Good Gawd! High noon on a mid-June day, and…it’s 110 in the shade of the back porch! Today’s high was predicted to be a mere 108 degrees, with 38% chance of rain.
UNbelievable.
The dawg and I shot out of the house at dawn. It was already too late to be walking around out there. But tonight the temp is supposed to drop to a chilly 87 degrees.
Brrr! Better get out the jacket!
Seriously: the only way Ruby can get her daily walk, in this kinda weather, is to take her out at sunrise, before the concrete and asphalt can heat up. Wait too long, and her little feet will be scorched.
This is the time of year when, really, I do wish I lived somewhere else. And…really…if my son weren’t here, I most surely would live somewhere else. Far, far from here!
Where would I go?
Well…the San Francisco Bay Area is whence my mother’s better side of the family emanated. Most of those folks are long gone…but the City is still there.
Given all the money in the world, I’d rent a flat in the Marina. Beautiful spot!
Given half the money in the world, I’d buy or rent a house in Berkeley: aging but handsome and urbane.
But of course, I do not have all the money in the world, or even half of it. Here in Arizona, a pauper like me (heh!) could afford to wriggle into any of several fairly pleasant venues.
One is a suburb of Scottsdale called Fountain Hills. It’s pretty expensive: upper-middle-class, close to the Mayo Clinic, near a slew of suburban amenities. Nice homes, though often cheaply built. Right now, the median listing price is just $799,000.
Yep. Must hurry right out and buy one!
Moving on… Another famously tony area is called North Central Phoenix. That’s where the Funny Farm resides: on the fringe of that district.
Here’s a one-bedroom, one-bath palace in North Central: a mere $94,500. What a bargain! An actual house, though, rather than a dinky condo? Get ready to pony up $745,000.
Every time I peruse the local real estate ads, I get more horrified.
Well, if by some miracle I can hang onto the Funny Farm until I die, M’hijito will inherit a valuable chunk of dirt. Zillow thinks my house is worth $584,000. Not much, by comparison of other Los-Angelized real estate in these parts.
But…he has expressed a desire to move to his dad’s home town in Colorado: a little burg called Grand Junction. Prices there are MUCH lower. For a fraction of what he can get for my house, he can buy a palace there.
Small town living is not to my taste, personally. But…he hasn’t spent his childhood in such a place, and so maybe as a grown man he might find it pleasant enough. Highly desirable, even.