Yes, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Yes, people are kvetching about it in the commbox. (Since I have only two readers, I suppose I really should go out of my way to please them.)

Life here is kinetic, if not entirely productive. There’s always something going on, a new activity perpetually being layered upon and impeding the completion of another, a constant succession of unfinished business that never seems to abate.

I do not spend much time in front of my computer these days. During the time I do spend, I’m not usually in a writing state of mind. Always thinking about it, never getting there, the words almost liminal but never quite breaking the surface of the brain/keyboard barrier.

I suppose part of it is that it’s hard to write about drudgery. Do you want to hear about the Arizona weather again? I thought not. How about the latest trip I made to go paint or clean something, or haul trash out of a yard, or dig a ditch? No? Would you care to see some of the beauty that surrounds me? Ok, here it is – and mind you, this is just a taste of the treasures that await us here:

There’s a lot more where that came from. Almost a whole city block. Somewhere in the ballpark of 40-50 trailers, most of them abandoned, and several single-family homes, all in substantial disrepair. We had renters for two of the homes vanish on us at the end of August, so we have two glaring vacancies that can’t be filled until we make the places nice again. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is like polishing turds. (It can be done, I know. I saw that episode of Mythbusters too. It’s harder, though, when the person controlling the purse strings thinks that the turds don’t need polishing…)

The scale of the project is daunting. There is little in the way of investment capital (and by little I mean hardly more than lunch-money) and an enormous, gaping cash-maw in the way of making the place decent that simply can’t be satiated by anyone who doesn’t periodically make a cameo in the pages of Forbes. In our five acres of paradise, Crime is a problem. Graffiti is a problem. Drugs are a problem. Drunkenness is a problem. Trash is a problem. Code violations are a problem. Non-payment by the tenants we DO have is a problem.

And now, for extra, um, turds and giggles, Arson is a problem. Yes, arson. For those not following my brief updates on Twitter or Facebook, we woke up last week at about quarter-to-two in the morning to a major conflagration in our back yard. Somebody decided to torch the abandoned trailer closest to our house, and man can those suckers burn. One was completely destroyed, and two others were seriously damaged. Well, more damaged than they already were. They were abandoned for a reason, after all.

According to the local news,

Tucson police are investigating an arson fire that destroyed one mobile home and partially damaged two others early Wednesday morning, officials said.

The Tucson Fire Department received a 911 call at 1:18 a.m. about a trailer on fire in a mobile home community at 6150 S. Park Ave., department spokeswoman Tricia Tracy said.

When firefighters arrived they found one trailer fully engulfed in flames and trailers on either side partially on fire, Tracy said. The fire was put out by 1:43 a.m. she said, with the trailers on the side each suffering about 25 percent damage.

Fire investigators determined the middle trailer was intentionally set on fire, but no origin was found, Tracy said.

None of the trailers were occupied, Tracy said. The estimated damage for all three structures was about $20,000, she said..

This is a strange place. I can’t get the hang of it. As I drove downtown today for confession, past the bums, deadbeats, and dealers lining 6th Avenue, I took in row upon row of buildings that would fit in perfectly in a two-bit border town, every sign looking like a thumbnail from a lomography gallery. I’ve spent enough time in the Southwest and Mexico to know that towns looking like that – fluorescent light spilling out of the iron-barred windows of block buildings lost beneath dirty coats of pastel paint – are not meant to stay in. You do your business and go home, or pass on through.

Speaking of confession, I must now confess to my heathen ways. In a rush to make the scheduled time at the cathedral, I left wearing what I had on – including shorts and a pair of dusty Crocs – the first time in years I’ve darkened the doorstep of a church in anything less than pants.

Then again, I was informed in the confessional that I’m committing sins because I’m tired and need a vacation, so maybe I was attired appropriately after all.