My Year Among the Sunflowers (Month 8)

In the spirit of it being the 2nd month of the year, I couldn’t pick just one theme:

February’s theme 1: Are the Sunflowers Being Serviced? How about now? Now? How ‘bout NOW? NOW?!

February’s Theme 2: The race is on!

I’ve received countless emails this month about a lot of paths around town being closed for “race season”. You can’t walk or run unless you’re signed up for some #K this or that, so people have been flocking to the Sunflower neighborhood of endless sidewalks. YES! Additional people!! Because 1500+ (950 houses, so I’m estimating) aren’t enough. February in Tucson is the second busiest month just behind January. And it’s just another manic month here. Gotta beat the heat! And death! As if.

I also can’t count the number of dances and dance classes and gaming events (mostly bingo) held this month for Valentine’s Day. It was BYOB and assigned seating. Are the office gals the pimps now? “Bring your valentine or come to find one.” Crazy Rhythm plays every Friday night in the Fiesta Room now. The Romeos* are on high alert.

*The Romeos is the name of a club for Sunflower Men (only) who enjoy time out with the guys without getting into trouble. They have a weekly OWLS - (Old Widowers’ Light Supper) for Sunflower men, widowed or who live alone, who would enjoy a night out with the boys.

The monthly newsletter’s calendar page is now three pages. Just to contain all the events and clubs and meetings and classes. February in Tucson!!! It’s LIT. Not just from the halogen lights everywhere. (My son flew in from Boise last week and said he could tell when he was over the neighborhood. LOL!) And it’s windy. As I write this, it is the first day after four of nothing but wind chimes. The Bird Whisperer next door and Lightning Rod Wilbur behind me love wind chimes and have several in their yards. They’ve been clanging all day and night, sometimes aggressively so if the winds reach over about 5 mph. I don’t know why you want to leave this world listening to wind chimes all the time. I’ve always thought their sounds could be lovely, but that’s tainted now.

I have an update on the Bocce Ballers performance in the Senior Olympics. Four teams walked away with medals. The “Roll 4 Gold” team won the Gold.

Have I mentioned that the pool at the amusement park/community center/clubhouse has been closed for repairs since October? I never knew old folk were so hard on their things. The pool is indoors, so it's not a sun-damage issue. The Sunflowers were told the repairs would be complete in December, then February, now April.

The Sunflowers were up in arms about it to begin with, but now I think we're all concerned about an uprising. The notices from the Park Ranger started as "This is necessary", quickly went to "We're so sorry", and are now just a nervous quote from the contractor, "We're working as hard as we can". (There can't be any more questions about the quality of workmanship in Tucson. )

Could their be an uprising? An army of short, slightly bent men in a parade of golf carts and tricycles and electric bicycles outfitted with flashing safety light detectors and God Bless America flags angrily waving their pickleball rackets and rolling bocce balls that don't quite make it to the Park Ranger's office door.

Don Ho, Sunflower Viagra dealer and part-time snowbird house caretaker, took down the Christmas light orbs and trees from his roof a month after the HOA deadline (ha, as if), but he’s now added light nets over all the plants and cacti in his crowded yard, spotlights at the four corners (10-feet from each other) and a spinning disco ball to his front porch. What is it with Sunflowers and lights? I think they’ve just run out of projects and things to buy at Big Lots.

February is one of the most popular Tucson months. The snowbirds have company again. It’s usually family for the Thanksgiving holidays, I think they go home for Christmas, but February is when they invite friends. Cars and trucks and RVs with upper Midwest license plates are multiplying. A house of one or two becomes a house of five or ten.

And, of course, the Sunflower construction continues into this new month! You'd think there'd be more to do, wouldn’t you? Or maybe less to do? I mean, what motivates people pushing 80 or 85 to constantly work on their homes? And why move/live here if you just spend every waking moment of what’s left of your life in your garage or 10 X 10 gravel yard or hiring people to hammer and saw on you all day? I don’t understand the thinking, but I’d hate myself if I did. The Sunflower motto should be, "Oh, you're here?", followed by the dismissive shrug a lot of us know all too well.

Because we live in zero-lot situations where we can hold hands with each other, it can feel like the activities of others is inside the house. I’m sure they can hear my screaming on particularly hard days.

Sally and Joseph’s 4-man construction crew across the street finished up at the very end of this month after four full months. It will forever be a mystery as to what they were working on in a 1500-square foot already built house. But, as soon as they left, Sally and Joseph returned home and Joseph has taken over where the crew left off. Every morning, he sets up his three saws in the garage. He lays out tarps and newspapers and extension cords and it’s quite the process. He reverses his steps at the end of every day. As I write this it’s Day 107 of sawing. 107! When he’s not sawing wood, he’s stroking it. He literally saws it, stands it up against the garage wall, and strokes his wood, like Austin Powers and his hairless cat. When not doing this, he shuffles around said garage. All. Day. Long.

So Joseph has gone from being serviced to servicing himself.

Sally is in and out and coming and going in her car until she returns home around 2:30 with all their grandkids. They close the garage around 6 (still getting dark around then) then light up the sky with all their new Halogen floodlights.

A big event here was the Garden Tour competition. Ten finalists so, I can’t imagine how many entries and judges. Gardens. In the desert. All needing water. In the desert.

There’s been a change with the Sunflower Singles group. A new leader has been announced. Kathy replaced Vic. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

Trivia Night is new and a big success! 93 people showed up for the year’s first Bingo night, setting a new Sunflower record. Karaoke hasn’t taken off like they thought.

