Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Soggy Doggy Day

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{glub!} Rain, rain, and more rain, pouring down from a lovely pearlescent gray sky. Dawg and Human are stuck in the house. From faraway Luke Air Force Base, we’re serenaded by the constant roar of fighter jets, practicing their take-offs and landings. Birds outside the back door squabble. The pool system kicks on: seems to be working OK.

Way, waaayyy too wet to take Her Dogship for her morning doggy-walk. Too wet for the Human to poke her own schnozz out the front door. Or the back door. Or the side door.

We’re trapped!

Carless in Gaza as we are here, now that M’Hijito has kiped my car, we have no way of even getting to the grocery store.

Well. That’s wrong: we could impose on the Uber driver who lives across the street. Wouldn’t he be pleased?

Or we could walk through the rain and the puddles, getting home good & wet and good & cold. Naaaaahhhh…

We could pester M’Hijito to take us to the store, since this predicament is his doing. That would interrupt the work he does for his employer….hmmmm…. Why do I suspect it might be better to swim on over to the grocery store all by my little self?

But weirdly: WHAT a beautiful day. 

Actually, when you live in Arizona, you think clouds are so rare and so exotic that whenever they lurk overhead, you fall into a trance of awe. 😀  It is, one must admit, a strange kinda place for human habitation. Made stranger by the presence of humans… 😉

Go Ahead: Just TRY to Put Your Feet Up and Relax!

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Feed the dog • Pick up the dishes, and • put them in the dishwasher •  Pour the coffee • Lock the back screen door and • open the kitchen door to let in some cool, clean(ish) air • Find the computer • Peruse the latest news • Check Wunderground’s (unremarkable) weather prediction for the day • Settle into an easy chair to swill coffee and…

…and you get RRRRROOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!

Ayup! Another Cop Copter chase.

They’re zooming around just to the north of us — about four or six blocks, I’d say.

Jayzuz! There is never a fukkin’ dull moment around this place!!!!

Well. That’s not fair. Ruby and I circumnavigated the park as dawn cracked this morning. Except for one idiot who deliberately tried to run us down in his car (no mistaking the deliberate part), it was quiet. No cops around there, either, to see the charging commuter.

Ugh! Makes Sun City look good!

Well. No…hafta take that back. IMHO, nothing makes Sun City look good. A dreary mausoleum a pleasant place to live does not make.

Yesterday the neighbors had a grand birthday party for their pre-teen kids. What fun! A joyous mob of them running around the street, which had been closed off for the festivities.

Why on earth would you want to live someplace where that couldn’t happen??

 

Kids!!! <3 Kids!!!

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Joy! The ‘Hood gets better and better! Because..NOW we’re getting KIDS!

Gosh, what could possibly BE better than a passel kids playing out front?

The neighbors have thrown a birthday party for one of their short set. Maybe a dozen wonderful pre-teens out there, running around and partying and laughing.

Ruby and I set out for a walk. As we pass by the chivaree, a passel of short stuff comes running out to dote on the corgi. 😀

“Can we pet her? Can we pet her?”

LOL! You imagine she’ll let you get away without petting her???

So now we have a new crowd of lifelong friends. Too, too fun. 

Yes, I do love this neighorhood.
Why d’you ask? 
😀

Arf! We say…ARF!

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Back again from traipsing around the neighborhood: pillar to post to pillar. Dawg and I marched from here to the shops east of Main Drag Central; then home and into the Shack.

Dawg takes up her post on the doggy bed, in the lovely air-conditioning. Human goes back out to hit the Sprouts and waypoints.

Human has gotten surprisingly skilled at repelling panhandlers. Hot diggety!

Sprouts: amply supplied with nummies, and — more importantly — with beer. So now we’re handsomely armed for dinner.

***

Ahhh, Little Dog! What a lovely little dog. 

In hideous Saudi Arabia — where the Human grew up — we weren’t allowed to have dogs. Rabies, y’know.

Actually, the jackals (which invaded the camp after dark every night) carried the rabies. But if your dog got into a squabble with one of those canine intruders, your dog was gonna be exposed to rabies, and that was gonna be the end of your dog. And you were going to enjoy THE most gawdawful round of anti-rabies shots you can imagine.

Pain, pain, and more pain: from every direction.

So we didn’t have dogs out there.

And therein lies one of the chief of the many reasons you couldn’t pay me to go back to that place. 😮

***

So here we are, loafing in the living room…again. Ruby and I have become quite expert at loafing!

It’s a warm but not a hot day. Tolerable enough for traipsing. School has come and gone, so kids are outside playing: more than tolerable enough.

Sometimes I think I would like to move…

But where to?

Well: first choice would be to a neighborhood closer to M’Hijito’s house.

Heeeeee!  Wouldn’t he be pleased?

