…for the balmy, that is… At 7:10 p.m. the thermometer on the back porch reads 109 degrees.
Hey! Ya can’t shovel heat!
Nary a sign of the summer rainstorms known in these parts as “monsoons.”
But it’s still a bit early for them. I think of monsoon as an August phenomenon. F’rhevvinsake, it’s only July 17.
These are the times that make the humans think 12 months of swimming-pool expenses are soooooo worth it! 😀 Into the drink this afternoon. Hop out. Shampoo hair in the hose. Return to the shack’s interior, where the AC system labors to hold the temp (in the coolest part of the house: the hallway) down to 80.
What a day!
Started with Ruby flushing Ratty out of the marjoram bed. Dayum! She almost caught the poor critter!
Later on: the Great Termite Project.
Exterminator came by. He didn’t think the infestation was too bad…yet. He sprayed the little gals where they were evident, and then laid down one helluva barrier all around the house’s foundation. I decided we should have him come back at regular intervals to harass the critters. Whenever the weather cools some, I’ll try to get him up into the attic (you’d have to be suicidal to go up there in this heat!). He didn’t think the girls have invaded there yet…he did show me where he believes them to be, and provided a pretty convincing argument to that effect.
We didn’t see the much-beloved Pool Dude this morning — Monday is his day to come around. We probably missed him while we were indulging in the dawn doggy-walk. The pool is positively pristine this evening, which it assuredly would NOT be, in this heat, had he not surfaced at some point today.
Wait, I know how to tell: did he retrieve the new pump pot filter basket I bought?
Checking….
Whoa!!! He did NOT!
Holee mackerel! That means His Cuteness never surfaced here today!
He must have had car trouble. Or the world collapsed on his head.
Fortunately, he’s done such a killer job on maintenance over the past few months that the damn thing looks clear and clean. So from a selfish point of view, that’s good. But..gosh… I hope he’s OK…
Back to the subject of infestation: The roof rats are back.
One of them was actually brave enough this morning to shoot right across in front of me.
Cute little fellas. Too bad they carry such nasty diseases. Too bad they do rather more damage than one would like to cope with.
So I set out the traps. When last checked, they were no more successful than they’ve been in the past. But…that was checking their daytime performance. We shall see, come morning, how they worked during our little tenants’ night-time maneuvers.
Awwwww crapola: Cop copters buzzing around overhead.
Check that all the doors are locked. And…hooleee shee-ut! The front screen was NOT locked.
Ohhh well. Now we’re barricaded in: two deadbolts engaged on every exterior door.
Four-legged rats. Two-legged rats. Six-legged rats. What a place we live in!
It is SOOOOOO wet out there that all you have to do is stand outside to raise a sweat.
wait wait! That’s true of standing inside, too!
Where does this city think it is? Dankest Georgia? Right now the sky is overcast — seriously overcast, as in “gimme 45 minutes or an hour to deliver the rain” — and we’re enjoying 90 degrees on the back porch. Wunderground says it’s 95, with 35% humidity…and I could buy that
Pool Dude surfaced this morning, shortly after dawn. I’d about lost hope…thought he’d disappeared from the scene. But nooo…here he is!
Did a nice job of cleaning the already pretty clean hole in the ground into which to pour money. Repaired some stuff. Chatted…sweet guy, IMHO. Probably a serial killer, but he can hold a nice conversation. And he’s cute. 😉
*****
A-a-a-an-d…. O’course I pick the most miserable hot day of the year to generate an Adventure in Frustration.
Hoooleeee sheee-ut!
The eye that had the cyst in it, lo! these several months ago — the eye that we thought was HEALED, ooohhh thank you gawd and billy graham — started itching and hurting. Again.
Can’t see anything in there. Apply the long-ago-recommended Refresh brand eye drops.
Nothing: no effect.
Wait a day or two, hoping Nature will take its course.
Nothing: no effect.
Hurts itches itches hurts hurts itches…and so on to infinity….
So I call the Honored Eye Doc. His staff directs me to trot out and purchase an over-the-counter product called Ivisia: eye drops of provenance unknown to me.
And, as it develops, unknown to about every retailer in the city.
Walgreen’s doesn’t have it.
Albertson’s doesn’t have it.
Walmart doesn’t have it.
Finally, after what feels like driving…driving…driving for hours through the 110-degree heat, I stumble into a Safeway. Stagger to the pharmacist’s counter. He points me to a stack of shelves down an aisle 15 or 20 feet from the his counter.
And lo!!! THERE IT IS!
