Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Circumnavigating…

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Yea verily: another dog-and-human circumnavigation of our lovely North Central Phoenix ‘hood. This morning no sh!thead was holding forth in the park — too early for him, presumably. Whatever: it was a relief to walk around without having obscenities shouted at me.

A new (presumably) owner is re-renovating the handsome, classic home on the corner of the park and Main Drag Central. That place is gonna be worth about a zillion dollars by the time they get through with it.

Seriously: property values here in the ‘Hood are headed for the stratosphere. By the time M’hijito inherits this house (as I sincerely hope he will), he’ll be able to retire to Tahiti on whatever he can sell it for.

Meanwhile, directly behind that fancfiying house, the lovely green park stretches out in three directions — constrained by the presence of Main Drag Central. I personally wouldn’t want to be that close to MDC…or, for that matter, to a wide-open park that beckons to every pot-headed bum who staggers past. But still: get a little deeper into the neighborhood around it, and it’s pretty fine.

If I manage to stay out of an old-folkerie (big IF!), my son will inherit my house and its ever-inflating value. That will give him a juicy choice: he can either move in here and enjoy its classy construction, its lovely pool, and its outrageously central location; or he can sell it and move…just about anyplace he pleases.

Tahiti presumably would not be his first choice. His dad came from Grand Junction, Colorado, a mining town on the Western Slope which, over the years, has evolved into the largest town in Western Colorado. He has remarked that he’d like to move there…so I can imagine him making his escape to those climes, after his dad and I pass on to our furry fathers.

That, unfortunately for him, is likely to be quite a while. Longevity is a Thing in my family: women who didn’t smoke have lived into their mid-90s…and because they were Christian Scientists, they never saw a doctor or had an immunization, either. I do go to doctors and do take flu shots and tetanus shots and the like, so as long as I manage to stay off the local roads, chances are I’ll live nigh unto 100 years old.

He’s doing OK for himself, though…as a practical matter, he could sell his house and get himself into Grand Junction without undue suffering.

Hmmm… What would I do, if I were him and I inherited a pile of dough at just about the time I was ready to retire with a decent pension & Social Security?

Hmmmm…indeed! Y’know…probably not much. I’ve seen the world, having grown up in the Middle East and traveled all over those environs, Europe, and the United States. Absolutely ZERO interest in any further junketing.

Chances are, I’d simply stay right where I am, invest the money, and let it support me comfortably for the rest of my life. I might even get a job just to keep myself amused. Of course, adjunct teaching jobs are all over the place. A journalistic job would be more fun and more interesting — and a lot less work of the unpaid variety. Whatever…I figure money is for loafing.

Summertime in Arizona

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Dog and I just returned from roaming loose around the ‘Hood. Ye GAWDS, but it’s hot out there!!!

Prob’ly not really that hot…Wunderground claims it’s only 90 degrees, in fact rather mild for this time of year. Humidity: supposedly only 9%…..couldn’t prove that by me!  Feels hot and damp outside just now, come 2:30 in the afternoon.

This is when I yearn to go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where my relatives lived.

They’re all late relatives now — the ones who would have anything to do with us W.T. So there’s no one to call me back there, alas.

Actually, there’s still a cousin…she’s a nurse now. But she doesn’t live in the old neighborhood, and she never thought much of me, far’s I can tell. Dunno what I did to pi$$ her off, but she seems not to like me. My father — now long late — was exceptionally stupid about her: disapproved vocally of her conversion to Catholicism. As if that were any of his business, or anyone else’s business!

I hope he didn’t say anything to her…but given the unfriendly way she behaves, my guess is that he did. And you can be assured: whatever he said would have been passing nasty.

So, in reality: no one who would welcome me to the East Bay is still there. So there really would be no point in going back, even for a sight-seeing visit.

That notwithstanding…if I could get back there, I shoot back in an instant!

Ain’t a-gunna happen, though.

Strange Arizona Afternoon

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Saturday. 

Overcast and gray. 

Hot and humid.

Betcha didn’t know Arizona could get humid, eh?

