Despite this morning’s mile-long doggy-walk, this afternoon I still craved more exercise. And…I do hafta say: the walking seems to have eased the hip pain. While still present, it’s no longer excruciating…so maybe a few more days of hiking will take care of it, once and for all.

That notwithstanding…dayum! I do hate Arizona!  Especially its brain-banging heat. As we scribble, the thermometer on the back porch registers 110 degrees. 

That’s right: ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DEGREES. In the shade! 

Ugh! What a place! 

As you might imagine, I lasted about 20 minutes out there, before heading back to the (refrigerated!) Funny Farm.

So here we are, loafing in front of the computer. Thank the heavens for iced tea!

Honestly. I could kick my father’s ghost for his having dragged us to this unholy place, after we were reasonably well set in Southern California.

Yes, So Cal is expensive: an attribute he loathed. But California is a big state. It has many balmy corners, and some of them do not bankrupt their residents.

Phoenix is Southern California Redux, only parked inside an oven. You don’t even wanna think about what my power bill is gonna look like this month.

Can’t complain too much, though: most of the winter I can leave the HVAC system off. So, off-season power bills are effectively nil.

***

Jeez. Just got something from Amazon that I didn’t order. Looks like they’re gonna gouge me for that.

Soooo….I guess the Amazon trade is done for. After this: get off the duff and walk to a store to get the doodads and the gunk!  110° or not!

Dawg and I are freshly(?) back from a swim through that air, as the morning sun hangs over the eastern horizon. This is one of several Arizona phenomena that make me want to brain my father for dragging us here from California.

Well. If he were still alive to brain.

God, I hate this place. If there were a way to get out of here, I’d be soooo long-gone.

But…truth to tell…for me there is no way out. I can’t afford to move. And even if I could, at this age where would I go? Too old to get a job. Not interested in living in a “retirement” community.

Plus my son is here. I’m not about to move away as long as he’s lurking in Arizona. And truth to tell, given that he has a more-than-decent job here, there are not many other places he’s likely to go.

His dad emanated from Colorado, and M’hijito has said that he’d like to repair to those parts. But…in the first place, he’d have to get work there. And the second place, it snows in Colorado. He’s no longer accustomed to snow and ice, and I have exactly zero desire to become accustomed to them!

§ § §

*  “Another beautiful day in Arizona” was the tagline of a locally prominent radio announcer here in Phoenix, back in the day. Every morning he would open his talk-show with “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it!”

Way to turn illiteracy into PR, eh?

Jayzuz! What kind of asshole steals clothespins!??

Now I’ve either got to traipse to the Albertson’s through 110-degree heat or order a new bag of pins from Amazon, at a premium price.

Hmmm….  Amazon will send 60 wooden clothespins for just $6.00. But it still pisseth me off!!! What kind of asshole steals the clothespins off your clothes line?

I swear ta gawd!

He never was especially empathetic to me. I believe he always saw me as a weird little kid — which I was, to a degree. But not allowing me to be with my mother she lay dying? Not even after she had said she wanted me there?

WTF? How cruel could a man get?

During all these years that have passed since then, I’ve resented him for chasing me away from her. I’ve thought (as I’d often thought in other circumstances) that he hated me because I was a weird little girl. And because of my eccentricity, he didn’t want me around her.

No kidding: decades have passed, and those decades did nothing to offer any insight to what he might have been feeling.

Recently, though, an insight has snuck into my feeble little mind.

He didn’t want me around her because he didn’t want my last memories of her to be utterly hideous. As they would have been, had I lingered by her bedside until she died.

She didn’t even know I was there, so out-of-it was she. So…what reason (other than to make me miserable) for me to linger by her bedside as she slid into death?

Now, in retrospect, I think he didn’t want me there because he didn’t want me to go through watching her die of a ghastly enteric cancer. The vomiting. The horror. The agony. Dear God!

He wasn’t a real articulate guy. It would have been exceptionally difficult for him to have said that to me outright. But now, after year and year and year have passed, it strikes me: what we were looking at was hideous. Truly hideous: a ghastly death by cancer. The best thing that could have happened to me, during that unholy ordeal, was to have been kept away from it.

And that is what he did.

He stood between me and the worst moments of my mother’s dying. And that, God bless him, was probably the kindest thing he ever did for me.

I swear-ta-gawd! Everything I’ve touched in that damn backyard today has gone SPRROOOOIIIINGGGGG!  And kindly created an interesting new hassle.

Just spent a good half-hour or 40 minutes wrestling with pool equipment, for a chore that should’ve taken 10 minutes…at the outside. I’ll tellya: if I glance at it, it goes SPRRROIIINGGGGG!!! And breaks or creates a mess.

Y’know, my neighbor Josie drained her pool several years ago and has never refilled it. And….I’m beginning to think she’s got something there.

