Coffee heat rising

Porch Pirate Repellant…Redux

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The signs I put in front a year or so ago, asking the Beloved Amazon Dude or Dudette to please bring packages inside the courtyard and not leave them out on the driveway, rotted away in the blasting sun and the driving rain.

Interestingly, the signs actually work! The Amazonians do bring their deliveries into the courtyard, and the porch pirates apparently prefer not to expend enough energy (or risk being videotaped) to come inside the courtyard and steal stuff.

So this morning I spent an hour rejiggering three signs, sealing them into plastic holders, and securing them to the gates and the front door.

Hassle City! You not only have to redraw the signs, you have to snurchle them into the kind of plastic holder that goes into a 3-ring binder and then seal the plastic holder all the way around with layers of Scotch tape. Then you have to slither plastic strip things into the binder holes so as to use the plastic strips to secure the signs to the steel gates. These last — in the Land of 110-degree heat — a year or more.

Yea, verily: a first-class PITA. But less so, I suppose, than having to drive to Target or Safeway or Albertson’s or Walgreen’s or the hardware store to buy every little thing you need, when you need it. Over the past few years, I reckon Amazon has saved me a surprising amount not only in gasoline but in wear-&-tear on the car. And nerves: half the time when you go into a retail store’s parking lot around here, some transient barges up and demands a hand-out. Guess I’d druther pay Amazon a little more on the retail price of this, that, or the other dingbat than having to dodge or repel the local drug addicts.

One of the neighbors — a lively techno-type — set up a camera in front of his house and found it recorded some woman in her car following the Amazon truck. The minute the Amazon driver would climb back behind his steering wheel after dropping off a package, she’d jump out, run up to the front door, grab the package, race back to her car, toss the package in the back seat, and take off down the road after the Amazon truck.

Persuading the Amazon drivers to bring packages INSIDE a gated patio has worked well to discourage this chickadee and her ilk.

Soooo glad not to be there…

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Back at the ranch: This charming episode occurred in a classroom on the suburban campus where I taught for lo! those not-very-many years. Thank goodness I managed to get an editorial job at the university’s main campus, and then to retire.

Actually, back in the Day, we didn’t feel too much concern about potential violence in the classroom. It’s kinda grown like fungus over the years, though. Today, I wouldn’t go into a classroom without a pistol stashed in my briefcase.

Interestingly, one day when I was teaching I discovered a woman student in one of my upper-division courses was doing exactly that. She openly admitted — in the classroom, in front of 30 classmates — that she was carrying a gun and that she wouldn’t come onto the campus without one. Even more interestingly, not a student in the room so much as blinked.

At any rate: that assertion above is to say, in truth, “I wouldn’t go into a classroom.” Period. I should risk my life to remind a bunch of students, for the 177th time, that a complete sentence contains a subject and a verb?

You do have to figure it’s not surprising that students don’t know the basics of their own language, if that’s what they have to contend with whenever they go onto a campus. Which came first? The ignoramus or the lunatic?

He Gave It a Good Try….

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So I drove through the Walmart parking lot where our favorite little neighborhood coffeeshop resided. When SDXB lived here in the’Hood, we used to trot over there every couple of days to loaf over a cup of (excellent!) coffee before we went about our appointed errands.

The place was situated right across the street from John C. Lincoln, a large regional hospital. The little shop’s proprietor figured if he could produce a superior product and also provide some top-flight bakery, the hospital’s employees and patients would cross the road to patronize his place. Plus a large Walmart store also stood on the same corner — presumably some of its customers would come in.

Well…I dunno how valid those theories were. But it seemed to be working: the coffee shop was in business for several years.

So SDXB and I used to go over there every few days: at least two or three times a a week, often more than that. Though the place was never full to overflowing, there were always at least a few folks in there, no matter the time of day. We did enjoy it and were happy to have it in the neighborhood.

But…after SDXB moved out to Sun City (a 40-minute drive from our parts), I pretty much stopped going there.  Eating out (or sipping coffee out) by myself doesn’t appeal to me — mostly I go out for the company, not for the food.

Well, obviously SDXB and I were not single-handedly keeping the guy’s place in business. Hafta say: I could not figure out how he managed to stay open. Money-laundering, maybe? 😉

He evidently couldn’t — not forever, anyway. ‘Cause he’s closing down now.

He probably took out loans to start up the business and keep it going until it could catch on. And…well…no doubt when that money ran out, he must have had to shut the doors.

{sigh} It really is hard to imagine why he figured people at a large regional hospital would come across the street to buy coffee and sweet rolls at his place, when those facilities invariably have restaurants and coffee bars on the premises.

Strange.

Encanto Dreamin’…

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Or…nightmarin’? 

Why I’d rather live up here at the top of Central Avenue than in the beautiful, classic Encanto neighborhood downtown whence we came, lo these many years ago:

* Quieter. Lots less noise. Further from the airport. No fire station three houses down the street.

