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Urban life

Yipes! ANOTHER Cop “Incident”?

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So the dawg is fed and I’m just about to throw on some clothes and take her for the morning doggy walk. It’s around 6:30.

Right. Sure.

Ruby is chowing down; I’m looking for a pair af marginally presentable jeans. And…ohhhh yeah:

R-R-R-O-O-O-O-A-R-R-R-R….

Cop copter flyover.

Round and round and round he goes. He’s looking for someone, and that someone is within a few blocks of the Funny Farm. The police dispatch website says nothing about it.

Based on past experience, the someone will be…

  • an ordinary burglar (not likely: they’ve been up there almost 40 minutes…they wouldn’t waste that much fuel on a workaday prowler);
  • a wanted criminal on the run from some other neighborhood;
  • somebody who actually did break in to a house here and raped or otherwise engaged the resident;
  • a bum who picked a fight with a homeowner trying to evict him from a garage or a backyard; or
  • a criminal, probably of the violent type, on the run from the cops, who chased him here after some other incident.

WhatEVER: it put the eefus on the Morning Doggywalk.

Fortunately, the weather has cooled dramatically. So, we can afford to wait an hour before setting out to defile the neighbors’ lawns.

😉

Yesterday the neighborhood association had its annual Giant Shindig in the Park, so we weren’t able to go over there during that. And now I”m not so sure about taking her into the park anyway, at least for the nonce. We’re enjoying a parvo plague. This fine and often fatal disease can be picked up off the ground. And Ruby, like any dawg, loves nothing more than sniffing every stink she comes across. Especially if it’s associated with a pile of feces.

Ruby has had her parvo shots, of course. However, I don’t get her shot up every year, because…a study showed that most of the routine vaccines last up to a decade. The researchers shot up a passel of dogs and watched them to see how long the initial rounds of shots worked. The vaccines were still protective nine years after the study began. At that point, the researchers ran out of funding and so dropped the study.

Thus we don’t know for sure how long the shots last, but apparently it covers the dog for as long as most dogs live. And also thus: I’m less than thrilled about taking her to our park, which everybody and their little brother uses as a de facto dog park. Not only are their little furbabies running around off-lead (some of them looking for a fight), but lead or no lead, any dog that’s been exposed to parvo is dropping viral particles everywhere it goes.

***

Hmmmm…. And this may have something to do with this morning’s Copter Flyover:

…the intersection of [Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South] is closed in all directions this morning and will not open until much later in the day. Please seek alternate routes. #PHXTraffic

Probably some idiot drove or walked out in front of the train.

Y’know…I love my neighborhood and all the wonderful young people who are moving here with their kids. I like being centrally located. I love the greenery and the park and the fancy houses in the Richistans and the cute little tract houses in my parts. But I sweartogawd, sometimes I think what AM i doing here?

My son is adamant that I should not move out of this house. But the truth is, there are safer districts, and they’re not all in the Sun Cities.

Fountain Hills is the most attractive of these. Problem is, it’s about as far away from everyone I know and everything I do as the Moon is. It’s halfway to Payson! Close to the Mayo Clinic…but otherwise, I know no one out there and have no great desire to get to know anyone. Sun City is quiet, if you enjoy the silence of the tomb. And mile on mile on mile of houses that look so much alike you can’t tell the difference between them.

Most areas in north Phoenix and Scottsdale do have fewer bums…we get inundated because we live at the end of the lightrail line. The bums and the indigent mentally ill climb on the damned train, ride it up here to the end of the line, get out, and fan out into the neighborhood. Of course we always had some crime before that thing was built. But we didn’t have a bum in every yard, and we didn’t have to be extra-cautious about taking the trash out in the alley (I have two sets of padlocks on the back gates!), and we didn’t have to walk around spaced-out bums sleeping off their latest fix in the park. These are largely functions of the idiotic lightrail project and the insertion of several drug clinics in the immediate vicinity of the neighborhood. So in theory one could escape some of the crime and ickiness simply by moving to a different district.

One of the magnets that calls the transients in: the FIVE drug treatment centers within easy walking distance of the lightrail stops at Main Drag South and at Gangbanger’s Way. One of them is right down the street from a grade school!

