Coffee heat rising

Urban life

And Another Lovely Evening…

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THIS evening made all the lovelier by the absence of perps fleeing cops in helicopters. 😀

Ruby and I perambulated our part of the Hood, plus Lower Richistan and Upper Richistan. What a hoot, right before Christmas.

The locals LOVE to decorate these old houses and their half-acre yards with their mature, beautiful trees. Kids are playing outside. Parents are puttering. Trees and shrubs and eaves and roofs are gussied up with colored lights for Christmas. It’s just a delight to walk around here at dusk.

A December evening in central Arizona really is lovely, except in the (unlikely!!) event of rain. The dusk sky glows in radiant shades of blue and orange. The air is sweetly temperate. The old 1950s houses are graciously handsome. And the kids are….

OHHHH! CORGIIII!!!!!

LOL! Here comes another kid!

My goodness, how the local urchins adore short, plushy, pointy-eared little dogs! Fortunately, she adores them back. So an evening walk can easily morph into a 45-minute love-fest.

That’s life in the ‘Hood. 😀

Eeeek! Duck for Cover!

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Ah, another lovely evening in beautiful North Central Phoenix.

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room. The back door is hanging open to let in the lovely, cool evening air.

…when,..

…suddenly…

ROAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Cop copter shoots over the house like an angry MIG. Chasing a perp, evidently. He roars over, then circles around, a block or two to the north of us.

Jump up: RUN to shut and lock the back door (and its security screen). Fly around the house checking to be sure other doors and windows are closed and locked.

By the time we finish that, whatever is going on has settled down a bit, at least in our immediate precinct. The cop flies away, in due time.

And now Ruby and I are perched, together, on the bed in the master bedroom, having seen to it that all the doors and windows are locked.

What

A

Place

Why do I continue to live here?

Well, mostly because there isn’t anyplace much better to live. Sun City would be quieter (most of the time). But then so is the tomb. My son’s house is not far down the street: wouldn’t take him more than 10 minutes to get here. A police station is just up the road.

Everyplace else in the urban area is about like this. Or worse. Much worse.

I’d say I wish I still had the ranch. But…no. I don’t. Out in the middle of nowhere, ten miles over dirt roads from the nearest town? Don’t think so…

What I do need, though, is a double-aught six. Have been lazy about tracking one down…but think tomorrow maybe I’ll go up to Shooter’s World and see what they have on hand these days.

Enough is freakin’ enough.

Gorgeous Morning

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The sun has risen on a magnificent clear day. Ruby the Corgi and I have circumambulated the ‘Hood, and now we’re back in the shack waiting for the water to heat so as to make a pot of awesome coffee. And I think…

I’m thinking about a friend of mine and his wife, who was one of my graduate students…

…he used to get up in the morning and walk to work, while she got up and made trouble. And oh, my goodness! Could that lady make trouble! She went to graduate school to learn the best techniques. Seriously: she had taken an M.A. and then pursued a Ph.D. in political science. 😀

They lived in a handsome patio home within walking distance of a prominent horse track, where he had a moderately prestigious job.  Meanwhile, her day job was to make trouble in the condo association. She was very good at it.

When they started finding death threats taped to their front gate, they decided to sell up and move to a house in a nearby development called Moon Valley. And that place was a piece of junk!

I know, because I helped them repair and paint the interior before they moved in. The south-facing wall was so flimsy and so spectacularly uninsulated that the tile floor was actually hot under my bare feet for a good yard inside the building. And flimsy indeed: you could take your fist and punch a hole through the outside wall. Reach inside, unlock the front door’s deadbolt, and let yourself in.

No kidding: it did happen.

He came down with cancer and died, not at all pleased with his wife’s behavior. She shifted around to a few condos and apartments here in the Valley; then moved back to the Midwest, where her family lived. Can’t find her online, so I figure she must have passed away by now — she was no spring chicken when I knew her, and that was some years ago.

Ah, the thoughts that occupy one’s mind on a gorgeous morning….

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a…NUT CASE!

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LOL! Yes, I do believe we’ve ascertained that it’s a nut case, abetted by an industrious bird.

Or…who knows?…maybe  by a space alien.

Just now I’m perched on a kitchen chair in the garage, trying to ascertain whether a persistent beep!… beep!… beep!… is coming from the house-wide smoke alarm system, from something gone on the fritz in the car, or from the resident fruitcake’s imagination.

😀

And lo! It begins to appear that the perp is actually a bird. WHAT bird remains unknown: this is not a call I’ve ever heard from the local avian set…and I’ve lived here since 19 and aught-62. I think I would have learned to recognize a fire-alarmish beep coming from a bird.

****

Well… Yeah. And No.

It IS the flickin’ smoke alarm. Not the giant garage-based house-wide fire alarm system, but one of the cute little portable smoke alarms that you attach to your ceiling with a Velcro strip.

It’s sitting out there chirping to itself as we sit here, type, and guzzle coffee.

😀

So in a couple of hours — whenever I get off my duff, whenever the Ace Hardware store is open, I’ll have to traipse out and buy a new smoke alarm. Then figure out how to get it back up in the garage.

If that one is crapping out, it means all the rest of them are on the verge of crapping out, too. Hmmm…let’s see…. Hmmmmmm….

