My Year Among the Sunflowers (Month 12)

June’s Theme: Still Sunny and Misbehavin’

Typically, things here slow down in June. The University is on break, the final wave of snowbirds have migrated to the upper areas , and it’s HOT. Hot and dry. Between April and July, we’re lucky to get one 3-minute rain.

But I have never lived among the Sunflowers before. They’ve never been more active, thriving mostly in the heat of the day, and they’re still misbehavin’. One of the seven newsletters we get every month from the office, included quite the scoldings: 1) A new food truck has entered the mix: a start-up run by a local man who’s lived in town forever and known for his wonderful breads. Yum, I say! Not enough yum to fight the crowd here. It seems that the Sunflowers, with all their generosity and thoughtfulness, have called the man’s new store location to place orders for delivery. Remember the Covid toilet paper hoarders? “We need to set some ground rules. John is not a delivery man. If you want to order, contact the shop to make an order and go and pick it up yourself at the shop. Another ground rule will be that each home in Sunflower will be limited at the sale to only 2 loaves of bread so that more people can buy bread. If one of those is for you and one a neighbor that is fine. But you will only be able to buy two loaves. Not 2 for yourself and 2 for your neighbor, only 2 loaves total. So, if your neighbor wants 2 loaves, they need to come to the center for themselves.” And 2) “Dogs are to be on a leash that is always held by a responsible person while on the center grounds and on the walking paths.  Dogs are not allowed on sports courts. Dogs can NOT be “tied up” to any of the center’s property or be around the center with their leashes dropped.  We did have one escapee who enjoyed the pool, much to the distress of some of our swimmers.” Unleashed dogs are a thing here. But dogs playing bocce or marco polo in the pool because Sunflowers don’t know how to tie them to things while they go play? I don’t know what it takes to be a person who would attempt to tie a dog up to something outside for hours while they go play. It’s been 112+ degrees here for 3 weeks now. I said it in Month 1, active adult communities are designed specifically for special level assholes. And 3) “Please close the umbrellas when you leave the pool.” It’s monsoon season, which means storms and 40mph winds on a daily basis. And 4) “The entire pool area is a smoke-free zone. Please use the proper receptacles outside the Community Center entrances for your butts.” And 5) “ALL guests (person is not a current Sunflower resident) using Sunflower amenities must be accompanied by a Sunflower proximity card owner and registered at the Front Desk. One guest punch per guest is required, with a maximum of 5 guests. Refer to Rules and Regulations Section C, Subsection A1.2, Clause 3F - 3J for full details.” And 6) “ Please leave the “van accessible” handicapped parking for our residents that are in a wheelchair or need assistance devices.  Van accessible spots are designed with no curb and extra space for maneuverability.”

If you’re in your 70s and 80s and 90s and don’t know how to be a decent human being…..

Since it’s less hectic, the Activities Committee is encouraging/bullying those that remain to sign up for everything! (Think school peer pressure. It is college without the exams here!) Lots of room for beginners! Easier to learn without the crowds. Bocce, pickleball, billiards, golf, bowling, yoga, ping pong, line dancing, tennis, tai chi, euchre, pinochle, Mexican train dominoes, etc.

The Friday and Saturday night bands are on hiatus until the fall. And we're down to three food trucks on Tuesdays. But because aging stops for no one, the Tech Talk Club hosted a “Get the Deets on Dementia” presentation in the Business Center that was well attended, if we remember correctly.

This month closes out My Year Among the Sunflowers. I’m staying another 6 months, and the stories will keep coming, but to give a final update on our cast of characters (and a new one!), I offer these things that still and will never make sense:

• Mr. Brindle, the stray dog adopted by the neighborhood and named for his coloring, has been re-homed after 8 months of living amongst us. Some residents were dedicated to the cause, no matter how much he insisted on not being corralled. He had become a celebrity here, with his own Instagram account and Facebook page, toys left around like Easter eggs, and food and water in shiny new doggie dishes left on patios. The rescuers commented on how shiny his coat was and how much weight he needed to lose. Residents are proud, “It truly took a village!”, but I wonder if he’ll be happier. He’s with a rescue group that’s probably not nearly as much fun.

