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Done For!

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Continuing spectacularly sick. Ohhh well…by now I’ve gotten used to the what appears to be the fact that I’m never going to get well. The best that can be hoped, I reckon, is that life comes to an end in some reasonable period of time.

Though, it must be allowed, we’re well past any “reasonable period.”

This morning — it appears to be a Tuesday — I plan to call a venerable old-folkerie here in the Valley. Well…the place is what I regard as a prison for the elderly. They take everything you have: your life savings, the value of your home, any other cash you happen to have laying around. In return, they babysit you and feed you awful institutional food until you pass into Eternity.

Which, we must hope, will happen soon.

Soon as my mother died, my father signed himself into a similar place, one then called “Orangewood.” His experience was just hideous, but not because of the institution and its operators: he married a woman he met there, apparently imagining she could somehow take my mother’s place.

Well. No one could do that. He was deeply, truly in love with my mother, and she with him. This new broad…ohhhh my gawd! Long story short, that “marriage” promptly turned into a Horror Show from Hell.

For me, it had one advantage: taught me that if you get locked up in one of those places, you mind your own business and don’t get chummy with anyone. And especially don’t marry anyone!

I had hoped to save my assets to pass along to my son. Unless I drop dead in the very near future, that ain’t gonna happen. Clearly, this unholy ailment is going to drag on and drag on and drag on, as I get weaker and weaker, more and more unable to care for myself. Soo….might as well resign myself to the fact that he will get little or nothing from me, because the disease is going to eat up everything I have: the value of the house, the savings I’ve set aside for myself, the small but real inheritance from my father. Gone. All of it.

If I were little stronger, I’d bring an end to the horror show myself, right now. But I simply don’t have the nerve end my own life. Just plain not brave enough. Sooo…that which I have is effectively no longer mine. Shortly, it will belong to a prison for old folks.

What a world we live in! 

So…Where Were We?

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These days, I never know….

😀

Last I heard, we were at the Mayo Clinic, where staff were busy torturing me. That was grand fun.

Did it do any good?

Uhhhhh…well…

In a minuscule way, I’d say. Hammering on the keyboard still makes the fingers tingle. But not as badly (I think) as before.

Hey! Life is short. Tingling is long. Why complain about it, eh?

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. now. Outside, morons are setting off bang-bangs. Fireworks, presumably, but they could be firing their li’l guns into the air. Fine if they’re shooting blanks. I’d just as soon not have one of their bullets cascade down through the roof and the ceiling. 😀

Continuing spectacularly sick here. My guess now is that this ailment is not something that will go away. I’m just gonna have to get used to it. Consider the ear whistling to be a kind of serenade. The lips, the feet, the hands buzzing (in a different mode) to be a welcome sign that I’m still alive. And quit bellyaching about it!

Contemplating those women in my family: those powerful women. The grandest of them — a mother and a daughter who lived well into their 90s — were Christian Scientists.

Apparently Christian Science, back in the day, was regarded as a type of eccentricity verging on insanity. 😀  WhatEVER. That notwithstanding, we did live in a free country — we did then and we do now — where people are allowed to harbor whatever crackpot theories they please.

They were powerfully clean living, those two women, largely as a manifestation of their religious beliefs. They did not drink alcohol. They did not carouse. They enjoyed home-cooked meals that consisted almost entirely of what we would call “whole foods.”

If that was insanity, we should all be so crazy!

They pretty much raised my mother, while her own mother went off the rails. And I think she regarded each of them —  especially my great-grandmother, as like a mother. Wish they’d lived long enough to meet my son: they’d have liked him.

Oh, well. They’d have been well into their 100s by the time he was born…so appreciation might have been difficult.

No outcome from the Mayo yet. They did a few annoying tests, but no opinion as to what ails me has been emitted.

So let us cast our minds back to the early 20th century and ask…if we were a Christian Scientist, what would we think ails me?

Booze, I reckon. They would tell you that the wine I was in the habit of drinking daily — a habit that lasted a good 20 years — was toxic, God-forbidden, and very probably what has made me sick.

It’s as good a theory as any. And since our august Mayo physicians apparently have no clue, we might as well proceed on the assumption that I’ve made myself sick through two decades of daily boozing.

So I’m on the wagon. Again. Still. WhatEVER.

And…is that working? 

