Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

And Speakin’ of ARGHA!…

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BING BOOONGGGGGGG!

Ohhhh gawd, NOW what? Stumble to the front door.

It’s the CLEANING LADY FROM HEAVEN! Ohhh damn ohhh hell I thought NEXT week was her week….

Stumble out to the living room. Let her in. Start to pick up litter.

And pick up litter….

And pick up litter….

And pick up litter….

And pick up litter…..

Ohhhhh damn oh hell oh damn…I’d put off this mess until next week!

B-a-a-a-a-d Human!!!!!!!

What’s going on in the backyard?

NO! Hallelujah, boys and girls: it’s NOT Pool Dude. Just the wind blowing stuff around. That’s something. I guess…except tomorrow a.m. we’ll have to vacuum up another nice mess.

This place…

This place…

Gotta think about this place…

Am I gonna stay here for The Duration? SHOULD I???

Those apartments on the west side of Conduit of Blight Boulevard…hmmmm…. They ARE going downhill
…and down…
and down…

They were OK when I moved in to the neighborhood. But over the years, they’ve declined. And just now the decline is mighty steady.

If I’m gonna move to a more stable district, I may have to do so soon. Because…  I do want to leave this house (make that a house) to M’hijito…but it’s gotta be a place that will hold its value.

And just now, that ain’t entirely clear to me. If those apartments continue to slide downhill, they surely will pull down the property values in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Maybe…

Maybe…

Maybe…

…I should betake myself to Scottsdale or Paradise Valley or Fountain Hills before that process gets any further under way.

But dayum, I don’t wanna move. I’ve done more than my share of moving in my lifetime — and then some — and don’t wanna do it again. Especially now that I’m old!

My son expects to sock me away in an old-folkerie, in the not-too-distant future. I expect to take a flying leap off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon before that happens…but either way, this shack needs to hold its value so it can get him into a place that will be a decent investment, real estate-wise. That may mean I’ll need to FIND such a decent investment…now…and get into it before much more time elapses.

Ugh. Spare me yet another move!!!

Glub!!

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Hot! Humid. Light overcast. Not enough to rain — which might clear out the swampy effect. Just enough to create misery.

Dawg and I have circumnavigated the ‘Hood again…pretty much a daily ritual. My bike is still missing: either purloined by my son or stolen by a passer-by. The upshot is the same. Whenever I work up the energy, I need to go rent a bike at the nearby bicycle shop. Then, presumably, find a place to hide it.

Antecedent to that, Ruby and I have circumambulated the ‘Hood, traipsing from one end of the place to the other through a hot, soggy morning. Now we loaf upon the bed. Ruby is already conkered out, and — after this morning’s damp tramp — I wish I were, too. Swilling coffee and munching chocolate no doubt will militate against any snoozing on the human’s part, though.

Here inside the house, it’s hotter than the Hubs…and soggy. Aim the table fan at the Human and the Dog. Gaze enviously at the snoozing pooch…think turn off that light, shut down that computer, and go back to sleep!

Yet and still…even inside the house with the AC blasting and the fan whirring, it seems too hot and damp to doze. So we play electronic “card” games on the laptop.

Missing my mother. How dare she work up the nerve to DIE, f’rgodsake?

She killed herself, actually. Poisoned herself with tobacco.

Seriously: never was she conscious that she didn’t have a cancer stick in her mouth. And eventually, the damn things did their job: killed her painfully and hideously. Put my father through the tortures of the damned: doting on her, tending to her through every agonized minute of her last three or four months.

Life is evil, y’know?

Speaking of the which, my bike is still gone — probably in my son’s precincts. But I don’t care.

There’s a Goodwill store across the road, and on the corner a retailer of bikes and such. I’m thinking I’ll go over to one of those and buy another bike.

That, however, would require me to get off my duff, climb out of the sack, and hike through the humid, overheated morning.

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

Joys of the Computer Age

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ARGHA! WordPress — the platform that hosts Funny about Money — wants me to diddle away some time and energy updating this and dorking with that.

Like I have nothin’ else to do, right?

Now I have to pester our honored Web Guru — who also has nothin’ else to do, right? — to get him to do whatever the heck WordPress wants.

Am I the only troglodyte who resents the constant electronic intrusions on one’s time and attention?

grrrrrrrrrr…. Welp, I can’t complain about the Computer Life. F’r hevvinsake, I grew up in the 1950s. Beyond school, a kid had three avenues of access to the Outside World — television, movies, and print journalism. Most of these had to be politically correct — or else. And you had to pay for all of them, one way or another.

{and sigh…} I don’t recall that there were SO MANY demands on one’s time, back in the Dark Ages.

The evening news occupied half an hour — an hour or so if you watched the local news, too.

Of course, you weren’t killing time with blogging. 😀

By and large, you didn’t drive to nearly as many local sites: the grocery store, pharmacy, and local soda shop were within easy walking distance; the grade school was around the corner from our apartment and, a year or so later, my junior high school was a 15-minute bus ride from the pickup point outside our apartment.

The time I would have wasted in front of a computer — mostly cruising the Web and writing blog posts — was killed in front of the television. My mother and I had the TV going almost every moment we were conscious.

These days, I don’t even own a television. Instead, I kill FAR more time loafing with a laptop computer. But…at least a computer is interactive: better than sitting there going duuuuhhhhh in front of a TV all day.

“Don’t even own a television” strikes me as the most interesting part of this matter. Back in the Day, I would’ve been bereft without a TV to fill up the silent hours with pointless noise. I couldn’t begin to focus on my homework without the comforting babble of electronic blah blah blah going on in the background.

Today, silence is golden.

