Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

And I’m Staying Here…WHY???

by

This garden spot is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm: two, maybe three blocks. In fact, I walk by there every time I stroll up to the liquor store to grab a six-pack of Guinness.

Any question why I’m beginning to think it’s time to move away from here?

This is far from the first such episode we’ve seen in past weeks.

Do I REALLY want to stay here?  If so…why? And what will change my mind?

Well, I hafta tell you: it ain’t a-gonna take many more episodes like this to convince me that it’s time to move along. As far along as possible…

We never used to see incidents like this. Yeah: burglaries. Who doesn’t have them? Yeah: car theft. You leave your car unlocked on the street and ya get what you ask for. Yeah: even the occasional home invasion (not usually to the benefit of the prowler, BTW).

But lookee here. Nineteenth and Dunlap is about three blocks north of the Funny Farm. The apartment complexes to the west of Nineteenth have changed demographically: not just racially but economically. The latter change has not been for the best.

I’ve arrived at the point where I won’t walk around up there — certainly not without a male companion, or at least a large dog.

Head south along the same main drag and…hmmmm…  Well, you feel a little less unsafe. But if you’re on foot, you’ll likely choose to cut through the neighborhood until you’re forced to come out on 19th to reach your destination. And, truth to tell, after you’ve made that journey a couple of times, you’re likely to choose NOT to go to the corner that hosts the desired stores.

If my son weren’t lurking around — he wants me to keep this house — by now I would have sold up and moved to another neighborhood. Indeed, these circumstances ARE the main reason SDXB chose to move to Sun City, a.k.a. Drabtown.

Where would I go?

Scottsdale.
Some parts of Tempe.
Prescott.
Berkeley, California.
Some parts of San Francisco.

By and large…. Truth to tell, there just aren’t many places where I want to live. Certainly not so much that I’m willing to pour money into a move, yank up roots, and take off into the sunrise.

I don’t wanna move, not by a long shot. But take a long hard look at it, and you think it’s time to get outta here while you still can. Without a large loss of cash investment. While you still have better choices to live in town. Before you have to go to the far side of the moon to get away from the crime and growing blight.

WAIT.WAIT.WAIT.WAIT!  😮

Return to the Land of Zillow and take another look. Therein, you see a slightly different picture…and HOOOLEEE Moley!

Here’s a shack, three blocks to the east of the Funny Farm: $875,000. (Uhhh…I paid about 200 grand for this place, and felt I was being gouged…)

This hovel has a rather tonier address: much closer to FancyDan Central Avenue. But is an address really worth EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY GRAND???

Ahem…you realize…that place is in Sunnyslope, renowned until late as a slum…

And speaking of holeee whatever, this hovel is right around the corner from the Funny Farm: OVER A MILLION DOLLARS!

JAYzus!  Apparently the antics and the frolics going on around here are not affecting property values. Or if they are…you don’t wanna know what houses cost in safer neighborhoods.

Hmmm…. Maybe instead of a house in a different part of town, mayybeee what is needed is a larger dog.

I’ve got Ruby the Corgi, of course: she will alert whenever she hears an untoward sound. But she weighs all of about 20 pounds. A German shepherd, she ain’t.

Must say…at this age I don’t want to have to wrangle a dog that size. But I could handle one that was professionally trained.

On the other hand, with my honored son having confiscated my car, I don’t know how I would get such a beast to the vet — even the clinic right down the road — if it got hurt or suddenly took ill. I can carry Ruby to that veterinarian. To get an 80- or 90-pound fiendish beast there, I’d have to recruit someone with a car and some physical strength.

Hmmmmmm….

Well, I do have a thing that contains chunks of lead instead of teeth….  But to use it well and accurately, I’d have to get some practice again, and stay in practice. And that would entail getting down to the gun range at least a couple times a week. And…yeah…that would entail taxi rides, and all the hassle pertaining thereunto.

A shotgun would do the job… But truth to tell, I haven’t been near one of those in many a year. Don’t even own one. That means I’d not only have to get out on the desert and practice using the thing, I’d have to get the thing. And again: traipsing to the range and banging away at targets is not quite how I’d like to spend the remaining time allotted to me.

Hmh. Looks like FAM’s site has crashed. It won’t upload an image. Let’s try to post…but save this copy to disk.

And so…awaaaayyyy!

A Long Time Till Dawn of a New Day

by

LOL! It’s 3:30 in the freaking morning!  How DO I manage to wake up at these crazy hours?

Ohhh well: Last night I got excused, once and for all, from the annoying hup-hup-hup physical therapy sessions. So that’s a relief, anyway: for me and for my son, who was having the schlep me over there and waste the evening waiting for me to get done.

So of late I learned that lifting fingernails — one of my current symptoms — can indicate diabetes.