O’course, a maneuver like that wrecks the plaster and the equipment, so the damn thing has to be expensively repaired before it can be turned back on — basically rebuilt. But…honestly. Sooooo what? The savings in Hassle Factor may be altogether worth it.

Godlmighty, though….I do hate the thought of wrecking the pool and leaving it a wreck for years, then having to spend several thousand dollars in repair bills when the house goes on the market, lo! these many years in the future.

But honestly…IS that pool giving me my money’s worth? To say nothing of my hassle’s worth? I hardly ever use it any more. I haven’t been in it today. Or this week, or, come to think of it, this month.

Maybe it just oughta be drained…..

{sigh}

If I were gonna do that, though, I think I’d want to cover it with a plank deck. If that were sturdy enough, it could be part of the patio, and a table and umbrella could sit out there. It would look nice enough (a helluva lot nicer than a plaster hole in the ground!) and could be used for parties and picnic meals.

Now, as a potential seller of this house, I see that plan as a mighty drawback. But….but what if some potential buyer comes along and is enchanted by the idea of an expensive deck that could be used as a party venue? That might not be such a bad thing…

Hm. I may ask a Realtor friend about this idea.

Sheee-ut!!  The temp out there is 107 degrees, with rain y-cumen in!  What a fukkin’ garden spot! Almost as balmy as (un)lovely Saudi Arabia, where heat and humidity were linked together with hooks-and-eyes!

It’s too hot and wet for coffee. So we’re imbibing iced tea with what passes for breakfast. Ruby is flopped on the floor in her favorite place: where the fan blows “cool” (i.e., moving) air across the Human and the Dawg.

What an icky morning! Sometimes I think I would brain my father for dragging me to Arizona, if he were still living to possess a brain. I swear…literally!

Because…I was all set to go to UC Berkeley when he announced that whoop-de-dooo! He and my mother were moving to Sun City, a middle-class retirement “community” (gimme a break!) on the western edge of Phoenix. No one under the age of 50 was allowed. If you had kids, they had to be adults living on their own, or sent off to college.

My father sent me off to college, all right. Because I was an ultra-honor student in Southern California, he contrived to get me into the University of Arizona a year early. So…whoop-de-doo! It was off to Tucson for me, at the age of 16.

Sheee-ut! I was stupid enough to be flattered at getting accepted to a state university when I was still a kid. But…also stupid enough have have no clue what that would mean for my career prospects. His little triumph canceled my plans to go to graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley: once and for all.

Yes, eventually I did get the Ph.D. No, I never did get a really good job.

So…yes, I hate Arizona. Having matured enough to understand what dropping out of high school a year early to enroll in a second-rate university would mean for my career aspirations, I now do indeed hate Arizona and very much wish I’d  been allowed to stay in school and go to UC Berkeley, as planned.

Everything I hoped for in a career went straight down the drain the minute I enrolled in the UofA. And though I managed to recover to some extent — thanks to marrying a high-earning lawyer — and though I did ultimately earn that Ph.D., none of it did me a damn bit of good, career-wise.

But who cares, anyway? She’s just a girl, after all…

Oh, my! How my mother would have admired her bright and classy grandson today! She really would have thought he was The Business.

But alas, she smoked herself to death shortly before her grandson came on the scene.

When the word came down, in the 1950s, that smoking causes cancer, she decided the pronouncement was Big Brother trying to control our behavior. So she chose to ignore the science.

And, not surprisingly, she developed the disease shortly after my father retired and betook himself and her to Sun City, Arizona.

Not long after her cancer was discovered, my pregnancy was also discovered! No kidding: my first (and only) child.

She was so sick by the time she lay dying that she didn’t much care about anything or anyone around her. No doubt what she most wanted was an end to it all.

Shortly after M’jito was born, I took him out to my parents’ house in Sun City, there to introduce the grandparents to him.

When I carried him into their bedroom to show him off, she took one look at him, shrugged, and said,”Meh!”

She wasn’t even slightly interested in him.

So offended was I that I felt I never wanted to see her again. But…well…  That was neither feasible nor humane. My father needed my support, and on reflection I had to allow that she had no reason to get all excited about a child that she would never watch beyond infancy. Particularly given that she didn’t especially like children…

Eventually, then, I got over it. After all (as I came to realize)…

• She would not live to see this child grow old enough to toddle around on two feet.
• She didn’t especially care for children; she had me only because her grandmother insisted on it.
• When she died, we figured, our little son would be well short of the age when he would remember her. And that proved to be true, in spades.
• And I could not walk away from her as she lay dying.

Still. What would it have taken to have muttered, “That’s nice, dear. Congratulations…”

So. OK, I never got over it. And yeah: I want my mother back. The mother who was still reasonably healthy before she smoked herself into oblivion, the one who cared about everyone around her, the one who would have been delighted with her adorable little grandchild.

