Coffee heat rising

B-B-B-R-R-R-R-R-R…

Egad, it’s cold out there!

Well….normal people in normal climes would think it was right balmy. But for an Arizonan, it’s colder than a by-gawd! 

😀

Forty degrees on the back porch kinda obviates this morning’s doggy-walk.

M’hijito is presumably on his way over here: his plan is to pick me up and drag me to the grocery store. Bless him!

Seriously: with my car purloined (and who, we ask, might be the purloiner??) and my hip so spavined I can barely walk from the dining room to the kitchen, I can’t imagine how I would stock in a week’s worth of groceries. I’m pretty particular about grocery purchases, and so ordering a bunch of goodies over the phone is…well…pretty much out of the question.

Most of what I buy at a grocery market is fresh fruits and vegetables. By and large, Americans — especially the ones of an age to be working as grocery-store clerks — have NO CLUE how to select decent fresh produce. That kinda obviates calling Sprouts and asking them to send over a few bags of veggies and fruit. What you’ll get is a few bags of schlock.

But meanwhile, oh! how I hurt!! The LAST thing if feel like doing is having my good son schlep me to the store, trudging around the place, dragging stuff out to the car, dragging the same stuff into the house, and putting it all away. Just sitting here in an easy chair with my feet on a hassock hurts, hurts, and hurts some more. 

Got my hiking stick out…actually, just now we could call it the limping stick. I can’t walk up the hallway without either hanging on to the stick or bracing myself against the walls. MAN, does it hurt to walk!

Or…umh…try to walk. Probably walking is not the word you’d use. 😀

****

Beginning to look like I’m gonna have to buy another car. That will set me back 18 or 20 grand. What a joy!

But, although I would be getting around OK if every goddamn step didn’t hurt like the dickens, Phoenix (like L.A.) is not a place where you can live, in any practical way, without a car. My son has locked my car in his garage, and it becomes clearer with each passing day that he has no intention of returning it.

And no, I’m not gonna report it stolen. He is, after all, my son. That’s all we need, eh? My son spending the next few years in the slam for car theft!

Oh, lookit this message he just sent:

For clarity:

    1. The car has been sold.
    2. Your driver’s license is no longer valid due to the prior safety issues involving alcohol and cognitive impairment.
    3. Your neurological care is currently established through Mayo Clinic.
    4. I am not ill, and there is no need to characterize your medical decisions as something that must be concealed from me.

If you want to discuss changes to your care, we can address that directly and in writing.

So basically what’s happened is he ripped off my car and justified the action with a lot of distorted BS supposedly emanated from the Mayo, embellished by pure nonsense.

Understand: the Mayo is an hour’s drive away from here. That’s one-way. Hiring a taxicab for a round-trip would freakin’ bankrupt me. So there’s no way I can get over there without a car.

Add to that the problem that our doctors at the Mayo listen to my son. They don’t even appear to hear me when I’m speaking. It’s as though they had an eight-year-old in the room with them. So nothing I say to them is going to change their minds.

My preferred doctor, who used to practice in a tony suburb just to the north of the ‘Hood, has moved to Sun City, where a very fancy new hospital just opened. That is an hour’s drive away from here! 

I lived in Sun City with my parents, after they moved here from California. And I’ll tellya: NEVER AGAIN!

No. I do not want to live in Sun City, a ghetto for the elderly middle-class. No, I do not want to be serenaded all morning, every morning starting at dawn, by the roar of fighter jets emanating from Luke Air Force Base.

No, I was NOT impressed with the medical care my parents got out there. Surely, my mother would have died anyway — a lifetime of heavy smoking having gifted her with a nasty case of cancer — but she didn’t have to suffer the way she did. Any competent doctor would have recognized her problem, and never would have patted her on her little head, told her it was all in her imagination, and sent her way.

At the Mayo, at least you’ve got a shot at snagging a competent doctor. In Sun City: fuhgeddaboudit!

And speaking of emanations of bullshit: just look at that message. Lemme tellya:

* I do not drink and drive. I NEVER drink and drive.

