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Round and round we go: through the park and over the grassy mounds and around the wee kids playing in the afternoon sun: charming, adorable, and satisfyingly playful. The kids are adorable. The teenagers pleasantly time-wasting. The little dog has a Grand Old Time. The human misses old friends who used to live in the ‘Hood but have moved on. And on. And on…

So absurdly sleepy now! Apparently loafing soaks up a lot of energy! ;-D

Spectacularly gorgeous afternoon: Pillows of fluffy cumulus clouds ride on the breeze. Behind them, the sky is a brilliant, painterly blue.

We walked past old neighbors’ homes, all of them as well preserved as if they’d been built yesterday. And hardly changed! Does NO one ever change the color of their house’s paint?

Sally’s house: still a staid landlady green…the paint in good condition. No hint that the place needs to be repainted. My old house: untouched: same colors and (so it appears) the same paint as when I lived there in another lifetime.

***
Time passes…
***

And now here we are at M’jito’s house.

My, it’s a nice place. Handsome Saltillo tiles throughout. Manly, heavy French doors opening out from the dining room onto the back porch. A handsomely accoutered kitchen. Oh: and don’t forget the big fish tank adorned with aquatic plants and a tribe of beautiful blue, silver, and orange residents.

LOL! He has Amazon trained to feed him various reminders. It just urged him to check the chow on the stove. 😀

The Dwelling is in a neighborhood of pretty brick homes built in the early 1950s.

LOL! Who knew there were humans dwelling the the Valley during 1951?

Seriously: this place must have been out in the country back in the Day. Today it’s a pretty neighborhood, somehow urban and suburban-looking at once.

Hmmmm… Would I like to live here myself?

Can’t say as I’d mind. Exactly.

The issue for me, though, is that these houses with their vintage construction are poorly insulated: expensive to run through the summer. Back in said Day, Phoenix residents didn’t stay here through the summer. They would own or rent places in Prescott, Payson, Flagstaff, and waypoints atop the Mogollon rim.

As Phoenix metropolitanized ( 😀 is there such a word?), developers began to build houses intended for people to live in during the entire year. Air-conditioning would still be expensive, but it wouldn’t bankrupt you. A year-round job became a practical choice.

So it goes. Now what was once a bloated small town is L.A. East. Real, serious careers are to be had. You need not own a summer home.

I tire. And so, let us move along….  <3

Whew!!  For a minit there, I thought WordPress was NOT gonna let me back into Funny.

But amazingly, after a few tries it gave up and dropped me into the website. Weird.

Why is everything weird? And have you noticed that some days stuff is weirder than on other days? Why, I ask. WHY?

Ohhhhh well. I’m back from a hot, miserable stroll to the neighborhood shopping center, there to stock up on my favorite inebriants. (To wit: one bottle of cheap white wine…)

That mall has the sweetest little liquor store. And I do mean LITTLE. The shop couldn’t be any larger than my dining room. The two guys who run it are just plain nice. Always quiet, always friendly, always accommodating. You come away wanting to go back soon.

Walking up there and back provides an opportunity to pass along the street where SDXB and I lived when we first moved into the  ‘Hood.

Oh, my: I loved that little stretch of MittelAmerica. The neighbors — mostly middle- to lower-middle-class types — were such nice folks. The houses were (still are!!) modest but nicely kept up.

We moved out when the City installed the Accursed Lightrail up the middle of Main Drag West, kindly bringing endless noise, crazy traffic, and crowds of bums and flakes. We didn’t move far away — actually, we’re still in the ‘Hood — but just a couple of blocks worked to get us away from the CLANG CLANG CLANG of the accursed lightrail and from most of the bums the lightrail hauled into the ‘Hood.

Walking back from the booze shop took me up the street where SDXB and I used to live, past the homes of all those beloved neighbors. My, I do miss them: about half of them have moved to other precincts; the rest have died or ended up in nursing homes. Such good people!

But — returning to the topic of an earlier paragraph — there is something weird about it.

There’s a strangeness to revisiting a cluster where you used to live.

