Coffee heat rising

Real estate

Hee heeee! And I imagined I was drinking…WHAT?

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My goodness. Sometimes one does wonder if somehow one is absorbing a little whiskey through the air!  What on EARTH???????

Just now, I’m puttering around the Funny Farm and thinking, ohhhhh, I’d like to walk up to the grocery store and buy a cool li’l snack and also something for the Doggy-Woggy! 

Ohhhhhh, wouldn’t that be nice??

Uhm. Well. No. Just stepped out into the backyard to attend to some minuscule task and… MY GAWD!  It is ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN DEGREES in the shade out there!!!!!

Holeeee maquerel!!!!!!

So. Neither the Doggy Woggy nor the Wacky Human are getting any nummies this afternoon. CAN you imagine????

Seriously: I can’t remember that Arabia, that hell-hole of heat and humidity, was ever this hot.

Gosh, I hated that place. Didn’t know any better because I started out there at an age just short of three years old. But dumb as I was and inexperienced as I was, I did know when the air was so hot and thick you could barely breathe it. And I was happy — more happy than you can imagine! — when after ten years in that horrible place my father decided to quit Aramco and take a job in California.

Freedom’s just another word….

Now…California, I do miss! Arizona leaves a lot to be desired: like a livable climate and a sophisticated culture. It’s a helluva lot better than Saudi Arabia. But it still would not be my first choice of domiciles.

Why did my parents retire here, to Arizona?

Cheap, I reckon. Sun City offered decently built tract houses in a pretty safe setting, for a price that would have been half of what they’d have had to pay to own a place in California.

Well, I’ll tellya… Sun City was a helluva lot better than Saudi Arabia. But it still would never have been my choice of places to live.

Where my father was concerned, if it was cheap (yet middle-class in ambience), it was good. And yeah: the real estate was cheap there, out in the middle of the cotton fields.

It’s all built up now, and not a bad place to live — in a whitey-white suburban way. Not my taste, but he and my mother liked it. My mother loved it, actually, and that must have gratified my father.

Now…hmmmmm…. If we were in Sun City right now, would I be able to walk to the nearest grocery store and snab a bottle of white wine?

Yeah. I expect.

The walk would be much longer — that place only has a couple of small shopping centers, for acre on acre on acre of houses. It would be hotter: hardly any trees grow out there. But it could be done.

Given my ‘druthers, I’d stay here. The houses are similar, the prices aren’t much higher, and the amenities are far more abundant. Sun City: a ghetto for old folks.

A ghetto’s a ghetto’s a ghetto….

Back at the Hubs…

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Quarter to eight in the morning. Hot. Sticky. Yucky out there.

The balmy weather blocks all but the balmiest of dog owners from circumnavigating the park, so Ruby the Corgi and I had the place almost to ourselves.

Traipsed down Main Drag Central. Eastward across Fancy-Dan Street South. Back north along Palm Row…passed the lady who HATES me because I asked her to please quit shoving junk-food “treats” in Ruby’s mouth.

Some people just flat refuse to believe you. Ever notice that?

Gosh, but humans are stupid. As animals go, that is.

The house once occupied by the young guy who got in trouble with the law and bankrupted his parents with legal bills (he still ended up in the slam) is vacant. Those poor folks lost their shirts!

Apparently a speculator bought the house. The pool is all torn up and it looks like the same is true of the interior. But then whoever got the place abandoned it. So it just sits there. Hideously.

The neighbors must just love it.

Eastward, eastward…that street reminds me of the exceptionally tony Palmcroft district, one of the Fanciest-Dan neighborhoods of Phoenix.

We used to live in a lesser neighborhood just to the east of Palmcroft — I could walk over with the dawgs to that park and its surrounding Richistan, and did. Still very nice. Still highly unaffordable for the likes of moi, today.

We moved out of our beautiful historic house there just in the nick of time. About six months after we escaped, the city bought a house right behind ours and turned the damn thing into a FIRE STATION!

Yeah! WEEEEE-UUUU WEEEEE-UUUU WEEEE-UUUU…all hours of the day and night.

Couldn’t believe it…y’know, there were plenty of commercial slots on the surrounding main drags where the city could have parked that thing. And the huge regional hospital with a gigantic parking lot that could have accommodated a fire station. And a defunct shopping mall with its own huge parking lot: perfect for a fire station. But ohhhhhhh no! The city has to stick the thing next door to or across the street from NINE residential lots!

Natcherly.

Honestly, I really think the City Fathers deliberately work at downgrading the quality of living in the beautiful old central neighborhoods. My guess is, the developers who build out the surrounding suburban tracts fund election campaigns for their stooges, to get them on the City Council and into county government. Once there, these sleazeballs work actively to trash centrally located neighborhoods, so they can be converted to commercial properties and generate $$$ for their sponsors and emptied of less-profitable private households.

