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What WAS the matter with us???

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Ever have one of those reflective, memory-filled moments when you wonder…”Why didn’t I do this?” or “Why didn’t we do that?” Yeah…don’t we all, eh? This afternoon I’m haunted by one of…well, the most haunting such moments.

In the first chapter of our marriage, DXH and I lived in Phoenix’s downtown Encanto district, a quaint historic tract filled with beautiful old houses and, yes, lots of history.

Heh. It was filled with burglars and rapists, too: drawn by the affluent young people who thought a historic district was cool, and by their pretty wives (yes, in those days most young married women counted their occupation as “housewife”) who were were a sexy draw.

We lived next door to Mrs. Wilson: the widow of the city’s first city manager, a woman with some historic significance and a long, long-time resident of the central city.

Mrs. Wilson was scared.

But then, so were most of us. The Encanto district was richly populated with drug addicts, panhandlers, vagrants, burglars, and thieves. One never knew when any such worthy would come a-visiting. This fact alone was the main reason many of us lived with massive pet dogs: German shepherds, doberman pinschers, great Danes, and whatnot.

Well.

One morning Mrs. Wilson told me that she had gotten up in the night, walked out of her bedroom through the living room and into the kitchen…and on the way spotted some guy sleeping on her patio, right outside the living-room’s French doors.  

Holeeee sheee-ut!

What did she do?

Did she grab her pistol?

Nope.

Did she call the police?

Nope!

She retreated to her bedroom and cowered until sunrise.

No kidding.

What is the matter with people? All she had to do was lift the phone and dial our number. My husband would have gone right over and scared the midnight camper away. Or called the cops and sicced them on the guy.

Folks! This is why we have a  pistol. It’s why we have a German shepherd or a doberman. It’s why we have a FREAKIN’ PHONE!!!

Apparently it never entered her mind to pick up the phone in her hallway and call the police. Or us. Too terrorized, no doubt, to think.

No one would expect an 80-year-old woman to have a .45 at the ready. Okay, that makes sense. But she sure as Hell can have a telephone at the ready.

So can any of the rest of us.  

Whenever you’re home, ALWAYS HAVE A PHONE WITHIN EASY REACH. And know how to call emergency services. Most municipalities use 911; if yours doesn’t, you can dial the Operator and tell her what’s up, and where. She’ll call the cops for you.

This is easier now, with cell phones that don’t have to be plugged in. But it might be wise to have a land-line at hand, too…just in case.

The other thing we all need to do is think through what we’re going to do in this set of circumstances or that set of circumstances. 

What are you gonna do if you wake up and find someone creeping around your house? What are you gonna do if the house catches fire? What are you gonna do if you hear someone start up your car and drive it out of your carport?

And be prepared to make these maneuvers work. If you figure you’re going to grab a pistol, be sure that pistol is well lubricated, working, and loaded; and that you know how to use it. And that it’s kept out of the kiddies’ reach…  If you’re going to flee, have several escape routes in mind, and know how to get to them. If you imagine your dog is going to protect you, have your dog trained for the purpose.

Be set to go into action. Always. 

Staying Home; Getting Safe

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So as I advance into my dotage, I do worry — more and more — about falls or confusion or strokes or Gawd Knows What could happen while I’m here alone. Between you’n’me, I happen to know my son worries about this issue, too.

One way to address it, once and for all, is to sell your home and move into one of those horrible old-folkeries…uhm, retirement homes.

I regard that option with horror. First, because I abhor communal living — just HATE it. That’s not the way I want to spend the last few months or years of my life.

Second, because the expense of those places is hair-raising. Horrendous! Everything I could get from the sale of my present home would have to go to buying myself into a “life-care community.” That was the upshot, with my father.

Sorry. No. That money is my son’s. It ain’t goin’to your old-folkerie, friends!

It looks to me like there could be another option, if you think it through and you’re willing to devise your own system.

Have someone who calls you every day at a certain time. And, ideally, a paid person who comes into your house or calls you every day or two to check on you.

Also, bear in mind that in Arizona, any cell phone will dial 911 in an emergency. This is probably true just about anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.

Any cell phone. Any place. Any time.

So: step number 1 will be to get several cell phones, and keep them all charged up. And ALWAYS keep one with you…at all times. 

All times, all places: no exceptions.

So: if you slip and fall; if you have a heart attack; if the burglar is coming in the back door; if you rear-end the car in front of you; if whateverthefuck, within a matter of seconds you’ll be able to call for help.