Grab. Trudge to checkout. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand…pay up.
Back in the car.
Heat makes Arizona drivers crazy. We shouldn’t find that surprising, though. Everything makes Arizona drivers crazy.
Trudge and dodge and dodge and trudge and finally make my way home. If the present discomfort didn’t make this thing feel ever so slightly urgent, I would’ve just come home and ordered it from Amazon.
Honestly. I don’t know how local retailers even begin to compete with Amazon. The hassle factor entailed in schlepping around the God Damned City to find ONE STUPID LITTLE ITEM is sooooooooooo aggravating, that given just a little more motivation, I would’ve succumbed to common sense and ordered it online.
But…the eye hurt, and I really really did NOT want to wait two days for delivery plus run the risk of our pet porch pirates stealing the stuff before I can find it.
Ohhhhh well! Now we have it.
****
I sweartagawd, it feels just like lovely Ras Tanura out there. That desiccated corner of Eastern Hell on the shore of the Persian Gulf…summertime was sauna time.
Seriously: I can remember waking up in the morning on those hot summer fucking days and seeing water dripping off the eaves. And no, it had NOT rained during the night.
I can remember standing in the front yard under a clear blue sky and watching RAIN condense out of the hot, cloudless air.
Like that: that’s how it feels.
My poor mother. How on earth did that hapless little Upstate New York orphan survive even her first 16 or 18 years on this pitiless earth, to say nothing of 30+ years of marriage to my globe-trotting, tightwad father? In her place, I would have died long before I gave birth to the first lifeless baby, to say nothing of the second one and the third brat that survived.
To say nothing of the man who dragged her to Hell (seriously…) and back again. She was, when you think about her, an amazing woman.
Damn! I wish I’d appreciated that while she was still living.
*******
Seriously: when I say it’s an inexplicable wonder that local retailers are surviving Amazon — if they are — I kid you not.
There were hardly any customers in the Walgreen’s.
Hardly any in the Albertson’s.
More in the Walmart, but not enough to keep a large retail enterprise alive.
Naught but a bunch of yuppifed egotists in the Safeway, creatures that were buying one or two items apiece…nary a week’s worth of groceries in evidence at any check-out stand.
Now consider what a hassle it was to get ahold of this magical mystery eye salve in person, from a brick-and-mortar retailer….
Why on earth would anyone want to go through that?
You may be sure that in the future I will remember. And when I can, I will order all the little necessaries online. Occupying a fricasseeing hot afternoon schlepping from place to place through nasty traffic is not something I want to do whenever I need this or that little retail item.
Ever have those days when every inch along the way is an uphill hassle? Whatever you want to do, whatever you need to do: you can’t do it without a struggle….
5:30 a.m.: Take the dog for a walk.
5:45 a.m.: She drags us over to the park, where every other doggy-lover in the ‘Hood has already arrived and is traipsing around, some with their dogs off-leash. This means…
Cross the street to manage some distance from the Milling Horde. This means…
…dodge oncoming cars
…climb up on people’s lawns along stretches that have no sidewalk
…dodge oncoming dogs and their humans
…yank yank
…jerk jerk…
Haul around the park; enter Lower Richistan.
…drag drag drag drag
…dodge oncoming dogs and their humans…
Pass the pile of rubble that is all that remains of the house where some drug-addled transient woman (she was seen!!) got into the garage and set fire to the house. The insurance company FINALLY seems to have gotten around to paying up: just now a bulldozer is inside the fenced lot, apparently there to shovel up the debris.
Pass the outrageously out-of-place pile of plywood and plaster that is rising on the site of the little house where the poor, beleaguered couple with the mentally deficient son lived. They lost the house, having no way to make a living or pay the taxes on the shack, and apparently were evicted. Whatever: they’re gone and now their house is, too. A gawdawaful McMansion is being inserted onto the lot, its walls about 6 or 8 feet from the neighbors’.
This last detail is, I would’ve thought, out of code. But apparently the neighbors there, suspecting the same, have gone to the City and tried to thrash that issue out…to no avail. This is Phoenix, after all, where money talks.
Hot.
Humid.
Drag drag drag draggety drag drag. Human grows more out of sorts.
6:30 a.m.: Dog and Human pause to chat with a much-favored neighbor, out front puttering in the yard and garage. Her husband died of covid, picked up when he was in the hospital for unrelated surgery. Now she owns a very nice house here, and another place in Flagstaff. And I’ll tellya…if it were me, Flag is where I’d be. The Valley’s heat is already crushing, and it’s just starting.
