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Urban life

The Frost Is on the Palm Tree…

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…and on the neighbors’ roofs. The Human, consequently, is suffering a spate of severe indolence, much to the disgust of the Dog, a creature of crisper climates. Soon, though, the loafing primate will be forced to get up and trot around the ’Hood with the canid. Then it’s off to the Walmart to pick up some household necessities.

It was 36 degrees out there when the Dog and the Human rolled out of the sack this morning. Just now — along about two and a half hours later — the back porch thermometer claims the ambient temp has warmed to a cozy 41 degrees. Ruby just trotted in, bearing a prize mummified orange, which (unless I get off my duff and steal it from her) she will soon chew up into messy crumbs. There she goes…off to her nest in the back bathroom.

Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner is hung up on the new moron-protection equipment at the bottom of the pool. People with not very good sense will swim to the bottom of a pool’s deep end with their long hair floating sexily loose in the water and…surprise! Their hair gets stuck in the main drain (which has very powerful suction), they panic and can’t get loose, and they drown. So to protect such bright folk from themselves, we all get to be inconvenienced: the mandated non-hair-catching drain covers, which were not required by law the last time that pool was replastered, stick up off the floor and trap Harvey, so that he just sits there while the pump runs for eight hours at a time.

Pool Dude says I need to replace Harvey (who was replaced just a year or so ago…and whose life expectancy is a good eight years or more) with a model that has wheels. Right. That’ll be $380, which I don’t happen to have laying around. So…I dunno what to do about that. Maybe just take Harvey out and manually vacuum the pool every week or two. What a PITA.

I may ask Pool Dude if his company can come up with a better price than Leslie’s can. They are, after all, a local outfit, and one of course would rather buy local, all other things being equal. But…not now. Probably not until after the end of the summer, unless I win the lottery.

As soon as the rush hour traffic abates, the dog and I must set out for the daily mile-long circuit around the hood…though I must say, I’d like to take this dog somewhere else for a change of scenery. That would require getting in the car, though, something I find increasingly aversive as the days and months go by.

Yesterday I drove out to Tempe to meet The Kid at our favorite fancy restaurant. She’s now engaged in a new master’s program, with an eye to changing careers altogether. She wants to become a psychological therapist, a calling that (IMHO) she would be very good at.

It only took about 20 or 25 minutes to get out there. But it took over an hour to get home.

Normally one would figure the rush hour begins at 3:00 p.m. here. So at 2:25, westward bound on the 202, it did not register with me that I’d best get off the freeway at 32nd Street rather than driving all the way through to the northbound 51. That was dumb. Yards past the 32nd Street offramp, the traffic started to back up. People as usual were jerking and darting around and cutting each other off…I mean, really, estúpido, what good DOES it do you to be one car-length further on down the road than you already were? So in my inimitable manner I did a bit of my own highly skilled jerking around and cut off the guy who had just cut me off to get into the lane to go north on 24th.

Damn, I’m good! Outa my way, ya crazy fools!

I shoulda been a stock-car driver. Did you know one of my freshman-year roommates raced stock cars? Yeah. Back in the day: she was one of the only female race-car drivers in the country. Nineteen and aught-sixty-two…

The offramp is moving slowly, but it is moving. We cruise past several hundred cars (no exaggeration) becalmed in four side-by-side stopped lanes and we slide off onto 24th Street. From there it is a long drive on the surface streets to the north side of North Central.

I decide to take a favorite short-cut, darting west onto Missouri. Unfortunately, so many people now know about this route that one no longer does much darting on it…unless one is cutting off another of one’s fellow homicidal drivers, of course. Traffic is moving, but at a leisurely pace. Naturally, I forget about the damn school: see a school bus way on down the road. Thank the gods and goddesses, it turns off into a neighborhood. One annoyance out of the way, anyhow.

The favorite restaurant was disappointing: for the second time in a row. The last time, I thought it was a fluke — really, this is one of the best places to eat in the entire Valley. But now it looks like the operative term is was, not is.

Usually the hired help is primo: today the server was well-meaning, for sure…but…well…okay, let’s say it: stump-dumb. He didn’t know a lot about the restaurant business, apparently, and he certainly knew almost nothing about the level of cuisine usually served up there.

But that was probably OK, because the level was decidedly not at its high-water mark. Feeling less than ravenous, I ordered an hors-d’oeuvre  platter of Greek-ish delicacies priced about the same as an entrée, and a cup of fancified tomato soup. The soup had a kind of chemically taste (supposedly “smoked” tomatoes: I suppose the smoke was applied from a bottle). The hummus was overspiced (possibly that’s why it was misspelled on the menu? not really hummus but hummus-like: hummous…). The falafel balls were overcooked, dry, and came with too little tahini to moisten them — just a few smears spread on the plate. The Kid’s salad was…well, a salad: what else can one say?

The wine? I’ve had better from Walmart’s liquor shelf, and got the whole bottle for the six bucks we each paid for a glass of the day’s “special.”

The only part of the meal that was outstanding was the dessert. A berry shortcakey concoction, it was excellent. As for the rest of it: taken together, dessert included, it was decidedly not worth the $43 and change we each paid.

So. I’m thinking the next time I go there, I’m gonna order a cup of coffee and the dessert of the day. Period. I’m sure not dropping another $43 on another meal like what we had yesterday.

Well, the sun is half-way to the yardarm, the frost has melted off the neighbor’s shingles, and so…away!

Comedy of Errors…That Ends Well

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What a wacky day! Bill Shakespeare himself couldn’t have made this one up.

