Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Beloved Neighborhood, Beloved Neighbors

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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…

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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!

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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

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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!

Good Morning, America! And…

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…DUCK FOR COVER!

LOL! 8:00 in the morning, and you can hear those damn fighter jets from Luke Air Force Base all the way over here in North Central Phoenix! 

What

A

Racket!

Yes, the Sound of Death is no lullabye. That’s for sure.

People who live in Sun City bitch nonstop about the noise from Luke, right up the road from the Old Folks’ Ghetto. That actually creates SDXB’s job out there: as a semi-retired PR guy for the Air Force, he volunteers to staff the phones in the base’s public relations office. Every morning, rafts of Sun Citizens call in to bellyache about the roar from the jet plane exercises.

Hilariously, my mother used to LOVE that racket. She’d sit on her back porch, there in Sun City, and take her morning coffee to the lullaby of F-16s taking off and landing. “It’s the sound of freedom,” she would coo.

There’s a wild-eyed right-winger for you!  😀

By a weird coincidence, my house was built by the same outfit that built out Sun City. And, although it’s designed for more than two people, it bears a weird resemblance to my parents’ Sun City house:

* gray slump-block walls
* aluminum-framed sliding doors and windows
* asphalt shingle roofing
* sloping roofs over attics

Well, at least we have actual garages. Webb apparently felt a place to put a car was unnecessary for an old f*rt…presumably the new residents would be too old to drive, right?

Well. No. Out there, the houses have cheesily built lean-to carports. STEAL THIS CAR! that sign says…. 😀

Actually, what the local thieves used to do was climb on top of the car, reach up to the carport ceiling, and slide open the door to the attic. From there, they’d hop into the attic, walk across the beams to the living-room or kitchen area, saw a hole in that ceiling, and drop down into the house. From there, they’d steal you blind.

Lovely.

Here, my dowdy li’l Sun City-style house does have an actual garage with an actual garage door. 

LOL! If I’d known this subdivision was built by the same outfit that built Sun City, I wouldn’t have bought a house here. Not on a bet.

But that prejudice notwithstanding…it’s not a bad little shack. Not at all. Construction is sturdy. Design is sensible. Lots are large enough to put plenty of space between you and the neighbor. Alleyways are included, and they’re lined with 8-foot-high block walls.

Sun City has no alleys, and no backyard walls. Take your morning coffee in your backyard, and you can watch your neighbor do the same as the jets scream overhead.

They scream overhead here, too…occasionally. But at least they’re far enough away to put some distance between the natives and the racket-makers.

Ugh!! This is gonna be another beautiful day in Arizona: 28 percent humidity under clear (hot!!) skies.

In the Department of Jobs You’re Glad You Don’t Have, Mr. and Mrs Wonderaccount (right across the street) have hired a team of painters to spiff up their shack. I need those guys over here, too. But…well…luring them to my house would require me to get up off my duff. And I ain’t about to do that!

Snoop Snoop Human

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Here we are on Truthfinder, searching out dirt on an old neighbor and sorta-friend of mine. Their “search” is in-freaking-terminable! On and on and on and on….  And, as we all suspect, very probably a waste of time.

This lady was married to a prominent lawyer here in town, at the same time my own husband was a prominent lawyer. Had a bodacious daughter who was given to using weed and generally getting into mischief. And a cute young son who wasn’t yet old enough to create much trouble.

Ohhhhh lookee here! They make you sit through INTERMINABLE computer clicketymumbledypeggedy and then, after 15 or 20 minutes of this, they tell you they have all sorts of miraculously scandalous information about your victim…uh…subject…and want you to pony up cash to see it!!!!

Eff that, dear Truthfinder. You might consider presenting the “truth” of your business model up front, before your victims spend half the morning waiting for you to gag up data.

Hmmm…. Looks like my old pal moved to Tempe.

SPECIAL OFFER!!!!
DOLLAR TRIAL!!!!!!
PONY UP JUST A DOLLAR TO GET STARTED!

Bye, Truthfinder.

God, I get tired of Internet rips. “Information is supposed to be free!” Remember that?

And I for one do NOT pay for DIY data searches.

A-n-n-d…by now wouldn’t you think I’d be smart enough to recognize an Internet rip when I first lay eyes on it?

😀