Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Porch Pirate Heaven

by

My house has a nice big courtyard in front, with two entry gates: one on the east side and one on the west side. This makes for a pleasant and welcoming front porch, and it also provides a nice fenced-in patio where Ruby the Corgi can watch the passers-by. And bark at them. Especially if they have a dog.

It also provides a nice sheltered spot for thieves. You know them: the guys who follow the UPS and U.S. Mail trucks around the neighborhood, watch for a driver to stop and leave a package at the door, then jump out, run up to the door, grab the loot, and take off down the street again after the delivery guy.

Many of the neighbors don’t have packages delivered to their homes at all. They rent a PO box and give out its address to people who send packages or important mail.

This, of course, means you have to get in your car — during business hours only — and schlep across town to the Mail Boxes USA store — dig out a special key, unlock the drawer, get your stuff (if it’s there…), close and relock the drawer, climb in your car, and haul the junk back to your house. What’s the point of having stuff delivered at all?

By way of addressing the porch pirate problem, I put up signs on each courtyard gate:

Welcome to Porch Pirate Heaven!
You’re Being Followed
Please Don’t Leave Packages
Outside the Gate
Place Them Inside the Patio
Ring the Doorbell!
Thank you! <3

You think I jest? Consider: A neighbor who put out cameras in front has caught videos of the local thieves following UPS and Mail Service trucks up to a front door, jumping out of their car as the delivery person trundles on down the street, running up to the door, grabbing the package, racing back to their vehicle, and continuing on down the road after the delivery truck.

Quite the little nuisance, eh?

Interestingly, I’ve found the Sign Strategy works surprisingly well. I’ve not had a single delivery stolen since I started posting this notice. Dunno whether the porch pirates just don’t want to come inside the courtyard, or whether they figure there’s probably a camera recording their antics. WhatEVER: since I’ve started with the sign, I haven’t lost a single delivery.

To my knowledge… 😉

And speakin’ of real estate…

by

…as we were saying yesterday, briefly, Zillow claims my li’l middle-class house is worth (hang onto your hat) $563,000!  And change.

What????????

Over half a million dollars for an aging tract house within walking distance (easy walking distance) of a dangerous slum? Seriously????

And horrors!

****

I return to the idle thought that maybe I ought to think about moving out to Scottsdale — more specifically, to the district known as McCormick Ranch. Once a very fancy-Dan tract, McCormick ranch is now a mid- to upper-middle-class suburb, filled with ticky-tacky construction set in seas of Bermuda grass. The area is relatively safe. Of course, no place in a big city is “safe,” but McCormick Ranch is far more so than the swaths of North Phoenix that border the alarming Sunnyslope tract, where I live now.

This proposition presents its challenges. The main one: I very much doubt I could get anywhere near that much for this house. And houses out in Scottsdale are pricier by far than the ones here in North Central on the edge of Sunnyslop.

To get into Scottsdale housing, I’d probably have to move into an apartment. And I don’t wanna.  I love my house and all its roominess. I love my swimming pool — my pool and no one else’s. I love the trash pickup service from the alleys. None of these appertain to apartment living.

And another important adjunct to this issue:  unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding, it doesn’t look like it would be worth moving unless I could get into a better area.

McCormick Ranch is not a better area than North Central Phoenix. The two districts are about on a par. Fairly affluent. Relatively low in crime. Close to upscale shopping. Attractively built middle-class homes. Decent schools. Sooo….

Why would I want to live there? 

* It’s ten minutes from the endlessly importuning Mayo Clinic. The gawdawful drives to see MayoDoc would go away, once and for all.

* Shopping is excellent, ranging from the high side of middle class to the high side of very much upper middle class.

* Proximity to lots of great restaurants.

But…but…waitminit here. 

* I don’t go to restaurants. I can cook lots better than that…for lots less change!

* These days I do about 75% of my clothes shopping online.

* I should base where I’m gonna live on the proximity of a doctor’s office? Uhhhh… don’t think so…

* The Ranch is a long way from my son’s neighborhood. If I moved out there, I’d hardly ever see him!

* I dunno if the Cleaning Lady from Heaven would be willing to drive way to Hell & Gone to clean the Funny Farm if it were in North Scottsdale.

***

Hmmmmm….  To my mind, the “Waitaminits” outweigh the benefits by about ten to one. Seriously: there aren’t enough positives to convince me that I should pull up (expensive!) stakes and move to the far side of Scottsdale.

So…one is led to apply that Fine Old Saw: When in doubt, don’t!

