Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

And Another Lovely Evening…

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THIS evening made all the lovelier by the absence of perps fleeing cops in helicopters. 😀

Ruby and I perambulated our part of the Hood, plus Lower Richistan and Upper Richistan. What a hoot, right before Christmas.

The locals LOVE to decorate these old houses and their half-acre yards with their mature, beautiful trees. Kids are playing outside. Parents are puttering. Trees and shrubs and eaves and roofs are gussied up with colored lights for Christmas. It’s just a delight to walk around here at dusk.

A December evening in central Arizona really is lovely, except in the (unlikely!!) event of rain. The dusk sky glows in radiant shades of blue and orange. The air is sweetly temperate. The old 1950s houses are graciously handsome. And the kids are….

OHHHH! CORGIIII!!!!!

LOL! Here comes another kid!

My goodness, how the local urchins adore short, plushy, pointy-eared little dogs! Fortunately, she adores them back. So an evening walk can easily morph into a 45-minute love-fest.

That’s life in the ‘Hood. 😀

Sittin’ on the dock of the…uh…pool…

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Staggeringly gorgeous weather. This is one of the best times of the year in Phoenix…and most times of the year are exceptionally good. 😀

Thinking about…

* My father retiring.

He figured he had it made: their little house paid off plus enough in savings to carry him and my mother through the rest of their lives, even after they paid for my college education.

Heh…he didn’t understand about the vagaries of the stock market.

Poor man! He about had a coronary when the market crashed. As far as I could tell, he didn’t understand that if he just held steady, eventually the market would rally and all would be well. And yea verily, that did happen…but not until after he’d expended a great deal of adrenaline. And lost quite the pile of cash.

* The Mayo Clinic and how much I’m coming to distrust it.

They do a blood test on me; then come back to me (and the highly vulnerable son) squalling EEEK EEEK!! You have diabetes! EEEK!!!!!

No, I don’t. Been here, done this…let’s do it again…

Now I present myself to another doctor. “Will you please check me for diabetes? It’s in the family.”

JAB! STAB!! Test test test…

“No. You don’t have diabetes. You have prediabetes, which may possibly some day evolve into diabetes. Or not. This is why you should have annual physicals and they should indeed include testing for diabetes. But so far, you’re not very close to Death’s door.”

Uh huh. Same wind I’ve heard blow before.

* The beloved Young Dr. Kildare

Awww, poor babe. He’s fled the profession again. Come to find out, he’s no longer at the practice where I found him most recently, just up the road in suburban Sunnyslope. They ain’t a-tellin’ about where he’s gone.

My guess is, it’s far, far from the practice of medicine, and pretty damn far from Phoenix, too.

*****

Time passes a bit

****

It’s only 6:00 p.m., but my! What a beautiful — even glorious — evening.

A beautiful and gracious dusk elides into darkness, the room-temperature night air holding steady through the hours.

Arizona: what a place!

 

Gorgeous Morning

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The sun has risen on a magnificent clear day. Ruby the Corgi and I have circumambulated the ‘Hood, and now we’re back in the shack waiting for the water to heat so as to make a pot of awesome coffee. And I think…

I’m thinking about a friend of mine and his wife, who was one of my graduate students…

…he used to get up in the morning and walk to work, while she got up and made trouble. And oh, my goodness! Could that lady make trouble! She went to graduate school to learn the best techniques. Seriously: she had taken an M.A. and then pursued a Ph.D. in political science. 😀

They lived in a handsome patio home within walking distance of a prominent horse track, where he had a moderately prestigious job.  Meanwhile, her day job was to make trouble in the condo association. She was very good at it.

When they started finding death threats taped to their front gate, they decided to sell up and move to a house in a nearby development called Moon Valley. And that place was a piece of junk!

I know, because I helped them repair and paint the interior before they moved in. The south-facing wall was so flimsy and so spectacularly uninsulated that the tile floor was actually hot under my bare feet for a good yard inside the building. And flimsy indeed: you could take your fist and punch a hole through the outside wall. Reach inside, unlock the front door’s deadbolt, and let yourself in.

No kidding: it did happen.

