Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Tryin’ Again…

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Believe we’ve lost several posts since the last time I was here scribbling. And…well…I am NOT in the mood for struggling with the Internet just now.

So let’s freakin’ start over.

Today is Sunday, March 16.

It’s 3:40 in the afternoon. A rather stuffy and damp afternoon, one with high clouds lurking overhead.

Ruby and I are just back from circumnavigating the park. Enjoyed watching teams of young people playing soccer and volleyball. Nice way to spend time…

Contemplated the potential joys of inhabiting some other neighborhood.

My cousin lives in an outlying suburb called Fountain Hills. A little higher in elevation, it’s a bit cooler than the more central parts of the Valley. It’s practically within walking distance of the Mayo Clinic.

Would I like to live there?

I might, if my cousin were just a shade friendlier. For reasons I cannot imagine, she visibly dislikes me. Dunno what on earth I did to piss her off permanently, but she’s openly hostile to me whenever we’re within hollering distance. So…that does nothing to encourage me to move to the far northeast side of the Valley.

How about Sun City?  Way to Hell and gone on the west side?

Ugh! Nothing feels more repellent to me than the Old Folks’ Ghetto. Make that the Whitey-White Old Folks’ Ghetto.

My mother loved the place after she and my father came to light there. But…I never could see the charm to its visual and social monotony.

How about back down into the historic central part of the city?

Well. Yeah: I did like living there. Thirty years ago… However…today? Maybe not so much.

Social-stratum-wise, it’s about the same: a popular destination for the young, the affluent, and the upwardly mobile. But…but….

First off, it’s noisy. The upscale neighborhoods are bordered by large, incredibly busy commuter roads. So every morning and every evening you get roar roar roar from seven-lane roads that don’t let you turn left. A major regional hospital occupies a large corner to the north, and another one stands to the southeast: ambulances shriek past at all hours of the day and night. And Sky Harbor Airport calls jet plane traffic to the south and east, roar roar roar roar roar — also at all hours of the day and night.

So…even though it’s a pretty and a historically interesting neighborhood, it’s less than perfectly ideal. Especially given the crime rate, which is pretty breathtaking.

Not that we don’t have a healthy crime rate up here in Sunnyslop. But with only one regional hospital we do get lots less siren music.

Ohhhhh my…. WHERE would I go if I could escape from lovely uptown Phoenix?

Hm.

Just about noplace in Arizona. It’s much of a sameness, all across the state…when you come right down to it. Loved living on the ranch, but it probably wouldn’t be safe for an old lady: at this age, you need to be closer to medical and social services than thirty miles out in the middle of nowhere.

So…. {sigh}…  I’m probably about in an ideal location, given my age, my health, and my social status. I do like it here, even though there are places I’d like better.

La Maya and La Bethulia have moved to the area around Monterey, California. It is beautiful there. And cold. And foggy. And expensive. No way in Hell could I afford to live there.

SDXB’s relatives live in Seattle. It also is quite lovely. And a bit too expensive for my budget.

I do love New Mexico. But…I don’t know anyone there, and at this age you may be sure I don’t wanna start all over.

Back to the San Francisco Bay Area? All my relatives in those  parts are long gone, left for the Other World many a year ago. No longer knowing anyone there and without a job there, I can’t imagine much of any point in moving back.

So I feel like I’m kinda stuck here, trapped by inertia. There’s noplace else to go to that makes sense, and I sure don’t wanna work hard enough to create any such place.

Arizona: Garden spot. I guess.

And Speakin’ of Colder Than a By-Gawd…

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😀  What an insane afternoon!

We’re back from the late-day perambulation of the park. EGAD, but it’s cold out there! Overcast, windy, and…well.. more than “crisp.” Colder than a by-gawd, as my father would have said.

Ruby has patrolled the neighborhood streets and inspected the park. Clouds have blown up during the time we wandered about: it’s dark gray out there now.

Wunderground predicts an 84% chance of rain…I’d say that’s a conservative estimate. Supposedly 52 degrees out in the backyard just now…but again: I’d say, “conservative estimate.”

