Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Glub Is the Word, Alright!

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Two and a half hours after this morning’s early post, and it’s still pouring rain!

Worried about the babysitter my son has hired to nuisanceferize me…uhhhh…to take care of me. She was supposed to be here at 8:00 a.m. It’s after 10 now, and the woman hasn’t shown up.

Personally, that’s fine by me: I do not want some pest dear soul lurking around all day. Privacy is my Thing, after all. Truth to tell, I do just fine allll by my little pea-brained self. And  you may be sure, I do not need a prison guard to be sure I don’t drop a mug of coffee on my dainty little foot.

On the other hand, I do feel a bit worried about her. It is one bitch of a drive to North Central from the far east side, where (as I understand it) this one lives. And since most workin’ class folks here live in either the east-side or the west-side suburbs, traffic is heavy…and made much worse by rain.

Oh well. I’d hoped to recruit her to drive me to one of the nearby grocery stores, so I wouldn’t have to haul several pounds of chow home through threatening rain. But…it looks like that ain’t a-gunna happen.

Luckily, it ain’t necessary. We do have all the human-and-dawg food we need to cover the next few days. Soon as the sky clears credibly, I’ll walk over to one of the three(!!) nearby supermarkets and grab whatever else we need.

****

By sheer serendipity, when I moved here I landed in what may very well be the most convenient centrally located neighborhood in the city. Within easy walking distance of my house, we have an Albertson’s (equivalent of a Safeway), a Sprouts, and an El Rancho (also a major supermarket, only with a bit of a Spanish accent). We also have a computer store and a Walgreen’s, in the same vicinity. AND a veterinary!

*****

Ohhhhh DAMN!  I scribbled too soon! Here she is at the door…and now she’s parked at the dining-room table.

Ugh!

Well, on the bright side: at least she got here safely, thank goodness.

Driving through Phoenix’s (un)lovely rush-hour traffic is no fun under the best of circumstances. But doing so in the rain? That’s putting your  life on the line!

Anyway: that’s the end of my privacy for today. DAMN it. 

I just hate having people underfoot for no good reason. If we’re getting together to do something: fine. But if you’re gonna sit at my dining-room table playing with your phone so you can spot me every time I wriggle out of the bedroom at the far end of the hall…not so goddam fine.

And, dammit dammit dammit….to make things worse, I haven’t picked up the breakfast dishes. So really, I ought to drop what I’m doing and clean the kitchen.

Whee.

I can hardly wait.

Out the Door! (Glub!!)

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7:40 in the morning: Dawg and I just raced back in the door after  fast circumnavigation of the ‘Hood.

Thunder rolls: the sky is getting ready to POUR rain.

Still, in its way, it’s a GORGEOUS morning. Cool and soft and lovely. We got into the house just before it started to sprinkle. Pretty sure that before long, we’ll be seeing a nice deluge.

Ruby is in full i ain’t doin’ it mode. Ha! That turns every walk into a fight. What fun.

Uh oh…there’s that noise in the plumbing again. HAVE to get a plumber over here to look at that.

My son has forbidden me to do so: apparently he thinks I spend too much money on workers. On the other hand…he has no idea what to do with whatever is making that racket. So now I’ll have to sneak to get someone to fix that.

Goodie. Just what I wanna do.

The banging noise resonates throughout the house. No way in hell one could sleep with that racket…and it’s an alarming sound. One that says hey stupid! you need to get this fixed!!! 

So…that will be the misery of the day. I can hardly wait!

She knew…

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Yes. She knew. 

What she didn’t understand was that my father also knew. And he wasn’t going to put up with it.

***

My father rescued me from the most horrific cruelty my mother could possibly have committed. Ever.

What she tried to do was maneuver things so that I had to repeat what she had to do as a girl my age: minister to her mother as her mother was dying of a self-inflicted cancer.

Her mother was a fast little thing, back in the 1920s and 30s. Apparently, she would fu*k just about anyone and anything that  came along, and then some. My mother once told me about coming home from school one afternoon, using her key to unlock the front door, walking into the living room, and finding her mother and a boyfriend on the floor in front of the fireplace, in flagrante delicto. 

Not surprisingly, the woman fell prey to a number of venereal diseases. In the ’20s and ’30s, treatment for these was pretty fierce stuff. Couldn’t have been good for your long-term health.

Probably not for your short-term health, either. 😮

In due course, my dear grandmother fell prey to a reproductive cancer: one that killed her.

My mother, then a young teenaged girl, had to tend to her as she lay on her deathbed.

Result: she was determined that her own daughter would NOT do that. And the upshot of that was simply that my father chased me out of her room whenever I dared to approach her as she lay dying, years later, of the family disease: cancer.

In retrospect, I do understand what he was doing…and why.

But I also think he overdid it a bit. Probably he should have let me spend time by her bedside, even if I wasn’t toting bedpans and changing diapers.