* Our park seems safer than large, beautiful, mega-public Encanto Park. No public toilets here. Fewer shrubs for bums to sleep under. Much less parking.

* Deeper in the ‘Hood: Fewer iron bars on windows & doors…

* Houses here are newer…which means not so picturesque. But that also means better, safer wiring, better & more efficient AC, enclosed garages, ever-so-much harder to break into.

* Really no further from a regional hospital than we were there. Except we have TWO of them…

* Better insulation, possibly better construction here (depends on your point of view)

* Desert landscaping: acceptable here. Hold the grass. Save the gallon on gallon on gallon of water poured into the dirt.

* Less commerce, and commerce further from residential areas.

* Schools may be better. Closer to private & parochial schools.

My O My, I did love living in the beautiful, classic downtown Encanto district.

But My O My: if you have a functioning synapse between your ears. the northerly reaches of tony North Central and the shabby reaches of neighboring, lower-middle-class Sunnyslope make sooooo much better sense than the snobby elegance of the Encanto District!

And all things considered, our reaches don’t look any worse, they don’t feel any worse, they don’t function any worse than the classic, handsome upper-middle-class Encanto neighborhoods. Ever so beautiful, those. But…uhm…none too practical.

😉

High Noon at the Hubs of Hades…

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Good GAWD, but it’s hot out there! Hot and humid!

Just back from a brief perambulation with the dog: over to the park, tromp down to the playground, then trudge on back via Feeder Street E/W. Our honored civic leaders have got the streets plowed up all around the place, so there’s relatively little traffic over there. Bums? Only a couple: it’s hotter than the Hubs just now, so I expect the vagrants are taking in the slack at the nearby bum hostleries, provided courtesy of our taxpayer dollars.

This, after a fast, very hot trip to AJ’s, there to pick up enough groceries and dawg food to last a day or two. Not too annoying: the usual party of transients and sight-seers was absent, so one could walk across the store’s front porch without having to dodge the weird, the wonderful, and the nuisancey.

Even with the AC blasting away in the car though, the trip was hot, blinding, and bloody uncomfortable. Can’t walk across the street without risk of burning the doggy feet on the asphalt…so it was a brief junket.

Boyoboy, do I miss San Francisco! Sure do wish I could afford to live there!

 

Old(!!!) Home Day

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Omigoodness! Just came in from a totally pointless, idle, and radically sentimental cruise of the Old Neighborhood.

It’s still there. It’s still called the Encanto neighborhood. It’s still beautiful. It’s still infested with the Young and the Upwardly Mobile, who seem to invest most of their money and their energy in fancifying and preserving the lovely old early 20th-century houses.

How I do miss it.

We left because I (ignorantly) imagined DXH (Dear Ex-Husband) would consent to put our son in the (excellent! top-of-the-line) Madison public schools if we moved north up Central Avenue into the Madison School District.

Wrong!

He refused to do so, and insisted on keeping the kid enrolled in the spectacularly expensive, annoyingly sosh’ private schools up there.

If I had known he would do that, I would never have lobbied to move up to North Central Phoenix. I hated the place and hated the snobs who infest it. Ultimately the stress from that move and my social exclusion from that fine exclusive company brought an end to the marriage.

Sorry. I’m just not lawyer’s wife material….  LOL! Born WT and always will be WT.

Ohhhh well.

Our old house is still there, looking much the same. Well maintained: whoever has it now must love it.

They did put a steel gate across the driveway: good move. Discourages the local bums and prospective burglars from entering the backyard via the west side of the house.

Wish we’d done that.

{sigh}

I did love the neighborhood. The reason we left was fear: the crime level was quite high. And we didn’t seem to be able to get away from it…

* The night Greta the Gershep caught a prowler in the living room, where he had just found me snoozing on the sofa (DXH had a deafening roar of a snore!). She chased the poor fella out the back door…I imagine he’s still running.

* The guy who tried to get in the side door as I was sitting in the adjacent room typing a seminar paper. I ran to the front door, threw it open, and screamed FIRE! FIRE!! FIRE!!! That brought out all the neighbors, excited to watch the house burn down, and scared the poor perp off down the alley.

* The sh!thead who tried to break in the front door as I stood there next to another German shepherd…whose presence didn’t even faintly faze the guy.

* The night my mother brought a pistol after I’d invited her to stay overnight. Yeah.

Well. No wonder, eh?

But still: it was such a pretty neighborhood, and the neighbors were such a delight, a constant delight.

We moved up to North Central: Snobsville North, as we might call it. I’m just too fragile a little blossom to survive hate, prejudice, meanness, and petty snobbery…the result being that the marriage didn’t survive them, either. How I came to hate that place!

And I guess the hate slopped over onto the marriage.

Encanto remains a beautiful neighborhood. And I found myself wishing we still lived there, were still married, were proceeding happily ever after.

Yeah. Right.