Coffee heat rising

Dispatches from Hell

Turned Upside-Down in Space?

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Holeeee maquerel! WHAT is going on here?

Just tried to call my son, thinking it’s about dinnertime — around 6:30 in the evening.

But…

No….

No, folks: it’s breakfast-time!

It’s not 6:30 in the evening. It’s 6:30 in the morning!!!! 

Understandably, he was pretty peeved at being rousted from the sack at this hour.

And I’m pretty scared.

Scared that I’m so turned around and so goddamned confused that I don’t know whether it’s morning or night!

****

How terrifying!

Well. I guess this is a signal. And that signal’s meaning is pretty obvious:

Time to sell the house and move into a holding pen for the elderly. 

Guess I’m headed for the Beatitudes, a “life-care community” that stores you during the last months or (God forfend!) years of your life, as you rot away into senility.

Dear Lord! How I would ever so much rather be dead!

Seriously: I just abominate institutional living. Hated hated HATED living in the dorms in college. And now…goddammit! Now I have to end my life that way?

Time to look into alternatives. I simply cannot wind up my life locked into a dormitory for the senile. If I weren’t already crazy when they hauled me off to such a place, I would soon be stark raving insane.

There’s gotta be a better way to go. Let’s find out what it is. And…exit, stage left. 

Morning Has Broken…

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Like the first day…
Blackbird has spoken,
Like the first bird…

Actually, we don’t have blackbirds here in the lovely Sonoran desert. We have telephone solicitors.

The ba*tards start calling you as dawn cracks. Ringy-dingy-dingy Ringy dingy dingy ringy…. If you have any fantasy about sleeping in, fuhgeddaboudit!

We’re told phone soliciting is a prison industry. Apparently, a large portion of these nuisance phone calls are coming from convicts, placed from inside local and regional prisons. Makes you wanna just hurry right out and buy whatever they’re peddling, right?

I used to blast a horn into the phone whenever the ba*tards would jangle me up. Now…well..that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And really: if the job is being done by people who are forced to it by their prison guards, I suppose it’s not every nice to try to blow out their eardrums.

I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not very nice to jangle me out of bed by dawn’s early light, either.

I’d disconnect the phone at night, if I felt safe doing so. But…I don’t. I’m here by myself, and if anything happens that I need to call 911, then…yeah: I’ll NEED to call 911. Now, not after fiddling indefinitely with the damn phone.

What a gorgeous morning!! 

Guess Ruby and I had better head out on our morning walk, before the day heats up. And so…

A-WAAAAYYY

Time to Move to the Old Folks’ Home?

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Stay? or flee?

Do Ruby and I want to sell up, pack up, and move? Shift our base of operations to an institution for the elderly, where staff babysit you 24/7? Or…well…stay here, keep dodging the burglars and the sh!t-heads, keep managing crews of yard guys, housecleaners, pool dudes, repairmen…on and on and endlessly on?

One advantage of living in an old-folkerie: someone else rides herd on the hired help.

Here, I do have a cleaning lady who does an excellent job. Most of them don’t: they appear not to know how to clean house, at least not to middle-class American standards. So the presence of Wonder Cleaning-Lady is a huge privilege…and very possibly a rarity.

You shouldn’t have to ride herd on a worker doing a job that your mommy taught you to do when you were nine years old. In Wonder Cleaning-Lady’s case, I don’t have to…but too dam many of them don’t even seem to know how to use a dustrag.

Move into one of those old folks’ warehouses, and (in theory, anyway) you have an employee riding the herd.

Whaddaya bet, though, that you still end up with imperfect cleaning, dust still sitting on the bookcase shelves, dust still hiding behind the sofa, grease still sitting on the stove burners…on and on and on…  Y’know…if I have to deal with that, I’d rather deal with it in my own home,  not in some unholy institution.

But…Jeez!!

This morning Ruby and I repaired to the neighborhood park for our morning perambulation. And there was some guy out there, yelling suggestive obscenities at us. Yeah: at an 80-year-old bat!!! 

You can’t get away from the bastards!