No kidding… Diabetes is the family disease. I’ve been told several times over the years that I have “pre-diabetes” — whatever that means. None of our august physicians at the Mayo have condescended to explain what it does mean, if anything. And of course, with my son swamped in work and unhappy beyond words with me, there’s no way I would feel comfortable pestering him to drive me out there.

It’s almost an hour’s drive…two hours round trip. So you don’t even wanna know what a cab would cost.

There’s a neighborhood clinic a couple blocks down the road, though. Tomorrow I’ll walk down there and ask if they’ll test me to see if the prediabetes has evolved to full-on diabetes.

Speaking of the ‘Hood, here’s a fine event that happened within about two blocks of the Funny Farm.

Ugh! The apartments along Main Drag West have turned into serious slums. I really need to move away from here. Not a propitious event for not a propitious time…

I’m too damn sick — by a factor of about 110! — to find another place to live, pack up my house, haul out of here, unpack everything, put everything away, and set up housekeeping and yard maintenance somewhere else. So even if I wanted to move (which I sure don’t), I can’t.

Plus I believe M’hijito wants this house. In that belief, I do want him to have it.

It’s a lovely little house — not so little, actually: four bedrooms, a roomy yard, a pool, a corner lot… This is not something I want to lose, and not something I want to cut off from his future possession.

However, if the area is going to He!! on a Handcart, it would be foolish to stay here much longer. I probably should be looking for safer digs…or maybe for a place that will hold its value after I finally croak over and M’hijito inherits it.

So far, none of the neighbors seem to be in any hurry to move. The thing to do is to keep an eye on what the Romanian Landlord does, since he is smarter than the average snail and is not about to stand around watching his real estate investments go down the drain. Plus his daughter lives two houses down…I very much doubt that he would allow her to stay here if he thought the place presented much risk.

Surely, I don’t want to move: a sentiment multiplied times 100% by the presence of the weird pre-diabetes ailment. Or whatever it is. Really, I’m too sick to pack up my house, drag across the city, unpack, and organize a whole new dwelling.

On the one hand, I can only hope that I’ll die before things get a lot worse here. And before the house loses a lot of value for my son.

On the other hand, it is getting scarier and scarier here: the slum apartments; the stiff laying across the entrance to the neighborhood school; the constant cop copter fly-overs, the cops getting shot at, neighbors paying the city(!!) to gate off the alleys; the endless serenade of sirens and roaring engines….  I dunno. If I could move, I would. But I can’t…so I won’t.

Round and Round We Go….

by

Whatever it is, it…

…doesn’t work
…has to be done over again
…needs a technician to deal with it
…needs my son to wrangle the technician
…is gonna cost an arm and a leg and another arm!

Air-Conditioning Dude just climbed down from damn near an hour on the roof. M’hijito was struggling to get away from his job so he could come down here and wrangle…but…apparently that was not feasible. No sign of the kid, no word from his precincts…oh damn. And now AC Dude needs to move along.

AC Dude is waiting in his truck for the kid to show up. He did say he had some paperwork he needs to do…but after that?????

We also had Plumber Dude in the wings: no sign of him.

Y’know…it looks like my dotage has caught up with me. Seriously: I just no longer can ride herd on workmen and doctors and lawyers and veterinarians and thisses and thattas.

Earlier today, I was thinking…hmmm…. Maybe it’s time for me to sell this house and move into an apartment.

Not fond of apartment living, frankly — been there, done that, and done it and done it and done it and…don’t wanna do it again. But it does have its advantages:

* The landlord deals with repairs and workmen
* Someone else has to be home to intercept those worthies
* Most of the infrastructure repairs are covered by the rent
* You don’t have to hang around all day to meet and greet said workmen

******

At any rate, my Excellent Son arrived soon to wrangle the beloved AC Dude. 😀  Seriously, both men rank among The Best, far’s I’m concerned.

Dear Son knew exactly what to describe to our guy. Bless’im! You don’t even wanna KNOW what I might have said to the fella.

Thanks to the clear instructions, though, AC Dude quickly grasped the problem and in less than an hour, had the thing fixed.

What a job, though! All told, from arrival to exit, it did take him darn a good hour of rassling around.

Y’know, this is one good reason — maybe THE best reason — for me not to sell this house and move into an apartment or some sort of old-folkerie. M’hijito should get this house. It’s just the ticket for him: roomy and handsomely renovated and smack in the middle of a passing tony neighborhood and within walking distance of the lightrail (which will drop you off right in front of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Grocery Store…) and within walking distance of three major supermarkets. Really….we need to see that he gets the place when I shuffle on down the road.

***

And along those lines, recently I learned that the old folks’ prison called The Beatitudes  — just a few miles straight down Main Drag West from my house, and within easy walking distance of M’Hijito’s place — will send people to your home to babysit you!

