Coffee heat rising

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

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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!

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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

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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!

And the Beat(ing) Goes On…

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The news is full of anguished reports about the disappearance of a woman from her home outside of Tucson. The cops don’t seem to be tracking any credible leads: every report we’ve seen in the news has described yet another dead end.

This, my friends, is why you have a German shepherd. Or a doberman pinscher. And a working pistol. And a phone in your pocket.

Honestly. What a society we live in. Yesterday as Ruby and I strolled around the park, we passed the former home of some neighbors who enjoyed a fine home invasion several years ago. The perps rang the doorbell; then barged in when the residents opened the door. The homeowners were bound up and thrown in an upstairs bathtub, there to wait until their home was searched and any place that might hold valuables was tossed.

As I recall, it took the victims a couple hours to work their way out of their bonds and call the police. By then, the perps were long gone. Never have been caught.

And what am I doing as we converse here on our computer? Yeah: sitting in an easy chair with the back door wide open, so Ruby can stroll in and out as she pleases.

At least I should get her a doggy roommate: one that weighs around 90 pounds. But…I just don’t feel like dealing with a big powerhouse of a beast like a Ger-shep.

Seriously, though: every time I walk past that house I do think I should sell out and move to some other, stodgier part of the city. But where? 

Truth to tell, no place is any safer.

And I think that’s probably true of just about every corner of our country. The criminal set is everywhere: in Upper Richistan, in the center of your city, out in the country…you name it and there’s another bad guy.

After the Great Home Invasion, I remarked to one of the cops in attendance that I thought maybe I should move to some other part of town.

“Don’t bother,” said he. “This kind of stuff goes on everywhere. We get called for these things all the time, and it’s the same all over the Valley.”  Message being: you can’t get away from the Bad Guys and you can’t get away from their Depredations.

{sigh} Really, though, I probably ought to have a German shepherd or a Doberman, rather than a cute little, adorable little, harmless little pint-sized corgi. My mother and I had a dobe…and I’ve surely had my share of GerSheps.

It’s just that I don’t wanna. Dammit! I’ve put in my time training and wrangling 90-pound dogs. Enough is e-freaking-nough!

My mother used to have a gun at hand, there in the sweet little, conservative little, bourgeois little house in Sun City. No kidding: she’d take it out and set it on the nightstand each time she went to bed.

Can you imagine being SO SCARED that you have to have a pistol next to your bed?

On the one hand, that fear seems so exaggerated as to be neurotic. But on the other…so many things happen around here that you come to sense it’s no exaggeration…

****

Oh Hell. Here’s my son, to drag me off to the damn Mayo.

And he’s having 15 shit-fits…JAYZUZ! 

Now I see why my father locked himself up in an old-folkerie after my mother died. If I’d spoken to him (or didn’t speak at all) the way my kid does to me, I’d go into hiding, too. Maybe I need to do the same. Or…move out of the city.

But…where?

* Back to Long Beach? 

Too damn smoggy.

* Santa Barbara?

Too expensive. No longer know anyone there.

* Tucson?

That has its appeals, but…it’s too cold in the winter. And I no longer know anyone there, either.

Sooo….guess I’ll be staying put for the duration. One begins to hope that won’t endure too damn long….

HAH! Next Time….

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One ringie-dingie…two ringie-dingies…three… Sucker picks up the phone. Sales pitch commences. 

Sucker swears like a 19th-century sailor at the ba*tard on the other end and hangs up.

One ringie… Jerk on the other end calls back to harass….

JAYZUZ, am I sick of phone soliciting. Really: that’s about all my land-line phone rings for anymore.

And that leads me to think it’s past time — WAY past time — to get rid of the damn land line.

Seems like all that would accomplish, though, would be for you to blitzed with nuisance calls on a cell phone. BLECH!!!

I don’t carry a phone around with me, mostly because I really, truly do NOT want to be pestered with phone calls everywhere I go. By and large, {RINGIE DINGIE…the bastard calls back!)…by and large hardly any real calls come through anymore. Few of my friends call on the land line. Mostly, if they want to get ahold of me, they email me.

CAN you believe it? That jerk jangled up my phone again after I hung up on him. 

YELL INTO THE PHONE AT THE HIGHEST VOLUME MY VOICE WILL ELICIT: IS THERE SOME PART OF “NO” YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND? GET OFF MY GODDAMN PHONE!!!!!!!

Telephone soliciting is a prison industry. So…many, if not most of the nuisance calls you get are coming from convicts inside a jail. Just the sorta folks you want to chat with, right?

Try to dial the solicitor’s number back: Caller ID says he called from “010.”

Yeah. Ducky.

LOL! Years ago, when we lived in a big ole historic home downtown, we used to get oceans of nuisance calls. Our phone was connected by a wire telephone line. allowing it to sit near the kitchen where I could get at it quickly if I was cooking or cleaning, yet also letting it sit within reach of the furniture where we sat to watch the TV. The phone soliciting bastards usually called during the dinner hour…. When a pest called, I used to carry that phone into the kitchen, set it inside the freezer, and close the door on it.

{chortle!} To little avail…but ludicrously satisfying. :+D

Really, I probably ought to get rid of the land line. But truth to tell, I don’t WANT a cell phone. For one thing, I don’t want anyone — friend or hustler — to be able to reach me wherever I am, whenever I am. Plus I just don’t do that much over the phone anymore: not so much that I’m willing to pay a premium price for the privilege.

 

Scared in Your Living Room…

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door!  

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room…while the kitchen door hangs open.

And while the news is full of reports about the guy who walked in a woman’s door as she was enjoying the beautiful weather around her house, out in a tony suburb…. LUV-leeee!

We live in an upper-middle-class slab of north central Phoenix, where you ought to feel safe and smug and snug. But truth to tell, it’s NOT safe. No part of the Valley of the Sun is safe. Wherever you are, you run a risk of some sh!thead breaking into your home or your car and coming after you.

This, of course, is why we have big dogs and guns.

But y’know…. Doesn’t it strike you that you shouldn’t have to be armed to the teeth to be safe in your own home? You shouldn’t have to board and feed a four-legged alarm system?

Gosh, but I’m tired of this.

Don’t know what can be done about it, other than sealing my house and yard inside an impermeable plastic dome.

But y’know…I don’t recall feeling antsy like this all the time when I was a kid and a teenager. My mother was scared — but she had good reason, having enjoyed the unwelcome attention of some guy who found her alone out on her grandparents’ upstate New York farm. But I’ve never had any such misadventure. So why am I…scared? 

Ohhhh well…

Make

My 

Day!