Drug abuse is pretty much endemic here. And it spans all social classes. So unless you live in a gated community such as the Biltmore or the Phoenix Country Club, you are going to have drug addicts wandering your neighborhood streets and sleeping in your yard.

Welp, Ruby is lobbying for a doggy-walk. I haven’t had anything to eat and am starved. And so, awawayyyy….to breakfast and then to brave the day’s outdoor adventure.

And tonight? HALLOWE’EN! Armies of cute little kids trucked into the ‘Hood from lower-income districts, here to collect the loot. We always sit in the WonderAccountants’ driveway to hand out candy…so that will be fun.

Dispatch from Costco’s Tire Shop: Monday as Day From Hell

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Any day could be a Day from Hell, I suppose. Monday’s as good any for spiraling downhill. After a full morning in Hell (cleaning lady, nail in a tire, driving round and round Robin Hood’s Barn), as we scribble we’re now parked on a bench in the Tire Shop at Costco, waiting a predicted two hours to get one flickin’ tire fixed.

Again.

Dave, the doughty fella manning the customer service desk, is so busy he hasn’t had time to take a deep breath. Literally: the action here NEVER STOPS, not even for a minute or two.

This morning I had to take Ruby the Corgi to the vet to find out about getting her stinky teeth cleaned. This is a much neglected task: having foolishly imagined that I would be responsible enough to clean her teeth myself, I’ve let it go and let it go and forgotten about it and let it go until now she stinks so much she no longer can be ignored.

Actually…the issue is that her mouth is too small to allow me to fit the finger-sized tooth-scrubber thing in there. So no amount of pretend scrubbing does…well…anything. So this morning I took her to the vet, who wants A THOUSAND DOLLARS to clean her teeth.

This was no surprise, because the same vet used to pull the same stunt on La Maya, who (more or less) willingly forked over the cash for her two dachshunds.

Expecting this, I told her that on Social Security there’s no way in Hell I can afford anything like that.

She recommended some outfit called Doggy Dental, which supposedly does nothing but clean dogs teeth, for something vaguely resembling a reasonable fee.

That notwithstanding, she charged me for X-raying the dog’s teeth (did I ask her to do that?), and of course for the privilege of walking into her office.

So on the way home I stopped by a newer, closer vet to ask what they’d charge. Walked in. NOT A SOUL AROUND! Waited awhile. Left.

Next: low tire light comes on. Sumbiche!

Stop by the Firestone shop on the way home – they’re up at the corner Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s Way. Guy there says the tire needs to be replaced. And that’ll be a thousand bucks.

Uh HUH!

See ya!

So now here I am at the Costco, waiting and waiting and waiting to see if they can fix the tire and, if, not to simply buy a new one. Which, you may be damned sure, will NOT set me back a thousand dollah.*

This place is hectic!!!

The guys at the desk haven’t had a chance to take a deep breath since I walked in. But now…weirdly!…the crowd has abated, people have roamed off, and it’s downright quiet in here.

Meanwhile, NATCHERLY today is Cleaning Lady Day. So Luz is on her own at the Funny Farm. Fortunately, because I had to duck in there on the way, I did manage to pay her. That’s something. I guess.

Dayumnation! Somewhere, somehow I’m gonna have to find a vet that charges reasonable fees. And is competent.

That’ll be quite a trick. All the good old vets that I knew have retired and sold their veterinaries. So I don’t know anyone anymore. And they don’t know me, either…so haven’t the slightest compunction about charging me through the schnozzola. {sigh} Because of that, I reckon, Ruby  the Corgi is going to be the last dog to live at the Funny Farm.

How much longer, I wonder will the Ruby last? Overall her health seems to be excellent. So, barring accidents…what? Three to five years?

Holeee shee-ut! In five years I’ll be EIGHTY-TWO YEARS OLD! Assuming I’m still alive, that is.

Doesn’t seem possible.

That’s actually not out of the realm of possibility, though. On the California side of the family, women have lived into their 90s…and since they were Christian Scientists, that was in the absence of medical care. One of my uncles was 88 when he croaked over…. But… my mother’s New York grandparents weren’t so fortunate. Her grandmother died of diabetes in what must have been her mid- to late 30s…early 40s at the latest.