This, obviously, would not significantly reduce the risk of falls or heart attacks or rampaging burglars or whatEVER. But it would allow you to call for help easily and fast.

So, with at least one emergency cell phone on you at all times — maybe also keep several around your property, so there would be one in the car, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, one out in the backyard…and so on — you would be able to call for help quickly and easily.

Next: set up your exterior entrances so emergency workers can easily find ways to get in. Keys will have to be NOT obvious to your pet burglars. But they must be placed in spots that you can quickly and easily describe over the phone, so a rescuer can find them.

With these and any other emergency amenities in place, now fix up the place so you can live comfortably and safely in it, with a minimum of hassle to yourself.

For example: grocery stores are now delivering. GET USED TO THAT. Learn how to use delivery services, and set them up now, not later. Then, if you get too sick to drive or your car craps out and you can’t afford to replace it or you just don’t feel like doing battle with a grocery store parking lot, you can simply call or email to get a week’s worth of fresh food delivered.

If you’re going to stay in a house (as opposed to an apartment, for example), be sure a trusted neighbor, relative, or friend can get in, should they realize you may be in distress. More than one person should have keys, your phone number, and your emergency contacts. Now, not later

In an apartment, make it possible and easy for management, family members, and trusted friends to get in. Arrange for someone to check on you  if they haven’t seen you for a few days.

So…hmmmm….  I think the key to staying in your own place as long as possible is collaboration and cooperation. It seems contradictory — stay independent by depending on others. But it’s the only logical strategy.

* Yes, you stay in your own place with your own keys and whatnot.

* But yes, you have at least a couple of friends or relatives who can get into your place, too: with their own keys and whatnot.

* These folks, by the way, must be given emergency contact information, so they can call your friends, relatives, landlord, or…whomever.

* You always carry a device that can be used to call for help. Keep it in a pocket or next to where you’re lurking, at all times. Keep it charged up, too!

* While you’re at it, in addition to quick access to folks who can get into your home and help you, the house should be old-buzzard-proofed as best as possible. For example, every shower and bathtub should be equipped with grab bars. Any steps should be flanked by banisters or handrails, so you always have something to hold onto, going upstairs or going downstairs. And any throw rugs should either have rubber backing or a slip-proof under-mat, to keep them from sliding out from under your feet.

Look around your house and your yard and THINK SAFETY. Consider what might happen, and install whatever might prevent a little disaster or help you get out of one unhurt.

Think of your home as a system, not just as a dwelling. Who do you train to operate that system? How can you and they collaborate to make it work? How do you kick them into gear when you need them?

Yes, we do want to stay independent and in our homes as long as possible. But to do that…well, we’re going to have to depend on people!

😮

 

Been there… Yow!

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Holee mackerel!

I can remember smelling the smoke from fires like this when my parents and I lived in Long Beach — back in the Dark Ages. Quite a few ages have passed since those days…and now, here we are again.

Five major fires around L.A. and Malibu… What a horror show! Some estimates claim 11,000 buildings have been torched. Sure am glad I’m not there, these days.

Welp…I guess that yes, I’m glad I’m out of California. It doesn’t say much, though. Arizona is full of forest land, too, equally vulnerable to fires. So far, we’ve been (relatively) lucky. Almost surely, though, as the climate gets hotter and drier, we’ll see more and more fires like this: here, there, and everywhere.

Just look at this stuff. Among the many things that strike you: your dog will have to go to a special animal shelter: you can’t bring him or her with you!

Well…I’d be sleeping on the side of the road with the dog, thank you. But…it strikes me that if one doesn’t have relatives someplace within a far-stretch drive of where one lives, one should make arrangements well before the event for where to go and where to take one’s sidekick. Or always have camping gear stashed in your vehicle, so you and the critters can get up and get out, fast.

Another thing that strikes you: You should keep your gas tank at least 3/4 full. Probably better than that, if at all possible. It means you’d be traipsing to a gas station every time you turn around…but that would be one helluva lot better than running out of gas while you’re on the run from some catastrophe.

Probably also should keep a kit of your regular and emergency medications at hand — either in your car or right by the door you’d go through to get into the car.

Good times, eh?

GAAAAAAHHHHH! Life in the ‘Hood….

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So…how would you like it if you got a call from the kid’s grade school while you were at the office:

“Please come pick up little Ignatius. We’ve had a murder here.”

Noooo kidding. That’s just about what parents here in the’Hood and environs heard today.