Well…yeah, it sure can. Sometimes even damp enough for rain to congeal out of a clear sky!

That’s not the case just now: it indeed is overcast. Not raining yet, but feels like it sure would like to rain.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the neighborhood before the sky could make up its mind about that. So…gray and dank as it is out there, we at least didn’t get rained on.

This is the kind of day that reminds you of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. Hot, gray, and dank pretty much described most of the summertime there!  How CAN I say how glad this human is to be back in the United States?!?

It is, though, the kind of day that makes me wish I were still dwelling in the San Francisco Bay Area, whither my mother’s family. My great-grandmother and her daughter — my great-aunt — lived in Berkeley, in a little Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired bungalow. So very pretty!! I do miss it.

But of course I can’t afford to live in the Bay Area…so forget that daydream. 😀

Some days I love living in Arizona. Others, I rather hate it…  Today is not a “love living here” day. 😀

But it’s not a “hate it” day, either. The sky is decorated with fluffy, floating clouds. A pair of black birds march around the back patio. Ruby, having marched all over the ‘Hood, is conkered out at the foot of the bed. A table fan blows tepid air at us. And I’d be asleep if I could be asleep. Which I can’t, not at this time of day.

Just invited my son to dinner, via email… He likely will decline: he’s less than thrilled with running around town after a full day of work. But it was nice to try, eh?

Chances are, too, that’s he’s put in a substantial numbers of work hours: Saturday notwithstanding. But chances are, too, that he’ll have something better to do with a Saturday evening than spend it with his muther. Oh, well: at least he’ll know I’m thinkin’ of him! <3

 

 

Reminiscing…

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Dear GOD, how I hated living in Saudi Arabia!

I grew up there, in an American oil camp called Ras Tanura. That means “Cape Brazier”…and they ain’t kiddin’!  It was a horrible place, hot and humid all summer long (add the spring and fall to that, to get the total length of the season…). Some days, it was so humid that rain would start to pour out of a clear blue sky!

This jolly memory was spurred by a moment of reminiscence: was remembering some of the kids I went to school with, what our lives were like (ugh!!), some of the teachers (double-ugh, to most of them!).

Well…hold that thought for a second or so.  I was very lucky to have had an utterly brilliant first-grade teacher (no kindergarten out there). Her name was Miss Woods, and that lady DID know how to teach the urchins to read. The astonishing result was that by the time I walked out of her class at the end of the first year, I could read and I could write — fluently.

When we got back to the States a few years later, I was even more astonished to find kids who could barely read. No joke: that is NOT an exaggeration. This was at the end of the sixth grade. And no, they were not learning disabled or special-ed types: they were the normal kids in the normal classrooms.

In Arabia, the teachers ranged from decent to excellent — with the exception of one nitwit who must have been some executive’s girlfriend. By and large, by the time we students got back to the US, we were well ahead of our respective grade levels. Kids who had been in stateside schools all that time often struggled to read a grammar-school book.

But…in Arabia, the social norm among the kiddies was Conformity with a Capital C.

Because I was a little girl who wanted to grow up to be an astronomer — not a secretary or a mommy or a grade-school teacher — I was The Weird One. Make that the Target. 

The little monsters teased and tormented and tortured me all the way through grade school…never was I so glad to get away from anyplace as I was when I left that horror show in the 6th grade. And THAT was why I hated living out there. With all my beady little heart…

When we got back to the States, I was years ahead of grade level. I loafed my way through junior high and a year or so of high school. Then was pulled out of school and sent off to a university. YAY!

That was a slice of heaven. 

For my father, too: it allowed him to retire a year early. We decamped to Southern California and they stuck me in a school there.

His “retirement” didn’t last long: Before long we hit a major recession, my father’s investments went down the drain, and he had to go back to work.

But by then he and my mother had fallen in love with Sun City, an Arizona tract for the elderly and the white, and I was at the University of Arizona. I managed to stay in school there, drifted into graduate school and into marriage with a lawyer who could support me in the manner…and now here I am. Not married any more, but comfortably ensconced, with a Ph.D in my résumé.

