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She used to sit out there on her beloved back porch, gazing into all the other unfenced backyards of the houses around our home there in Sun City. Perched over her morning coffee, she would listen to the b-l-a-a-a-a-s-t of fighter jet engines, a racket emanating from nearby Luke Air Force Base.

Oh, how I hated that noise.

It bothered the Hell out of me: the ungodly roar of those damned war planes. But I would try to hide that, so as not to pi$$ her off.

She would simper on: “Ohhhh, it’s the sound of fweedom!”

Uhm…right, Mom. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way.

Of course, I dared not say that to her. She’d have knocked me into the middle of next week for showing any disrespect to our honored country and its honored military. The weird thing was, she didn’t seem to care.

She didn’t care that it was the sound of death, damnation, and destruction. Of a war that would denude the planet. Of inescapable hate, fear, and death.

Amazing.

That always puzzled me: that she didn’t appear to recognize that what she was hearing was the oncoming engine of death, destruction, and catastrophe.

Luke is located some miles to the west of Sun City, which itself occupies large residential tracts to the west of Phoenix’s westernmost suburbs. Halfway to California, it sometimes seems.

Though…no: Sun City and Luke were nowhere near the California border.

Every now and again, a plane or a phalanx will fly out of Luke and roar over the city of Phoenix. That’s what occasions this morning’s little scribble: RRROOOOOOAAAAARRRRR over the house. Gawd, but I hate that noise. And yeah, I get it: without it the Russians are gonna blow us all to Kingdom Come.

Right?

Doorbell jangles. It’s along about 3:30 p.m.

Outside: a kid. Looks to be about 10 or 12. Articulate and well-spoken, he explains that he’s lost a football. Thinks it may have gone over the back wall into the pool.

Hot diggety: a MISSION!

We launch into a search. And man! Is it hot out there.

Explore through the jungle vines. Examine the trees. Search the drink. Eyeball the roof.

But nope. We can NOT find it.

Where the heck it went, I can’t imagine.

But…it is sooooooo hot in that back yard. As we scribble: 110 degrees. In the shade.

****

He goes on his way. 

I plunge into the drink. That pool is a godsend, expense and hassle or no expense and hassle.

Heh! Okay, okay: it does have to be said that you could accomplish the same cooling effect with a shower. 😀

But a shower is nowhere near as much fun or pleasure as a dip in the pool.

It really does feel monstrously hot out there, even though 110 is just not THAT hot, objectively speaking. Must be a little humid. Or something.

Wonder what happened to the kid’s football. It must have bounced into Terri’s back yard. We tried to roust her, but she wouldn’t answer the doorbell. Like many women in these sylvan parts, she won’t open the door unless she knows who’s on the other side. That’s prob’ly smart. But…yeah. Tells you something about life in Phoenix, doesn’t it?

Wish I could move away from here. But…

But…

But where would I go???? 

Seriously: other than the San Francisco Bay Area, I sure can’t think of many places that would be worth uprooting my life and moving to a new home. And I can’t afford to live in the City. So…really, there’s noplace else to go, surely not anyplace that would justify a move.

Especially not with my son living here.

Now if he went someplace else, I might very well follow him. Especially if it didn’t snow, wherever he went. Truth to tell, though, he doesn’t seem even faintly interested in moving. His family and friends are here. He has a decently paying job that allows him to work out of his home(!!). And his home is a very pleasant house in a very pleasant, centrally located neighborhood. Unless some company offered him a truly fantastic deal, it seems unlikely that he’d take flight.

Sometimes I think I’d like to move back to Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived. They had such a pretty little house there, in a beautiful neighborhood on a steep hill. You got your exercise walking the block or two up to the grocery store!

But unless someone offers my son a phenomenal job, it sure doesn’t look like he’ll move. Don’t reckon I would, if I were him.

hmmmm…..  Would I want to work out of my home, five to seven days a week?

Really?????

Well. That’s exactly what I did, when I was teaching at the Great Desert University. Yes, I had an office on the campus. But I sure didn’t kill much time there…mostly, it was just a landing patch for when I was out there between classes. Which wasn’t long, that’s for sure!!

About half my sections were night classes. I’d have a couple of daytime sections each semester, plus of course I had to trudge out there for faculty meetings and to confer with the occasional student. But truth to tell, most of the time I was working from home.

M’jiito does most of his job over the phone, wrangling insurance agents. I personally prefer to spend at least half the day, maybe more, in the company of coworkers. Plugging away in a home office hour in and hour out, day in and day out is…depressing, IMHO. And he does keep his nose tight to the grindstone, that’s for sure.