  • Doubt, indeed. There’s just not enough there to persuade me that I would benefit from moving. Benefit: in any way…
  • Socially (I know one! person who lives out there.)
  • Financially (Any benefit from moving to a tonier area will be outweighed by the costs of selling, buying, fix-up, and moving.)
  • Comfort-wise (My house is a luxurious palace; noplace on McCormick Ranch is any better, and most are not as good.)
  • Gasoline and mileage savings (I probably drive out to the Mayo Clinic no more than once a month. That’s hardly a motive to pull up stakes!)

So unless my son decides to move someplace else — say, he gets a job in another city — there’s really no reason for me to even consider buying a place in McCormick Ranch.

If he did move out of North Central Phoenix, I might move out, too. Either to follow him or to put some distance between me and the gangs. But as long as he’s in these parts…well, so am I!

Movin’ Movin’ Movin’….

by

LOL! This morning I happened to find myself contemplating my lifetime on the move. In the years since I was born to life on this planet, I have moved house twenty-five times. 

That’s just the places I can remember. Without a doubt, several others occurred when I was too little to know or remember much of anything.

My parents and I lived in…where?

* Richmond, California
* Long Beach, California
* San Francisco, California (several places, several times!)
* Long Beach, California (again, years later)
* Down by the docks near Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
* In Ras Tanura (a company town), Saudi Arabia (2 houses)
* Sun City, Arizona
* Tucson, Arizona
* Phoenix, Arizona (several places!)

Jeeeminy! At least 13 or 14 different houses and apartments before I came of age. Then, after I grew up , left my parents’ home, and got married:

* Tucson, Arizona (4 years; 4 different domiciles
* Phoenix, Arizona (my own li’l apartment, ALL MINE!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (first place with hubby)
* Phoenix, Arizona (downtown: gorgeous historic home)
* Phoenix, Arizona (uptown: move to get away from the crime) (har har!)
* Phoenix, Arizona (leave marriage; move into apt.)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move into apt. where boyfriend lived)
* Phoenix, Arizona (escape apt.; buy house)
* Phoenix, Arizona (move to a quieter house, further from main drag)

And here I am. Hmmmmm…. That would be twenty-two different homes — 22 moves!) in one piddly little lifetime.

And that doesn’t count the number of times my mother had to move, following my father, before I was born. Ball-park guess: at least four places. Probably more.

This rumination came about after I had visited a friend and his wife’s home in Scottsdale — in a tony suburb called McCormick Ranch. VERY nice place in a pleasant, upper-middle-class tract that has that low-on-crime look. 😀

But…but…

Well, but… It’s TINY. Small but decent kitchen. One living/dining room. One small master bedroom upstairs. And a guest bedroom/study. Cramped, walled-in patio in place of a real yard.

Still: one could live with that. Ever so much less space to have to clean, right?

Well, but…  It’s WAYYYY far away from my son. He lives in North Central Phoenix, and he ain’t about to move away from his dad’s outpost. Nor is he about to sell his pretty little brick house, within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Incredible Gourmet Grocery Store, to move to the crassly bourgeois precincts of North Scottsdale.

So. Nope. Ain’t trading my son’s company for a set of steps. 😀

There, of course, is the decisive element. The kid, that is; not the steps.

But even if Young Caligula weren’t living in my present parts, still…I don’t see the prospect of moving as worth the cost. 

As you know, moving house is a financially bracing proposition. And…what would I be getting in exchange for several tens of thousands of dollars?

* Supposedly a better neighborhood. {Though I have yet to see proof of that: North Central, where the Funny Farm resides, is about as good as it gets in the Valley.}

* Proximity to hordes of excellent restaurants in several price ranges. (Uhm...but I rarely eat out, because I prefer my own pretty damn excellent cooking…)

* Relative proximity to Arizona State University. (BFD: I ain’t teachin’ there any more…and I’m not about to go back!)

* Proximity to the Mayo Clinic. (What could be more cheering than living right down the street from your doctor’s offices? :-o)

Ohhhhh well.  Movin’ on (as it were):

***

Last night I had the weirdest dream. 

In this wacky somnolent universe, SDXB  and I had a fight and I stalked out of the house. The setting was right here in the neighborhood, so I marched out onto handsomely paved streets that run past our homes and past our friends’ houses.

That notwithstanding, I wandered into one of the alleys. And there…oh, yah: I got lost. 

Understand: this is even more somnolently wacky, because a) the alleys here run in parallel rows, so you can’t get lost in them — certainly not if you’re even vaguely sober. And I’ve lived here so long that I know the layout of the neighborhood — its yards and its trees and its sidewalks and its alleys and its fences — even more neatly than I know the layout of the back of my hand.