He came down with cancer and died, not at all pleased with his wife’s behavior. She shifted around to a few condos and apartments here in the Valley; then moved back to the Midwest, where her family lived. Can’t find her online, so I figure she must have passed away by now — she was no spring chicken when I knew her, and that was some years ago.

Ah, the thoughts that occupy one’s mind on a gorgeous morning….

A…a…n…d furthermore….

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Here’s what was going on yesterday evening, while Ruby the Corgi and I were doggy-walking and dodging bullets.

{sigh}

Y’know, this stuff is gettin’ old. I’m beginning to think SDXB was right; time to move to Sun City, where you can enjoy the Silence of the Mausoleum, day in and night out.

Having lived in Sun City when my parents moved there, dragging me with them and dumping me at the University of Arizona, I really, really do not want to live there again. So, when SDXB announced he was headed west, I refused to go with him. But sweartagod, I’m beginning to think that may have been a mistake.

At the time SDXB moved out there, it was fairly calm here in North Phoenix, for a big-city neighborhood. But…that’s not so true anymore. It feels like every time you turn around, along comes some new shenanigan. You can’t take the dog for a walk around the block without carrying a pistol with you.

But…my problem with Sun City is that I don’t wanna live in a mausoleum. And that’s what the place feels like. The silence of the tomb reigns. Plus you have that generation’s 1950s-style hatred of minority: the place is Whiteyville with a vengeance.

One of my friends moved out there from the East Valley, delighted at the prospect of living in a place designed for retirees. Problem is, it’s a place designed for white retirees…and he ain’t one of those. The locals ganged up on the poor guy and hounded him until he moved out!

Guess I should have warned him. But as a practical matter, it’s been over 60 years since my parents moved to Sun City. And frankly, I assumed the locals would have come into the 21st century by now. Wrong!

That notwithstanding, I find it a dreary and depressing venue. Weirdly enough, I like the sound of children playing. And even of an occasional teenager blasting the car radio as they cruise up the street. That, plus it’s a 40-minute drive into central Phoenix, where my son lives. I’d never see the guy again!

Well. You don’t have to move to a ghetto for old folks to escape the constant whiz of flying bullets. Other areas of the city are reasonably quiet and safe.

Problem is, they’re a lot more expensive than this part of town. Plus they’re further from M’hijito’s house.

I kinda doubt that I could get enough for this house to buy another house in points east. Might be able to get into a fairly tony North Central high-rise apartment…but then what am I gonna do with Ruby?

Plus…truth to tell, I love this house. It’s a couple of bedrooms too large, but otherwise it’s perfect for me.

  • It’s in a moderately safe neighborhood.
  • It’s close to my preferred shopping venues.
  • It’s easy to keep clean.
  • It has a nice pool…one that, for an exorbitant price, responds with Pool Joy to the ministrations of a hired pool dude.
  • It has gorgeous mature trees. And desert landscaping.
  • It has adequately nice neighbors.

Why on earth would I want to move?

One Good Thing!

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Well, here’s a little miracle: FaM let me in on the big desktop computer, a vast and aging Macintosh.

Normally I use a laptop. The desktop is very beautiful and wonderful, but these days it’s profoundly uncomfortable for me to sit in a wooden chair for hours (or minutes….) in front of an office desk. So I use a MacBook — a laptop — which allows me to play with the computer while laying in bed or loafing in an easy chair. The ancient desktop is working here…which is nice for Funny about Money, but not so great for the 87 gerjillion other password-protected sites. The MacBook’s keyboard has died. Hit a key or type a password, and nothing happens.

Plus the desktop isn’t accepting a bunch of my passwords. I can’t get into my bank account, for example. And no, I can’t get through to those folks on the phone. So I’ll have to drive about seven miles (one-way) to the west side to get to the credit union, stand in line stand in line stand in line and stand in line to get to a teller, explain the current fiasco, try to get them to reset my password…WITHOUT A COMPUTER.

Yes. My laptop — upon which I am almost totally dependent because of the current ailment — just died, here at 5 o’clock in the goddamn morning. The desktop is  not well — notice how it just decided it won’t type a single-end-quote? Lovely. It will enter an apostrophe: ‘  But not in a standard end-quote format.

