Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Go Ahead: Just TRY to Put Your Feet Up and Relax!

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Feed the dog • Pick up the dishes, and • put them in the dishwasher •  Pour the coffee • Lock the back screen door and • open the kitchen door to let in some cool, clean(ish) air • Find the computer • Peruse the latest news • Check Wunderground’s (unremarkable) weather prediction for the day • Settle into an easy chair to swill coffee and…

…and you get RRRRROOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!

Ayup! Another Cop Copter chase.

They’re zooming around just to the north of us — about four or six blocks, I’d say.

Jayzuz! There is never a fukkin’ dull moment around this place!!!!

Well. That’s not fair. Ruby and I circumnavigated the park as dawn cracked this morning. Except for one idiot who deliberately tried to run us down in his car (no mistaking the deliberate part), it was quiet. No cops around there, either, to see the charging commuter.

Ugh! Makes Sun City look good!

Well. No…hafta take that back. IMHO, nothing makes Sun City look good. A dreary mausoleum a pleasant place to live does not make.

Yesterday the neighbors had a grand birthday party for their pre-teen kids. What fun! A joyous mob of them running around the street, which had been closed off for the festivities.

Why on earth would you want to live someplace where that couldn’t happen??

 

And…So…DO I really wanna stay here?

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Out the door as the earliest stores opened, the better to traipse from pillar to post. WHAT a gorgeous day!!!

Neither cool nor warm…we could call it “temperate,” I suppose.

Without a car lurking in the garage, I have two choices: pay an Uber driver to schlep me around, or (hang onto your hat!) to walk. Truth to tell, I much prefer to walk — especially on a lovely day like this one.

An advantage to traveling on foot is that you get to see your fellow residents up close, as well as gazing upon the infrastructure. Today’s junket revealed what anyone with half a brain cell already has observed: that this neighborhood’s population is steadily darkening. Which is to say, large sections are turning Black. Where before you never saw a dusky face in these parts, now I’d say about…ohhh…..one in eight passers-by is of the African-American persuasion.

Most live in the banks of apartments stacked on the west side of Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Do I care?

Probably not.

If my mother were still living, though, she’d be throwing one hissy-fit after another. One of the reasons she and my father moved to (un)charming Sun City was that Black Folk were decidedly not welcome there.

That apparently is still the mood out there. One of my friends — a fellow of the duskier complexion — dared to buy a house out there a few months ago. No kidding: the aging locals harried the guy out. 

Within six months, he’d sold his new place and moved elsewhere.

Well. Sun Citizens feel the same about anyone under the age of around 45 or 50. That’s why I hated loathed and despised rooming with my parents after I graduated from the UofA. What a horrible place!

And what horrible people. 

Can you imagine a housing development whose existence is predicated on keeping certain people out? Out out out OUT! That describes Sun City, down to the smallest molecules. That’s what makes Sun City a horrible place. It’s a housing tract built on hate.

And there’s why I chose to stay here when SDXB took it into his bonnet to move out there, running ahead of Tony the Romanian Landlord’s onslaught.  Any day, I’ll take an angry Eastern European over a chuckleheaded Yankee.

So…uhm…yeah. I do really wanna stay here.

Wow! AWESOME!

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Which is to say: AWESOME afternoon!  What a beautiful day!

When my Realtor friend John Shackelford brought me to the ‘Hood, lo! these many years ago, he could not have done me a bigger favor. This middle-aged North Phoenix tract really is a beautiful little mid/middle-class neighborhood, perfect in every way.

Seriously! It IS in the middle of everything: you don’t have to walk far to get to any store, any professional’s office, any car shop, any ANYTHING you like. Drop the jalopy off wherever you please, wander away, and come toddling back…yes…whenever you please.

The ambience is safe. Thugs do not holler at you as they barrel past on a main drag. Every corner has a tidy little shopping center. There’s a church across the street. And a school across the street. And a car repair shop up the street. And….and…and on and on.

Seriously, indeed: I do feel like I just fell into it when I bought into this neighborhood.

This afternoon, it was over to my favorite little booze shop, thereinat to buy a six-pack of Kilt-Lifters. Then homeward, ever homeward…hereinat to love up the dog and fork over a couple of fistfuls of kibble as a treat for her. Then pour a beer, sit down, and put up the feet.

Gosh! What a day, eh?

We live in such a pretty little neighborhood! I’m SOOOOO glad I didn’t follow SDXB to dreary Sun City when he decided to escape Tony the Romanian Landlord by moving out to Old Folks’ Land. Gaaaahhhh!  When I lived out there with my parents, I learned to hate…

  • …the sound of F-16s roaring overhead all day
  • …the hatred of young people, creatures the locals moved out there to escape
  • …the ticky-tacky architecture
  • …the third-rate grocery stores (do old people not eat, not cook???)
  • …the endless, endless, FUKKIN’ ENDLESS drive into town, whereinat to buy a decent steak…

LOL! If you’re gonna live in a city, forgodsake LIVE IN A CITY. 😀

Zowie!!!

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CAN you believe it???  WordPress let me back into Funny about Money on the FIRST TRY!

Zowie! It’s a miracle! 😀

Just back from trudging around the park with Ruby the Corgi. Usually this is pleasantly fun, and today is no serious exception. Kids playing. Grown-ups loafing and socializing. Other dawgs walking their humans. Beautiful, sunny afternoon: bright but not too hot.