So my friends VickyC and KJG made plans to meet at KJG’s new digs in Payson, on the 9th. This entails a junket up the side of the Mogollon Rim, about a 90-minute drive.

But first, I had to find some place to farm out the dog: My son’s house.

M’hijito was pressed into duty.

From his house I would have to make my way through gawdawful rush-hour traffic, made even more nightmarish by the TWO (not one) no-left-turn-during-rush-hour roads between my house and VickyC’s house. Getting there would require some driverly gymnastics on the master level. Meanwhile my back still hurts like hell.

So I arrive at his house at the duly appointed time, a little after 8 a.m. Jangle the doorbell.

He, given a fair amount of seniority on the job, is allowed to work at home to some degree. At a little after 8 a.m., he’s on the phone to a customer and is mightily annoyed at being interrupted.

Says he: It’s tomorrow, not today! The 9th is tomorrow.

WTF? Well, I’m sure the Big Day is Friday, because Vicky C, also gifted with a fair amount of seniority, often gets Fridays off. But now am confused.

Leave the dog with him, dart back to the car, and set out to circumnavigate the gawdawful no-left-turn lanes. This entails, in classic Phoenix driving fashion, traveling west in order to go east. I have to get over to 15th Avenue, cruise down to Indian School, fight my way across Central Avenue and the fucking train tracks, then veer south on 3rd Street, bat down to Palm Lane, cross 7th Street on that neighborhood lane (which has a light on 7th), and if I’ve lived that long make my way over a couple more neighborhood streets to VickyC’s.

This would be enough fun without the usual array of moron drivers.

But yea, verily: today I encounter the Emperor of Morons.

Wouldntcha know?

Southbound on 15th — a two-lane road, one southbound, one northbound, with a woozly little left-turn lane running up the middle — I pull up behind a jerk who’s meandering along at 15 mph. It’s a 35 mph zone, which means in Phoenix most people would drive 40 mph. Fifteenth Avenue is a main drag, you understand.

The turkey putters along and putters along. He’s not looking for someplace to turn. No. He’s just holding up the traffic.

Enough. I look around for a cop. Seeing none, I swerve into the left-turn lane and floor it!

This would be why we insist on a SIX-banger.

Sail past the moron and shoot back into the southbound lane, leaving the clown in the dust. Make the light and swing onto Indian School, where I wait through four or five lights to cross Central Avenue, pointlessly and stupidly congested by the lightrail boondoggle.

Finally get through that mess. Dart down 3rd, putter across Palm, and cruise up to VickyC’s house.

Naturally, she’s not there. Evidently my son is right: the Payson day was tomorrow. Which makes sense: the 9th is tomorrow, this being the 8th.

Back to the kid’s house. Pick up the dog, disappointing poor Charley the Golden Retriever, who was thrilled to have company today.

On the way home, stop by the park. By now, summat after 9:00 a.m., the morning is gorgeous! The air is still so crisp some frost lingers on the grass, but the sun is brightly shining. At this late hour, there’s almost no one in the park. We get in a mile’s walk, swinging south through a peninsula of Lower Richistan. Where…of course…

…we encounter another moron.

This is the Ohhhh don’t worry he only wants to play! species of moron.

Yes. Said chucklehead has a hundred-pound Rottweiller straining at a flimsy retractable(!) leash. This critter sees little Ruby and decides she’s at best a nuisance; at worse possibly a threat. The moron does not understand dog language, nary a whisper of it, and so he fails to grasp the meaning of a stiff-legged stance and a tense expression. Yea, verily, the stiff-legged stance with which his little FooFoo is approaching me and my dog, while he — the chucklehead — is being dragged along and cooing, he just wants to play!

I growl, perhaps altogether too unkindly, Right! I’ve heard the wind blow before. Poor little moron chuckles, probably nonplussed, and manages to hold his animal at bay until Ruby and I can get past, giving him and his poochie a wide berth.

Why? Why? WHY ARE SOOOOO MANY PEOPLE SOOO STUMP-STUPID?????

And speaking of stump-stupid, when I get back to the house I email VickyC to say I had the day wrong and I guess we’re going up to Payson on the 9th, Saturday, not on our usual get-together day, Friday.

She emails back: I thought it was March 9.

Holy sh!t.

We check in with KJG and learn forthwith that she’s on her way down here for a grandchild’s birthday, and indeed was figuring on March 9.

So. This is senility for ya. On steroids.

Actually, it’s a bit of a blessing. Quite a bit of a blessing.

First, of course, because I did not look forward to having to roll out of the sack early again tomorrow, bang around to feed me and the dog and pack the dog and her dinner in the car and repeat today’s adventures in city driving. So, hallelujah brothers and sisters, I’m excused from a repeat of that task.

But FAR more to the point: Our redoubtable new choir director, by way of orchestrating a special concert for this weekend’s Evensong, has arranged for a high-powered guest conductor to come in and lead us through this event. Out of the blue, he announced that said conductor would be here for a rehearsal tomorrow and, though notice was short, he would love to have as many of us attend as possible.

Well. Of course you may be sure I really wanted to be there, because our guy has brought in some very interesting people and this one promises to be another of them. Thinking I couldn’t possibly get out of the Payson junket, I was pretty disappointed.

But nay verily! Now I can go to this event after all!

So it goes: All’s well that ends well.

