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Urban life

Start of a New Day from Hell???

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LOL!  Honestly: it just doesn’t stop! When we say “whatever can go wrong will go wrong,” we ain’t kidding!

Weirdly, I locked myself out of the house this morning, along about dawn.

HOW? That escapes me.

I thought the door was unlocked when I stepped outside in front, into the dim early light.

Well.

No.

Wrong!

Try to get back in: LOCKED TIGHT!

Side gate: locked.

All the windows: closed and locked.

So….I couldn’t get back in the house. And Ruby was trapped inside.

Fortunately, the neighbors were already up. Tom (the male neighbor over there) was puttering with his car.

So I descended on them…O lucky them!

Thank goodness they’re VERY nice people. Tom was able to get the door open.

And now I’m assigned to get some extra keys made, so as to give one or two to them.

Yes, my son does have a key. But…y’know…strange as this may sound, he has a JOB.

Right. He can’t jump up out of his desk chair and come charging up here to rescue his idiot mother every time she gets herself into some new predicament.

So. It was a disturbing way to start the day. 

Evening in the Park

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Ruby and her Human just back from the dusk perambulation of the neighborhood park. 😀

Oh, my!  It’s simply impossible not to love the young parents and their little kids over there!  Impossible not to love the teenagers hanging out.

What a wonderful place!

It was sheer, raw luck — and a savvy Realtor — that brought us to the ‘Hood. And I must say: I do feel incredibly lucky to be here.

In the years since SDXB and I moved into this neighborhood, the place has gentrified at a steady pace, property values drifting toward the stratosphere and affluent young professionals moving in with their families. Today it’s a lovely, upper-middle-class neighborhood, one that feels safe and pleasant and happy.

We shall see how long I can hang in here, as I sink into my dotage. But ideally, I’d like to be able to leave this house to M’hijito, so he can move in here if he likes or else sell the place for what will be, in the future, some outrageous price. One way the other, it will redound to his advantage.

And, I expect, to mine…over the years.

Ditch the Class Snobbery! I’M IN LOVE!!

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O…M…G… I just got a wonderful whack upside the head!

Did you read yesterday’s FAM post?  OINK, we say. Lady! Come down out of your classist eagle’s nest!!!

Okay…. Eventually I quit sitting here going oink oink oink and resigned myself to having to walk up to the (muy hispanico) corner at Main Drag West and Conduit of Blight North.

Trudge through the steamy heat and arrive in a classic corner shopping center. Barge into the El Rancho supermarket. Grab a cart and stroll around. And…

And…gosh.

I like this place!

Damned if it doesn’t have all the kinds of things I like to eat and to cook — bein’ WT myself, I guess, I fit right in. The staff: quiet, nice folks. The other shoppers: damned if they’re not my kinda people!

Suddenly, I’m NOT outside my social class…as is invariably the case at the ritzy AJ’s or the upscale Albertson’s.

I’m walkin’ around in there and thinking, “This ain’t real. IS it?”

But….yeah: it IS real. 

For the first time in I don’t know HOW long, I feel…where I belong. And that is not where everyone around me is better than me…

What fun! Omigawd! I felt like I’d gone home!

Gosh. I wish I’d found that place sooner…like when I first moved into the neighborhood, 87 gerjillion years ago.

Classism lives, folks!

Another Icky-Sticky Day

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Need to walk(!) down to the nearest supermarket to restock supplies. But… At 7:30 in the morning it’s pushin’ 80 degrees out there. And overcast! In Arizona, that makes for a hot and sticky morning.

Ohhhh how do I not feel like trudging down there?

Actually, there’s a closer supermarket-like affair in the corner commerce just to the north of us. But they target Latino shoppers from the mercado just to the north of us. Not a bad store, but they stock items that I would never buy, and don’t stock items that I regularly use.

Walking down to the Albertson’s will entail dodging through the neighborhood — adding steps on steps — in order to avoid the sh!theads on 19th Avenue who scream obscenities out their car windows at every passing woman. Even a doddering old bat!

Guess they’re so stupid they think that’s funny. I don’t: I think it’s damned annoying.

There isn’t an easy way to reach either of the corner shopping centers on foot from the neighborhood. Because several tracts built at different times stand between here and those markets, you pretty much HAVE to walk down Main Drag West to get to the stores.

The prospect of doing so in melting heat and sticky humidity does not appeal.

Nope. Not a-tall.

Ay, señors y señoras! I do believe we’ll be shopping latino today. That (mostly) Mexican supermarket carries about everything I really need, and it also has some fun stuff to experiment with. And it’s only about a ten-minute walk to the north of us. It would help a lot if I’d contrived to make myself fluent in Spanish during all the years I’ve lived in the American Southwest. But…never too late, eh?