She’s staying in the Valley because her son is starting a restaurant, in a strip shopping mall that houses the favored Safeway store. With the right marketing and the right food and the right service, he does have a shot at success.
A long shot. All small businesses in this area are long shots. Most of them are very long shots. At any rate, she’s here to help out with that.
****
hmmmmmm….
Is there any question why, at 10 after noon, I’m so damn tired I need to take a nap?
Holeee mackerel!This episode occurred in the early afternoon, right where I almost bought a nifty condo to get away from the unending crime and bum drama here in the ‘Hood. It’s within walking distance of where I was going to buy.
At the time of the Great Garage Invasion, I remarked to one of the cops that I thought maybe I should move out of this area to escape the endless crime episodes — to Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, or Sun City, for example.
“Don’t do that!” said he. “It’s everywhere: you can’t get away from it.”
Appears that he was right: this sh!t really is everywhere. About your best bet to avoid being beaned when you go out in the backyard is to buy into a gated community. But even then…you have to leave its sacred precincts to go to the grocery store or the doctor or the vet.
{chortle!}
Imagine a gated community where just about everything the residents need on a routine basis is INSIDE the gates. Like Sun City or Fountain Hills or SmallTownUSA with a big wall around it and a gate that opens with a code, attended by a security guard.
Around here we do have a lot of gated developments, but they’re relatively small and, other than a one-room community center and swimming pool, they have no other amenities.
Now suppose that in addition to the community center and the pool, the place also had a general store — selling groceries and drugstore items. And a pharmacy, where you could get prescriptions filled. And a clinic, where you could visit a nurse practitioner or a doctor and a dentist for your various minor ailments. And a veterinarian, maybe.
Add a K-8 school. Or maybe, depending on the size of the place, K-12 schools.
Think o’that. You would hardly ever have to leave your immediate precincts. You might not even need to own a car. For the few errands that would take you out of the place, you could use Uber or Lyft. Because the development would in effect be its own privately owned municipality, the HOA could block “entrepreneurs” like Tony the Romanian Landlord from buying houses there and turning them into reform schools for juvenile delinquents. Or into rentals. High enough walls around the perimeter would limit the number of cop-chase dramas…by a big margin.
O’course…America would cease to be America. Every neighborhood would become its own municipality. Cities would become agglomerations of tiny mini-governments, rendering city governments largely irrelevant. Same might apply to county and state governments. And upward mobility? Whazzat?
On the other hand, we wouldn’t be dodging crooks and cop helicopters every time we venture out of the house….
Ohhhh-kayyyy…. Let’s see if WordPress will give us sane formatting today, or whether we have to jangle up our honored Web guru and make him crazy with whatEVER is going on.
Not that we’re not already crazy enough with whatever is going on. Do you still have the temerity to read the news? If so, how exactly DO you retain your grip on your marbles?
Here we are, busily charging a former (if incompetent, yes) president of the United States with THIRTY-SEVEN felony counts of what is basically a treasonous act. Oh, gooood…. Moving on (surely there must be someplace to move on to??)…
Meanwhile, the Republican Party worries that the Presidential Fiasco will come back to haunt them. Guys…if you didn’t want to have to handle a mess, why did you put a mess in the White House? 😀
We have our Native American brethren being (once again) madly ripped off by yet another huge Belagana scheme: hundreds of Navajo being exploited…and God only knows how many members of other tribes.
Enough of that, already! Quite enough to prove that WordPress’s paragraph-break function is working again.
*****
Meanwhile, as we discovered yesterday, the pool is decidedly NOT working. Swimming Pool Service & Repair’s guy surfaced (heh!) yesterday evening and made off with the pump. He figures it’ll take them about three days to fix it and get it back over here.
So far, the water hasn’t turned green. He said not to fuss with it: if algae starts to grow, just take a gallon of chlorine and walk around the pool’s perimeter, slowly dribbling the stuff in.
Ugh! Chlorine: not my favorite choice of drinks…. 😮
*****
Dawdled wayyyyyyyyy too long to get out the door for Ruby’s morning doggy-walk. It is spectacularly hot and humid out there by 7:00 a.m. And the Doggy Jamboree was in full swing by the time we reached the Richistans.
Ruby wants to clear the earth of other dogs, a little characteristic of which other dog owners seem utterly oblivious. While I’m trying to keep my dog from eviscerating theirs, they’re cooing ohhhh don’t worry! they just wanna playyyyy!
How does a species with so many stump-dumb stupid members manage to survive?