Hassle after hassle after hassle

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It just goes on and on and on and on…

So in addition to wrenching my back and spraining my hand, which will require a visit later this week to a doctor whose offices are on the south edge of freaking Sun City, halfway to Yuma, now ANOTHER actinic keratosis springs up, practically identical to the one suspected to be a squamous cell carcinoma, which required three trips to the dermatologist for biopsy and removal.

I had a standing appointment next week, not at the office halfway to Yuma but at another office, halfway to Las Vegas! It will take a good hour to drive out there. When this new itchy/hurty thing appeared, I called and asked if we should accelerate that appointment. She said she’d squeeze me in this afternoon. But no, not at the office I’m used to going to, which at least is right off the freeway, but at the halfway-to-Vegas office, which entails trudging mile after mile after mile after ENDLESS mile across Bell Road, through some of the most congested parts of the West Valley. If that weren’t enough, this morning I found another of the precancerous pits on my back.

It hurts to drive the car with this damn back pain. To reach the pedals & the steering wheel, I have to sit with my knees elevated above my hips, which as far as I can tell is the single most uncomfortable position to assume when your back is ripped up. So believe me: I’m not looking forward to two hours of that.

Then PayPal is demanding a series of actions or else they’ll close the bidness account. Tina and I haven’t used the thing since last October, so we decided to just let it go, since I haven’t seen any action from China since last October and she hasn’t extracted any work of her own. So of course, the instant that decision is made, in come 18 typest pages of abstruse math whose author wishes to have it turned into impeccable English. Great.

So I try to open a new PayPal account with a different email. PayPal jams. I can’t open a new account, apparently. And they demand that I link a credit card or debit card with it. NOT a freaking chance on God’s Green Earth! Almost all the most egregious complaints about PayPal entail PP reaching out and charging a user’s credit card — no appeal, fuckyouverymuch — and so you absolutely positively do NOT want a credit card “linked” with that outfit. In fact, I don’t think I want to do business with PayPal at all.

Sooo…on the way back from traipsing halfway to Las Vegas, I’ll have to make a detour to visit the credit union (assuming I can get there before it closes) and ask for advice on alternatives to PayPal.

WonderAccountant says she uses a Wells Fargo account so as to have access to a SWIFT number — the credit union is too small to have such a thing. This, she advises, would facilitate at least some funds transfers. However, where Wells Fargo is concerned: been there, done that, don’t wanna do that again. Nor do I want to do business with any large bank, because I have no desire to pay them so they can have my deposits to invest.

Western Union does business in China, but I think that would inflict an undue nuisance on my clients…to say nothing of “on me”: you have to find and traipse to a Western Union office to collect your money, then traipse to the credit union to deposit it. Wayyy more trouble than it’s worth; wayyyy more opportunity for fuck-up than I want to enjoy.

***

So I drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive. Leave at 1:12, walk in the doctor’s door at 2:04.

And…well…the little burg of Surprise now really is a surprise.

When I first came here and lived, off and on, with my parents in the original build-out of Sun City, Surprise was a raggedy wide spot in the road on the way to California. It wasn’t a town, exactly; it was a settlement for farm laborers. There was, in a word, nothin’ there but workin’ folks who didn’t speak English.

Now? It’s a vast carpet of late-model sprawl. Mile on mile after mile on mile of look-alike stick-and-styrofoam houses and mile on mile of look-alike strip shopping centers filled with clone restaurants and stores. Southern California on steroids.

Inside the office: A uniracial clientele. Three notably white patients wander out from back offices into the waiting room as I’m sitting here. They check out. One of them, at least, is fairly affluent: the receptionist tries to book an appointment six months hence – August – and he says nooo way, he’ll be up north out of the heat all summer.

Uh huh.

But…the houses are of later vintage, not pushing 50 years old, as my aluminum-wired shaque is. They’re all well maintained – grâce à the ubiquitous HOAs that have been inflicted on homebuyers here for lo! these many years.

It occurs to me to wonder what the crime rate is, out in those parts.

Not freaking bad, apparently: per 100,000 residents, a mere 89 violent crimes per annum, compared to 508 in lovely Arizona and 383 nationwide. Burglary: 168.5 (how do you get half a burglary? Catch the poor little perp in the act and chase him off?), vs. Arizona’s 536.3 and the nation’s 434.4 (4/10 of a burglary? Really? Picture it: Yes, officer, I was trying to burgle this shack, but just LOOK at the damn place! There’s nothin’ here to steal!) Vehicle theft: 129.3 vs Arizona’s 271.6.

That latter is probably explained by the fact that for several decades no one built enclosed garages: with no snow, all that was required was a shade structure. Believe it or not, once upon a time (oh! so folkloric!) Arizona was a fairly safe place to live. So vehicles in older neighborhoods are more vulnerable to break-in and theft than those parked inside the garages that have become standard in newer parts of town.

Hmh.

Despite the extreme whiteyness (which I find a bit disturbing) and the dreary sameness of the strip shopping malls that line the main drags, I wonder: should I consider moving here? Would it be better not to have to live behind hardened locks, not to listen to the merry buzz of ghetto birds overhead day and night?

Well.

Hell.

I think probably not. All the tidy elbow-to-elbow-to-elbow houses look the same. Inside and out. And something there is about elevated ceilings that exist for no other reason than to trick the eye – to make the occupant feel the dinky rooms are bigger than they are. Something there is about all-electric kitchens with hateful glass stovetops. Something there is about “plant shelves” that exist to break the boredom of the fake high ceilings and openings that evade having to use so much drywall. Something there is about noisy, ugly vertical blinds. Something there is about a solid gravel unlandscaped backyard and a dinky little nook that’s supposed to pass for a patio, ten feet from the wall between your house and the neighbor’s… Something there is that gives me the creeps. I hate that kind of design and building. Just can’t stand it.