* No one has ever proven, in any way credible or incredible, that I am cognitively impaired. Read the content of this blog and decide whether it’s the product of someone who isc

Yes, occasionally I have a glass of wine or a cocktail before dinner. But I do not get in the car after that and drive around. The wine before a big mid-day meal became an established habit when I was a senior in college: my boyfriend was a European fellow who loved to cook. He would prepare the day’s big meal — what Americans would call “dinner” — in the early afternoon: along about 1:00 or 2:00 p.m.

We would go to class, get all the tromping round campus done, and the repair to his house, where we would eat like royalty. And we always had wine with that (usually pretty spectacular) meal.

That became a habit with me, once I had my own place, and so…yeah! I do have my big meal of the day around noon or in the early afternoon. That is different from getting sloshed, jumping in the car, and cavorting around the city. Typically, after that mid-day meal I hang around the house: napping, blogging, reading, editing clients’ copy…whatever. But: not driving!

So this whole “Vicky gets in the car and careens around the city drunk” bullshit has gotten REAL stale.

First off, it’s wrong.

Second off, it’s insulting. Really, how stupid DO those doctors think I am?

Oh craparoonies. Here’s the kid.  Posting…

 

 

Glorioski!

Truly: what a GLORIOUS afternoon!  

Weather:

cool but not too cool
sunny but not hot

Neighbors:

Sittin’ around their front yards with the kids out
Kids: cuter than cute, having a great time running around

Ruby the Corgi:

Snoozing in the back bathroom
NOT lost, after all!

😀  As you may have deduced: a small surge of panic. Dog disappeared. Dog declined to come to call. Human could not find Dog anywhere in the house. Human about fainted in terror.

But eventually said Dog did materialize: yea verily, from the back bathroom where she likes to loaf, and where I didn’t see her while I was banging around looking for her.

If I had a little more ambition (and if my right hip weren’t quite so spavined), Ruby and I would walk over to the park, explore a bit, and then wander home.

This is the sort of time when I most miss the ineffable SDXB. He, as you may recall, moved to staid and stodgy Sun City, where he took up with the lively and charming New Girlfriend. 😀 I’ve lived in Sun City, thank you — that was where my parents settled after my father retired, dragging me there with them.

It’s really not my style, and truth to tell I hated being stuck out there during the four years of my university sojourn. So…soon as I finished school and got a job in Phoenix, I moved into town. Never EVER to move back to Sun City.

SDXB, himself the staid and stodgy type, bought a place and decamped out there a few years ago. He tried to get me to go with him, but…been there, done that, ain’t a-doin’ it again! He loves it, though, and shortly took up with a very nice New Girlfriend…for whom, quite frankly, I wish the best.

WhatEVER. Moi, I dearly love the kids playing outside in front. Just came in from a stroll and a visit with parental set: the young people and the toddlers and the dog or two…what more could one want?

😀 Really, it is a lovely neighborhood.

Why on earth would you want to live someplace where no kids are frolicking around?????

Beerless in Gaza…

Well, that was one of the weirder junkets I’ve made in the past few years. 😀

It went like this:

* Out the door
* Wander up Main Drag West past the Prod church
* Stroll on through the Albertson’s, planning to buy…
*…to buy?
*…to buy WHAT?
*How’s about picking up a six-pack of beer?
* Bah! Too much bother to carry home
* Exit Albertson’s, empty-handed
* Stroll around shopping center
* See exactly nothing of interest
* Walk back to Main Drag West toward the house
* Pass Prod church again
* Enjoy kids playing outside in their yards
* Hike up toward the Funny Farm
* Arrive back at the Funny Farm
* Shouldn’t I have bought a six-pack of beer?
* Bah! What on earth for? I’m gonna hike six blocks, then  turn around and hike six blocks back home, to buy…to buy…what? A bottle of beer?

I’m crazy. but I’m not THAT crazy. 😀

Seriously: It was a pleasant short hike on a beautiful afternoon, to buy…NOTHING

Yet there was something strangely pleasing about having gotten out of the house, strolled a half-mile down to the store, strolled another half-mile home, and spent NOTHING on anything! 

