Coffee heat rising

Wednesday in Hell…

My son is on the way over here to pick me and up and drag me to the Mayo Clinic. Again.

Hope today’s appointment is at the hospital, here in town. Many of their doctors maintain their offices at that place, which is 45 minutes closer to my house than is the Mayo’s palace in Scottsdale.

Since the Mayo aims at an affluent, well-insured audience, they place their clinics and doctors’ offices in upscale parts of the city. That’s all very nice…but our particular upscale neighborhood doesn’t happen to be in either of the two ritsy-titzy locales that the Valley’s Mayo Clinic occupies.

So any trip to a MayoDoc means an endless trudge through cut-throat traffic. It’s an awful drive at any time of day; a rush-hour trip is a species of Hell.

This is why I took up with Young Dr. Kildare, who had an office just up the street. Unfortunately, he and his partners have closed that practice, and he’s moved to Sun City.

Bad sign. When my mother was out there dying, we got more than a superficial taste of the medical care available in Sun City. That’s one reason I wouldn’t retire out there on a bet!!

So, so, SOOOO not in the mood(!!!) to hassle with doctors today. Especially not after an hour’s rush-hour drive. Ugh!

What a fine way to start your day, hm?

Holeee Shee-ut…

Waiting for the cops to show up.

And waiting…and waiting…and waiting….

Some charmer was sniffing around the front and the east side of the house. Seems to be gone now.

After SDXB chased off his burglars — caught them in the living room and waved his pistol at them — he called the cops. Said it was over 20 minutes before they showed up. At two in the morning…

That was a couple years ago…and one of the immediate causes for his moving to lovely, boring Sun City.

No sign of a gendarme here. Haven’t been tracking the wait time….

**
Okay

They finally appear.
***

Well, one lonely cop shows up. By the time he gets here, there’s not a soul around. Ruby is quiescent. Presumably our visitor has moved on.

I hope.

Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!
Dammit, I have got to get out to the range and practice with my father’s pistol!!!

More to the point, I probably need to get a shotgun. Much easier to hit an uninvited visitor.

Cripes! Here’s a cop copter, a couple blocks to the north of us. That suggests Josie must have called them, too.

A uniformed officer showed up at the door about ten minutes after I called. That’s darned good  response time — usually it takes them at least twenty minutes to surface.

Phoenix…
What a garden spot!

Another Day, Another Taxpayer-Funded Dollah…

Mwa hah ha!  Social Security: what could be better?

Seriously, I do hafta say that I am mightily grateful for the wee Social Security income that trickles in each month. Yes, I do have enough in savings to live on as a retiree…for the time being. But…that’s assuming I do NOT acquire the insane longevity of my non-smoking forebears.

Yeah: the Christian Scientists on my mother’s side of the family lived into outrageously advanced old age — and by and large, they did so independently. They were well into their late 90s when they croaked over…and might have lived even longer if they’d been given to the blandishments of modern medicine.

Would they have wanted to? Ah. Yea verily: that is the question.

My son dragged me out to the Mayo yesterday, an annoying and time-wasting trip. Among the several sillinesses to which they subjected me was this…uhm…Olde Folke’s IQ Test. As it were.

And as it were, it was the stupidest thing you could ever hope not to encounter. Seriously: an unutterable and frustrating waste of time.

Frustrating because I had better things to do of an afternoon.

Unutterable because one probably should not openly express one’s opinion of such stupidity, especially not to the professional who is inflicting the stupidity on you.

When you come away from an encounter like that, you find yourself thinking “Them thar Christian Scientists had somethin’…”

World War III…Comin’ Your Way!

So Ruby and I are just back from the morning traipse around the’ Hood. Actually. we’re running a little late: it’s 8:30 already.

But the lovely serenade from Luke Air Force Base, twenty miles to the west of us, is still echoing through the atmosphere. WHAT a gawdawful racket!!

My mother used to love to sit on the back porch of their little Sun City house — practically under the flight path of those damn planes — to have coffee and read the paper. She claimed, if you can imagine, to love the roar of jet planes taking off and landing for the morning maneuevers at Luke.

“It’s the sound of fweedom,” she would coo, proudly patriotic.

