Coffee heat rising

Real estate

And…So…DO I really wanna stay here?

by

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.

Doggy-Walk from Heaven

by

INCREDIBLY gorgeous morning! Cool but not cold. Clear skies. Lovely, low morning sun. Neighbors out walking their dogs and taking the early air…  What a fantastic neighborhood we live in.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the park. Said “hello” to half-a-dozen other dawg walkers. Soaked in the gorgeous morning air.

Walked past the house where the family’s son f*cked some teenaged girl and got arrested for the favor. He went to jail. They lost their home. It’s been a wreck for awhile.

But now someone has bought it and fixed it up. Looks like about all that’s left to do is to repair (rebuild??) the swimming pool.

We hang a left onto that neighborhood street: a lovely upper-middle-class neighborhood of handsome, big houses, irrigated lots, and general toniness. It’s one of the reasons I love living here.

Shortly, we bear north, ever north…again past the lovely park with its expanses of green grass (!!!) and its handsome, mature trees, and its 87 gerjillion other dawg-walkers. 😀

What a place to live!

I hope I can hang onto my home until I croak over. Partly because I do want to live here for literally the rest of my life. And partly because I want to leave it to my son, so he can either move into this beautiful little house or sell it for enough to decamp to Tahiti.

No kidding: this place is Yup Central, the younger generation of the upwardly mobile having discovered it. So by the time I pass on to my furry fathers, the house should be worth a ridiculous amount of money. He’ll be able to sell his house and bank the cash income, or sell both places and move to Upper Richistan.

If things work out the way I hope, it will be a lovely gift to leave him, and something that has the potential to profit him seven ways from Sunday.

Yea verily: the thoughts that preoccupy you as you and the Killer Corgi stroll past a fine green park and piles of fancy houses and little patches of local history. Onward!

Beautiful Dog-&-Human Night

by

Ruby the Corgi dragged her Human all over the north part of the neighborhood this evening. And what a beautiful evening it is! Really one of those incredible Arizona nights…just gorgeous.

We walked northward, past my old Arizona Highways colleague’s place: Jerry Jacka, one of the great landscape photographers of the Southwest. Then up past our now-absent friend Marge’s house.

She, we assume, must either have passed or have been consigned to The Beatitudes, a skin-crawling prison for the elderly. She appeared to be well into her 80s…maybe even older than that.

Her house — a classic Southern-California style 1970s ranch house — has been swarming with workmen. It’ll be interesting to see what transpires…

She told me she wanted to leave it to her son, who lives out of state. She wanted him to have it as an outpost to use when he’s here on business, which is apparently every now and then.

Our grown kids, though, usually do NOT have the same ideas about large and expensive investments as we do. My guess is, he’s cleaning it up and fancying it up so he can put it on the market.

It’s really not in an ideal location: only a block or two south of Main Drag North, one of the most hectic surface streets in the city. When you live next to a busy road like that, you get used to the racket from the traffic. But…whaddaya bet Sonny hasn’t done any such thing? He probably thinks it’s a zoo up there, and has no intention of hanging onto a piece of real estate pasted to the edge of that unholy road.

Ohhh well. Nothing stays the same, eh?

 

Coyote Jamboree

by

A pair of coyotes have found the neighborhood park. Ruby and I were over there yesterday…and kinda dodged out of the way.

{grump! crab!!}

Decided against taking her over there for this morning’s dog’n’human stroll. Not that I don’t think I can fend off a coyote (I do carry a shilelagh with me, partly for that purpose). But…well…just not in the mood for confrontation, whether of the human or the canid variety.

And so, we loaf.

Lately, I’ve daydreamed about moving back out to Sun City. 

Heh!

Know what roams around the streets and backyards of Sun City?

Ayup! Coyotes!

Two legs, four legs…what’s the difference, eh?

Neighbor across the street — one of the WonderAccountants — reports that his neighbor on the other side from my house croaked over last night.

That makes me feel so sad. I didn’t know them well — just to say “hello” as the dog and I stumble up the sidewalk in front of their house. But they are unmistakably nice, kind, lovely neighbors.