• The FreakShow Grandparents (FSGs, Sally and Joseph) who left for a bit are back. From Colorado! I don’t think there could be more confirmation of their freakiness than this. ALL of Colorado in June is lovely. They opened their home to AirBnbers the last 3 months after the 7-month reconstruction of what is apparently a Taj Mahal. They weren’t home 12 hours before a new set of remodelers arrived. And to add to that, school is out now, and the grandkids are here every day. Squealing and playing in the driveway and the street. Even though they built a huge playground complete with tall Home Depot forts in the backyard. There are HOA rules, of course, but I doubt they’re big on the book learnin’.

• The Newly Roofed recently spent an entire Sunday night attaching and packing one of those plastic storage things on the roof of their car. I only became aware with the opening and closing of car doors for hours. After dark activity isn’t frequent here. So, I thought a break from them was nigh! But alas, the next morning, the next afternoon, the next night, until the following afternoon (midday), the car disappeared from the driveway.

• Don Ho must have a new job at the used car dealership off the highway. He’s in a different car, typically with sputtering or lack-of-muffler issues, every morning and every night. So his whoredom is no longer limited to just women. He has a new lady friend now and has taken to just carrying the Friday party evening bottle with him, since the ice just melts now. When Sally and Joseph aren’t home, Don Ho parks his cars in their garage. To make him even more social? Or maybe to make it look like someone is there should a prowler try to enter their garage door? That explanation implies thought, so I’d say it’s Don Ho’s thing.

• Festus or Fernando has a new Sunday after church leaf blowing, car revving, and yard doings outfit. One of those Cowboy Rootin’ Tootin’ Time birthday party looks with the black, long sleeved shirts with silver snaps and trimmed in white piping. It’s just a Sunday tradition, really. He showed his car that barely runs in the Father’s Day Car Show here. He opted to have a tow truck come to haul it back and forth to the Community Center. Something about road warrior wounds?

• The Gray Baron’s trash can was still at the curb the other morning, the morning after his pickup day. The can's top was flipped so the can was open. He would hate this, being a person who washes his cans every other Friday. I worried about him, but he appeared a day or two later (he’s an afternoon garage worker, which probably has contributed to his 3 calls to 911 this year), getting on his tricycle for his afternoon trip to the store. Every morning, I play one of those Roulette Wheel games about whether his garage door will be open or closed. I think he might be The Oldest Sunflower and I worry about his safety, really, more than the possible theft. But he’s alive, and this is still annoying and awesome.

• It was a mystery when the Bird Whisperer’s family of metal quail, her bird baths, and windchimes in the backyard were suddenly gone. My over-the-bathroom-vanity window has a birds-eye (!) view of her roof, where the usual 15-20 evening birds were no more. Her 1991 gray Saturn was parked in the driveway with all its windows down for a few days just two weeks ago. The Bird Whisperer has died (in the car?) and been replaced. And Sunflower Swiftly. A new maroon SUV is in the driveway now. A new garage door. Paint fumes. A tall man dirt-blowing out back. Her constant and clanging wind (30mph+ here next to the mountain) chimes have been replaced with the constant hum of a hot tub (yes! in Arizona, in a yard that’s the size of a master bedroom). Ah, that magical desert water just keeps flowing.

• Which brings me to Felix Nuevo, the latest Sunflower. Out of the blue, someone started ringing my doorbell at various times of the day. (I don’t answer doors, especially now and in Tucson, where I’ve been robbed twice over my 6 years of living here.) I received an email from my landlord that explained everything: Felix is the Bird Whisperer’s son and owner and new full-time resident of the home. (His backstory: He and his partner, Johnny, had a terrifying breakup and Felix moved to San Diego, as far as he could get and stay in the country. An attractive man with a sad story, he didn't stay single for long. Apparently, this isn't specific to gender. He met Diego, moved him in, and was happy until a job loss and subsequent find in Tucson. On the opposite side of town, so he moved his ailing mother into the tiny house here until he was old enough to live here (55 requirement). Smart retirement plan, really, and when the market was reasonable. Mom seemed happy, too. Especially at 4am, when she liked to bust open that sliding glass door and feed the birds.) Anyway, he wants to put in a security fence, and wanted to talk to the resident of the house. He didn’t give a shit about security for his 95-year-old mother living in the home alone, but he wants one for his hot tub, I guess.

