Coffee heat rising

funny

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ohhhh well….

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11:20 Friday night:  And dayum! 

Here I thought this vicious ailment was getting a little better…but ohhhhh no! It’s back with a burning, tingling, hurting vengeance.

LOL! Do not annoy the Gods of Pain, whatever ya do!

Seriously, by evening I (stupidly) did think it was slacking off. Getting a little better. Becoming tolerable. Har har har! 

Not. So. Much.

Sure am tired of hurting. Wish this thing would go away…or I would go away. Whichever is necessary to make it stop.

The little dawg turned out of the sack a little early for her wee-hours perambulation of the backyard. It’s only about 11:30. She usually lasts till 4:00 a.m., give or take.

Because the ‘Hood is infested with coyotes — any one of whom would enjoy a delicious 20-pound dog as a midnight snack — I have to go outside with her and stand around until she does her Thing. Then lure her back into the house. That’s not a terrible thing to have to do, really. One could do without the background music of constant ear-whistling. But ten minutes or so in the backyard of a pleasant night….that’s OK enough. I guess.

Ugh! Still wonder what those two officious social workers — ostensibly from the State of Arizona — wanted when they descended on me. And still marvel at the incredible luck that Luz the Wonder-Cleaning-Lady happened to have visited early enough to have shoveled out the pig-pen before the nuisance women showed up. That was a bizarre visitation — from the two officials, that is. What the Hell were those to up to?

Whatever it was…wasn’t good, of that you can be pretty sure.

***

That dose of ibuprofen I dropped seems to have helped a little. Let us try to get back to sleep!

😀

 

Eeeps! Sell Car? Get Free? Whaaaaa!

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O…M…G…  Contemplating the idea of selling the car, as I was throwing myself around fixing dinner, suddenly gave me SUCH an emotional overload that, briefly, I thought I was gonna pass out.

Such is the power of cultural tradition, eh? 😀

Told M’hijito about this idea. To my amazement, he didn’t seem especially exercised about it.

But he’s kind of a calm guy, in a lot of ways. Maybe he figured this is not something to make a big deal about.

Hell, maybe he figured I wasn’t serious.

We’ll see about that…

Meanwhile, the kitchen has stopped spinning, for the nonce. Hope it stays put awhile longer!

********

And…uhm…used Toyota Venzas are selling in the vicinity of 20 grand!  And UP!

Yow!!!!  Can you imagine? That would buy one helluva lot of Uber rides!!!

And Yet ANOTHER Wild-Eyed Radical Idea…

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Hmmmm…. If you read my past few posts, you’ll get the distinct impression that I’m in the middle of some kind of life-changing revelation. Changes to the left of me, changes to the right of me, wack-shit ideas pouring in from all directions. 

Well, it’s not quite that radical. But something has happened that presents the potential to make some major changes. And to save big, BIG bucks.

What happened?

My honored son pilfered my car out of my garage. Drove it off and locked it up in his garage. This apparently resulted from a) anger at me and b) some sincere concern that enough of my marbles have rolled out my ears that really…maybe I shouldn’t be driving.

Upshot: for the past two or three weeks, I’ve been doing without a car. In the 115-degree heat, we might add.

And y’know what’s happened?

Nothing. 

Got that?

Nothing. NOTHING, nary a disaster, nary even a noticeable inconvenience has happened. That’s what’s happened.

And…why hasn’t my world ended? Well…

It turns out that if you live in a sufficiently urbanized area, you very well may not need a car.

And why not????

BECAUSE… here in the city you have busses. You have taxicabs. You have trains. And you have reasonably safe streets leading to the nearest grocery and drugstores.

No kidding. Within easy walking distance, I have…

* A Sprouts
* A Walgreen’s
* An Albertson’s
* A Fry’s
* and an El Rancho

Got that? FOUR SUPERMARKETS(!!!!) and a drugstore within six blocks or less of the Funny Farm. Mostly less. Significantly less.

Furthermore, directly across the street from the Funny Farm, we have a guy who’s driving an Uber!

So if I don’t feel like walking a few hundred feet to the nearest store, I can hire the guy to haul me over there, and carry the groceries back here in his car!

My son probably thought he was inflicting some kind of disaster on me, in the moment that led up to this scheme.

But no.

What he was doing was creating a revelation. 

To wit: in a large city saturated with public transit AND with private taxi services, you don’t need a car!

Think o’ that.

And think  how much you spend on the damn car(s) in your garage and driveway, hm?

You could rent a LOT of Uber rides just for the insurance premiums on those tanks. Add in the car payments (if you’re still coughing them up), the gasoline, and the regular servicing and…hoooleeee mackerel!

Get rid of the rolling hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money and you will save a TON of change!!!

You want a swell ride to go someplace special or take a vacation trip? Forgodsake, RENT one. There’s a car rental place less than three blocks from my house.

