Coffee heat rising

Good(?) Morning, America…

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Okay…back online. For the nonce, anyway. 

We seem to have lost the post I was working on. Big deal: not like I had much of import to say. 😀

No more than I ever do!

Don’t know what hung the laptop, but suspect this little glitch presages a trip to the computer store to have the thing worked on.

Calendar reports that M’hijito is supposed to show up here at 11:30. For what, it doesn’t say…but I assume it’s to drag me out to the goddamn Mayo Clinic again. That’s almost an hour’s drive across the Valley, halfway to freakin’ Payson through unholy traffic.

Well. No….if all we’re doing is visiting their test lab, that’s only a quarter of the way to freakin’ Payson.

But…I didn’t notice today’s scheduled horror on the calendar, and so I just scarfed down coffee and breakfast…replete with plenty of sugar. If they’re planning to jab, jab, jab some more and then test, I’ve screwed that up.

And of course, while these frolics have unrolled, the coffee has gone stone cold.

********

Before I discovered the (phantom??) Mayo appointment on today’s calendar, I was gonna go over to the neighborhood Bland Christian Church (some sort of nondenominational thing down on the corner of Main Drag South and Main Drag West), where I hoped to see if they have a functional choir and, if so, whether I might join it.

So. There’s another scheme down the toilet.

I do NOT understand why the goddam Mayo consistently schedules its accursed vein-jabbing tests on Sunday mornings. This is the berzillionth time they’ve demanded that I skip choir and traipse out there for what appears to be yet another pointless test.

Not that it would matter today: without a car, I can’t easily get down to my own church for the purpose of spending a couple of hours baying. But…the point is, it pisseth me off. Because if IS pointless.

Particularly today, since I didn’t notice the note on my calendar and so have scarfed down breakfast, replete with sugar, toast, and enough coffee to float Noah’s Ark.

***

Looks like WordPress is back online. Presumably the latest and greatest hang-up was some sort of temporary glitch. Let’s see if this post will go up….

Kickin’ & Screamin’…into the 21st Century

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{chortle!} Welp, it looks like I’m gonna be FORCED to come into the (dire!) 21st Century. If you don’t have your own chariot, you now pretty much have to hire a robo-taxi: a driverless monstrosity that requires an A.A. in computer tech to operate.

How CAN I say how much I absolutely positively do NOT want to learn a complicated new system for hiring a cab and getting around the city?

Those ba*tards at the Mayo, egged on by Dear Son, have invalidated my driver’s license. When you live in a hectic L.A.-style city like Phoenix, this  puts the eefus on…just about everything.

Fortunately, because I live smack in the middle of everything, I’ve been getting by mostly on foot: whatever I need is within reasonable walking distance. That would include…

  • A Sprouts
  • An Albertson’s
  • A Fry’s
  • A Walgreen’s
  • A Bookman’s
  • An El Rancho
  • A wine shop
  • A UPS store
  • A computer store
  • A hair stylist
  • A dentist
  • A veterinarian

And  many, many more. The truth is, I don’t need a car to live comfortably and shop easily here.

As long as I’m living in this house, I’m within easy walking distance of everything I need…and then some. Outside of walking distance? Lemme tellya: have we got the robotaxis!!! 

Actually, we still have a few taxis driven  by humans, which I much prefer. ‘Cause I’m still a denizen of the 20th century, right? 😉

Interestingly, the neighborhood seems to be holding its value. We just welcomed the first Black family to our environs…and so it’s much to be hoped that we are in the 21st century and therefore that eventuality will not torpedo our property values. They look like nice folks…and I think they have cute kids.

I’m excited to welcome them and try to make friends with them. And…well…we’ll see how that goes! Even the 21st century is still part of Mittel-America. Time will tell.

 

And I’m Staying Here…WHY???

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This garden spot is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm: two, maybe three blocks. In fact, I walk by there every time I stroll up to the liquor store to grab a six-pack of Guinness.

Any question why I’m beginning to think it’s time to move away from here?

This is far from the first such episode we’ve seen in past weeks.

Do I REALLY want to stay here?  If so…why? And what will change my mind?

