Coffee heat rising

Urban life

So…???

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Okayyy… After that fine system crash, let’s amuse ourselves by seeing whether Funny (via Firefox) will reboot…

{scribble scribble}
{Save Draft}

hmmmm

WordPress’s “Page Setup” looks funny…but…but… I dunno…it kinda looks like the site is online and…MAAAYYYBEEE it’s gonna work…

*****

Reminiscing and daydreaming about the Good Ole Days living in our beautiful mid-town Phoenix Encanto neighborhood.

  • Our house was so pretty.
  • Our neighbors were so fine.
  • The central location was so handy and dandy.
  • The burglars and wannabe rapists swarmed in such merry abundance…

I do miss it. But on the other hand…I don’t miss it. 😀

Cruising the real estate ads…gosh, here are all these beautiful old houses. Our friends Jan and Ed’s place!! Zowie!

It was a pretty house to begin with. After they’d been in it for awhile, though, it was freaking gorgeous.

Wonder what our old place looks like, now that several passels of yuppies have spent time in it… It, too, was freaking gorgeous — that was a good 20+ years ago.

Those houses are selling in the million-dollar range now. THAT, you may be sure, is something you couldn’t get here in my present tony neighborhood.

Hmmm….  Frankly..,.

I loved the house and I miss it. But I don’t miss…

* The traffic noise
* The airplane noise (we get about as many planes here, but the Encanto district was much closer to the airport than we are, so our noisemakers are higher overhead)
* The panhandlers
* The burglars
* The sirens from the two nearby regional hospitals
* The sirens from the fire station the accursed city installed right behind us
* The third-rate public schools, making private school tuition NOT a choice
* The ancient, rickety plumbing

Hmmmm…  Money doesn’t buy common sense, eh?

😀

r-r-r-r-r-o-o-o-a-r-r-r…

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Cop copter overhead. Again.

Jeez. Is the ‘Hood really so overrun with criminals that we must have police helicopters buzzing our homes almost every goddam night?

How effective are cop copters, anyway, at chasing off the perps? Would a cop in a patrol car do as well? Or one on foot, with a pistol in hand?

What a racket!

Hmmm… This evening they flew off fairly soon. Hardly hung around at all.

We have a LOT of cop helicopters buzzing the ‘Hood. And I do find myself wondering: why?

If you were a perp, wouldn’t you just dodge in under the oleanders to get out of sight? If you were in a vehicle, wouldn’t you s-l-o-o-w down to make yourself look like an innocent passer-by and then just toddle out of the neighborhood?

One does wonder…

Soggy Doggy Day

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Just this minute: back in the door from a 90-minute Dawg Walk. At 9:15 ayem, it’s not exactly hot out there. But it’s warm. And it’s stuffy. Jet engines roar from the precincts of Luke Air Force Base. {chortle!} If you think that racket is annoying, you ain’t heard nothin’ and you don’t live in Sun City, right beneath the jets’ take-off pattern.

We ran late enough to miss the thickest swarms of morning Dawg Walkers. So: no near-dogfights, no zig-zagging back and forth across the streets to avoid the neighbors’ affectionate (heh!!) fur-babies. That was good.

We made it all the way up to Main Drag North, a path that takes us past the former home of a dear old Arizona Highways colleague, now long gone and much missed. Jerry Jacka, his name was. What a marvelous man he was!

So much missed, indeed… those wonderful Highways days! Wonderful people, fun work, great adventures.

But…nothing lasts forever, eh?

Jerry’s house — former house, I guess: someone else has the place now — is just a couple of acre-size lots south of Main Drag North. A perfectly horrible conduit of traffic and racket now…in the good ole’ days when Jerry and Lois built up there, it was out in the country. Serious country: mostly cotton fields and citrus orchards.

I used to drive past it (little knowing then about its occupant!) on the way from my parents’ house in Sun City (waaayyy out in the country then!) to my law-office job in downtown Phoenix. This was soooo long ago that it was before my job at Arizona Highways, which itself came after the bachelor’s degree and the stint at a major law firm. 😀

Who’d’ve thunk it, eh?

Good (not quite) Morning, Arizona!

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Ugh! It’s all of 11:30 at night — not quite: 11:26, to be precise — and the cops are buzzing the suburb just to the north of us, hollering down at the perps through a loudspeaker. Good Morning, America, eh?

That district is a high-crime area. Every now and again, yet another chase ensues up there. This could be entertaining, if it were not so common that it’s become routine.

Ruby is quiescent, so presumably whoever they’re after hasn’t made it down into the ‘Hood yet. If the cops don’t catch him, though, he will — pretty quick.

Grrrrrr! I am NOT in the mood to be kept awake by cops-&-robbers antics. Enjoying a little ailment that’s making me quite uncomfortable — whenever the doctors’ offices open tomorrow, I’ve gotta call one of them and make an appointment. It would help a lot if I could get a few hours’ sleep tonight.

Doesn’t sound like that’s gonna happen, though.

Let’s see what the “police incidents” page sez…

Helle’s belles! Here’s a shooting at  a Walmart. Apparently the perp took off… But it doesn’t look like this is our current boy: that episode took place around 5:00 p.m. It’s almost midnight now.