Wait…isn’t that what the cop said after the Great Home Invasion Adventure?  😀

Seriously: you CAN’T get away from them.

If I’m going to stay here and if I imagine Ruby and I are going to continue our walking routine, maybe I ought to get us a pistol. One that’s small enough to fit inside a pocket.

On the other hand, I don’t want to shoot some jerk just because he asks me if I wanna f*ck. That wouldn’t be nice, would it?

😉

Hair!

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Three in the morning. Wide awake. Sick as a dawg. Ohhhh well….

Stumbled into the bathroom. While there, peered in the mirror…astonished. The hair has grown below shoulder length. For hevinsake it’s halfway down my back. 

😀  😀  😀

Ohhh, how I wanted long hair when I was a girl!  My mother, for reasons I’ve never understood, would have none o’ that. She let me grow it almost to shoulder-length once, when we were in Arabia — no hair stylists out there — but then hacked it off and kept it hacked off.

So, I suppose, if she were still living today, she’d be abhorred by the long flowing locks.

The other thing that’s kinda startling, when one peers in that bathroom mirror, is that my hair has hardly any gray in it.

Forhevvinsake, I’m eighty  years old! The long flowing locks should be mostly grizzled and gray. White, even!

But that’s not the case at all. Peer in the mirror, and what you see is just a few strands of gray.

How funny! And…I wonder why?

My mother’s hair was largely gray by the time she died — she was in her early 60s, having smoked herself to death.

Her relatives had the most beautiful pure white hair. I think, actually, those women may have been blonde to start with. Possibly even platinum blondes. But by the time I came along, any flowing golden locks were flowing silver locks. Snow-white, actually.

Life is weird, isn’t it?

Speaking of weird, for unknown reasons the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy has fallen back some. Not gone, alas. But much, much milder.

Why? No clue.

One benefit of feeling truly awful — as the neuropathy helps you to do — is that you look forward to the end. Truth to tell, I’m not afraid of the Final Exit, and in fact rather hope it comes sooner than later. Tired of hurting. Tired of feeling too sick to function. Tired of trying to navigate daily chores without a car, in a car-centric town.

Sick.
           Of.
                It.

And looking forward to the end.

LOL! How does one “look forward” to nothingness?

Oddly, though, there is a point where one does just want it to be over. And here in the wee hours of a March morning, I seem to have arrived at that point. Not only does the prospect of nada no longer scare or even particularly bother me, indeed I’m kinda welcoming it.

Nada, after all, means no pain. Hooooray! 😀

Ear Whistle? Or Limp?

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{Chortle!} So a few days ago I held forth about gulping down ibuprofen…which I had to do to beat back the pretty startling pain in a spavined hip.

Ibuprofen, it develops, makes your ears whistle. So, as we scribble, my head is singing SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE……  

Yeah: one gets one’s choice: a giant pain in the a$$, or invisible screamers in your ears!

Argh! How could I do without this ess-aitch-ai? Let me count the ways…

Jet planes are roaring around to the north of us. “To the north” would suggest they’re not the Air Force numbers that charge back and forth over Sun City as dawn cracks — it’s to the west of us. But…why anyone would have jets blasting back and forth over a residential subdivision escapes me.

Sure could do without it, though WHAT a racket!

Meanwhile, ibuprofen or no ibuprofen — ear-whistle or no ear-whistle — the damn hip hurts like the dickens. That will obviate today’s doggy-walk.

Now we’ve got some moron out there on the street, just on the other side of my backyard wall, SHRIEKING AT HIS DOG at the top of his voice: YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW…

I holler back, without getting up from my easy chair, KNOCK IT OFF, STUPID!

😀 He must have heard me: he shut up.

God, but I’m tired of stupid. 

Seriously: it seems — all the time! — like we have Stupid to the left of us and Stupid to the right of us, Stupid to the front of us and Stupid to the back of us. WE’RE SURROUNDED BY MORONS!

Oh man! What a racket from those damn jets. And y’know: they’re a good 20 miles away!

