Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

Twenty-First Century as Gigantic Rip-off

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Those of us who are decrepit enough to remember life in the late 1900s can surely attest that there were plenty of ripoffs on the float, back then in the “good” ole days. But jeez…

Every which way from Sunday, here’s somebody trying to siphon your money out of your wallet. I swear ta gawd!

Today I had to register the Dog Chariot. Every year or two (depending on how much you’re willing to pay at any one time), you have to trot your car into a state facility to get an emissions test, for which you have to pay about 20 bucks.

Once you pay, they give you a sheet of paper that you have to use to re-register your car. This year: the tab is $227 and change. In other words, it’s going to cost almost $250 to register a nine-year-old car. For one year.

I find this passing infuriating. Yes, I know: we need to pay to maintain the roads and hire highway patrolmen. But we already pay an exorbitant state income tax. And stiff sales taxes on everything that passes a cash register.

But evidently there’s nothing one can do about it.

For a change, though, this year’s ritual was not the unpleasant production of the past. Used to be, you’d drive in and find a dozen lanes, any one of them with ten or fifteen cars ahead of you. So you get in line and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you…

…and you don’t have much choice of which line you get into. And this is August. The hottest month of the year in Arizona. (Understand: it was 112 here today…and that was actually a fairly balmy day.)

To my surprise, this time there were not very many cars and trucks ahead of me.

A worker motioned me to a line that had only one vehicle, and it was already inside the drive-thru.

So, incredibly, I didn’t have to wait long at all — only a few minutes.

Get in there…and usually they make you get out of the car and wait inside an uncomfortable booth: hot, stuffy, and claustrophobic.

This year, though, they seem to have done away with those. He didn’t even make me get out of the car!

And…it only took him a few minutes to do the job — not a quarter-hour or more. Forthwith he came back, handed me the paperwork, and said I was good to go!

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! No hassles??????

Well.

Then you look at the paperwork.

The fee to register that nine-year-old vehicle is $227.77.

Can you imagine?

Two hundred and thirty bucks to drive a car I should have traded in four years ago?

Dayum. What do you suppose it costs to register a brand-new Venza? If they even still make them….

I don’t drive that car much. Now that I don’t have to schlep to jobs in Tempe or in Glendale, I rarely have any reason to bucket around the roads. Yeah: I drive to the grocery store, the Costco, and the occasional doctor’s or veterinarian’s office, but that’s about it.

If we had decent public transit here, I probably wouldn’t even own a car.

But we don’t, so I do.

There’s good reason not to feel safe on the city’s buses and trains. Mainly, the transients ride them for free (partly because on the train, no one is taking tickets, and partly because various organizations hand out free bus passes. And o’course, because they’re air-conditioned). Most of those folks are harmless. But some are…not. Many are ex-convicts. Most are drug users. Some are out of their heads with mental illness or the effects of street drugs. So…no. They’re not strangers you want to spend a lot of time with, in elbow-to-elbow seating. Or standing.

And that’s specifically why I don’t ride lovely Phoenix’s buses and vaunted trains.

So here we are in a city — and a state — where public transit is neither very practical nor very pleasant, and those of us who have to drive (that includes almost everyone) gets gouged for the privilege of putting our cars on the road. Don’t forget: this is not the only tax we pay. Gasoline is taxed liberally. Most retail products are taxed at the checkout counter (and points along the way thereto…). Power is taxed. Water is taxed. On and on it goes.

Not that one doesn’t want to support government and public services. But maybe the funds should be used intelligently?

Lordie! One extreme idea after another!

 

Eeeeek!

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Not to say A-a-a-a-a-k!

Just saw the BIGGEST RAT I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!

She was lurking in the garage, and when she saw me she was just as startled as I was in spotting her. She shot underneath the dryer, where she presumably is hiding now.

Called Ruby the Corgi, who came trotting out to investigate.

Corgis are ratters. One of the things they’re bred for is chasing rats around ships and barns.

