A friend remarked on the dystopic nature of our lives as they are affected by the ubiquity and inescapability of computers, whose presence has expanded to fill every cubic centimeter of existence. And how, brother!
Sometimes I wonder if the digitization of day-to-day life creates stresses and psychological disjunctsmay be responsible for the madness we see around us — specifically, for the ever-increasing number of shootings by crazies. Life was frustrating back in the day…and scary, too — remember those air-raid drills? Everyone had at least one gun in the house — or at any rate, that was true of the blue-collar class in which I grew up.
But no one went out and shot up public spaces.
The mindset has changed, and I think that has happened because of the deluge of passive stimulation, of violent games and TV and movies and music and “entertainment” and hostile speech accessible 24/7, and because of the constant background demand that you respond to negative stimulation through social media, gaming, and incoming images and narratives. We’re blitzed with constant aural and psychological noise, much of it hostile and violent.
And there’s no viable escape from it. Remember when a little kid could sit outside and watch the clouds float by? Imagine a kid doing that today…right!
I mean…when I was a kid, I hated school. I deeply loathed my classmates, the obnoxious little twits who made my life miserable for years on end. I hated my fifth- & sixth-grade teacher (same bitch….she “passed” into the 6th grade along with us, to my horror!). But forgodsake, it never entered my fevered little brain to kill them. Though I would have been pleased if they’d all been dispatched to the other world, making that a DIY project was not even remotely imaginable.
Now we have the lovely situation in which we find ourselves. Today it not only is imaginable, it’s becoming commonplace. And a nutty, disaffected kid like me can find instruction and encouragement on a machine that brings the world to her bedroom.
Result: an ordinary neighborhood church has an armed security team(!!!) who must leap into action to save the lives of what could have been scores of parishioners. Look at this video of the latest outrage (if you don’t mind having your hair stand on end): the guy had some kind of long gun. You can’t see it clearly in this video, but it looks like it’s probably a semi-automatic.
The most striking thing here is that these guys were prepared. The one who shot the sh!thead was a former FBI agent. It wasn’t that a few parishioners happened to pack heat into church: the church had an organized, armed security team.
WTF!! We’re in an era where churches and synagogues need armed security guards. Sorta like schools do. And movie theaters. And nightclubs.
Y’know, I can’t even count how many times I’ve sat in that choir loft and thought how easy it would be for a crazy to get a gun into the sanctuary below us. At this time of year, when it’s cold, everyone is wearing jackets…making it easy to hide a pistol. There are four entrances to that place, not counting the two stairwells that lead to the organ loft. Anyone could carry in a pistol, take a seat, and bide his time. When he was good and ready, he’d have a large roomful of sitting ducks. If he could get into the choir loft (to which there are two entrances), he could shoot at people from above, though choir members would probably interfere with him. Or he could shoot us all in a matter of seconds.
Good Yule Morning to you! I hope your holiday is happy.
Hereabouts, it’s raining. Again. Still. This is the second day of steady rain, with more (we’re told) to come. Just this moment, it’s stopped. And here I am trying to take advantage of that pause to fix something to eat.
It’s not working. Had the bright idea of frying some baby potatoes in butter, rather than, as usual, grilling them. Mistake! The smoking butter set off the fire alarm. Got that damn thing shut off. Carried the potatoes in their pan out to the grill to set the things on the grill pan. It’s starting to mist again. The tiny raindrops sifting out of the sky hit the hot grease and created a stutter of staccato explosions.
Soon it will be raining again, which will make it impossible to cover the grill whenever I’m done “cooking” (or whatever it is) because the metal grill lid will be too hot.
Haven’t heard when my son wants me to come over for the proposed dinner, a circumstance which I’m beginning to assume means “never.” Okay…whatever.**
What’m’I gonna do about that grill in the rain? Hmmm… Whenever I can pull the food off of it, I guess, cover it loosely with a few strips of tinfoil. Then as soon as it’s cool enough, put the mostly worn-out cover back over it. No wind is blowing, so a few sheets of tinfoil probably will stay in place for half an hour.