But no. ‘Twas not to be.

It’s 95 degrees in the deep shade of the back porch, under overcast skies. Wunderground predicts we’ll hit a crisp 100 degrees today, with 15% chance of precipitation. The skies are solidly gray, so…Funny’s Weather Service predicts one helluva lot better chance of rain than 15%.

I hate this place. (In case you hadn’t noticed…)

WhatEVER possessed my father to drag us to the middle of the baking Arizona desert after he retired?

Oh, yeah. I know: Cheap!

Compared to California, where we’d been living for the six years after we got back from Saudi Arabia, this place was a bargain on steroids.

* Housing: cheap
* Utilities: cheap
* Gasoline: cheap
* Doctors’ fees: cheap

On and on and on….

The fact that he cut off my opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley? Meh! Who cares? She’s just a girl. Why does she need a Ph.D. to cook on a stove and wash dishes in the kitchen sink?

Yeah, I did eventually finish the doctorate…from Arizona State University.

And yeah: it most certainly DOES matter where you got your advanced degree!

Except for the ego gratification, I might as well not have bothered.

No, a guy who never finished high school could not be expected to understand why his kid would want a Ph.D. and what advantages it would present to her. Still…how pig-headed can you get?

So, yeah…I hate Arizona. Wish I’d never been dragged here. Wish I’d had the initiative and the ambition to get myself out of here while I was an undergraduate, or, forgodsake, at least for graduate school.

But…by the time I hit the Ph.D. program, I was married to a well established lawyer here in Phoenix. He wasn’t going anywhere (nor should he have!), and neither was I. So…Okay: Ph.D. from Arizona State. Whoop. De. Doo.

What a place!

Who knew?

Holeeee maquerel! If they do a decent job of it, this will solve a HUGE problem that has arisen in recent weeks. To wit: since my son kiped my car, I can’t get to a decent grocery store to haul stuff back to my house. But….but…hey!!!!  Apparently Amazon will shop for you in local stores! 

If that’s the case, you’d at least have a shot at having edible fresh produce delivered. If it comes in a box, a bag, or a can, who cares? but if it’s fresh veggies and fruits…THAT makes a difference.

Given how much a car costs to own and maintain (add in the licensing and taxes…), ordering food to have it delivered would at least break even and maybe even be cheaper than getting the Uber guy across the street to drive me to the nearest Sprouts.

Mwa ha ha!  This will foil my dear son’s plan to punish me by kiping my car. Grocery shopping really IS the only thing I need a car for regularly. Most of the other vendors, professionals, and peddlers are within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm.

The main problem I can see with this is getting quality produce delivered. Most Americans haven’t a clue how to pick out produce…and for sure, some high-school or college guy ain’t gonna know how to do that. But…it’s worth a try, isn’t it?

Well…yeah: it IS too good to be true.

But what if it works? What if about 90% of purchases come in reasonably decent? Even if you had to throw out some of it, you’d be ahead of the game by not having to traipse across the city to a store.

Have you tried shopping online through Amazon?  What happened? Were you pleased (or not) with the result?

Feels like Saudi Arabia, by the shore of the Persian Gulf, where we used to live while my father worked for Aramco — the Arabian American Oil Company. HORRIBLE. One of the nastiest places to live that you can imagine.

Ruby is panting frantically as she lounges on the kitchen floor’s cool tile. I’m covered with sticky sweat…thirsty but too tired and sore to get up and lumber into the kitchen after a glass of water.

WhatEVER possessed my father to move us to this ungawdly place when he retired?

Oh, yah: I know. CHEAP.

Del Webb was practically giving away the houses in Sun City — certainly by comparison with California real estate. But Sun City’s BIG appeal to him, IMHO, was NO KIDS.

Truly: he abominated kids. He hated the sound of kids playing outside. And when he heard of a whole housing development where no kids were allowed, he thought he’d found Nirvana.

He made me drop out of high school a year early, so he could send me to the University of Arizona…thereby getting around Del Webb’s rule that no one under some extenuated age could live in Sun City. If your kid was away at college, you were allowed to move in…even if the brat was under 21.

So that fucked up my education. But why should he care? I was just a girl. What did I need a degree for, since all I was gonna do was take dictation and type? And raise kids, of course.

Y’know, if he’d waited just one more  year, I could have gotten into UC Berkeley, and there I could have landed a decent degree that would indeed have led to an interesting job or a first-rate graduate program. But nooooooo….we had to move to f*cking Sun City.

What a place!

At any rate, here we are, enjoying a classic Arizona late-summer day. Wet, soggy, dark…just gross. I hate Arizona (in case you hadn’t noticed…). And really…I will resent him for the rest of my life for f*cking up my educational plans (I was lined up for a Ph.D. from Berkeley or UCLA!) and dragging me out to the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

But…yeah. So what? I was just a girl….