Coffee heat rising

Sole & Separate: Keep It That Way

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Stumbling through the afternoon heat, out and about on the neighborhood streets. Not one of my brighter ideas eh?

Man! Speakin’ of stupid ideas: as my brain cooked, my mind wandered to my father’s ill-fated marriage to the hair-raising Helen: the woman he took up with after my mother died.

You wanna talk about mistakes? Lemme tellya MISTAKE!

Couldn’t have been much better for Helen, either: the two of them must have been magnificently miserable after they moved in together. But him? My gawd! What a dragon lady that woman was! 

He had been unendingly happy with my mother: for decades. They were deeply in love. She was a compliant and loving woman. And they tended to think along the same lines…or at least, if they didn’t, she stifled her thoughts and made herself agree with him.

Helen, au contraire, was a woman of strong will and her own opinions. No one told her what to think, and no one told her what to do. Particularly not some guy. 😀

He was utterly bereft after my mother died. The result: after he met Helen at the old-folkerie where he moved, he stupidly proposed marriage.

Guess he imagined one woman was much like another. That, as we know, is far from true. The result: several years of utter misery for my father.

He refused to divorce her, because — wailed he — “she’ll get all my money!”

I was too stupid to come up with a counter to that. I should’ve said Daddy! Your daughter is married to one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. She’s not gonna get all your money…or any of it! 

But no: nary a word from me.

That, to produce an excuse for me, came after years of having had the sh!t beat out of me. True: I was kinda afraid of my father, even as an adult. So I wasn’t inclined to gainsay him. If he thought she’d get all his money, well…no doubt she’d get all his money. Right?

Big mistake. I should have advanced my dainty little foot and spoken up. But…well…I figured that even if he heard a word I said, he wouldn’t be swayed. He would do what he would do because…that was what he did.

As a practical matter, with that lawyer in the offing he probably would have listened to me. Or at least have taken an afternoon to meet with said lawyer and discussed the matter. So…because I kept my mouth shut, he lost a substantial part of his shirt. My bad, eh?

Well, anyway: after decades of prior marriage for each of them, they didn’t think of looking at new  matrimonial arrangements in any unconventional way. So…off they went to the altar in the typical manner: blending all their worldly goods as community property.

Don’t do that, folks.

What you want in a second (or later) marriage is sole and separate property. And you want to keep it that way!  Talk with a lawyer BEFORE you tie the knot; understand what you’re doing and be sure your lawyer reviews things properly.

If my father had done that — well, to be fair: if the two of them had done that — their lives would have been a lot happier and a lot calmer than they turned out to be. And they could have untied the knot fairly easily, with lots less pain. 

Parboiled in Phoenix…

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Ruby and her human are just back from the neighborhood park. HOT, stuffy, stagnant morning over there…ugh!  Hardly a jolly frolic.

Oh, well. At least we got a little exercise. Ruby is flopped under the master bathroom toilet: in Canine Estimation, the coolest spot in the house. The Human is parked in front of a fan, swilling iced coffee.

In the Olden Days, when Whitey-Whites first lived in these environs, people would leave town for the summer. They’d go up on the “Rim,” as the high country is called, and pass the hot months there.

Yea verily: we used to own a ranch up there. We co-owners would betake ourselves to that place whenever we could.

Sure do wish we still had it!

😀

But oh!  The little kids in the park are so delightful, frolicking around in the dawn heat! Ruby and I loafed and watched the urchins burn off the parents’ calories. Eventually it got too warm to linger, and so we ambled back to the Funny Farm.

And here we sit, continuing the loafing chore.

Thank goodness we found Pool Dude!  Otherwise, I’d be out there in the backyard with the brush and the vacuum right now, cleaning the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money. And lemme tellya: loafing, that is NOT. 

{chortle!} I do love the pool, though. Really, I ought to be out there right now paddling around in the drink. But oh, my…it really IS fricaseeing hot outside. Having come back from the park nicely parboiled, I can’t move myself to go back outdoors, even if it entails cooling off in the luxurious pool.

