Coffee heat rising

Retirement

Melted!!!

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Argh! I overestimated the heat when I went for today’s exercise stroll. As we scribble, Wunderground claims the temp is 111 just now. “Feels like 117.”

Is THAT all?

Yeah…well, I’d have guessed 119. 😀

It feels like freaking Saudi Arabia out there, where we lived on the edge of the Persian Gulf: hot, humid, and suffocating. And yes, that place was capable of reaching 120 degrees. Nooooo problem!

So, 117 degrees doesn’t seem THAT out of the ordinary. Eh?

This is one of many days that make me wish I were back in San Francisco. Where I belong.

Ohhh well. That ain’t ever gonna happen again. My son is here, and I’m not leaving as long as that’s the fact.

{sigh}

Most of the time, Arizona has a tolerable climate. It does get absurdly hot in the summertime, as we can see by today’s balmy afternoon. But the winters are lovely, as are most of the spring and fall days.

That notwithstanding, I do wish my parents had never discovered Sun City, the garden spot that drew them here. Boyoboy! Imagine a whole gigantic subdivision where NO KIDS ARE ALLOWED!

Goodie.

You were allowed to live there if your brats were over 18 or off in college. I was 16.  So…

They engineered a deal with the University of Arizona whereby I would start my freshman year there a year early. So it went: I dropped out of high school at the end of my junior year, and they dragged me to Arizona. Soon as we got here, they exiled me to Tucson.

That I was all set to go to UC Berkeley the following year meant nothing to my father. (Well…he himself was a high-school dropout, and the truth was he understood little or nothing about universities and university education…) They yanked me out of school, sent me off to Tucson, and with great delight moved themselves into a pleasant tract house under the flight path of the war planes from Luke Air Force Base.

The cute little Sun City house was my father’s lifetime gift to her. And she was SO delighted with it! Seriously: she even made herself relish the roar of those damn fighter jets: as the pilots practiced, she’d sit out on the back porch in the morning sipping her coffee and simper, “Ohhhh! it’s the sound of freedom!”

Yeah, Mom… The sound of World War III comin’ our way…

She loved it, though. So it was a beautiful thing he did for her, after decades of marriage living in difficult conditions.

Charging off to college a year early was a nice ego trip for me…though it wasn’t the greatest of all possible ideas. At 16, I really was too young to go off by myself. I did OK — the UofA was hardly the most challenging of all possible higher ed institutions.  But I would have been better off waiting a year or two. And FAR better off going to one of the University of California campuses.

Not that I did all that poorly: I did graduate Phi Beta Kappa. But my social life left something to be desired. Like, for example…a social life.

So…heh! I guess you could say my life was melted. Just as I was melted by today’s blasting heat on the sidewalks of the ‘Hood.

And that was one of the first reasons that the phrase “I hate Arizona” became my byword. 

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona”*

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It’s a Sea of Cortez day…moisture saturating the atmosphere, making for a swamp-like, Saudi Arabian, horrible morning. Weather is drifting up to (un)lovely Phoenix from Mexico just now…breeding a sticky, icky day.

Dawg and I are freshly(?) back from a swim through that air, as the morning sun hangs over the eastern horizon. This is one of several Arizona phenomena that make me want to brain my father for dragging us here from California.

Well. If he were still alive to brain. 😉

God, I hate this place. If there were a way to get out of here, I’d be soooo long-gone.

But…truth to tell…for me there is no way out. I can’t afford to move. And even if I could, at this age where would I go? Too old to get a job. Not interested in living in a “retirement” community.

Plus my son is here. I’m not about to move away as long as he’s lurking in Arizona. And truth to tell, given that he has a more-than-decent job here, there are not many other places he’s likely to go.

His dad emanated from Colorado, and M’hijito has said that he’d like to repair to those parts. But…in the first place, he’d have to get work there. And the second place, it snows in Colorado. He’s no longer accustomed to snow and ice, and I have exactly zero desire to become accustomed to them!