La Maya and I met for lunch today, at an old favorite Phoenix standard, a place that We Who Were Parents used to frequent when our urchins were preschool age. In the course of conversation, she remarked that Feeder Street E/W, which runs from Main Drag West through the ‘Hood to the freeway, is said to be closed, because there was a murder just outside MittelAmerica School, which sits on the Hood’s western border. The corpse was found outside the blocks of prison-gray apartments that border the school on the its south side, a few yards west of Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Eeep! thought I. But then not much more of it, since…yeah, that’s life in the Big City.

An hour or so passed as we munched and socialized. Then she went on her way.

I took my ailing laptop over to Best Buy (again!!!!!) and forked it over to the techs. So often do I surface over there at the service desk that His Cuteness recognized me. Alas, though: he was born about 20 years too late.

From there I drove homeward (and homeward…homeward…homeward…) through the unholy surface-street traffic. Made it back to the house. Having no pistol in the car (GOT to fix that little lapse!!!), I inspected the doors and windows before entering the Funny Farm. No sign of any fleeing murderers.

Thank Heaven for small favors, hm?

The school — a grades 6-8 middle-school campus — was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape. So was Feeder Street E/W, which east of Conduit of Blight leads to the Post Office (so much for mailing your bills today, eh?).

Just imagine:

  • Your child’s school wrapped in police crime scene tape.
  • A dead body right across the street from the campus, next to the slum apartments that border the school on the south.
  • Cops ambling about here and ambling about there…

For the love of GOD!

 

 

Where Ya Gunna Go?

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So I’m visiting the Albertson’s down at the corner of Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South. Normally I won’t go in there because I don’t enjoy being panhandled in the parking lot (once I had a bum actually chase me, at a dead run, across the parking lot). Yesterday, though, I wanted a roll of masking tape and, the Albertson’s being a huge general store as well as a grocery store, figured I could find it there.

Plus the store (or maybe the mall owner) has hired an armed guard, who’s posted outside the market’s front door. So I feel fairly confident that if I park close to the front door and walk directly in — and do not carry a purse slung over my shoulder! — I’m probably going to get in and out with a minimum of pestering.

My father would’ve liked that Albertson’s. Because it’s fairly huge, it carries a vast array of products, from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, to house and auto care products, to…of all things…food. But I can tell you for sure he wouldn’t have shopped there, because of the number of black folks who habituate the place. He was, as he liked to crow, “a bigot and proud of it.” The vast blocks of working-class apartments across the street are very similar to the ones where we lived in Southern California…well, except for the black folks. My mother would’ve been outta there like a rocket the instant the first dusky face surfaced. Whereas my father openly bragged about his expertise as a hater, my mother generally kept her mouth shut about her bigotries. But like him, she also lived by them. She wouldn’t have moved into our lily-white neighborhood because of the number of African-Americans dwelling right across the huge main drag that separates the ‘Hood  from the apartment blocks up here.

So as suggested, my father would’ve loved that store…it would have appealed to his workin’class genes. But my mother?… She probably would have thought of it as I do: fine in a pinch, but lacking in some aspects that one would like to have for shopping on a regular basis. Nevertheless, neither of them would have shopped there (or lived here, we might add…) because of the number of black folks among the customers.

My problem with that store, though, is that even though it’s huge and even though it carries most things you’d like to have, its offerings are kinda boring. Prepared foods are by and large additive-laced schlock. AJ’s, it is not. And…if there’s something you want right now and you went there because you were pressed for time and didn’t want to drive halfway to Timbuktu to get it at a Walmart or the Safeway, you can be sure they won’t have it.

On this particular trip, what I wanted was a roll of masking tape.

How hard is this? Masking tape.

Searched from pillar to post.

No masking tape. Picked up a couple of incidental items, though — a chunk of cheese, some fresh produce. But having found no masking tape I was flying down an aisle toward the checkout where…hallelujah! There on a bottom-most shelf next to the floor was one, count it (1) roll of masking tape. Not the blue type that I favor. But was I going to drive across the city to score a role of BLUE masking tape?

Grab!

Out the door, much relieved not to have to schlep to the paint store.

Albertson’s armed guard lurks outside the door, where he oversees the customers’ and the bums’ comings and goings. This is a considerable improvement — in fact, it is THE reason I will go into that store these days. Once a panhandler actually chased me across the parking lot there, at a dead run. With a hired cop-like creature out front, that kind of thing is a lot less likely to happen.