Ninnies of this sort had permeated the Richistans, so we doubled back and walked through the tract of 1960s ranch houses just to the north of ours.
Man! You do not even want to KNOW how much it must cost to air-condition those old piles. In the 1950s and 60s, power was not very expensive here. Consequently, houses and office buildings were never built with effective insulation…often not with any insulation at all. My son’s house, which is of that vintage, just about bankrupts him in the summertime, even when he jacks up the thermostat and has big floor fans blasting in every room.
Once the back yard…now the back porch of the back porch!
I remember my parents’ house in Sun City, each of whose walls was built of one layer of slump block. Period. Didn’t even have a slab of drywall inside, to pretty it up. Put your hand on one of those walls and you’ll burn yourself.
But…in those days, people didn’t stay in Phoenix over the summer. Without a doubt, Del Webb assumed his hordes of retirees would all drive back to Michigan and stay there in their RV’s between May and October. And many of those folks do. SDXB, who now lives in Sun City, does in fact clear out of the Valley for as long as he can, every summer.
My parents didn’t. They’d had their fill of living out of suitcases and driving back and forth across the country, what with my father’s Merchant Marine job and living in lovely Saudi Arabia. And yeah: that house got pretty hot in the summer. My mother jacked that AC so it never went off at any time of the day or night.
Here’s their house, photos taken during the last time it was on the market. It’s much modernized…didn’t have a dishwasher when we lived there, for example. The original screened porch along the back of the house has been enclosed, adding a nice dose of extra square footage to have to air-condition. They’ve laid down some reasonably decent tilework on all the floors– we had ugly carpets throughout.
My father! Just makes me cringe to look at this place and remember what he went through as my mother lay dying in one of those bedrooms.
That poor man. He worked SO hard, all of his life, just to build a comfortable, care-free retirement for them. And how thrilled he was to find Sun City! Boyboyboy: “no brats hollering outside your bedroom window when you’re trying to take a nap!”
Yeah.
Meanwhile, all the time my father was working like a mule, my mother was smoking herself to death. And what a way to go: just freakin’ hideous!
After he had “retired,” happily moved the two of them to a ghetto for old folks, and ensconced me in the University of Arizona (he got me into college a year early, for his convenience), his investments crashed. He’d put everything in insurance securities, which went down the tubes just a year or two after he had retired and deposited us in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. He lost his shirt and had to go back to work, to restore at least some of his retirement savings. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been for him. All his life he drudged away so that he could retire at the earliest possible moment and live happily ever after with his bride.
Who, we might add, really was the love of his life.
For his trouble, he got to attend her as she stumbled off to the Next World. And a mighty gawdawful trip that was.
As soon as she died — literally within days — he bought himself into Orangewood, a life-care community in the North Central district of Phoenix. It was ideal for him, because he was accustomed to institutional living and in fact liked it. My mother had refused to go, because a cramped little hole in a warehouse for old folks was not where she wished to spend the last years of her life.
Little did she know how few years she had…
Oh well. Forthwith he moved himself over there. And honestly, I think he would have been very happy at Orangewood had he not been instantly snabbed by the witch who seduced and married him. What a harridan! He didn’t know that until it was too late, though. Upshot: the last few years of his life were pretty damned miserable.
Keep that in mind: when you get old, don’t be in any hurry to lock yourself into a marriage. Nobody cares whether some old buzzard is living in sin with some old bat!
That house is lookin’ mighty good now — or at least, it was when those photos were taken. They enclosed the carport — which was on the west side of the building. Another layer of block plus a large space of empty air (garage) would cut the heat level in that living room, very nicely. They also enclosed the back screen porch, much enlarging the indoor living space.
And they added a dishwasher — my mother never had a dishwasher, in all the time she lived with my father…thirty-some years. All nice new appliances, very good. Ceiling fans: good. Those room air conditioners would have made it a LOT more comfortable for her…really, when you come down to it, it’s kind of odd they didn’t think of that. But then again, maybe not: they bought central air-conditioning to have central air-conditioning, after all. The bathrooms are basically the same, no doubt with updated fixtures. That gawdawful Pepto-Bismol pink tile in the back bathroom was the height of style when they moved in!
Really, if there just weren’t SO many unhappy memories associated with that place, right now today I would seriously consider buying it.
Supposedly the version I’ve got is not very severe. But I’ll tellya…it’s got me knocked into the middle of next week! Uhm…I think… It’s hard to tell what week we’re in.
It zaps your memory. Especially short-term memory. I can. not. remember. things that I did just a few hours ago, or things that I’m supposed to do now and in the near term.