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*  “Another beautiful day in Arizona” was the tagline of a locally prominent radio announcer here in Phoenix, back in the day. Every morning he would open his talk-show with “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it!”

Way to turn illiteracy into PR, eh?

 

Swampy-Dampy Day

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As dawn rises, we’re back from this morning’s doggy-walk: out the door, around the park, through Lower Richistan, back up into the ‘Hood, and straight to the kitchen.

It’s too hot and wet for coffee. So we’re imbibing iced tea with what passes for breakfast. Ruby is flopped on the floor in her favorite place: where the fan blows “cool” (i.e., moving) air across the Human and the Dawg.

What an icky morning! Sometimes I think I would brain my father for dragging me to Arizona, if he were still living to possess a brain. I swear…literally!

Because…I was all set to go to UC Berkeley when he announced that whoop-de-dooo! He and my mother were moving to Sun City, a middle-class retirement “community” (gimme a break!) on the western edge of Phoenix. No one under the age of 50 was allowed. If you had kids, they had to be adults living on their own, or sent off to college.

My father sent me off to college, all right. Because I was an ultra-honor student in Southern California, he contrived to get me into the University of Arizona a year early. So…whoop-de-doo! It was off to Tucson for me, at the age of 16.

Sheee-ut! I was stupid enough to be flattered at getting accepted to a state university when I was still a kid. But…also stupid enough have have no clue what that would mean for my career prospects. His little triumph canceled my plans to go to graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley: once and for all.

Yes, eventually I did get the Ph.D. No, I never did get a really good job.

So…yes, I hate Arizona. Having matured enough to understand what dropping out of high school a year early to enroll in a second-rate university would mean for my career aspirations, I now do indeed hate Arizona and very much wish I’d  been allowed to stay in school and go to UC Berkeley, as planned.

Everything I hoped for in a career went straight down the drain the minute I enrolled in the UofA. And though I managed to recover to some extent — thanks to marrying a high-earning lawyer — and though I did ultimately earn that Ph.D., none of it did me a damn bit of good, career-wise.

But who cares, anyway? She’s just a girl, after all…

What a Place!

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Ugh! Arizona…WHAT a dump!!!

It’s 95 degrees in the deep shade of the back porch, under overcast skies. Wunderground predicts we’ll hit a crisp 100 degrees today, with 15% chance of precipitation. The skies are solidly gray, so…Funny’s Weather Service predicts one helluva lot better chance of rain than 15%.

I hate this place. (In case you hadn’t noticed…)

WhatEVER possessed my father to drag us to the middle of the baking Arizona desert after he retired?

Oh, yeah. I know: Cheap!

Compared to California, where we’d been living for the six years after we got back from Saudi Arabia, this place was a bargain on steroids.

* Housing: cheap
* Utilities: cheap
* Gasoline: cheap
* Doctors’ fees: cheap

On and on and on….

The fact that he cut off my opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley? Meh! Who cares? She’s just a girl. Why does she need a Ph.D. to cook on a stove and wash dishes in the kitchen sink?

Yeah, I did eventually finish the doctorate…from Arizona State University.

And yeah: it most certainly DOES matter where you got your advanced degree!

Except for the ego gratification, I might as well not have bothered.

No, a guy who never finished high school could not be expected to understand why his kid would want a Ph.D. and what advantages it would present to her. Still…how pig-headed can you get?

So, yeah…I hate Arizona. Wish I’d never been dragged here. Wish I’d had the initiative and the ambition to get myself out of here while I was an undergraduate, or, forgodsake, at least for graduate school.

But…by the time I hit the Ph.D. program, I was married to a well established lawyer here in Phoenix. He wasn’t going anywhere (nor should he have!), and neither was I. So…Okay: Ph.D. from Arizona State. Whoop. De. Doo.

What a place!

Swampy-Dampy Day!

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Yuch!!  Just back from this morning’s (soggy!) doggy walk. What a horrid morning! Gray, wet…yes, SO wet the air actually does feel soggy.

