Coffee heat rising

funny

This post may be a paid guest contribution.

The Choirless Sunday Proceeds

by

Hmmmmm…. So, the MayoQuacks are (again!) precluding my attending choir or even going to church by demanding that we traipse to the Mayo Clinic way to Hell and gone out in Scottsdale.

Yes. That’s damn near an hour’s drive. 

Not like my son has nothing else to do with his time, either — right?

This is NOT the first time the damn Mayo has scheduled — unilaterally, no feedback from the victim — an appointment on Sunday morning, on the f8cking far side of Scottsdale.

Why do they do that?  Why are they even open at all on Sundays, other than for emergency visits? Today’s junket is for a rather routine (if exceptionally annoying) test.

Most annoyingly, it’s not the first time they’ve done this. Apparently busting up the patient’s religious worship and weekend activities is S.O.P. with that bunch.

Appealing to M’hijito is pointless: he thinks the Mayo can do no wrong.

***

So…how is The Ailment coming along?

Therein lies the question, hm?

Frankly, I think it’s getting a little better. The crazy-making tingling has been gone — as in GONE gone — for a fair part of the morning (it’s ten to noon as we scribble). Just now, it’s back — possibly as a result of my pounding on the keyboard. But…no: the lip tingling is back, too…and…well, I don’t chew on the keyboard. 😀

I suspect the fact that the bzzzzzzzzzzz in the lips and hands died down for the past two or three hours is tryin’ to tell us something. It may be that this thing is just gonna take a long time to clear up, a little at a time.

Meanwhile, we get to waste our time, energy, and gasoline schlepping to the effin’ far side of effin’ Scottsdale.

And mean-meanwhile, a hefty list of grocery-store needs awaits. I’m hoping I can get my beleaguered son to take me to AJ’s Fancy-Dan Overpriced Grocery Store on the way home from Doctor Hell. Or at least to a Fry’s or a Safeway…we shall see.

****

Hmmmmmmm…..  Okay, I’ve gotten up from the beloved Thos. Moser rocking chair — a hard wooden affair — twice. And each time, standing up has NOT hurt!

What is the body tryin’ to say to us?

Well…we haven’t given it enough time to have a serious say: my sojourns in the rocker have been quite brief. A matter of minutes.

Míjito is presumably on his way over here as we scribble. So let’s try sitting here until he surfaces: with any luck, at least 15 or 20 minutes, but better: 30 or 40 minutes.

If sitting down in a non-sagging chair without wriggling that joint around is what makes it stop hurting,… well… we surely can arrange that. Every day, all the time, eh?

Or, if gently swaying back and forth in a wooden rocker makes it stop hurting…whaddaya bet we can manage that, too?

Choirless Sunday

by

Ugh. Still haven’t figured out how to stay out of Orangewood, the prison for old folks [now called “The Terraces,” apparently]. Oh well: I’ll figure that out later…if it can be figured out.

Meanwhile, it was off to the park with the Human and the Dog. Speaking of “Ugh!,” the weather is sunny…and soggy. A humid, shiny morning: less than perfectly pleasant. That notwithstanding, we circumnavigated the park — upwards of a mile’s stroll — with me mooning along: wishing I could be back on the church choir.

After the beloved Scott retired from the choir’s directorship, the new clergy took to hiring guys who expected choir members to be able to sing on the professional level. Well…I can sing along just fine. And I can carry a tune just fine. But in Arabia, we did not have music lessons. 

Well: some did. Our neighbors hired a piano instructor for their kid. But my father was not ABOUT to spend his hard-earned riyals on any such thing!

Result: I cannot read music! If I can hear a piece of music, I have no trouble learning it. But I can’t read sheet music.

That kinda disqualifies me from the much fancier choir our church now has. All of those folks are functioning on the professional level or close to it…and believe me, they can figure out how something is supposed to sound by reading the sheet music.

So that’s disappointing.

If I had a car (still do not: and I expect that quarrel to be permanent), I could go out to the Unitarian church, which has a kind of sing-along choir. For my taste, though, they’re a bit too lovey-dovey. I’m just NOT the hug-and-kiss type. You’re all very nice, folks: but keep your hands (and your lips) to yourself!