I love my present neighborhood, though. And would like to stay here until I die.

Exactly how to pull that off kinda escapes me. 

My son wants to consign me to a high-rise old-folkerie called The Beatitudes. Ugh!!! Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl.

I hate, loathe, and despise institutional living. 

* No, I do not want to listen to your effing TV blatting away all day and half the night.

* No, I do not want to eat disgusting foodoid dumped out of cans and boxes into steam tables.

* No, I do not want to have to pretend to be nice to you as I hover, disgruntled, over a plate of disgusting foodoid.

* No, I do not even faintly care about your Ailment of the Day.

* Yes, your bird-brained politics make me want to bite you.

One thing is for sure: I wouldn’t last long in a place like that. I would die of depression, if nothing else.

Speaking of the Joys of Old Age, my son is dragging me out to the damned Mayo Clinic again this afternoon. Why, I do not recall. Just now, whatever Blessing of Age was afflicting me seems to have gone away. And frankly, I don’t even remember what I might have been whining about that would have led him to make an appointment.

Ugh!

And speakin’ of real estate…

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…as we were saying yesterday, briefly, Zillow claims my li’l middle-class house is worth (hang onto your hat) $563,000!  And change.

What????????

Over half a million dollars for an aging tract house within walking distance (easy walking distance) of a dangerous slum? Seriously????

And horrors!

****

I return to the idle thought that maybe I ought to think about moving out to Scottsdale — more specifically, to the district known as McCormick Ranch. Once a very fancy-Dan tract, McCormick ranch is now a mid- to upper-middle-class suburb, filled with ticky-tacky construction set in seas of Bermuda grass. The area is relatively safe. Of course, no place in a big city is “safe,” but McCormick Ranch is far more so than the swaths of North Phoenix that border the alarming Sunnyslope tract, where I live now.

This proposition presents its challenges. The main one: I very much doubt I could get anywhere near that much for this house. And houses out in Scottsdale are pricier by far than the ones here in North Central on the edge of Sunnyslop.

To get into Scottsdale housing, I’d probably have to move into an apartment. And I don’t wanna.  I love my house and all its roominess. I love my swimming pool — my pool and no one else’s. I love the trash pickup service from the alleys. None of these appertain to apartment living.

And another important adjunct to this issue:  unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding, it doesn’t look like it would be worth moving unless I could get into a better area.

McCormick Ranch is not a better area than North Central Phoenix. The two districts are about on a par. Fairly affluent. Relatively low in crime. Close to upscale shopping. Attractively built middle-class homes. Decent schools. Sooo….

Why would I want to live there? 

* It’s ten minutes from the endlessly importuning Mayo Clinic. The gawdawful drives to see MayoDoc would go away, once and for all.

* Shopping is excellent, ranging from the high side of middle class to the high side of very much upper middle class.

* Proximity to lots of great restaurants.

But…but…waitminit here. 

* I don’t go to restaurants. I can cook lots better than that…for lots less change!

* These days I do about 75% of my clothes shopping online.

* I should base where I’m gonna live on the proximity of a doctor’s office? Uhhhh… don’t think so…

* The Ranch is a long way from my son’s neighborhood. If I moved out there, I’d hardly ever see him!

* I dunno if the Cleaning Lady from Heaven would be willing to drive way to Hell & Gone to clean the Funny Farm if it were in North Scottsdale.

***

Hmmmmm….  To my mind, the “Waitaminits” outweigh the benefits by about ten to one. Seriously: there aren’t enough positives to convince me that I should pull up (expensive!) stakes and move to the far side of Scottsdale.

So…one is led to apply that Fine Old Saw: When in doubt, don’t!

  • Doubt, indeed. There’s just not enough there to persuade me that I would benefit from moving. Benefit: in any way…
  • Socially (I know one! person who lives out there.)
  • Financially (Any benefit from moving to a tonier area will be outweighed by the costs of selling, buying, fix-up, and moving.)
  • Comfort-wise (My house is a luxurious palace; noplace on McCormick Ranch is any better, and most are not as good.)
  • Gasoline and mileage savings (I probably drive out to the Mayo Clinic no more than once a month. That’s hardly a motive to pull up stakes!)

So unless my son decides to move someplace else — say, he gets a job in another city — there’s really no reason for me to even consider buying a place in McCormick Ranch.

If he did move out of North Central Phoenix, I might move out, too. Either to follow him or to put some distance between me and the gangs. But as long as he’s in these parts…well, so am I!

Movin’ Movin’ Movin’….

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LOL! This morning I happened to find myself contemplating my lifetime on the move. In the years since I was born to life on this planet, I have moved house twenty-five times. 