I wonder if his widow will stay put, or move into some more elder-oriented digs? I hope she stays…but…you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, eh?

Heh… One thing I don’t gotta do is move out of this house…and surely not to horrible Sun City.

My parents bought a house out there when my father retired. I just hated that place!

Actually my present house was built by Del Webb, the guy who engineered Sun City. But for some reason, I find it a lot more comfortable than my parents’ place. Something about the design, the size…whatEVER. Plus the backyards are all fenced in (none o’ that nonsense in Sun City!!!!), and the house has a gorgeous pool. And it’s close to shopping — from here I can easily walk (!!) to a Sprouts, to an Albertson’s, to a Fry’s, and to a Walgreen’s. None o’ THAT nonsense in SC, either! 😀

And we have kids. That, IMHO, is a very big deal, indeed. I do love the sound of kids playing.

Anyway, I wonder what the surviving neighbor will do?

Wonder if my son would like to buy that house, if she decides to trudge off to an old-folkerie? How KEWL would that be?

Well.

I’d think it was kewl. He’d probably think it was a PITA. 😀

Ohhh well. One crazy idea after another, eh?

LOL! I don’t wanna move, that’s for sure. Main reason: I have moved altogether too many times in my life, between spending ten years in the Middle East and then gallivanting all over California for six or eight years. Never wanna fill up another cardboard box with newspaper-wrapped dishes again!

EVER!

And truth to tell… I think (hope!!) I’ll be able to engineer things so that I can stay here in the Funny Farm until such time as I croak over.

As long as I don’t have a stroke that seriously disables me, that should be possible. I’d have to hire someone to come in — probably every day — but given the cost of an old-folks’ prison, the expense might not be any more than having to move into an old-folkerie.

Hire someone to come babysit — maybe even stay overnight in a spare bedroom, if necessary. Get someone to deliver food. And get Uber to tote me around the city…  And basically, that would be about it.

Yes, it would cost more than it’s costing me now to live here. But not THAT much more. And very surely nothing like as much as an old-folkerie would cost.

Well. It’s something to consider.

Gorgeous morning

by

It’s already 8:30 and the day is brain-banging GORGEOUS. Beautiful clear skies. Balmy temps. Dawg yapping at the passers-by. What more could anyone want, eh?

Well…hmmmm…  Absence of pain, for one thing. Whatever went wrong with my hip is still wrong. Hurts like the dickens to get out of a chair, to say nothing of limping across a room.

Ohhh welll…. Thæs overrode; swa may thisse…

Pool Dude came by this morning, bless him! (oooooohhhh beloved Pool Dude!!!!) He left a bill instead of waiting three minutes so I can write him a check. So, alas, the much-deserved payment for his work will have to wait a week to be delivered.

Rummaging through The Economist, one of my fave periodicals, I come across a spread on (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, the hell-hole where I grew up.

Doesn’t sound like it’s a whole lot better than it was in the 1950s. Sure am glad I’m not there now!

Hmmmm….here comes some sorta air-borne vehicle. ……naaaahhhh…. It drifted off to the north. Dunno what it was: not a prop-driven airplane or a jet, that’s for sure. ohhhh well….

The kids who bought Sally’s house (right behind the Funny Farm) put these stupid rotating vents up on the roof. They make a racket whenever a breeze blows. Dunno how the kids can stand it! I’d have blasted the things to Kingdom Come by now.

They also got some guy to patch the roof…with shingles that don’t match the ones that were installed when Sally lived there. That’s…cute.

What IS the matter with people?

Makes a high-rise on North Central Avenue look good. And that’s sayin’ something.

Hmmm…something terrible. 

Lately, I’ve been contemplating just such a high-rise as a possible alternative to moving into the horrifying old-folkerie called The Beatitudes. An apartment stuck on the N-teenth floor of an old-folks’ storage bin does NOT appeal to me. A private apartment in a 15-story rabbit warren doesn’t look much better…but…

On the other hand, I know my son would like to have this house — the sooner the better. And I’d sure like him to have it. But not at the cost of my having to move into some garden spot that I’d wish I’d never seen.

