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Rasty-Nasty Redux

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Ahh! COLD TEA!!!  What a relief!

Just back in the house after a peculiarly unpleasant doggy-walk. At eight in the morning, it is SO HOT and SO HUMID out there that it feels like a day in Rasty-Nasty, the horrible American compound where my parents and I spent nine years on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

What a gawdawful experience that was! I can remember days when it would be so humid that rain would start to fall out of a clear blue sky.

Oh, well. At least we don’t have any Arabs standing around hating on us here. That’s something. I guess.

Where would I go, if I could get away from this sylvan spot?

Well…

The San Francisco Bay Area for sure, if I could afford it. My mother’s family lived in Berkeley, which at the time was a lovely suburb of the City, up in the East Bay hills…just as pretty as could be.

But of course, I can’t afford it.

Where else?

Some parts of Colorado have their appeal. Problem is, it gets too cold in the winter there.

New Mexico, maybe…but I suspect the summers there are about as balmy as they are here…

All of which is about as irrelevant as irrelevant can get. Because… As long as my son is here, this is where I’m gonna be.

Hotter than the Hubs…

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Surely Hades was never this hot and soggy! 😀

Ruby is guzzling water (again!), panting, choking, gasping for breath. The human is hurting, hurting, and hurting some more: this peripheral neuropathy is no joke.

But at least we got our morning perambulation…  And ohhh my! Lest you ever feel sorry for yourself, all you have to do to perk up is to look around at other people.

This morning we passed a crew of laborers working on the renovation of a large house in Lower Richistan. Yeah: in the heat. In the humidity. Dear lord! What a job!  Hard physical work in absolutely ghastly weather.

At times like this, (un)Lovely Phoenix reminds me of Ras Tanura, the American outpost where we spent ten years next to the Persian Gulf while my father worked for Aramco. Just about the most gawdawful place to live on the planet! Hot, wet, miserable…and hostile to Americans.

My mother’s health was ruined out there — she came down with amoebic dysentery — and I was sick all the time.

Most of my “sick” was play-acting, a strategy to keep me out of the damned school and away from the horrid little brats who inhabited it. If you were “different” in any way (I was a girl who wanted not to grow up wearing ribbons and frills but to work as an astrophysicist), you were tormented, tormented, and tormented some more. So I was constantly trying to persuade my mother that I was too sick to go to school. About half the time, she fell for it.

And well she might have, since she was sick at least half the time; probably more.

Ohhh gawd! There goes the dawg again: choke choke choke CHOKE GAAAG!  Got to get her to a vet…but how to do that without a car beats me.

My son, despite having made off with my car (he thinks I’m too old to be driving!), cannot take time away from his job to schlep me to stores and the dog to veterinary hospitals. So exactly what I’m supposed to do here, isolated in (un)lovely North Phoenix, escapes me. Even though a doctor has said there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be driving, Dear Son is determined to keep me out from behind a steering wheel.

This, I assume, results from what he’s seen in his job as an insurance adjustor. You can bet he’s shuffled his way through some horrific car wrecks. And yes: it’s undoubtedly true that elder drivers with slower reflexes and weaker vision are more vulnerable to accidents than are the Young and the Alert.  Surely, though, there ought to be some way to test you to see whether you’re safe to be driving. My own doctor says there’s no reason I shouldn’t be driving…but the kid ain’t listening to him.

At any rate: the result is that I’m stuck here in the house and can’t even take my poor sick little dog to a vet.

Not.
A.
Happy.
Camper.
!!!!

And the Day Staggers On…

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Yeah: it’s still pretty “Rasty Nasty“out there under the cheery blast…uhm, glow of an Arizona afternoon sun.

The little dog seems significantly better this afternoon: the horking and coughing have about faded away. I think — hope — there’ll be no need to drag her through the unholy heat to have a vet look at her.

Exercise-traipsing around the ‘Hood just now, I was reminded of how much my mother loved Arizona…how grateful she was to my father for installing them in sizzling, sky-roaring, anachronistic Sun City. Oh, my…she did love it!

At this moment: Horribly hot for an exercise traipse. This is weather that makes me wish I were back in San Francisco. Even in Long Beach, that capital of the bourgeois.

Personally, I’m none too fond of Arizona. But I ain’t movin’ on…no way, no how. For one simple reason: my excellent son is here. And where he is: that’s where I’m gonna be.

If he were to decamp to, say, Colorado (where I believe he would rather be), I’d follow him. To Canada or Mexico? Not so much. But almost certainly anyplace in the U.S.

***

Heh!  I sure have lived in a lot of places on this planet! Let’s add them up…

  • Long Beach, California
  • San Francisco, California
  • Richmond, California
  • Alameda, California
  • Berkeley, California
  • Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
  • Beirut, Lebanon
  • London, England
  • Tucson, Arizona
  • Phoenix, Arizona
  • Sun City, Arizona

LOL! I’ve probably lost track of some of them! 😀

Now, yea verily: Arizona isn’t my favorite venue. Particularly not the gawdawful Phoenix area and its environs. The sole reason I’m here is that my son is here. And…as long as he stays here, I’ll stay here. If he were to move on? Chances are, I’d follow him. At the very least, I’d move out of the (un)lovely Valley of the Sun.