That’s just the places I can remember. Without a doubt, several others occurred when I was too little to know or remember much of anything.

My parents and I lived in…where?

* Richmond, California
* Long Beach, California
* San Francisco, California (several places, several times!)
* Long Beach, California (again, years later)
* Down by the docks near Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
* In Ras Tanura (a company town), Saudi Arabia (2 houses)
* Sun City, Arizona
* Tucson, Arizona
* Phoenix, Arizona (several places!)

Jeeeminy! At least 13 or 14 different houses and apartments before I came of age. Then, after I grew up , left my parents’ home, and got married:

* Tucson, Arizona (4 years; 4 different domiciles
* Phoenix, Arizona (my own li’l apartment, ALL MINE!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (first place with hubby)
* Phoenix, Arizona (downtown: gorgeous historic home)
* Phoenix, Arizona (uptown: move to get away from the crime) (har har!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (leave marriage; move into apt.)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move into apt. where boyfriend lived)
* Phoenix, Arizona (escape apt.; buy house)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move to a quieter house, further from main drag)

And here I am. Hmmmmm…. That would be twenty-two different homes — 22 moves!) in one piddly little lifetime.

And that doesn’t count the number of times my mother had to move, following my father, before I was born. Ball-park guess: at least four places. Probably more.

This rumination came about after I had visited a friend and his wife’s home in Scottsdale — in a tony suburb called McCormick Ranch. VERY nice place in a pleasant, upper-middle-class tract that has that low-on-crime look. 😀

But…but…

Well, but… It’s TINY. Small but decent kitchen. One living/dining room. One small master bedroom upstairs. And a guest bedroom/study. Cramped, walled-in patio in place of a real yard.

Still: one could live with that. Ever so much less space to have to clean, right?

Well, but…  It’s WAYYYY far away from my son. He lives in North Central Phoenix, and he ain’t about to move away from his dad’s outpost. Nor is he about to sell his pretty little brick house, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Incredible Gourmet Grocery Store, to move to the crassly bourgeois precincts of North Scottsdale.

So. Nope. Ain’t trading my son’s company for a set of steps. 😀

There, of course, is the decisive element. The kid, that is; not the steps.

But even if Young Caligula weren’t living in my present parts, still…I don’t see the prospect of moving as worth the cost. 

As you know, moving house is a financially bracing proposition. And…what would I be getting in exchange for several tens of thousands of dollars?

* Supposedly a better neighborhood. {Though I have yet to see proof of that: North Central, where the Funny Farm resides, is about as good as it gets in the Valley.}

* Proximity to hordes of excellent restaurants in several price ranges. (Uhm...but I rarely eat out, because I prefer my own pretty damn excellent cooking…)

* Relative proximity to Arizona State University. (BFD: I ain’t teachin’ there any more…and I’m not about to go back!)

* Proximity to the Mayo Clinic. (What could be more cheering than living right down the street from your doctor’s offices? :-o)

Ohhhhh well.  Movin’ on (as it were):

***

Last night I had the weirdest dream. 

In this wacky somnolent universe, SDXB  and I had a fight and I stalked out of the house. The setting was right here in the neighborhood, so I marched out onto handsomely paved streets that run past our homes and past our friends’ houses.

That notwithstanding, I wandered into one of the alleys. And there…oh, yah: I got lost. 

Understand: this is even more somnolently wacky, because a) the alleys here run in parallel rows, so you can’t get lost in them — certainly not if you’re even vaguely sober. And I’ve lived here so long that I know the layout of the neighborhood — its yards and its trees and its sidewalks and its alleys and its fences — even more neatly than I know the layout of the back of my hand.

Well. That notwithstanding: in the Dream Universe I can’t find my way home…or even out of the alley that I’ve wandered into.

Stumbling up that alley in a state of weird confusion, I come across two (handsome!!) cops in a cop car. Ohhhhhhboy!!! And hot diggety!

Turns out the neighbors have noticed me roaming up and down the alleys and, all worried, have called the cops. Meanwhile, SDXB has also called them, since I haven’t come back after our squabble.

So the cops and I chat for awhile. They, recognizing a random nut case when they see one, desist from any plan they might have had about running me in. Au contraire, they drive me to SDXB’s house, where he acts all happy to see me and I just sit there obediently.

Eventually the officers give up and go on about their business. SDXB and I take up our lives as usual.

WTF???????

Do I have a clue what that l’il nightmare was about?

Well. No. Other than embroidery of memories from a decade ago. Essentially, it was a re-run of a long-ago episode.

Hafta say: I really doubt that I could find a better neighborhood than this one. Certainly not one that I could afford — or would want to afford. And most certainly not one that’s centrally located.

Yeah.

I like this neighborhood. And love my house. And yes, I very much do want to leave the house to my son.