No wonder the’hood is gentrifying. No wonder some fix-and-flipper figures he can get 750 grand for his latest 2700-square-foot-magnum opus, despite the bums and the commerce desert and the crime rate and the idiotic lightrail and the Section 8 apartments across the main drag. He probably can.

Jeez. The thing isn’t even in Lower Richistan.

At the credit union? The manager doesn’t know what alternative we might have to PayPal. He allows that he doesn’t like PayPal, thinks they’re none too ethical, and has the impression that of late they’ve been getting worse. He says he’ll have someone from the cash flow department call. Well. I don’t expect to hear from them.

My sense about this is that we’re probably going to have to deep-six the Chinese phase of The Copyeditor’s Desk. And since most of our custom now comes from China, that will mean, most likely, closing the business altogether.

Too bad. But frankly…even adjunct teaching would replace its income. With a lot more aggravation, of course. I should probably look for part-time work at Costco…

Pillar to Post…or is that Po$t?

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Okay, I knew I was going to have to drive from pillar to post this morning. But that doesn’t make life any less…amazing.

Item: Yesterday by pure serendipity I happened across a study that looks real (but sure, may not be: have we heard of the International Journal of Dermatology?) reporting that virgin coconut oil is almost as effective as mupirocin in beating back staphylococci. I’ve come to the end of the time that one is supposed to use the anti-MRSA staph ointment, and my nose still itches and the fading remains of the first and largest of the staph boils lingers on my paw. I am neurosing.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to throw out all of my makeup, because of course all if it is contaminated with the honored microbe. Yesterday I spent $90 at the Target replacing just  a few of my favorite drugstore cosmetics. But Target, being in the process of dumping last year’s fashions and restocking with this year’s fashions, offered precious poor pickin’s.

Item: Today I need a bottle of wine and a bottle of that “green” odorless relatively environmentally friendly dish detergent, which Sprouts does not carry. Sprouts does carry woo-woo shit like “virgin coconut oil,” whatever that is. There’s a very fine Sprouts down in the old, now obscenely gentrified neighborhood. It’s across the street from a Safeway, which will sell the coveted detergent. And I needed to go in search of the eyeshadow and brow powder that Target didn’t have.

Target, which I visited yesterday, is in the process of replacing last year’s stocks and so had almost none of the brands and products I use. To frost that cake, most of my makeup is several years old. Makeup, like clothing, goes out of style under the impetus of its manufacturers’ craving to sell more, more, and still more of the stuff. So of course I couldn’t find most of my preferred brands and colors.

I wear a lot of makeup when I go out in public, because my weathered skin is so grotesque that my unpainted face will scare small children. It’s an annoyance: when I was a young thing, especially during the hippy-dippy period when women went around bare-faced all the time, I could go out unpainted without feeling self-conscious. But now: not so much. Two layers of L’Oreal foundation covers a lot of brown spots and scars.

And carries a lot of staphylococci, presumably: I apply it with a brush, which gets dipped back into the cream between smearings-on.

First stop was the new Sprouts in Encanto, where yes, they did have several brands of the coconut oil nostrum, including one in a house brand that was significantly cheaper than any of the offerings at Amazon. Plus of course some wonderful red potatoes on sale. And a beautiful squash…and…and…

Moving on: of course, as usual, the road was under construction. Getting out of the parking lot involved dodging an 18-wheeler and a ninny in an SUV who felt entitled to take his half out of the middle of the road (and whom the truck driver also had to dodge), then navigating a fine mess at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Osborn.

I needed, also, a bottle of red table wine. Sprouts’s choices of wine range from poor to mediocre, all of them overpriced. So I needed to dodge through the construction to get into the large, fairly fancy Safeway across the street.

Wow! I’d forgotten how massively gentrified the stores in that area had become. Holy mackerel! At the Safeway, I saw a bottle of wine that Costco sells for $9…on offer for eighteen bucks! No, thank you.

This added a trip to said Costco.

Up to Costco through the homicidal traffic. It being Wednesday, almost noon by then, the place was as uncrowded as it’s been in weeks. I stand in a very short line and buy a bottle of $9 wine and a bottle of $7 wine.

How hard is this?

Very, apparently. The cashier charges up a lifetime supply of butter to me, which really belonged to the guy in front of me. Said guy doesn’t notice.  Neither do I until I pick up the box his sidekick hands me. He says he didn’t charge me for the butter, and they take the stuff back. I head for the door, but check the receipt on the way. Yes, he did charge me.

It’s the unsalted variety, which I use. I go back and say “you did charge me.” His sidekick is about to take it back to reshelve it. I say I’ll take it, by way of avoiding the hassle of standing in line again and wrestling with the cash card to get the money back. Fortunately, it’s the unsalted variety, which I prefer, and so that’s one fewer thing I’ll have to buy in the future.

Onward.

Cruise east and north across the city to get to the Walgreen’s I habituate. This entails driving through a residential neighborhood to avoid having to wait to turn left at the interminable red light at Montebello and 15th Avenue. Which is OK, but a nuisance.

Arriving in the vicinity of the Walgreen’s, I see it’s a good thing I decided to try the Safeway downtown, because as usual the City has the streets torn up and getting catty-corner across the street into my usual Safeway haunt would have presented a headache.