So then we’re confronted with the question of whether, after Ruby passes on to her furry fathers, can I justify getting another dog? Or even handle having another dog?

. . . .

Tire Shop Desk Dude: It’ll take about two hours to fix that.
Customer: That’s fine. I’ll do some shopping. The car is right outside.
TS DD: Where’s the wheel lock key?
Customer: In the glove compartment.

Uh huh. NOBODY would ever think to look for it there….

Guy just came in with a tire that needs fixing. Warrantee expired three years from the day he bought it: YESTERDAY.

Augh!

. . . .

As we were saying…. Can I, should I get another dawg after Ruby passes on to her Furry Fathers? Assuming she predeceases me, that is.

Unless the proposed successor to the Crown is already pushing old age when she arrives in the Realm, I’m not likely to survive her. So…who will take her? Can my son be bamboozled into agreeing to take in an ancient dawg when his mother croaks over? Hmmmmm…..

Old Guy comes in, pays a bill, walks out. He’s wearing well-used jeans held up with suspenders. Looks like he belongs in the Ozarks.

Prob’ly cruised in from Paradise Valley in his Rolls.

This is the West Side, though. Not impossible that he could be an old cotton farmer or rancher. Not likely, though.

Hey: Tire Dude says the guys are just finishing up with the Venza. Give it 2 minutes; then walk out to the second bay.

Hungry hungry hungry. By the time I get home it’ll be dinnertime, almost. So I guess that’ll be the main meal of the day.

How much longer before two minutes have passed?

Ohhhh how I wanna go home!

****

ESCAPED!

* Oh, and it cost $12 to replace the tire… It was on warrantee.

 

Leave. My. Dog. Alone…PLEASE!

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Well, I offended one of the neighbors mightily this morning. Honestly. Sometimes I do wonder WHAT is the matter with people!

This lady — I’d say she’s in her 60s or maybe early 70s — walks around every morning with a pocket full of dog treats. She inhabits the Richistans, so if Ruby and I go over there on the morning doggy-walk, we’re likely to run into her. And we DO go over there most days, because the park, so much beloved by Ruby the Corgi, is simply overrun with off-the-leash dogs charging around.

Yes. The park DOES have a big sign that says “DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH.” But of course it doesn’t apply to those folks, right?

So if we want to stroll through a shady, park-like stretch, we’re pretty much restricted to Upper Richistan.

This lady haunts those regions. She’s out there almost every morning.

She’s very friendly. She’s a VERY sweet person. And every damn morning she wants to give Ruby a doggy-treat.

Now you understand, I don’t especially mind if Ruby gets a random dog treat now and again. But there are some good reasons to ask her to refrain:

  • Ruby is getting fat.
  • Fat is exceptionally not good for a corgi, with its long spine and short legs.
  • I would prefer it very much that Ruby not expect to get doggy-treats from strangers. My dogs’ job is not to suck up to strangers, some of whom (in these parts) are not folks with whom you especially want to encourage chumminess.
  • Some dogs are diabetic. They should not have doggy treats: their diets, like the diets of diabetic humans, need to be carefully tended.

She always asks if it’s OK to give Ruby a treat, and I always, out of politeness, say “sure.” Today I decided to get honest with her, and so I replied, “I’d really prefer it if she didn’t get treats.”

WELL! You’d think I’d insulted all her daughters and their madame!

She got all huffy and stalked off dramatically.

People are SO STUPID about dogs!

  1. The ones who insist on letting their dogs run loose in a public park bounded on three sides by streets full of commuters chugging off to the main drags.
  2. The ones who confuse their dogs with children and burble inanely over their “fur-babies”
  3. The ones who coo, as your German shepherd is getting set to remove their dog’s throat, coo “Ohhhh don’t worry! They just wanna plaaayyyy!“
  4. The ones who let their dog run loose in the mountain parks and then are surprised when their dog sticks its nose under a creosote bush and gets bit by a rattlesnake.
  5. The ones who run their dog by their bicycles as they peddle down the street.
  6. The ones who run their dog by their skateboard as they skate down the sidewalk.

Lordie, I’m fed up with that stuff.

