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Urban life

Evening in the ‘Hood

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Dusk, with high thin clouds floating over the ‘hood. Wow! What a GORGEOUS evening as Ruby and her human stroll around.

This neighborhood gets tonier and fancier and more spectacularly expensive-looking by the day. If I manage to stay here until I die, my son is going to inherit the Asset from Heaven! Seriously: worth Gawd Only Knows how much more than I paid for it.

Gosh, I hope I’ll be able to hang onto this place until then. Really, that only needs to be another eight or ten years. As we scribble, Zillow claims this place is worth about five times what I paid for it. My first house here is supposedly worth some four times more than I paid…and it’s almost two blocks closer to the spectacularly noisy Main Drag West.

And frankly, I can’t see a single sign that this area is likely to slide downhill anytime in the near future, barring a catastrophic recession. Which I kinda doubt is gonna happen.

The area is relatively safe, crime-wise.  And we’re within walking distance of three major supermarkets, a medical clinic, a veterinarian, two first-rate public schools, at least one good private school, a well-respected hospital, a beautiful neighborhood park,…on and on and on. Meanwhile, the county has run a swell new light-rail line up the west side, and busses zip up and down all the major main drags.

If things stay reasonably stable or, God and the Taxpayer willing, continue to improve in quality and public services,  M’hijito will inherit one HECK of an asset.  By then, it should be solidly ensconced in the tony district known as North Central, even the public schools (now a shade wanting…) brought up to par and beyond, and the property values hovering near the stratosphere. He’ll be able to claim a more-than-decent house in an upscale district, or else sell it and move to the retirement venue of his dreams, out in Colorado.

Nice thing to daydream about...as day fades into dusk…

😀

…And Day Fades into Evening

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My son will soon be over here to drag me over to the (hateful!!) physical therapy studio. Ohhhh  gawd how could I do without that place and its mindless routines?

Said routines do nothing to help the spavined hip and back. What helps, apparently, is Time and the River Flowing. And walking, walking, walking, walking…

Trotted up to the northside shopping center this afternoon. A beautiful afternoon, we might add. Enjoyed schmoozing with the employees. Eyeballing the weirdos who live in the slum apartment complexes across the road. Strolling around the rest of the mall. Headed back to the Funny Farm…

On the way, passed by the Ole Guy’s house.

The Ole Guy was a retired gentleman who lived in a corner house just to the northwest of our part of the ‘Hood. And he was on in years: I’d guess he was in his late 70s or mid-80s.

SDXB and I would march around the neighborhood every morning, by way of exercise. And generally he would be out puttering in his yard when we passed by. WHAT a nice man!!

His main concern, as the weeks and months passed, was for his wife. He felt she was no longer able to stay in the house unassisted. Wanted to put her in a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie called the Beatitudes.

She was having none o’ that!!

The quarrel…uhm, discussion…went on for months.

We would see him every day; say hello as we passed; get the current neighborhood and family gossip.

But..yea verily. One day he was no longer there. The only way he could get her locked up was to lock himself up with her, o’course. And so when the time came, they both disappeared from our parts.

Much missed, we might add.

Dunno who lives there now: one never sees them outside

Ruby the Corgi and I are outside in front just now…as befits old folks, I guess?  Ruby is telling every passer-by how the proverbial cow ate the proverbial cabbage. I am…umh…loafing

And waiting for my son to show up and tote me off to the endlessly annoying physical therapy gym.

My gawd, how I hate that place. Its exercising hassle truly IS the biggest waste of time I can imagine, other than solving algebra problems for your ninth-grade math class….

So this will blow away the evening, a pretty evening when Ruby and I should be strolling from one end of the ‘Hood to the other.

One night I got pissed off with the frustration and the time wastage and sneaked out the door. Took off down the road on foot.

M’hijito had gone home, I think (or somewhere), to wait out the time with less boredom.

He was mightily annoyed when he showed up there to collect me and discovered I’d escaped.

😀

So now he won’t leave. He brings something to read and wastes his own goddamn evening sitting there while nothing useful is being done to me.

Make it stop, God!

Okay okay…sooner or later He will. But…wouldn’t it be nice if that “sooner or later” time could pass without endless annoyance?

😀

Hmmm…  A neighbor’s fire alarm seems to be on the fritz. It’s going quack!….quack!….quack!…. 

Ah…apparently it either ran out of juice or somebody came along and shut it off.

Hmmm…  Speaking of front yards in the neighborhood, we could so with a li’l maintenance here at the Funny Farm. Couple of plants need some serious pruning. And a spot where another shrub died could be cleared out and replanted with something new and classy.

Well…we can pounce poor old Gerardo with that. Get him to work on it before the weather is too hot for working.

Hm,….quack! quack! quack! 

Dammit! The defunct fire alarm was not. Defunct, that is. It’s back to quacking…and quacking…and quacking.

Uh oh. Here’s the Kid. Sooo…bye!

 

 

 

 

Memories…of Nightmares

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{chortle!}  Sittin’ here over breakfast remembering my beloved San Francisco Bay Area relatives of the prior generation. They lived on the side of a hill in Berkeley, just below a tunnel where the train to San Francisco entered the neighborhood.

Those were cool ladies: my aunt Gertrude and her mother (my great-grandmother) Clarissa, lovingly known as “Gree” by the family.

