Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Here We Go Again…

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Dammit! Cop helicopter buzzing the neighborhood to the west of us.

By golly, I’m tired of this stuff! Every time you turn around, here’s another Happening.

Part of it is because we live directly south of a low-income, high-crime district. SOMETHING is always going on up there.

Only way to get away from that is to sell my home and move to a higher-rent, lower-crime zone.

But ya know what? I LIKE my house. And I like my neighbors. And I like our location. And no, I do NOT want to move to some other district.

This is an old-line, moderately upscale central-city neighborhood. Prices here are moderate, too. Moving to a similar neighborhood in a “safer” part of the city would cost me a proverbial arm & a leg. And, as one cop remarked, it wouldn’t accomplish the goal. ALL neighborhoods in the Phoenix area are plagued with crime.

Crime is endemic here. You can’t get away from it.

So, no. There’s no point in spending 87 gerjillion dollars to move to Scottsdale or Moon Valley or…whatnot. It’s all of a kind.

Afternoon Report from the Hubs of Hades

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{Chortle!}  And now, comin’ up on 4:00 p.m., the outdoor thermometer registers 105º in the darkest shade of the back porch.

Garden spot, eh? Dontcha wish you lived here?

Oh, you do live here? My sympathies!! 😀

If my father were still living, I’d brain him for dragging me and my mother to this unholy place. Ohhhhhh well! Too late! 

She loved it, though. She even loved the unholy roar of the fighter jets from Luke Air Force Base, just outside of their home in Sun City. “Ohhhh,” she would simper,” “it’s the sound of freedom!”

Well. No, muther. That’s the sound of World War III, headed our way. 

Ohhh well. Whatever chimes your bells.

She did love Sun City, and incredibly, she did love the sound of those gawdawful war planes. Or at least, so she claimed. 😀

****

Hey! PRESTO CHANGEO!  Amazon just showed up at the front door with a package of wonderful Bigelow teabags. SIX BOXES of them!!!

Who’d’ve thunk it?

Now I won’t have to buy tea for a good year! One fewer hassle, eh?

Y’know…that isn’t something that I would’ve thunk, at the time I moved into this house here in (un)lovely Central Phoenix. But y’know… Amazon is some kinda Godsend.

By now I can’t even count the number of trips that outfit has spared me, traipsing around overheated, batsh!t Phoenix. I hate driving around this city, and you may be sure I like walking around it in 110-degree heat even less. Now that my son has kiped my car, Amazon’s deliveries pay for themselves many times over.

Without that car, at this time of year I’d have to make shopping trips at 6:00 in the morning, the instant the Albertson’s opens. And frankly, walking back and forth to the local stores, with our honored passing drivers hollering obscenities at me, is NOT what I wanna do at any time of the year.

If my son weren’t here, I would be SO GONE from this place. If I stayed in the Valley: probably to Fountain Hills. If not: to points in California, Colorado, or the Mogollon Rim. You couldn’t keep me here: not on a bet.

But…he IS here in lovely central Phoenix. So here I am, too.

And yeah: Amazon is one thing that makes this place more or less livable.

Hotter Than the Hubs….

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HO-lee maquerel!  As we scribble — coming on to 6:00 p.m. — the thermometer in the shade of the back porch reads 109 degrees.

Garden spot, eh?

Just walked over to the park and back… Couldn’t take the Ruby, because the pavements — all of them — are too hot for her feet. Couldn’t make it all the way around, either: the air is too hot for the human!

Ugh! WHAT a place!!!!  What on earth possessed my parents to drag us to this corner of Hell, lo! these many years ago?

O’course…you could ask what on earth possesses me to stay here….

Just crazy, I guess.

Actually, it’s because my son is here. He has a job here. His dad is here. And he ain’t about to go anyplace else.

So…. I reckon as long as he stays in Phoenix, I’ll stay here too. If he decamps to some other garden spot, I may follow him. If he goes someplace where I can’t follow…well! Then I’ll be on my way to the higher altitudes of the hills around Tucson or else headed for Payson or Prescott (small towns in the plateaus above the desert) or…maybe straight back to San Francisco, where I belong.

Those exigencies don’t make me like this place a helluva lot more, though. It’s fine in the fall, the winter, and the early spring — climate-wise, anyway. The overall Los-Angelization is a trait I could do without, any time of the year or the day.

Who’s That Knockin’ at My Door?

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Just realized…. These days, I never answer the door when somebody comes a-knocking. Or a-doorbell ringing, either.

Seriously: it used to be — back in the Dark Ages — that when you went to someone’s house and rang the bell or knocked on the door, they answered by opening the door(!!) and greeting you. Today, I won’t open the door unless I know who’s out there.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. My front door is secured by a heavy-duty prison-like screen door, on the outside of the usual decoratively wooden door. So, the exterior door — the real one — has a set of bars and outside that, a thick sheet of solid metal screen. Getting through that would not be easy!