Phoenix, Arizona: Garden spot…

Report from the Hubs of Hades…

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EGAD, but it’s hot outside. 

Actually, it only seems so: Wunderground tells us the current temp is a balmy 95 degrees.

Brrrr!  Break out the jacket!

Actually, 95 isn’t all that hot for Arizona. I think it’s a little sticky out there, though: but…but…no!!!!  Only 4% chance of rain; Wunderground claims we have 6% humidity.

Right, guys. R-i-i-g-h-t…

Left Ruby home while I took a short hike around the ‘Hood, not wanting to fricasee the little pooch. Being only around 6 or 8 inches tall, her furry body would be one helluva lot closer to the frying pavement than my tall, thin, and unfurry one.

Came across a neighbor beating himself to exhaustion: Here in the middle of the afternoon, the guy had DUG UP HIS LAWN to pull out part of the irrigation system, which he was trying to repair. Lordie!!!  Beat me some more!!! 

All of which goes to show that some people are even crazier than I am.

Looked around the neighborhood just south of ours, wondering….would I like to move over there?

  • The houses are bigger, fancier, nicer.
  • It’s a slightly more upscale slab of the neighborhood.
  • Closer to the park: much to Ruby’s advantage.
  • Further from the ever-threatening Sunnyslope slum…

But…but…seriously?  What AM I smoking???

  • Yep: the houses are bigger, fancier…and commensurately more expensive to air-condition.
  • The lots are irrigated, meaning someone has to be paid to come around and mow the grass every week or two. (Mine is gravel: virtually maintenance-free.)
  • Close to the park means close to the traffic, close to crowds, close to noise.
  • Further from the slums means…nothing. Two or three blocks a difference in the crime rate does not make.
  • Rich people make me kuh-RAZY. No, I do not want to move into a more affluent slab of the ‘Hood.

Ahem! Okay, so much for THAT idea. 😀

Movin’ on…

Good Dog(gy-less) Walk

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In full Nut Case mode, the Human charged out into the afternoon heat, determined to exercise the spavined hip with a nice walk around the neighborhood.

😀
Not to say
:-0

Quite possibly not the critter’s smartest move. 

Amazingly, I failed to cripple myself. But did just about bake myself!

Yea, verily: it’s hotter than the Hubs out there. Not hot enough to beat back a brainless human, though…

Traipsed around the blocks to the north of my parts, where SDXB and I used to hike almost every day when we lived in another part of the neighborhood. Looks about the same. I kinda miss it….

Walked by the beloved Ole Guy’s house. What a nice man he was! SDXB and I became pretty good friends with him, until he had to move out. His wife, who also fell into the “old” category, had reached the point where she needed to go into assisted living.

She resisted with all her strength. Finally, to get her into the old-folkerie, he moved in there with her. So he had to sell their home, and away they went!

Much, much missed, we might add.

House looks about the same…still decently cared for, thank goodness.

It’s such a nice neighborhood! Gosh, I hope I can manage to stay here until I die!

O’course, we all know that ain’t a-gunna happen. But it’s something to work toward, eh?

Too, too hot for Ruby the Corgi out there in the afternoon heat. So the Human stumbled around alone out there, eventually smartening up enough to realize it’s too hot for humans, too. 😀  Ohhhh well.

Survived. Staggered back to the Funny Farm. Fed the dawg. Collapsed in an overstuffed chair.

Honestly, it’s not all that hot out there (for an Arizonan, anyway). But it is unusually humid. Icky, even. No clouds. Just sticky air.

Dawg is now overstuffed with food. Human waits for the chow to move through her little gut, so she can be let outside to do her Thing. And then…what?

More loafing, presumably….

The Morning of the Morons!

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No kidding: Every moron on the planet is out there on the sidewalks with their dog! Come 7:00 in the morning, they all pour out of their houses and prance back and forth around the park.

