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Security

Start of a New Day from Hell???

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LOL!  Honestly: it just doesn’t stop! When we say “whatever can go wrong will go wrong,” we ain’t kidding!

Weirdly, I locked myself out of the house this morning, along about dawn.

HOW? That escapes me.

I thought the door was unlocked when I stepped outside in front, into the dim early light.

Well.

No.

Wrong!

Try to get back in: LOCKED TIGHT!

Side gate: locked.

All the windows: closed and locked.

So….I couldn’t get back in the house. And Ruby was trapped inside.

Fortunately, the neighbors were already up. Tom (the male neighbor over there) was puttering with his car.

So I descended on them…O lucky them!

Thank goodness they’re VERY nice people. Tom was able to get the door open.

And now I’m assigned to get some extra keys made, so as to give one or two to them.

Yes, my son does have a key. But…y’know…strange as this may sound, he has a JOB.

Right. He can’t jump up out of his desk chair and come charging up here to rescue his idiot mother every time she gets herself into some new predicament.

So. It was a disturbing way to start the day. 

Egad! $$$$$

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Just realized that two of the five Panasonic telephones in my house are gone. 

Yeah, I had five extensions. Now I have three.

Ducky.

Got a suspicion of who the perp is: one of the cleaning crew. But which one? No clue.

Generous of her to leave me three, eh? Some kind soul came into my home and stole TWO of my phones.

Not sure how to cope with this. If I buy new extensions, can they be programmed to work with my system? Or….what???

Without a car, I can’t get to the store where I bought the phones. So replacing them will not be easy.

What the FUCK is the MATTER with people?  Stealing some old lady’s phones? SERIOUSLY????

Looks like it costs somewhere between $14 and $60 to replace one of these handsets. Here’s one online: $53!!!!

To get new ones, I’ll have to go up to a store in the nearest shopping mall, which I can’t reach without a car.

Can you believe this?????

Not Gettin’ Very Far…

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Tried to call the electrician to ask him to come over and fix whatEVER was done to the backyard lights. No answer. Left word.

So…that’s not very promising.

Guess I should call around until I find a craftsman who will come over — preferably today! — and fix those lights. But truth to tell, I do NOT feel at all good. And do not by any means feel like trying to chase down a new electrician.

Honestly: I’m so under the (very hot!) weather that I just can’t even contemplate doing battle with this stuff. The lights aren’t the only issue. We also have the watering system and the gate locks and…on and effin’ on.

No kidding:  It’s 9:30 in the morning, and we’re coming on to 100 degrees on the back porch. Make that in the shade of the back porch.

{chortle!} What do you suppose the temp is in San Francisco, whence I emanated and where I would very much like to go back? Hmmmm….

Jeez. Sunny and 67 degrees. They expect a high of 72.

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WHY am I here in this God-forsaken place? 

Oh, yeah: Because the kid is here. 

What Possesses People???

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Honest to Gawd! Are people malicious, or just plain stupid?

We’re talking about your regular workers, not some burglar or passing vandal. The yard guys. The cleaning lady. Arrrrghh! 

These days, I hire a phalanx of workers to keep up the Funny Farm:

  • Pool Dude
  • Gerardo the Miracle Yard Dude
  • Cleaning Lady from Heaven
  • Smartest Plumber on the Planet
  • Air-Conditioning Dude

And on and on and endlessly on. Together, they keep this place running, and see to it that nothing falls apart.

But singly…one wonders if any of them has a measurable IQ….

This evening I stumble out into the backyard behind the dog. As I’m trying to call her back into the house, I realize the motion-sensitive back porch light isn’t coming on.

Dang! Did the bulb burn out? Or what?

After dorking around with the system for a bit, I realize…waaaitaminit here! There’s nothing wrong with the outside lights. What’s happened is…Jeez! Some idiot has switched off ALL the lights out there! 

HUH? 

Why would you think I wanted the lights turned off if I’d left them all turned on? Why would I install motion-sensitive lights if I wanted to turn the backyard lights on and off manually?

O’course, this event could signal something more malign than mere stupidity. Somebody could have switched off the lights so they could creep around the backyard in a burgling project.

One never knows.

This, of course, is why one has a dog and a firearm. But still… Grrrrr! It’s the principle of the thing. Right?

Yea, verily: more malign than mere stupidity…. Just tried to turn on the motion-sensitive west-side lights. And…yeah. They don’t come on. At all. Someone has unscrewed or broken them.