Folks. Your dog is not your child. It’s not a human at all. It is a descendant of wolves, a type of pack animal. It acts like it’s your friend because its species has evolved into a an advantageous, symbiotic relationship with humans. Treating your dog as if it were a child puts your dog at risk of health problems and behavioral problems and you at risk of lawsuits.

Even if you must be silly about your dog, please please please don’t be stupid about other people’s dogs!

Are You Crazy to Have Kids Today?

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Time to move along? If I were younger and had kids, I’d sure be looking at that possibility a lot more closely. On the other hand…move to where? Seems like every part of the country is either off the deep end or teetering on the edge.

What a place we live in!

Southward bound to the AJ’s, my favorite overpriced gourmet-style grocery store, I was about to turn left off Main Drag East to move over onto Central Avenue, which takes you directly by the front of the beloved store. Idling in the left-turn lane, I looked down in the direction of where I would be east-bound and saw…TA DAAAAA! An army of cops, fire vehicles, ambulances, and whatnot, right down on Central.

HOLY shee-ut! Veer back into the southbound lanes and proceed southward, ever southward, to the first E/W main drag north of AJ’s. Manage to get into the store without incident.

So…chatting with the beloved checkout lady at the beloved AJ’s, I mention that if she’s going out to lunch, she should avoid going north on Central. And she said…a little wrecky-poo was as nothing! The other day the AJ’s crew was witness to a full-blown lockdown of Brophy, Xavier, and Central high schools, fine institutions of learning directly across Camelback Road from AJ’s.

FYI, Brophy and Xavier are elite private high schools run by the Jesuits, who have a lovely church and campus about a block south of AJ’s. Central is THE high school that middle-class parents who can’t afford private schools move into the North Central neighborhoods for: to get their kids in there. If you’re a minority member and live in South Phoenix, you also have a good shot (oops!) at getting your kid into Central. Campuses for the three schools are adjacent.

Apparently a nut-case kid at Central showed up at school with a gun (or not???), and a full-blown panic ensued. From what you can tell by the gnus stories, it appears that all three schools were locked down.

Just imagine. All those hundreds of kids having to go through a terrifying drama like that!

Y’know…. If I were a young person today, you could not pay me to have children.

But if I were of the religious persuasion that insisted I simply must go forth and procreate, then you could not pay me to put my kids in the public schools. Or…as we can see from this episode, in any goddamn school.

If I had kids today, truth to tell, I would home-school them.

Right. Try not to go berserk at the mere thought: it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

One semester I was teaching a class at ASU West — in the evening, as I recall — whose members were mostly adults. Somehow the subject of home-schooling came up — why, I don’t remember — and ohmigawd! You should have heard the conversation that ensued.

As you might expect, a number of classmates were folks who thought that only the crazed and the doctrinaire would even think of home-schooling.

Then the crazed and the doctrinaire spoke up. There were, purely by coincidence, A LOT of them. And…you never saw so many ears perk up in your life!

Not one of the home-schooling parents appeared to be crazy. Every one of them had rational reasons to have their children tutored through the first 12 years of America’s conventional education. All of the kids who had reached college age had succeeded in getting accepted by the colleges of their choice. Each set of parents had made financial sacrifices (i.e., one parent had to stay home from work) to pull off the home-schooling trick. Classmates had question after question after question after question after question. And the parents had answer after answer after answer.

It was THE single most interesting classroom discussion I’ve ever had the pleasure of leading or of participating in.

We spoke together long before the mass-shooting loony-toons our culture enjoys today. But even in the absence of that concern, when you heard these parents speak about the reasons for their decisions, about how they pulled it off, about how they found activities to help socialize their kids, and about the results, you came away thinking holeee shee-ut! why didn’t i think of that?

And you know… I have to say that today, if I had kids (which I probably wouldn’t, under the circumstances), I would seriously consider home-schooling.

What a place we live in! What a time we live in! What an unholy culture we live in!

 

Time to Move Along?

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Mogollon Rim from near Payson

HOLY mackerel! This place gets more and more crime-ridden and more and more violent with every day that passes!

