Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

And Another Lovely Evening…

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THIS evening made all the lovelier by the absence of perps fleeing cops in helicopters. 😀

Ruby and I perambulated our part of the Hood, plus Lower Richistan and Upper Richistan. What a hoot, right before Christmas.

The locals LOVE to decorate these old houses and their half-acre yards with their mature, beautiful trees. Kids are playing outside. Parents are puttering. Trees and shrubs and eaves and roofs are gussied up with colored lights for Christmas. It’s just a delight to walk around here at dusk.

A December evening in central Arizona really is lovely, except in the (unlikely!!) event of rain. The dusk sky glows in radiant shades of blue and orange. The air is sweetly temperate. The old 1950s houses are graciously handsome. And the kids are….

OHHHH! CORGIIII!!!!!

LOL! Here comes another kid!

My goodness, how the local urchins adore short, plushy, pointy-eared little dogs! Fortunately, she adores them back. So an evening walk can easily morph into a 45-minute love-fest.

That’s life in the ‘Hood. 😀

Eeeek! Duck for Cover!

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Ah, another lovely evening in beautiful North Central Phoenix.

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room. The back door is hanging open to let in the lovely, cool evening air.

…when,..

…suddenly…

ROAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Cop copter shoots over the house like an angry MIG. Chasing a perp, evidently. He roars over, then circles around, a block or two to the north of us.

Jump up: RUN to shut and lock the back door (and its security screen). Fly around the house checking to be sure other doors and windows are closed and locked.

By the time we finish that, whatever is going on has settled down a bit, at least in our immediate precinct. The cop flies away, in due time.

And now Ruby and I are perched, together, on the bed in the master bedroom, having seen to it that all the doors and windows are locked.

What

A

Place

Why do I continue to live here?

Well, mostly because there isn’t anyplace much better to live. Sun City would be quieter (most of the time). But then so is the tomb. My son’s house is not far down the street: wouldn’t take him more than 10 minutes to get here. A police station is just up the road.

Everyplace else in the urban area is about like this. Or worse. Much worse.

I’d say I wish I still had the ranch. But…no. I don’t. Out in the middle of nowhere, ten miles over dirt roads from the nearest town? Don’t think so…

What I do need, though, is a double-aught six. Have been lazy about tracking one down…but think tomorrow maybe I’ll go up to Shooter’s World and see what they have on hand these days.

Enough is freakin’ enough.

Gorgeous Morning

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The sun has risen on a magnificent clear day. Ruby the Corgi and I have circumambulated the ‘Hood, and now we’re back in the shack waiting for the water to heat so as to make a pot of awesome coffee. And I think…

I’m thinking about a friend of mine and his wife, who was one of my graduate students…

…he used to get up in the morning and walk to work, while she got up and made trouble. And oh, my goodness! Could that lady make trouble! She went to graduate school to learn the best techniques. Seriously: she had taken an M.A. and then pursued a Ph.D. in political science. 😀

They lived in a handsome patio home within walking distance of a prominent horse track, where he had a moderately prestigious job.  Meanwhile, her day job was to make trouble in the condo association. She was very good at it.

When they started finding death threats taped to their front gate, they decided to sell up and move to a house in a nearby development called Moon Valley. And that place was a piece of junk!

I know, because I helped them repair and paint the interior before they moved in. The south-facing wall was so flimsy and so spectacularly uninsulated that the tile floor was actually hot under my bare feet for a good yard inside the building. And flimsy indeed: you could take your fist and punch a hole through the outside wall. Reach inside, unlock the front door’s deadbolt, and let yourself in.

No kidding: it did happen.

He came down with cancer and died, not at all pleased with his wife’s behavior. She shifted around to a few condos and apartments here in the Valley; then moved back to the Midwest, where her family lived. Can’t find her online, so I figure she must have passed away by now — she was no spring chicken when I knew her, and that was some years ago.

Ah, the thoughts that occupy one’s mind on a gorgeous morning….

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a…NUT CASE!

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LOL! Yes, I do believe we’ve ascertained that it’s a nut case, abetted by an industrious bird.

Or…who knows?…maybe  by a space alien.

Just now I’m perched on a kitchen chair in the garage, trying to ascertain whether a persistent beep!… beep!… beep!… is coming from the house-wide smoke alarm system, from something gone on the fritz in the car, or from the resident fruitcake’s imagination.

😀

And lo! It begins to appear that the perp is actually a bird. WHAT bird remains unknown: this is not a call I’ve ever heard from the local avian set…and I’ve lived here since 19 and aught-62. I think I would have learned to recognize a fire-alarmish beep coming from a bird.

****

Well… Yeah. And No.

It IS the flickin’ smoke alarm. Not the giant garage-based house-wide fire alarm system, but one of the cute little portable smoke alarms that you attach to your ceiling with a Velcro strip.

It’s sitting out there chirping to itself as we sit here, type, and guzzle coffee.

😀

So in a couple of hours — whenever I get off my duff, whenever the Ace Hardware store is open, I’ll have to traipse out and buy a new smoke alarm. Then figure out how to get it back up in the garage.

If that one is crapping out, it means all the rest of them are on the verge of crapping out, too. Hmmm…let’s see…. Hmmmmmm….

Not to say Uh oh….

Come to get up off my duff and check, and what do I see but that most of the li’l cheapo fire alarms have long been retired from service. FIVE of them have been removed from their stations.

WTF?