Welp…there’s always something going on up there. Keeps life interesting.

I guess…

STOP THE WORLD!!

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😀  First good thing that’s happened this morning, as dawn proceeds to break: I have managed to weasel my way into the FaM website.

At 6:45 in the morning, all Hell is breaking loose, and as far as I can tell the terrorized demons are running off down the road.

Worst thing under way: the diabetes that runs in my family has apparently decided to visit me. At least, I assume that’s what these hair-raising and painful symptoms are. Can’t get in to see a quack at the Mayo. And the beloved Young Dr. Kildare has quit the practice of medicine to return to his first love, social work. His partners have moved to Sun City, an hour’s drive from here.

So later this morning I will have to go to one of those roadside docs — one resides about five minutes from here — and ask (again!!) to be tested for the Family Disease.

Failing that, I do have a friend who’s a chiropractor…vaguely, I hope he may be able to connect me with an M.D. who can test me for full-on diabetes.

To frost those cookies, the deadbolt on the back door has frozen shut. Joy! I cannot get the kitchen door open to let the dog outside!!!!!

So whenever the hour hits 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock — that is, whenever somebody’s shop opens — I have to call a locksmith and try to get him over here to fix that damn thing.

You realize…this means that if a fire starts in the kitchen, I can’t get out into the backyard. The dog and I will somehow have to make our way through the garage or else around Robin Hood’s Barn to get out the front door.

Hm. It also means I can’t get at the key to open the backyard gate into the alley, since that thing hangs on the inside of the back screen door.

Hm and hm… Do we have an extra key…???

Yes. It looks like it.

OK. If and when I can get a locksmith here, he’ll need to make me a couple more keys.

These adventures are just the frosting on the cake. This diabetes thing is a REAL terror.l

My mother’s grandmother, who raised my mother in Upstate New York back before there was such a thing as insulin, died of the disease. It runs in the family. I’ve been told (repeatedly!) that I’m “pre-diabetic” (none of the quacks seems able to explain what that really means), but apparently the implication has been that sooner or later I’ll develop the disease.,

We may now be at the “sooner than later” point…

Oh…lookee here! Just to make everything perfect, the clothes dryer just went on the fritz!

AAAUUUUGHHH!

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8:02 a.m.

The dryer decided to start working again. Hallelujuah brothers & sisters!

I smashed my hand in the back door. Doesn’t appear to be anything broken, though.

Will have to wait another hour to get thru to make an appointment at the Mayo…unless I decide to take my chances with one of the li’l roadside quacks closer to home. I don’t trust those guys…but…frankly, I don’t trust doctors in general. So what’s the difference?

**************

WOW!

Everything I touch goes S-P-R-R-R-O-I-N-N-G!!!!!!!!

Migawd, I can’t unlock the back screen door without breaking something!

*****

On the other hand:

* The clothes washer is running again…apparently working OK
* The smashed hand seems not to have any broken bones
* The clothes dryer is running, normally far’s I can tell
* The padlock on the back gate is now working: no clue what made it go on the fritz

But meanwhile, it’s not even 9 a.m. and I can’t get in or out the back door.

gaaaaahhhhh!

E-freakin’ NUFF

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Hey there, Sprouts management: lissen up!

I quit!!!!! Those weekly, biweekly, even triweekly trips to the beloved neighborhood Sprouts?

DONE!

GONE!!

NO FREAKIN’ MORE!!!!

This afternoon’s gamut-run marked THE LAST TIME, absolutely positively THE last time I will shop in the Sprouts just down the street from my house.

NEVER….

fukkin’

AGAIN

You cannot go into or come out of that store without being hustled by panhandlers.

And y’know what?

As a woman alone, the LAST effin’ thing I want, as I head home from the grocery store, is to be hustled by panhandlers.

Some of whom are bloody aggressive.

Today was it. I am simply NOT GOING INTO the Sprouts at 19th Avenue and Northern, ever again. And NOT COMING out of the Sprouts at 19th and Northern, ever again.

No. No way. No how. Never fukkin’ ever again.

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LOL!!
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Quite the li’l hissy-fit, eh?

I’m good at that. 😀

Well…one does hafta say that the constant hustle from the panhandlers at our neighborhood stores is…well…a bit of a nuisance. 😀

Across the street from the Sprouts et al., the Albertson’s has hired a full-time, armed (!!) guard to stand out in front and chase off the pests. That is, I’ll say, the main reason I shop there. Otherwise, I’d never go into the shopping center at all.

But the time is fast approaching when a ten-minute saving on the drive will not be worth the hassle of shopping in those stores.

Then what???

I will say, the main reason I still live in town — that is, in the central parts of the city — is to be close to routine shopping…to avoid the endless annoying drives.

***

My friend VickyC lives in a beautiful old — as in “seriously, elegantly antique” — house in the historic mid-town district. I’d love to have that place!

{ahem!} But maybe not love so much the burglars, the sex perverts, the constant airline noise, the police and ambulance sirens, the traffic noise, the… Aggghhh!

Too bad those districts can’t be a) safer and b) quieter! 😀

We used to live in that area. Never again!

You shouldn’t HAVE to own a live-in German shepherd and keep a pistol stored under the sofa cushions to feel safe in your home.