In fact, maybe it would be worth taking a year of introductory Spanish at one of the community colleges here. If I could figure out how to get a ride to said institution.

Hmmmm….  This is innaresting:
https://www.thespanishexperiment.com/review

Since I’m fluent in French and can stumble around in Italian, an online course in Spanish just might do the trick. Bet I could learn enough to navigate the local commerce.

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s past time to learn Spanish!

What Possesses People???

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Honest to Gawd! Are people malicious, or just plain stupid?

We’re talking about your regular workers, not some burglar or passing vandal. The yard guys. The cleaning lady. Arrrrghh! 

These days, I hire a phalanx of workers to keep up the Funny Farm:

  • Pool Dude
  • Gerardo the Miracle Yard Dude
  • Cleaning Lady from Heaven
  • Smartest Plumber on the Planet
  • Air-Conditioning Dude

And on and on and endlessly on. Together, they keep this place running, and see to it that nothing falls apart.

But singly…one wonders if any of them has a measurable IQ….

This evening I stumble out into the backyard behind the dog. As I’m trying to call her back into the house, I realize the motion-sensitive back porch light isn’t coming on.

Dang! Did the bulb burn out? Or what?

After dorking around with the system for a bit, I realize…waaaitaminit here! There’s nothing wrong with the outside lights. What’s happened is…Jeez! Some idiot has switched off ALL the lights out there! 

HUH? 

Why would you think I wanted the lights turned off if I’d left them all turned on? Why would I install motion-sensitive lights if I wanted to turn the backyard lights on and off manually?

O’course, this event could signal something more malign than mere stupidity. Somebody could have switched off the lights so they could creep around the backyard in a burgling project.

One never knows.

This, of course, is why one has a dog and a firearm. But still… Grrrrr! It’s the principle of the thing. Right?

Yea, verily: more malign than mere stupidity…. Just tried to turn on the motion-sensitive west-side lights. And…yeah. They don’t come on. At all. Someone has unscrewed or broken them.

No, not likely they burned out: we have four of them out there. One or two might burn out after extensive on’s and off’s. But not all four at once.

So…most likely: someone has set up the place so he can burgle around the house & yard unmolested.

Tomorrow I’ll have to call the electrician and have him replace those outdoor lights. Let’s hope whoever has been messing with them doesn’t decide to come a-visiting tonight….

Makes moving into a holding pen for old folks look better and better…

Makes a .38 look damn good, too!

What Next, Lord?

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It’s now an hour and a half later than when I wrote this morning’s post. I take it into my feeble little noggin to walk up to the nearby Albertson’s grocery store to pick up a few minor necessaries. Right….

Step out the front door and….

ROAR!!!!

Cop helicopter blasts overhead. Circles the neighborhood: round and round he goes, clearly searching for someone.

Someone you may be sure we do not want to get to know…

Back into the house. Lock the doors behind me. Double-check that all the other doors and windows are locked.

See why I find myself thinking, almost obsessively, about moving someplace else?

Ugh!

I really do begin to think that if I’m going to stay in a single-family home, I need to move down into my son’s neighborhood. Houses there are within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s overpriced market, plus a nearby aged shopping center hosts a large Fry’s supermarket.

Hafta say that I no longer feel safe in Phoenix.

O’course, I never did: you’d be a fool to think all was hunky and dorey in this place, wherever you live & whatever the time of day. But these days I do feel more uncomfortable than I used to.

I never used to feel unsafe inside my home, in broad daylight.

And that’s telling me it may be time to move.

But move where?

  • My son’s neighborhood? Frankly, it’s no safer there than here…in fact, it’s probably less safe.
  • Fountain Hills, whither my cousin betook herself? Very nice, very toney…but wayyyy too far from where my son lives.
  • Tempe, suburban home of Arizona State University? Meh! It’s about as bland as you can get. Does have, as one of its advantages, easy proximity to the many cultural activities at the university campus. But…how likely am I to take advantage of those things?
  • South Scottsdale, where my best friend and her husband lived for awhile after they returned to the Valley from an excursion in the Virgin Islands? No better than Tempe in the Meh! department.
  • Into an old-folkerie? The Beatitudes and Orangewood retirement “homes” await. Problem: I hate, loathe, and despise institutional living. And I’m not anxious to wind up my life in one of those places.

I can’t say that I exactly feel unsafe, here in the Hood. It feels more like…nuisanceferizing.

Yeah: one damnfool nuisance after another.

The cop flyovers are nuisances. No, I don’t feel at risk. But I do feel that I have to get up, close and lock all the exterior doors, and check the windows to be sure they’re secured shut.

Do I want to do without the cop flyovers? Hell, no! Those cops are all we have between us and a legion of sh!theads.

But…how wise is it, really, to stay here much longer?