Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Thank You, Good Realtor!!!

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Y’know, my good Realtor Friend, a guy named John Shackleford, did me one of the greatest favors anyone ever did for me: by bringing me to this house, in this neighborhood.

What a lovely, peaceful, pretty place to live!

Ruby and I just got back from one of our circumnavigations of the ‘Hood. And oh, my! What a pretty day.

The park: brilliant emerald green in the spring sunshine. The weather; insanely beautiful. The kids: playing magnificently in the park, kicking  balls and chasing around. The dogs: handsomely trotting along  beside their humans. The sky, delicately painted with fine, thin white clouds against a deep blue background. The birds: singing and flying around in avian joy.

What more could you possibly want, eh?

Just now, I can’t think of much.

It really is a beautiful, upper-middle-class North Central Phoenix neighborhood. Just about anything you want or need is within easy walking distance — as I’ve discovered to my amazement, now that my son has kiped my car.

Yes, it’s true: living here, I actually don’t need a car! Get rid of the chariot, and come to find out you have, within easy walking distance,

  • 3 top-flight grocery stores
  • a veterinarian
  • a computer store
  • a bookstore/computer software store
  • a hair stylist
  • a doctor (of sorts)
  • a magnificently stocked drugstore
  • 3 pharmacies
  • 2 major urban hospitals with top-rated emergency rooms
  • a fine young lawyer

One could go on and on…but basically, the message is, you can get about 95% of the goods and services you need without ever setting foot in a gasoline-powered vehicle. 

Y’know, this characteristic of the neighborhood never fully dawned on me until after my son kiped my car. I mean…well, of course I knew all these places were here. But until the car disappeared from my garage, it never really registered with me that I didn’t need to drive to these places!

Seriously: in the summertime, get going early enough and you can do your errands before the heat comes up. Raining? Call an Uber…like, the one whose owner lives straight across the streeet. (Turns out a half-dozen Uber drivers live right here in the Hood!)

It’s every bit as good as San Francisco in that way. When my mother and I lived there, back in the Dark Ages of the late 1950s and early 60s, we did have a car. But we never used it unless my mother and I had to drive across the Bay to pick up my father when his ship came in. (He was a Merchant Marine pilot.) I’d guess we never turned on the ignition more than twice a month.

And now, between Uber and just about every daily need within easy walking distance, I find myself in the same situation. I don’t really need a car! 

Mwa ha ha!!!

My son has it in his garage. And frankly, he can have the damn thing. I may sign over the registration to him, next time I have to pay for it.

Glub!

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Yeah, verily: It’s a glubifarious morning. You should see that rain pouring down out of the skyfull of dark gray clouds! Thank Gawd for coffee, that’s all I can say!!

It obviates my plan to traipse to the grocery stores this morning. What with my honored son having persuaded the stump-dumb doctors at the Mayo to cancel my driver’s license (!!!!!!), I can’t get to a store except on foot or by paying through the schnozzola to hire an Uber cab.

Our beloved Uber driver lives right across the street…and I can assure you that he will not want to be rousted out to schlep the Little Old Lady six blocks to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts. Fortunately, there’s enough Dawg-and-Humann food in the house to sustain Ruby and me for a few days. So whenever the rain stops, I can run (literally!) to the nearest shopping center and grab enough chow to tide us over until the weather clears.

Wow! What an ugleeeee morning! Wunderground seems to have missed the boat (heh!!) by predicting a mere 30% chance of rain today. Asleep at the switch, eh, folks?

Roar…Roar…Roaaaarrrr….

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Argha! Another cop helicopter, whirling around over the neighborhood to the north of us. At least, for a change, this one is not hovering right over the house. /eyeroll/

The ‘Hood isn’t exactly Crime Central, but neither is it a place of sweetness and tranquility. We reside on the southern edge of a suburb called Sunnyslope, which is Crime Central, swarming with drug dealers, delinquents, burglars…and even the occasional murderer.

This fine circumstance brings us cops. And cops. And more cops. Many of them riding in noisy, buzzy helicopters. Dare to go to bed, dare to go to sleep, and you’ll bring on the serenade: BRRRRooooaaarrrrrrrr…

Reassuring in that it lets you know the policia are on the job. Un-reassuring in that it lets you know they’re chasing some sh!thead around your neighborhood.

Get up. Walk through the house. Check that all the doors are locked. Turn on the outside porch lights, the better for the cops to chase their prey.

These regularly recurring events lead me to regularly reconsider whether I want to stay here.

Do I want to move back out to Sun City?

Ugh, no!

Okayyy…. Do I want to move down into the neighborhood where M’hijito lives? 

Hm. Those houses are 20+ years older than these, poorly insulated, expensive to run. Right in the middle of everything, which is cool in some ways — you can walk to the spectacular AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store from his house. But at what cost?