The Methodist church down on Central Avenue, which was similar to the Episcopalian outfit I was attending, has closed. Property values in that upscale business district had gone too high, apparently, to allow a low-rent tenant like a church to continue.

There’s another Episcopalian church (I think that’s what they are…) down by the park. But I found it singularly uninspiring: left me less than enthused about driving down there and dodging the park’s population of bums.

Heh! So…that leaves Sunday morning for Doggy-Walks!

Good Morning, Dogmerica!

by

Scarfety chomp munch munch scarf scarf chomp…  Ruby’s way of greeting the morning. Arf! we say to that.

Lately back from the ayem tromp around the park. Apparently the Human tromped on an ant’s nest: Crazy-itchy spots on the feet.

Hey, stupid! Next time remember to wear a decent pair of shoes! 

😀

Honestly! Humans aren’t very bright, are they?

It is a beautiful morning, though. High, thin overcast softens the brilliant sunlight and gives it a golden cast. Ruby as usual enamored herself of every passing human.

My gawd but people love corgis. The cuteness does it, apparently.

* * *

{sigh} We may be coming up on the last few morning walks around that park. M’hijito has been talking up the glories of prisons for the decrepit such as Orangewood, a dreadful motel that my father moved into after my mother died.

It’s not actually dreadful, objectively speaking. It’s just that..well…communal living is about as not my style as anything can get.

Truly. I despise living in close quarters with other people

  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your choice of television shows.
  • No, I do NOT want to hear your toilet flush.
  • No, I do NOT want to overhear your conversations.
  • No, I do NOT want to hear your microwave beeping.
  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your favorite radio talk show.
  • No, I do NOT want to smell whatever packaged gunk you’ve heated in your microwave.
  • No, I do NOT want to listen to your dog yap.
  • No, I do NOT want you to have to listen to my dog yap…
  • No, no, no, no, and N-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!

Seriously: It’s getting harder and harder to see how I’m going to avoid being locked up in an institution for the elderly and the decrepit. And that is NOT the way I want to go out.

I hated, loathed and despised living in the university dorms. Just HATED it!!!!!

That was the way I began my adulthood. And now it’s beginning to look like that’s the way I’m going to end adulthood.

There simply MUST be a better way to pass through the tag end of your life. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is!

***

On the other hand, it does have to be said that these jails offer some serious benefits for the unattached elderly.

The staff at Orangewood were wonderful to my father. You couldn’t hope to find more caring, more skilled, and more knowledgeable prison guar…uhmmm…caretakers. I surely couldn’t have given him even a decent fraction of the attention and care that he got from them.

He doted on my mother — apparently loved her more than anyone or anything in his life — so she was cared for like a queen during the last weeks and months of her life. By the time he fell ill, though, I was running late on the deadline for my dissertation and could NOT interrupt that project to hang out at Orangewood and nurse him as he passed into the Next World. And it might be recalled that he had bestowed one beating too many on me as I was growing up, a circumstance that left me with no great desire to scotch the Ph.D. and stay at his house or at some institution to babysit him.

He had already decided to move to Orangewood — the only reason he wasn’t ensconced there when my mother’s smoking habit caught up with her was that she had flat refused to move out of her beloved Sun City house. She wasn’t in her funeral urn more than a few minutes before he was arranging to get out of Sun City and into the old-folkerie.

He liked that kind of thing, though. Institutional living would’ve made me crazy then and will make me crazy now, if I’m forced into it. How exactly to avoid it, though, kinda escapes me.

Please, please make it harder to get a covid shot!

by

For the LOVE of Gawd!!!!  Did you know that they’re trying to force you to go to a doctor and get a prescription just to get a damn covid shot?

Nooooo effing kidding!!!!! 

This afternoon I trotted up to the Albertson’s, where staff were just beginning to demand that you show them a doctor’s prescription to get a covid vaccination.

Yeah.

Well: my doctor is at the Mayo Clinic, which is somewhere on the far side of the planet, halfway to China. To get that holy permission, I would have to drive NINETY MINUTES between here and northeast Scottsdale and back.  EACH WAY.