How exactly to make that happen kinda escapes me. It’s going to depend, I’m afraid, on raw luck + a healthy dose of genetics.

Women in my family — those who didn’t f*ck themselves to death — lived deep into ripe old age. Ninety to ninety-five was typical of those who lived what you and I would think of as “clean” lives: hold the alcohol, hold the promiscuity.

I do drink, no question of it. Though not much lately, because without a car on hand, it’s too much of a PITA to haul bottles of wine or beer back to the house…and you may be sure I’m too much of a cheapskate to have that stuff delivered.

Still: over the decades I surely have swizzled down enough to do me in. No question of it. So far, no symptoms. But we can expect they’ll show up sooner or later.

At any rate and nevertheless, the probability that I’ll live into my late 90s remains high.

And that notwithstanding: I really do want M’Hijito to have this house. Or at least the proceeds from its sale.

So…that kinda militates against moving into an old-folkerie, or into a resort-like condo.

Ugh! Through the Swamp

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Just back from this morning’s Doggy-Walk. HORRIBLE out there: it’s like a damn swamp.

Ohhh well…it cut down the number of merrie dawg-walkers, anyway. Nowhere near as many nitwits who think their dog (and your dog) are basically four-legged kids. Is there a reason people are so stump-dumb stupid?

Anyway,the dog is fed and watered and walked. I have to wait until M’hijito and I get back from the Mayo Clinic before having anything to eat. Which irks the hell out of me.

Not that I’m hungry. But that I regard today’s little diagnostic journey as a waste of time. And gasoline.

Been there. Done this. Over and over and over again. Why do we have to go through it again? 

The Mayodocs have run blood test after blood test after blood test on me, and never have been able to figure out the cause of the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy.

Is there some part of “pre-diabetes” they can’t figure out? Maybe an aspect of “inherited proclivity for diabetic conditions” that’s really, REEEEELY hard to understand?

How can you go through all those years of medical school and come out so damn stupid?

Today we have to traipse out there for ANOTHER pointless goddamn blood test. My son will be here in half an hour to drag me across the Valley for that little adventure. Every time I go out there for yet another goddam blood test, they tell me “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes!” Ask them what “pre-diabetes” is, and they can’t come up with a satisfactory definition. About the best they can gag out is “well, it means maybe you might be about to develop diabetes. Someday. Maybe.”

No kidding. This is NOT the first time I’ve been through this infinitely annoying hoop-jump.

Last time they went “Ohhh eeek! you have pre-diabetes! — a year or so ago — I went over to Young Dr. Kildare,  my “doctor in the wild” who used to practice right up the road from here.

He went jab jab test test, then called me back in to his office, and announced “No, you do NOT have pre-diabetes. You do not have diabetes. Nothing is wrong with your blood sugar levels.”

Got that? So…I expect this to be another annoying waste of time. And now that YDK has moved to effing Sun City, still more time will be wasted either traipsing halfway to Yuma to get to his office or finding another doctor, explaining all this bullshit, and talking him into re-testing me.

Spent half of yesterday out in Scottsdale, visiting a friend who lives in McCormick Ranch, an upper-middle-class suburban development nestled in expanse after expanse of grassy golf courses.

Nice little place my friend and his wife have out there. Unfortunately (IMHO), “little” is the operative word: it’s tiny. 

Cute, charming, and tiny. 

I suppose an aging couple could get used to it and come to like that aspect, though. Less space to have to keep clean. Less space to have to air-condition.

It’s a little small for my taste, though: I’m spoiled to living in a four-bedroom North Central Phoenix commuter palace. Though I’d love to live in that much tonier and safer Scottsdale district, I sure don’t want to have to downsize that much.

And really…is McCormick Ranch all that much tonier, just because it’s in Fancy-Dan Scottsdale? Really, North Central Phoenix is mighty Fancy-Dan, too. Even though our neighborhood is just a mile or so south of a dangerous slum (Sunnyslope leaves a lot to be desired in the Department of Safety), it still is a district of North Central, not Sunnyslop.

{sniff!) We’re soooo fancy, y’know!!!  😀

Reeeel Estate!

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Gosh! Lookeee here!

This high-rise is just down the street from where DXH and I used to live, right in the center of the toniest part of mid-town Phoenix.

How kewl can you get, eh?

Seriously: I do like this li’l hovel. It’s literally right down the street from where DXH and I used to live, and smack in the middle of what is now the most stylish part of North Central Avenue.

Given just the slightest provocation, and I’d move there in an instant.

Seriously: I did love living in that district. And when I was a kid in San Francisco, I loved living in a high-rise. Betcha I could get used to this dive real quick.

Moving though….ugh! More trouble than it’s worth, I suspect.

But…hmmmmm…..  Mebbe not, eh?