Coffee heat rising

She knew…

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Yes. She knew. 

What she didn’t understand was that my father also knew. And he wasn’t going to put up with it.

***

My father rescued me from the most horrific cruelty my mother could possibly have committed. Ever.

What she tried to do was maneuver things so that I had to repeat what she had to do as a girl my age: minister to her mother as her mother was dying of a self-inflicted cancer.

Her mother was a fast little thing, back in the 1920s and 30s. Apparently, she would fu*k just about anyone and anything that  came along, and then some. My mother once told me about coming home from school one afternoon, using her key to unlock the front door, walking into the living room, and finding her mother and a boyfriend on the floor in front of the fireplace, in flagrante delicto. 

Not surprisingly, the woman fell prey to a number of venereal diseases. In the ’20s and ’30s, treatment for these was pretty fierce stuff. Couldn’t have been good for your long-term health.

Probably not for your short-term health, either. 😮

In due course, my dear grandmother fell prey to a reproductive cancer: one that killed her.

My mother, then a young teenaged girl, had to tend to her as she lay on her deathbed.

Result: she was determined that her own daughter would NOT do that. And the upshot of that was simply that my father chased me out of her room whenever I dared to approach her as she lay dying, years later, of the family disease: cancer.

In retrospect, I do understand what he was doing…and why.

But I also think he overdid it a bit. Probably he should have let me spend time by her bedside, even if I wasn’t toting bedpans and changing diapers.

Life. It distorts everything, eh?

Another Muggy Day…

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…in (un)lovely North Phoenix…. 

Ugh! It’s hot and overcast and swampy. WhatEVER possessed my parents to move here from California, dragging me along with them?

Ohhh well. In fact, the sky is mostly very beautiful, with towering cumulus clouds gazing down at us. No doubt we’ll get some rain tonight.

Let’s see what the Official Sky-Watchers opine….

Hmmmm…. 24% chance of precip tonight, and then…HOLEE molee: 87% chance tomorrow, with thunderstorms.

😀

Well, that ought to be a show. 

Most of the time, these predictions amount to nothing, or next to it. Now and again, though…they do hit the mark. We shall see…

Took off into the weird gray yonder without company of Dog. Didn’t want to have to wrangle her through rain, if any occurred. Plus it really is pretty hot for her…if you were wearing a two-inch-thick fur coat, you probably wouldn’t enthuse much about traipsing over hot concrete and asphalt in 83-degree heat.

Actually, that’s downright chilly for lovely uptown Phoenix.

Tomorrow, we get a bit more drama, or so the Weather Service opines: 90% chance of precipitation, thunderstorms, high of 69 degrees, locally heavy rainfall possible.

Kinda like to wash my hair…but figure with the air this soggy, shoulder-length locks may not dry before bedtime.

Yeah….I should get the hair mat cut short. But a) I like it long, old age or no old age; and b) I just don’t feel like dorking around with a beauty parlor.

Oh, my goodness! Patrick Stewart died! Captain Kirk!  How is that even possible? My, he was a delight…he made all his roles delightful.

Much to be missed…

Dog ‘n’ Human Walk, Redux…Update

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So here we are, once again, back from a twilight circumambulation of the ‘Hood.

WHAT a pretty neighborhood! If you have to live in Phoenix — or anywhere in the suburban reaches of the “Valley of the Sun,” you really can’t do better than this one.

********************

Well, I started to write this a day ago…then roamed off into the twilight of my life.

Oh, my. I’m SO sick. 

Surely it can’t be much longer before I’m dispatched to the next world. Surely hope not, anyway!

Speaking of that horrifying dispatch, my son just called to inform me that he’s dragging me to the old-folkerie of our choice: the place he plans to store me until I finally pass over into the Next World.

That would be kind and thoughtful and all…except…..

Very few things do I revile more than institutional living. I just HATE being crammed in with a bunch of other people. I hate listening to some dimwit’s TV blabbering on down the hall. I hate bad food dumped out of cans and boxes into steam tables.

Honestly: if I’m approaching the end of my life, then forgodsake it’s time. Time for me to go.

And that exit is not something I want to have drawn out.

Yes, I will say: I’m not especially well just now. And indeed, it won’t be long before I won’t be able to stay here in my home safely.

Already, my son has purloined my car (he believes I shouldn’t be driving), which means I have to hike some unholy distance just to go to the grocery store. And no, hiring the Uber driver across the street has proved not to be a very practical strategy.

The awful place where he plans to consign me is less awful than most of them.

My father put himself in a place now called The Terraces. He would have done fine there if he had not stupidly imagined he could replace my mother (the love of his life) with a dimwitted woman he met there.