So. There’s the Question of the Day:

WHY HAVE WE BEEN SPENDING ALL THIS CASH ON A CAR PARKED IN OUR GARAGE OR DRIVEWAY?????

Why, indeed?

My car has been parked at M’hijito’s place for the past ten days or so. And y’know what?  I haven’t missed it!

So a New Plan is shaping up:

  • Have him sell the tank for me.
  • Bank the proceeds.
  • Convert the garage into an arts-and-craft workspace, and
  • Invite friends over to paint, draw, model clay, or whatever other artsy thing suits their fancy.

I might even rent the garage to an arts teacher to use as an artist’s studio.

From a hole in the ground into which to pour money
to
A money-making asset…
Mwa ha ha! 

Think o’ that!

Now that I’ve cleverly figured all this out (it only took…how many years??), I’m reminded that when DXH and I spent several months in London, we never bought or rented a car. We got around on foot or by public transit. Never did we feel especially inconvenienced.

Actually, that’s wrong: a couple of times we rented a car to go sight-seeing in the countryside. Never for longer than a day, though.

Why d’you suppose Americans feel we all must have cars?

Well: advertising and marketing, of course. But the truth is, going car-free may prove to be a hugely liberating experience. We shall soon see, eh?

Idle Reverie of the Day

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Hotter than the Hubs outside. No car…not that I would go anywhere if one was sitting out there in the garage. Wasting time on the Internet.

One of my fave time-wasters: real estate ads. Another fave: reminiscing about growing up, and our time in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This little place looks kinda like my relatives’ home in Berkeley. Pretty li’l bungalow, early 20th century. Gosh, I miss that place, that neighborhood…my aunt, my great-grandmother. If I could move back there right now, I’d be outta here like a rocket.

It was sooooo pretty! Had a pie-shaped lot with a lovely little backyard. Its own garage (!!!!). Sat on a hillside street that took you right up to the stop for the train that ran directly into San Francisco. Overall, in this genre…

My great-aunt worked at Crocker-Anglo National Bank — one of the highest-ranking female staffers ever to come along — and so would walk up that hill every morning, five days a week and ride that train across the Bay.

She stayed in this sweet little house after my great-grandmother — her mother — passed away. Then eventually her son talked her into moving to an apartment in downtown Berkeley — I think she’d quit her (very!) longstanding job at the bank by then. And finally he put her in an old-folkery — uhm, an assisted-living facility — in the East Bay. She was at the end of her 90s when she kicked off. Just as her mother was: longevity runs in my family.

This reverie brings me back to the question of the day, which is will I be able to stay in my beloved home here until I die?

And I’m awfully afraid the answer is gonna be NO.

Not a chance, Duckie!

By way of background: I want my son to have this house. Given the family trend toward living a century or so, I probably will have to give it to him well before I croak over.

A hopeless lone wolf, I truly LOATHE living in communal settings. So the prospect of having to move into an old-folkerie makes me cringe. But short of jumping on a bus and heading away into the hinterlands, I don’t really see how I’m going to avoid it.

* I have no family to take care of me in my dotage.
* If I do live into old age, I may not even be able to care for an apartment, to say nothing of a house, a yard, and a pool.
* My son has…you know: a life. Remember those? It’s hardly fair to ask him to take the time when he’s not laboring at his job and devote it to caring for a crippled-up old lady.
* And, logically enough, the answer to these little challenges is simply to move into an institution whose whole purpose is to babysit elders until they topple over into the grave.

Our culture has changed, over the past 20 years or so, in ways that make it a lot easier to stay in your own home without having to gad about the city. Without having to drive.

Consider Amazon and its ilk, for example. You can buy almost anything your beady little heart desires online…and have it delivered to your door. Even prescription drugs can be dropped at your house or in a mailbox.

And THAT…yes: that is HUGE. It relieves you of hours of driving, piles of risk on the city streets…hot dayum.

But it still may not be enough to keep you out of the old-folkerie.

It occurs to me that one might be able to hire a helper — such as my cleaning-lady extraordinare — to stay with you during the waking hours, keep an eye on you, be sure your kitchen is stocked and your laundry is clean, be sure you get fed. Yea verily: Luz (the C-L extraordinare) says she has done exactly that.

One expects she’d still be doing it, if that were what she wanted to do. But if she’s around when the time comes, I surely will ask if she’d like to alter her job to become a care-taker for me instead of a cleaning lady for half-a-dozen gringos. We shall see.

But failing Luz, there may be some other candidate. Yea verily: we shall see. 

Time to Exit, Stage Left?

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Hmmm…  The last couple days’ Incidents keep returning to haunt. In specific, those two social-workerish women who showed up at my door and sat around quizzing me and altogether too obviously assessing my (spotlessly clean!!!) surroundings…eeeeeee!

I’ll tellya: reflecting on those two really gives me the willies.