This is devolving into a nice Day from Hell.
Still have the gawdawful cough. The hand still hurts like the devil, though it’s a little better… Friday I’m supposed to go out to the Mayo to get a chest X-ray (since this cough may very well be incident upon the antibiotic they gave me for the UTI, a side effect with potentially fatal ramifications) and a hand X-ray. How exactly any of this is going to help escapes me…there appears to be little to be done in either event. The lung damage, we’re told, will clear on its own in about four months — assuming it doesn’t kill you. The hand? I don’t think it’s broken…and so what exactly is to be done, other than maybe some physical therapy, also remains to be seen.
Yes. The hand…and the woo-woo. Actually, we have woo-woo remedies in connection with both. Videlicet…
This damn cough is about to kill me. Now that we know the stuff that powers Robitussin and its knockoffs — stuff that works very effectively to silence the hack for several hours — jacks up the blood pressure by something upward of 20 points, we’re left with nothing to treat the damn cough.
So I tried an old folk remedy: fresh ginger steeped in hot water and honey.
Interestingly, this does create an improvement. And it works for several hours! The difference is not as joltingly quick as what occurs after a dose of the pizzen in Robitussin, but it’s about the same. And it seems to last for about the same period of time.
Uh huh… Strawberries, cherries, little angels kissin’ spring…
Night before last, I came across the jar of CBD cream that came into my possession a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, until I had to rummage around for some lip balm.
“Hmmmm,…” thought I, ever articulate: “Why not?”
So I rubbed this stuff on the sore spots, fell into the sack, and forgot about it.
Next morning, I wake up and lo! The pain is about 85% improved.
Of course, I think the Goddess has changed Her mind and decided to smile upon me. By the light of dawn, I blithely forget about the crème de cannabis that I’d smeared all over the paw.
As the pain slowly returned over the next 20 hours or so, somehow I managed to remember the doped cream. Could it be possible? I wondered. Looked up the question of whether medicaments of one sort or another actually can soak through your skin and affect your muscles and tendons. Weirdly, there seems to be evidence that this is the case. I mean scientific evidence, not woo-woo.
What the hell? This morning I smeared on some more. It required some time to take effect — if indeed the outcome is an effect. But after a bit, the pain, which has been pretty intense at times, was somewhat relieved.
Who knows?
woo-OOOO-ooo!!
😀
….and time passes…and the tinfoil trick works, and lo! there’s a streak of blue across the sky, something we haven’t seen in two or three days. The steak & potatoes came out just fine, despite the inclement weather.
Ruby just came in and opened the door to the garage(!). What is that dog trying to say to me?
It’s mighty cold outside. She doesn’t seem to want to go outdoors, exactly. But what interests her in the garage? That escapes me.
But then…most things escape me.
** Lo! The message M’Hijito sent re: proposed arrival time was sent at 11:20…appeared in my in-box at 1:40. Gee, thanks, Apple!
Apparently can’t escape the neighbor’s dog, either…
😀 People are stupid. No matter which direction you look or how you look at them, people are plug-stupid.
Oneself included, of course…all too often.
Today, we have proof of both.
So…the ongoing bug is taking its toll on me. I’m effin’ exhausted. Meanwhile, the wounded hand hurt ALL. NIGHT. LONG And was all swollen up come the dawn.
It’s normally been a little swollen, but this was beyond the pale. Bound an ice pack to it and wrapped it up in elastic bandage.
No…proverbial…dice.
But meanwhile, after two months of coughing and gagging and fever and misery, the bronchitis I picked up (probably at the Mayo’s ER) healed up…only to be followed a couple days later by a new epizootic — this one apparently just a garden-variety cold.
I don’t do very well with garden-variety colds. For me there’s no such thing as “just a cold.” These things make me effin’ miserable, and they go on and on and freaking on. Like, for weeks. So now I’m coughing up gunk and sneezing and snorking and struggling for air through a blocked nose…and on and on. Yes. Always on and on.