Well, in comparison with 20 years of daily tippling, I’d say we haven’t given the teetotaling  anything NEAR enough time to show what it can do. We have a few dry days vs. year after year of daily sniftering… So presumably it’ll take a while for this clean living stuff to take effect.

As we scribble? My lips are burning. My ears are buzzing. My fingers are tingling. The soles of my feet are tingling. But otherwise everything is fine.

Uh huh….

En Train

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So here we are, trapped in a Mayo lab room imterminably while they pump a bottleful of medication into my arm,

******* OHHH for cryin’ out loud! WordPress just ERASED 3/4 of this damn thing when I hit “publish.” Must not have gone “Save” first, eh.

Welp! Watch this space. 

Just got home. Now must walk the dog from pillar to post. Whenever (ifever?) we get back, I’ll rewrite this thing and post it.

Good(?) Morning, America…

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Okay…back online. For the nonce, anyway. 

We seem to have lost the post I was working on. Big deal: not like I had much of import to say. 😀

No more than I ever do!

Don’t know what hung the laptop, but suspect this little glitch presages a trip to the computer store to have the thing worked on.

Calendar reports that M’hijito is supposed to show up here at 11:30. For what, it doesn’t say…but I assume it’s to drag me out to the goddamn Mayo Clinic again. That’s almost an hour’s drive across the Valley, halfway to freakin’ Payson through unholy traffic.

Well. No….if all we’re doing is visiting their test lab, that’s only a quarter of the way to freakin’ Payson.

But…I didn’t notice today’s scheduled horror on the calendar, and so I just scarfed down coffee and breakfast…replete with plenty of sugar. If they’re planning to jab, jab, jab some more and then test, I’ve screwed that up.

And of course, while these frolics have unrolled, the coffee has gone stone cold.

********

Before I discovered the (phantom??) Mayo appointment on today’s calendar, I was gonna go over to the neighborhood Bland Christian Church (some sort of nondenominational thing down on the corner of Main Drag South and Main Drag West), where I hoped to see if they have a functional choir and, if so, whether I might join it.

So. There’s another scheme down the toilet.

I do NOT understand why the goddam Mayo consistently schedules its accursed vein-jabbing tests on Sunday mornings. This is the berzillionth time they’ve demanded that I skip choir and traipse out there for what appears to be yet another pointless test.

Not that it would matter today: without a car, I can’t easily get down to my own church for the purpose of spending a couple of hours baying. But…the point is, it pisseth me off. Because if IS pointless.

Particularly today, since I didn’t notice the note on my calendar and so have scarfed down breakfast, replete with sugar, toast, and enough coffee to float Noah’s Ark.

***

Looks like WordPress is back online. Presumably the latest and greatest hang-up was some sort of temporary glitch. Let’s see if this post will go up….

Kickin’ & Screamin’…into the 21st Century

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{chortle!} Welp, it looks like I’m gonna be FORCED to come into the (dire!) 21st Century. If you don’t have your own chariot, you now pretty much have to hire a robo-taxi: a driverless monstrosity that requires an A.A. in computer tech to operate.

How CAN I say how much I absolutely positively do NOT want to learn a complicated new system for hiring a cab and getting around the city?

Those ba*tards at the Mayo, egged on by Dear Son, have invalidated my driver’s license. When you live in a hectic L.A.-style city like Phoenix, this  puts the eefus on…just about everything.

Fortunately, because I live smack in the middle of everything, I’ve been getting by mostly on foot: whatever I need is within reasonable walking distance. That would include…

  • A Sprouts
  • An Albertson’s
  • A Fry’s
  • A Walgreen’s
  • A Bookman’s
  • An El Rancho
  • A wine shop
  • A UPS store
  • A computer store
  • A hair stylist
  • A dentist
  • A veterinarian

And  many, many more. The truth is, I don’t need a car to live comfortably and shop easily here.

As long as I’m living in this house, I’m within easy walking distance of everything I need…and then some. Outside of walking distance? Lemme tellya: have we got the robotaxis!!! 

Actually, we still have a few taxis driven  by humans, which I much prefer. ‘Cause I’m still a denizen of the 20th century, right? 😉

Interestingly, the neighborhood seems to be holding its value. We just welcomed the first Black family to our environs…and so it’s much to be hoped that we are in the 21st century and therefore that eventuality will not torpedo our property values. They look like nice folks…and I think they have cute kids.

I’m excited to welcome them and try to make friends with them. And…well…we’ll see how that goes! Even the 21st century is still part of Mittel-America. Time will tell.