And a strangeness to knowing most of your friends and neighbors are gone…but a few are still there.

A weirdness to walking up the street and hearing sounds that didn’t exist when you lived there.

A pleasing eeriness to encountering a friendly, glad-to-meetcha owner at the wine shop.

…The wine shop that didn’t exist when you lived there.

 

Amusing traits and tricks of dotage…

* You put things “away”…and  before you know it, you can’t remember where “away” is.

* You make a marvelous pot of coffee…and then forget you have a coffeepot sitting on the counter.

* You don’t know what time it is…partly because you no longer reckon the time of day by the sun’s position, and partly because you don’t care.

* You forget you told a friend you’d meet them…uhmmm…uhhh…wherEVER…

* You can’t find your purse…and you NEED something it contains.

* You bang and crash around, searching room after room and space after space.

* After you give up, you come across the purse…but it doesn’t contain what you needed to find it for.

* You do find your driver’s license, whose loss you’ve silently concealed because you’ve been afraid to ‘fess up that you lost it.

* You find the four (4!!!!) purses that lately have disappeared from the scene. OH JOY!!!!

* But…uhmmm…. Where is the stuff that’s supposed to be in those purses?

* None of the purses are flopped on the car’s seats. But…but…why are FOUR yellow pads and THREE pens sitting there?

* Searching for the missing purses, you find a metal credit-card case that you had not yet realized was lost. Well…joy! One less scare to clutter your afternoon.

* You hear water humming away outside. NOW what? Get up to explore and discover the water hose you left running to top off the swimming pool FAILED TO SWITCH OFF.

* As you RUN outside to turn off the spigot, you realize the water level is about two inches below the surface of the deck. Ohhhhhh well…at least it’ll be awhile before you have to refill the pool again.  /eyeroll/

*At this point it occurs to you that you want, more than anything, a bourbon & water.

* And at the next point, you realize your worried son has (sanctimoniously!!!!) snabbed all the whiskey and all the wine. Nary a drop in the house to defrazzle your nerves.

* One thing you DO need in your dotage is defrazzling! Regular defrazzling…

* Cop helicopter flying low over your yard does exactly nothing to defrazzle.

* You trot inside and lock the doors.

* The water bill and the Cox bill arrive in the mail. Most of your regular bills are autopaid…but some are not. Trouble is, you no longer can recall which is which. Now you’ll have to drag out file folders or traipse to the credit union to figure out if either of these must be manually paid.

* Next question: Where can you hide the bourbon where the kid won’t find it?

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

And that, my friends, is why old age is not for the young or the faint of heart……

Ah, a lovely spring day in Central Arizona. The rain — a light rain but a soggy one — is letting up , distant thunder rolling down into the Valley from the northerly hills. Gray, hot, and sticky.

Just darted back in the house, after aborting a vaguely planned grocery-store junket. At four in the afternoon, the city streets are less than pure fun on any day. On a gloomy and wet day, you can  be sure they’re a menace to all things living.

Today’s plan was also to drop by the car body shop to the west of the ‘Hood and see if they could touch up a li’l scratched paint on the Dog Chariot. That was a FAIL!, though, thanks to ihe incoming shamal. Driving around in the rain with my fellow Arizona lunatics is not a good way to spend an afternoon. 😀

M’hijito: busy riding herd on his mother. He’s highly annoyed because I diddled away a couple hundred bucks on replacing most of the double-cylinder deadbolts in the house. Feels I was mightily ripped off.

Hm. Could be….that’s for sure!

None of the things was utterly worn out, after all.

Still…it’s habitual with me. Typically when I live in a house upwards of seven years or so, I’ll replace the doorknobs and locks. And we got seven new door accouterments, which presumably will last another seven or more years.

In this part of town, you do want doorknobs and locks that will stand up to some pressure…

By golly, I thought I was gonna knock off…and spend the rest of the afternoon loafing with my feet up on a hassock.

No.

Of course not.

No. Not. A. Chance.

Now I’ve got door handles and door locks busted every which way from Sunday!