Nice, though, not to have to commute. His house is centrally located, so over the lunch hour and for certain break periods, he can bop around to various stores and chow lines. Or go for a walk. Or whatever.

****

Kid on the phone! 🙂

He just arranged to take me shopping tomorrow. How nice!!!

My car is kaput. And frankly, it’s beginning to look questionable whether I’ll replace it. I can walk almost everyplace I need to go, and with an Uber driver living right across the street, I can foist the chore of driving through Phoenix’s gawdawful traffic on someone else.

Jeez. How amazing is that, anyway???

In addition to Uber, we have lightrail trains zipping up and down Main Drag West, all the time. If I can’t rope in a human to drive me around, I can stroll over to the train tracks and grab a ride there.

Heh! Phoenix is beginning to behave like an actual city! Can you imagine?

Kinda makes me miss San Francisco even more, though. One thing about the City: it was never hotter than a two-dollar cookstove outside. 😀

But…it did tend to rain on one, as one stood around a bus or train stop.

Y’know, it is interesting to think I might never replace the car. Just imagine that!

For one thing, imagine not having to diddle away dollar after dollar on a rolling tin can. How kewl would that be? 

What on earth would I do with all the cash saved by not having to buy gas every time I turn around, and by not having to get the car serviced? Or licensed and registered? Hot dang!

In due course, I’ll talk with my son about this idea. He’ll think I’ve lost a few more marbles, of course… But seriously: I really am thinking that it may be reasonable to do without a car. The Funny Farm is within walking distance of a place that rents cars: if anything comes up that I really need a car, I can get one quickly and easily. But at least two people here on the street hire out to drive people around. Plus of course we have cabs, cabs, and cabs.

If the idea flies, then we have the question of what do we do with the huge, two-car garage?

Got an idea: Turn it into an art studio. 

No kidding. It’s huge. Its walls are lined with cabinetry. Why not put a couple of art tables out there and invite friends to come over to draw, paint, or make pottery?

Would that be fun, or would that be fun? 

Hmmmm….  The idea begins to sound better and better…

SHOCKED, I tell you. Shocked! 

😀

This noon, I thought…gee, I’d like a bottle of beer to go with the orzo I’m planning to fix for a mid-day meal. Beer, or maybe a glass of wine.

Ohhhhhkayyyy….

Welp…I knew I was out of wine, and I feel uninclined to buy more just now. But…beer?

Yeah: beer:

There’s none left in the fridge.

DANG!

So…I figure I’ll walk down to the Albertson;’s and buy a six-pack.

Well.

In the first place, just now it’s HOTTER THAN THE HUBS OF HADES out there: A hundred degrees in the darkest shade of the north-facing back porch.

Caligula, my dear son, has my car imprisoned at his house. So to acquire this delicacy, I have to walk half an hour or forty minutes, back and forth, beneath Arizona’s finest noonday sun.

Hm.

So much for that idea.

I figure I’ll brew up some sun tea under the afternoon sun (add tea bags to a pitcher of water, cover, and set it out in the blasting heat for three or four hours). Meanwhile, I’ll be reduced to drinking (ecch!) water {shudder!!} or making hot tea and pouring it over ice for lunch.

Ech, though. Yech! is what I say to that.

So, yes! Let’s walk down to the nearby Albertson’s and buy a box of beer.

Uhm…shoofing on-line…

Just now, Albertson’s wants twenty-three bucks for 18 cans of Coors.

Got that?

Yeah: Almost $1.30 for a can of superbly mediocre beer. And you get to haul it home through the heat all by your dainty little self.

Hooooleeeee shee-ut!!!

****

Welp! One thing’s fer sher: I ain’t a-spending that kinda money on cheap beer!

Next time I’m in Costco, I’ll pick up a lifetime supply of whatever plonk they have on offer that’s not too indecent. Until then, we’ll be making do with water! If Costco’s plonk doesn’t rise to my elevated standards, we’ll be having iced tea with dinner after this.

Meanwhile — indeed, maybe henceforth, going forward — I don’t feel I should be expected to accept a bottle of plonk to go with my mid-day meal. Or my evening meal, either.

Pisseth me off! I really do resent not being able to have a modest swiggle of wine or beer with dinner. But y’know what?  Getting ripped off for the privilege pisseth me off even more!

I surely will miss my daily slurp of wine or beer with a nice meal. But y’know what? I resent getting ripped off even more than I’ll miss swiggling.

And so, dear booze manufacturers and sellers: BYE!!

 

 

{chortle!} Here we are, back home from the morning Doggy Walk, right along about 7:30 a.m. A little hot & muggy, but not too bad this morning

Yesterday: it was a swamp out there.