> Noise
> More Noise
> Still More Noise
> Traffic
> Traffic
> Still More Traffic
> Astronomical utility bills
> Higher property taxes
> Insane water bills
> Bums sleeping in your yard…

Naaaahhhh…. Ain’t goin’ there!

The Valley does offer other suburbs and other neighborhoods that are a little less…active, shall we say. Fountain Hills, for example. Moon Valley. Sun City: inactive to the point of stasis. But is that really worth spending thousands of dollars on selling the shack, buying another one somewhere else, and moving?

I think not. 

Soggy Doggy Day

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{glub!} Rain, rain, and more rain, pouring down from a lovely pearlescent gray sky. Dawg and Human are stuck in the house. From faraway Luke Air Force Base, we’re serenaded by the constant roar of fighter jets, practicing their take-offs and landings. Birds outside the back door squabble. The pool system kicks on: seems to be working OK.

Way, waaayyy too wet to take Her Dogship for her morning doggy-walk. Too wet for the Human to poke her own schnozz out the front door. Or the back door. Or the side door.

We’re trapped!

Carless in Gaza as we are here, now that M’Hijito has kiped my car, we have no way of even getting to the grocery store.

Well. That’s wrong: we could impose on the Uber driver who lives across the street. Wouldn’t he be pleased?

Or we could walk through the rain and the puddles, getting home good & wet and good & cold. Naaaaahhhh…

We could pester M’Hijito to take us to the store, since this predicament is his doing. That would interrupt the work he does for his employer….hmmmm…. Why do I suspect it might be better to swim on over to the grocery store all by my little self?

But weirdly: WHAT a beautiful day. 

Actually, when you live in Arizona, you think clouds are so rare and so exotic that whenever they lurk overhead, you fall into a trance of awe. 😀  It is, one must admit, a strange kinda place for human habitation. Made stranger by the presence of humans… 😉

Summer Storm-time

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1:40 p.m.
November 18, 2025…still!

Fine freshet of an Arizona afternoon storm is y-rollin’ in. kerBOOM!  Thunder growls angrily in from the west. The sky has turned ash gray as clouds gallop ahead of the wind. Ruby the Corgi loafs on the bed, gazing out the window…apparently unfazed.

What un-fine timing. Tonight M’ijito is dragging me to the brain-banging booooring physical therapy studio, there to blow away another two hours going hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-…..to amazingly little avail.

Ugh. If I’ve got to waste my time, I’d rather waste it loafing with Ruby.

Ohhhhh, well. It gets one out of the house. I guess. And presumably onto the rain-soaked streets…

Meanwhile, the pain is sloooooowwwleeee easing off, about an atom’s width at a time. Eventually it will go away. Then with any luck the ludicrous physical therapy antics will also go away.

The other evening I got SO frustrated with the mindless, pointless hup-hup-hupping that I sneaked out of the gym and ran off down the street. M’jito had gone off someplace (no doubt even more bored than his muther was), so I contrived to slip out and trot away without getting caught.

You can be sure he won’t let that happen again, eh?

Already it’s seemed a strangely long day. It’s only about a quarter to two. yet if feels like we ought to be rounding on 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. Why? Probably the thick cloud cover: the sky is a uniform dark gray, so you can’t estimate the time (not on a bet) by studying the height and angle of the sun.  And lookee there! It’s raining again!

How do I not want to drive through the rain, in the dark, for the privilege of a pointless hup-hup-hup session?  ARRRGH!  Let me count the pointless ways!

Roar! Roar! ROOOARRR!

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And HOW glad am I that I don’t live in Sun City anymore?

GAWD, what a racket emanating from that place this afternoon! And it’s a good 20 miles from here…

We’re talkin’ jet engine noise. Sun City is just down the road from Luke Air Force Base, where what must be a VAST fleet of fighter jets resides. And yeah: damn near every day: ROAR ROAR ROAR!

My mother, who dearly loved her home in Sun City and was one of the rightest-wing of all possible right-wing patriots, used to coo on and on about how glorious the roar from the air base was. It’s the sound of FWEEDOM! she would emote.

Yeah. If the sound of World War III bearing down on you is the sound of fweedom, that must be it, all right.

Ugh. What an awful place!

At any rate. just now even our North Central Phoenix ‘hood is too damn close to Luke.

WHAT!

A!

RACKET!

And yeah, if I could move even further from it than we are here, I sure would.

Oh, well…  Round and round the ‘Hood with the little dog this noon. Beautiful day. And the place seems to grow handsomer with each passing month and year, too. I think it’s because of the location, mostly. And the quality of the aging tract houses, which were fairly upscale when they were built and which remain so.

SDXB and I really fell into it when my Realtor brought us to this place. Both of us bought houses here. And neither of us lost $$$ in the transition.

He has since moved to Sun City. Having lived there when my parents were there, you couldn’t give me the place. But I guess he likes it.

You do need to enjoy the Sound of Freedom to fully appreciate the joint, though. Ugh!