Just back from a mile-plus peregrination of the ‘Hood, dragged along by my furry boss. How can I count the ways I just wanna sit down and swill a cup of coffee?
Stumble over to the easy chair. Flop down in it. And…
RINGY-DINGY-DINGY!
Goddamned phone. A Goddamned phone solicitor on the other end.
I tell him where to make his next phone call and slam down the receiver.
Honest to Gawd. Phone soliciting should be illegal. Seriously: I realize it’s “freedom of speech” and all. But shouldn’t the rest of us have something like “freedom of privacy” or “freedom of peace and quiet”?
***
The neighborhood park is so lovely! I adore this area. Beautiful, quiet, upscale, affluent, right in the middle of everything
O’course it ain’t perfect. Right across the street from the park stands a house whose occupants fled after a pair of home invaders barged in, grabbed them, tied them up, threw them in the bathtub, and proceeded to loot the house.
So. If you live here…yeah: you keep your doors locked all the time. And you do NOT answer the door unless you know who’s on the other side and what they want.
But then…come ON! No place is safe. Just the other day some sh!thead barged into a madly upscale home in Fountain Hills, a mighty swell dive. And I’ll tellya: before that happened, I would have said Fountain Hills is as staid and secure as you can get, this side of Sun City.
My mother, who was scared of her own shadow, cowered in terror all the time she lived in Sun City. She dwelt behind heavily locked doors and windows. And yet…really…she was less terrorized out there than anywhere else we lived.
Something must have happened to her. If it did, she never told me. But really: you wouldn’t act like that unless you had some reason to be scared.
Me, I find the company of a dog amply reassuring. Ruby is no German shepherd (not by a long shot!). But she does alert whenever anyone comes around.
And really, that’s about all a dog can do for you. You’re the one who has to take care of yourself: get to a safe place, grab your pistol, call the cops, whatEVER.
Ruby: the four-legged burglar alarm.
😀