Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Haunted!

by

LOL!  Ya just think some damfool ailment is gone, and wooooooOOO, like Caspar the Ghost it’s b-a-a-a-c-k!!!

Here I thought the hip pain was magically healed…gone…free of limping and aching and whining!!!!!

Uh. No.

It’s back now, and with a vengeance.

What DID I do to bring it back?

Nothing, that I can think of. Just sitting here, loafing and playing with the computer. Get up to go to the bathroom and OOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

By damn, I can barely hobble across the room!

No idea what kicked it off.

* Not sitting in any goofy position
* Not hiking around the neighborhood with the dawg
* Not loafing in the bed cattywampus
* Not scrubbing the floors
* Not climbing on ladders
* NOTHING!!!!!

And now, here we are: hurting like HELL!

DAYUM! I was gonna hike across Main Drag West to haunt the computer store. But now…well…I’d be surprised if I can walk that far. And if I can…whether I can walk all the way back home.

{sigh}

If I were a grown-up, I would get into the pool and exercise the thing a bit. And that might work the pain out.

Or…heh…it might cripple up the damn hip enough to leave me stuck in the drink.

So much for that idea….

Once I get up and start to move around, it feels better. Not cured, but not crippling either. So I assume (hope) it’s nothing serious.

This morning: discovered online that the Romanian Landlord has a nursing home of some kind, established on one of the residential streets to the south of us. Interesting. I’ve heard that Romanians tend to get into the nursing home and care business…didn’t realize he was doing that. Last I heard, he’d closed down the reform school for juvenile delinquents.

That one must have caused way too much trouble for the poor guy. You just can’t imagine how much static flapped out of that enterprise! He being no fool, he recognizes which side of the bread is buttered, so within a few months he closed that one down. Right now, he’s renting the house to a very bland young couple…and frankly, I think that’s a very smart move on his part.

As long as they pay the rent, he makes a profit on the place. And so far, they’ve been quiet and inoffensive. Let’s hope they stay that way…

DOUBLE Dayum!!!  Dare to sit down (wouldn’tcha think by now I’d know better?) and here comes Gerardo’s crew, descending on both the back yard and the front yard at once. ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR…that’ll be a hundred bucks.

Think o’that. A hundred dolla for about 30 minutes of work.

Y’know, he’s jacked up his price. Now…it’s true, costs are going up everywhere. So he probably NEEDs to increase his billing. But dayum!!! A HUNDRED DOLLARS for thirty minutes of charging back and forth around the yard???????

True, they do an awesome job. But…that seems like a lot for not very much time.

On the other hand, he does have four guys roaring around out there. So in theory, it’s really two hours’ worth of a single yard dude’s labor. But gosh.

It really does make a box in the sky look good. 

{sigh} I imagine the proposed high-rise apartment on North Central Avenue would have its associated monthly costs. Probably not a lot less than a hundred bucks — trash pick-up, hall clean-up, window washing, receptionist’s time, security guard, underground garage maintenance…yeah. Probably not a lot less than Gerardo bills.

But…geez!

*********

And What to Do Next?

by

Hmmm…ooohhkayyy…. I seem to have recovered from the spavined hip episode. That was weird…to say nothing of startlingly painful.

Now, just a few hours later — shortly after noon — the pain is gone. As in GONE gone.

That’s weird. Dunno what made it start hurting, and don’t know what made it stop hurting.

****

Cruising the real estate listings in North Central Phoenix — the tony part of the city, that is.

Wow. Which is to say…uhm…well…wow. Truth to tell, I’m not seeing a thing that impels me to feel I must run out and buy it. Or even run out and look at it. My house is as good as any of these piles, or better. And when I croak over, M’hijito will inherit a piece of property worth some stupefying amount of money (certainly compared to what I paid for it!!) and can decide whether he wants to stay in his own palace or move into my castle. His place is maybe a little smaller than mine — certainly a little older — but both houses are well maintained, in decent neighborhoods….and worth a sh!tload of money, after all these years.

He has remarked that he’d like to move back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a nice, middle-class rural kind of town…founded by well educated engineers and business entrepreneurs. Truth to tell, it’s quite a pleasant place. And as a retirement venue, it could be downright perfect.

Because Grand Junction ain’t the San Francisco Bay Area — my own choice of retirement venues — what he’d get from selling my house and his would set him up like Colorado’s King of Sheba. So…as retirement schemes go, it ain’t a bad idea.

Why am I NOT in Berkeley, as we scribble?

Because he’s here.