But more likely, wherever he goes, I’ll go.

A Rasty-Nasty Day

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Rasty Nasty…so glad to be gone!

Today’s weather is what my father used to call “rasty-nasty,” after Ras Tanura, the dreadful ARAMCO company town where we lived for nine years, perched on the shore of the Persian Gulf. It was a hot, soggy, miserable place.

Today’s ugly morning is hot and soggy, for sure. The sky dark gray with overcast, rain varying from drizzling to pouring.

Directing matters toward Hell, Ruby has  something wrong with her sinuses…or something. She keeps gasping and wheezing…hork  hork hork hork! Damned if I can tell what the matter is.

So I need to get her to a vet, but without a car, I can’t imagine how to do that through this unholy weather. I’d have to pick her up and carry her eight or ten blocks…and migawd!! Just now I’m so sick I can barely carry her around the house!

A guy across the street drives for Uber…but somehow I doubt he’ll agree to carry a sick dog in his cab.

Yesterday’s junket to the Mayo Clinic was just gawdawful! What I need today is to sit down, hassle-free, and be quiet all day. Doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, though. Afraid to ask my son for a lift…yesterday he and I were at each other’s throats. Plus…he has — of all things — a job! He can’t be knocking off half the day to schlep me and my dog to a vet.

In related sylvan fields, I need to find a decent doctor who does NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic, halfway to Bisbee. Dealing with a doctor — especially when you’re a woman, Gawd help you! — is dreadful enough, without piling on a 45-minute drive each way. 

And “find a decent doctor” is no small task these days. Our wonderful old docs from the law-practice days are long retired, after having repaired to the Mayo some years ago (dragging us with them). And of late the quacks I’ve met there have ranged in competence from bird-brained to spectacularly arrogant; half the time when you describe your issue, they’re not paying the slightest bit of attention. Their minds are made up, and they don’t care be distracted by any damned facts, thank you.

Lawyers tend to know which doctors have been sued and which haven’t. That’s why you should seek a recommend from a lawyer, whenever you’re in the market for a new doctor.

Now that my lawyer hubby and I have been divorced for some years, I no longer know a lawyer to ask. Most of our friends are now retired…I haven’t seen a practicing lawyer in for-freaking-ever.

***

Blech!!! It’s getting still uglier out there! How it’s possible, I do not know…but the sky has turned even darker than it was.

I give up! Back to bed with me and the hound!

Escaped from the Mayo

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Okay..well…I guess I’m not quite ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. That notwithstanding, a visit to the Mayo Hospital does little to persuade me of that. LORDIE, how I hate hospitals, and how I hate that one in particular!

By the time we left that sylvan realm, my angry son and I were speaking to each other more or less politely. Sorta. So there’s some hope that we’ll get back to normal in a day or three.

Miserable experience, though.

***

How much longer do I have in this sylvan vale, really? 

Well…that’s no easier to tell for me than it is to tell for anyone else. My guess is, if I don’t get any sicker than I am (which isn’t very), we’re looking at five to ten years. But if I follow in the family Tradition of Extreme Longevity, it could be another twenty to twenty-five years.

Twenty-five: no, I would not expect. But twenty: that wouldn’t be very surprising. Women in my family have lived to advanced old age…and without medical care, because they were Christian Scientists.

Sometimes I think that the very reason they lived into their dotage was that they stayed away from doctors and hospitals.

Today’s experience at the Mayo was enough to cause you to hear the sylvan call of the Other World, that’s for damn sure. All afternoon with a needle stuck in my arm, miserable hurting scared annoyed pissed in the dark as to what was really happening… How CAN i count the ways….?

Well, I never want to go back there, that’s for sure. But since the Mayo is the best medical facility in the Valley — very possibly in the whole state — this surely was not my last adventure in those parts.

Ugh. Maybe I should convert to Christian Science…

Cross and Crown emblem

Parked at the Mayo

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Here we are at the Mayo Clinic in North Phoenix.  A needle is jammed in my left arm while staff infuses…uhmmm…some kind of gunk into me. No one has been kind enough to bother to explain what these torture sessions are meant to accomplish…only that I get dragged back here about every ten days for another one…and another one…and another one. Boy-o-boy, could I do without this!!

After 10 years in disease-ridden Saudi Arabia being jabbed — over and over and over again — with every painful inoculation known to science, I deeply hate shots and needles. So…even though the Mayo’s procedures are relatively pain-free, they fill me with dread and misery.

Meanwhile, my son and I are quarreling — we had a nasty squabble on the way over here — and so at the moment I’m passing miserable, He has stalked off, relieving himself of my (admittedly) obnoxious company. So I’m sitting here in the dark soaking up…whatever goop they’re pumping into my left arm.

Honestly. It’s getting to be past time for me to exit this earthly realm. Just now that option looks more and more attractive.

Unfortunately, women in my family who didn’t smoke and didn’t fu*k every dong that came along have lived to VERY advanced old age. They were Christian Scientists, so they accomplished this with no medical care.

So if you don’t imagine that was God’s doing, then you can suspect I have a lot of years ahead of me.

Presumably pretty miserable years….

Well, it feels like I’ve been trying to type this one-handed for years…so: away!