It’s crossed my mind to suggest that he and I trade houses. Then he’d have this place and I’d have his pretty little 1950s red-brick bungalow, within strolling distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Yuppie Supermarket.

Trouble is, those houses were built before there was such a thing as air-conditioning. They were “cooled” (after a fashion) with whole-house swamp coolers. These are none too efficient…as a practical matter, the residents in those days just spent the summers up north, in the high country were the weather was tolerable.

And the houses are, as is appropriate for swamp cooling, leaky boxes. So when you turn on the air-conditioner, you’re actually air-conditioning the whole damn block.

Hmmmmm….  Another strategy we could undertake:

  • I buy his place.
  • He moves in here.
  • I sell his place, and…
  • Use the proceeds to buy an apartment in a Central Avenue high-rise.

Probably couldn’t get enough for his house to get into one of those little boxes in the sky. But…hmmm…really, what do I care? I’ll only be here for a few more months or years — a decade at the very longest. No reason why I couldn’t decamp to a box in the sky, paid for on time. Lots and lots of time….

My mother and I lived in one when we took up residence in San Francisco after we left (un)lovely Saudi Arabia. I loved the place!

Now, I’m not a 12-year-old anymore, and so I no longer regard running up and down the interior fire escapes as an entertaining pastime. But still… Those places are just a few blocks down the road from the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store. The train goes right past the front and will drop you off at the store. Mwa ha ha! I’d never have to drive again!!

And What to Do Next?

by

Hmmm…ooohhkayyy…. I seem to have recovered from the spavined hip episode. That was weird…to say nothing of startlingly painful.

Now, just a few hours later — shortly after noon — the pain is gone. As in GONE gone.

That’s weird. Dunno what made it start hurting, and don’t know what made it stop hurting.

****

Cruising the real estate listings in North Central Phoenix — the tony part of the city, that is.

Wow. Which is to say…uhm…well…wow. Truth to tell, I’m not seeing a thing that impels me to feel I must run out and buy it. Or even run out and look at it. My house is as good as any of these piles, or better. And when I croak over, M’hijito will inherit a piece of property worth some stupefying amount of money (certainly compared to what I paid for it!!) and can decide whether he wants to stay in his own palace or move into my castle. His place is maybe a little smaller than mine — certainly a little older — but both houses are well maintained, in decent neighborhoods….and worth a sh!tload of money, after all these years.

He has remarked that he’d like to move back to Grand Junction, Colorado, whence his father emanated. It’s a nice, middle-class rural kind of town…founded by well educated engineers and business entrepreneurs. Truth to tell, it’s quite a pleasant place. And as a retirement venue, it could be downright perfect.

Because Grand Junction ain’t the San Francisco Bay Area — my own choice of retirement venues — what he’d get from selling my house and his would set him up like Colorado’s King of Sheba. So…as retirement schemes go, it ain’t a bad idea.

Why am I NOT in Berkeley, as we scribble?

Because he’s here.

Seriously: I feel no great craving to return to the Bay Area, even though I did love living there and I still miss some aspects of it. But that craving is far from enough to make me want to move anyplace where my son isn’t. If any day now he took it into his noggin to move to Grand Junction, I’d no doubt follow, shortly.

Ohhh well. What to do next?

It’s too damn hot to hike to any of the nearby grocery stores. Ruby and I are well set up for a couple days’ worth of food, even though the human lacks her favorite potables. That lack, alas, is not compelling enough to send me barreling through the neighborhood to the nearest Albertson’s, Safeway, Basha’s, or wine closet. So we will loaf.

Ruby is already loafing, having resumed her possession of the foot of the bed.

The beautiful pool is contentedly burbling away. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d be out there paddling around. But…well…the truth is, one probably doesn’t want to plunge in a swimming pool beneath the ungodly blast of sun we’re getting just now.

Later. Much later.