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No Longer Even Bother….

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BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

BRRRIIIINGGGGGGG!

CALL FROM “V….[ETC ETC ETC]

Oh, hey!!!  Turns OUT

it’s from my pal VickyC!  She wants to go out for brunch…lunch…whatever it is!

Yahoo! Now I have less than an hour to get off my duff, wash up, and get dressed.

The heck with that noise: I’m drinkin’ the rest of this coffee, come what may! 😀  😀  😀

And how convenient: I need a new lawyer, my beloved guy having retired. And she DOES know a good one, I believe. I hope…she was hiring my guy, but I think she needed someone who had a slightly different specialty.

Well! We shall see in an hour or so.

Must review the piles of legalistic paper and be sure my will and other paperwork remain set up to cover my son, with the least possible degree of hassle, for when I croak over.

*****

Aaahhhhh SHEEE-UT! 

No, we won’t see any such thing. Turns out my son has made a goddamn appointment with the goddamn Mayo Clinic…on SUNDAY MORNING!!!!!!!

This is not the first time those idiots have done this.

It’s a hour’s drive out there, one-way.

That means if I have choir: cancel choir.

If I have anything else to do: cancel that.

Get in the car and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and…  Find a place to park in their maze of an underground parking lot. Ride upstairs and wait and wait and wait and…GODDAMMIT!

Just what I wanna do on a Sunday morning. Choir or no choir.

****

And now here we are in one of their draped rooms, waiting for…Gawd only knows what new torture. Presumably something entailing a generous jabbing of needles.

How do I hate this place? Let me count the ways.

One nice thing about it, I guess: if you croak over, you don’t regret it so uch…it would be a bit of a relief.

1:54 p.m.

“Morning,” eh? 

Well, it’s comin’ on to two in the afternoon. We’ve been here for HOURS. I’m still lashed up to a needle and fukkin’ tubes and…HOW can I say how much I hate this?

Yeah, I do recognize and understand how amazing our medical system is and how astonishing all the stuff we can do is and…boyoboyoboy…  And how much I hate this stuff.

Cruising the Internet. Come across a notice of my nephew’s demise. Poor guy. He never was…well…quite right. Short a few IQ points, from the git-go. Just…really sad.

This was the grandson of the woman who became my stepsister when my father married her mother…

2:15 in the fukkin’ afternoon…

Tied down to a couch in the Mayo with a damned needle in my arm for…how long? I’ve lost track of the time. Feels like fukkin’ hours, though. Son is yelling at me..I can’t open my mouth without pi$$ing him off.

One

Bitch

of a

Day

* * *

And now we’re on the way home. My poor son’s mood is not improved by our escape. He’s yelling at me. I just want to get home, get in the house, and shut the door!

And maybe, with any luck, find something to eat. Without having to hike to the grocery store.

Li’l Afternoon from Hell…

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Y’know, it’s really NOT that hot this afternoon. Only 80 degrees, come 2:45 p.m.  High, faint cirrus clouds off to the north. But for some reason the afternoon feels miserably stuffy and hot.

Maybe it’s because whatever I try to do, I do it wrong.

Those two fine sentences, for example: “High, faint…hot”: FOUR typos before we reach the word “hot.” Gaaaahhhh!  

One of the neighbors seems to be beating their brat. Kid is screaming WAAAAAHHHHH! MOMMMYYY!! WAAAAHHH! MOMMY! WAAAAAHHHH WAHHH WAAHHHHH!

Grrrrrr!  Lay off the brat, bitch!

You may gather, correctly, that this old bat is

out…

of…

patience….

Over to the Sprouts this afternoon, on foot. There, of course, they did not have what I wanted. Risk life to cross Main Drag West, thereby to get into the Albertson’s. No, of course they didn’t have what I was looking for.

Dodge cars. Dodge busses. Dodge trains. 

Gawd!!!

Almighty!!!!!

Finally headed home, northering on Main Drag West. By now, mightily fed up.

Thinking, as the brain seethes, that I should move a little further into town, closer to AJ’s, the beloved Fancy Dan grocery store.

This maneuver, though, would deposit me right in the middle of M’hito’s neighborhood. Won’t HE be pleased!!!

