Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Heeee! It keeps getting better…

by

Well, by damn! I found a copy of my driver’s license. 

Who would ever have expected such a thing? 😀

So now I don’t have to put up a friend or a taxi driver to schlep me down to the county and wait while I stand in line and I stand in line and I stand in line and I stand in line and I stand in line and I stand in line and ….. Ad effing infinitum. 

Seriously: the lines in that place are freakin’ endless. So this is a big relief.

It brings us back around to the question of whether I’m going to continue to drive the tank at all after this. 

And y’know…hafta tellya the truth: I’m inclined to think not. 

Why should I?

It has become surprisingly easy to get around this city without a car. Not as easy as in San Francisco. But…close.

Add to that the fact that an Uber driver lives right across the street from me! 

Think o’that!

Between Uber and the city’s hugely improved public transit, the truth is…I may not need a car at all. If something comes up that it’s just totally unavoidable, there’s a place a block up the street where I can rent one!

Well. For sure, we’re going to experiment with that thesis. Let’s give it a few weeks to see if I can get around, hassle-free, without owning a tank.

Can you imagine? Not to have to do battle with

* licensing
* maintenance
* gasoline
* keeping the car out of the local thieves’ hands
* storing it in a garage
* pouring money into it
* pouring money into it
* and pouring money into it…

Jeeemineee! This looks like a whole new world! 

STILL hotter than the hubs…

by

My GAWD!!!!  Ruby and I: just back from our morning perambulation of the park. By 7:30, it was SOOO HOT and SOOO WET out there, the human was literally drenched. Horrible!

Hideously reminiscent of (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, in the sun-scorched sand by the waves of the Persian Gulf. Gawdawful place!!!!  So glad to NOT be there.

And in fact, if my son weren’t here in (un)lovely Phoenix, you can be sure I would NOT be here. Between the ever-urbanizing, ugly city and the truly ugly summer weather, this would not be where I would choose to live.

Well, one nice thing about this morning: the nasty weather kept most of the air-headed dog-walkers indoors. So Ruby and I didn’t have to dodge a lot of out-of-control pooches, for a change.

Why are people soooo stupid about their dogs???

Anyway, what we did get to see was an almost brand-new baby being pushed along in a carriage by his spectacularly proud dad. That was cool!!!

Metaphorically speaking…

Tooling along thinking…man! I’ve gotta get a lawyer to replace the very late and once great Mike Kimerer. We need to be sure all the wills and paperwork and debts and whatnot are set up for M’jito. I don’t want to surprise him by croaking over and leaving some kind of unholy mess for him to plow through, instead of an orderly estate.

Nobody’s there at Mike’s office: apparently his partners (office-mates may be more like it???) just shut everything down and threw out his files. My will was in one of those files…

I guess I’ll try to reach the ex-husband (high-test lawyer, retired) to see if he can refer me to someone to be sure all that stuff is in order.  Failing that:

????

 

 

 

Okay, I give up….

by

Tooling along halfway through today’s FaM post, when WordPress CRASHED the post. Can’t find it. Can’t reconstruct it.

AAAAARRRGHHHH!

Like we don’t have enough frustration in our ordinary boring lives?

So: toss it all, forget it all, start over from scratch and f*ck it all. Especially the latter. Grrrrrrrrr!

My son having purloined my vehicle, I need to walk through the 100-degree heat to the nearest grocery store to get food and treats for the Queen of the Corgis. Either that or pay an Uber driver to tote me over to the store.

LOL! Speaking of frustration…

It looks like he has also purloined whatever wine or beer remained in the house…though truth to tell, I think the stock has been low or empty for several days. The main issue is dog food. But…we have half-a-dozen cans hiding on the shelf, and about a third of a bag of kibble. So it looks like I can wait until tomorrow morning and hike down to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts to get that stuff, rather than hiring Uber to drive me right this g.d. minute.

As for the beer…meh! That can wait until tomorrow, too. Or until someday.

LOL!

Y’know, this situation gets eye-openinger and eye-openinger. What it reveals, incredibly, that if it were not for the heat, I would not need to own a car at all. 

No kidding! Not to say Can you imagine?