Well, I hafta tell you: it ain’t a-gonna take many more episodes like this to convince me that it’s time to move along. As far along as possible…

We never used to see incidents like this. Yeah: burglaries. Who doesn’t have them? Yeah: car theft. You leave your car unlocked on the street and ya get what you ask for. Yeah: even the occasional home invasion (not usually to the benefit of the prowler, BTW).

But lookee here. Nineteenth and Dunlap is about three blocks north of the Funny Farm. The apartment complexes to the west of Nineteenth have changed demographically: not just racially but economically. The latter change has not been for the best.

I’ve arrived at the point where I won’t walk around up there — certainly not without a male companion, or at least a large dog.

Head south along the same main drag and…hmmmm…  Well, you feel a little less unsafe. But if you’re on foot, you’ll likely choose to cut through the neighborhood until you’re forced to come out on 19th to reach your destination. And, truth to tell, after you’ve made that journey a couple of times, you’re likely to choose NOT to go to the corner that hosts the desired stores.

If my son weren’t lurking around — he wants me to keep this house — by now I would have sold up and moved to another neighborhood. Indeed, these circumstances ARE the main reason SDXB chose to move to Sun City, a.k.a. Drabtown.

Where would I go?

Scottsdale.
Some parts of Tempe.
Prescott.
Berkeley, California.
Some parts of San Francisco.

By and large…. Truth to tell, there just aren’t many places where I want to live. Certainly not so much that I’m willing to pour money into a move, yank up roots, and take off into the sunrise.

I don’t wanna move, not by a long shot. But take a long hard look at it, and you think it’s time to get outta here while you still can. Without a large loss of cash investment. While you still have better choices to live in town. Before you have to go to the far side of the moon to get away from the crime and growing blight.

WAIT.WAIT.WAIT.WAIT!  😮

Return to the Land of Zillow and take another look. Therein, you see a slightly different picture…and HOOOLEEE Moley!

Here’s a shack, three blocks to the east of the Funny Farm: $875,000. (Uhhh…I paid about 200 grand for this place, and felt I was being gouged…)

This hovel has a rather tonier address: much closer to FancyDan Central Avenue. But is an address really worth EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY GRAND???

Ahem…you realize…that place is in Sunnyslope, renowned until late as a slum…

And speaking of holeee whatever, this hovel is right around the corner from the Funny Farm: OVER A MILLION DOLLARS!

JAYzus!  Apparently the antics and the frolics going on around here are not affecting property values. Or if they are…you don’t wanna know what houses cost in safer neighborhoods.

Hmmm…. Maybe instead of a house in a different part of town, mayybeee what is needed is a larger dog.

I’ve got Ruby the Corgi, of course: she will alert whenever she hears an untoward sound. But she weighs all of about 20 pounds. A German shepherd, she ain’t.

Must say…at this age I don’t want to have to wrangle a dog that size. But I could handle one that was professionally trained.

On the other hand, with my honored son having confiscated my car, I don’t know how I would get such a beast to the vet — even the clinic right down the road — if it got hurt or suddenly took ill. I can carry Ruby to that veterinarian. To get an 80- or 90-pound fiendish beast there, I’d have to recruit someone with a car and some physical strength.

Hmmmmmm….

Well, I do have a thing that contains chunks of lead instead of teeth….  But to use it well and accurately, I’d have to get some practice again, and stay in practice. And that would entail getting down to the gun range at least a couple times a week. And…yeah…that would entail taxi rides, and all the hassle pertaining thereunto.

A shotgun would do the job… But truth to tell, I haven’t been near one of those in many a year. Don’t even own one. That means I’d not only have to get out on the desert and practice using the thing, I’d have to get the thing. And again: traipsing to the range and banging away at targets is not quite how I’d like to spend the remaining time allotted to me.

Hmh. Looks like FAM’s site has crashed. It won’t upload an image. Let’s try to post…but save this copy to disk.

And so…awaaaayyyy!

A Long Time Till Dawn of a New Day

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LOL! It’s 3:30 in the freaking morning!  How DO I manage to wake up at these crazy hours?