😀  😀  😀

My son believes the local authorities have confiscated my driver’s license. This, resulting from a rear-end fender-bender that occurred YEARS ago. I believe that if that were the case, I would receive some kind of official notice thereof….not just a missing goddamn piece of plastic.

But because he’s certain he’s right, he has purloined my car out of my garage. So the only way I can get around town is on foot or by annoying public transit.

Meanwhile, my lawyer croaked over: dropped dead on the floor of his office. And offhand, I don’t know anyone else I can pester about a stupid, wacky thing like this.

So…somehow I’m gonna have to go out and find another lawyer, and then ask him WTF is going on with…all that BS.

How do I not wanna? Lemme count the ways….

To make things better, somehow I’ve hurt a hip joint. So…EVERY GODDAMN STEP HURTS, HURTS, AND HURTS SOME MORE. 

So…I reckon I’ll have to wait until whatever this passes before tracking down a new lawyer and siccing him on the authorities.

One way or another, pretty quick I do need to find a new legal beagle.

Some guy has opened a literal store-front practice in the shopping center just to the north of me. If he’s even faintly competent, well…wouldn’t THAT be convenient!

Off-hand, though, I dunno how to ascertain his level of competence. All the lawyers I knew are now long retired or long gone…so…that presents a bit of a problem, eh?

“The Sound of Freedom”!!!

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Weather conditions are right this morning to waft the breathtaking “Sound of Freedom” 25 miles across the Valley from Luke Air Force Base into our yards here in North Central Phoenix.

My parents’ little house in Sun City was just a few miles up the road from Luke. So there was no escape from that fine melody, no matter what time of day or which way the wind blew.

R-R-R-R-O-O-A-A-A-R-R-R-R!!!!

Jet warplanes ripping their way through the atmosphere.

My mother loved to take her morning coffee on our screened back porch, out there in Sun City. Right about the time the boys climbed into their fighter jets and took off….

“Ohhhh,” she would coo. “It’s the sound of freedom!”

Today I listen to that terrifying racket and wonder, Did she REALLY believe that “Sound of Freedom” b.s.? 

She wasn’t a stupid woman. So when you think about it, it is puzzling that she would fall for that line.

Maybe, I thought then and sometimes think now, maybe it was a way to justify staying in Sun City, where she and my father retired after his 30 years of crushing work overseas and on oil tankers.

If she pretended to like that gawdawful racket, then of course she couldn’t bellyache about it to my father: he who labored like an animal to get them to the bourgeois little house in Sun City.

How would he have felt, one wonders, if she had turned to him, after 30 years of hard labor, and said I don’t like it here! Let’s move someplace else!

You don’t even wanna know. Truth to tell, an admission like that might very well have ended the marriage.

I suppose “oooh, it’s the sound of freedom” was at base a way to smother the terror we all felt, knowing at any time a nuclear war could break out…and we could be in the middle of it.

In San Francisco, where I went to junior high school, the screaming air raid sirens were terrifying. The “duck-and-cover” drills in the classroom: terrifying. The instruction to “get home as fast as you can!” — on foot, a good two or three miles: terrifying. The ridiculous air-raid shelter in the basement of our apartment building — all too obviously about as efficacious as a styrofoam cup: terrifying. The bomb shelter that doubled as a garage for all the apartment dwellers, each automobile filled with gasoline a potential little bomb of its own: terrifying. The beeee-EEEEE-eee alert on the radio: terrifying. The blasting air-raid siren on the tower’s roof: terrifying.

Few if any places to get away from the racket: terrifying. The apartment building’s useless basement where we were to take cover: terrifying. Day by day: terrifying.

Really, looking back on those days, that’s how I recall it: as a time of terror.

What kind of morons were we: we and the Russians and the Chinese and all the rest of the worldwide chuckleheads who bought into nuclear armaments? Peculiarly stupid ones, apparently.

Zowie!!!

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CAN you believe it???  WordPress let me back into Funny about Money on the FIRST TRY!

Zowie! It’s a miracle! 😀

Just back from trudging around the park with Ruby the Corgi. Usually this is pleasantly fun, and today is no serious exception. Kids playing. Grown-ups loafing and socializing. Other dawgs walking their humans. Beautiful, sunny afternoon: bright but not too hot.