This house is within a few minutes’ walk of two major supermarkets (Albertson’s, Fry’s), a gourmet hippy-dippy store (Sprouts), a community clinic (in the Albertson’s shopping center!), a car rental lot, a computer repair shop, a clothing store, a veterinary, …one can go on and on. Between those and Amazon, there’s really no need to leave the neighborhood, except maybe to make a run on the doctor’s or the dentist’s office…for which you can rent a cab or an Uber. Add to that the train running up and down Main Drag West and the busses on Main Drag West, Main Drag East, Main Drag North, and Main Drag South…and…well…

Seriously: why own a car at all??? 

Think of the sheer volume of cash you could save by using the public transit and the local taxi services…only when you need them? Between the taxes and the upkeep and the fuel, a car really is a hole in the ground into which to pour money. If you organized your local travel needs logically enough, you really would not need to own a vehicle.

And dayum! If the roads here were safe for the purpose, a good bicycle would almost eliminate the need for any gasoline-powered chariot.

Well, of course: they’re not safe for that (or any) purpose. But that notwithstanding, the proximity of so many stores and services here cuts out the need for a good 90% of gasoline-powered transit, here in the ‘Hood.

Seriously: I’m thinking I may not buy another car. And I’m beginning to wonder WHY that hasn’t been obvious to me before now.

Interesting, isn’t it? You get so much in the habit of doing things in thus-and-such an established way, that you don’t think of the alternatives. 

 

Glub!!!!!

by

You thought Arizona has “a dry heat,” right?  HAR HAR!!! Just now it feels like Ras Tanura did, when we lived there on the shore of the Persian Gulf: HOT and WET, WET, WETTER THAN WET.

Ugh. Ghastly morning!

Ruby and I: just back from circumnavigating the hood, through this very soggy doggy day. Ugh! Indeed.

M’hijito is gallivanting around the Midwest on business. No idea when he’ll be back: presumably in a couple of days. Looking forward to his return…and am curious to learn how things went for him there.

Traipsing traipsing doggy-traipsing...around the park. Past the house that’s having to be completely rebuilt after the previous owners trashed it. Through the ‘Hood: a pretty place to live.

Every time I walk around this place, I thank my lucky stars that I stumbled upon a Realtor named John Shackleford. He’s the one who brought me to this place, when I was looking for a house of my own after having escaped marriage. It really is a nice area; North Central but not North Central: therefore not North Central prices. That’s how I was able to afford to move here.

My first house here, which I shared with SDXB, was less than a block from the dratted light-rail line. That thing made a lot of noise and, not surprisingly, imported a less than desirable population. SDXB eventually moved out, but bought a house in the neighborhood — actually, just a block from my present palace.

Eventually, I decided to move out of the place we’d occupied — after our idiot city fathers installed that light-rail up Conduit of Blight Blvd, the noise and the human trash from the thing made for an unpleasant place to live. I’d planned to move out of the neighborhood — probably to Scottsdale, East Phoenix, or back to the Encanto district. But this place — a block from where SDXB had moved, came up…far enough from the horrid light-rail to be reasonably quiet, just a block from Lover-Boy, and handsomely renovated by the sellers.

SDXB subsequently moved to Sun City, where — being a stodgy sort — he’s very happy. I’d lived there with my parents and just hated it, so refused to follow him out there.

Soooo…here I am, ensconced happily enough on the edge of unholy Sunnyslope (you don’t wanna know!) and within a few short minutes’ drive of my son’s house. It’s incredibly convenient:

  • 3 major supermarkets (one of them a Sprouts) within easy walking distance
  • a doctor’s office, in the same realm
  • a Walgreen’s: same precinct
  • a veterinarian within walking distance
  • a train running up a main drag, but far enough from the house to avoid noise
  • armies of busses running up the two main drags to the east

One thing is for sure: you don’t need a car here. And that’s good, since my son filched mine…for my own good, dontcha know.

😀  I don’t happen to agree with him that I shouldn’t be driving — that’s BS. But truth to tell, in this location I don’t have to drive! Everything I need is within easy walking distance, even including a doctor and a vet. To gild that lily, a guy across the street is driving an Uber cab.