Case in point: the pool motor busted. (Wouldncha know, eh?) So now I’ve gotta get some guy out to work on that.
Pool Dude gave me a guy’s name. I know I called the guy…but…
I can…not…remember…what…we…said!
Is he going to come by? If so, when? What day? What time?
Seriously: the conversation we had is a blank. A total blank: I cannot remember one thing we said.
So now I’ve got to call that guy up and fess up to that little lapse…what an embarrassment!!!
****
Yes. Yes I did talk to him. He said he would come by whenever he can — has a pretty full plate, apparently.
Weird!!
Also weird is the apparent variability of this virus’s effects. Some people, as we’re widely told, are brought to Death’s door.
I, on the other hand, have a cough. That’s it. Well, that and so-called “brain fog.”
No fever — to the contrary: my temp is in the negative numbers.
No headache.
No sore throat.
No stuffy nose.
No compulsive pounding on Death’s Door.
I suspect the “brain fog” is a real thing. Even though I’m getting damn senile, I’m not THAT senile! Normally I can remember who I talked with this morning and what we said.
So I’m left worrying whether it’s safe for me to drive the car…even though I feel fine, if some marbles are missing, am I a menace to navigation?
***
The day stumbles on. Now we learn I must not have been THAT sick last night. Because….quite a commotion took place a half-block from the Funny Farm, and I slept right through it.
NEIGHBORHOOD FACEBOOK PAGE, 12:38 A.M.
Neighbor 1:
What is happening on Butler right now? Cops and helicopters everywhere
Neighbor 2
Suspicious person hiding near a car on NNth Ave & Funny Farm Road
Neighbor 3
Author
Pass-Through Street is completely blocked with first responders
Neighbor 4
The Hood…never boring
Neighbor 3
unfortunately not these days
Neighbor 5
https://www.abc15.com/…/two-teens-injured-after-stolen…
Found this article!
ABC15.COM
Two teens injured after stolen vehicle crashes into wall, fencing
Neighbor 4
3 teenagers stole a car, there was a police chase , they lost control on PassThrough and FunnyFarm Ave, one was ejected, the other they caught in my neighbors yard then the other one apparently was a few blocks north
Neighbor 6
How did you figure this out? They took out my fence and damaged property.
Neighbor 4
oh my goodness ! I’m 2 or 3 houses down i believe, the neighbor across the street spoke with the police last night and he told my husband .
Neighbor 7
If anyone has video- please let us know asap! From what I understand he took off his jacket and had a white shirt on. It was between 12-1am Saturday night. Detectives are knocking on doors looking for video. https://ring.com/share/14201c5b-5acf-434e-846d-4cebeda5a21a
RING.COM
Ring #AlwaysHome
Neighbor 7
They were hiding under our neighbors car but got away before the cops arrived on foot… :/
UGH
****
So it goes: Life in the Big City. I personally am getting bloody tired of it, and if my son weren’t dead-set against my moving, I would be soooo gone by now.
SDXB moved to Sun City because of exactly this kind of sh!t. I’ve lived in Sun City and don’t want to do that again. But there are plenty of other venues that are significantly less active than ours.
Fountain Hills is one. It’s halfway to Payson…but on the other hand, it’s close to the Mayo Clinic’s doctors’ offices, which could be convenient on occasion. On the other side of town, there’s Cave Creek and it’s affluent sister suburb, Carefree. Very pretty area, though expensive. The Arcadia district, over on the easterly side of town, has houses very similar to the ones in the ‘Hood but is a significantly better area.
Most of the neighborhoods in town, though, have this kinda sh!t going on all the time, unless they’re gated communities like the Country Club district. The nearest comparable area is probably Moon Valley, but because it’s solidly middle-class and has no adjacent slums, the cost of real estate there is way outside my budget. By and large comparable houses there cost almost twice what I could get for the Funny Farm. Most have no gas service, so you’re stuck with an electric hot plate instead of a real stove. And — not so obvious in the real estate photos — the houses are VERY cheaply built. Many or most of them have essentially zero insulation in their exterior walls. Many have flat roofs, so you can’t insulate the attic (such as it is) either. So they’re hot all summer despite astronomical power bills.
It’s Life in the Big City…i guess…
***
**** AND no, I do NOT know why WordPress refuses to double-space between paragraphs here! Yes, I HAVE tried to fix it, every which way from Sunday. No, NOTHING that I do makes it work. And so…screw it. Imagine paragraph breaks where ye please. ****