Ohhh well: Last night I got excused, once and for all, from the annoying hup-hup-hup physical therapy sessions. So that’s a relief, anyway: for me and for my son, who was having the schlep me over there and waste the evening waiting for me to get done.

So of late I learned that lifting fingernails — one of my current symptoms — can indicate diabetes.

No kidding… Diabetes is the family disease. I’ve been told several times over the years that I have “pre-diabetes” — whatever that means. None of our august physicians at the Mayo have condescended to explain what it does mean, if anything. And of course, with my son swamped in work and unhappy beyond words with me, there’s no way I would feel comfortable pestering him to drive me out there.

It’s almost an hour’s drive…two hours round trip. So you don’t even wanna know what a cab would cost.

There’s a neighborhood clinic a couple blocks down the road, though. Tomorrow I’ll walk down there and ask if they’ll test me to see if the prediabetes has evolved to full-on diabetes.

Speaking of the ‘Hood, here’s a fine event that happened within about two blocks of the Funny Farm.

Ugh! The apartments along Main Drag West have turned into serious slums. I really need to move away from here. Not a propitious event for not a propitious time…

I’m too damn sick — by a factor of about 110! — to find another place to live, pack up my house, haul out of here, unpack everything, put everything away, and set up housekeeping and yard maintenance somewhere else. So even if I wanted to move (which I sure don’t), I can’t.

Plus I believe M’hijito wants this house. In that belief, I do want him to have it.

It’s a lovely little house — not so little, actually: four bedrooms, a roomy yard, a pool, a corner lot… This is not something I want to lose, and not something I want to cut off from his future possession.

However, if the area is going to He!! on a Handcart, it would be foolish to stay here much longer. I probably should be looking for safer digs…or maybe for a place that will hold its value after I finally croak over and M’hijito inherits it.

So far, none of the neighbors seem to be in any hurry to move. The thing to do is to keep an eye on what the Romanian Landlord does, since he is smarter than the average snail and is not about to stand around watching his real estate investments go down the drain. Plus his daughter lives two houses down…I very much doubt that he would allow her to stay here if he thought the place presented much risk.

Surely, I don’t want to move: a sentiment multiplied times 100% by the presence of the weird pre-diabetes ailment. Or whatever it is. Really, I’m too sick to pack up my house, drag across the city, unpack, and organize a whole new dwelling.

On the one hand, I can only hope that I’ll die before things get a lot worse here. And before the house loses a lot of value for my son.

On the other hand, it is getting scarier and scarier here: the slum apartments; the stiff laying across the entrance to the neighborhood school; the constant cop copter fly-overs, the cops getting shot at, neighbors paying the city(!!) to gate off the alleys; the endless serenade of sirens and roaring engines….  I dunno. If I could move, I would. But I can’t…so I won’t.

What a Life She Had!

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Migawd! I think about my mother and all the things that happened to her over her 65 years on this earth...and I wonder…how EVER did she survive that long? 

My father, clearly was the best thing that ever happened to her. He rescued her from what I would describe as Hell. And he gave her some 30 years of happy married life.

And that, my friends, is an accomplishment.

She was born shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the child of an upstate New York farmer’s boy and a California chippy.

The chippy abandoned her to the paternal grandparents. What happened to the father, I have no clue…I assume he died or ran off.

After a series of court battles, her California grandparents succeeded in gaining her custody. So, a kid in grade school, she was sent to the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Spending half her childhood in the boondocks of rural upstate New York meant she enjoyed few of the accoutrements of 20th-century American civilization. She told me she’d never seen a school bus before she got to Berkeley. Back home, the kids were taken to school on the back of a hay-wagon. And she described how flabbergasted she was when the California relatives brought her to their house, opened the front door, flipped a switch on the wall next to it, and magically the lights across the room came on!

Before long, she adjusted (more or less) to urban California life. What amazing experiences she must have had! She managed to get all the way through high school, but she surely didn’t go to college. Even my uncle — the one who designed the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco — never got a university degree.

As a young woman, she met my father at a party. He barged up and told her, “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever met!”

😀  Now there’s a line, eh?

Apparently, though, it was more than a line. They quickly became a pair, and before long they married. Yes: into a marriage that lasted over 30 years, until she smoked herself to death.