Annoyed — this means still more time off choir, more time feeling awful, more time low on food because I can’t face the thought of doing battle with Christmas crowds to buy basic groceries, more…whatEVER — I start treating the stuff as per usual: generic Afrin to clear up the nose, and generic Robitussin to stifle the frantic coughing. This is working okay.
Meanwhile, the Mayo gets on the phone to discuss upcoming X-rays and wtf is the matter with my busted-up hand. Their nurse practitioner now catches wind of this new ailment. She is not pleased and starts asking the usual questions, to which I respond with the usual answers. I mention the antibiotic I was given for the UTI, which is known to cause lung problems — some of them life-threatening — in older women. She allows as to how it might be a good idea to add a chest X-ray to the upcoming paw X-rays. “Had any chest pain?” asks she. “Uhhh….no,” say I, with some degree of honesty.
Fine. Now I spend the next few hours mostly loafing and reading, after consuming a breakfast (coffee, fruit, rye bread, nuts, cheese) so outrageously late that it qualifies as lunch. I medicate myself so as to be able to breathe and not to be able to cough my lungs out.
While I’m reading a particularly interesting new book, suddenly I get a sharp little pain in the middle of the chest. Sometimes this is scar pain. But I think…no…probably gas. And in fact, a burp or two come up. But this subtle jab recurs. And recurs again.
Holy sh!t i must be having a heart attack! This is IT, dear Lord!
Should I call 911? What’ll I do with the dog? Should I try to drive the 15 miles to the Mayo? What if I don’t make it…who will I kill on the road? Am I doooomed?
Well…after a moment it becomes apparent that I’m not dying. Maybe I’m having some sort of heart thing. Maybe not. It passes.
I get up, go in the other room, and take my blood pressure. Elevated. But not extremely so. As I take and average the usual four or five measurements that comprise an effort to get an accurate reading, the numbers drop by 15 points. Looks this is one more thing that’s not going to kill me.
Realize I’ve gotten exactly zero exercise all day long. Decide to do a short, calming yoga routine. After a few easy poses, I try the blood pressure routine again: first reading is down 22 points off the previous set’s initial reading.
And it’s off to the Internet — aka The Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest — whereinat we learn that Afrin (nose spray) can raise one’s blood pressure, and Robitussin can cause “dangerously high blood pressure” and chest pain.
Uh huh. Name a drug, any drug, List its side effects. And invariably I will have the weirdest, most far-fetched, and most alarming manifestation possible.
So there’s stupid stuff No. 1. I probably should have called the doctors, but out of stupid orneriness I did not and am not going to because I have bloody well had enough of doctors, and because this little flap now looks not very alarming.
Moving on… While I’m not getting any exercise, Ruby the Corgi is not getting any exercise. I haven’t taken the poor little pooch out all day. And the skies are clabbering up. It’s supposed to rain off and on tonight and tomorrow, and then pour all day on Christmas.
Decide to take her for a Doggy Walk. So, along about 3:30, we set out.
It’s a nice afternoon, under gray skies. We socialize with various wandering neighbors, children, dogs. Marching through Lower Richistan toward Upper Richistan, by golly, what do we encounter but those astonishingly stupid people with the dog that keeps trying to plunge through their front picture window. The old man is outside standing around the sidewalk, with this dog once again wandering around off the lead.
Annoyed, I make a quick about-face and head back toward the ‘Hood. At Feeder Street N.S., I realize that this guy’s house is a half-block east of Richistan Way, so that if we take the next neighborhood lane to the north of him, we can circumvent him and his pooch and get where we want to go. So that’s what we do: head west on the next little street. Get about two-thirds of the way to Upper Richistan, and there the jerk is! Standing there with his massive dog.
Yes. He has walked east to Richistan Drive, north to this little road, and west a half-block in our direction, where he’s now standing around waiting for us to confront his fuckin’ dog.
Well, that’s probably not how his train of thought, such as it is, actually goes. But it’s the upshot. He simply does not grasp the possibility that his dog has been living and breathing for the opportunity to take out my annoying little corgi.