Meanwhile, there in the yards we have kids playing, grown-ups puttering, pooches frolicking, soft wind blowing…what a perfect afternoon!

This, I need to do more often!

A-r-r-g-h! Not to say OUCH!!!

Wow! That really hurts!!! What exactly I did to bring this on escapes me: but just now, the right hip is SO SPAVINED I can barely hobble across a room.

Don’t recall doing anything to create any damage. So I imagine I must have slept crooked, and in doing so, sprained something in the groin area. WhatEVER: it does hurt colorfully.

Very tired of the never a dull moment phenomenon. Have you noticed that? All the damnfool things happen in a row: one headache after another after another…. That’s how things have gone hereabouts, over the past couple of days.

And now I’m so crippled I can barely hobble across the room.

What I oughta do is go back to bed. But…it hurts too much to limp to the back room where I can check the calendar, to see what I’m supposed to be doing today — other than loafing.

I have the worst feeling I’m supposed to traipse to the Mayo Clinic, on the far side of the galaxy. Ugh! How can I count the ways I don’t wanna?

If that’s the case — the traipsing, not the counting — my son will show up here shortly, all primed to drag me across the city.

And how CAN I count the ways that I am all doctored out? How happy would I be never to see another doctor again??? 

***

Welp! It’s quarter to noon. No kid. Hot diggety! That has GOT to mean the Mayo Clinic premonition was more like a hallucination. Surely do hope so.

Jet warplanes are zooming back and forth over the city’s northerly precincts: ZOOM ZOOM ROAR ZOOM!  What. A. Racket!!

When my parents lived in Sun City, a few miles to the east of Luke Air Force Base, my mother used to love to sit on her back patio, sip coffee, and listen to the early-morning commotion from those damn planes.

LOL! I remember remarking to her, one morning, how much I hated swilling coffee to that symphony. She corrected my socialistic error: “That’s the sound of Freedom,” quoth she.

Quoth I: Uhm…nooo, Mother. That’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Never seemed to register with her.

Ohhhhh well….

Spavined!

OUCH! Ouch ouch ouchety-ouch OUCH, does that damn hip HURT!

Stupidly, the human took off for the park this afternoon with the corgi leading the way. We got about halfway around when I realized I was damn near crippled! 

Didn’t seem to hurt THAT much when we started out. But it just got worse and worse and worse as we proceeded.

This evening, in a couple of hours, M’hijito schleps me to the hated physical therapy studio. GAWD, but I loathe that stuff. An hour or 90 minutes of hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-hup, most of it hurting with every move.

It does seem to help though. Some. Trouble is. the “some” part doesn’t last any length of time. By the next morning (these sessions take place in the evening), once again I can barely limp from the bedroom to the bathroom.

A dose of ibuprofen seems to help. Some…. Trouble is, it seems to make me kinda sick, too. Which would you prefer:

*Can’t crawl across the room”?  or
“Get into that damn bathroom before you barf all over the floor”?

Ibuprofen makes my ears whistle, too. And just now, they’re wailing like an air-raid siren: WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Jeez! Stop the world! I wanna get off!

Doggie Resistance

Ruby is lobbying to head on out of the Funny Farm and go for a good long walk around the ‘Hood. Her human, however…not so much. The human doggedly resists…

Cripes. I’m so crippled I can barely limp from the dining table into the kitchen. Why?  Dunno.

Best guess is I must have slept in an odd position. A fine jab of pain hit the minute I woke up and tried to climb out of bed. So…about the most reasonable explanation is a cattywampus position in the bed.

Or…last night my son dragged me to the physical therapist. I suppose some of his hour’s worth of manipulations could have spavined some muscle or tendon. But you’d think I’d have noticed that at the time.

At any rate, just now I’m in no shape to trek around the neighborhood behind a lunging dog.

Whatever. It sure does HURT.

And y’know what? I am tired of hurting!