But by the time Her Majesty arrived, Rattie had dodged out of sight. Dayum!

Well, I have rat poison now. Been reluctant to put it out, lest Ruby find it and munch on it. Or…lest she find a deceased gourmet rat and eat that.

Tossed several pellets of the stuff in behind the washer and dryer, and then put some inside a rat trap along with a little slab of dog food, hoping maybe the combined deliciousness will lure Rattie into that.

Rattie, it develops, is very smart. She has exactly zero intention of strolling into a trap.

That would make her several degrees smarter than a dog, we might note.

I’ll have to keep Ruby out of the garage now, to be sure she doesn’t get into the scrumptious rat pills. Or find a rat roast to munch out there.

This is gonna be a PITA of the first water….

Speaking of water, as we scribble the much-vaunted California storm is making its way into the Valley. It’s thundering away out there, the air having chilled down to a crisp 71 degrees. We’re told to expect an 80% chance of rain and light winds.

Hmmmm…well, it may rip and roar a bit in our parts, but I doubt we’ll see any rain here. The thunder is pretty far off in the distance…I think the alleged thunderstorms are well to the north of the ‘Hood.

San Berdoo apparently got something over 13 inches of rain with this storm. Almost 12 inches in Riverside. Looks like the main part of the thing is bearing toward Nevada. Pretty startling images from the low desert of California…egad! Wunderground is predicting a .o5% chance (whoop de dooo!) of rain here, with a low of 71 during the night. Eeek. Be scared. Be very scared.

And lookee here!  I failed to “publish” this adventure. Apparently.

Trying again…

 

Revisiting the Good Old Days…

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{ooookayyyy…. Let’s see if this effort retains the formatting I kindly asked WordPress to emit…}

So…this morning, driving home from an expedition in a southerly precinct, I happened to wander through our old neighborhood, known hereabouts as the Encanto District.

It’s a beautiful area, consisting of tracts that date from the 1920s to present. The Young and the Upwardly Mobile live there, partly because it’s close in — no significant commute — and partly because the beautiful old houses are handsome, unique, and built to last the ages.

Here’s a pretty little shack in our old stomping grounds: just $1,050,000. Dollars. Yeah. It looks a lot like my friend Emily R’s place, the more or less elegant residence for her and her extraordinary husband, who believed he was a girl and in time had himself surgically transformed accordingly…

This thing is right on the park.

But then we have this, two blocks from where we lived on Cypress.  It sold for eight hundred and thirty-five grand….

The reason I wanted to leave that area, BTW, was two-fold:

* I thought our son should be able to go to the public schools. But that wasn’t an option down in the historic slums. If we moved up to North Central, he could go to the Madison schools, which had an excellent reputation, not only locally but nationwide.

* And yes, the place was overrun with bums and burglars.

My mother started to campaign after the evening that the guy tried to pop the deadbolt on the side door to the utility room, which opened into the TV room where I was sitting on the floor typing up a grad-school seminar paper…in my bra and panties. He came very close to succeeding. When I heard the rattling noise as he was trying to jimmy the lock, I got up to see WTF — I’d thought it was the cats shoveling litter out of their catboxes, one of their favorite activities. Finding the lock lever jumping around, I ran out to the front courtyard and started screaming FIRE! FIRE! CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.

This, as desired, brought all the neighbors out to watch the house burn down, and that caused the would-be rapist to take off to the boondocks.

On the other occasion, a guy did get inside the house. DH’s resonant snoring had driven me out of the bedroom and onto the living-room sofa. Our German shepherd, Greta, was very elderly by this time. She was sleeping in the hallway right outside our bedroom door.  I woke up in the dark of the night, saw a flashlight in the kitchen, and thought (no kidding!) ooohhhh! the baby must have waked up and John must have gone into the kitchen to get him a bottle! 

 When I went “John??…well!  At the sound of my voice, Greta knew that whoever was ambling around in the kitchen was not me and not John.

