Coffee heat rising

Security

And now it’s night-time….

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No longer colder than a by-gawd out in the back yard...but not much fun, come 10:00 p.m., as a venue to stand around waiting for the dawg to do her Thing.

And waiting…and waiting…waiting..

Aarrrrgh!!!!

Traffic is roaring back and forth to the north of us. The ridiculous light-rail train is bong-bong-bonging up and down Main Drag West. And here’s a cop copter, sailing over the house.

Looks like Ruby did her Thing just in time to get us back inside before the party begins. We’re in. The doors are locked. Let us hope that will suffice, for the human & the dog.

Pretty night, though. Would be mighty nice in the absence of a few burglars, car thieves, wannabe rapists, and whatnot.

Blech!!! Begins to make Sun City look good….

 

Key Hell

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LOL! Went to find a key to unlock one of the exterior screens and… Voilà!  a half-dozen goddam different keys!!!! 

It’s taken almost an hour to unjumble that mess, and it’s still not straightened out. Just now: counted NINE keys, a couple of which I don’t even know what they go to.

Part of the problem is, different doors bear different brands of locks. So you can’t just have one or two keys made to work all seven (!!!!) exterior doors. Plus, because these houses back onto public alleys (which call in legions of bums and burglars) which require their own deadbolts, we end up with…hmmm….let us count…

11111 11111 1

ELEVEN LOCKS! 

At one point along the line, as I recall, I did ask a locksmith to key all the locks the same. But, for reasons I do NOT recall, he couldn’t do that. He was able to key a few of the same, but not all of them.

And that leads to an even more confusing mess!!

ooooohhhhh gaawd!! i have gotta have some breakfast. where the hell is that coffee?????????

Hiking to Pretoria…

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Well…to Dogtoria, actually. Ruby and I just got back from a seemingly endless trek around the’Hood, not only all over the interior regions but up and down the east and south main drags. Traipsing traipsing traipsing.

Neither of the two lawyers I’d consider engaging were in their offices…not surprising, considering that this is a Sunday. 😀 Tomorrow I must take off into the urban wilderness and see if either of these guys will talk with me. Not about anything drastic…just quotidian stuff like copyright and ownership deeds and such-like.

At this point, I want to review  my will, to be sure that M’hijito  will get everything I’d like him to have after I croak over. That would be…everything I have. And that’s a fair amount, actually: investments, real estate, on and on and on. I want this stuff to transfer smoothly to him, without any hassle.

And with my beloved long-time lawyer consigned to the Other World (how dare he croak over!), we need to get a new attorney in place and set to go for M’hijito with a minimum of headaches and tax problems.

Tomorrow I’ll call Dear Ex-Husband (in his heyday one of the top corporate lawyers in the region) and see if he can aim me at someone who will get everything firmly and smoothly in place.

Meanwhile… Yes: the ‘Hood…  

The piles of apartments to the west of our environs are…mmmm….possibly not going in the direction one would like. They’re getting old. Rents must have come down, one surmises: the apparent quality of the residents (as seen from afar) is nothing like what it used to be.

So that puts the ‘Hood right on the border of a slummifying district.

And that makes this ‘Hoodie right nervous.

Seriously: I don’t like the look of it, and I kinda think I should sell the shack and move into a more credibly stable neighborhood, one likely to hold its value until after the Kid inherits his share of it. But before doing that, I need to make sure M’jihito’s interests are already protected.

Oh well.  We shall see. Eventually. 

Women and Terror

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Loafing late in bed of a Friday morning (nya nya nyaaa! I don’t hafta go to work!!!), I find myself wondering about a peculiar behavior of my mother’s. She was scared, y’know.

Not just scared. But absolutely fukkin’ TERRORIZED. All the time. Any time she was alone in the house. Any time after dark.

One evening she came down to our house in Phoenix’s middle-class, rather boring Encanto district, having decided to spend the night. So we pass a nice day and watch TV all evening and then we unfold the big ole’ sofa-bed (queen-sized, it was) so she can hit the sack.

Make the bed, get everything all nice for a good night’s sleep, and, as she’s getting ready to climb into the sack…what does she do?

She opens her purse and pulls out a pistol! This, she sets on the TV table next to the bed.

No…

Kidding….

She was SO SCARED that even though she was at my house, with a German shepherd at her side, she felt she needed a gun.

I was just floored. 

No, she wasn’t putting me on. She really and truly was so frightened, of life the universe and all that, she needed a pistol at her side.

Trying to reassure her did nothing to help her to feel any braver. It just convinced her that I was crazy and not too bright.

****

A lot of women feel that way. I used to be scared to death all the time, too. That, as you might surmise, was the reason for the German shepherd room-mate.

Had something happened to her? Dunno. If it did, she never told me about it. But on the other hand, I’d never been seriously attacked (harassed, yes; but actually attacked, no), and I wasn’t scared witless in my own house. Scared: yes. That’s why we had the GerShep. But scared enough to be waving a pistol around? Not so much.

That German shepherd did earn her keep one night, after some poor wretch got into the house while she and her humans were sound asleep. Unfortunately for him, she did wake up…and got between him and the door he came in.