Y’know…I can handle the mailbox thefts. And the burglars. And the cop helicopter flyovers every damn night. The abductions (for the purpose of rape) from the bus & train stops at Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E.W. can be dealt with simply by never riding a bus or a lightrail train. The transient drug addicts: locks on the doors and windows, plus a large, loud dog. The panhandler harassment at the corner shopping centers: drive to some other district for grocery shopping and drugstore visits. The car break-ins and thefts: close the damn garage door…oh, but first, do park your car on the inside of said garage. The mail thefts: for a mere 400 bucks, install a Fort Knox of a mailbox. The burglars: keep a fine, fully loaded .45 on hand.

But I sweartogawd, every which way you turn, here’s more gratuitous, demented, and criminal violence. And it is too…damn…close to home.

I go by this corner every time I visit the Costco north of the university.

Ruby and I could walk to this dump, if it were safe to do so. As it is, I drive by there several times a week on the way to the freeway or to points west. That’s rather closer than I’d like to get.

This fancy charter school is in the Arcadia district, not far from where my late step-sister lived.

This episode took place in an informal B&B (why are those legal???) that popped up, also in the Arcadia district — an area where the ritzy and the titzy congregate to live in what they imagine will be peace.

A moment of nuttiness took place at a park just south of the university’s west campus…another garden spot that I pass in my car with some frequency.

Central High School is the best public high school in the city (which may be telling you something). My son went to a Jesuit high school directly next door to it — they occupy, in effect, practically the same campus. Sunnyslope belies this figure, though; it also has a reputation as one of the best-performing high schools in the country.

Yet… the violence and the vagrancy and the craziness go on and on and on and on, every damn day! And it seems to get more frantic as the weeks pass.

And y’know what?

I’m tired of living in the middle of a war zone. Once again I’m brought back to the feeling that as much as I love my home and my neighbors and my neighborhood, as much as I like being 8 minutes from the church and 10 minutes from my son’s house (he also lives in a war zone…), it’s past time to move along.

The violence, the crime, and the Loony Toons spread pretty homogeneously across the Valley. Of course, there’s more low-end craziness in garden spots like the apartments that flank the ‘Hood on the west side of Conduit of Blight Blvd and the dank slum directly to the north. But as that cop said after the Adventure of the Home Invasion: “It’s everywhere.”

[Yeah? Well…whaddaya bet some parts of Everywhere have less of it than our part does?]

So…if one were gonna move, where would one go?

Well, if I stayed in the Valley, the two choices would be Fountain Hills or the Cave Creek/Carefree area. I don’t consider the Sun Cities a choice: just not innarested in living in a ghetto for old tolks.

Both these venues are expensive. Fountain Hills has the added attribute of late-model cheesy construction: structures that were built to fall apart. The Funny Farm is probably in the last generation of solidly built affordable residential structures, and even it has a failing in the insulation department. Those houses out east are simply junk: Southern California-style built-to-fall-apart junk. Expensive junk.

Anything that is newer construction shares that fine attribute, and most of the stuff in Cave Creek and Carefree falls under the rubric of “newer.” Ticky-tacky is the name of the Development Game here in Arizona, price range notwithstanding.

That leaves as options some of the outlying towns, or Tucson.

  • Tucson, also plagued by gimme-a-buck developments, has two big draws: the best hospital/medical center in the state (something that looks Bigger the Older you get), and the vibrant cultural center that is the University of Arizona. A lot is going on in Tucson, the weather is far more pleasant than Phoenix’s, and with a fine mountain range behind the city, just about anyplace you can live is fairly scenic.
  • Prescott, a large small town/small city up the I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, is a pleasant little burg. HOWEVER…it’s been discovered. From what I’m told, mobs of Baby Boomers and younger people are moving up there, turning it into yet another Southern California East. The weather’s a little cooler (though what you save in air-conditioning you’ll probably spend on heating); it has a supposedly excellent medical center (people who work there beg to differ, interestingly enough); and it’s a straight shot down the freeway to the urban marvels of Phoenix. I’m not at all sure it has enough more to offer, when compared to Fountain Hills, to make it worth a major move and a long drive into town.
  • Payson: Mr. and Mrs. Fireman moved up there, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. They bought an extremely cool house in the forest, and, given Mr. Fireman’s outstanding handyman skills, have turned it into a to-die-for little palace. Problem with Payson? Rudimentary services and facilities. They had to drive their dog into Phoenix to be tended to by a veterinarian after the poor pooch was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No Costco: only one Safeway, a store that I would call…well, pretty blah. No first-rate doctors or dentists — they drive into town for those services, too. Doctors? Doctors? We don’t need no steeeenking doctors!
  • Uh huh. Well…if you have to schlep all the way down the mountain — about a two-hour drive — for basic shopping and services, you’d be far better off to live in Fountain Hills.  Not only do they have a couple of supermarkets within the development, there’s a Costco down the road and all the upscale shopping of lovely Scottsdale just a few miles to the west. Plus you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from Fountain Hills!
  • Chandler: Nope. Ticky-tacky suburb Hell.
  • Florence: Nope. No better than Payson, but not as pretty.
  • Ahwatukee: Blech. If I’m gonna live in ticky-tacky mass construction, I’ll take Fountain Hills any day.
  • Tempe: Gawd help us!
  • Sun City/Youngtown: Horrible ghettos for old folks, garnished by cheaply built ticky-tacky.