Nooo, muther. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way.

Never happier than movin’ out of merry Sun City….

She absolutely LOVED living there, though. As Whitey-White as you can get, tomb-quiet, politically situated in John Birch territory.

Soon as I graduated from college, I got a job in downtown Phoenix and rented an apartment in the central part of the city. It was on Thomas Road, one of the mainest of the city’s main drags. Traffic noise was bracing…but it was nothing like the roar of those planes coming out of Luke.

They still roar in and out of the base. We’re a good 20 miles away, but every morning we can hear the serenade of jet airplanes straining every mechanical gut to get off the ground and charge back and forth.

*****

And now here we are in a bland waiting room at the Mayo Clinic. Ohhhhh goodie! Apparently they want to do some sort of neurological tests on me. This has been said to M’hijito…wouldn’t it be nice if they’d tell me about it!

Fundamental Questions of Olde Age

What am I doing?

What am I supposed to be doing?

Who the Hell am I?

And why am I here?

Yes. There we have the fundamental questions
that confront the aging mind.

😀

Was just about to fly out the door and trudge down to the ever-pricey AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store, there to buy some swell stuff for the mid-day dinner. Charging around, it occurred to me to wonder…

* Waitaminit! What’s in the freezer?
* Waitanotherminit!! Whats wrong with this spectacularly fancy piece of
spectacularly expensive steak?

and…

* Is there some REASON I can’t add this fresh, crisp asparagus to the menu?
* What??? No potatoes? Really??? What’s wrong with a fistful of freshly cooked pasta?

Sometimes I do wonder what’s wrong with me. At least this noon I escape the vicissitudes of old-age brain haze (for once!!), come away with what will be a very nice dinner, and not have to shell out another dime for it.

***

Y’know…ten years ago — even five years ago — it would never have occurred to me to traipse out into the (pricey!!!!) wilds to buy the makings for today’s mid-day feast. I would have known what was in the fridge. I would have known there was no need to go charging out in the traffic and scoop up $30 worth of fancy food and wine at AJ’s.

So…

Now we scribble while we wait for the kettle of water to come to a boil for the pasta. We swill wine by way of passing the time. And we wonder which drain our IQ points trickled down.

<<sigh>>

Worrying about SDXB and NG (New Girlfriend). He says she’s under the weather…apparently seriously so.

This is highly worrisome: first because she’s a lovely person and does not deserve to be sick; and second because he’s transparently in love with her and needs to have her in his life.

***

And in the Department of Weirdness…

Last  night I dreamed of returning to the sweet middle-class Berkeley  neighborhood where the relatives who raised my mother lived. And…

…how much I miss those women
…how much I miss Berkeley
…how much I miss the San Francisco Bay Area
…Oh hell! How much I miss my mother

How dast she smoke herself into the grave?

If heroin peddlers and cocaine peddlers and even marijuana peddlers are regarded as criminals, why the Hell aren’t tobacco peddlers legally recognized as the craven murderers that they are?

Ah well…movin’ on.

Maybe we’re all craven murderers? is that possible?

Daydreaming on in this vein, I found myself remembering Berkeley and the oh-so-long dead relatives, so vividly that they seemed almost real, almost here: and I wondered WTF is wrong with me.

If this is senility, my friendsthen senility is freakin’ weird!

One Effin’ Nightmare After Another…

Main Nightmare of the Day: SDXB’s excellent New Girlfriend is enjoying an Adventure in Medical Science. Trying to get thru to him on the phone today to see how that’s going and offer moral support: can’t get through.

Can’t tell whether it’s my phone (think it is) or his phone or the effin’ phone company at work. Call an operator. Spend half an hour or 45 minutes on a runaround. NOTHING is fixed. No phone service. No way to reach SDXB easily.

His annoying “automated phone answering system” message takes you NOWHERE. Nothing you do gets you anywhere.

Try again: end up in the same fruitless runaround.

This leaves me SO frustrated I can’t even remember the several other aggravations of the day. F*** It! Let’s just go to the grocery store and diddle away some cash on a new bottle of wine.

How do I hate life in the Twentieth Century?

Let me count the ways….