Apropos of Phoenix
So I finally got to Tucsam again (listen to me! the last time was only two weeks ago). That was Friday night. Which fully and completely explains why there have been no postings since Thursday. I've been busy. And busy. After I got here, I got there, having arrived several times after that. (winks to him and him).
Saturday afternoon, ObS (the bf) and I drove up to Phoenix to hang out at bars and Hang Out in other places. Just a bit of native fun before meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend on Sunday.
We stayed in a Motel 6 that was probably the single grossest national-chain hotelroom I've ever been in. It was a non-smoking room with ashtrays and stale smoke stench, with a shower but no real soap and no real water, and with towels that didn't so much dry you as push the water around from place to place on your body.
But we made it to my brother's apartment and hung out for a while with him and Jess, his girlfriend (who is stunning, and stunningly likeable). This was the first time Sam met any of my family, and it was a freakish set of circumstances that had Anthony (the brother) being the first one to meet Sam: it was not so long after meeting Sam, the first real reason I've ever had to visit Arizona, that my brother announced that he and Jess were moving to Phoenix. Bonus!
So there we were, after eating at some surprisingly good restaurant (a chain called Mimi's Cafe), driving to “Dynamite Mountain Ranch” to look at the house that they'd just bought. While we were there, we looked at all three models. Damn, there's a lot of open space within and without, in suburban AZ! Just for kicks, we also went to the next sub-division over to look at even larger houses, all cloyingly named after tv families (that's television, not transvestite).
So there we were, walking through the “Cunningham's”, the “Ricardo's” and the “Brady's” models (yes, they include the “'s” in the official model name), ranging from just under 2000 sq ft to just over 2400 sq ft. I have no idea what I would do with all that space. Likely just hunker down in a small upstairs room—or small wing in these houses—and forget the rest of the house is there for anything other than “extra space”.
While I was flattered that Jess kept asking me when I was going to buy one, the whole experience cannot be further from what I see myself getting into. I kept hearing the words of Jeff, one of my San Francisco “Dad's”, saying “location! location! location!”, meaning quite specifically “NOT San Francisco”.
That said, I'd still love to own a house, but it's something I have never entertained seriously as a solo endeavor, both for financial (read: blemished credit) and emotional (read: nesting) reasons. Now that the solo part isn't solo no mo', I guess that's back on the table....or at least occasionally bent over the table for a quick ride.
It's a keen illustration of what Family is all about, though. I found myself getting completely into the Phoenix house-buying thing on behalf of Anthony and Jess for no other reason than he is my brother and the two of us have just Always Been. As I have written before, he and I had never been close, but now that he is rising from the ashes of a dysfunctional marriage with a sociopath of a (soon to be) ex-wife, he's Himself. And interestingly, that's a person that I happen to like. A lot.