Really, in a lot of ways, the ‘Hood IS the best of all possible worlds, at least for someone who’s not swimming in money. It’s an established neighborhood. Because the upscale section has irrigation, we have mature and very beautiful green landscaping. Even over here in the po’ folks quarters, the trees and shrubbery are mature, shady, and lovely. It’s close-in — shopping, schools, entertainment, doctors & hospitals, all right around the corner. We have a park in the middle of the neighborhood. We’re served by a decent public grade school and one of the nation’s top public high schools, plus an array of private and religious K-12 schools. Young upwardly mobile types have discovered it and are madly gentrifying, so there’s nowhere for property values to go but up. Plus: what could be better than young families with young kids playing around the neighborhood?

So…i dunno. It’s a toss-up. So it seems to me…

Brave New World…redux

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God’lmighty!!!!! It’s 11:30 in the morning; I’ve been on the road since 9, burned a third of a tank of ga$, and so far have gotten exactly nowhere.

In the Getting Nowhere Department, for the life of me I cannot enter edits to clean up the formatting mess that is yesterday’s post. NOOO clue what’s the matter with it. Grayson the Web Guru doesn’t seem to know, either. Because, he offers, I copied and pasted it in from a different program?

Well, OK, could be: he’s got somethin’ there. I pasted much of it from MacMail, reproducing a narrative of adventures I’ve shared with friends. But I do that all the time!!!!!! If copying a passage from an email bollixes up the formatting so spectacularly that it can’t be fixed, then 2/3 OF THE POSTS I’VE INSTALLED HERE FOR LO! THESE MANY YEARS would be similarly up-gefucked.

It won’t let me fix the formatting. So I give up. The copy is not unreadable — just a bit funny-looking. The latest effort fixed all but about the first third of the post. Sooooo…fugeddaboudit… Let’s pretend it’s just ducky and move on.

What. A. Day!

It’s 102 out there, with 15% humidity. And not even noon.

Day from Hell started with a simple goal: trot out this morning to visit the nearest hardware store and pick up a battery-operated doorbell. One with two bing-bong buttons. This to replace the one that was disassembled by a thief.

No kidding. I’m sitting in my office and see a pickup pull up to the front of the house. Looks like a yard dude: he’s got a trailer full of yard debris in tow. Guy hops out of the passenger seat. I figure he’s gonna come up to the door and ask if I’d like to hire them to clean out the weeds that have sprouted (in gay abandon!!) since Gerardo and the boys were here.

He walks up to the front gate; pauses there; then turns around and RUNS back to the truck.

Turns out he’s ripped off the doorbell button from the gate!

Backstory:

This house has been owned by a succession of eccentrics. Before Satan and Proserpine (my immediate predecessors) bought the place, some chucklehead who lived here got the bright idea of RIPPING OUT THE WALL BETWEEN THE LIVING ROOM AND THE FRONT BEDROOM. No kidding. This clever strategy turned the front room into a cavern, and reduced the number of bedrooms from four to three. Thereby also reducing the value of the house by about 20 grand.

In the process he also ripped out…yes…the doorbell installed by the developer. Like most sane doorbells, this thing operated on electricity, and so it had wiring that ran through the very walls that Previous Moron Owner had declared redundant. So when S&P moved in, the house had no doorbell.

