Coffee heat rising

Home, (Not So…) Sweet Home

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Ugh!  This is where my parents and I used to live, on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Hard to describe how richly we were hated by the locals, who considered Americans to be emissaries of Satan. So, SOOO glad not be there anymore.

My father was paid some ludicrous amount of money to shepherd tankers and freighters out of the Ras Tanura harbor. He was an ocean-going pilot of some prominence, and when he hired on out there, he figured to earn enough to finance a spectacularly early retirement.

Didn’t quite work out that way. I was a weird little kid who couldn’t get along with my normal, very sosh’ classmates. Imagine: a girl child in the 1950s who wanted to grow up to be, of all things, an astronomer! 

😀
not to say
🙁

So the kids hated me and tormented me every day from the fourth grade on, day in and day out of awful misery.

My mother realized how horrible life had become for me out there, and she managed to maneuver my father into retiring from ARAMCO and coming back to the U.S., whither he shipped out of California for Standard Oil.

Whew! She saved my sanity with that. 

Didn’t do his career a whole lot of good, though…

So I was in the 6th grade when we landed back in San Francisco. Couple years later, he got a higher-paying job with Union Oil shipping out of Southern California, and that allowed him to retire permanently much earlier than planned.

Thence, it was off to Arizona, where he had discovered the phenomenon known as Sun City. They shoehorned me into the University of Arizona a year early (skipping my senior year in high school), bought a house in that dreary suburb, shooed me off to Tucson, and lived happily ever after.

Well… Until my mother’s incessant goddam smoking habit caught up with her. After it had me sick (and sick…and sicker) for several years, it gave her cancer and killed her.

My father was soon glommed by one of the predatory women out in Sun City. She maneuvered him into marrying her — one of the biggest mistakes of his life — and he lived miserably ever after with her, in a dreary retirement home in uptown Phoenix.

Hafta give him this: he was a far stronger human being than his daughter was or is. I would have picked up a pistol and blown out my brains if I’d been stuck with that lady in that hideously depressing prison for old folks. She was mean, meaner, and even meaner, and she openly hated me because my husband and I were traitorous LIBuhrals. (She was a right-wing crazy; my hubby was on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, if you can imagine anything so Communistic!). I soon learned to detest her, and so I stayed away from my father most of the time.

Grand way to wrap up a life of amazingly hard work, eh?

Poor man! His life should have been better than that…especially the last few years of it.

He spent those last few years in misery, because he refused to divorce the Dragon Lady. This, despite urging to do so from me and from my husband, one of the most prominent lawyers in the American Southwest. “She’ll get all my money!” wailed he. Forgodsake, Daddy: somethings are more important than money. 

Well. He thought not, having toiled throughout his adult life to collect that retirement fund. So he stayed married to the witch, on and interminably on. He predeceased her, which meant the last few years of his much-coveted retirement were passed in glum, tedious depression.

Ugh! What that said to me is no matter how much you covet married bliss, NEVER remarry in old age! 

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! 😀

Coyotes

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Several posts showing coyotes in our neighborhood yards.

And parks…this one is entertaining:  https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/comments/1kryhmi/made_some_friend_with_coyotes_at_the_park_near/

Made some friend with COYOTES at the park NEAR SUNNYSLOPE
byu/Wyden_long inphoenix

And thither: they’re all over town.

They’ll wander into our ‘Hood now and again. Coyotes aren’t real fond of humans, so if they spot you or hear you coming, they’ll usually take off. Or hide. But still…one would just as soon not have an encounter between Wile E. and one’s pet dog.

The sky this evening defies belief.  WHAT a moon!!!!! Just gorgeous…maybe even beyond gorgeous. And the present spectacle follows a truly handsome sunset.

Dim Light on the Horizon?

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Okay, this afternoon the weirdly spavined back has decided to act a little better.

Why, I do not know. Time and the river flowing, I imagine.

This is the first time in three weeks or so that the pain has slacked off a bit. At any rate, it does offer SOME hope that this little frolick will settle down and go away.

My gawd: it has hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, and HURT some more, day in and day out over the past several weeks. Can’t even imagine what I did to myself: must have slept cattywampus one night and wrenched something back there.

Anyway: patientia! 

If it actually is healing on its own, it’s doing so very, very slowly. So if I’m to gut this out, just let it get done and go away, it probably will take another two to four weeks to reach a fully, magnificently pain-free state. Hmmm…matter of fact, these folks say it can take up to six weeks for a back sprain to heal.

Uh huh…that sounds like it’s about par for my course.

So…figure we’ll give it another three weeks or so before having (yet again!!!) recourse to the Mayo Clinic, with its hour-long drive (each way) and its arrogant doctors who treat you like you have an IQ in the negative numbers..