That is to say: I may be able to get one-on-one oversight, food prep, some drivings-around, and whatnot without having to sign over my freedom to one of those awful jails for the elderly!

Whether they charge a lot more to come to your home and ride herd on you than they do to put you up in old-folks’ prison is yet to be discovered. My father had to fork over everything he got from the sale of his handsome little house in Sun City to get into the gawdawful old-folks’ jail where he consigned himself. So I imagine this supposed service will be similarly pricey.

But if the cost is the same…any day I’d druther be able to stay in my own home than have to move into a noisy, stinky, annoying zoo for the elderly. So: that issue moves to the front burner. It would be hugely reassuring to know I could hire out my end-of-life care, rather than having to move into a “facility.”

Ugh. What a society we live in!

Surely the End Is in Sight

by

So, so sick. One can only hope this comes to an end fairly soon.

Not that I’m in any hurry to shuffle off this infamous mortal coil…but…dayum this old-age stuff hurts!

Need to find a way to get down to the nursing home/old-age factory, there to talk with the operators and figure out how to arrange to get myself in there when the time comes (which, I fear, is nigh…) and how to pay for it.

Horrors.

First horror: I truly detest institutional living. Hated every goddam minute of living in the college dorms. And now it looks like I’m going to have to end my life in exactly that kind of setting.

Yeah: hating every goddam minute of every goddam day.

Next horror: those places take everything you have in exchange for baby-sitting you into the Next World. And I do NOT want to have to fork over all the money my father left me and all of my own savings plus the value of this house for the privilege of being baby-sat into the Next World. I want that inheritance to go to my son, not to some baby-sitting factory.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Wonder Cleaning-Lady apparently spent some time coming into infirm people’s homes and baby-sitting them. Next time I see her, I’ll have to ask her about that, and where she worked.

It would be ideal if I could hire someone to come in and baby-sit me, at least during the day and at least until I’m a lot closer to the finish line. But it’s unclear to me whether that’s possible and, if so, how much it would cost.

Everything you have: that’s how much it’ll cost. Dontcha just  know?

And no, my son is in no position to chauffeur me into the Next World. He has a JOB. Can you imagine???

And it’s a pretty demanding job: his nose is on the proverbial grindstone all day, every day…and then some. So…somehow I’ve got to find some way get cared for without wrecking his life. And preferably without making me any more miserable than absolutely necessary.

So…I have no idea how to handle this. Asked down at the church, figuring social service work is a large part of a cleric’s job. They didn’t have a clue.

What would help a lot would be if I would just keel over dead, with a minimum of hassle and pain. Flop down on the living-room floor and be done with it.

BUT…we have this little problem of the dog. If I fell off the cliff into the Next World, she would be left here alone, with no one to feed her and care for her. And since nobody gives a damn whether I live or die, she might not survive until someone noticed.

I guess I could find a new home for her now. But gosh, I don’t wanna do it. Just now she’s my only companion and, frankly, about my only friend. If I give her to someone else, I really will be all alone.

All alone in an institutional setting. Doesn’t that sound jolly?

Roaaaarrrrrrr!

by

Gosh, what a…classically Arizona winter day. How strange, how weird, how…funny.

Coming on to 10:30 of an early November morning. Ruby and I go out front to oversee The Property. Yeah: get Gerardo to fix this. Get him to trim that. Admire the other plant. Loaf, loaf, and loaf…

The sky is deep gray, coated in thick, non-raining clouds. This makes for a strangely beautiful morning, hard to understand why. But one supposes “why” doesn’t matter, eh?

Off in the distance, a steady RROAARRRR rumbles up toward the ‘Hood from the southeast side. It’s the song of the the commercial airlines taking off and landing at Sky Harbor Airport.

Living closer to that place — where my stepsister’s house was, for example — would be even more annoying than living in Sun City, where one is blasted from dawn to dusk by jet fighters roaring in and out of Luke Air Force Base. Purely by accident, I happened to stumble into my present neighborhood: staidly middle-class, centrally located in spades, and far enough from the local noise-makers to be relatively quiet.

Seriously: I am so pleased with this house that I absolutely positively do NOT move out of here when I reach a stage of such decrepitude that I need a baby sitter.

And really: considering how much it costs to live in an old-folkerie (the place where my father retired took all the proceeds from the sale of a very nice suburban house, and then pretty much cleaned out his savings accounts), it does seem to me that rather than move into a retirement “home” (snort!!), you might be better off to hire staff to come in and care for you in your present, paid-off manse. Especially if you manage to die in a timely way.

Seriously — sorry, I realize Americans are scared of talking about Death, but do get over it! ‘Cause we ain’t a-gunna get away from it!