Well. That notwithstanding: in the Dream Universe I can’t find my way home…or even out of the alley that I’ve wandered into.

Stumbling up that alley in a state of weird confusion, I come across two (handsome!!) cops in a cop car. Ohhhhhhboy!!! And hot diggety!

Turns out the neighbors have noticed me roaming up and down the alleys and, all worried, have called the cops. Meanwhile, SDXB has also called them, since I haven’t come back after our squabble.

So the cops and I chat for awhile. They, recognizing a random nut case when they see one, desist from any plan they might have had about running me in. Au contraire, they drive me to SDXB’s house, where he acts all happy to see me and I just sit there obediently.

Eventually the officers give up and go on about their business. SDXB and I take up our lives as usual.

WTF???????

Do I have a clue what that l’il nightmare was about?

Well. No. Other than embroidery of memories from a decade ago. Essentially, it was a re-run of a long-ago episode.

Hafta say: I really doubt that I could find a better neighborhood than this one. Certainly not one that I could afford — or would want to afford. And most certainly not one that’s centrally located.

Yeah.

I like this neighborhood. And love my house. And yes, I very much do want to leave the house to my son.

How exactly to make that happen kinda escapes me. It’s going to depend, I’m afraid, on raw luck + a healthy dose of genetics.

Women in my family — those who didn’t f*ck themselves to death — lived deep into ripe old age. Ninety to ninety-five was typical of those who lived what you and I would think of as “clean” lives: hold the alcohol, hold the promiscuity.

I do drink, no question of it. Though not much lately, because without a car on hand, it’s too much of a PITA to haul bottles of wine or beer back to the house…and you may be sure I’m too much of a cheapskate to have that stuff delivered.

Still: over the decades I surely have swizzled down enough to do me in. No question of it. So far, no symptoms. But we can expect they’ll show up sooner or later.

At any rate and nevertheless, the probability that I’ll live into my late 90s remains high.

And that notwithstanding: I really do want M’Hijito to have this house. Or at least the proceeds from its sale.

So…that kinda militates against moving into an old-folkerie, or into a resort-like condo.

7:00 a.m.: The Moron Hour

by

Why IS it that every  moron on the planet turns out of their house at 7 in the morning? With their dog, o’course!

Just back from the morning DoggyWalk. Nasty morning: hot, overcast, and wet. Back porch thermometer registers a mere 85 degrees.

Days like this, sometimes rain just coalesces out of the air. Don’t even need clouds to make it rain!

Welp, that doesn’t seem to be happening today…not yet, anyway. Wunderground predicts a 15% chance of rain and just now registers an ambient temperature of 85 degrees. Not very hot. But yeah: damp, that’s for sure.

Ruby never seems fazed by a soggy atmosphere. Maybe the thick furry coat protects her, to some degree from the elements: whether cold and wet or hot and wet.

At this hour, everybody and their little brother, sister,, and grandmother is out tromping around with their dawg. And they just don’t seem to get it that “they just want to pwaaaayyy” doesn’t apply to your dog. No, stupid… my dog just wants to rip their dog’s throat out. 

After you tell them to please keep their dog back and they refuse to do so, they get all peeved when your dog goes in for the kill.

Speaking of dogs, M’hijito bought a puppy yesterday, to replace his beloved old white golden retriever who croaked over a few days ago.

Oh, my, what a little cutie! And the parents were also white retrievers, so this one will grow up to look a lot like the Late, Great Jake.

I should call him — the kid, that is, not the dawg — and see if he’d like me to bring something over for lunch from the AJ’s deli. That would be pleasant…and an excuse to see the new pup. 😉

***

Meanwhile: ugh!  My hip is spavined and hurts like Hell.

Years ago, the Late, Great Dr. Daley — one of the finest GPs ever to walk the surface of the Earth — told me that someday I’d have to get surgery on that hip. Looks like the Someday has arrived.

Just what I need: surgery, and then weeks in the hospital recuperating and going through endless physical therapy. Whee…I can hardly wait.

Could I even walk from AJ’s to M’jito’s just now? Probably: once I get going, the gait seems to move along OK. The problem, I think, would be trapping a bus, getting down to Central & Camelback, and then hiking to the Kid’s place.

Dunno. A guy across the street has taken up the Uber business. I may ask him to drive me down to the store…and maybe for a few extra bucks he could be persuaded to stick around long enough to schlep me from the AJ’s to the Kid’s house.