Seriously: I feel no great craving to return to the Bay Area, even though I did love living there and I still miss some aspects of it. But that craving is far from enough to make me want to move anyplace where my son isn’t. If any day now he took it into his noggin to move to Grand Junction, I’d no doubt follow, shortly.

Ohhh well. What to do next?

It’s too damn hot to hike to any of the nearby grocery stores. Ruby and I are well set up for a couple days’ worth of food, even though the human lacks her favorite potables. That lack, alas, is not compelling enough to send me barreling through the neighborhood to the nearest Albertson’s, Safeway, Basha’s, or wine closet. So we will loaf.

Ruby is already loafing, having resumed her possession of the foot of the bed.

The beautiful pool is contentedly burbling away. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d be out there paddling around. But…well…the truth is, one probably doesn’t want to plunge in a swimming pool beneath the ungodly blast of sun we’re getting just now.

Later. Much later.

Beloved Neighborhood, Beloved Neighbors

by

The ineffable Josie was out in her front yard, yanking weeds as Ruby and I ambled back home from our morning circumnavigation of the park.

Josie lives in SDXB’s old house. She came up from the daunting slums of South Phoenix — the house purchased by the city and donated to her after the city glommed her property to build an airport runway. (What a place, eh?) I do enjoy Josie: a denizen of an entirely different culture. Hope she hangs around for as many years as I last here. 😀

Meanwhile, neighbors were walking their dogs at the park. The sky is dappled with low-hanging cumulus, incredibly beautiful in the dawn light. Weather is on the high side of warm, humid, a bit sticky. But not really uncomfortable. Yet.

I do love this place.

And do NOT want to be moved out of here. How exactly I’m gonna manage to “age in place” with my son already beginning to lobby to move me to an old-folkerie kinda escapes me.

But…we shall see. I haven’t been legally declared non compos, so I imagine (hope) I’ll be able to stay put until such time as I can barely stumble from the bedroom to the bathroom. Or until I die, whichever comes first.

When I first moved into the ’Hood, back in the Dark Ages, a number of elderly women lived in these houses, on their own. One was right next door to my first house here. No doubt into her 80s, she was a lively character. Every day, she’d be outside blowering and sweeping her patio or fiddling with the yardwork.

I want to be that lively character. 

Now, it’s true: I don’t enjoy yard work. But I can afford to hire people to keep up the property:

* Yard dudes
* Pool dude
* Arborist
* Cleaning lady
* Electrician
* Mechanic…

On and on. So with any luck, I hope to stay put until I die. That would be ideal.

Second best would be to hang in here till I have a stroke and lose track of who and where I am.

And yeah: one can only hope…

Meanwhile: what a GORGEOUS morning. High cumulus glowing white and pearl-gray by the dawn sunlight. Temperature: perfect. Kids and dogs outside playing: moms and dads watering yards and getting ready to fly off to work. Crew of workmen heaving around the new mansion someone is building in Lower Richistan.

Amazing.

Why would anyone ever wanna live anywhere else???

Another Day, Another Thunderstorm…

by

Welp, I never did make it over to The Terraces (formerly Orangewood Retirement “Community”). Just as well, I suppose.

Seriously: I do NOT want to live in an institutional environment. And especially not an institution designed to warehouse the elderly until they die.

Given what those places cost, y’know… I could borrow against the paid-off value of the Funny Farm and collect enough to hire someone to come in and care for me — for as long as I’m likely to go on living.

Which ain’t all that long. 😀  One would hope not, anyway.

Actually — as I mentioned in passing yesterday — longevity was a tradition in my mother’s family. Seriously: most of those people lived into their 80s and 90s. A few lived well into their 90s. And they were nut-case Christian Scientists: nary a drop of medication nor a preventive shot blemished their lives.

The exception was my mother: she smoked herself to death. NOT a pretty way to go, by the way…

Some of the relatives on my father’s side lived seemingly forever, too — most notably, his brother. My father smoked, though not heavily…but he was submerged in the stinking smoke from my mother’s obsessive habit, and so over the long run no doubt was harmed, from that. But despite that and the misery he suffered in his late-life marriage to the Dragon Lady, he still lived well into his 80s.

Oh, well: neither here nor there.

In the Here and Now, what I’d most like is to be able to hang onto the Funny Farm, keeping it debt-free until it can be passed along to M’hijito. Then he could move into a very nice, very economical house, essentially at no cost to him. Or he could sell it and invest the proceeds toward his retirement. Either way: just now it’s an asset I want him to have.

Ohhh well… Also in the Here and Now, I can’t hold my eyes open another minute. And so, it’s off to Naptime! 