Just as seriously, it strikes me that with the roof over your head paid for, you could be better served by your own hired folks than you would be living in one of those old-folks’ prisons.

Luz — Cleaning Lady from Heaven — remarked at one point that she’d had a job like that.

So I’m gonna ask her who she worked for, what she did, and how much she got paid. Learn who to hire and where to find them when you reach the point where you really can’t care for yourself, reliably and safely. Then start looking around, talking with employers, and figuring out how to get such a person on the private payroll.

***

Ahhh, what a nice little neighborhood, indeed. The WonderAccountants — who live straight across the street from the Funny Farm — just installed a new set of exterior windows. They apparently called the same guys who installed mine several years ago, and it looks like they selected the same model of windows, or one very much like mine.

They put up classy wrought-iron fake shutters on either side of each window, far more sophisticated than anything I could dream up… And now the front of their house REALLY looks nice. They should be amply pleased with the result.

They say that double-paned windows save you a bundle on AC and heating bills. Couldn’t prove it by me: I’d say the monthly power bills are about the same as they were before I replaced my single-panes.

Still, a double-paned window would be a bit more hassle to break into, so that would up your security level. And a perp would have to make a fair amount of noise to cut or break out such a window, thereby alerting you in plenty of time to dodge out a back door and run off down the street.

***

{sigh} I love this neighborhood. I love the neighbors. And I love my house. GOT to find ways to stay here until I croak over.

The prospect of being locked up in one of those holding pens for old folks fills me with horror. Honestly, I would rather be dead. (No: I’m not contemplating suicide anytime soon, so please don’t panic.)

But y’know….life is short. We only have around 70 or 80 years in this sylvan vale. So why spend any part of it in misery, just because you’re getting on toward the end of the road? Locking up a person in a holding pen to await the end is forcing that person to spend the last part of her or his life in misery.

How, really, is that the right thing to do?

Would it not be better…would it not be morally preferable…to hire someone to come in to your home and care for you until you totter over into the grave? Or at least until you fully and permanently lose consciousness?

That’s no easy job — caring, not tottering, that is. My father worked like an animal caring for my mother in the last dreadful weeks of her tobacco-poisoned life. But…well…he did her a magnificent service.

I watched him die in the old-folkerie where he banished himself….and to tell you the truth, his best friend there did himself a favor when he took a pistol and blew out his own brains.

My father found the guy’s corpse.

What a horror! But…why not make it possible for a person who knows Death is on its way and knows insurmountable suffering will accompany it…why not make it possible to choose your own exit door?

*** *** *** 

Darkness has fallen
Dog has frolicked
Human is pooped

*** *** *** 

And here we are, once again, loafing in an easy chair by the breeze of an electric fan and the light of an elegant old electric lamp.

😀

What a day!!! One depressing thought after another. One depressing predicament to cope with after another.

Ohhhhh well.

Tomorrow’s another day. Uhm… I hope…

Roar…Roar…Roaaaarrrr….

by

Argha! Another cop helicopter, whirling around over the neighborhood to the north of us. At least, for a change, this one is not hovering right over the house. /eyeroll/

The ‘Hood isn’t exactly Crime Central, but neither is it a place of sweetness and tranquility. We reside on the southern edge of a suburb called Sunnyslope, which is Crime Central, swarming with drug dealers, delinquents, burglars…and even the occasional murderer.

This fine circumstance brings us cops. And cops. And more cops. Many of them riding in noisy, buzzy helicopters. Dare to go to bed, dare to go to sleep, and you’ll bring on the serenade: BRRRRooooaaarrrrrrrr…

Reassuring in that it lets you know the policia are on the job. Un-reassuring in that it lets you know they’re chasing some sh!thead around your neighborhood.

Get up. Walk through the house. Check that all the doors are locked. Turn on the outside porch lights, the better for the cops to chase their prey.

These regularly recurring events lead me to regularly reconsider whether I want to stay here.

Do I want to move back out to Sun City?

Ugh, no!

Okayyy…. Do I want to move down into the neighborhood where M’hijito lives? 

Hm. Those houses are 20+ years older than these, poorly insulated, expensive to run. Right in the middle of everything, which is cool in some ways — you can walk to the spectacular AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store from his house. But at what cost?

> Noise
> More Noise
> Still More Noise
> Traffic
> Traffic
> Still More Traffic
> Astronomical utility bills
> Higher property taxes
> Insane water bills
> Bums sleeping in your yard…

Naaaahhhh…. Ain’t goin’ there!

The Valley does offer other suburbs and other neighborhoods that are a little less…active, shall we say. Fountain Hills, for example. Moon Valley. Sun City: inactive to the point of stasis. But is that really worth spending thousands of dollars on selling the shack, buying another one somewhere else, and moving?

I think not.