So now I have to do another about-face and walk back into the ‘Hood, curtailing our walk significantly.
The last time this idiot and his pea-brained wife saw me coming and noticed me turning in another direction, they called after me in their best ninny voices, Ohhhhh don’t worry! He won’t hurt anybody!
That’s fine, but how’s about you obey the leash laws, you morons? And how’s about we don’t tempt fate?
This is the dog that takes up a position on a shelf or table that these two have installed in their front picture window. It dozes all day in this window. Every time the critter sees me and Ruby walk by the house, it flies into a freaking berserker RAGE. It roars and barks and growls and, more to the point. throws itself against the window over and over, banging the window so hard it rattles and groans.
Eventually that window is going to break. When it does, the dog will come flying out through piles of glass shards and, if it doesn’t disable itself by getting mortally slashed, will come right straight after me and my pipsqueak dog.
These people are retirees, so it’s hard to believe the fools don’t notice their 90-pound beast is bashing itself full-force against a plate glass window. They couldn’t possibly miss it. That means they’re simply too fuckin’ stupid to surmise the obvious consequences.
They’re the folks who feed the coyotes.
Yeah. That’s why that street and the alley up behind their house are home to Coyote and all his wives, pups, and cousins. At night they put out two or three dishes of food for the feral cats (which they love dearly), thereby calling the coyotes to their driveway to consume the food. Being Belaganas, they’re none too bright about Coyote and appear not to understand that a fed coyote is a dead coyote. Or rather: incapable of understanding that concept. They have been told and asked and told again and asked again not to leave food out for stray animals, time and time and time again. But these idiots seem to think common sense doesn’t apply to them.
Possibly the term is de-credit-unioning…but that’s a little clumsier than de-banking, for a title. 😉
The plan under way just now is to abandon the Arizona State Credit Union, now annoyingly called “OneAZ,” and move my vast wealth over to the Desert Schools Credit Union. Probably I should have done this a long time ago, but out of inertia I’ve remained with the state employees’ credit union. Closing out a personal account and a corporate account represents a substantial amount of hassle, especially since a LOT of direct deposits come in and even MORE automated direct payments go out. Canceling each of these and re-establishing them at a new institution presents a lengthy series of headaches.
However, OneAZ (isn’t that cutesiness enough to just gag you?) has gone too far in its latest manifestation of customer disservice. They’ve decided that we no longer will be allowed to deposit checks by scanning to a computer and uploading to an account. All electronic deposits now must be made by smartphone.
Well. I don’t have a smartphone and I don’t want one and even if I did want one, believe me, there’s no way in Hell I could afford one. I’ve tried an Android smartphone and after several expensive months of wrestling I simply could NOT learn how to work it. We’re told the iPhone is more OldBat-friendly. Yeah: for a thousand bucks.
Jayzus. A thousand dollars for a telephone!
At any rate, what this means is that every time a check comes in, I have to traipse across the city to hand the damn thing to a teller, in person. The nearest branch is at the ASU West campus, a 15- or 20-minute drive through a depressing slum — so, 30 minutes to deposit one check, with no other errands to do on that side of town.
I get a constant flow of little nuisance checks. Medicare and Medigap do not accrue all the eligible payments for any given Adventure in Medical Science. They send you a tiny little check here and a tiny little check there and an even tinier check again. Most recently, they sent me a goddamn check for $3.17! The gasoline to drive to the credit union and back would cost more than that!
Desert Schools is located in the North Central corridor, putting it reasonably close to the Funny Farm. And, more to the point, putting it in the general direction of other errand destinations where I go several times a week: two grocery stores, an Ace Hardware, drugstores, a Costco…. And several more or less acceptable restaurants;. It’s halfway to a Sprouts; a Nordstrom’s Rack; the FedEx guys, an upscale Fry’s and a downscale Fry’s (the local name for Kroger’s); and the now much-discombulated Biltmore Fashion Square, home to a Macy’s, a Saks, a Williams-Sonoma, a Pottery Barn. L’Occitane, a Cost Plus, a Pier One, and on and on.
