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Urban life

Late October in the Desert

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Incredibly gorgeous morning! Clear, cool but not cold, not even crisp. People out pushing their baby strollers, walking their dogs. My mind wanders…

…to the horror of potential incarceration at the Beatitudes, a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie. Honestly: I’d rather be dead than locked up in an institution. Must figure out potential alternatives…

* Hire someone to come to the house and care for me? Apparently Luz (Cleaning Lady from Heaven) used to do this.

* Stay someplace overnight, but keep the house and return here during the day?

* Buy an apartment in someplace like The Terraces? (The Terraces is an old-folkerie.)

* Allow self to be forced to buy a place at the Beatitudes (an old-folkerie on the gawdawful level), but after the dust settles, go out and rent an apartment someplace else, keeping it secret?

* Buy a house in M’hijito’s neighborhood, so he feels better about being closer to me? Hire someone to help care for it?

Looks like #1 is probably the only truly viable choice. That or 1 & 5.

Right now, I don’t need #1. I have no problem caring for myself:

* Fixing meals
* Shopping for groceries
* Cooking gourmet(!) meals
* Bathing, grooming
* Tending the pool
* Riding herd on the hired help
* Caring for the dog

The big issue, really, is the purloined car: not being able to get from Point A to Point B without hiring a driver. But is that really a very big deal?

* A guy across the street drives for Uber and is usually available.
* Otherwise, Uber does its own roaring business in this neighborhood: no problem calling for a driver.
* When my son’s nose is not on the grindstone, he probably can schlep me to most routine destinations (grocery stores for example).
* But that may not be necessary: we have not one, not two, but three major grocery retailers and two drugstores within easy walking distance. And two computer stores. And a veterinarian. And a hair stylist. And a nail salon. And…hmmmm…Is anything NOT within walking distance???

My Aunt Gertrude was a very practical woman…so, my guess is that she moved from her sweet Berkeley bungalow into a fancy old-folkerie because her son forced her to move, not because she felt any urgency to do so. She could have gotten by in that house indefinitely, with hired help to come in and handle the cleaning, the shopping, and the errands/appointments. And what an asset to have handed down to her son: it’s now worth over $1.2 MILLION!

Such are the ravages of time, eh?

Truth to tell, I suspect that over the time left to me, this house’s value also will explode…right along the lines of Gertrude’s house. And how would I love to be able to pass along something over a million bucks to my son? Zowie!!

Slow Morning in Citrus Central

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Loafing my way through the morning… 😀  The miniature killer watchdog has dragged me around the park and through the neighborhood. We have chowed down. And now we loaf.

One of the nicest things about loafing, here at the Funny Farm, IS the Funny Farm. It’s such a pleasant place to sit around doing as little as possible.

Just now the automated watering system is drenching the decorative plants and the trees. The automated pool system is running the swimming pool’s sparkling water through a set of filters. The Human is considering whether to get off its duff and walk over to the Sprouts, or whether ’tis better to sit around munching chocolate chips and guzzling coffee. The Dawg is busy guarding the backyard.

To my mind, the biggest issue or problem with staying in your freestanding home into (and with any luck, through) your dotage is having to wrangle the hired help. Most are honest & hard-working, but some leave something to be desired in those categories.

The citrus trees, for example, need to be pruned. Since the beloved Gerardo hasn’t done that job so far this year, I’m assuming either he doesn’t want to do it or he doesn’t know how.

But that’s a generous assumption: OF COURSE he knows how to prune the damn citrus. He’s been working here, in darkest Citrus Central, for years. That he hasn’t done the job by now means he doesn’t want to be bothered. Since we know he surely does know how to do the job, we also know he doesn’t wanna do the job.

And that means I’ll have to track down some new victim to do the job. And in the department of don’t wanna, that one ranks high.

Guess I should annoy him by phoning and asking if he’ll come back.

But…ugh! Not now.

Beautiful Dog-&-Human Night

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Ruby the Corgi dragged her Human all over the north part of the neighborhood this evening. And what a beautiful evening it is! Really one of those incredible Arizona nights…just gorgeous.

We walked northward, past my old Arizona Highways colleague’s place: Jerry Jacka, one of the great landscape photographers of the Southwest. Then up past our now-absent friend Marge’s house.

She, we assume, must either have passed or have been consigned to The Beatitudes, a skin-crawling prison for the elderly. She appeared to be well into her 80s…maybe even older than that.

Her house — a classic Southern-California style 1970s ranch house — has been swarming with workmen. It’ll be interesting to see what transpires…

She told me she wanted to leave it to her son, who lives out of state. She wanted him to have it as an outpost to use when he’s here on business, which is apparently every now and then.

Our grown kids, though, usually do NOT have the same ideas about large and expensive investments as we do. My guess is, he’s cleaning it up and fancying it up so he can put it on the market.

