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Colder Than a By-Gawd!

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LOL! Well, no: it’s probably not THAT cold.

It was one of my father’s favorite turns of phrase: hotter than a by-gawd! colder than a by-gawd! 

LOL! I never did figure out what, if anything, a “by-gawd” was. As a kid, I assumed he meant “bi-god.” By that, he apparently did not intend the Earls of Norfolk, a modern currency, or a premium British cheese. 😀

My hip and tailbone hurt like a by-gawd. How a bi-god got in there escapes me: he apparently snuck in while I was sleeping.

At any rate, the sun is up, but it’s still passing cold out there. This morning’s doggy-walk is gonna have to wait for an hour or two, at least until the frost is off the palm tree.

How Do They Know?

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…How DO they know when you’ve been awake half the night and want only to flop down on the bed and doze off?

😀

I dunno…but they DO know. No doubt of it. Mental telepathy, maybe?

Just get under the covers. Play a computer game of solitaire. Next: to turn off the light and launch into a nice nap…

WWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

And yeah: how DOES he know? Lawn equipment revs up and roars up and howls and growls and wails.

😀

Incredibly, it’s not even Gerardo! The racket is coming from two or three yards down the street.

Who knew mental telepathy could carry that far? 

I’m IN!!!

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A miracle!  Lost the password for FaM.  And thought…well, that’s it for the blogging hobby.

But nay! called up a magical page, and presto! Here it is! Why or how, I have no idea…

Probably FaM is no longer for this world than I am…which at the moment appears not to be much longer. I’m very, very sick. No sign of help from any doc in any direction. They clearly don’t know what’s causing this ailment or how to treat it.

Nor, we might add, do they care. In America, old people are less than…”people.”

So…I guess it’s…just resign myself to the obvious fact that I’m not gonna last much longer. And…well, once I’ve stopped lasting, presumably FaM will stop lasting.

{sigh} I reckon the paucity of help or effective care is a function of my personality…which apparently is pretty obnoxious. People have hated me since I entered grade school — before that, really, as evidenced  by the time a neighbor’s preschool brat threw a fistful of sand smack into my eyes.

WOW! Did that HURT! 

Worked nicely, though, to teach me to distrust other people and to stay back from them as much as possible.

Well, WTF. I’m an old lady now — a really old lady, having pretty much outlived my life. A couple of women in my family lived into their 90s. But most died much, much younger than that.

My mother and her mother both croaked over from cancer. I don’t smoke, don’t drink anymore, and don’t f**k every soul who comes up the pike, so you’d think I’d last a little longer than some.

Well, no: “Don’t drink” is mis-speaking. I do love a glass of wine, though lately I haven’t been able to stumble to the store to get any. And I used to enjoy a bourbon and water before dinner. Can’t manage that these days, either. But still…one could figure that a lifetime of pre-prandial swiggling can’t have done the body much good….even if it’s stopped in old age.

At any rate…now that I’m old, I’m so, sooo sick that frankly, I can’t wait for the show to be over. No credible sign that it’s gonna end soon, though…unless I help it along. But that, alas, is not my style.

Ever-So-Slightly De-crippled…

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The spavined hip I’ve been whining about seems s-l-o-o-w-l-y to be getting better. The Dawg and the Human managed to make our usual perambulation around the populated part of the ‘Hood — short version — without crippling the old lady. Still hurts, but at least the leg & hip are now functional.

With any luck, the undercarriage will be back to normal within another three to five days. And then we’ll be back to our usual cavortings. Yay!

Sure as Hell hurts right now, though. 😮

Incredibly beautiful stroll! Lush, gorgeous twilight evening. Most of the kids are inside for dinner, or so it appears. So it was quieter than usual as we strolled around.

Haven’t heard from my excellent son this evening, nor have I attempted to pester him from this end of the phone line. So I hope he’s having a quiet evening…ideally, hanging out with friends.

Meanwhile, also hoping to hit the sack early — Dawg is already conkered out at the end of the bed. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help the spavined hip…with any luck and enough ibuprofen.

sigh! <3  This is such a lovely neighborhood!  I hope I can contrive to stay here until I die. Really: it couldn’t cost any more to have a caretaker come in and babysit me here in my home than it would to lock me up in some dreary old-folkerie.

