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:
-
- The car has been sold.
- Your driver’s license is no longer valid due to the prior safety issues involving alcohol and cognitive impairment.
- Your neurological care is currently established through Mayo Clinic.
- 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 is non compos.
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…
{Chortle!} So a few days ago I held forth about gulping down ibuprofen…which I had to do to beat back the pretty startling pain in a spavined hip.