It's Day 127 of all-day construction flurry at the newly roofed house two doors down from Sally and Joseph. These folks had three concrete mixers show up a few days after the month-long roof replacement and then, lumber. The lumber came twice. The guy parked the 18-wheeler o’ lumber next to my living room wall (which is separated by a sidewalk and a 6-inch border of gravel then the curb, and folks like to idle there sometimes). I couldn’t hear myself think, so I opened a blind to see how long this might last. He stood around in their driveway, but nobody came outside. So, he got his little lumber hauling machine cart thing and unloaded all the lumber onto the driveway. He was checking his phone the entire time. Once he got done, he connected the little cart back to the 18-wheeler and sat in the truck talking on the phone. Then, he got out, unhooked the little cart hauler and moved all the lumber he’d unloaded into the driveway and loaded it back on the truck bed. Then hooked up the cart hauler and finally drove away. Of course, the roof people weren’t home, because nobody stays home to suffer through their own construction. But the next day, he came back and we ALL went through the process again. Well, still no sight of the roof people. So, by ALL, I mean me.

(In his defense, they did reuse street numbers here. Every street has a unique name, but the same series of numbers were used. So, if there’s a 666 Wish Upon a Star Way, there’s a 666 Love is in the Air Lane. The Planning Committee, right?)

Come to find out, the roof people have started construction on a second home in their backyard. The city of Tucson (of which we’re not really a part) recently lifted their ban on this, which means that we all might as well just live in apartments. Soon after the concrete and lumber, the hammering and yelling started. There are 5 or 6 workers on various parts of the house that talk/yell at each other all day long.

Every job here requires a minimum of three huge trucks. It’s like a small town crime scene. Every cop on and off duty shows up for someone reporting an overturned trash can. I can’t help but think that not only are the Sunflowers getting serviced, they’re also getting screwed.

For an added bonus, Sally and Joseph had a crew come and unload dirt into their backyard for a little over a week mid-month. The worker process is this: They pull up in their well-worn truck with a trailer full of dirt. They lay a tarp down in the street behind the trailer. They shovel the dirt a wheelbarrow load at a time onto the tarp, then shovel the tarp dirt into a wheelbarrow that they tote to the backyard. Three days now. We’re in zero lot lines, so this can only mean grass. In the desert. People who have grass here are a special kind of asshole. No debate, no question, just 1+1=2. I didn’t need any more confirmation about who they are, but I got it.

I just feel so sorry for the pitiful couple with weekly plumbing and pest control visitors who live between these two. I picture them inside huddling in a corner with the rosary. (Then again, they back up to the Bocce ball courts so hopefully they aren't a bothered type.) But the second house going up next door to them is two stories and blocks their view of the mountain vistas. Reminds me of the new batch of Country Mormons who moved into my Nightmare Country Mormons and built a 4-story, 4,500 sq ft house right next to their property wall and blocked the view for everyone around them. The city got lots of complaints and did nothing, of course. Follow that $ trail. It's short. You can see the 2nd house thing on the same trail.

My son laughs at me when I say this, but I am convinced that this is what they call divine timing, but in the bad way. As in, God says, "You want to build shit for 6 months?? You want to fire up 3 wet, screaming saws in your garage all day? Wait!! Karen'll be here in 2022, and I'm still trying to teach her some lesson she still can't figure out. Poor kid.” He knew that people would want to have months of construction done to their house, people would want to replace all their outdoor lights with halogen bulbs and install some new ones, people would buy classic cars in need of carburetor work, people would move in their grandchildren and their forts, but Karen’s coming. I think I’ll have all these folks wait until she gets there. Then, during her year among the Sunflowers, she won’t be able to think straight. I must be a lot of fun up there.

I Googled something about curses, I guess, because now I'm getting all sorts of Joyce Meyer video suggestions about complaining and being good to people we hate. So, to try to say something in the direction of positive today, I am grateful that I had this house to move to, when nothing else worked out for months, and I'm glad I border Wilbur and the Bird Whisperer, because besides the daily 4am slamming open and shut of sliding glass doors and constant (and sometimes very aggressive) wind chimes and football floodlights, they haven't built anything (yet).

Sometime before dark last night, a port a potty was dropped off in the front yard of the newly roofed house where the second home is being built in its backyard. Just when you think, it can't get more ridiculous, somebody puts a shitter by their mailbox.

Sally and Joseph spent an unusually windy day here power-washing and then spray painting patio furniture in the driveway. This might sound like normal weekend afternoon on a Tuesday behavior, but the "furniture" is actually five or six of those folding, web strap, aluminum frame lawn chairs. He put newspaper down and it didn't fly all over the neighborhood for almost a full minute. A few pages made it to the new roof two houses down. It’d been funnier if it landed at their port a potty door.

I think Joseph went out of town or got sick or something, because twice, when he wasn’t seen or mostly heard, Sally, not knowing what the hell to do, would sweep the street and curb in front of Don Ho's house. Clearly, this family is confused by life, so maybe she got lost? Or maybe she didn't have enough sweeping to do in her own "yard", so she just kept going? Or maybe they don't understand property lines or boundaries? I imagine though, that they just don’t realize there are people around them. I wholeheartedly approve of her lack of leaf blowing, though. That’s usually an every day all day thing here, the dust and gravel blowing, so the broom sound is almost refreshing.

So, to summarize: Not a minute goes by when a Sunflower isn’t being serviced. With all the information this community provides, I think a Sunflower Servicing Schedule should be in order. An especially irksome part of all this is that they leave the house while their work is being done. The rest of us, the peasants, must suffer not knowing the plans.

But really, it’s just me, and possibly the pitiful couple, suffering. From my observations, most Sunflowers are just oblivious.

Next month, I believe we’ll be partying and leaf-blowing the desert MORE as the temps rise. And it’ll be motorcycle and tricycle season!