And when they moved out, the house had no doorbell.

BUT…you can buy handy-dandy battery-operated doorbells at the Depot. Most of these devices have (or used to have…) two buttons: one for the front door and one for the back door.

Since my backyard is secured like Leavenworth, this gave us a redundant button.

But it was rendered UNredundant when Richard the Incredible Landscaping and Construction Dude built a marvelous enclosed front courtyard for me. He installed wrought-iron gates in the wall around this thing. A-n-n-d…conveniently enough, most battery-operated doorbells come with two doorbell buttons. We put one next to the driveway gate (where most people enter the courtyard) and one in the customary spot beside the front door.

This has worked well.

Until that a$$hole stole the doorbell button by the gate.

Ohhkay…i figure i’ll go out and buy another doorbell and set of bing-bong buttons, just like the one I installed a few years ago when I moved into this place.

Well.

No.

Of course not.

They apparently don’t make the damn things anymore. You cannot find them for love nor money.

Beloved Ace Hardware store up by the QT doesn’t have them.

Similarly beloved Ace Hardware Store in the Basha’s strip mall doesn’t have them.

Today we learned that Home Depot doesn’t have them. Lowe’s doesn’t have them. The hardware store just off the I-17 that might have had them (because they had everything) no longer exists: closed, lost, and gone forever.

Any surviving unsold specimens (if they actually do exist) are available only on Amazon.

So. I spent the ENTIRE FUCKING MORNING driving from pillar to post through the heat and humidity, banging around amongst the homicidal morons, and accomplished exactly NOTHING.

Well. Except for witnessing some fine examples of humanity’s nuttiness.

Jayzuz!

Here we are in the Home Depot parking lot, having dodged oblivion twice on the way there. Cruising up to where the reasonably located parking spaces reside, I see a young HD employee collecting empty shopping carts.

Because, after all, no self-respecting HD customer would have the common decency to put the damn things in the li’l stables where you’re supposed to park them after unloading your junk, right?

The kid is heaving a long line of carts across the lot — he must be pushing 15 or 20 heavy metal carts over the tarmac.

Along comes a moron in a beautiful new pickup — all red and shiny and magnificent. He cruises past the kid and the kid’s choo-choo train of carts, then CUTS IN FRONT OF HIM and swerves into a parking space directly in the path of where the kid has launched the carts!

Hooleeee shee-ut!

I think omigod that whole train of metal shopping carts is gonna crash into the truck’s shiny new rear fender!!!!

Incredibly, the kid manages to stop the caravan just before it collides with the truck.

Trudge into the Depot. Ask around. Find a guy who knows about battery-operated doorbells. Nope, they don’t have any with two ringy-dingy buttons.

I know these still exist, because I’ve seen them on Amazon. Say g’bye. Trudge back out through the soggy heat to the car. Resume driving driving driving.

Cruise across the city, under the freeway, through the ever-present road construction, and over to the Lowe’s. First try to visit the Best Buy next door to the Lowe’s, because as we know Best Buy carries everything, no matter how eccentric. Forget that: they don’t open until an incredible 11 a.m.!!! It’s about 9:30 or quarter to ten by now, since I wanted to get an early start to beat the most crushing of the heat.

Lowe’s of course has battery-operated doorbells…but none of them have two doorbell buttons.

Sumbiche.

Drive home, ready to bite somebody.

Dodge a huge truck that tries to change lanes into the driver’s side of my car. Incredibly, escape unharmed.

Get home, mad as a cat.

SDXB on the phone. Tell him this sad story. He starts to lecture me about how to get the desired doorbell, unknowingly reiterating Every. Goddamn. Thing. I. Just. Told. Him. I’d. Done. This, evidently, because he suffers from male pattern selective deafness: this is a guy who literally cannot hear the female voice. And so it doesn’t register with him that he’s advising me do do all the things I’d just told him I tried to do.

Arrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Finally get off the phone, more or less politely.

Get online. Call up Amazon. And yup: there’s the very doorbell.

Order it up. It’s supposed to be delivered by 10 p.m. tomorrow.

That’s assuming, of course, that none of the ‘Hood’s ubiquitous porch pirates steal it before I notice it’s been delivered.