So as a practical matter, Desert Schools is much more convenient, now that I’m not working at the West campus. I’ve stuck with them for a good 20 years, because their service has been primo, and for many years they had a banker stationed in the lobby who was about the best thing that ever came along. But recently they promoted the guy, and they replaced him with one of the dumbest cows I’ve ever seen. She is just stump stupid, and when you have a question or a problem, she not only is no help, she’s actually…shall we say, counterproductive.
This leaves as the only reason to drive out there the depositing of checks, which one really should not have to do at all because in any reasonable system one would be able to upload a jpeg or two and be done with it.
LOL! Desert Schools has also changed its name, but at least not in an annoying way: they now call themselves simply “Desert Credit Union,” presumably signalling that potential customers no longer need be educators to qualify for membership.
One must admit,the products they offerare significantly better than OneAZ’s. They can take wire transfers, although only to personal accounts. Since we recently de-incorporated The Copyeditor’s Desk and turned it into a sole proprietorship, that won’t matter: clients can simply wire direct to me as a human being rather than as a business entity. This, oh hallelujah, would revive my China trade!
WonderAccountant wants me to keep a separate business account, though I fail to see why I couldn’t simply segregate CE Desk transactions into a savings account within the personal account. You can make electronic payments directly out of a credit-union savings account; besides, I charge business expenses to the corporate AMEX card, so you’d think that would maintain enough of a corporate veil. As it were. Why do you need a corporate veil for a sole proprietorship, anyway? All its assets belong to the proprietor…
At any rate, this little transfer scheme looks to me like a long, sticky mess.
BECAUSE…I have quite a few automated direct deposits and quite a few automatic payments, not the least of which are the utility bills, which are engrossed by each utility provider from their direction. This means I’ll have to call the city water department, the power company, and the gas company to give them new account information…and as you know, anything that sounds as simple as that invariably turns into a headache-breeding tangle. And I have Metlife ripping off $128 a month for long-term care, which I need to cancel anyway.
So that will be a hassle. Nay, a series of hassles.
Vaguely, I recall that we were told, when we signed up for long-term care insurance originally through TIAA-CREF, that paying into it created a kind of fund that would be paid back to us if we decided to stop paying premiums. However, TIAA-CREF abandoned the long-term care insurance business and transferred their customers to Metlife, which subsequently also abandoned LTC insuring. They kept their existing customers, but we’re told customer service is execrable and they do everything they can to get out of delivering the coverage you paid for half your life. So even if they don’t return some of the money I’ve poured into their coffers, at least I won’t be wasting any more money there.
Getting through to Social Security to have those monthly payments moved over surely will mean a major bureaucratic runaround, and probably a trip to a Social Security office and several hours wasted sitting around a waiting room.
And heaven only knows how long it will take to move all those automated deposits and payments around and make them work properly.
So. My plan is to leave about a thousand dollars in the OneAZ personal account and maybe about $500 in the business account. That should (…i hope…) be enough to cover about a month’s worth of auto-payments until such time as I can make SS change its records, but it also should put enough in the new accounts to cover the credit card bills and the auto-payments that get changed with minimal argument or foot-dragging.
It’s going to be a project, probably extending over several weeks…maybe even a couple of months. But I expect the result will represent an improvement.
Oh, hell: make that “Why I Hate the 21st Century.” ’Cause I do: I hate almost everything about it, especially
Donald Trump
Lunatics who shoot up schools, churches, synagogues, and just about any other public space that suits their fancy
Opportunists who subsequently take advantage of the lunatics to propose confiscating our guns
Drug-addled thieves and crazies who make it necessary for a little old lady to own a gun
A medical system dedicated to making huge profits in shearing the sheeple
Homicidal traffic
Just about anything computerized… And consequently,…
My car
Day before yesterday when I went to get into the car, I forgot I had the cell phone I’ve taken to carrying around the house — so as to call for help if I fall or otherwise get into some kind of old-bat trouble — not only in my pocket but turned on.