My next-door neighbor has a camera installed above the front door. It relays an image of any caller to a screen inside the door. And no, she won’t answer the door unless she knows who you are and why you’re there.

Awful that we have to be that scared, isn’t it?

One might say times have changed and so our door-answering customs have changed…the implication being that in the good ole’ days you didn’t have to worry about who or what was out on the doorstep.

But no. I don’t think the folks who show up at your door are any different than they used to be. If they’re not a friend or neighbor, then they’re trying to sell you something or (of late) they’re census takers, surveying the locals. It’s a rare bird that poses a real threat.

That notwithstanding: These days I peer out a window before I go to the door. If I don’t recognize the person, I don’t answer. Or else I holler through the window to ask them what they want — and nine times out of ten, send them away.

Now I will say: I don’t want to be hustled by some door-to-door seller. Period. So one reason that door doesn’t get answered is to make it easier to repel those jerks. As for census takers and the like: they need to show me a mighty authentic-looking ID to get me to the door.

Fine times we live in, eh?

Not Exactly HOTTER than the Hubs…

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But at least VEERING toward hot as the Hubs of Hades. Outdoors: hot, sticky, gummy weather. Indoors: sticky and gummy.

July is the time of year when you do NOT want to be killing time in Arizona. The heat is fierce, and no, it is most surely not a “dry heat.” It’s as humid and sticky as (un)lovely Saudi Arabia used to be when we lived out there. Yuck!

Wunderground claims it’s only 94º outside. Supposed to get up to 107º during the day. If you asked me, I’d say we’d reached that goal already! At ten in the morning…

Ugh. If my parents were still living, I’d brain them both for dragging me to this hellish place.

They thought Sun City, over on the far west side of Phoenix, was just loverly. 

Yeah…

No accounting for taste, eh? If you love the sound of fighter jets roaring up and down, starting along about 5 in the morning: just loverly. If you love folks who hate kids and wish to live in a place where no such critters exist: loverly. If you love folks who hate people whose skin is darker than theirs and wish to live in a place where no dusky types reside: loverly. If you love grocery stores that sell nothing more exotic than a T-bone steak: loverly.

Ye gawds, did I hate living out there!

Finally got a job in town, one that supported a studio apartment’s rental. So…was able to escape loverly Sun City.

Now in my old age: here I am, parked in North Phoenix….most certainly not in the retirement environs of Sun City. To this day, the appeal of that place escapes me. Reckon it must be….what? ….

The whitey-whitness (No kidding: just a few months ago an African-American friend of mine bought a house out there. Within weeks he was literally HOUNDED out of the place!)

The ultra-tidy sameness of the architecture and of what passes for the landscaping. (Nothing like a gravel lawn to stay nice and neat, eh?)

The relative cheapness of the houses. (A comparable house in town would cost half again as much…or more.)

The remoteness from the rough-and-tumble noise of a big city. (Sun City is characterized by the silence of the tomb….when fighter jets aren’t blasting back and forth.)

One could go on and on, I suppose….but one would prefer not to.

Never was so happy as when I got into graduate school and made my escape to a university campus.

Ugh!!!

The Weirdness of People

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Okay, here’s the Question of the Day:

Why would somebody steal a bag of clothespins?

Old clothespins, for that matter? The thing has been hanging out there for YEARS, probably since I moved into this house, and nobody has ever bothered with it.

This morning I stumble out into the rain and find, there on the covered side porch, that the bag of clothespins that’s hung — yes, for years — from the covered porch’s little laundry line is GONE.

* No, it’s not in the garage
* No, it’s not on the back porch
* No, it’s not anywhere in the house

So…presumably, some yard guy or repairman stole it. A bag of clothespins. Can you imagine?

What possesses people? Forgodsake! A package of 50 only costs about $6.00 from Amazon. Presumably they’re cheaper in a local grocery store or dime store that doesn’t have to ship them to you.

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WHOA! Just found a brand-new package of classic wooden clothespins, sitting in the garage.

Certainly wouldn’t want a morning to pass without some stupid PITA, eh? 😀

Ahhh, decrepitude!  What fun gettin’ old is!!!

Says a lot about my own senility: that I didn’t even remember I’d had to buy a whole new package of clothespins!  And if that ain’t scary, I’d sure like to know what is….

Also says a lot about people: What kind of jerk steals a bag of clothespins off a backyard clothesline?

Can you imagine? Now I’ll have to stash this new trove in the garage…they cannot be left to hang on the porch clothesline.

So. Now that we know I can’t leave clothespins on the clothesline, we need to find someplace to keep this recovered bonanza. Dayum! What a nuisance.

They’ll have to go in a box on top of the dryer in the garage, I guess. Thereby taking up space normally occupied by laundry detergent and bleach and whatnot.

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Disturbing.
Seven Ways from Sunday!