Gawdlmighty, am I tired of stupid! 

The favorite Idiocy Trick hereabouts is to come bounding up to you and try to set their dog loose on your dog. They just want to p-w-w-a-a-y, the idiot coos.

No, dear…. My dog just wants to eviscerate your dog.

WHY, why in the name of GAWD are people so effing STUPID!?????

Well, we got out into this very lovely morning, around the park, across the road just south of it, back up into our part of the ‘Hood…surprisingly, without an overt dog fight. That, primarily because the Human dragged Ruby away from several impending altercations.

I do love to walk with Ruby through the neighborhood: it’s such a lovely venue. It would be made a lot more lovely, though, by the presence of humans with functioning brains….

The Family Lore: What a Show!

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Strolling around the ‘Hood with the little dog this afternoon, I chanced to cast my mind back over what my mother told me of her family(???) and upbringing in Upstate New York.

That poor child! What a horror show!

The tale as we have it is that she was born illegitimately to a rather swift glamor-girl. This woman abandoned her to her poverty-ridden paternal grandparents in rural New York state, who kept her until the grandmother died of diabetes — back in the day, an incurable and fatal illness.

At that point she was sent, over a judge’s best instincts, to the maternal grandparents, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Apparently this bunch was moderately affluent: they owned a large citrus orchard down the Coast. Result: her life changed radically. She learned to ride a school bus (!!!  She’d never seen one before), went to California schools, and did OK there.

She married. Divorced. Married my father. Lived happily ever after. I was born to my father, apparently after several miscarriages.

My mother escaped the diabetes, a heritable disease. I have something called “prediabetes,” which apparently amounts to abnormal blood-sugar levels but is not full-on diabetes. My son’s blood sugar levels either are or are not in the normal level, depending on which quack you talk to and…jeez! far as I can tell, on the time of day.

So…apparently the ancestral horror show either is or is not visited upon my son…or may one day be. Or not.

Sure would be good to have some clearer understanding of that melodrama…but apparently none is possible.

Hmmmm….  Okayyy…what about the paternal side?

They were Indians. At least some of them were: Choctaw Indians.

It develops that my father’s father — my paternal grandfather — was a buffalo hunter of the gringo persuasion. He married a Choctaw woman. Hence: my father. So saith my uncle, his elder brother.

And if you looked at my father, you sure could believe that tale. He had almost black hair and blue eyes. Turns out Choctaw Indians can have blue eyes! How strange can that be, eh?

Far as I know, he wasn’t aware of this. He staunchly denied that he was anything other than Whitey-White-White. For sure: you never saw bigotry until you met my father! 😀 But you couldn’t look at him without suspecting some…intermixture. 😉

Fortunately, my father was very smart and contrived, without anything resembling a college education, to make a good living. He took us overseas — I grew up in Saudi Arabia — and later, after an interlude sailing out of California (he was a Merchant Mariner), he retired to Arizona, dragging me with him. Hence: three degrees from Arizona universities for me and a lifetime of work and residence in this garden spot.

Heh! My life has hardly been a horror show, that’s for sure. Not all sweetness and light…but mostly good. Certainly easier than his. Or than my mother’s.

Basically, he rescued my mother. She’d had a gawdawful childhood, and then had stumbled into a marriage that was quite the little nightmare, ending in divorce. After that, apparently she and my father met at a party. Fell instantly in love. Married. and lived happily every after. Who’d have expected it, eh?

So…the horror show ended when my father came along and found my mother. Certainly he rescued her. And our lives have been peaceful and moderately easy during my entire lifetime.

Well. If you consider ten years in Saudi Arabia to be “peaceful and moderately easy.” In fact, I would say that’s exactly so: we did just fine out there. And because there’s no place to spend money in those garden realms, they returned to the States comfortably set and in a position to build a pleasant retirement in Arizona, after a few more years of work in California.

So…here we are. Strange people. But I suppose all people are kinda strange, eh? It’s human nature.