{sigh}  I just hate going to doctors. And especially am repelled by the Mayo.

Yeah: they ARE among the best…indeed, they may be THE best. But gawdlmighty, the custom of peering down their noses at you is about as annoying as it gets. Drive half your life…to see a doctor who behaves as if she thinks you’re a step removed from a moron.

Well, if the thing continues to improve, maybe we can avoid another encounter with God’s Greatest Gift to Half-witted Patients. We shall see…

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Here we are in Coyote Hell again. 

Actually…I get a kick out of the coyotes and do not consider their presence to be Hell-making. But ooooh my, how they terrorize the local gringos. Get on the neighborhood Facebook Page and it’s oooohhhh eeeeeek aaaaawkkkk eeeeek ohhhhhh!!@!!! Squalls of terror from all directions.

Humans sure are stupid, aren’t they? Especially the ones that live in cities…  😀 Nary a one of our FB correspondents seems to register that a coyote is more scared of you than you are of it.

Just now — the loveliest cool of the day, when Mr. Coyote is likely to be out taking the morning air, I would not leave Ruby to roam the backyard alone. She is, after all, a tempting little morsel.

But let the heat come up, and Mr. Coyote will repair to the shade of the shrubbery and the trees. And he will not bestir himself to chase after a ludicrous thing like a corgi.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady is here. She likes to have the back door open while she’s working. So Ruby is out on the patio, loafing in the shade. For the nonce, none of her wild cousins are visiting, and so I reckon she’s safe enough. Hope so, because just now I’m altogether too lazy to get up and establish myself out there.

Mmmmm…. I figure the best thing about pain is that it reminds you that you’re alive. And just now, by damn, I am SOOOO ALIVE! 

The spavined right hip joint is particularly lively… HOleee shit, does that hurt!

***

Just now, if I were a responsible human bean, I’d get off my duff and stroll over to one of the three(!!!) grocery stores within reasonable walking distance. But really, I do suspect that I’d find myself crippled by the time I got halfway to the nearest one.

{heh} Good excuse, ain’t it? 😀

I may ask WC-L to drive me over to the Sprouts or the Albertson’s.

Or maybe not.

***

What a weird thing it is, to realize that now — today, here in Two Thousand and Aught-Twenty-Six — I cannot remember off-hand what I wanted to buy at the grocer’s. Am I that superannuated, that worn-out that I can’t remember a grocery list of two or three items????  AUGH!

😀

When I first moved into the “Hood,” lo! these decades ago, I was a young pup surrounded by aging, long-time North Central Avenue residents. Now I’m the Old Bat — the historical relic — and all the neighbors look like they were born about ten days ago.

And oh! How can you not love them! Our beautiful young people: the handsome young marrieds, their adorable children…gosh, what a joy!

I wonder if the old ladies who lived here when I moved in — the dignified and historically experienced Mrs. Wilson, the lively and eccentric Fran, the great old gals on the street behind us — enjoyed us as much, when we moved in here as a wave of Yuppies.

Oh, well. I’m old now. Tomorrow they will be. So it goes.

Riding the Wagon

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Decided to climb on the wagon for a few days…horrors!  😀

Seriously: I no longer sit around tippling half the afternoon, as DXH and I used to do — and later, SDXB and I did. This grating abstinence cuts the wine consumption to about a bottle a week. Which for us…ain’t much.

Still…of late, even that seems rather more than necessary.

For one thing, recently I’ve noticed that I spend an awful lot on booze — mostly wine. But realized…uhm….hey! I ain’t drinking any more than I have in the past.

This suggests either that the cost of booze has gone up hugely in recent weeks or months, OR that my booze-lapping has gone up.

Truth to tell, I can’t tell that I’m drinking a whole lot more than I ever have: a glass or two a day. Matter of fact: if anything, I seem to be drinking less than the usual guzzle-fest. So...hmmm…. that suggests the cost of wine and beer has headed for the stratosphere.

Well! What better excuse to get off the sauce than to launch into Full Cheapskate Mode? 😀

As of this week, we are not diddling away any cash on wine, beer, or whiskey. And you wanna know what? for unknown reasons, I find I don’t miss it!

And THAT is weird. In the past, when I’ve resolved to climb on the wagon, I’ve truly hated it: am so accustomed to a glass or two of wine or a cocktail late in the afternoon, that I have a booze insufficiency fit before dinnertime! 😀

That’s not happening this time around, though. Dunno why, but I’m finding I don’t especially want a drink during the usual cocktail hour, and I don’t miss it. 

And that is weird.

Well: I ain’t fighting it! If I can get off the sauce and stay off for several weeks, I would be able to reset my cocktail habits to a much more conservative level. Or maybe even eliminate them.