My son still has the purloined car, so any shopping has to be done within walking distance.

But…but… In the “can you believe it” department,  THAT is no problem. Everything we need IS within walking distance!

  • Two supermarkets
  • A pet store
  • A computer store
  • A Sprouts
  • A Bookman’s
  • A QT
  • A hair stylist
  • ….on and on

When Caligula made off with my car, really: I did expect to be seriously inconvenienced. Enough to consider selling my house and moving to a suburb on the far east or far west side.

But..nay verily! 

You don’t need a car to live in this neighborhood conveniently. 

I sorta kinda knew this. But had never tried it out. Now, though, I have…and what I’ve found is that I can easily walk to any of the many stores in this area.

LOL! That may not be so when the weather’s hitting 110 degrees. During that period, I’ll have to call an Uber or a cab. But that ain’t very long, in these parts. Even in the summertime, you have a couple hours in the morning when you can walk around without risk of heat stroke.

Truth to tell, though, this neighborhood is incredibly convenient, and well stocked with a generous array of retailers within easy walking distance.

So. That does away with the (horrible!) plan to move to Sun City or Fountain Hills, stodgy suburbs on the far west and far east sides of the city. Looks like I’ll be hanging out here until they come to lock me into the old-folkerie.

And with any luck, I’ll croak over before then. 😀

If this state of affairs proves to be permanent, I probably will ask His Lordship to sell that car, so I can pocket a few grand and no longer be hassled with licensing and insuring it. We shall see…

And we’re b-a-a-c-k!

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Yep: the Hound and the Human are back from another park circumnavigating junket.

WHAT a beautiful night! Perfect temperature. Velvety dark evening. Kids playing. Kids playing. Kids playing. Teenagers batting baseballs and batting baseballs and batting baseballs. A brilliant full moon pouring light down through the darkening sky.

Just freakin’ gorgeous.

Walking through the dusk, I’m reminded of what an evening at sea must have been like for my father. He was a seaman: a merchant mariner, mostly shipping on oil tankers. This vocation got him a very fine, handsomely paid job in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia: one that included housing for his family and a short leave with a two-week trip to venues like Beirut and Delhi and a long leave with a trip back to New York, whence we would launch our biennial automobile trip across the United States.

Start in New York City.

Cruise southerly and westerly, down through Maryland and waypoints. Eventually arrive in Dallas.

Camp there with his brother for two or three weeks. Then get back on the road.

Westerly, westerly, through Colorado and across the Rockies, through Nevada, Arizona, and them-such waypoints. Arrive at the home of my mother’s best friend, in Long Beach, California.

Hang out with her for a week or two.

Then northerly, northerly, up the coast to the Bay Area. Hang out with my relatives in Berkeley for a month or so.

And back, like a rocket, across the continent to New York City, there to turn in the car, hop on a plane, and head back to Dhahran.

Some vacation, eh?

Well. I guess it would have been cool…once. But we did it every time we came back to the States. That was every two years. 😀

So that is what I’m reminded of by a brilliant azure night with Venus hanging over us and warm air circulating around us. What a life!

‘Round & ‘Round They Go…ARF!

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Eighty-nine degrees out there, sez Wunderground, with 12% humidity.

Ohhh yah? Couldn’t prove that by me.

Just back from a junket around the park, dragged forth by a small dog. I’d have said it was nigh unto 90 degrees, ayup… and freakin’ WET. Humid. Soggy. 

😀

Thinkin’ about my late stepsister as we traipsed along. Many of the 70s-ish ranch houses remind one of her family’s place. I do miss her. Even though her politics were somewhere to the right of Benito Mussolini’s, she was a smart woman, an interesting woman, and a fun person to be around.

{sigh} Ah, the bygone days…

How she came to spring from the loins of the witch my father married after my mother died: that escapes me. That woman was one of the meanest humans I’ve ever met: nasty, nasty, and nastier. In startling contrast, her daughter, who became a Superior Court judge, was one of the nicest people you could hope to meet.

They’re all dead now: Witch stepmother, smart step-sister, sister’s bright daughter, sister’s mentally stunted son, and her lawyerly husband. Ohhh well: nothing lasts forever.

Which is probably just as well…