A live phone, it develops, is a live bomb when it comes to the Toyota Venza’s goddamned “audio” system. Climbing into the car caused the radio to shut off and the screen thing that sorta operates it to switch to “AUDIO.”
Whatever “audio” does, it doesn’t play music. Apparently it wanted me to talk on the phone.
I did not want to talk on the phone with it. I just wanted it to fuckin’ GO AWAY.
Nothing — and I do mean nothing — that I tried would make AUDIO go away. This wrestling match, we might note, was going on while my car was rolling down the road. I punched every button I could think of, but of course many of the “buttons” are not on the dashboard but instead appear as images on the goddamned screen if and when you punch the right (or wrong) combination of…somethingorother.
Y’know…I do not want to use my car as a telephone. I do not want my car to tell me which way to turn in a quarter-mile. I do not want my car to order up a pizza for me.
Believe it or not, I can manage all those things without a car tutoring me. I know how to read a map. The only reason I carry a nuisance cell phone is because there are no pay phones anymore. Well…except insofar as the goddamn cell phone makes you pay for minutes and minutes and minutes that you’ll never use, lest ye be stranded by the side of a freeway 60 miles from home with no help in sight. All I want a car radio to do is PLAY WHATEVER THE GODDAMNED RADIO STATION IS BROADCASTING.
How hard is this?
For the nonce, I give up, by way of navigating Phoenix’s homicidal traffic without killing myself or any of my fellow crazies.
A couple of more efforts to fix it, after I reached a parking lot and later after I got the car back in its garage, failed. Ignominiously.
I now realize I’ll have to dig out the instructions from the THREE VOLUMES of driver’s manual…but later, please. Much later.
This morning I recall this annoyance, whilst bathing and getting dressed to go out. I think…maybe I should go by the Toyota place and ask them to put it back on “RADIO,” thereby giving me a chance to bellyache at the Toyota people. This, I realize, is an exercise in futility: discard that idea. Chuck the Wonder Mechanic’s place is just around the corner from the Toyota place: I could go by there and of course any of the young pups will know, instantly, how to work the damn thing.
That seems unduly lazy to me, though. Also it will make me look like an idiot…probably not an unfair characterization, but still…why advertise it?
I decide instead to shuffle through the owner’s manual’s voluminous index and try to figure out how to switch the accursed thing back to RADIO.
Yeah. Right.
Those three volumes that make up the Venza owner’s manual? ONE WHOLE VOLUME is dedicated to the complicated whack-shit audio system! Yes. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO PAGES on how to use “AUDIO.”
For the love of God. All I want to do is listen to my cowboys crooning down from Wickenburg on the FM airwaves. Do I really have to paw through 232 pages of technobabble to accomplish that?
Well. Yes.
So after some difficulty I find the section explaining how to turn on the radio — which apparently is not what the system is designed to be used for — and discover the trick involves pressing a virtual button several ways from Sunday and then pressing some more choices that supposedly will pop up to get to a point where the thing will receive ordinary FM stations.
Jezus Aitch Keerist.
Honest to gawd, I wish I’d kept that Sienna and taken my chances with the alternator. Yes, waiting for the insurance company’s Roadside Disservice for five hours was exceptionally unacceptable. But…if I’d signed up for AAA — which I need to do anyway, obviously — and ponied up the cash for another unreliably rebuilt second-hand alternator, it would have cost one helluva lot less than the present endlessly annoying jalopy cost.
The damn thing is emblematic of all I hate about the 21st century and its digitization: a fair number of things — maybe most things — worked better in their analog formats.
No one should need 232 pages of instructions to turn on a fuckin’ radio.
Yesterday, while idling away some time by ogling real estate ads, I stumbled across an amazing factoid: An apartment in the very elegant highrise where three of my friends reside costs, astonishingly, no more than what I could net on sale of my house!
WTF? These are very nice apartments in a very stylish part of town. Friends’ place overlooks the Phoenix Country Club. The lightrail cruises right past on Central, inviting you to ride up to AJ’s (my favorite gourmet chow line) or down to the Heard Museum or the Phoenix Art Museum or the Civic Center or the East Valley.