Thank you so much, Big Brother!

Fortunately, I squeezed in under the wire. But if I need another one, I’ll have to traipse halfway across the Valley for the privilege.

Not like we don’t have enough trouble getting the Dumb and the Feckless to take their vaccinations, eh?

Seriously: if I weren’t a microbiology freak and I didn’t understand about immunology, I would have just shrugged my shoulders, walked away, and forgotten about it.

’Til I was enjoying a hospital stay, presumably. 

Why You Have a Kid…

by

Ever ask yourself that? Why DO you have a kid? 

Welp, I’ll tellya: Its because your kid is smarter than you.

Yep. That’s it: no question. Chances are your kid started out smarter than you. But as time passed, the brat got smarter and smarter…the brat figured out more things…the brat adapted to the changing times… And by golly! The kid’s a grown man or a grown woman, and about ten times smarter than you!

Meanwhile, all that time, your own marbles have been rolling out your ears.

😀

Seriously: you would not believe how amazing Mi’jito is…because I can’t believe it myself. Not just because he knows so much more than I do (that’s to be expected, as our culture evolves over a couple of decades), but because he knows what to do with that so much more stuff. 

Computers, especially. Of course. Money: investments, real estate.

All this moonie admiration brings us around to the question of how to handle my estate...which includes everything my father left me, plus real estate, plus more money, plus…plus…plus…on and freakin’ on.

I plan to leave him my house…but DO I want to do that? A house is not 100% asset. It also has drawbacks. It has expenses. It may have loans against its equity. It may be falling down in its old age. It has taxes. And depreciation. And ever-growing costs of upkeep. Questions of neighborhood stability — or instability. Crackpot neighbors. Bat-brained city projects…augh!

Lately I’ve been thinking maybe I should look at the type of old-folkerie my father consigned himself to, after my mother died. The one he went into is actually within (lengthy) walking distance of the Funny Farm: once called Orangewood, it’s now dubbed The Terraces.

It has as its benefit some halfway decent apartments and a skilled, experienced staff who look after you. But the place is much changed today from what it was in my father’s heyday. So…I have no idea, really, what I’d be getting into.

My house is very comfortable and in a moderately safe district. Hiring someone to come in and take care of me surely wouldn’t cost any MORE than parking me in some institution. It might not cost as much. And you can be sure it wouldn’t make me anywhere near as miserable.

What I would need to do, though — something I’ve neglected! — is get back in with the church, show up down there at least once a week and preferably more, and cultivate friendships and activities.

Without a job, it must be admitted: I’ve let my social life lapse. Just now I don’t know anyone and don’t do anything. But really…how hard would it be to get back into some activities to let me rub elbows with other old bats?

Hmmm….  So, I guess starting in the next couple of weeks, I should get off my duff and go JOIN a few things.

Let’s see how that goes. If it revives “a life,” then I can basically rebuild what I had before I slid into the present lethargy.

But if it has no positive effect, then I’ll need to think a whole lot more seriously about moving into an old-folkerie, where staff can ride herd on me 24/7.

Ugh.

Another Beautiful Day in Arizona… /eyeroll/

by

Ugh!!!  Hotter than the Hubs out there this morning. And wet. Not raining, but so humid the air feels thick.

Ruby the Corgi and I are just back from trudging around the park: the exercise walk of the day. It’s so sticky out there, you feel like you’re walking through cotton candy!

M’hijito has got us set up to traipse to the far side of the galaxy, there to visit the august Mayo Clinic…again. If there’s ANY way to get out of that, I’d sure like to. The peripheral neuropathy is clearing up now. Almost gone, come to think of it. So this is going to be a long, tedious, annoying wasted trip.

On the other hand, he’s got his own ailment that would benefit from a chat with those august quacks. So maybe we could just trade conferences: HE, not me, talks with the doc.

On the other other hand, he’s the one with the demanding job. And he’s the one who shouldn’t be wasting two or three hours traipsing to the far side of the galaxy, there to talk with a doctor who will tell us nothing we didn’t already know. Either way…it’s a monumental waste of time.