Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Babysitter Hell

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My dear son has hired this annoying woman to sit here all day and babysit me.

As though I hadn’t been living alone and taking care of myself and my dog and my home and my yard and my pool all by my little idiot self, for year on year. You wanna talk about annoying?  

Holeeee shee-ut.

She sits there on the phone gabbing with her friends and whomever, yakity yakity yakity yakity yakity yakity…. The endless yakathon devolves into an exceptionally annoying noise. Especially to a person who is used to living alone.

This comes on top of the discovery that some workers he sent over got into my office and stole sh!t to the left of them and sh!t to the right of them. They stole my office phone’s handset, among a number of other things.

Fortunately, I had another phone stashed in a cabinet in another room. But…that means that sooner, if not later, I’m gonna have to buy another handset.

If they even still make that brand and variety. Seems to me at one point a guy at the local phone store said these things are no longer available.

In-f*cking-furiating!

So, back to the original infuriating element of today’s post: I need to decide whether to try to stay here, in my nice little house in my nice bourgeois neighborhood, until I drop dead (good luck with that!) or to move, in the very near future, into one of those horrible prisons for old folks….uhm….”life-care communities.”

The very thought makes my skin crawl.

Back in the day, the University of Arizona (my dear alma mater /eyeroll/ ) required all female undergraduates to live in the dormitories. Well. Unless one was married or living with one’s parents.

That experience left me with a lifelong distaste for institutional living.

Ugh!!!!  I started in that way, and I do NOT want to go back out through that door. Bleayach!

Evening in the Park

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Ruby and her Human just back from the dusk perambulation of the neighborhood park. 😀

Oh, my!  It’s simply impossible not to love the young parents and their little kids over there!  Impossible not to love the teenagers hanging out.

What a wonderful place!

It was sheer, raw luck — and a savvy Realtor — that brought us to the ‘Hood. And I must say: I do feel incredibly lucky to be here.

In the years since SDXB and I moved into this neighborhood, the place has gentrified at a steady pace, property values drifting toward the stratosphere and affluent young professionals moving in with their families. Today it’s a lovely, upper-middle-class neighborhood, one that feels safe and pleasant and happy.

We shall see how long I can hang in here, as I sink into my dotage. But ideally, I’d like to be able to leave this house to M’hijito, so he can move in here if he likes or else sell the place for what will be, in the future, some outrageous price. One way the other, it will redound to his advantage.

And, I expect, to mine…over the years.

Every Moron on the Planet…

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No kidding. Go for a morning walk, and all the morons on the planet come bounding out of their homes, there to make trouble for the passers-by.

Idiot and his unleashed dobe were standing out in their unfenced front yard this morning. Naturally, his dog came charging after Ruby, who weighs all of about 25 pounds. Sheeee-ut!

Now here we are, unwinding at home over breakfast…uhhhhm… DREAM ON!

Bing bong!!! 

Former cleaning lady: now the woman my son has hired to babysit me all day.

DamNAYshun!

What I do NOT need is some dear soul underfoot all day, watching my every move.

Clearly my son fears that in my dotage I’m no longer competent to live in my home unmolested.

And what THAT means is that pretty soon I’ll have to move into the old-folkerie called The Beatitudes — or else into Orangewood, the one my father consigned himself to — so as at least to get one room without some intruder underfoot.

….And…THAT is not something I want to do. Not for love nor money.

Godlmighty, but this dear woman is a nuisance. GO AWAY, dearie! Leave me ALONE!

😀  😀  😀  😀  😀

If this is what I’m gonna have to contend with in my own home, day in and day out, I might as well move into one of those old-folkeries.

Godlmighty. Now she’s turned her phone on and is listening to some sort of yammer. Even though she’s got the volume turned way low, I can hear the yak yak yakity blah blah where I’m sitting, clear across the room.

* * *

Get up. Trudge to the office, in the back of the house. Make the bed on the way.

Fire up the desktop. Fiddle around.

Y’know… If this sh!t is what I’m going to have to contend with, day in and day out, in my own home, I might as well move into one of those prisons for old folks.

Pick up the dog’s Rx bottle, while she watches, watches, watches. Check to be sure that yes, I did give Ruby her morning dose, while our dear lady watches, watches, watches.

Realize there’s no way I can slip out the back way without this broad spotting me.

Well…maybe. But it would be tricky. And one way or the other, when I come back to the house, she’ll know it. And she’ll blab to my son.

Well. Y’know…. If he’s going to treat me like this — as a non compos mentis inmate — then I might as well sell the house and move into one of those horrible prisons for old folks. They gouge  you, gouge you, and gouge you some more. And because women in my family are spectacularly long-lived, that means effectively nothing will remain of my estate to leave to my son.

One of those places has set up a tour for me and the young man. Just got an email from one of their hustlers telling me not to worry, it’s not “institutional living.”

Give.

Me.

A.

Break!

As if I at this age I don’t have friends who have lived there and in places like it. How fukkin’ STUPID do these people think their customers are???????

Icky-Sticky Day!

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LOL! This is one of those days that don’t happen in Arizona: hot and HUMID. Very humid. 😀

It feels almost like the weather used to feel in lovely Ras Tanura, where I grew up in Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Not quite, though. There, I’ve seen it start to rain out of a clear blue sky: that’s how wet the air would get there.