No, not likely they burned out: we have four of them out there. One or two might burn out after extensive on’s and off’s. But not all four at once.

So…most likely: someone has set up the place so he can burgle around the house & yard unmolested.

Tomorrow I’ll have to call the electrician and have him replace those outdoor lights. Let’s hope whoever has been messing with them doesn’t decide to come a-visiting tonight….

Makes moving into a holding pen for old folks look better and better…

Makes a .38 look damn good, too!

What Next, Lord?

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It’s now an hour and a half later than when I wrote this morning’s post. I take it into my feeble little noggin to walk up to the nearby Albertson’s grocery store to pick up a few minor necessaries. Right….

Step out the front door and….

ROAR!!!!

Cop helicopter blasts overhead. Circles the neighborhood: round and round he goes, clearly searching for someone.

Someone you may be sure we do not want to get to know…

Back into the house. Lock the doors behind me. Double-check that all the other doors and windows are locked.

See why I find myself thinking, almost obsessively, about moving someplace else?

Ugh!

I really do begin to think that if I’m going to stay in a single-family home, I need to move down into my son’s neighborhood. Houses there are within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s overpriced market, plus a nearby aged shopping center hosts a large Fry’s supermarket.

Hafta say that I no longer feel safe in Phoenix.

O’course, I never did: you’d be a fool to think all was hunky and dorey in this place, wherever you live & whatever the time of day. But these days I do feel more uncomfortable than I used to.

I never used to feel unsafe inside my home, in broad daylight.

And that’s telling me it may be time to move.

But move where?

  • My son’s neighborhood? Frankly, it’s no safer there than here…in fact, it’s probably less safe.
  • Fountain Hills, whither my cousin betook herself? Very nice, very toney…but wayyyy too far from where my son lives.
  • Tempe, suburban home of Arizona State University? Meh! It’s about as bland as you can get. Does have, as one of its advantages, easy proximity to the many cultural activities at the university campus. But…how likely am I to take advantage of those things?
  • South Scottsdale, where my best friend and her husband lived for awhile after they returned to the Valley from an excursion in the Virgin Islands? No better than Tempe in the Meh! department.
  • Into an old-folkerie? The Beatitudes and Orangewood retirement “homes” await. Problem: I hate, loathe, and despise institutional living. And I’m not anxious to wind up my life in one of those places.

I can’t say that I exactly feel unsafe, here in the Hood. It feels more like…nuisanceferizing.

Yeah: one damnfool nuisance after another.

The cop flyovers are nuisances. No, I don’t feel at risk. But I do feel that I have to get up, close and lock all the exterior doors, and check the windows to be sure they’re secured shut.

Do I want to do without the cop flyovers? Hell, no! Those cops are all we have between us and a legion of sh!theads.

But…how wise is it, really, to stay here much longer?

Another Unlovely Day in Arizona…

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“…Leave us all NOT enjoy it.” 

Ugh. Not yet 9:00 in the morning and it’s 100 degrees in the shade of the back porch.

Some asshole has messed up my watering system. Spent altogether too much time trying to undo that fiasco and get water going on the plants. (Any amount of time on that mess is too much time…). Time spent in ungodly heat.

Goddammit! I hope it wasn’t Gerardo or one of his guys who did this! If I find out that’s the case, he is sooooooo fired!

Kinda doubt it, though. He has worked here for years, and nothing like this has happened before. I reckon it must have been a service man or a prowler.

How to keep any such worthies out of the backyard escapes me, though. The guys from the power company and the city water department have to get back there to fiddle with things. They’ve never done anything like this before, and since I’ve done nothing to offend them, I kinda doubt the perp was any of those guys.

Problem is, they have to get back there to do their job. So I can’t change the locks on the gates…it will keep them out as well as the sh!thead who f*cked up the watering system.

So now I’ve somehow got to catch Gerardo the next time he surfaces here — or else call him on the phone and pester him. He’ll need to untangle that mess and get the system working properly again. And…won’t he be thrilled!

Maybe I could sneak a motion-sensitive camera back there. It would run whenever ANYone strolled into the backyard, so would rack up Gawd Only Knows how much time wasted studying the images. But at least it might catch the jerk.

Hm. Another thought: how about installing a motion-sensitive bell back there? Then anyone who walked into the backyard would cause it to ring BING-BONG inside the house…then (assuming I was home at the time) I could see who was roaming around.

Or…I could just post a sign reading “SMILE! YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA!”

Chortle! If the jerk believed it, maybe he’d stand down.