Then I’ve got to come back here and drive another ten or twelve miles in the OTHER direction — through Phoenix’s cut-throat traffic — to arrive at the august Shemer Museum.

And what a fight awaits there!

I’d signed up, at a friend’s behest, for a pottery-making class. Sounds fun, eh?  Well…it would be…

But of late I’ve developed a new ailment: peripheral neuropathy.

This little horror causes your hands, your feet, your lower legs, your lips, your gums, and even your effin teeth to tingle like mad. Tingling like when a limb “goes to sleep” because you had it in some position that cut off circulation.

Welp… When we got to the pottery class, I discovered that it entails kneading and slapping at a ball of ceramic clay. And y’know what? THAT HURTS!!!

So I dropped the class and asked for my money back. They obliged…. Uh huh.

By depositing the refund in what they claimed was my PayPal account.

Uhhhmmmm….. WHAT Paypal account?

If I have a Paypal account, I’ve never used it. I have NO idea how to access any such thing, nor is there any way to reach a human at Paypal to find out WTF. Not that I can find, anyway.

How TF could they deposit money into a Paypal account that I don’t have?  As far as I know, Paypal doesn’t have my legal name: my parents gave me a bizarre name, guaranteed to make a little kid’s life miserable, and I don’t use it. Therefore there’s no way they could have sent me a refund through Paypal: Paypal would not know who I am if the Shemer sent money there under my legal name. And good luck trying to explain that to some functionary — probably a volunteer — at the Shemer’s front desk.

I’ve tried to call them, and I can’t reach a person there, either.  Trying to get them to call me is probably futile: because of the volume of nuisance phone calls I get, I’ve had to block most of the local area codes, plus many in other states. Phone solicitors have software that blocks their outgoing number and makes it look like they’re calling from a number in your area code. After you reach a certain age, you’re assumed to be a soft touch, so the ba*tards just blitz you with nuisance calls. Literally, until I blocked a series of area codes — many of them local — I’d get 10 or 12 nuisance calls a day! Yeah… I’m pretty sure the Schemer is in one of the blocked area codes, and therefore if they tried to reach me they couldn’t get through.

So now I have to get in my car, buy gas (wrestling with a pump handle HURTS), drive way to hell and gone to the east side — on the border with Scottsdale — barge in, demand to see a person, be told no one will see me (dontcha just know it?), leave my email, and beg the morons to get in touch with me that way. Then turn around and schlep all the way back into town to get to the Best Buy, bearing the laptop, and beg them to fix it.

The one minuscule bright point of light in this mess is that I do have a service contract with Best Buy. So…well…they MAY fix it for free. If they don’t, though, at least they will take it in and try to get it working.

MEANWHILE….

I’m clearly very ill. I need to move fast to be sure my end-of-life affairs are in order. But…but…but… My lawyer died. His partners scattered to the wind. I have no idea how to find someone to take his place. So I’m going to have to grovel to my ex-husband, begging him to find someone else to locate the missing will and/or write a new will. ASAP, so that my son will not face some unholy nightmare when I croak over.

I arranged for a burial niche for my ashes at the church, in their lovely, grassy courtyard that they call the Close. But I can’t see a sign that I paid for it. So now I’ve got to go back there, confess to my stupidity, and get the details or re-arrange that. Then go to a mortuary and arrange for my own cremation.

The prospect of trying to face down the Death Industry is just horrifying…and not something I feel safe in engaging just now. I tried to find out if I could retrieve my parents’ ashes from the shelf in the crypt at Sun City and move them to the Close. What a horror show!!!!!

My father had my mother shelved out there after she died hideously of cancer — not an ordeal I’d like to be reminded of and reminded of and reminded of and…

He arranged to have himself cremated and shelved next to her.

Then he moved himself into an old-folkerie.

There he met the Dragon Lady. She spotted him the instant he walked in the chow line’s door, and she went straight for the kill. Understand: my father was a very handsome man, though he apparently wasn’t aware of how attractive he was. He adored my mother and never looked in any other direction, far’s I know.