In the Walgreen’s, I finally find the make-up I’ve been searching for. Damn! I kick myself: I should’ve gone to Walgreen’s first, not hoped I could find replacements at Target.

Yesterday I spent $90 at the damn Target on foundation, mineral powder, blusher that was the wrong color, and eye paint, but still didn’t find the products I prefer.

At the Walgreen’s, hallelujah sisters, I do find a blusher whose color probably will be OK. And they have a lady who runs the toiletry and make-up department: unlike the Target lady, this one knows what she’s doing. I ask for matte eyeshadow. She does not look at me as though I’ve lost my mind. And she does indeed find a box of the stuff I want, over on the Neutrogena shelf. They also have the L’Oreal gold accent shadow I like, which I grab before it evaaporates.

The new mode is to sell all eyeshadows in “sets.” so to get the color you want, you have to buy a box that contains upwards of five colors: four or more shades you don’t want. This is exceptionally annoying, but far as I can tell can’t be avoided. The Walgreen’s still had a few of the glittery gold eye stuff I wanted to replace in single pads. But to get the matte brown I need to use as eyebrow fill-in, I had to buy five colors.

Shee-ut! $30, all told.

So I’ve now spent $120 replacing the makeup contaminated by the late, great staph infection. Ducky.

Now to get home…  Hah! The city has the intersection of Seventh Street and Glendale blocked for construction, too. So now, to go west and north I have to backtrack a block, come back around, navigate the left-turn at the intersection, veer through a neighborhood, beat my way through to Central to go north. Lovely.

The dog, of course, has peed on the floor while I was gone. Again. I’ve already cleaned up two brown mounds this morning, before leaving the house. Is there any question why I have a staph infection all over my hand and arm?

In cruising the Web this morning, I learned that rubbing alcohol — which I used in hopes of disinfecting my computer’s case and touch-pad — does NOT disinfect. To the contrary. It’s exceptionally counterproductive in the case of S. aureus. It not only does not kill staphylococcus, it enhances the bacteria’s film, which it produces and which harbors the little bastards.

Holy fuck.

The only way to kill S. aureus is to clean well with water and detergent. And of course…you can’t very well apply those substances to a computer keyboard, hm? The CDC says about the best you can do is equip the keyboard with one of those plastic covers, which  can be removed and washed in a sink.

Holy shit. As though this damn computer isn’t hard enough to use?

I wonder if I’m going to have to buy another MacBook? Like I have a spare three grand laying around for the purpose.

Oh, well. At least I found this out before I wasted my time scrubbing down all the door handles in the house with rubbing alcohol.

The coconut oil, by the way, is extremely soothing and makes your itch feel a lot better. It also makes you smell like a walking Mounds bar. But if you don’t dislike the parfum de palme, it’s something to know about.

Now I have to cover my face with the new make-up and run off to choir practice. And so…away…

Monks, Bums, and Pee Pads: Why I Love the Walmart

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Yes. If there was ever any question whether Funny is politically incorrect (really??), let it be forever dispelled: I love the Walmart in our neighborhood.

Why?

Well, in the first place, it’s the only grocery store within about an eight-mile radius where I feel safe getting out of  the car in the parking lot. This is because unlike the Safeway or the Albertson’s or the Walgreen’s or the Sprouts, they hire a security guard service. Actually, staffers at my favorite coffee house, right across the asphalt from the Walmart, say the shopping center hires the service, apparently grâce à a kind of protection racket (don’t ask: I can’t prove it; it’s just a rumor). When you don’t see an armed guard ambulating around the property, you see a massive male Walmart employee lurking out in front, allegedly wrangling the shopping carts but in fact transparently keeping an eye out for shenanigans.

Never once have I been harassed in that parking lot, which fronts right on Gangbanger’s Way. I’ve been harassed at the Safeway (which serves a very fancy part of North Central). I’ve been harassed at the Walgreen’s across from the Safeway and at the Walgreen’s in my neighborhood. I’ve been harassed at the Albertson’s in my neighborhood — indeed, chased around the parking lot at a run. I’ve been harassed at the Sprouts across the street from that Albertson’s. So annoying is this that I will cheerfully (well…grudgingly) drive through 20 miles of homicidal traffic to get free of it. Or…oh, indeed: or shop at the nearby Walmart.

The much-abused (so we’re told) staff at the Walmart are always nice to you. I’ve never met an employee there who wasn’t polite, kind, and helpful. And, as a lagniappe, nary a one of them is stupid as a post.

If they don’t know where something is (they usually do), they’ll try to find out. This is not invariably true at those other fine emporia: I no longer buy meat from the Safeway’s meat counter because one of their butchers was so rude to me. I’ve had clerks at the Whole Foods recognize at a glance that I decidedly did not belong there. At the Albertson’s…well, good luck finding an employee: they’re like Seldom Seen Smith. The staff (when you can find one) at the Paradise Valley Fry’s are very nice, but their efforts are negated by the Maserati-driving customers, who recognize poor white trash when they see it. 😀 Ditto the clientele at the Whole Foods, which since Amazon’s takeover sports even fewer hired help than the Albertson’s. But at the Walmart? No one at the Walmart treats you as though you don’t belong there, even when they are visibly tired, stressed, and overworked.

Which brings us to another small truth: Walmart people are my people.

That’s right. The customers behave as though they were decent human beings, even when they’re dressed in rags and buying their groceries with today’s equivalent of food stamps. I love Walmart people.

