Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Garden Spot!!!

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So saith the beloved Wunderground, as we scribble: 103 degrees(!) with a 15% chance of rain…  Glub!!!

Seriously: It feels like (un)lovely Saudi Arabia out there: Hotter than Hell and as humid as the inside of an active shower stall.

We’ve got pretty clouds fluffing their way across the sky…so I’d suggest (being the expert weatherperson that I am!) a bit more than a 15% chance of rain. Whaddaya bet that by sundown tonight, we’ll have not a CHANCE of rain but REAL, PALPABLE water falling out of the sky?

😀

Fluffy clouds or no, it’s hotter than the hubs out there. Vaguely, I’d planned to stroll over to one of the neighborhood markets (what we have here, within walking distance, are an Albertson’s (same as a Safeway), a Sprouts, a Walgreen’s, and a Fry’s. Plus some smaller stores of diverse varieties.

Not in this heat, though!

If it cools off enough, the Ruby and I can assay another stroll around the park. But…I kinda doubt it. This sort of humid heat, when found in (un)lovely Arizona, doesn’t cool down real quick, even after the sun sets. The streets will remain too hot for her li’l feet until well after nightfall.

So it looks like our next Doggywalk will be put off until dawn tomorrow (and not later than that!).

She doesn’t seem to mind: she’s conkered out on the sack just now. Canine response to heat, I reckon.

Y’know…  Phoenix — the Valley of the Sun — never used to be like this. It didn’t get this humid.

Yes, it did rain. But when the air got as wet as it is now, that’s when the rain would coalesce out of the sky. 

No kidding. Back in the day, it never felt as soggy and muggy as Saudi Arabia used to feel. But now? Yeah: for some period during the summer, you’re gonna feel like you were perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf. The joys of urbanization, eh?

And this is what makes me miss the San Francisco Bay Area, where my relatives dwelt before my parents took off for distant parts. Damp? Sure. But damp and hotter than the Hubs? Nope.

Ohhhh how I wanna go home!!
😮

 

Dawgy Walk…Through the Swamp

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Blech! That is hardly an understatement. 6:30 in the morning and it feels like a freakin’ sauna out there! What a horrible day!

It’s 90 degrees in the shade of the back porch. 8:30 a.m.  Truly does feel like a freakin’ SAUNA out there, it’s sooo hot and soooo WET. 

I’ve seen days like this in (un)lovely Saudi Arabia when the air was so wet that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky. Presumably the only reason that isn’t happening now is that we’re not parked on a beach next to the freakin’ Persian Gulf. Yech!!!

But…I’ll bet if we were much closer to the Sea of Cortes, that sky would indeed be spitting rain on our heads.

DXH is in Chicago, for some sort of business meetings. I forgot….and called him as dawn cracked this morning. Thereby interrupting him and annoying him royally.

Jeez. Don’t get old, whatever ya do!!  😮

Don’t have much to do today…I don’t think this is Cleaning Lady Day. If that guess is correct, then there’s no need to race around the house picking up litter.

Hmmmm… Found a roadside doctor practicing next door to the Albertson’s shopping center. I’m thinking I should try to build a doctor-patient relationship with the guy…not because he seems so wonderful, but because he’s so convenient. The Mayo, where our docs practice, is a good hour’s drive from here. I can walk to this guy’s office. So it would be good to have him on the string for ailments that would benefit from a doctor’s attention but that clearly are not terminal….

That would help a lot.

The MayoDocs are great when you have something wrong that’s real and that’s significant. But driving to the other side of Timbuktu to have every little sniffle checked? Not so much. 

This is one of the great things about living in the thick of a major metropolitan area: you don’t HAVE to drive from pillar to post to get things done. In fact, just now I don’t have to drive anywhere: everything I need and do is within walking distance. Failing that, though, we have an Uber driver living across the street — one of half a dozen who inhabit the ‘Hood. I can hire him to schlep me around the Valley.

I’m pretty sure I can get this new doc to overrule the Mayo quacks’ opinion that oh dear oh dear I mustn’t be driving. But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to be bothered. The main thing just now is that I need the driver’s license to serve as identification. Driving per se is beside the point. Cashing a check is the point.

So I need New Quack to help me retrieve my driver’s license. If he will.

😀

Gosh, I’m tired of Stupid Stuff. 

Does it not occur to you that Stupid Stuff ebbs and flows like the tide?

For a nice long time, things flow smoothly and calmly and sanely. And then all of a sudden a freakin’ FLOOD of Stupid Stuff pours down on you like an ocean wave? Just now, we’re definitely at high-tide. I feel like I’m drowning in Stupid Stuff!

And frankly, wayyyyy too much of it is emanating from those suckers at the Mayo: the ones who listen to my son bellyaching about me but never think to ask me about the cause of the bellyaching.

That, I think, is why I need to hire on some docs who a) don’t know me; b) don’t know my son; and c) have heard nothing from the opinionated set at the Mayo Clinic. Let them hear me whine about my current “symptom,” let them examine me, and let them form their own conclusions about what, if anything, ails me.

And What to Do Next?

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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.

YOW!!! Incredible pain!

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Holeee maquerel! This morning as I was puttering around the house, my right hip went out.

As in OUT out…yow!!!! 

I don’t think I’ve ever had anything hurt that much…and I had my baby without anaesthetic because I thought childbirth is supposed to hurt more than one’s periods.

(Hint: it doesn’t.)

Could barely walk, but made it to a phone. Called the Fire Dept rescue crew.

And…of course…by the time they got here the pain was beginning to subside.

They must have thought I was crazy!

Maybe I am crazy…  ?????

They went on their way.

I limped back into the house.

And now here I am walking around with almost NO pain, a little stiffness…and wondering WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????

Ahhh, here’s a little cookie-frosting: The cops’ copter is circling around to the north.

At this hour — just coming on to  9 a.m. — that can indicate a car accident.

Or — as at all hours in this place — it also can mean a home invasion. Domestic abuse. Kid fell in the pool and is drowning (or already drowned). Car wreck. On and entertainingly on….

Welp…better get up and check that all the doors are locked. Looks like the toast is done, too.

And so, awaaayyyyy!

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???

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.