LOL! He found a door he could get out, just as the fangs were about to rip off his rear end. Last I heard he was still running.

It brings you around to the question of whether you really do need a gun in the house. And that question brings up a whole slew of other questions:

* Do you know how to use it?
* Would you use it? Really? On another human being?
* How are you going to recognize a false alarm? Hubby coming home late at night, for example. The teenagers roaming around in the wee hours….
* Can you (or can you not) get out of the house safely if some jerk comes in a door or window?
* What are you gonna do if you shoot some schmuck and kill him? How will you prove he didn’t belong in your house and you really didn’t know who he was? How DO you prove a negative, anyway?
* Wouldn’t you be better off just to close the bedroom door and lock it when you go to bed?

On and on.

I tend to feel that keeping a gun at hand every night is probably a bad idea. Definitely a bad idea if you have kids in the house.

Do I feel safe alone in the house here in lovely North Phoenix? Hell, no! It’s a dangerous area, no question of that.

But EVERY place where humans live is a dangerous area. So you can’t get too paranoid over your own neighborhood. Nor can you barricade yourself in the bedroom every night, armed to the teeth with pistols and shotguns. That just doesn’t make sense…and serves only to scare you more.

My own guess is that your best defense is an alarm system: whether the kind that runs on batteries or the type that runs on four feet. If someone’s around, you want to know it in time to get out, or at least to barricade yourself inside the bathroom. A phone in every room, including the bathrooms, is de rigueur.

***

I’ve lived most of my life now, and lived it with few truly dangerous incidents. I’m not a pretty young girl anymore (thank Gawd). With my boobs lobbed off, that’s one fewer attraction.

But that was true of my mother…well…she still had boobs, but she also had lots of wrinkles and stank to high heaven of tobacco smoke. And she was scared half to death: alll the time. As for me: well… Dude! Make my day!

Seriously: I don’t feel especially scared. I don’t recklessly put myself in situations where I might be at risk. But neither do I forget that there is NO situation where a woman is not at some risk. 

Roar…Roar…Roaaaarrrr….

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Argha! Another cop helicopter, whirling around over the neighborhood to the north of us. At least, for a change, this one is not hovering right over the house. /eyeroll/

The ‘Hood isn’t exactly Crime Central, but neither is it a place of sweetness and tranquility. We reside on the southern edge of a suburb called Sunnyslope, which is Crime Central, swarming with drug dealers, delinquents, burglars…and even the occasional murderer.

This fine circumstance brings us cops. And cops. And more cops. Many of them riding in noisy, buzzy helicopters. Dare to go to bed, dare to go to sleep, and you’ll bring on the serenade: BRRRRooooaaarrrrrrrr…

Reassuring in that it lets you know the policia are on the job. Un-reassuring in that it lets you know they’re chasing some sh!thead around your neighborhood.

Get up. Walk through the house. Check that all the doors are locked. Turn on the outside porch lights, the better for the cops to chase their prey.

These regularly recurring events lead me to regularly reconsider whether I want to stay here.

Do I want to move back out to Sun City?

Ugh, no!

Okayyy…. Do I want to move down into the neighborhood where M’hijito lives? 

Hm. Those houses are 20+ years older than these, poorly insulated, expensive to run. Right in the middle of everything, which is cool in some ways — you can walk to the spectacular AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store from his house. But at what cost?

> Noise
> More Noise
> Still More Noise
> Traffic
> Traffic
> Still More Traffic
> Astronomical utility bills
> Higher property taxes
> Insane water bills
> Bums sleeping in your yard…

Naaaahhhh…. Ain’t goin’ there!

The Valley does offer other suburbs and other neighborhoods that are a little less…active, shall we say. Fountain Hills, for example. Moon Valley. Sun City: inactive to the point of stasis. But is that really worth spending thousands of dollars on selling the shack, buying another one somewhere else, and moving?

I think not. 

Go Ahead: Just TRY to Put Your Feet Up and Relax!

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Feed the dog • Pick up the dishes, and • put them in the dishwasher •  Pour the coffee • Lock the back screen door and • open the kitchen door to let in some cool, clean(ish) air • Find the computer • Peruse the latest news • Check Wunderground’s (unremarkable) weather prediction for the day • Settle into an easy chair to swill coffee and…

…and you get RRRRROOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!

Ayup! Another Cop Copter chase.

They’re zooming around just to the north of us — about four or six blocks, I’d say.

Jayzuz! There is never a fukkin’ dull moment around this place!!!!

Well. That’s not fair. Ruby and I circumnavigated the park as dawn cracked this morning. Except for one idiot who deliberately tried to run us down in his car (no mistaking the deliberate part), it was quiet. No cops around there, either, to see the charging commuter.

Ugh! Makes Sun City look good!

Well. No…hafta take that back. IMHO, nothing makes Sun City look good. A dreary mausoleum a pleasant place to live does not make.

Yesterday the neighbors had a grand birthday party for their pre-teen kids. What fun! A joyous mob of them running around the street, which had been closed off for the festivities.

Why on earth would you want to live someplace where that couldn’t happen??