My son still has the purloined car, so any shopping has to be done within walking distance.

But…but… In the “can you believe it” department,  THAT is no problem. Everything we need IS within walking distance!

  • Two supermarkets
  • A pet store
  • A computer store
  • A Sprouts
  • A Bookman’s
  • A QT
  • A hair stylist
  • ….on and on

When Caligula made off with my car, really: I did expect to be seriously inconvenienced. Enough to consider selling my house and moving to a suburb on the far east or far west side.

But..nay verily! 

You don’t need a car to live in this neighborhood conveniently. 

I sorta kinda knew this. But had never tried it out. Now, though, I have…and what I’ve found is that I can easily walk to any of the many stores in this area.

LOL! That may not be so when the weather’s hitting 110 degrees. During that period, I’ll have to call an Uber or a cab. But that ain’t very long, in these parts. Even in the summertime, you have a couple hours in the morning when you can walk around without risk of heat stroke.

Truth to tell, though, this neighborhood is incredibly convenient, and well stocked with a generous array of retailers within easy walking distance.

So. That does away with the (horrible!) plan to move to Sun City or Fountain Hills, stodgy suburbs on the far west and far east sides of the city. Looks like I’ll be hanging out here until they come to lock me into the old-folkerie.

And with any luck, I’ll croak over before then. 😀

If this state of affairs proves to be permanent, I probably will ask His Lordship to sell that car, so I can pocket a few grand and no longer be hassled with licensing and insuring it. We shall see…

And we’re b-a-a-c-k!

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Yep: the Hound and the Human are back from another park circumnavigating junket.

WHAT a beautiful night! Perfect temperature. Velvety dark evening. Kids playing. Kids playing. Kids playing. Teenagers batting baseballs and batting baseballs and batting baseballs. A brilliant full moon pouring light down through the darkening sky.

Just freakin’ gorgeous.

Walking through the dusk, I’m reminded of what an evening at sea must have been like for my father. He was a seaman: a merchant mariner, mostly shipping on oil tankers. This vocation got him a very fine, handsomely paid job in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia: one that included housing for his family and a short leave with a two-week trip to venues like Beirut and Delhi and a long leave with a trip back to New York, whence we would launch our biennial automobile trip across the United States.

Start in New York City.

Cruise southerly and westerly, down through Maryland and waypoints. Eventually arrive in Dallas.

Camp there with his brother for two or three weeks. Then get back on the road.

Westerly, westerly, through Colorado and across the Rockies, through Nevada, Arizona, and them-such waypoints. Arrive at the home of my mother’s best friend, in Long Beach, California.

Hang out with her for a week or two.

Then northerly, northerly, up the coast to the Bay Area. Hang out with my relatives in Berkeley for a month or so.

And back, like a rocket, across the continent to New York City, there to turn in the car, hop on a plane, and head back to Dhahran.

Some vacation, eh?

Well. I guess it would have been cool…once. But we did it every time we came back to the States. That was every two years. 😀

So that is what I’m reminded of by a brilliant azure night with Venus hanging over us and warm air circulating around us. What a life!

Too Gorgeous to be Miserable…

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Seriously, this afternoon — along about 3:00 p.m. — is SO mellow, so soft, so clean, and SO beautiful that even the plague of little maladies fails to make one miserable. Just…incredibly…lovely!

Maladies? Ohhh…just a few…

Peripheral neuropathy: frantic buzzing and burning in the hands, soles of the feet, and lips. Hurts. Makes you crazy.

Fingernails: lifting from the nail beds. No indication of why, or of what one can do about it.

Awful sore and itchy spot on the tail end. Dunno what to do about it. Rubbing in an analgesic does…hmmm…essentially nothing.

As of this morning, the hip pain was gone. But now it’s back! No idea why.

Dared to try to sit out on the back porch to take in this gorgeous afternoon.

B-a-a-d idea!

Place is swarming with mosquitos. Forthwith, had to dart back inside. Slam the screen door. Slam the kitchen door. RUN AWAY!!!

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Thinking about my father: the jobs he had, how hard he worked to support me and my mother.

He was a tanker captain and, when he worked a shore job, a harbor pilot.

Maneuvering oil tankers across the ocean paid him well. But the job took him away from home for weeks on end. And…y’know…weirdly, the man was basically a homebody. A harbor pilot’s job is dangerous and demanding…he must have been exhausted most of the time during the ten years he did that in Saudi Arabia.

When he finally retired to Sun City, he and my mother had…ohhh…about 18 months together until the cancer sticks she’d smoked in gay, stinking abandon since she was 16 years old ganged up on her and killed her. She died horribly of tobacco-induced cancer shortly after they settled into their Dream Home in the suburbs of Phoenix.

They’re both gone now. The only relative I have left is my excellent son. And…heh…that does put some strain on him, the poor man! 😀

Seriously: he works ferociously for the insurance company that employs him. I would go back to teaching freshman comp if I had to work that hard!!! It doesn’t leave him much time or energy for riding herd on an ailing old bat. So…well…I try to keep from belly-aching too much. But he does know I’m ailing…and that the indications of that ailing do NOT bode well.

Oh, well. The sooner I croak over, the sooner I stop hurting. Right? 😀