Life. It distorts everything, eh?

Dog ‘n’ Human Walk, Redux…Update

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So here we are, once again, back from a twilight circumambulation of the ‘Hood.

WHAT a pretty neighborhood! If you have to live in Phoenix — or anywhere in the suburban reaches of the “Valley of the Sun,” you really can’t do better than this one.

********************

Well, I started to write this a day ago…then roamed off into the twilight of my life.

Oh, my. I’m SO sick. 

Surely it can’t be much longer before I’m dispatched to the next world. Surely hope not, anyway!

Speaking of that horrifying dispatch, my son just called to inform me that he’s dragging me to the old-folkerie of our choice: the place he plans to store me until I finally pass over into the Next World.

That would be kind and thoughtful and all…except…..

Very few things do I revile more than institutional living. I just HATE being crammed in with a bunch of other people. I hate listening to some dimwit’s TV blabbering on down the hall. I hate bad food dumped out of cans and boxes into steam tables.

Honestly: if I’m approaching the end of my life, then forgodsake it’s time. Time for me to go.

And that exit is not something I want to have drawn out.

Yes, I will say: I’m not especially well just now. And indeed, it won’t be long before I won’t be able to stay here in my home safely.

Already, my son has purloined my car (he believes I shouldn’t be driving), which means I have to hike some unholy distance just to go to the grocery store. And no, hiring the Uber driver across the street has proved not to be a very practical strategy.

The awful place where he plans to consign me is less awful than most of them.

My father put himself in a place now called The Terraces. He would have done fine there if he had not stupidly imagined he could replace my mother (the love of his life) with a dimwitted woman he met there.

So… Lesson number one: no love affairs!!!

😀

Seriously, though…you would not believe the horror show that devolved from that episode.

Because he had stupidly married the woman, he was afraid to break it up. He convinced himself (rightly or wrongly, I do not know) that she would get all his assets if he divorced her.

Personally, I doubt that would have happened: at the time, his daughter was married to a partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the Southwest. But he was just simply too scared to take any chances.

So he stayed married to her, in profound misery, until the last day of his life.

As for me, I hate institutional living. Hated every moment that I had to spend in the dorms in college. (Back in the day, unmarried women students were required to live in the dorms, unless they could prove they were living at home). And I just. don’t. want. to. go. through. that. again!!!!

I fail to understand, given what it costs to live in one of those hell-holes, why we can’t use the same amount of money to hire someone to come in and babysit me in my home.

So this morning my son is dragging me to the Terraces, for an introductory tour.

Goodie gumdrops. I can hardly wait. 

Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…

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As a long-ago radio announcer — still fondly remembered — used to intone each morning: “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona…leave us all enjoy it!”

😀  Nothing like a little illiteracy to give your talk show some zing, eh?

Seriously, it was a much-loved maxim that he invented and used for years.

Ruby and the Human have marched around the ‘Hood, at least to some degree. The Human is feeling sick, and so not at all in the mood to gallop from pillar to post.

Back in the house, fed,  and ensconced on the bed, I hope to sleep off whatever this is.

Missing a dear friend from long ago. She and her husband lived in a later-built tract to the north of the Central Avenue area. Ticky-tacky little house, cheaply built in the mode of later architecture. He fell ill — very ill, indeed — and died after a long haul in that house. She moved to Scottsdale briefly; then decamped to the Midwest, whence she came and where her family was still living. Forthwith, we lost track of each other.

I seem to have  lost track of most of my friends.

Maybe I should try to get another adjunct position at the Great Desert University. That, at least, would give me something to do and bring me into contact with new people,

But…without a car — my son purloined mine and sold it — there’s no way I can get out to the campus. I’m trapped here in the Funny Farm, really.

I probably could get down to the church. It would require a hike through the North Central district and then a bus ride — often an annoying experience in these parts, what with the stoners and the panhandlers. More hassle than I’m up for.

And so…what will I do? Sit here and rot away?

Very possibly, as we don’t appear to have many alternatives. Make that “any” alternatives.

  • No job.
  • No freelance opportunities.
  • No volunteer gigs.
  • No friends left.
  • No car in which to venture forth…

Really, when you come down to it, I’m doomed. It really IS time to go, isn’t it?

Yeah. “Sit here and rot away” about defines my future. Hope it comes quickly….

Another Icky Arizona Day!

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So we moved on from yesterday’s icky-sticky day to a rainy-looking but dry day. WHAT is going on out there?

😀

Oh well: nothing we can do about it.

The sky is festooned with thick gray clouds. Has been all morning…yet no actual rain. The Human loafs on the bed with the Dawg, watching the darkly muddled sky, in too much pain to maneuver a doggy-walk.

Somehow I spavined a hip. NO idea how! Presumably slept catty-wampus on it overnight. Whatever, it hurts, hurts, and HURTS some more. That obviates the morning hike. Hence: loafing.

Tired of hurting, this Human is.