  • The tired-looking hard-working laborers who show up late in the afternoon
  • The Mexican mothers with their beautiful, sweetly behaved babes and toddlers, the mothers who speak Spanish with the cashiers, no doubt hired for the purpose
  • The disabled welfare recipients who stand patiently, endlessly in the line at the pharmacy (when the pharmacy’s open) and jump through hoops to get the care they need
  • The old people who amble around the store, searching for the best prices
  • The Black women, sharp and quick-looking, who no doubt also search for the best prices…but a great deal less obviously
  • The locals who act as though they were in a small-town corner grocery and will strike up a neighborly conversation with you at the drop of a hat
  • The hungry-looking, weary vagrants, also negotiating a purchase or two on “nutrition assistance”

They’ll all talk with you, genially enough, as though you were at a small-town corner grocery. Who knows? Maybe you are. Maybe Walmart is actually a port to the Twilight Zone.

I love these people because there’s a decency to them that you don’t find in the overpriced Fry’s or the Amazonized Whole Foods or the self-righteous Sprouts. No: they’re no more decent than you or I or Ms. Gotrocks. But they don’t hide what decency they have behind an elitist façade.

Today I rolled toward the checkout stand and found, ahead in the closest line, a clear and present homeless dude. Being old, single, and jaded, I tend to be wary of single homeless males. They can be all right. Or they can be…well, in need of medication. So….I roll into a longer line behind a youngish guy who appears to be, shall we say, mildly disabled intellectually. He’s clean, he looks honest, and I know I’m smarter and faster than he is, and so he’s my choice of fellow shoppers. Behind me: two other homeless or near-homeless guys, one of them hauling an oxygen tank. They’re clean enough and quiet. We wait until the cows come home while the cashier checks out the guy in front of the intellectually questionable guy. Then we wait some more because he has a sh!tload of stuff. In passing I think about asking the two homeless-looking dudes if they’d like to get in front of me but think better of it because they also have a basketful and I only have three things.

One of the guys ambles over to the machine that dispenses lottery tickets and shoves some change in there. The pot is $245 million. Silently I send a petition heavenward: Goddess! Hey, Goddess? Yeah, you, Ma’am. Please give this guy 245 million bucks. She refrains from emitting a reply at that moment.

But if you hear that some poor scruffy-looking fella in Phoenix won $245,000,000, you’ll know where that came from. 😉

To our right, another show is going on. We regulars who are in the know happen to know that the customer service desk will check you out, just like any of the check-out stand. Most people don’t do that, even though we’re aware of it, because it’s kind of rude to occupy the customer service lady with routine cashiering when there are people who really do need some special attention. But because it’s busy, a half-a-dozen shoppers are stacked up there, too.

Among them is a guy in a dress.

What?

No: he’s a monk! A real monk. He’s wearing gray Franciscan robes and he has a beautiful crucifix around his neck and…by heaven, he’s the handsomest man you have ever seen in your life. Born 40 years too late and about 90 degrees too religious. But…gorgeous. And he exudes a kind of radiance. This is a man who is deeply happy, so it seems: presumably in his vocation.,

Happy New Year to ye, brother. And many happy more.

Wanna know a little secret? You’re not gonna see that guy at the Whole Foods…

Moving on… The reason I had to make a run on the Walmart was that I ran out of doggy pee pads. Poor little Cassie is really sick (again, still). And as you know, whatever little needs or emergencies that need to be attended to always occur on a major holiday. Wasn’t sure the store would be open today, but was very pleased to discover it was doing business.

Cassie has been going through four or five pee pads a day, between pissing on them (or missing them and puddling up the floor) and shitting on them. This is turning into a bit of a nightmare. Yesterday after cleaning up, cleaning up, and cleaning up again, I realized that I did not have enough paper sponge pads to last another 24 hours. And this, m’dears, presented a major problem. If it turned out that the Walmart was closed today — as any retailer that treats its employees decently would be — then the dogs and I were going to have an Issue.

What on earth was I going to do if the Walmart was closed? Really: THE last thing on this earth I felt like doing was running around the city searching for pee pads. Wheeeee!

But thank God Walmart treats its employees like slaves and yes, they were indeed impressed into service on New Year’s Day.

Last night was the usual seven kinds of Hell presented by New Year’s Eve in the ’Hood. Offered the opportunity to buy any kind of fireworks they like, folks rich and poor will do exactly that, and spend half the night blasting away with those and with their cannons.

The locals start shooting off fireworks and guns about 11:30. This goes on until they run out, around 1 a.m. The idiots out in the alley, right behind the house, are blasting away…but that’s alright because the racket is going on for miles around. At least it’s raining, cutting the fire risk out there. Gerardo sprayed the weeds behind my knucklehead neighbor’s house, but he didn’t cut them down, so there’s a swath of dried-out dead grass and brush out there. I’d hoped the rain might keep the ninnies inside in front of their televisions…but ohhhh no!

The racket scares the bedoodles out of Ruby, so there’s no chance of diving under the pillow and trying to sleep. She paces around anxiously, threatening to jump off the bed. Said sack has one of those stupid double-thick mattresses…I didn’t realize how ridiculous it was until they delivered it, at which point is was too late to do anything about that bad choice. It’s so high that if she jumps off, she will hurt herself, and then I’ll get to drive through the dark and the rain, dodging bullets, to take her to an emergency vet.

Time passes. Eventually she settles down.

3:30 a.m.: Dog pacing awakens the human. I imagine it’s Ruby, probably hearing another round of ordnance going off — the drunks don’t stop just because midnight happened three and a half hours ago.