He worshiped her. And what a life he led her into! Ten years in Saudi Arabia. Journeys all over the planet, by plane, car, train, and ship. Homes in San Francisco, in the East Bay, in Saudi Arabia, in Southern California, in Arizona…here, there, and everywhere.

It was a life much shortened by the homicidal tobacco products that enrich their makers so. She died at about the time my son was born — over 30 years ago now! (Thirty years????  How did that happen?)

So my son never saw his grandmother. She saw him once, a few weeks before she died. When I showed him to her, a brand-new baby, her response was a shrug and “meh!”

She knew, I realize now, that she would never see him grow up…or even reach the toddler stage. Did she care?  I dunno… No doubt by then she was just too sick to care about much of anything or anyone. And truth to tell, I don’t think either of my parents were wild about kids.

But in between that boondock birth day on an upstate farm and her death in a comfortable bed in Sun City, she had an amazing life. One adventure after another, one country after another, one conveyance after another…all around the world.

I miss her. Wish we could bring her back.

Never a Frikkin’ Dull Moment

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Now we’re told that a slew of aluminum pots and pans — sold by different retailers under different brand names — will leak lead into your food. Jayzuz! Never a frikkin’ dull moment, eh?

Looks like none of my cookware falls into these categories. Probably because I bought all my spectacularly overpriced pots and pans at Pottery Barn and Macy’s: years ago.  When I had an income…  Sometimes there’s an advantage to paying way too much for that kinda stuff.  Plus I believe mine are all stainless, not aluminum.

How can I count the ways that I don’t wanna get up and start charging around?

Well, it’s only quarter after seven, so Ruby and I can loaf for awhile longer. But soon we’ll have to get on the road for the morning hike around the ‘Hood.

My revered (reverewared?) son came over yesterday afternoon and supervised tha AC guy’s activities. That was a mercy! I wouldn’t have had a chance of climbing up to the roof or tromping around observing what the guy was doing — because I wouldn’t have any idea what he was supposed to be doing.

So just now the system is pounding away. Back porch thermometer says it’s 46° out there. Not unreasonably chill for December. I guess. Doesn’t do much to inspire me to schlep the dawg around the park, though. 😮

This evening we have to traipse to the physical therapists’ gym and waste another couple of hours going hup-hup-hup. I do not see that this routine does anything whatsoever for the hip pain. What works is…yes: time and the river flowing.

Anyway, the aches and pains have faded to near-absence. So I figure that in another week or so I can put my well-exercised little foot down and call a halt to the PT shenanigans.

Meanwhile, in the absence of said aches & pains (most of them, anyhow), I need to hike to the nearby Sprouts this morning. Just what I wanna do… /s/  Still too early and too cold for any such expedition. Probably the dawg and the humann will just climb back into the sack and loaf for a couple more hours.

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2;10 p.m.

Back from the Sprouts…and the Albertson’s…and various stores in the associated shopping center.

The outfit that sold me the shoes, one of which fell apart, claimed they’d  never sold any such shoes.

R-i-i-i-g-h-t…  Like I buy so many shoes I can’t remember where I get them. 

So I got nicely screwed there. And will never buy anything at that store again.

The skies are vibrating with the roar of military jets charging back and forth. Think most of them are coming out of the Sun City area, which is almost adjacent to Luke Air Force Base. However, a few seem to be lurking on the opposite side of the Valley — the east side, which would not be true if they were Luke planes.

Haven’t seen any nuclear bomb clouds, so I assume we’re not at war. For the nonce.

***

Sit your butt down in an easy chair, fire up the computer, start dorking around online and… RINGIE DINGIE DINGIE * RINGIE DINGIE DINGIE * RINGIE DINGIE DINGIE… Some a$$hole on the line trying to hustle you.

My GAWD but I’m sick of our idiotic phone system

Really, sometimes I think that I ought to just unplug the phones whenever I’m home, unless I’m using them to call out. But..of course…that will mean that friends and business acquaintances will never be able to call in to reach me on the goddam phone.

Let’s see if we can make the phone jangle some more by trying to take a nap between now and this evening’s hup hup hup session…

😀  😮  😀