The place looks spectacularly expensive, and in fact I recall a friend speculating that one couple we know must have spent an arm and a leg to move in there.
As I gazed at the photos of this dwelling, it occurred to me that the place is larger, brighter, and far more liveable than the two-bedroom apartment my elderly friends retired to at the Beatitudes, a life-care community. And it ain’t costing its occupants $7,000 a month to live there!
Of course, neither does it provide nursing home insurance for two aged adults. But…but… Think about that. If you were to put 7 grand a month aside, in short order you would have more than enough to cover even a fairly lengthy stay in a nursing home.
The average cost for a two-person room in an Arizona nursing home is $171 a day; for a private room, $212. So, hmmmm….. $212 a day comes to a tab of $6572 for ONE month in a nursing home, for ONE person. That’s less than my friends at the life-care community are spending per month — but for two people. In other words, between the two of them, in 60 days they spend enough to put each of them up in a nursing home for a month.
Hm. The average stay in a nursing home is 835 days, we’re told (by a not altogether unbiased source…). That’s about 27 months. Clearly, a hefty monthly set-aside will cover nothing like the amount of time you’ll be warehoused. That doesn’t include the care you would need at home; apparently many people receive several months of this kind of assistance. Fidelity estimates a couple will spend $245,000 on healthcare ABOVE AND BEYOND nursing care. Holy shit.
On the other hand, these figures are not the only ones out there. A 2009 study showed the median length of stay for those who did not die in the nursing home was 5 months.
The median length of stay was only 5 months (IQR 1-20). The majority of residents had short lengths of stay, 65% of decedents had lengths of stay of less than one year, and over 53% died within 6 months of admission.
At $6572/month for each of my two friends in the old-folkerie, a 27-month stay would cost just ONE of them $177,444. Meanwhile, to live on the campus in a two-bedroom apartment, in the run-up (we might say) to the nursing-home stay, my friends are presumably paying $3500 apiece: we’re told the tab is 7 grand for the two of them. Each of them is effectively being charged $3500 a month to stay in a tiny two-bedroom apartment until such time as they need the nursing home (IF they need the nursing home).
Okay. $6572 for each person for nursing home care, right? The buy-in at this old-folkerie is $350,000±. If one of them keels over today, that $350,000 would cover 53.3 months of nursing-home care: twice as long as the exaggerated median stay cited by companies who want you to buy nursing-home insurance or buy into a life-care community (i.e., just about enough to cover a median stay for each of them, if you believe those figures). It’s ten times as long as the median stay reported by an unbiased research study. If they both keel over today, their buy-in would cover each of them for about 26 months.
But the buy-in isn’t all. Even after ponying up the entire sale price of their home just to get in the door, they’re still paying $7,000/month in rent on their cramped apartment: $3500 apiece from now until they croak over. And…for each month that they spend that $3,500 apiece, they pony up the cost of almost two months in the nursing home.
Fifty-three months of coverage for the buy-in price alone? Yes. That does add up to ten times the median nursing home stay, as calculated by research that is not dedicated to scaring the bedoodles out of old folks. But okay, that 7 grand is for two people: only slightly more than the median cost of a month’s nursing home stay, per partner.
Hm.
So, if you were to take your $350,000 and park yourself in 1 Lexington Avenue, deep in the heart of Phoenix’s endlessly gentrifying North Central corridor, in comparison with what you would get for $350,000 at the old-folkerie, you would have…
A significantly larger and nicer apartment…
…in a vibrant part of the city that is NOT adjacent to the meth-ridden, crime-infested Conduit of Blight Boulevard, as is the case for the old-folkerie in question
A concierge parked in the lobby
The lightrail within steps of the front door
$7,000 a month in your pocket, which would buy a WHOLE lot of in-home care for the two of you, or, should the occasion arise, two months of nursing home care per one month of $7,000 set-aside
Entertainment, cultural events, restaurants, and a very fancy grocery store along that light-rail line
Freedom from surveillance by hired nannies
A private residential environment (albeit in an apartment building), as opposed to an institutional environment
The more I think about this, the more I think…wow! That’s the answer!