Seriously: if Uber stays in business, it will be several years before I’m forced to move into a horrible old-folkerie. With any luck, indeed, I’ll die before that happens. And so I will live out most or even all of my last few years in my own calm, quiet and pretty little place. With my own swimming pool, my own yard, and my own funny little dog.

What more could one ask?

The Joys of Living in Phoenix

by

10:52 p.m.

What a fukkin’ ZOO this place is!

Rousted by the dog: got up to let her out to do her Thing. Spotted a cop copter buzzing the neighb0rhood.

Managed to urge the dog along and then dodge back in the house. Cop is still buzzing around over Main Drag West…essentially right over my old house’s roof.

Oh…hold that statement. Here he comes over here.

Here at FaM, Main Drag West also goes by the name Conduit of Blight. That’s pretty much what it is: a thoroughfare that brings criminals, delinquents, and pursuing cops into the ‘Hood. Tiresome as hell!!

Speaking of tiresome, I yam TIRED and wish to go back to sleep. Looks like that’s not gonna happen for awhile.

What. A. Place!

Hot enough to fry your brain…if you still have one…

by

WILL WordPress let me back in this time???

Hmmmmmm…..  The answer would appear to be “Yep!” But…let us hold our wind and water…we don’t KNOW that it will let me post this squib. Ohhhh well...got nothin’ else to do just now.

M’hijito, my honored son, just called on the horn. He’s on his way out of town and all worried that I’m not competent to buy a bag of groceries. Or, more to the point, that I’ll try to walk to the grocery store (a distance of about three blocks) in the broiling heat.

{chortle!}  What CAN one say?

* Yes, I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.
* I’ll call Uber and ask them to drive me the three blocks to the store.
* Don’t worry: if the dawg and I run out of food before you get back, we’ll just do without until you get here.
* Pass me the goddam bottle of wine.

See, the problem I have these days is that people don’t seem to recognize when I’m kidding. And I don’t understand why. ‘Cause I’ve always been something of a kidder. Why isn’t it obvious anymore?

Well, to be honest (and no, NOT kidding this time), it’s 105 degrees out there. And no, I wouldn’t be happy about my 80-ish mother wandering around, alone, in 105-degree heat.

And that’s what we’ve got right now, in the balmy shade of the back patio: 105 degrees. Hevvin only knows what it is in the full sun. 

But…y’know…I’m stupid, but I’m not THAT stupid.

Of course I’m not about to junket up Conduit of Blight Blvd and across the parking lot at Conduit of Blight and Main Drag North through 105-degree heat. Soooo…WHY does he think I might actually be that stupid?

***

Okay….let us imagine some part of the agèd brain is still functional. How ARE we gonna get the chow we need?

Here in the ‘Hood, we have several possibilities for the agèd and the witless:

* Uber. This neighborhood is overrun with Uber cabs. If I wanted someone to drive me to a grocery store RIGHT NOW, I could call Uber.

* A train. It rides on tracks that run north and south past the Funny Farm, less than three blocks to the west.

* Busses. They run on the same thoroughfare; just not as often.

* Feet. The shopping center is only three blocks up to the north! Even in the blasting heat, a person in normal health (as I happen to be) is not going to expire from walking that far.

By the same token, neither am I about to pay a bus or a train to carry me three blocks to a store. Gimme a break!

* Time and the River Flowing… As a practical matter, in about six hours the sun will have gone down, the air will be much cooler, and walking up to that shopping center will be a simple and safe matter.

Yeah…WAIT until the sun goes down, forgodsake! Or start before the sun gets high enough to fry the landscape! How hard is that?

Oh well. Truth to tell, I wouldn’t have been real happy about my mother gallivanting in 105-degree heat. So I can’t bellyache too much!

Further truth to tell, though, the issue is not the ambient temperature. It’s the ambient humidity.

Ugh!!! As we scribble, it’s overcast out there (got that?: 105 degrees and cloudy!). And yeah, that does make for some real unpleasant heat — even dangerous heat.

So…yeah. Afraid it’s not a good afternoon to trot on over to the Albertson’s.