Not to say Uh oh….

Come to get up off my duff and check, and what do I see but that most of the li’l cheapo fire alarms have long been retired from service. FIVE of them have been removed from their stations.

WTF?

Welp. That’ll be a li’l chore for Bila the Handyman. He can climb up on a ladder and replace the darn things. Won’t he be pleased!

They must have crapped out one at a time, with lengthy periods in between. Otherwise I would’ve noticed that we…uhhhh….no longer have a functioning smoke alarm in most of the rooms.

/eyeroll/

Ohhhh well. I’ve got a bunch of other chores for him to do. So this will enrich his month’s income nicely.

*****

Along comes, of all things, a stray German shepherd!

She comes trotting up the street to the front patio and peers in the gates.

Ruby is beside herself with fascination. Neither dog makes a move to eat the other one.

Hmmmmm…. She has no collar. No ID. oboyoboy would i like to have THAT dawg!

uh oh… That’s not nice, is it?

Oh well. Before I can engage a plan to steal her, she trots off down the street.

The damn smoke alarms continue to beep. I begin to suspect it’s not the little portable alarms, but the ancient house-wide alarm that some previous owner installed, lo these many years ago.

I have NO idea how to turn it off or even if it can be turned off (thought it was turned off at the time I moved in here).

Seems like if you could shut it off, it would’ve been turned off by a prior owner, since it was nonfunctional when I appeared on the scene.

Cripes. The wandering pooch is after the neighbor’s stray cat. Oh well…it gets them both outta my yard, anyway.

The beeping continues. Could it be a bird, cheeping outside?

Hm. Anything’s possible. I guess.

If so, it’s a bird with an alto cheep. That’s kinda weird.

One of those days…

A…a…n…d furthermore….

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Here’s what was going on yesterday evening, while Ruby the Corgi and I were doggy-walking and dodging bullets.

{sigh}

Y’know, this stuff is gettin’ old. I’m beginning to think SDXB was right; time to move to Sun City, where you can enjoy the Silence of the Mausoleum, day in and night out.

Having lived in Sun City when my parents moved there, dragging me with them and dumping me at the University of Arizona, I really, really do not want to live there again. So, when SDXB announced he was headed west, I refused to go with him. But sweartagod, I’m beginning to think that may have been a mistake.

At the time SDXB moved out there, it was fairly calm here in North Phoenix, for a big-city neighborhood. But…that’s not so true anymore. It feels like every time you turn around, along comes some new shenanigan. You can’t take the dog for a walk around the block without carrying a pistol with you.

But…my problem with Sun City is that I don’t wanna live in a mausoleum. And that’s what the place feels like. The silence of the tomb reigns. Plus you have that generation’s 1950s-style hatred of minority: the place is Whiteyville with a vengeance.

One of my friends moved out there from the East Valley, delighted at the prospect of living in a place designed for retirees. Problem is, it’s a place designed for white retirees…and he ain’t one of those. The locals ganged up on the poor guy and hounded him until he moved out!

Guess I should have warned him. But as a practical matter, it’s been over 60 years since my parents moved to Sun City. And frankly, I assumed the locals would have come into the 21st century by now. Wrong!

That notwithstanding, I find it a dreary and depressing venue. Weirdly enough, I like the sound of children playing. And even of an occasional teenager blasting the car radio as they cruise up the street. That, plus it’s a 40-minute drive into central Phoenix, where my son lives. I’d never see the guy again!

Well. You don’t have to move to a ghetto for old folks to escape the constant whiz of flying bullets. Other areas of the city are reasonably quiet and safe.

Problem is, they’re a lot more expensive than this part of town. Plus they’re further from M’hijito’s house.

I kinda doubt that I could get enough for this house to buy another house in points east. Might be able to get into a fairly tony North Central high-rise apartment…but then what am I gonna do with Ruby?

Plus…truth to tell, I love this house. It’s a couple of bedrooms too large, but otherwise it’s perfect for me.

  • It’s in a moderately safe neighborhood.
  • It’s close to my preferred shopping venues.
  • It’s easy to keep clean.
  • It has a nice pool…one that, for an exorbitant price, responds with Pool Joy to the ministrations of a hired pool dude.
  • It has gorgeous mature trees. And desert landscaping.
  • It has adequately nice neighbors.

Why on earth would I want to move?

Lovely Uptown Phoenix

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rrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr HONK HONK HONK RRRRRRRRRRR beep beep beep thwack thwack thwack thwhack…. Ahhh, the lovely melody of the ‘Hood! Major wrecky-poo to the west of us on Conduit of Blight, just as Ruby and I stepped out the front door for a doggy-walk.

So we head out in the opposite direction. An hour later, the cop copters are flying away and apparently most of the mayhem is cleaned up.

Hm. This might not have been a wreck. It may have been yet another moment of mayhem: apparently a shooting incident took place over there. Hmmmm… No, don’t think it’s the same episode. The shooting thing took place on or near the freeway itself. This afternoon’s moment of fun looked like it happened on a surface street. Probably.

Then we have this little bit of fun: Apparently the water in our parts is contaminated with lead from the pipes that the city has no intention of replacing. Guess Ruby and I should be drinking bottled water. $$$$

And this one from yesterday…

Starts to make Sun City look good, eh?