So… Lesson number one: no love affairs!!!

😀

Seriously, though…you would not believe the horror show that devolved from that episode.

Because he had stupidly married the woman, he was afraid to break it up. He convinced himself (rightly or wrongly, I do not know) that she would get all his assets if he divorced her.

Personally, I doubt that would have happened: at the time, his daughter was married to a partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the Southwest. But he was just simply too scared to take any chances.

So he stayed married to her, in profound misery, until the last day of his life.

As for me, I hate institutional living. Hated every moment that I had to spend in the dorms in college. (Back in the day, unmarried women students were required to live in the dorms, unless they could prove they were living at home). And I just. don’t. want. to. go. through. that. again!!!!

I fail to understand, given what it costs to live in one of those hell-holes, why we can’t use the same amount of money to hire someone to come in and babysit me in my home.

So this morning my son is dragging me to the Terraces, for an introductory tour.

Goodie gumdrops. I can hardly wait. 

Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…

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As a long-ago radio announcer — still fondly remembered — used to intone each morning: “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona…leave us all enjoy it!”

😀  Nothing like a little illiteracy to give your talk show some zing, eh?

Seriously, it was a much-loved maxim that he invented and used for years.

Ruby and the Human have marched around the ‘Hood, at least to some degree. The Human is feeling sick, and so not at all in the mood to gallop from pillar to post.

Back in the house, fed,  and ensconced on the bed, I hope to sleep off whatever this is.

Missing a dear friend from long ago. She and her husband lived in a later-built tract to the north of the Central Avenue area. Ticky-tacky little house, cheaply built in the mode of later architecture. He fell ill — very ill, indeed — and died after a long haul in that house. She moved to Scottsdale briefly; then decamped to the Midwest, whence she came and where her family was still living. Forthwith, we lost track of each other.

I seem to have  lost track of most of my friends.

Maybe I should try to get another adjunct position at the Great Desert University. That, at least, would give me something to do and bring me into contact with new people,

But…without a car — my son purloined mine and sold it — there’s no way I can get out to the campus. I’m trapped here in the Funny Farm, really.

I probably could get down to the church. It would require a hike through the North Central district and then a bus ride — often an annoying experience in these parts, what with the stoners and the panhandlers. More hassle than I’m up for.

And so…what will I do? Sit here and rot away?

Very possibly, as we don’t appear to have many alternatives. Make that “any” alternatives.

  • No job.
  • No freelance opportunities.
  • No volunteer gigs.
  • No friends left.
  • No car in which to venture forth…

Really, when you come down to it, I’m doomed. It really IS time to go, isn’t it?

Yeah. “Sit here and rot away” about defines my future. Hope it comes quickly….

Beautiful Kid Afternoon

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Oh, my! Dear Reader, I do wish you could be here to watch the goings-on here in the ‘Hood.

Actually, the performers are gathering to go in for dinner now…the hour coming on to 4:00 p.m. But up til now: all this cool, sunny afternoon we’ve had kids and teenagers cavorting up and down our little neighborhood lane… So much fun! So adorable!

Hope they’ll come back out after dinnertime.

The kids and the teenagers (and their parents) are what makes the ’Hood a lovely place to  live. Why, you wonder as you watch the goings-on, would anyone ever want to live in a mausoleum like Sun City?

😀    :-0   😀

Well. My parents did. Particularly my father.

He didn’t seem to care for children at all. He actually disliked the sound of kids playing. From what I could tell, my mother had to bamboozle him into letting her bear the pregnancy that produced me. And I was — quite deliberately –the only child they had.

He must have been disappointed when they spawned a girl. He didn’t seem to mind Boy Scout types. But girls didn’t much interest him.

That notwithstanding: He did his duty in supporting me and providing a safe home. Sent me through four years of college. So…I guess I can only be mystified at what made those two tick.

Meanwhile, here in the ‘Hood we do have kids. A lovely, funny, rowdy passel of them.

😀

NOW what???

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Is there, seriously, NEVER a dull moment?

Why th’hell not???

Six p.m., Friday evening, October 23. Now I find a weird, itchy rash all over my chest.

WTF???  Chicken pox???

Believe I had chicken pox as a kid. Can you get it again as an old bat?

Hmmmm….  Saith the Mayo Clinic:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chickenpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20351282

Doesn’t look strikingly like that.

Temperature: a little over 100 degrees. That’s high for me: I’m a cold potato. Normal for me is 97. Mayo clinic regards 97 to 99 degrees as “normal.”

Feeling ever so slightly on the awful side. Believe I’ll shut off the lights and try to get some sleep!