She JUST EXPLODED! It was one of the most terrifying noises I’ve ever heard…truly: you do NOT want to piss off a GerShep.

She got between the poor li’l perp and the door he came in. As she was about to despatch him to his maker, he found the side door. Managed to dodge outside and slam the door in her face, just as John ambled into the kitchen from the back of the house.

Still clueless, I get up and trundle out to the kitchen.

“WHO WAS THAT MAN?” he demands.

“What man?” say I.

“THE ONE WHO JUST RAN OUT THIS DOOR!”

Holy sh!t. 

Well. I’ll tellya…it was the end of the romance for me. That his first thought would be that I was entertaining some chucklehead while he was sleeping off the evening’s drunk said to me this guy doesn’t trust me and he probably doesn’t even like me. I never felt particularly comfortable with him after that.

Life is strange that way…

 

Heah Come de Storm!

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Eek! SIXTY-mile-an-hour wind gusts? Say it ain’t so, dear Wunderground!

We’re told to batten down the hatches for a fine little freshet that’s swooping in from the southeast. And yea verily, just now we’re getting some startling rolls of thunder.

Not raining here at the Funny Farm yet, at just 9:00 p.m.

Wait, I take that back! The rain just started…and it is already pounding down. ohhhhh gawd, what a mess that pool is gonna be!

Oh well. At least we’re not out in it.

Just grabbed the chair cushions in from the side deck. One of them: soaked. The other: just damp.

Water is roaring against the bedroom window Arcadia door like someone is spraying the glass with a hose! Yipes!

And now… Huh! Suddenly it stops.

Weird.

Arizona is a weird place. One of its weirdest aspects is its weather.

Good Morning, America!

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Midnight: Weird noise outside.

What?  Pool equipment run amok? Air conditioner on the fritz? Juvenile delinquents frolicking?

Stumble outside. Cop copter is circling over the intersection of a neighborhood lane and Conduit of Blight Blvd. He flies up this way, then doubles back. Ugh.

Why DO I live in Crime Central, anyway?

Climb back into bed.

Dog wants out. Wouldn’tcha know it?

Lift dog out of bed. Follow her to the backyard.

* Cop copter is already gone. That’s somethin’, anyway.
* Wait for the dog to do her thing. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
* Neighbor’s AC is making the weird noise. Sounds like an expensive fix.
* Motion-sensitive backyard light is losing motion sensitivity. Does it just need a new lightbulb, or is that another expensive fix?

“Come ON, dawg!!”

*Scrabble scrabble scrabble scrabble…. Dog digs up quarter-minus.

Stumble back in the house. Lift dog back onto the bed.

{sigh}

Dog’s stomach is growling dramatically. Why did I imagine I wuz gonna get back to sleep?

Fed her…when? Around 6 p.m.

Helle’s belles. That was seven hours ago!

Do I really have to get up at 1:00 in the morning and feed the dog? And then let her out into the crime-infested night again?

Arrrrghhhh!

Now What?

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LOL! Speaking of the Hubs of Hades, the local denizens are as weird as anyone you would expect to reside in the Miltonic Underworld. 😀

This afternoon I’m puttering around in the house, not doing anything consequential, and what do I hear but KEEEEEE-RASH!! Coming from the street to the east of the Funny Farm. Car wreck, it sounds like. Right in front of Tony’s Rest Home for Juvenile Delinquents.

Now what, indeed?

See that the dog is safely contained. Find some shoes. Trot out front to  peruse whatever new excitement has occurred. And find…

nothing

Nope. Nary a dented car. Not even a smashed mailbox stanchion.

nothing

No idea, still, what THAT was about. If one of the brats had bashed a parked car, a fender surely would have been crushed. If they’d run into a mailbox, that would make quite a twisted little display.

The brats are in the habit of SLAMming the front door. Apparently it sticks — Tony being the clever handyman that he is, you’d think he’d shave it down so it would fit smoothly. But who knows? Maybe they’ve trained the inmates to slam the door as a signal to tell the overseers that they’re going outside.