The air is dead still — not a leaf on the trees jiggling. That must be why the uproar carries so far this morning. You rarely hear the Luke AFB racket all the way into town.

Should get up and walk Ruby around the ‘Hood.

But…kinda doubt that I can, actually. This hip hurts so much I can barely wriggle. Just walking over to the kitchen to add some hot water to a cup of tea hurts like the dickens. Probably I should just limp back to bed!

Oh well. Old Dawg-Yeller seems to have waddled on down the street. The fighter jets have gone on their way. The ears are still doing their air-raid siren thing. Nothing’s gonna get any better. And likely nothing’s gonna get any worse. Think I’ll go back to bed!

Another Day, Another Jab in the Hip…

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LOL! The spavined hip remains…spavined! Well…actually, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It does still hurt. As in HURT. But…nowhere as much as it hurt yesterday.  The pain does seem to be going down a little.

My guess is (Doctor Hay Speaks!) that the worst of the pain will be gone after about another three days.

Just now, it’s a whisper on the nerve-wracking side. Horribly light-headed! Feel like I just might faint.

Why, I can’t imagine: it doesn’t hurt THAT much. But weirdly, somehow I’m dizzy and my heart is pounding and it does indeed feel like I could pass out.

Why I would feel like my head is about to float off into orbit: that escapes me. Haven’t had so much as a sip of booze all day: no wine, no whiskey, no nothin’ in that line.

Soooo….what’s with the crazy light-headedness? Seriously: it doesn’t feel like anything near enough pain to make me pass out. Hmmm…pulse seems to be pounding a bit fast…why??? Ears whistling….woooooooooooooooo!

Probably ought to repair to the ER. But my poor son has been SO HARASSED with this stupid stuff, I do hate to call him and ask him to deal with some new episode.

Should I walk up to the ER? Doubt if I can get that far, on foot and alone.

Hmmmm….  Let’s try reclining on the sofa…phone in hand. Assuming I can get that far….

WHOA!!!

Google “Can ibuprofen cause vertigo,” and here’s what you get:

Yes, ibuprofen can cause vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness, though it is not a common side effect for everyone. As an NSAID, it can sometimes cause ototoxicity (damage to ear structures) or restrict blood flow to the inner ear, leading to vertigo, dizziness, and tinnitus.

LUUUUVLEEEEE!

Dammit!  I’ve been gulping ibuprofen for…what? the past three days? Hell, longer than that! The past FIVE days.

Wouldn’cha know?:

Honestly, I seem to be growing more and more sensitive to over-the-counter nostrums. This is the first time I’ve enjoyed what appears to be a reaction to ibuprofen. But…hmm…on the other hand, I wouldn’t normally dose myself with it for several days in a row.

So?????  Does that have anything even resembling significance?

Possibly: I may simply have OD’ed on the stuff.

……

hmmmmm….

Ear whistling seems to be backing off a bit. Both ears feel weirdly congested, but the loud WHEEEEEE is slowly fading.

What to do, what to do? If anything….

Hanging on for another few minutes: off to pass the idle time on the beloved Internet….

……

Next Google: Can Ibuprofen cause tinnitus?

Yes, ibuprofen, as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), can cause or worsen tinnitus (ringing in the ears), particularly with high-dose or long-term, daily usage

. This side effect is often temporary and reversible once the medication is stopped, as it often results from decreased blood flow to the cochlea.

Uh HUH! Wouldn’t you fukkin KNOW?!

……

Hmmmmmm….   What to do here?

What to do what to do….  Well…  As we sit here fussing, the ear howling is slacking off. It’ ain’t gone….that’s for sure. BUT…neither is it still wailing like an air-raid siren. Hmmm….

Welll…..it doesn’t look like this is gonna be fatal. (Hey! if it DOES kill me, at least the ear-wailing will go away!)

So I think it probably will be safe to wait another half-hour to sixty minutes, just to see what happens. If the wailing continues to fade, then I’ll just let it go…and never, EVER swallow another ibuprofen pill.

If the ears are still howling after a half-hour…then what? Guess I’ll just walk up to the local ER and see what they have to say about it.

Goody. 😮