 

And I’m Staying Here…WHY???

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This garden spot is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm: two, maybe three blocks. In fact, I walk by there every time I stroll up to the liquor store to grab a six-pack of Guinness.

Any question why I’m beginning to think it’s time to move away from here?

This is far from the first such episode we’ve seen in past weeks.

Do I REALLY want to stay here?  If so…why? And what will change my mind?

Well, I hafta tell you: it ain’t a-gonna take many more episodes like this to convince me that it’s time to move along. As far along as possible…

We never used to see incidents like this. Yeah: burglaries. Who doesn’t have them? Yeah: car theft. You leave your car unlocked on the street and ya get what you ask for. Yeah: even the occasional home invasion (not usually to the benefit of the prowler, BTW).

But lookee here. Nineteenth and Dunlap is about three blocks north of the Funny Farm. The apartment complexes to the west of Nineteenth have changed demographically: not just racially but economically. The latter change has not been for the best.

I’ve arrived at the point where I won’t walk around up there — certainly not without a male companion, or at least a large dog.

Head south along the same main drag and…hmmmm…  Well, you feel a little less unsafe. But if you’re on foot, you’ll likely choose to cut through the neighborhood until you’re forced to come out on 19th to reach your destination. And, truth to tell, after you’ve made that journey a couple of times, you’re likely to choose NOT to go to the corner that hosts the desired stores.

If my son weren’t lurking around — he wants me to keep this house — by now I would have sold up and moved to another neighborhood. Indeed, these circumstances ARE the main reason SDXB chose to move to Sun City, a.k.a. Drabtown.

Where would I go?

Scottsdale.
Some parts of Tempe.
Prescott.
Berkeley, California.
Some parts of San Francisco.

By and large…. Truth to tell, there just aren’t many places where I want to live. Certainly not so much that I’m willing to pour money into a move, yank up roots, and take off into the sunrise.

I don’t wanna move, not by a long shot. But take a long hard look at it, and you think it’s time to get outta here while you still can. Without a large loss of cash investment. While you still have better choices to live in town. Before you have to go to the far side of the moon to get away from the crime and growing blight.

WAIT.WAIT.WAIT.WAIT!  😮

Return to the Land of Zillow and take another look. Therein, you see a slightly different picture…and HOOOLEEE Moley!

Here’s a shack, three blocks to the east of the Funny Farm: $875,000. (Uhhh…I paid about 200 grand for this place, and felt I was being gouged…)

This hovel has a rather tonier address: much closer to FancyDan Central Avenue. But is an address really worth EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY GRAND???

Ahem…you realize…that place is in Sunnyslope, renowned until late as a slum…

And speaking of holeee whatever, this hovel is right around the corner from the Funny Farm: OVER A MILLION DOLLARS!

JAYzus!  Apparently the antics and the frolics going on around here are not affecting property values. Or if they are…you don’t wanna know what houses cost in safer neighborhoods.

Hmmm…. Maybe instead of a house in a different part of town, mayybeee what is needed is a larger dog.

I’ve got Ruby the Corgi, of course: she will alert whenever she hears an untoward sound. But she weighs all of about 20 pounds. A German shepherd, she ain’t.

Must say…at this age I don’t want to have to wrangle a dog that size. But I could handle one that was professionally trained.

On the other hand, with my honored son having confiscated my car, I don’t know how I would get such a beast to the vet — even the clinic right down the road — if it got hurt or suddenly took ill. I can carry Ruby to that veterinarian. To get an 80- or 90-pound fiendish beast there, I’d have to recruit someone with a car and some physical strength.

Hmmmmmm….

Well, I do have a thing that contains chunks of lead instead of teeth….  But to use it well and accurately, I’d have to get some practice again, and stay in practice. And that would entail getting down to the gun range at least a couple times a week. And…yeah…that would entail taxi rides, and all the hassle pertaining thereunto.

A shotgun would do the job… But truth to tell, I haven’t been near one of those in many a year. Don’t even own one. That means I’d not only have to get out on the desert and practice using the thing, I’d have to get the thing. And again: traipsing to the range and banging away at targets is not quite how I’d like to spend the remaining time allotted to me.

Hmh. Looks like FAM’s site has crashed. It won’t upload an image. Let’s try to post…but save this copy to disk.

And so…awaaaayyyy!