* *

Well, by the time he gets to Orangewood, his desired prison for old folks, he’s exhausted and he’s deeply depressed. When Dragon Lady flings herself at him, he is understandably flattered and cheered. Before long, she maneuvered him into a marriage that turned out to be truly depressing. It was just horrible.

He refused to divorce her, even though my then-husband could have gotten him unhitched free of lawyer’s bills, because (said he) “She’ll get all my money!!”

He tried to escape her, for short periods, by renting a room at another old-folkerie, where he would spend whole days in front of the TV. He would tell her he was taking the car to be worked on and was sitting in the Ford dealership’s waiting room all day while this work was allegedly happening. {Yes: she was so stupid she believed it!) But…  One of the inmates at the alternate old-folkerie  knew the Dragon Lady and tattled on him — in front of him, in a manner calculated to humiliate him.

So that was the end of that. Not of the horrid marriage, but of his only way to get a break from that horrid woman.

Well.

It turns out that after he died he had his ashes shelved next to my mother…and…and…lordie! Some time later I learned that, without asking me or saying anything at all, the Dragon Lady’s relatives arranged to have her ashes stashed next to my father’s and my mother’s. On the same goddamn shelf in Sun City.

Far as I can tell, there’s nothing I can do about it. The Sun City mortuary thieves CHARGE you to remove a person’s remains from their ash prison. So it would cost me THOUSANDS of dollars to spring my father and mother’s “cremains” from that place and bring them down to my church, where I want to be interred. Then it would cost some more to get the church to stash them there.

***

Well, the sun is up and I’d better get going: grab some chow, walk the dog, and hit the road. This is gonna be a day from Hell…I feel that in my bones. What a thrill — I can hardly wait to dive into it!

 

De-brrrrrr’ed….

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And now, two days later, it’s lovely and balmy on the back porch. The young people’s wonderful little kids are playing in their backyard, their beautiful kiddy voices wafting over here from their yard. Glorious afternoon! What could be better?

Just back from the Goodyear Tire shop, a couple blocks to the north of the Funny Farm. To my astonishment, I discovered that they have actual mechanics there…  Yeah: just like the beloved guys who used to work for Chuck, before he got decrepit and had to check himself into an old-folkerie.

That was an enormous loss: Chuck was a Godsend. But alas, none of us lives forever….and Chuck was a generation ahead of me.

By sheer luck, about the time we could see there was no substitute for Chuck at Chuck’s, I happened to stumble upon that Goodyear place. I’d assumed all they did was sell tires…that would be why it’s called “Goodyear Tires,” right?

Nay, verily! Turns out the place is full-service repair shop!

Wooo HOOO!

Not only that, but it’s within walking distance of my house!

No more sitting around the shop’s waiting room for three hours! Or putting up friends to drive me down to drop off the tank-mobile at Chuck’s, and then come get me and drive me back down there in the afternoon rush hour. Wa Hoooo!

Heh…. We learned an amazing factoid about Chuck’s:

When my family lived in lovely Saudi Arabia, my father got a three-month leave between each two-year contract. His idea of a “vacation,” gawd help us, was to fly home (a 24-hour flight across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean), buy a car in New York (that was his special treat to himself!), drive across the US as fast as he could go; stop in Texas for a week or two to visit his brother & family; then drive drive drive some more to reach Berkeley, California — there to visit my mother’s relatives — and then SHOOT back across the continent to New York, unload the car, jump on another plane, and fly back to Dhahran.

LOL! With vacations like this, who needs nightmares?

Turns out that during this period, Chuck’s was the only repair garage in Phoenix!

Yeah. Phoenix was a wide spot in the road at the time. And…whenever we hit Phoenix, my father would take his fancy new vehicle to a repair shop (a repair shop??? make that the repair shop) to be spiffed up so we could make it through the rest of the trip!

No kidding!

So over all those years, at one point or another we did business with Chuck.

And you couldn’t do business with a finer man. This world is much diminished without him.

You were a good man, Chuck!

And now here we are in the fuckin’ 21st century, no doubt surrounded by good men. But HOW, dear gawd, do we find them?

Well, despite my having dropped out of The Present, I think (hope) I’ve found a small tribe of them. We shall see, over time.

{ahem!}

If that much time remains to us…