Welp. That’ll be a li’l chore for Bila the Handyman. He can climb up on a ladder and replace the darn things. Won’t he be pleased!

They must have crapped out one at a time, with lengthy periods in between. Otherwise I would’ve noticed that we…uhhhh….no longer have a functioning smoke alarm in most of the rooms.

/eyeroll/

Ohhhh well. I’ve got a bunch of other chores for him to do. So this will enrich his month’s income nicely.

*****

Along comes, of all things, a stray German shepherd!

She comes trotting up the street to the front patio and peers in the gates.

Ruby is beside herself with fascination. Neither dog makes a move to eat the other one.

Hmmmmm…. She has no collar. No ID. oboyoboy would i like to have THAT dawg!

uh oh… That’s not nice, is it?

Oh well. Before I can engage a plan to steal her, she trots off down the street.

The damn smoke alarms continue to beep. I begin to suspect it’s not the little portable alarms, but the ancient house-wide alarm that some previous owner installed, lo these many years ago.

I have NO idea how to turn it off or even if it can be turned off (thought it was turned off at the time I moved in here).

Seems like if you could shut it off, it would’ve been turned off by a prior owner, since it was nonfunctional when I appeared on the scene.

Cripes. The wandering pooch is after the neighbor’s stray cat. Oh well…it gets them both outta my yard, anyway.

The beeping continues. Could it be a bird, cheeping outside?

Hm. Anything’s possible. I guess.

If so, it’s a bird with an alto cheep. That’s kinda weird.

One of those days…

Wiley Comes a-Visitin’

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Urban coyote

The ‘Hood is one of the northernmost outposts of a Phoenix district locally called “North Central.” The place consists largely of single-family homes on lots ranging from 1/4 to 1 full acre, with large lots watered by the city irrigation system installed when the former farmland was transformed into ticky-tacky.

LOL! Actually our houses are not ticky-tacky in the sense that more recent builds are. Mine, for example is not drywall and plaster but solid block: difficult to air-condition but too sturdy for an enterprising burglar to shove his fist through a wall.

{No kidding! That is how the burglars break and enter homes in newer tracts: they walk up to the front door; ring the doorbell; and then if no one answers, they just take their fist and shove it through the drywall. Reach in. Unlock the door. Make yourself to home!}

We have a different type of burglar hereabouts, though: a four-legged variety. We border a desert mountain preserve, and that place hosts families of coyotes. So unafraid of humans are they that we could almost call them “semi-domesticated.” They consider stray cats and cute short dogs to be gourmet fare. So…if you leave your 30-pound corgi out in the yard, she’s likely to turn up as breakfast for a distant furry cousin.

Just now, the neighbors — some of whom grow hysterical at the mere glimpse of a coyote — have been madly reporting sightings. And because neighbors — being only human — are remarkably stupid, they often fail to clean up the banks of shrubbery that serve handsomely as coyote hotels. We have one of those about four houses up the street.

No amount of heavy-handed hinting by neighbors haunting the local Facebook page has persuaded the couple on the corner to trim their shrubbery in front by way of evicting the four-legged tenants. Meanwhile, other idiots don’t grasp the concept of Cat As Gourmet Feast, so they leave their delicious kitties outside to call in the cat-loving coyotes.

Honestly. HOW has our species survived this long?

At any rate… I’ve set up a kind of coyote barrier along the top of my cinderblock backyard walls: strapped lengths of carpet tacks to the decorative block on top. This keeps the neighbors’ cats out nicely: they learn forthwith that when they jump over the wall, they get their feet punctured.

As for Wiley? Not so sure about that. In the first place, a coyote is a helluva lot tougher and smarter than a domestic cat. And…that notwithstanding, if Wiley tries to jump the wall, finds himself clinging to a length of nails, jumps down, and lands inside the yard…well, jumping back out will be highly aversive.

Not a coyote

So I’ve got to be careful every time Ruby goes out in the yard. Whenever I open the back door to let her out, I need to walk out there and look around, to be sure she’s the sole occupant. When you’re in the middle of fixing breakfast or dinner, that’s a PITA…

A Seller’s Personality

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Yes, I do love driving around and around, looking at real estate...occasionally even getting out of the car and touring an open house.

It’s a trait I seem to have inherited from my mother. She also loved to look at open houses — in Southern California, before we moved to the desiccated spaces of lovely Arizona. Great fun, it is: to look at what’s selling for how much, and how the other two-thirds live.

She could have been exceptionally good at the Realtor’s job, because she did have a saleswoman’s personality: friendly, empathetic, interested in other people.

My house: perfect for two people. Good for two people and one or two kids. Probably tolerable for two adults and as many as four kids. Six would be pushin’ it…but an enthusiastic parent could do it. I suppose.

There’s so much good fun to look at, here in the ‘Hood.

Just got back from Ruby’s evening perambulation. We have to walk around the large central park, which encompasses several acres. This evening as we traipsed past, we got to watch a couple of serious soccer games in progress.

Several Latin American leagues show up at the park, come evening. These appear not, by and large, to be Mexican, but probably clubs from South America. They play soccer, they play soccer, and they play soccer…with élan. Great fun to watch them. If I had no dog in tow, if I had nothin’ else to do…I’d stop and watch a whole game. Could I converse with them in Spanish? More or less. But Portuguese? Prob’ly not so much. But oh my: they’re fun to watch.

What does that have to do with selling houses? Prob’ly nothing…except, I suppose, you have to like people and you have to engage their doings in order to persuade them to buy things from you. Especially expensive things.