• It feels like closure to end this list where I started: Wilbur and Edna. And this brings it all back to where this year started. Wilbur and Edna’s patio lights. Wilbur and Edna were dark the first few nights i was here last year. I moved in a year ago today. July 2nd. It had rained and rained (for 15 minutes instead of the usual 5) on one of my truckload trips the day before. But they were dark and it was quiet and nice. AND THEN BOOM. Like the beginning of Friday Night LIghts episode. Back with a BOOM. LIGHTS ON. And they've been on ever since. But they've been out of town for a few weeks now, I think. Someone with a brain house-sits when they're gone (twice now, they don't leave much, but when they do it's in a camper) and keeps the patio lights off. To add insults to final injuries, Felix Nuevo has installed seven spotlights that light the 16-inch path between our houses. They come on at dusk, go off a little after first light, and shine on the sides of both houses and my bedroom bathroom. He leaves his patio light on all night, as well. So the hot tub won’t get scared, I suppose, but I couldn’t have imagined when this all started with Wilbur that it could get worse. It’s like living next to the Chesters in Christmas Vacation minus the cold and the fun and the holiday. (When the temps rise over 110 in the next months, Wilbur will leave his patio lights off and open his back doors and windows, giving ME a full view of him in his shirtlessness and boxer shorts. I think he just needs to be seen, and some of our needs never go away no matter how old we get. And he loves the HOT of it all. In another better life, he would die first.) If I’ve learned nothing else, I know how aptly the neighborhood was named: Sunflowers and sunflowers thrive and wave happily in their heat and their lights.

Construction Projects for the Month

So, my landlord piggy-backed on Felix Nuevo’s fence project and decided to have this yard done, too. As I write this, we’re on Day 4 and have all of 5 fence posts. FIVE for two yards the sizes of master bedrooms. The fence is 3-feet high and the usual cookie-cutter iron kind. In typical Tucson style, the crew is two dudes in an unmarked truck of all trades. One has a long beard covering a lot of his pocked face and weights about 110 pounds. The other is a midget Mexican. The fence posts are too tall for him to bang in the ground, so Meth has to do that part. Midget mostly mixes concrete and moves the wheelbarrow around. They use my patio for their supplies and their breaks (there are many) between tasks. The silver lining is that I get to know when they're coming and going, though. Their truck is to the side of the house.

And Felix Nuevo has all sorts of projects going on. One is constant raking of yard rocks. They’re not even enough for him or something. Sometimes, he takes breaks between our houses. So, I can see his ass a lot outside my office window. And I do mean his ass, because nobody can fit between the houses. You must slink through sideways.

Sunflower Hasta Siempre (Goodbye FOREVER!)

Over the year, I’ve picked a lot of bones with the Sunflower men, but really, the women are to blame. Avoiding your husbands at the expense of others. How rude. Shouldn’t there be a responsibility to the greater good as we age? But there are also a lot of single men here. Sunflower men outnumber Sunflower women by double digits. I’m of the opinion that their women just died to get away from them. They guys are everywhere and outside, here for their chores. They’re like little boys at the windows waiting for a sighting of the first boy outside. Then, they can go, too. Here, when the first garage door goes up, it’s not 5 minutes before the second, then the third, and so on. You can take the man out of the boy, but not the boy out of the man, I suppose. Men in their 70s and 80s struggle with their waning manhood, of course. That’s common knowledge. But having lived among them for a year now, I have come to understand the manic leaf blowing, building, sawing, hammering, weed killing, hosing behavior. They just have to be seen and counted among those still holding hard things in their hands.

As a final, Screw You, Renter, the town’s police department has agreed to do periodic drive-bys for people on vacation or not at home for extended periods of time. BUT, only if you are the homeowner. The newsletter item specifically says, “They will not extend this courtesy to renters.” I seriously doubt that’s a statement from the police, but from the HOA.

So, my year is closing out, but the stories obviously keep coming.

As much as I’ve complained, I do find humor in most of these people (minus the FSGs) now. And I have some love for a select few, especially the ones who have given me so much fodder here. So to close on a high note, as it said in the last week of June’s newsletter, after a year of it being closed for repair after unplanned repair: “Ta Da! Pool splashing starts Friday June 30th!” And these are just a few of the rules to keep the misbehavin’ to a minimum (how they track and monitor, I don’t want to know):

1. No glass containers in the pool area. (We see you, Don HO!)
2. Shower before and after using the pool.
3. Please do not enter with street shoes worn on blacktop to help keep the decking clean. There is a bench by the entrance gate for you to sit to change into your pool shoes.
4. The ENTIRE pool and spa area is a smoke-free zone!
5. Children under 18 years of age must be supervised by an adult 21 or older at all times.
6. No running, horseplay, dunking, excessive splashing, water pistols, balls, toys or jumping/diving in the pool is permitted.
7. Spa users must be at least 18 years old.