The Uber thing looks like quite the little Godsend. I’ve only tried it once, but it really was The Business! The guy showed up at my house right away, schlepped me across the city, and then showed up again at the dentist’s office to schlep me home.

Truth to tell, it really may be that Phoenix has turned into enough of a Big City that you could live here without owning a car. M’hijito would like to get rid of mine — apparently he thinks that at 80 I’ve reached such a state of decrepitude I’m not safe to be driving. And I’ll tellya: if I knew for sure that a car would show up when I call for it — and show up in a timely manner — I’d agree with him.

But…well…that is something that I don’t know. Actually, to the contrary: I do know…a cab is not gonna show up on time when you need it. Period. This ain’t San Francisco, folks: this is Phoenix.

And no: dyed-in-the-wool Phoenicians do not ride cabs.

 

And QUADRUPLE-ARRRRRRGHHH!

by

So some long-time workmen who are pretty reliable fellas show up. They’re puttering around…and somehow….

SOMEHOW…

…they get ahold of my front door keys and they fuck them up with élan!!!!!!!

My GAWD!

None of the keys works any of the locks or none of the locks or whateverthehell…WHAT A MESS!!!!!!!!

HOW THE HELL DID THEY DO THAT???

GODDDAMMMMIT!!!!!!!

Now I’m gonna have to call the locksmith AGAIN to come over here and untangle all the goddamn locks.

This guy charges an arm and a leg just to breathe the air inside your house, to say nothing of doing any work. So this is gonna be another $200 bill. Then I’ll have to listen to my son bitch at me for spending all that money on the goddamn locks.

Again. 

Y’know, when I had the first locksmith over (they all work for the same outfit), I asked him to fix ALL THE LOCKS so they work on the same key. So: this would make it hard for me to confuse the keys and fu*k everything up.

Now, NO TWO LOCKS work on the same key. Set one key aside and you are FUCKED until you can dig it up from wherever the Hell you put it down.,

And wherever that is will likely be pretty random, meaning it will be hours or maybe days before you find that key, if you ever do.

STOP THE GODDAMN WORLD!!!”
I WANNA GET OFF!!!!!!!!!

by

Back home right at 7:30 a.m. from a dog-and-human walk around the neighborhood: circumnavigating the park, roaming through the ritzy-titzy part of the ‘Hood, trotting past a major grocery store, past a 24-hour clinic, past the Sprouts, past the Walgreen’s…and…

..And WHY, again, have I been driving my car from the smallest pillar to the tallest post — with its pricey licenses and its expensive regular maintenance and its $3.48/gallon gasoline???

When my parents and I came back from our ten-year stint in Saudi Arabia, we took up residence in San Francisco, in a Fancy-Dan apartment development called Parkmerced. I dearly loved that place, and if I had the money (hah!!) would go back in an instant. It was a handsome place, and it was designed for residents to get around on foot. I rode the bus to school(!!!), and my mother and I rode busses and streetcars into downtown SF for our (altogether too frequent!) shopping trips.

Later, my father changed jobs and we moved to Southern California — to dowdy Long Beach, where I had been born and not far from where my father’s ships came in to dock. Unlike the Bay Area, southern California was not designed for pedestrians. My Northern California relatives didn’t even own a car. In Long Beach, you couldn’t begin to get by without one.

Remembering our walks around Parkmerced; and that walking was not practical in SoCal…probably because the place was not designed for pedestrians, as San Francisco was. Neither Gree nor Gertrude — my great-grandmother and great-aunt in Berkeley ever owned a car.

Just imagine having access to your job, to one of the world’s most magnificent cities, and to all the shopping you liked (and then some) without a car!

Well. I wonder if one could engineer something long those lines here in (un)lovely uptown Phoenix. Seriously…with a guy driving for Uber across the street, a light-rail train and a fleet of busses running up and down the main drags…why do I need to own a car at all?

Could I get rid of the Tank? That seems all the more feasible with a car rental place some three blocks up the road from my house. If something comes up that I really need a car for some episode, all I’d need to do is walk up the road and rent one.

I may give the Tank to Ian…let him pay the insurance and taxes and maintenance on the damn thing!

It is a nice enough vehicle, and it came in handy when one of its riders was a German shepherd. But a 35-pound corgi does not need a gasoline-powered covered wagon!

And to pay for an occasional taxicab surely isn’t going to cost what a van with its attendant taxes, maintenance and repair bills and gasoline bills costs.

How would I get the dog to the vet? M’hijito would have to drive us.

************
Arrrgha! I’m gunna have to crash out of this post. Can’t get it to do anything and do not know if it will survive. My apologies for the weirdness!!!!!