We’ve managed to repair to the Funny Farm, and Ruby has taken up her position at the foot of the bed.

…. uhhh….

Well, no: She’s taken up her position at the chow bowl, having rousted the human and demanded a pile of Dawg Food.

😀

{sigh}. I hope the stuff races through her forthwith, so we can get her out into the backyard before it starts to rain. Which will happen…soon, I imagine.

Well…what if?

What if we lived in Fountain Hills, a suburban locale I covet?

It would be colder there than it is here. And no doubt windier.

What if we still lived downtown, in the antique and very classy central-city neighborhoods?

‘Twould be no warmer there than it is here, but a WHOLE lot noisier. We’re comin’ on to rush hour, so would be serenaded with traffic noise and ambulance sirens and fire-engine sirens and…gaaaaaaahhhh!

On the other hand, we’d be closer to M’hijito’s house, so it would be easier for us to pester him. 😀  😀  😀

How’s about Sun City, the garden spot where my parents took up residence for their retirement?

Well…they STILL hate “minorities” out there, even after all these years. A friend of mine — a fella of the dusky persuasion — bought a place in Sun City. He was hounded out in less than six months.

Though I myself am of the paler persuasion, you couldn’t pay me to move out there. What awful people!

So…here we are, Ruby the Corgi and I, loafing on a bed in lovely North Central Phoenix. Ruby has enchanted a number of the locals, having strolled around the park and cutied them into submission. The skies have clabbered up and turned threateningly gray. Ruby, unconcerned, snoozes. I scribble.

What can  we say? Other than arf!

Renovations

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The young(ish) couple who bought my neighbor Sally’s house are over there madly renovating. Sounds like a buzz saw — or maybe a floor sander — whirring away.

Hm. While we think of it…let’s go on a li’l doggy walk and poke our nosy schnozz into their business as we stroll by…

****

So we’re ARF! ARF!  out the door. Around the park. through the south side of Lower Richistan. Ruby: beside her canid self with doggy joy.

And it’s ROAR! ROAR!! ROAR!!! from Luke Air Force, off to the southwest side of Our Fair City. Holy mackerel, what a racket!

That racket is one of the several reasons you couldn’t pay me to live in Sun City: the melody of jet fighter planes soaring overhead, taking off from an Air Force Base just down the road from one’s backyard. That’s about as far from what I wanna hear over morning coffee and evening cocktails as you can get.

Hilariously, my mother claimed to love it. She would sit on her screened back porch, swill her coffee, and listen to those blasting jets’ engines as the sun came up.

ohhhh, she would coo. It’s the sound of freedom!

ahhhh…no, Mom. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way….

WHY are humans so fukkin stupid?????

Ohhh well…

The pair who bought the Beloved Sally’s house behind me: nicest neighbors you could hope to have. A yardful of screaming kids: maybe not so much. But only a  couple of kids in sight just now…and that makes for a reasonably QUIET occupancy.

They may have bought the place on spec, though. We shall see. I hope they last a good long while.  But whatever: for the nonce, they’re about as ideal as you can get.

Secretly, I even enjoy and am happy to have Tony the (Amazing!) Romanian Landlord as a neighbor. Forgodsake don’t tell him, though! Who knows what shenanigans he’ll get up to if he hears that bit of apostasy! 😀

Meanwhile, the young people behind us are  busy fancifying Sally’s shack.

* On the one hand, I hope they spiff it up and extract a nice profit from it.
* On the other hand: I rather like that bunch and would  be pleased if they hung around a few years.
* On the third hand, soon it will be time for me to move into an old-folkerie or some such horror. And I surely would like either to leave this house to my son as a fine investment or to be able to sell it and add the proceeds to the pile of dough I hope to leave to him.

Please, God: let me exit, stage left before that third exigency comes to pass.

ROOOOARRRR!

Is that another F-15? Or is it Cosmic laughter?