“Go to sleep!” I growl. Dog pacing continues. Get up. Turn on the light.

It’s not Ruby, it’s Cassie, experiencing an embarrassing urgency. Lift her off the bed. Set her on a pee mat, hoping she’ll go there because it’s freaking cold and wet outside. While I search for my shoes, she squats on the pee mat and goes PHPHBHPPHFFFPPTTTT…. Doggie effing diarrhea. Then she waddles off the end of the pee mat and goes PHPHBHPPHFFFPPTTTT some more: all over the tiles.

Well, I should be glad that it is tilework and not damn carpet. And not on the bed. But I’m not THAT glad. I lose my temper. Swear the dog is going to have to go: I cannot be on my hands and knees scrubbing floors with disinfectant four, five, six times a day, 24 hours a day. This is no longer a viable arrangement.

Get another pee mat — running out, and I expect the Walmart will be closed tomorrow. Toss it on the floor.

She immediately waddles over and pisses all over it.

Get another pee mat. Tear it whilst shaking it open. To$$ that in the garbage.

Get out another one — now there’s only one or two left, and I’ve been putting down four or five a day. There are three on the bed, which I can take off and lay on the floor. That means both dogs will have to sleep on the floor tonight, which means they’ll be banging against the bed all night long. What the hell. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since Cassie got sick, along about the first of September. So it doesn’t much matter.

The damn burns on my wrist itch like fire, as does the rash. One of these burns is going to leave a perfectly hideous scar. On the positive side, the rash is going away, so I guess it must not be MRSA. That’s something. I guess.

Another blast of ordnance goes off — now almost 4 a.m. Sounds more like a shotgun than a cherry bomb. But the stuff they sell in the Albertson’s and Home Depot parking lots at this time of year really does sound like…artillery fire.

Ruby, terrorized again, tries to jump off the bed. Get up, lift the dog down to the floor, search for shoes so as to take that dog outside. No: by the time I find my shoes, she’s hiding behind the toilet. Call her: she stays put. I lose my temper.

Go in the other bathroom in search of lidocaine to smear some on the frantic itching.

Well, no…that stuff I squished out onto my arm is sun block. F***!!! Scrub off the wound and rashes. Apply lidocaine.

Dog comes out. Call her to let her out in the yard. She dives back under the toilet.

Well. Who can blame her? The human is visibly NOT a happy camper… and the bedroom now stinks enough to gag a skunk.

Speaking of the knucklehead, those two acquired another dog, apparently as a Christmas present. It’s a yapper. So now they put this animal out in their backyard and it stands there and BARKS. And barks and barks and barks and barks….  This causes their other dog to start yapping. Cassie is too sick to bark back…but Ruby isn’t. When she hears that mutt barking, she runs out there and joins the chorus.

Aw, geeez!

4:45 a.m.: A Hell’s Angel flies by on Gangbanger’s Way. DUDE! Get a muffler on that damn thing!

What the heck. The guy’s prob’ly so high on meth and booze he can’t hear it. Or couldn’t, if he weren’t already stone deaf. Or…heh…stoned deaf. 😀

Happy 2019 from Beautiful Uptown Phoenix!

Images:

Walmart Store: WhisperToMe [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons
Monks: By Francisofmconv – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44107853

 

 

 

Choir: The Antidote to Days from Hell

by

So: two hours of choir practice completely negates the aggravation brought on by yet another interminable Day from Hell. It’s amazing! I sure do wish I could do more singing. A whole lot more singing.

Yet another fun day of fiasco after snafu after fiasco. Just to top things off, the minute I got home and came back to the computer I found messages from WordPress kindly informing me that (at last…) all of my sites have been updated to WordPress 4. This is something I have not been looking forward to, because of course it means a new and probably interminable round of technohassle. This post having been started, it’s still showing in the old format. But I’m sure opening a new post will be a learning experience. And what DO you bet all those scheduled posts I made at Plain & Simple Press, which extend all the way through to the end of freaking 2019, are now conveniently UNscheduled?

Hmmmm…another small blessing: it doesn’t look any different from before. Okay. Good. Moving on.

Yeah, this morning’s early light dawns after an endless night of listening to poor old Cassie gasp for breath, the miserable little beast. She got more sleep than I did, I suspect, because of course she doesn’t have to worry about whether a vet should be invited to put her down or about what will happen if said vet is not so invited. {moan}

Before I have time to fix breakfast, Gerardo calls to say he’s on his way over. Surprise! So: drop everything, fly around picking up the dog shit, dig up enough cash to give him and his cousins a Christmas bonus.

I lose my favorite paring knife, a rather expensive thing that I bought at Williams-Sonoma back in the day when I had a job and enough money to purchase such things. Searching all over the house and yard, of course, does nothing to recover it.

Eventually, of course, it does resurface, like all the things that disappear from sight these days. In your old age, things regularly disappear into the black ink of the Magic Eight-Ball that is your memory. Eventually they reappear…it’s just a matter of time. And aggravation.

La Bethulia comes over to reclaim the iPhone, which we never could get the Apple people to free from its attachment to her and to Verizon. I hand it over and she demands the charger cable. I point out that I had to buy it and pay for it. She says “No, you didn’t. I gave it to you.”

