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Criminey! Another stupid evening! 

Lost Ruby’s dog collar whilst circumnavigating the park, a journey that takes about an hour. Ugh!!

Her nylon collar has her name and phone number, so if  by some (highly unlikely!!) miracle, she’s found by someone who cares, they may call me and let me retrieve her. Most people in these parts won’t: they’ll just steal the dog. But at least this gives you an outside chance of getting your pooch back.

So I get home and fart around and fart around..and…eventually…what should come up but the “lost” collar. Dork with it. Kinda get if fixed. But realize tomorrow we’ve gotta go up to the PetSmart and buy some new ID stuff.

Goodie. I can hardly wait.

We hike and we hike through the darkening dusk, dodging vehicles and other people’s dogs. Finally get home.

No, I can NOT find another collar (there should be two or three around here!!!) with her name and phone number. So yes, tomorrow we have to dork with an expensive trip to the pet store. Yay!

Nine a.m. and…at last! The jets at Luke Air Force Base have come to light.

They practice every morning along about dawn, when they begin around three hours of maneuvers. So just when the Sun Citizens down the road from the base want to sit on their back porches to take their morning coffee, they get a symphony of roar, roar, ROAAAAARRRRR from fighter jets charging back and forth, as the pilots practice their moves for World War III.

SDXB, who retired to Sun City from a career in journalism and public relations, still works off and on for the base. Practically every day, says he, they get calls from Sun Citizens belly-aching about the racket from that air base.

LOL!  Well, folks: wake up! If you don’t want to hear jet engine noise, don’t buy a house five or ten miles up the street from a jet runway.
😀

My mother used to sit on her back porch and sip her morning coffee to the serenade of Luke’s blasting jets. Weirdly — well, probably not: probably as a result of living 10 years overseas in a country where Americans are roundly hated — she convinced herself that she actually liked the sound of those roaring engines. It’s the sound of freedom, she used to simper.

Ohhhhh gawd!

And ohhhhh well: whatever makes you happy.

Yea verily, though…those of us who spent a decade of our lives in a medieval dictatorship do understand what that “sound of freedom” is worth.

Nevertheless: I’m sure glad I no longer live practically beneath the base’s landing and take-off paths!

No kidding. We’re a good 20 miles away here, and the racket is…not quite awful, but still annoying.

*****

Argha! It’s after 10 a.m. and the jets are still roaring away out there. WTF?

That ain’t normal.

Something must be going on. Either its some kind of special exercise, or some sort of sh!t is coming down.

***

All of which — the memory of my mother and how much she loved their little house in Sun City, how much she loved my father — brings back all sorts of depressing and unwelcome other memories.

* The Dragon Lady and what a horrid witch she was
* How she lured my father into marrying her
* How miserable he was, living with her
* How afraid he was to divorce her (“She’ll get all my money!!!”)

Jayzuz, Daddy! Some things are more important than money!  Why didn’t I have enough sense to say that to him?

or maybe…

Jayzuz, Daddy! Your daughter’s husband is a partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the Southwest. She’s NOT gunna get all your money. Very probably, she’s not gunna get any of it.

***

Ah well. Nothing like a wee splash of wine to chase away fading regrets. {slurp!}

Seriously: now we’re comin’ on to midday, which is when I dive into my Big Meal of the Day. And I see we have enough chow in the house to concoct a nice little feast and enough to feed Ruby for the next several days.

You realize what this means, right?

Incredibly…

I won’t have to go out and buy food today!!!!!!!

Yahooooooo!

The Hound and I will be set until the first part of next week. CAN you believe it?

So: I can continue to loaf and play with my li’l computer. Ruby can continue to loaf in her favorite throne under the back bathroom’s toilet.

Loafing: The highest and best use of life!

So Ruby and I are just back from the morning traipse around the’ Hood. Actually. we’re running a little late: it’s 8:30 already.

But the lovely serenade from Luke Air Force Base, twenty miles to the west of us, is still echoing through the atmosphere. WHAT a gawdawful racket!!