Can’t Go Home Again…

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Remembering Berkeley: wish I was still there. Or could go back.

Gree and Gertrude — my mother’s grandmother and aunt — lived into their late 90s…problem-free. Partly because they were tee-totaling Christian Scientists and so never were challenged by a doctor. But I suspect more likely because they lived on a rather steep hill in Berkeley. Gertrude had to walk up that hill five days a week to board the train for San Francisco, where she worked at Crocker-Anglo National Bank. Gree walked up there every day or two to visit the charming little neighborhood grocery store. She would also mount a steep concrete staircase and then climb a steep paved road to get to her grandson Berwick’s place.

Steady up- and downhill walking. Hardly any place they went was on the flat.

Hereabouts, there’s hardly any place you can go that isn’t on the flat. There are a couple of so-called “mountain parks” — we’d call those breathtaking heights “hills” — and a ritzy-titzy neighborhood built on gently rolling terrain below one of those alleged “mountains.” But most populated parts of the Valley are decidedly un-hilly.

Gree and Gertrude’s neighborhood was a hill. Hereabouts, for me to get to rolling terrain, I’d have to drive 20 minutes (one-way!) through homicidal traffic. There: it was right outside the front door.

So basically what was happening: to go about their ordinary daily routines, they had to indulge in some hefty gymnastics. Up a steep hill to reach the grocery store; then down a steep hill. Up a set of concrete steps to reach another hillside road. Up that road to get to their kids’ house. And o’course, on the other side of the Bay just about any place you chose to venture in the city was going to take up you up and down an incline.

It was such a pretty place, Berkeley. I really do miss it.

My father decided that nothing would do but what he had to retire to Sun City, Arizona. Not a bad move, exactly: real estate prices were cheap enough that he could quit his job early, and once we’d been in the state for a year, my tuition at the University of Arizona was next to nil. My mother, after a brain-banging hard upbringing and a challenging adulthood, could accommodate herself to just about anything. She thought the place was just too, too wonderful.

How you could imagine that about flat, monochromatic, mono-ethnic Sun City escapes me. But whatever rings your bell, I guess. How you could imagine the University of Arizona was any match, for your Phi Beta Kappa kid, to Cal Berkeley (or any of the California universities) escapes me. I was set to go to Berkeley, but ohhh mirabilis! Ended up in Tucson. My father, not even having graduated from high school, had no clue what this meant for me career-wise. Nor, I suppose, did he care.

Because, after all, what was a woman’s career? To marry, bear children, cook, and clean house. Yeah.

I very much doubt he understood what difference a college degree would make for me — to say nothing of a graduate degree or two. Because after all…what was I gonna do? Become a secretary somewhere: that was about the highest and best use of your National Honor Society girl child’s little brain.

So, that’s what I see, what I remember when I visit Sun City. As you can imagine, it’s about the last place on this planet where I wanna live.

In an instant, I’d go back to Berkeley, if I could afford it. But of course, I can’t. Not even my father could afford it, on his handsome Merchant Mariner’s salary.

So here we are in lovely Arizona: Southern California redux seasoned with too damn much heat and a handsome dose of public stupidity. What a place!

Good {grump!} Morning, Arizona!

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Crack of dawn: out the door with the dog.

The derelict who set up camp outside the backyard wall was gone. And — surprise!! — he picked up after himself!! So there was no mess to shovel out after the sun comes up.

Circumambulate the park: beautiful morning. Hip hurts, but not as much as usual: reflect that the beloved, retired Dr. Tim Daley was no doubt right when he said eventually I’ll need a hip replacement.

Yay. I can hardly wait.

😮

Reflect, while hiking around the neighborhood, on where I might go if I actually did decide to move out of Bum Heaven. Only two places come to mind: the Arcadia district, where my now late stepsister used to live; and Fountain Hills, a Whiteyville on the east side of Scottsdale. Neither has much appeal: they’re just too damn far away from where my son lives.

Where else????