The one and only thing gives me pause about moving into one of those places right now: the dog.
I can’t imagine what I would do with Ruby. Schlepping her up and down a tower in an elevator several times a day so she can be marched around until she does her business does not seem even faintly practical. It would be out of the question if I happened to be as sick as I have been over the past three months, what with a case of bronchitis and then a fall that has spavined a hand and a leg. Unless you lived on the ground floor, you simply couldn’t have a dog…and there are no ground-floor apartments in that place.
If I moved in there now — which as a practical matter might be advisable — I’d have to find another home for Ruby. And I don’t wanna.
Ruby is about five years old now. The median life-span for corgis is 12.5 years, though some have been known to go as long as 16 or 18 years. Assuming she’s typical, she should live another seven years. In seven years, I’ll be 82.
That’s not an unreasonable age to move to an old-folkerie. However, this house is costing me significantly more, when you count in details such as property tax and homeowner’s insurance and the cost of the pool and the yard, than one of those apartments would cost, even with the $333/month property tax and the $716/month HOA fees and the $88/month homeowner’s insurance. I think.
But…
It looks a great deal as though the monthly costs there would be much higher than they are here, primarily because the property tax is much higher here and because I pay no HOA fees, exorbitant or otherwise. My homeowner’s insurance is significantly higher, but not THAT much higher.
By way of comparison, if you add the property tax, the HOA fee, and the homeowner’s insurance, you get a base cost per month of $1,137 to live in that place. That, of course, doesn’t include water, electric, and whatever they charge you to park in their garage. If you add up my present property tax, homeowner’s insurance, Gerardo’s bill, and the pool guy’s bill, you get $460 a month. [Of course, that doesn’t include the occasional but inevitable hits like roof repair, air-conditioning and plumbing repair, or the breath-taking water and power bills…but stlll…it’s nigh enough unto apples-to-apples.]
!!!
That’s a far cry from $1137 a month. And from the 7 grand a month we’re told our friends are paying over at the old-folkerie.
What do you get, compared to the Funny Farm, for that $1137/month?
Greater security
A concierge
Proximity to a credible (though not ideal) hospital
Public transit right out the front door
Cultural attractions, restaurants, and shopping within walking distance
Less space to have to take care of
A stunning view of the entire East Valley
A prestigious address
If you like to travel, a place where you can just lock the door and take off whenever you please
And probably lots fewer burglaries, cop helicopter fly-overs, and drug-addicted bums
What do you NOT get? Ahhh…there’s the rub! You don’t get…
Two Arizona sweets and a Myer lemon that are laden with fruit just now
A pool where you can skinny-dip every day of the spring, summer, and fall
Goodly distance between you and the closest neighbor
Ruby the Corgi
A shady neighborhood of million-dollar homes through which to walk the corgi
A neighborhood park
Young upwardly mobile neighbors moving in with their cute little kids
A Sprouts within walking distance (not that one would walk down Conduit of Blight Blvd to get there…but still…)
A Walmart Neighborhood Grocery (a bigger asset than we of the snooty upper middle class would like to admit) within a five-minute drive
Friendly neighbors in a politically active neighborhood association
Cops regularly watching the place from helicopters
A garage in which to park your car right outside your kitchen door
So it goes.
Just now, it looks to me like the pro’s of staying in a house that’s much larger than I need, located next to a dangerous meth slum, outweigh the pro’s of moving into a (very nice!) mid-town apartment that’s half the size of the Funny Farm. For less money but at the cost of having to stay alert to what’s going on around me, I get more space, a private pool and yard, great neighbors, and Ruby the Corgi.
A friend remarked on the dystopic nature of our lives as they are affected by the ubiquity and inescapability of computers, whose presence has expanded to fill every cubic centimeter of existence. And how, brother!