I find the background babble of a TV station — even one that’s running in some public place, such as a department store — to be extremely annoying. Yappa yappa yappa is aggravating, even when you’re not listening to it.

Times change. And people change with the times. I guess…

How about you? Do you let your TV drone on all the time, whether or not you’re actually watching it?

Car Hijinks: Is this even possible?

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Y’know…   It’s kinda embarrassing to have a son (even a magnificently grown one) who’s a lot smarter than you are. Eeps!

The other day, my son purloined my car out of my garage. He refuses to bring it back. So here I am: carless in Gaza, having to do errands on foot and hire an Uber driver for more involved appointments.  I thought the car-grabbing maneuver was just a moment of nastiness, or else the kid was trying to pull some sort of demented power play.

Uhmmm…. Not too swift on the uptake, am I???  :-

In fact, what he has been doing is demonstrating that he’s about 50 times smarter than his agèd muther!

Here’s what has happened since we took that car out of my garage:
* Not a dime has been diddled away on gasoline, car servicing, or anything else of a vehicular nature.
* The guy who lives catty-corner across the street revealed himself as an Uber driver.
> No kidding!!!! He uses his personal car as a taxicab…and he lives all of 30 seconds away.
> Took a ride with him: He appears to be a good, safe driver, and the inside of his chariot is spotlessly clean.
* I have not tried to kill a single one of my Fellow Homicidal Drivers.
* I did NOT, as had been planned, schlep the tank to the Ford dealer for updated maintenance work. $$$
* With the car locked up my son’s house, I’ve no concern about the passing burglars visiting my garage.
* The garage has been incredibly easy to keep clean (who knew???)
* Walking to the Albertson’s, Sprouts, or El Rancho provides a highly satisfactory amount of mild exercise.
Who knew, indeed? In a highly urban environment, the benefits of going car-free outweigh the benefits of owning a car.
That’s assuming you don’t use your car for regular commuting and you don’t have to drive to any destination every day.
Y’know what? I’m thinking we should get rid of that car altogether. Sell it and bank the money. Then I get M’jito or the Uber dude to drive me to the (relatively few) destinations I need to go to these days.
Whaddaya think? Am I crazy?

Inauspicious Morning

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Ugh! Not 7:30 yet, and we’ve already had one Drama of the Day. More to come, no doubt…

Ruby and I were headed homeward from the morning walk, when we came upon a favorite neighbor. This lady lives alone. She’s very smart and very charming and just the sort of person you enjoy having as a neighbor.

As we greet each other, she trips on a heaved slab in the sidewalk…and DOWN SHE GOES.

She whacked the heck out of her head. I wanted to go get my car and drive her up to the ER. She declined. Which was good, because in the heat of the moment I’d forgotten that my son has stolen my car.

Another neighbor came along. She also proposed that we take our friend to the ER. Again, Friend declined.

Reluctantly, we complied (what were we gonna do? Tie her up with a clothesline??). And our group dispersed.

***

And this is why I need my car. You never know when some emergency, small or large, will arise.

If my son persists in refusing to return it, I’ll have to go rent a car. And I may report him for stealing my car, which will cause him to lose his job. I hope the principle of the thing is worth it to him.

***

Ugh. Hot and humid out there: 99% chance of rain.

I should get off my duff and walk to a grocery store, since a few things are needed…and I sure don’t want to be prancing around in 100-degree heat…or 100% rain.

But ohhhh…how I am not in the mood! 😀

***

Reminded of where we lived in San Francisco, a sprawling middle-class apartment development called Parkmerced. Loved living there!

One of the amenities was a huge underground parking garage. My mother would park our car in its slot on the 6th floor (that’s 6 floors down), and we would rarely use it unless my father was in port. (He went to sea; we had to pick him up when his ship docked in the far East Bay, but otherwise, we had no real need for a car).

Frankly, it was cool not to need a car. Well: not “cool” in a social way but in a day-to-day lifestyle way. We could walk to the grocery store. My mother’s job was within easy walking distance. The city busses had a stop right outside our building: I could jump on a bus and ride to school.

If we were going anywhere outside of Parkmerced, my mother would drive us. But that amounted to surprisingly few trips! Mostly, the car sat in the parking garage…day in and day out.

Wish we could live that way now.

A Plan!

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So…here I am, stuck in the house with no car in the garage and 112-degree heat outside. I need groceries. But ain’t about to get them in this weather.

Ooohkayyy…. So what AM I gunna do?

Welp, truth to tell, of late I’ve come up with a New Plan.

The basis of this Plan is to limit the number of times a week that I need to go to a grocery store or a pharmacy. With a set number of junkets for any given period, I should be able to arrange with a local driver to pick me up on specific days at a specific time. Say, Tuesdays at 10 a.m. for a trip to Sprouts. Wednesdays at 2 p.m. for a trip to Albertson’s.

And so on.

Not very much so on, I hope.

That way, I would know what I can buy, where, and when. And also have a pretty fair idea of how much it’s going to cost. If the trips are arranged with Uber (or some such), then I would always know when I’m gonna head to a store and always know approximately when I’m gonna get back.

If we discover that the local car-for-hire drivers are reliable (yeah…big “if”), so that they show up about when they say they will, it would be very easy to keep the pantry stocked. And I wouldn’t have to trudge through the heat, dodging panhandlers and sh!theads, to get to the store. Let’s say, at 10:00 on Monday morning, the Uber driver who lives across the street will pick me up and take me to the local grocer. He’ll wait till I’ve loaded up the groceries, and then he’ll bring me and the loot back home. Voilà! Chore done!

With any luck: chore done in ONE trip per week!

How awesome would that be, eh?