Well, we shall find out before too long, as I don’t seem to be getting any younger. The longer that exigency can be put off, the better!!

Hurts Like Hell! Down through the ages…

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No kidding. It’s 6:00 in the evening, and the hip pain has been holding forth all day. Not any better as the sun goes down.

Seriously, this thing DOES hurt like the dickens. Won’t say I’ve never had anything hurt this much…but it’s close. Very close.

Contemplating the ancestors and the family history… 

Here’s my grandmother, who never met me and never met her fine Arizona grandson. That, as it develops, is because her cancer killed her before either of us came along. Apparently her promiscuity (so we’re told by the more prudish set in the family) was what did her in: fu*king every guy who came along gave her cancer. Right?

Or not: Ancestors.com tells us she died in 1979…

WHERE do people come up with this stuff? 

At any rate, no matter what caused it or when, my mother’s story was that the woman’s gut filled up with what apparently was a reproductive cancer, and that was the end of her. My mother, then a young teenager, was made to attend her on her deathbed, an experience guaranteed to instill horror in the kid for the rest of her life.

Didn’t stop her from smoking, though….

I incline to believe her story about Olive’s death over the one on Ancestors.com. After all, my mother was not an Internet page. 😀

But seriously: her recollections of what she saw and did while tending to Olive were vivid and gawdawful, not something she would have made up. At no time was it necessary to invent some wild story about being present at the woman’s deathbed — all she had to do was say, in the simplest of phrasing, that her mother died of uterine cancer. Period.

That’s quite horrifying enough.

But…BUT…. It gets a whole lot more horrifying when you contemplate the possibility that my mother may have been lying about Olive’s death. Altogether. That Olive did not die of cancer in the 1930s and that she may have been living when I was born. Yea verily: she could have still been living when my son — her great-grandson — was born.

And that, my friends, is what we call bizarre….

Colder’n a By-Gawd

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Mighty crisp out there this morning. Truth to tell, though, it’s not THAT cold: no frost on the windshields. O’course, that may be because it’s a dry cold. 😀

Hoping that Wonder-Cleaning Lady shows up today…but then realize…hold the phone!!…it’s Friday! And that is NOT Cleaning-Lady-Day.

Oh well. The house is still clean from her last visit.

What I really hoped was that she could tell me about the (terrifying!) Beatitudes, the warehouse for old folks where I almost certainly will end up soon, unless I croak over in a timely way. She used to work there. So she should be able to tell me what I need to know and what I want to know.

And I’m hoping, as knowledgeable as she is in those subjects, that she may be able to help me duplicate the services provided by the Beatitudes without having to move into that place. I abominate institutional living: just HATE it.

When I went down to the University of Arizona, I was preternaturally young — 16 years old. The UofA required girls under 21 to live in the damned, miserable dorms. So there I was: stuck in one of those holding pens for brats for the duration of my undergraduate career.

After a couple of dreadful years, my roommate’s mother managed to spring us free. She claimed that her sister — my roommate’s aunt, who lived in Tucson — was going to put us up at her house…so ’twas said.  The aunt merrily lied for us, and so we got out of the dorm hole. We rented an apartment and lived contentedly like the grown-ups we were.

At any rate…back to the future:  What I’m hoping to do now is hire people to duplicate the services you get at the Prison for Old Folks.

Cleaning: We already have Wonder-Cleaning Lady
Driving: This neighborhood is crawling with Uber drivers
Delivery services: Is that not why we have Amazon?
Doctor: My son drags me out to the Mayo, often without especially good reason. The Mayo is great for serious stuff, but for the occasional stubbed toe, we do have have a little clinic down by the Albertson’s, staffed by nurses and MD’s.
Baby-sitting: Spare me, Lord!
Groceries and pharmacy: Yeah: we do have that mega-Albertson’s.

So what I need most immediately are cleaning and driving services…and yeah! I’ve already got those! Minor medical issues can be handled by the local store-front quacks. Et voilà! 

Serious medical issues: We’re within a five-minute drive of not one but TWO major medical centers.

There really is no reason for me to have to move into an institution to get those services.

Now, granted: this morning I’d probably freeze to death before I could walk to any of those fancy-Dan hospitals or clinics. But…I’ll take my chances, thanks.