By the time I came along — after nine years in Saudi Arabia — Gree was well into her 90s. That seems to have done nothing to slow her down. She walked up that (steep!) hill almost every day, headed for a little grocery store where she bought lovely fresh produce.

Neither Gree nor Gertude drove a car. They had no need for it, truth to tell: the train would carry them into downtown Berkeley or across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. On foot, a short climb up a set of outdoor stairs would deliver them into Gertrude’s son’s neighborhood.

At some point along the (very long!) line, though, they decided that Gree should learn to drive. I was not along on this famous ride: mercifully, I wasn’t born yet.

So Gree and Gertrude had acquired a car, and now they decide to hop into it and take a drive.

Yeah.

Somehow, they get on the Bayshore Highway — Gawd only knows how. It wasn’t designated a “freeway” yet, but that notwithstanding, it was already magnificently a main drag. This was all very Californian of them…except…well…somehow Gree made some sort of a wrong turn and drove the wrong way up an offramp! 

No kidding. There they are, two old ladies in a clunk, headed onto the Bayshore Freeway going bass-ackwards up the offramp.

They make it onto the road, and now they’re driving against the traffic on what was then one of the most dramatic freeways in the land.

Got it? Wrong way on one of the fiercest freeways in North America!

Somehow, Gertrude managed to coach her mother across the lanes of 60 mph traffic and get her to drive off the road and safely onto the shoulder. HOW…really, I cannot even begin to imagine.

If I’d been her in that passenger’s seat, I would have utterly panicked and probably been unable to utter a word. You have to say about Gertrude: she was one helluva woman!!

Ever-So-Slightly De-crippled…

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The spavined hip I’ve been whining about seems s-l-o-o-w-l-y to be getting better. The Dawg and the Human managed to make our usual perambulation around the populated part of the ‘Hood — short version — without crippling the old lady. Still hurts, but at least the leg & hip are now functional.

With any luck, the undercarriage will be back to normal within another three to five days. And then we’ll be back to our usual cavortings. Yay!

Sure as Hell hurts right now, though. 😮

Incredibly beautiful stroll! Lush, gorgeous twilight evening. Most of the kids are inside for dinner, or so it appears. So it was quieter than usual as we strolled around.

Haven’t heard from my excellent son this evening, nor have I attempted to pester him from this end of the phone line. So I hope he’s having a quiet evening…ideally, hanging out with friends.

Meanwhile, also hoping to hit the sack early — Dawg is already conkered out at the end of the bed. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help the spavined hip…with any luck and enough ibuprofen.

sigh! <3  This is such a lovely neighborhood!  I hope I can contrive to stay here until I die. Really: it couldn’t cost any more to have a caretaker come in and babysit me here in my home than it would to lock me up in some dreary old-folkerie.

Well, we shall find out before too long, as I don’t seem to be getting any younger. The longer that exigency can be put off, the better!!

Pool Dude, Beloved Pool Dude

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HOW ON EARTH does this dawg know when it’s Pool Dude Day???  Do dogs have internal calendars?

That wonderful man comes around regularly to shovel out the leaves, the dust, and the whatnot, to update the chemicals, and to keep the pump equipment running. If it weren’t for him, by now I’d have had to do what my neighbor does: shut down the pool, drain it, and use it as a nest in which to breed mosquitos. (You can’t fully drain it: even with the drain open, a little puddle gathers at the deep end.)

Her neighbor on the other side is a lady who likes to sleep with her windows open. (Yeah, I know. But she’s from Europe and knows not about the risks posed by the local criminal set). So…European Lady naively goes to bed with the windows hanging open and apparently with no functional screens covering the empty space.

And…SURPRISE!!!!! She gets all bit up by the mosquitos breeding on the bottom of our neighbor’s pool, and this leads to a fine, roaring infection that damn near kills her. In fact, at one point the doctors told her dad she wouldn’t live through the night.

But she’s a tough lady, and so she surprised them. She’s back and going strong. And our neighbor’s mosquito pond still sits in that backyard, with a nice little puddle at the bottom.

I suggested to European Lady’s dad — who happens to be the famed Tony the Romanian Landlord — that he quietly toss some insecticide over the wall into the puddle. And…well…he must have done that, because we no longer get mosquito raids here.

What a place!

And to put the crown on that: this is one of the better “places” in Phoenix.

Wherever there are humans, there be morons. 

Wow!!

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Life in lovely downtown Phoenix…  This little adventure occurred right across the road from where I was gonna live. Yeah: just a few years ago, I almost bought an apartment just across the street from this spot.

What a place!!

Fortunately, I decided the price was too high for what the condos offered. And that the location would be too noisy. All very urban, y’know.

It was a conundrum, for sure.

I didn’t want to move to Sun City, where my parents held forth after my father retired, and where SDXB went. Old folks’ mausoleums aren’t my speed, alas.

We have our own little adventures, here in this middling in-town section of North Central Avenue. But so far nothing that dramatic! And certainly we have fewer incidents per month or per year than other centrally located districts do.

Honest t’Gawd, this place gets more and more like Southern California as the days trundle by. But really: I’m past the age where I feel any enthusiasm for packing up a house and moving into a new shack and finding new places for all the junk and unpacking box after box and stocking shelf after shelf. Ugh!

So I sit here and listen to the melody of gunshots — off in the distance, so far — and watch the kids play and…loaf.