Though…well…yeah. The last time I was there they had a shooting in that parking lot, in front of the block of buildings that houses the T-Mobile store.

Guess you can’t have everything, hm?

Key Shopping Accessory

Drop a Tranquilizer before Visiting a Gas Station…

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{gasp!} {hyperventilate!!!!}

Just back from a junket to Costco…and waypoints. Belief HAS officially been defied now….

The plan was to traipse up to Costco in search of the usual bargain on gasoline. CC routinely underprices every gas retailer within several miles of a given store, right? While there, buy a few not-urgently-needed but nice-to-have grocery & household items, and also renew this year’s membership, which I’m told is officially running out.

Thank gawd they sell wine… That’s all i can say….. 8-o

Drive and drive and drive and drive and…every road in the goddamn city is under construction. Wherever you’re goin’ you really CAN’T get there from here. Arrive at the store north of the Great Desert University (WAY north…), which is about the same distance from here as the store in Paradise Valley but which, because of the relative penury of the surrounding populace (middle-middle class, not upper-middle-class and Richerati) will likely have a lower price on gas.

My membership is running out. Ask the lady at the entrance where to get it renewed; she says the easiest way is just to pay at checkout.

Ramble around the store ogling all the amazing eye-popping goods. Toss a bunch of stuff I don’t need into the cart. Make my way through the checkout line. Offer to pay for the membership renewal. She says I don’t have to do that now.

Yeah? Well…then why are they telling me to do that now? I figure she just doesn’t want to be bothered. Okkkayyyy….

Retrieve the Dog Chariot. Head for the gas pumps.

They’re mobbed.

But, being the canny type, I manage to slither into a line that has only three or four vehicles ahead of me.

Wait and wait and wait and wait, then wait and wait and wait and wait, and then wait some more.

FINALLY pull up to a gas pump.

Stick my Costco card in. Clickety hummedy click. Then stick my debit card in (Costco doesn’t accept AMEX credit cards)…and….

PLONK! Am told my cards are no good.

Annoyed, I stalk across the lot and retrieve the attendant.

No problemo! saith he.

He sticks my Costco card in. Clickety hummedy click. Then sticks my debit card in. And PLONK! We’re both told to take a flyer at the moon.

He proposes to hold up the ever-longer line with some sort of hoop jumps. I say f’geddaboutit! Because I happen to know the QT in Sunnyslop is charging the same rate Costco is.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and dodge construction zones and drive and slip through a short-cut i know and drive and drive and finally arrive at the QT.

Whip up to an unoccupied(!!!!!) pump and…and…lo and sumbiche! Find the price is a bargain $5.21 a gallon — yea, verily:  the same bargain price that Costco was charging!

Five. Dollars. And. Twenty-One. Cents. A. Gallon!!!!!!!!!!!

It cost THIRTY DOLLARS to refill that quarter of a tank.

CAN….YOU…IMAGINE?

Well, thought I crabbily.There go any ideas about a weekend in Prescott. Or maybe in Yarnell. Or, oh Helle’s belles, even in freakin’ Sun City!

Hmmmm…

Okay, so between you’n’me and the lamp-post, that is the LAST time I visit a Costco to buy (or attempt to buy) gasoline. We have not one but two QT’s practically within walking distance of the ’Hood. And since about half the time (or more), the main reason I go to a Costco is not to shop in the CC but to buy gasoline, that is gonna mean a WHOLE lot less of the Funny Farm’s budget will be spent at Costco stores. I may not even bother to renew my membership. Enough being enough, after all.

One is left wondering what this state of annoying affairs foreshadows for supplies of day-to-day cost-of-living goods: food, diapers, soda pop, motor oil, coffee, tea, toothpaste, shampoo, hot dogs, steak, broccoli…. If the cost of fuel has gone up THAT much across the board, then suppliers and marketers will have to raise their prices accordingly.

This probably is a good time to stock up on things like paper goods (a far better time than we saw in the last Great Paper Panic). And on nonperishable foods. And canned goods. And stuff that can be stored in a freezer.

Because…clearly grocery prices are headed for the stratosphere.

And if you garden? Well then, garden like crazy, my friend! I’m thinking I may build a raised garden in the backyard right now. A bunch of things — summer squash and peppers and tomatoes and if you have any skill even things like corn will grow now. Then, in Arizona an amazing variety of veggies and fruits grow in the fall and winter.

It’s never too late to learn the fine art of canning….