77.

The motor just started to run. Temp inside the house is in the 80s just now–far as I can tell. May be higher. So it’ll take a couple hours to cool back down into a bearable temperature.

Well, it’s only a bit after 5:00 p.m. at the moment. So by bed-time, maybe the house will be sleep-able….

My hair is soaking wet. And since I haven’t been in the pool, that ain’t a good sign.

What the HECK happened here? This is not a cleaning-lady day. Far as I can recall, no workmen have been in the house. And you may be sure I wouldn’t have turned the AC off.  Soooo….how did the thermostat get set at a Hades-like temp?????

Jeez. I wonder if someone could have come in the house and, in a moment of funny-ha-ha humor, messed with the thermostat? But…who?  Cleaning lady?  WHY? She’s no vicious nut case, and so wouldn’t have done a thing like that. Plumber? Don’t think he has a key.

Is it possible to dork with the thermostat from outside the house? If you get on the roof with the unit, for example?

Oh well. The thing is blasting cool air into the room just now. Soon it will be blasting a vast power bill into the house….

 

Hotter than the Hubs

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Ruby and I must have gotten a later start on the morning’s neighborhood stroll than I thought, at the time we set out. Lordie, it’s AFTER 10:00 A.M. Not good, on a “spring” (hah!) morning in lovely uptown Phoenix.

Holeee doggerel, is it hot out there. 

Y’know what job I’d most NOT like to have, here in lovely uptown Phoenix? ANY job that requires you to work outside!

This morning we passed a crew of guys who were gutting out and renovating the Alleged Molester’s house. This, actually, is a handsome middle-class home backing right onto the park. It was occupied by a family whose son dated some girl who was a few days under the age of consent. Hopped into the sack with her…and they were hard at it when her mother came home and caught them in the act.

The mother called the cops, and the young fella was arrested for statutory rape. He went to prison. His parents lost their shirts. They ended up abandoning the house, which turned into a wreck and has been standing decrepit on that corner for upwards of a year.

Well, someone has gotten ahold of it, apparently, and they’re shoveling it out and renovating it. You don’t even wanna know what that project must cost. The pool was drained and allowed to stand dry for well upwards of a year, so it’s ruined: basically ha$ to be rebuilt. The roof has been redone. Workers inside the house seem to be pulling out and replacing almost everything.

If they put it on the market, it’ll be interesting to see how much they try to get for it.

Two lots to the east, another house is being gutted out and renovated. Another huge project: who can even imagine the cost?

Well, if and when the speculators put those houses on the market, we shall see what they do for the price of real estate here in the ‘Hood. The other properties on that street are pretty upscale, so I imagine we’ll see the whole area go through the financial roof.

ARF! we say….and GLUB!

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Loafing on the front porch this gorgeous morning…waiting for a workman to confront the day’s catastrophe.

Boyoboy, am I tired of catastrophes. This stuff makes a box in the sky down on Central Avenue look good! Nice aspect of apartment living: someone else takes care of the damned repairs.

This morning the irrigation system sprang a leak. I found out about it only because the neighbor across the street, one of the WonderAccountants, came over to tell me the road between our houses was flooded from curb to curb.

Looovvveeeleeeeee….

So now we’re waiting for an irrigation plumber to show up. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

He probably has several other jobs to attend to this morning. So it’ll be half the day before I can go on about my business. And by then, waaayyyy too hot for Ruby the Corgi’s morning walk.

Contemplating: Maybe SDXB was right to sell up and move to Sun City. 

Even though he still ends up with a free-standing house to take care of…a gravel yard presents almost zero maintenance issues. Taxes out there are lower. Burglars are pretty much uninterested in you. Two hospitals — neither of them very good, but neither of them much worse than most of the others in the Valley — await your next stroke or heart attack. Not a bad deal, overall.

If M’hijto weren’t here in town — conveniently located to both me and to his father & stepmother — I might very well have followed SDXB back out to the far, noisy west side.

Or not.

I did hate living there when my parents owned their end-of-life home…ah…here’s our plumber!!!!!  Awayyyyyy…..

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A-a-a-n-d… Now the plumbers are here. They’ve dug up the yard around the side gate. Hevvin only knows how much they’ll charge for this little adventure!

I sure don’t wanna know.

Ohhhhhh man! What a job! Wayyyy up there in the Department of Jobs You’re Glad You Don’t Have!!

Seriously, though, these guys have amazing skills. Not only did they figure out the problem within a few minutes of attacking the watering contraption, now they’ve taken it apart and are merrily (uhm…welll…) reconstructing it.

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JAYZUZ! Two hundred and seventy bucks!  To repair a leaking pipe!

Sheeeee-ut!

Well…to be fair, they had to dig up a corner of the yard. Excavate the equipment that regulates the water flow on the west side. Install new parts…in the mud…

Gawd only knows how much this little cavort will run up the water bill. Literally: the road was flooded curb to curb before Tom (neighbor) noticed  and called me.

Honestly, sometimes I do think a box in the sky would be a better habitation for an old bat. But…then I remember living in one.

My parents and I lived in a box in the sky in San Francisco, in a tract called ParkMerced. It actually was a cool place to live: I loved both of the apartments we occupied successively: first a high-rise and then a pleasant little two-story garden apartment.

But…y’know… Apartment developments are crowded. They can be noisy. And expensive: monthly rental can add up. And add up. And add up. Here the only payments I make — on four bedrooms plus a diving pool and two patios and four citrus trees — are for taxes and utilities. This house really is about as ideal as it can get, for an old bat and her dawg.

Hmmm…. Yep! Count up the blessings of a high-rise apartment, the blessings of a cheaply built tract house out in Sun City, and the blessings of this house…and this house wins, paws down.

  • Decent neighborhood
  • Low-maintenance landscaping
  • Block walls around the back & side yards
  • Orange trees
  • Lemon tree
  • Lime tree
  • Climbing roses
  • Cute little kids living all around in the neighborhood
  • Lightrail train running up and down Main Drag West
  • Two major regional hospitals — one of them within walking distance
  • One of the best public school districts in the city
  • Three middle- to upscale shopping centers within walking distance

I’m sure one could ask for more…but personally, I can’t imagine what that would be. 

Hummer Vandals

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Okay, so I lost patience with replacing or repairing the stolen/damaged hummingbird feeders in front. Took them down. Refilled them, hung them from eaves in the back yard. Behind an eight-foot concrete wall and a set of locked gates.

What a shame!

You can’t even have a stupid little decorative bird feeder hanging from the front-porch eaves of your house.

Seriously: what IS the matter with people? Stealing every damn bird feeder some idiot homeowner hangs out on her front porch?  Is that REALLY so much fun that you do it over and over?

It begins to make the (hideous) prospect of moving into an old-folkerie look better and better. You can be sure no one is going to steal a bird feeder from a balcony on the sixth floor of The Beatitudes.

Depressing as Hell, ain’t it?

Nothin’ Better to Do….

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Jeez. Can you imagine? The locals have got nothin’ better to do than to sneak onto my front porch and steal my bird feeders!  They did it again this afternoon.

What bastards!

Welp: after this, the birds will have to repair to the back yard — behind locked, six-foot-high gates — to snack on their birdseed and their hummingbird juice.  Guess I could booby-trap the front patio with cameras…but really…. That does seem like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Literally: even if I catch them in the act, the cops aren’t likely to do much (or anything) about it. Like there weren’t better things to fill a police officer’s time?

It’s stupid and it’s petty. But it sure pisses me off!