Life is strange, eh?

April 22

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Ungodly racket from the damn air base, way on the FAR side of Sun City. At least a good 29 miles away: roar roar roar roar ROAR. Don’t understand how people living out there can tolerate it, even for a few hours in the morning.

My mother used to sit on her back patio there in Sun City, serenaded by those blasting plane engines. She would simper over her morning coffee, “Ohhhhh, it’s the sound of fweedom!” 

Right, Mom, I dared not say: It’s the sound of World War III coming your way. 

Oh, well. At least we got Ruby’s doggy-walk out of the way, and before it has started to get hot out there. She’s gone off to the back bedroom, there to loaf. And…I suppose blogging is a form of loafing, too.

The (very sweet!) lady who inherited SDXB’s house by welfare-agency fiat is enjoying a fine predicament: The plumbing under the kitchen sink busted open and flooded the house!

Lordie! WHAT a mess.

So she and a daughter were trying to mop up, and trying to get the City to send a repair crew. One of those fine nightmares that none of us needs, eh?

Before SDXB came along and bought the place for a song, it was owned by some very flakey, very feckless folks who let the place go to rack and ruin. He fixed it up handsomely…and then practically gave it away as he fled our quarrel with Tony the Romanian Landlord.

Actually, he had lobbied me earlier to move out to Sun City. I’d lived there before with my parents, and wasn’t bloody well about to go back. So when things intensified here and I still refused to move out, he just sold up and headed west, leaving me behind.

Whatever excuse you need, eh?

Shortly, the Tony quarrel settled down, and now he and I are actually rather friendly — walked around the park together just the other day.

Must decide what (if anything) to do today. The dawg and I are in full-out Lazy Mode: it’s too damn hot out there to do much hiking, and without a car, I can’t even get to the grocery store without hiking through the heat.

Actually, I can: ask the guy across the street who drives an Uber. But…what? Pay someone to drive me 8 or 10 blocks? Gimme a break!

😀

There’s a corner shopping center much closer, I must admit. But the neighborhood over there is a little shadier: you’re likely to get hustled, and as a woman alone I don’t feel very safe in those conditions.

So…yeah: maybe I should have followed SDXB out to (un)lovely Sun City. But….no. Nope I truly hated living out there with my parents.

Been there.

Done That.

Ain’t doin’ it again. 

Whew!!!!

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BACK ONLINE!

We’re in one of those idiot moments. You know…when you can’t remember your name, to say nothing of your website’s password?  😀   Yeah: like that.

Fortunately, this isn’t my first Senior Moment. By way of heading off these events, I kept a record of the site’s password…and stored it on MY OTHER computer!  So…,mirabilis! Here we are back in Funny about Money.

How long this will last remains to be seen…

Hotter than the Hubs outside. Just came in from hiking through sweaty, nasty heat. For reasons unknown: wired to the teeth. 

Think it’s because my car has been kiped, thanks to the idiots at the Mayo Clinic.. That plus absolutely positively NOTHING that I need to get done works! 

The MayoQuacks put the eefus on my driver’s license, at my son’s behest. Note that I have not been in an accident in years — and that one wasn’t my fault. Nor have I had any tickets. Or any complaints about my driving. Or…whatnot. What I do have here is a royal screwing…the upshot of which: my son came down here, snatched my car out of the garage, and drove it off. I now have no car and no sane way to get around town.

And in a Los Angeles-style city like Phoenix, that IS a problem. Yeah: a BIG problem.

Apparently it’s a Hexed Day for everyone. 

Josie, the lovely lady who glommed SDXB’s house from the Welfare folks when he moved to Sun City, is having one of those, too.

Ohhhmigawd, Josie!  In a highlight of her day, apparently the kitchen plumbing jammed and…basically exploded, from what I can tell. Pipes leaking all over the place. Nothing working. And yeah: just TRY to get a plumber over here on short notice.

Last I saw, she’d managed to shut off the water into the house and was trying to mop up the tidal wave. What a horror show!

Yeah: every time things are bad for you, remember: they’re worse for someone else!