Car? We Don’t Need No Steenking Car!

by

LOL! Ever had that thought? The why am I spending 87 gerjillion bucks on this clunk thought? The what a PITA it is, schlepping this contraption in for its regular maintenance thought?

Yeah…..  Lately, I’ve been kinda haunted by that thought.

Main reason is that it has slowly but steadily dawned on me, now that we have a lightrail train cruising up and down Main Drag West and now that a rental car lot has taken up residence in a nearby shopping center and now that (duh!!!) I’ve come to realize I can reach three large grocery stores and a Walgreen’s on foot, none of them more than a ten-minute stroll away…that…yeah…maybe, just MAYBE I don’t need a car. 

Think o’ that!

Seriously: when I need a ride that’s longer than a short dash around the strip malls that surround the’Hood, I can call for an Uber. DAYum! A guy who drives for Uber lives right across the street. Several other Uberites dwell in the immediate neighborhood.

So…umh…WHY am I spending some unholy amount of cash to keep a pile of steel and aluminum sitting in my garage most of the time?

Why am I freakin’ going broke to insure that pile of tinfoil?

For the past couple weeks, the Heap has resided at my son’s house. And…y’know what has happened?

Yeah,

Nothing.

NOTHING horrible has ensued from the absence of a $15,000 pile of sheet metal, bolts, and rubber.

Well. Something HAS happened.

I’ve come to believe that in a city like Phoenix, now that it has installed piles of public transportation up and down almost all of our main drags, there really is NO NEED to own a car! 

Seriously.

From my house, I can walk to not one, not two, but THREE major chain supermarkets: an Albertson’s, an El Rancho, and a Fry’s. Not sufficient? We also have two huge chain drugstores: a Walgreen’s and the one inside the Albertson’s. All these have pharmacies. Three of them sell more groceries than you can dream of.

And with the trains running up and down Main Drag West, I can cruise as far as I please to visit stores, doctors, dentists, and whatnot. For just so much loose change!

Gosh. It’s almost like when we lived in San Francisco: a real city! 

So…I’m thinking get rid of the clunk. Maybe split the sale price with my son, giving half to him as a sales commission. And…call it a day.

We have a rental lot just a couple of blocks up Main Drag west. If I must have a car to drive around, I can go over there and extract one for a day. Same if I feel called to drive up to the Grand Canyon or some such. Why OWN a hole in the ground into which to pour money for the sake of a few rides here and a few rides there?

So…I’m kinda excited about this idea. Haven’t discussed it with M’hijito yet. He being the owner of the male voice here in the famiglia, I think he should have a say in this scheme. But frankly: I suspect he’ll approve. 

Choirless Sunday

by

Ugh. Still haven’t figured out how to stay out of Orangewood, the prison for old folks [now called “The Terraces,” apparently]. Oh well: I’ll figure that out later…if it can be figured out.

Meanwhile, it was off to the park with the Human and the Dog. Speaking of “Ugh!,” the weather is sunny…and soggy. A humid, shiny morning: less than perfectly pleasant. That notwithstanding, we circumnavigated the park — upwards of a mile’s stroll — with me mooning along: wishing I could be back on the church choir.

After the beloved Scott retired from the choir’s directorship, the new clergy took to hiring guys who expected choir members to be able to sing on the professional level. Well…I can sing along just fine. And I can carry a tune just fine. But in Arabia, we did not have music lessons. 

Well: some did. Our neighbors hired a piano instructor for their kid. But my father was not ABOUT to spend his hard-earned riyals on any such thing!

Result: I cannot read music! If I can hear a piece of music, I have no trouble learning it. But I can’t read sheet music.

That kinda disqualifies me from the much fancier choir our church now has. All of those folks are functioning on the professional level or close to it…and believe me, they can figure out how something is supposed to sound by reading the sheet music.

So that’s disappointing.

If I had a car (still do not: and I expect that quarrel to be permanent), I could go out to the Unitarian church, which has a kind of sing-along choir. For my taste, though, they’re a bit too lovey-dovey. I’m just NOT the hug-and-kiss type. You’re all very nice, folks: but keep your hands (and your lips) to yourself!

The Methodist church down on Central Avenue, which was similar to the Episcopalian outfit I was attending, has closed. Property values in that upscale business district had gone too high, apparently, to allow a low-rent tenant like a church to continue.

There’s another Episcopalian church (I think that’s what they are…) down by the park. But I found it singularly uninspiring: left me less than enthused about driving down there and dodging the park’s population of bums.

Heh! So…that leaves Sunday morning for Doggy-Walks!