Garden spot, eh?

Anyway, hereabouts we’re told the humidity is 32% just now. And for Arizona…well…that’s more than passing damp. 😀

No clouds, though: The sky is gorgeous sterling blue. And no sign of fugitive raindrops.

Strolled around the park this afternoon…rather later in the day than I should have: it was a little warm for strolling. That notwithstanding, though, it was not excessively unpleasant. And as usual, fun to watch kids playing and grownups lolling around.

I do love our neighborhood and our park. Struggling to stay here: to avoid being moved to an old-folks’ institution. How to avoid that — displacement, I mean — gets more and more difficult to intuit. I’m awfully afraid I’m going to be forced out of my home, sooner or later, on the grounds that I’m too old to take care of myself. We haven’t reached that point yet…but it’s hard to avoid the fact that we’re headed there.

Indeed, my son wants us to visit a place called the Beatitudes, down the road from the ‘Hood. To which I say horrors! I’ve had friends who lived there.

And no, it’s not a bad place, as institutions go. But….it’s just that I absolutely, positively, passionately HATE institutional living. I hated living in the dorms. And spending the next few years living in a dorm for old folks is NOT how I want to wrap up my life.

There simply must be a better way….

Swampy-Dampy Walk

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Midafternooon…and the sky is gray, the air is soggy: feels like it wants to rain but can’t work itself up to that much effort.

Just back from an idle, unplanned stroll around the ‘Hood, sans doggy. It is SO WET out there, you feel like you’re in a sauna! Glad I didn’t take the corgi: she would have melted.

What does Wunderground predict for our parts?

Huh???  Only 5% chance of rain?

What ARE they smoking?

In summary: all the weather sites are describing “clearing skies.”

Ohhhhh…kayyyy…  That gray stuff up there is kinda funny-looking “clear.” But whatEVER.

Despite the gently threatening skies and the soggy air, a walk around the park is moderately pleasant. What could be more pleasant than watching the young people playing on the greens and under the trees, after all?

Gotta tellya: This is the place! I want to live here until I die. At this point, that’s likely to be another ten or fifteen years. With luck.

My great-grandmother and her daughter, my great-aunt, managed to stay in their home in the Berkeley foothills until the last cat was dragged out. Ideally, that’s how I’d like to wrap up my life.

Well. We shall see, eh?

Pray for the best. Or something.

Life: Which Direction to Take?

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Not toward the liquor store, evidently.

😀

Imagining that I craved a glass of wine, along about 4:00 p.m. this afternoon I blasted out of the house and sailed toward the little booze store in the shopping center on the northern edge of the ‘Hood.

Got about two blocks along the way to the place and found myself thinking Why the f*** am I doing this????

Seriously: What on earth did I need a bottle of wine for? Or a fifth of whiskey? Or whatever I imagined I was gonna buy…

And, to my infinite surprise and delight, I found myself headed back to the house, empty-handed.

Yes. Turned around and came straight back to the Funny Farm: sans booze purchase.

For reasons I don’t clearly understand, my brain has decided it does not want its human to consume any more booze!

How weird is that, I ask you?

Truth to tell, I don’t think I drink to excess…at least, not by the standards of the crowd I run with.

My parents always had a cocktail or two before dinner: usually Canadian Club. Yes: every afternoon. After I came of age and was home from college, I would join them.

All my boyfriends guzzled merrily.

Dear Ex-Husband and I had a daily bourbon and water before dinner and wine with dinner. And that was for years. 

After he and I parted, the subsequent gentleman friends continued that tradition with me.

Understand: we weren’t getting sh!t-faced. We were just having a tipple or two.

After I found myself living in singletude, I continued that tradition: would break out the whiskey or the wine before dinner and pour a swiggle. Sometimes more than one swiggle….

Then one day it struck me that any more than one of those swiggles was making me…well…not high as a kite, but for sure, mildly inebriated. Maybe even more than mildly. And that was not good when one was loafing around the house all by one’s self.

So I decided to knock it off with the afternoon cocktails. Which I did.

But I continued to have a glass of wine (maybe a glass and a half) with dinner.

Time passed. Eventually it struck me that ANY swiggling was probably NOT a good thing. Dinnertime or no dinnertime.

So I quit. 

Yeah: cold turkey.

Have not had an alcoholic drink in some weeks.

And y’know… I don’t miss it!

That, I consider to be weird. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it was just time to knock off the swiggling and climb aboard the wagon.

Weird or not, it strikes me as a good thing. An exceptionally good thing, come to think of it. Because enjoyment or not, I do think consumption of alcohol — in any incarnation and in any amount — is not a good thing.

The Mormons and the Christian Scientists have got it right: booze in ANY amount just ain’t healthy! And the best thing you can do for yourself, if you’re a drinker to any degree, is to knock it off.

So…that’s what I’ve done. And the weird thing is…I don’t miss it!

Earlier efforts along these lines have indeed left me feeling deprived. But now? Not so much. For reasons I do not fully understand, I really, truly do not have any craving for a swiggle before dinner. Or a glass of wine with dinner.

So…yeah. This is a bit of a new direction for me.  We shall see how far I can travel in it.