It’s really not in an ideal location: only a block or two south of Main Drag North, one of the most hectic surface streets in the city. When you live next to a busy road like that, you get used to the racket from the traffic. But…whaddaya bet Sonny hasn’t done any such thing? He probably thinks it’s a zoo up there, and has no intention of hanging onto a piece of real estate pasted to the edge of that unholy road.

Ohhh well. Nothing stays the same, eh?

 

A Day Not QUITE from Hell…

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But close. Very close. 

Why?

Well…where on earth to start?

Let’s start in the neighborhood computer store.

My laptop crapped out; needed the attention of a computer tech.

My son has my car, so I can’t drive the computer across the city to the Best Buy, where I have a warranty that covers it.

Shee-ut. So I pick up the gadget and hike the six blocks to the neighborhood computer store, down at the corner of Main Drag South and Conduit of Blight. Haul it in. Explain the problem. “Oh…” says the ninny at the service desk, “We don’t fix that issue.”

Wonnerful. I do have a warranty at Best Buy. But taking the machine to that august computer dealer entails a half-hour or forty-minute drive through nauseating traffic, plus a good 15 or 20 minutes of standing in line. “Know anyone nearby who can work on it?”

She sends me across the street to the electronics store over there.

Hike across six lanes of homicidal traffic. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand…

“I dunno what the problem might be. You need to take it down to the Best Buy.”

Yeah: the one I just passed over because I didn’t want to make the half-hour drive in each direction.

Hike back into the parking lot, mightily pi$$ed.  A military jet ROARS over, emitting a terrifying racket.

Reminds me of how much I hated living in Sun City, just down the road from Luke Air Force Base, which sent its ROARING jets over our homes every morning starting at about 6 a.m., and serenaded us for the rest of the day.

That reminded me of Sun City’s other horrors, not the least of which was its incompetent, misogynistic doctors. The bastards who made my mother’s final suffering ten times worse than it had to be.

Or maybe a hundred times worse. When does stupidity morph into outright evil, anyway?

By now, as you may have intuited, I was having a just LOVELY day.

Circled back to the Funny Farm. 

Here at the house, I stumbled across an ancient computer power cord. And LO! The damn thing fits in the laptop’s plugs!!!

We’re now attached to an outlet, and it looks like the critter is going to keep on working. Apparently the problem, such as it was, had to do with the present power cord, which must have broken or worn out.

Do miracles ever stop?

* The palms of the hands are still buzzing.
* The upper gums over the front teeth: still buzzing.
* The soles of the feet: still buzzing.
* The ears whistling at high volume, nonstop.

Somehow, none o’ that seems to matter much.

* Computer breakdown
* Idiots in computer store
* Roaring jet
* Sun City memories & horrors
* Persistent peripheral neuropathy

WHAT a wonnerful day!!!!

Morning Perambulation

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So it was OUT THE DOOR as the sun bobbed above the eastern horizon. Gorgeous morning! Cool, clear, and bright.

We were, as usual, not alone. The locals love to do their morning exercise and/or dog walk as dawn cracks. Most of them probably have to go to work — poor souls — and so are getting up & attem in time to trot the dog around the park and then fix breakfast.

Mercifully, this is no longer an issue for Ruby and her human.

In no hurry, we stroll hither and thither, ogle the landscaping, dodge the local coyote, admire the neighbors’ BMWs, enjoy their kids running around.

Past the horse pasture that has been repurposed as a home for a local’s pet llamas. Cute critters…and surprisingly tame.

No coyotes in evidence this morning. They’re around — of that you can be sure. But today we didn’t have to change course to avoid an encounter.

So we wandered through Upper Richistan, the truly upscale section of our overall fairly upscale neighborhood. Pretty, broad irrigated yards, full of green stuff called “grass.” (We don’t have it over here in the low-rent district…not much of it, anyhow.)

Past our elderly friend Marge’s place. She’s recently gone: whether she died or not, I do not know. Since she was a Neighborhood Fixture, I’m sure the grapevine would have announced it if she passed on. I believe she was locked up in a prison for the elderly called The Beatitudes…a garden spot I hope to evade, dead or alive.

The Beatitudes is an old-folkerie designed to turn handsome profits from locking up, supervising, and feeding the elderly. In short: it’s an old people’s prison.

Her son lives in some other state. She daydreamed that she would keep her house for him, so he’d have his very own jumping-off place for the times he’s in town on business.

Just now, they’ve got workmen in the house eviscerating it and rebuilding stuff and painting. I expect he probably intends to sell the place…for a very nice profit, indeed.

I do miss Marge: what a nice lady! We would often run across each other as we perambulated the neighborhood streets, and then walk and talk and gossip together for an hour or so.

If I were friendlier and chattier, surely I’d be the New Marge. Unfortunately, I’m nothing like as gregarious as she was: don’t make friends easily and don’t seek out walking partners.