Down into my son’s neighborhood? Those houses were built before there was such a thing as air conditioning. They’re designed for swamp cooling (actually, they’re designed for the residents to spend their summers up north…). Plus the area is even noisier than mine.

Welp. Things could be worse: so far 11 people have been killed in the Kentucky storms…which aren’t over. Arizona can have killer weather, too…but not enough to take out a dozen locals at a time.

***

Too bad none of those 11 were goddam phone solicitors. Another one of them was on the horn just now. I try to have some kind of ear-blaster near the phone, so as to zap the bastards with something that will HURT when they call here. Didn’t have one nearby. SCREAMING into the phone as loud as you can may (or may not) be an effective substitute. This a.m. the SHRIEK was emitted in words:

GET THE F**K OFF MY GODDAM PHONE!!!!!!!

Man! Am sick, of goddam phone solicitors.

{gronk!}

Ruby trots out onto the back porch, picks up some piece of debris off the patio, and eats it!

Ohhhh gooodie. There’s another fine vet bill, comin’ up the trail. Assuming she lives long enough to get her to the vet…

***

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is still at the neighbor’s house. It’s three in the afternoon, and the woman has been there all day! I don’t understand how she does what she does.

Normally, she cleans WonderAccountant’s place and then comes over here. But typically, she’s done over there by about 11 a.m. or noon. She must be knocking herself out!!

***

Gaaaahhh! 4:30 in the afterno0n and the poor woman is still laboring away!! HOW does she do that.

I’ve been laboring away all afternoon watching the bubblers water the citrus trees, and I’m exhausted. ;-

The woman is amazing!

 

Fundamental Questions of Olde Age

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What am I doing?

What am I supposed to be doing?

Who the Hell am I?

And why am I here?

Yes. There we have the fundamental questions
that confront the aging mind.

😀

Was just about to fly out the door and trudge down to the ever-pricey AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store, there to buy some swell stuff for the mid-day dinner. Charging around, it occurred to me to wonder…

* Waitaminit! What’s in the freezer?
* Waitanotherminit!! Whats wrong with this spectacularly fancy piece of spectacularly expensive steak?

and…

* Is there some REASON I can’t add this fresh, crisp asparagus to the menu?
* What??? No potatoes? Really??? What’s wrong with a fistful of freshly cooked pasta?

Sometimes I do wonder what’s wrong with me. At least this noon I escape the vicissitudes of old-age brain haze (for once!!), come away with what will be a very nice dinner, and not have to shell out another dime for it.

***

Y’know…ten years ago — even five years ago — it would never have occurred to me to traipse out into the (pricey!!!!) wilds to buy the makings for today’s mid-day feast. I would have known what was in the fridge. I would have known there was no need to go charging out in the traffic and scoop up $30 worth of fancy food and wine at AJ’s.

So…

Now we scribble while we wait for the kettle of water to come to a boil for the pasta. We swill wine by way of passing the time. And we wonder which drain our IQ points trickled down.

<<sigh>>

Worrying about SDXB and NG (New Girlfriend). He says she’s under the weather…apparently seriously so.

This is highly worrisome: first because she’s a lovely person and does not deserve to be sick; and second because he’s transparently in love with her and needs to have her in his life.

***

And in the Department of Weirdness…

Last  night I dreamed of returning to the sweet middle-class Berkeley  neighborhood where the relatives who raised my mother lived. And…

…how much I miss those women
…how much I miss Berkeley
…how much I miss the San Francisco Bay Area
…Oh hell! How much I miss my mother

How dast she smoke herself into the grave?

If heroin peddlers and cocaine peddlers and even marijuana peddlers are regarded as criminals, why the Hell aren’t tobacco peddlers legally recognized as the craven murderers that they are?

Ah well…movin’ on.

Maybe we’re all craven murderers? is that possible?

Daydreaming on in this vein, I found myself remembering Berkeley and the oh-so-long dead relatives, so vividly that they seemed almost real, almost here: and I wondered WTF is wrong with me.

If this is senility, my friends…then senility is freakin’ weird!