Feels like Saudi Arabia, by the shore of the Persian Gulf, where we used to live while my father worked for Aramco — the Arabian American Oil Company. HORRIBLE. One of the nastiest places to live that you can imagine.

Ruby is panting frantically as she lounges on the kitchen floor’s cool tile. I’m covered with sticky sweat…thirsty but too tired and sore to get up and lumber into the kitchen after a glass of water.

WhatEVER possessed my father to move us to this ungawdly place when he retired?

Oh, yah: I know. CHEAP.

Del Webb was practically giving away the houses in Sun City — certainly by comparison with California real estate. But Sun City’s BIG appeal to him, IMHO, was NO KIDS.

Truly: he abominated kids. He hated the sound of kids playing outside. And when he heard of a whole housing development where no kids were allowed, he thought he’d found Nirvana.

He made me drop out of high school a year early, so he could send me to the University of Arizona…thereby getting around Del Webb’s rule that no one under some extenuated age could live in Sun City. If your kid was away at college, you were allowed to move in…even if the brat was under 21.

So that fucked up my education. But why should he care? I was just a girl. What did I need a degree for, since all I was gonna do was take dictation and type? And raise kids, of course.

Y’know, if he’d waited just one more  year, I would have gotten into UC Berkeley, and there I could have landed a decent degree that would indeed have led to an interesting job or a first-rate graduate program. But nooooooo….we had to move to f*cking Sun City.

What a place!

At any rate, here we are, enjoying a classic Arizona late-summer day. Wet, soggy, dark with overcast…just gross. I hate Arizona (in case you hadn’t noticed…). And really…I will resent him for the rest of my life for f*cking up my educational plans (I was lined up for a Ph.D. from Berkeley or UCLA!) and dragging me out to the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

But…yeah. So what? I was just a girl….

Not Exactly HOTTER than the Hubs…

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But at least VEERING toward hot as the Hubs of Hades. Outdoors: hot, sticky, gummy weather. Indoors: sticky and gummy.

July is the time of year when you do NOT want to be killing time in Arizona. The heat is fierce, and no, it is most surely not a “dry heat.” It’s as humid and sticky as (un)lovely Saudi Arabia used to be when we lived out there. Yuck!

Wunderground claims it’s only 94º outside. Supposed to get up to 107º during the day. If you asked me, I’d say we’d reached that goal already! At ten in the morning…

Ugh. If my parents were still living, I’d brain them both for dragging me to this hellish place.

They thought Sun City, over on the far west side of Phoenix, was just loverly. 

Yeah…

No accounting for taste, eh? If you love the sound of fighter jets roaring up and down, starting along about 5 in the morning: just loverly. If you love folks who hate kids and wish to live in a place where no such critters exist: loverly. If you love folks who hate people whose skin is darker than theirs and wish to live in a place where no dusky types reside: loverly. If you love grocery stores that sell nothing more exotic than a T-bone steak: loverly.

Ye gawds, did I hate living out there!

Finally got a job in town, one that supported a studio apartment’s rental. So…was able to escape loverly Sun City.

Now in my old age: here I am, parked in North Phoenix….most certainly not in the retirement environs of Sun City. To this day, the appeal of that place escapes me. Reckon it must be….what? ….

The whitey-whitness (No kidding: just a few months ago an African-American friend of mine bought a house out there. Within weeks he was literally HOUNDED out of the place!)

The ultra-tidy sameness of the architecture and of what passes for the landscaping. (Nothing like a gravel lawn to stay nice and neat, eh?)

The relative cheapness of the houses. (A comparable house in town would cost half again as much…or more.)

The remoteness from the rough-and-tumble noise of a big city. (Sun City is characterized by the silence of the tomb….when fighter jets aren’t blasting back and forth.)

One could go on and on, I suppose….but one would prefer not to.

Never was so happy as when I got into graduate school and made my escape to a university campus.

Ugh!!!