My plan is to do as she has done: stay in my house until simply FORCED out by age and worried offspring. With any luck, I’ll croak over before I’m made to move into the hideous Beatitudes.

And lemme tellya: I do hope never to wrap another cabinetful of dishes, pots, & pans and haul them off in another cardboard box, drag them into the next kitchen and dining room, unpack them all, wash them all, and find new places to store every darned one of  ’em!!

My parents were highly peripatetic — between the time I was born and the time we came back to the States from Saudi Arabia, we lived in four company houses. That’s a move about every 2½ years. Back in the States, we lived in five different places between the time we set down in San Francisco and the time my parents retired to Sun City.

***
Eeek! Speaking of the Bizarre Charms of Living in the Funny Farm…
***

OMG! The corgi and the human amble into the backyard, the better for said dawg to defile the desert landscaping out there. And what do we spot overhead, circling with evident interest? The biggest damn hawk I’ve seen in years!

Actually, I’m not sure it was a hawk. Could have been an eagle. But it was solid black. The local eagle set: not black. 

Could’ve been a raven…but really, it was much too big to operate as a raven or a crow.

***

Gosh, but a li’l sighting like that elicits a surge of sentimentalia in the human. Oh, my. How I miss the ranch. 

Yea verily: out there on the lip of the Mogollon Rim, a zillion miles from anything like civilization, yes, we did have eagles.

And ravens.

And crows.

And coyotes.

And the occasional nuisance human.

LOL! Hereabouts, all we have are nuisance humans.

Sorry: I don’t consider a misplaced coyote to be much of a nuisance. Understand how coyotes think and train yourself to stare them down, and they don’t present anything like a threat. What they want most is to get a nice long distance from you — preferably with a fistful of fresh garbage between their jaws.

😀

Lord, how I waaaannna go home!

Traipsing to Pretoria….

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Hot, wet morning!

Out the door as dawn cracked, wherewith to take an exercise walk before it gets unbearably hot.

“Gets”???? Seriously?

Ohhhh well. 

It was down to the Albertson’s shopping center, wherein (I imagined) to visit the shopping-lot doctor’s office and tell the staff to QUIT CALLING ME ON THE PHONE, DAMMIT!!!!!!!

Three guesses:

* They weren’t open
* They weren’t open
* Or, they weren’t open

Right. Nine a.m. of a mid-week day, and no one was there.

Brilliant white cumulus clouds climb through a radiant blue sky. They seem to be growing, thickening. Presumably we’ll get some rain this afternoon.

Passed the PILES of cheap apartments along Main Drag West. Years ago, incredibly, my mother wanted me to rent a place in those dumps. They were no worse, really, than they are now. And no better. Not a place where you’d want to live. Especially not if you were a 20-something college kid.

Well. Post-college kid. I’d finished the B.A. and was lurking, trying to decide what to do next.

One thing I did NOT want to do was continue my career as a phone-answering receptionist, working for something less than almost nothin’. 😀

In any event, I cannot even BEGIN to imagine why those dumps, even when they were 30 years newer, would have been a desirable place for a young woman to live. Chez Pitz!

What on earth was my mother thinking???? 

Now and again, I imagine I really ought to sell the Dog Palace and move either out into the suburbs or deeper into town. Rationality soon catches up, though: it’s expensive as hell to sell your house, buy another one, and move. Plus I love my house and I ain’t a-gunna move away from here.

So. There!

Handsome young black man, loafing in the covered bus stop. Ohhhh you gorgeous critter! Smile. He smiles back. He’s plainly stoned.

Damn.

Proceed northward, ever northward, along Main Drag West. This, to avoid being followed into the ‘Hood.

Mercifully, I’m now tooooo old to appeal to any man: young, old, black, white, purple, stoned or straight…. Thank goodness! 

After enough distance is passed, dodge into the ‘Hood. Come upon a fine young father, busily installing a basketball hoop for his preschool-age kid. Adorable! Despite its surroundings, our neighborhood still DOES have a lot to recommend it.

DO I want to stay here, now and evermore?

Well….I’m so ambiguous as to whether the answer is probably “yeah….” I incline to operate on the “When in Doubt, Don’t” principle. If you’re not dead sure that XXX is what you want to do, then don’t do XXX.

duh! Why does that not seem obvious?

And yet….when ambiguity lurks, it surely isn’t obvious.

If you don’t know how well the real estate will hold its value…

If you don’t know whether those slum apartments will continue to go downhill, or whether the Yup set will discover them and turn them into high-rent urban campgrounds…

If you don’t know whether your health is gonna hold out as you roam deeper into decrepitude…

If you don’t know if your son would like to inherit your shack, after you finally do croak over…

Well, Helle’s belles: then YOU DON’T KNOW. 

Personally, I’m averse to making any kind of decision or move when I don’t know. Knowing what I’m doing: that’s what I do. But sometimes, that’s just not possible.

{sigh}