No kidding… Have you noticed that? How everything craps out at once, in multiples.

This house has deadbolts on every exterior door (each exterior door = 2 doors, because they all have burglar screens, mounted over the regular doors. That’s because you’d be CRAZY to live in or anywhere near lovely Sunnyslope without break-in resistant screens and heavy-duty deadbolts.

So, long as I have to pay the locksmith to come over and do battle with the hardware, I count up the number of locks that need repair. Seven.

Yep. That’s right. Seven worn-out deadbolts.

Helle’s Belles! I’ll be paying this bill for the rest of my life.

Call up my regular locksmith. And speaking of Helle’s Belles, that business seems to have changed hands! The guy who answers the phone has a HEAVY Indian or Pakistani accent.

So after some dorking around, we manage to make each other understood…I hope.

Let’s also hope he doesn’t figure he can rip off the Little Woman with some exorbitant overcharge.

The problem with getting repair dudes over here is that our genius City Fathers, lo! these many years ago, gave two parallel streets in the ‘Hood almost identical names.

Yes.

I live on Erewhon STREET. The next street north of me is Erewhon ROAD.

Result? Everybody who comes here for the first time gets confused and lost. They all go up Erowhon Road if they’re looking for Street, or up Erewhon Street if they’re looking for Road.

No sign of the locksmith our hero said would be right along. Presumably he’s charged off down the wrong road.

So…tomorrow I get to search for a new locksmith. Won’t that be fun?

******

NOPE!

Make that today I get to pay a new locksmith.

Our hero, who bears the name Mohammed, showed up pretty promptly. English ain’t his strong point, so I’m kinda scared I may not have explained the issue(s) to him clearly enough. Basically what’s happening is that these deadbolts do tend to crap out after several years of daily use. Some doors get a WHOLE lot more “daily use” than others…specifically the front door and front security screen; the office door with its solid-core door and heavy-duty deadbolt; the back door and security screen; to which one can add constant in-and-out traffic by a small and bossy dog.

It’s late in the afternoon and the human is massively not in the mood to listen to serenades from electric tools and from an agitated little (ARF ARF ARF ARF!!!) dawg.

***

hmmmm…. Speaking of dawgs…boyoyboy does that little pooch need a bath!

It wasn’t what he did. It was what his buddy did.

And that he approved of what his buddy did.

Paul was the first Great Love of My Life. Handsome, smart, affable, sexy, upward-bound. Who could ask for anything more, eh?

Well…as extreme as it seems, you could ask for a little common decency…

***

Paul was madly in love with me, there in Tucson in our last years of undergraduate school. And I was madly in love with him.

My parents loathed him.

But it was our lives and our love affair, so I pretty much disregarded whatever they thought or said about him. He was upwardly bound, finishing an undergraduate degree, headed toward an MBA, figured to have a career as a business executive or a government functionary.

My mother urged me to let him go. I ignored her: my feelings for Paul were my business and none of hers.

So I thought.

Paul’s best friend was a married man whose wife was advanced in pregnancy. Very advanced: about eight months along. One night this guy was out on the town with his pals…when he picked up a chippy at a bar. Took her to a motel room and had sex with her.

Incredibly (to my way of thinking…), Paul thought that was just dandy.

No kidding. He felt the guy was fully justified in jumping into bed with this whore, because, said Paul, “his wife isn’t giving him any.”

Got it? She’s on the verge of giving birth, bloated up like a watermelon, sick most of the time…but it’s her bounden duty to put out for her horny husband.

I thought, Y’know…dude, if you think it’s OK for him to do that to his wife, someday you’re likely to do the same to me.

And the next thought was Bye!

Want to end a love affair? Show your partner exactly what you’re capable of doing…

***

So my mother got her fondest wish: I flang him out.

Was that a good thing?

Probably. The man I did marry was a far, far better human being. The marriage lasted about 20 years. No doubt it would still be going if I’d been in love with him. Unfortunately, I never got over being in love with Paul, and so after all those years I wandered off on my own.