My mother used to love to sit on the back porch of their little Sun City house — practically under the flight path of those damn planes — to have coffee and read the paper. She claimed, if you can imagine, to love the roar of jet planes taking off and landing for the morning maneuevers at Luke.

“It’s the sound of fweedom,” she would coo, proudly patriotic.

Nooo, muther. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way.

Never happier than movin’ out of merry Sun City….

She absolutely LOVED living there, though. As Whitey-White as you can get, tomb-quiet, politically situated in John Birch territory.

Soon as I graduated from college, I got a job in downtown Phoenix and rented an apartment in the central part of the city. It was on Thomas Road, one of the mainest of the city’s main drags. Traffic noise was bracing…but it was nothing like the roar of those planes coming out of Luke.

They still roar in and out of the base. We’re a good 20 miles away, but every morning we can hear the serenade of jet airplanes straining every mechanical gut to get off the ground and charge back and forth.

*****

And now here we are in a bland waiting room at the Mayo Clinic. Ohhhhh goodie! Apparently they want to do some sort of neurological tests on me. This has been said to M’hijito…wouldn’t it be nice if they’d tell me about it!

GOOD MORNING, AMERICA!

Ruby the Corgi greets a cold daybreak with a frantic attack of reverse sneezing. This is a dramatic, noisy episode of choking and gasping for air. Apparently it’s not life-threatening, but I’ll tellya: it’s terrifying for a human to watch and hear.

***

She seems to have calmed down now. That’s good.

I guess.

Was going to traipse to the grocer, now that the rush hour is more or less over (it’s quarter to ten a.m. just now). But…hmmmm….  Hesitate to leave her alone until it’s undeniably clear that this episode is over and done with.

awwwww she-ut! There she goes again.

Am I really going to have to tote her to a vet?

watching….waiting…

Thinking vividly — for reasons I cannot even begin to divine — about my college boyfriend (scroll down in that page). Oh, my! How my parents hated him! Never did fully understand why, other than to assume it was some kind of racist thing. He was white…what WAS their problem? Apparently eastern European doesn’t count as “white” in the minds of Texas nationalists.

Ugh! Humanity: what a critter!

**********

And speaking of critters, the Corgi has quit wheezing and gagging. Soooo…i guess it’s off to the grocery store with me! {sigh}

The Corgi and the Human dawdled a bit this morning. It’s already 9:20, and we only just walked in the door from the a.m. perambulation.

But what a GORGEOUS morning! Clear and cool, free of visible smog, most of the bird-brained dog-lovers already back in their homes.

The dog-lovers. /eyeroll/  They all assume your dog LOVES their dog, and they wanna drag their fur-baby over to yours to socialize.

Why are people so stupid, anyway?

We walked by the late Jerry Jacka’s house, up on the north end of the ‘Hood. Jerry was, among other things, a professional photographer of significant stature. I met him while I was working for Arizona Highways, which filled its pages with his spectacular scenic photos. What a lovely man he was: the definition of talent and grace.

Jerry and his wife, Lois, owned a berzillion acres of ranch land halfway between here and Prescott, acre after rolling acre stretching west from the I-17. What a place!

They also had a pretty house in our neighborhood, just south of Dunlap: now a noisy main drag, but then a quiet two-lane country road passing through acre after acre of citrus orchards. The house is still there. But they, alas, are long gone.

So is the quiet rural character of their neighborhood. Now it’s on the northern border of North Central, beneath the flight path of helicopters ferrying patients to a huge hospital a couple miles away. Noisy! Hectic! Crowded! Crime-ridden…

LOL! You can bet that if I owned a few hundred acres out in the boondocks, you’d never see me in this place! 😀

My, how I do miss the Arizona Highways crew! It was so much fun to work there: so much talent came in through the doors. Not just the photographers and the artists and the writers: the editorial staff was outstanding, too.

Ohhh well. They’re gone, most of them. I’m probably one of the few members of that staff who are still living.

Life is short, my friends. Enjoy it while you can!