Well…I could have provided the receipt that shows the contrary… But just decided fuck it! There are some things I do NOT feel like arguing over. So her other friend to whom she wishes to give the phone (good luck with that!) will get a free (surprisingly expensive) cable. Merry Christmas, whoever you are! 😀

Now I need to do some shopping: Invited to a friend’s birthday party on Friday, I decide to get him a bottle of wine at Costco, plus I need a few small things from there. I figure on the way I can stop by the credit union and also pause at the Best Buy near there to inquire about buying an iPhone with prepaid minutes there.

But I also need to buy a jar of some gummy skin cream called Aquaphor, highly recommended by the dermatologist. This, I discovered, helps enormously with the allergy-generated itch one gets around the nose at this time of year. It’s not easy to find, though. Fry’s (a supermarket) had it. way to Hell and gone over on the other side of the city, but  the local Safeway doesn’t carry it.

Cruising across lovely Gangbanger’s way, I’m entertained (heh) by a Police Incident: the cops are trying to shovel some wretched bum out of a bus stop shelter. The poor schmuck has set up housekeeping in there. Seriously: he’s filled up the whole shelter with his camping gear, his stolen grocery cart, and all his worldly goods. The cops are wrestling with him and trying to take his plastic ground cloth away from him.

Ah, the lovely Valley of the Sun.

Knowing that neither Costco nor Safeway carries the desired skin goop, I figure to stop by an Albertson’s down the road from the credit union. This takes me somewhat off course.

No. They do not carry it. Of course not. Pissed, I continue on my way…

At the next destination: the credit union’s computers are down. Staff is standing around looking confused. Fortunately, the system comes back up fairly forthwith. I stand in line interminably while the ONE teller on duty copes with some chatty guy’s business. Finally get up there and ask to withdraw a few bucks. Well, because my son and I cosign on each others’ accounts (so he can access mine when I finally croak over, which sometimes I wish would be sooner than later…), she demanded that I provide a photo ID in addition to my goddamn debit card.

So I had to traipse back out to the car and dig my driver’s license out of its hidey-hole, an annoying nuisance. By the time I get back, someone has got in line ahead of me so now I have to stand in line another ten minutes waiting for her to get done with that one.

Actually, the kid who was standing around doing nothing finally noticed and bade me to come up to his station.

This 30-second transaction completed, I continued on through the lunatic traffic to the Costco.

Understand: it’s 2:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, normally the slowest day and time of the week at a Costco. But with Christmas coming upon us, the place was  freaking MOBBED! Jayzus, you never saw so many cars in a single parking lot in your life.

I’ve asked my son what he wants for Christmas. He says “money.”

Not very original: it’s the same smart-ass answer his father used to emit.

So I figure…OK, pal. You want money, that’s what you’ll get. I buy him a $200 cash card. So he can spend it on what he wants for Christmas.

I don’t have anything like enough cash left in my Costco budget to pay for gifts plus the grocery items I needed with my own cash card. So I ask the cashier to rack up the booze and the kid’s Christmas cash card on my debit card and then pay for the rest of the stuff on my cash card. He puts it ALL on my cash card. I explain that I do not have enough on my cash card to cover $225, which is why I asked him to put the kid’s cash and the booze on the debit card. So, with a line behind me extending back halfway to the meat counter, he voids the transaction and does it over again.

How hard was this, after all? Too hard, apparently.

He gives me a little Christmas gift card thingie to put it in. On the way out the door, I insert it in there, figuring to get it to the car more easily and not get it mixed up with my own cash cards, which are now half-empty.

I get about three steps toward the parking lot and realize the goddamn card has FALLEN OUT of this thing! It’s effing GONE. I turn around to pick it up — my feet have not left the sidewalk — and someone has already picked it up and stolen it.

Holy goddam SHIT!

Now I have to turn around, traipse back into the mobbed Costco, find a manager, get him to cancel the brand-new card, and beg him to issue me another one.

This adds another 30 minutes to a fun afternoon.

At this point I realize I’ve forgotten to go to the Best Buy but think screw it! Enough is enough.

Back on the freeway, headed home. And…you just know what’s coming, don’t you?

Up pops a sign reading, in glowing white lights, “CRASH AT CAMELBACK. HIGHWAY CLOSED.”

Ahhh fuck. Never fails.

So I shove my way to the surface street at the first off-ramp, along with everyone else who was alert enough to notice the message.

Naturally, every moron on the road has to get in front of me. Turning back onto Gangbanger’s Way from Conduit of Blight, I can NOT lose the pickup in front of me whose driver appears to be…well…lost. He evidently is listening to his talking GPS and trying the best he can to figure out WTF. Unfortunately for us both, “the best he can” isn’t very good. And naturally he’s going my way. After holding up the traffic on GB Way he turns into the ’hood on the road I need to take. Naturally.

After pondering every inch of the route he’s trying to follow, he finally roams onto a side street, holding me up only another few minutes. Oh well.

Whipped, I decide against cooking more dog food this afternoon. There’s enough left to last until tomorrow morning, so tomorrow afternoon will be consumed with that chore. Instead, I grill some chicken I picked up at Sprouts. Being the free-range stuff, it’s pretty tasty, free of the unpleasant stink characteristic of factory-farmed chicken meat. This, with some pasta and fresh tomato sauce and chard from the garden, sits on my stomach like a rock.

Order the Aquaphor from Amazon. Thirteen bucks, rather more than I wanted to pay.

Now I try to take a brief nap before I have to get up and go back out. Lost cause: Ruby the Corgi is having none of that.

Cassie, in her illness and confusion, has come un-house-trained. But she only crapped on the floor once today, and kindly not while I was out traipsing around the city. So she’s having a relatively good day.

That’s something. I guess.