Who reported to them that I was being abused? Or…did anyone? Was that just a standard boilerplate answer to shut up the sucker and maybe get more out of her? Or at least to stay inside her house a few more minutes and to ask more nunna-your-business questions?

It was incredibly lucky that Luz the Wonder-Cleaning Lady had been there that day. No, I don’t live in squalor. But I do a lot of loafing and leaving the newspaper laying on the sofa and not making the bed first thing in the morning…. Thanks to Luz, the Funny Farm was tidy and sparkling clean.

They must’ve been impressed, eh? :-d

Seriously: in my experience, when women are depressed or overloaded, they tend to let the housework go to Hell. Consequently, yes: a woman who is at risk may be living in a pigpen. Same is true of a woman who is neglecting herself, over her head with work or with personal problems, maxed out with bratty kids. So having the house look meticulously clean helped to send a message: nothing to see here, ladies. 

Nevertheless, I do hafta say: that whole episode gives me the willies. 

Who would sic those broads on me?

Why?

How? What excuse would they pump up to let them invade my privacy like that?

Frankly, I’m thinking maybe…just maybe…it’s time to get outta here. Time to find some new sylvan place to live.

Where would I go?

Ohhhhhh….where wouldn’t I go? 😀

Seriously: one can think of a whole slew of cool alternatives to lovely 110-degree crime-ridden uptown Phoenix.

The little town in Colorado whence Dear Ex-Husband emanated, for example: Grand Junction. That is a cool li’l city. Because it was developed largely by well educated mining engineers, the ambient culture is pretty sophisticated. It gets snow in the winter — some, but not a lot — and is hot enough in the summer, but overall the climate is temperate. It’s way to Hell and Gone out in the middle of nowhere, yet within striking distance of Denver.

I certainly would consider that.

In California: my friends La Bethulia and La Maya have retired to a mobile home (!) on the coast near Monterey. TO DIE FOR. I’d go there in a minute, if my son weren’t here.

Alternatively, somehow I could force myself to live in Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

If I would feel safe living in Arizona (probably not, under the present circumstances), there’s Payson. Prescott. Yarnell. Suburbs of Tucson. Nogales. Fountain Hills. One could go on and on, actually: this state is a gold mine of cool places to settle.

Well. If 110 degrees in the shade is “cool.” 😀

I don’t know. It really was a creepy episode. And if I had any sense at all, I’d be looking seriously at gettin’ on the road.

But instead of sense, I have lazy. 

Nay, verily! I do not WANT to get off my duff and move. Who, me? Overcome inertia? Are you kidding???

Hotter Than the Hubs

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Now, waitaminit here. How do we know the Hubs of Hades are hot?

Some cultures picture the domain of the afterlife as colder than a by-gawd. Could be, I suppose.

Oh well. Dawg and I are back from an hour’s perambulation of the ‘Hood. And yes, it IS damn hot out there. Worse, though: it’s humid. Sticky. Icky. But we did make it to the front door without melting. Just.

Still fretting about the “social workers” (uh huh…) or whatever they were who showed up at the door yesterday. Godlmighty!!!

It was just raw luck that Wonder-Cleaning Lady was here in the morning. And that she’d finished her job and left. Those two busybodies must have thought I keep the house spotlessly clean as a routine matter…an illusion that threw them off the track. They sat around making small talk and then (finally!!) wandered off into the afternoon heat. If they were as stupid as they looked, they must have thought all my little housewifely marbles were intact and I keep my house all clean and dusted and vacuumed and mopped al the time… Jayzuz!

What incredible luck. Seriously.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady paid for her wages, year after year of them, right there in that one afternoon!

At any rate, I have an idea who sicced them on me. We won’t be socializing with that one again!!

But the question is, will this unsuccessful foray bring a stop to any more efforts to protect me from my senile little self? And what else might they do to herd me into an old-folkerie?

Honestly. I will die if I get locked up in one of those awful places. And no, that is NOT an exaggeration.

Back in college, I hated, loathed, and despised every goddamn moment of living in the dorms. And I sure as hell don’t want to end my life in that predicament!!!

Mercifully, my roommate’s mother found a way to get us out. Girls were required to live in the grody dormitories at the University of Arizona, unless they were living with their families. But her mom had a cousin who lived in Tucson.

!!!

We told the Authorities that we would be living with this woman, and our mothers signed off on that little fib.

Forthwith, we rented an apartment, moved in, and lived happily ever after. Till we both graduated, that is.

Who will tell Big Mommy and Daddy that I’m living with some relative this time? I dunno. Unless I can hire somebody, I have no idea how I can evade the old-folkerie, short of moving out of town.

Which, if forced to it, is exactly what I’ll do.

oooo

But I’d druther NOT be forced to it. I love this house and this neighborhood. I love the yard. I love the pool. I love the neighbors. (Well…most of ’em 😀 ) How exactly to escape some societal dictate about where and how you will live kinda escapes me.

Better engage that issue now and have things set up to make my escape.