Still no sign of Pool Dude. Dayum! I do hope he’s not back in the slam.

I’ll try to call him on and off during they day. If he doesn’t answer…well then, time to find a new Pool Dude.

Darn it! He’s a sweetie, so I hate to lose him, Most of those guys, as it develops, are ex-convicts. Turns out that pool maintenance is one of the careers for which our wise gummint fathers train convicts. So if you hire a pool dude, chances are you’re hiring a record with him.

And chances are he won’t last long in the job.

***** Ooops! ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! *****

WTF?????? It ain’t Monday. Forcrissake, it’s SUNDAY!!!!

Jeez. Who knew?

LOL! apparently Pool Dude knew! 😀

**************

Strolling around the rather pretty ‘Hood: houses built in the 50s to the 70s take on a “historic” look in these parts. So I was reminded of our beloved 1923 house in the historic Encanto neighborhood, a home and a neighborhood I miss to this day.

Gosh, I loved that beautiful old place.

Dear Ex-Husband moved us out of there, to a large degree by telling me we would take our son out of the brain-banging expensive private school where he was going (public schools in Encanto are out of the question) and putting him in one of the perfectly acceptable public schools in North Central.

Turns out he had NO INTENTION of doing so!

And that little deception was one of several factors that led to the end of the marriage.

Truth to tell, even though I loved our gorgeous home and our beautiful historic neighborhood, I didn’t feel safe in Encanto. But frankly i don’t think there are many places where women feel safe. One of our most memorable Encanto adventures occurred when our German shepherd awoke in the middle of the night and EXPLODED into a rage. Roaring like a banshee, she shot up the hallway, where she chased a poor, hapless prowler out of the house.

Then we have the fact tat, bein’ white trash myself, I did NOT fit into tony North Central. One of the bitch neighbors there actually said to me, in casual conversation, that they thought it was such a shame we moved in there, because our presence ruined the neighborhood.

No kidding!!

At least in Encanto, the neighbors were polite to the White Trash.

Oh well. Hereabouts, the question of the day (or of the decade?) is whether I’m going to be able to stay here in my beloved little palace, or whether I’ll be forced to move into one of those dreadful old-folkeries. My son is already yammering about locking me up in one of them, an institution called the Beatitudes.

Ugh! How would I prefer to be dead? Let me count the ways.

I might manage to persuade him to lock me up in the jail of my father’s choice, a single-story spread here in North Central, called Orangewood.

It’s actually not a bad place. My father moved there after my mother died. He was spectacularly miserable there…but not because of the institution itself. What made him miserable was marrying a bi*ch named Helen, who really was…ahem…well…a hag of the first water.

If he hadn’t married Helen, he probably would have been OK there…even very fine. But he’d been married to my mother for something over 30 years. So in his mind “normal” people lived in marital bliss. For a man to live alone without a female helpmeet apparently struck him as abnormal, possibly even bizarre.

Unfortunately, what was “bizarre” was Helen. And their relationship was truly grim, at least from his point of view. He refused our suggestion that he divorce the bi*ch, moaning She’ll get all my money!!! 

The horror of it, eh!

Unfortunately, the horror was being married to Helen, who was one of the meanest human beings I’ve ever met.  He was so miserable with that hag that he used to…oh, get this! If it weren’t so grim, it would be hilarious:

He would tell her he was taking the car to be worked on at the Ford dealership. No kidding!

Then he would go outside to the parking lot, climb into the car, and sit there reading all day long!

After he realized that was a bit transparent, he would drive the car up to one of the city’s many canals, park near a hiking trail, and do the same: just sit there and read all day long!

Ohhh well.

Speaking of “all day long,” I need to quit the endless scribbling and head on over to the Sprouts.  Outta here!

Wherever you are, you can’t get there from here…eh? Altogether too often, working with  computer is like that. Argha! For unknown reasons, WordPress decided to hang Funny about Money. Why? UNKNOWN. Dorked around with it, and presto-changeo! Up it comes. Why? UNKNOWN.

Darn it. I guess I’m too sick and tired of this li’l game to continue.

Tomorrow, folks!! <3

 

Jeez, these damn computers just leave you confounded.

Funny appeared to be off-line. Not visible in Firefox’s alleged FaM web page. ARRRG! Another computer hassle.

But?????  Now I get online, click in the address line, and damned if the thing doesn’t come right up. Whaaaa?

Ohhhhh well.

Where were we?

Screwèd, screwèd, & gescrewèd . That’s where. I GIVE UP!!!!!!!