Well, before I chase him off to Payson, we’d need to rethink that idea.

Another possibility would be into the residential area adjacent to the area occupied by the Beloved AJ’s Fancy-Dan Grocery Store. Just imagine being able to walk to the best grocery store in the city! Whenever you feel like it!!

That also would be, in theory, within walking distance of M’Hijito’s house.

The location, though, is near one of the busiest intersections in the city, and right up the street from a complex of not one, not two, but three high schools. So…well…you can imagine the noise level!!

Don’t think I wanna move there.

So…ya look around and ya look around and ya look around…and eventually you think I don’t wanna move anywhere away from here! 

Yea verily: by sheer, raw luck, you happened to buy a house in THE ideal corner of the city. Truth to tell, there is no “where to” to move to.

What luck, eh!?

Ahhh! And now to LOAF!

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Dayum, but Olde Age has its compensations. 😀  The biggest is NOT HAVING TO GET DRESSED AND TRUDGE OFF TO WORK!!!

Wheeee! Here we are, dawn’s early light cheerily glowing in the window. The Dawg and the Human stuffed with breakfast. Human lingering over a cup of hot coffee.

Beloved Pool Dude has been here and gone, leaving the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money spotlessly, sparkling clean. Bless that wonderful man!

Ruby thinks he IS wonderful. And weirdly, she seems to know what day of the week it is. On Pool Dude Day, she lurks by the back door, waiting…waiting…waiting for the Moment of Joy when he shows up.

And yea verily, on that morning he does show up. Then we have a Magnificent Moment of Doggy Joy, after which Ruby must tear outside and stand there at the pool fence’s gate, admiring his magnificence.

Apparently many of these guys are ex-convicts. Pool cleaning is one of the…uhm…trades for which Arizona prisons train inmates. So, theoretically, when they get back on the street they’ll have some other way to earn money than by stealing your car, eh?

At any rate, I have no idea what about the guy makes him seem so splendid to a corgi. But without doubt, she thinks he’s about the best Human ever to stumble across the surface of the earth.

Whenever I get off my duff, I do need to trudge down to the neighborhood clinic to…uhmmmm…. wwwaaaaitaminit!

I wuz about to say, to try to get the doc to do something about the constant maddening ITCH in my feet and legs, and as the computer cruises happily across the Internet it lands on a page that tells us...

Vitamin B12: Common Side Effects (Oral Supplements and Injections)

  • Headache
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Mild diarrhea
  • Itching or a skin rash/acne
  • Dizziness
  • Tingling sensation in hands and feet (peripheral neuropathy)
  • Weakness or fatigue 

And which Vitamin B-gulper do we know who has a mad itch and crazy-making tingling in the hands and feet?

For.
The.
Luv.
of.
GAWD!!!!!

Manufacturers of OTC nostrums should be required to list ALL a drug’s potential side effects on the label! In 14-point type!!!

Man! I just stumbled across that li’l blurb. Wasn’t looking for it. And now know why my hands and feet and lips and gums feel like an electric current is buzzing through my body.

GodDAMMIT. I wish I’d known this two weeks ago. 

Ugh!!! Wonder how long it’ll take for this stuff to wear off… Bare minimum two or three days, whaddaya bet? More likely a week or two.

Wouldn’t you think that by now, having arrived in the middle of Olde Age, I would KNOW BETTER????? 

Yea verily, by now shouldn’t I have figured out that just about every damn pill I drop down my throat has some untoward side effect?

Argh!! My Christian Scientist crackpot relatives may not have been crackpots, after all. Maybe they had somethin’ there…

Too Gorgeous to be Miserable…

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Seriously, this afternoon — along about 3:00 p.m. — is SO mellow, so soft, so clean, and SO beautiful that even the plague of little maladies fails to make one miserable. Just…incredibly…lovely!

Maladies? Ohhh…just a few…

Peripheral neuropathy: frantic buzzing and burning in the hands, soles of the feet, and lips. Hurts. Makes you crazy.

Fingernails: lifting from the nail beds. No indication of why, or of what one can do about it.

Awful sore and itchy spot on the tail end. Dunno what to do about it. Rubbing in an analgesic does…hmmm…essentially nothing.

As of this morning, the hip pain was gone. But now it’s back! No idea why.

Dared to try to sit out on the back porch to take in this gorgeous afternoon.

B-a-a-d idea!

Place is swarming with mosquitos. Forthwith, had to dart back inside. Slam the screen door. Slam the kitchen door. RUN AWAY!!!

###

Thinking about my father: the jobs he had, how hard he worked to support me and my mother.

He was a tanker captain and, when he worked a shore job, a harbor pilot.

Maneuvering oil tankers across the ocean paid him well. But the job took him away from home for weeks on end. And…y’know…weirdly, the man was basically a homebody. A harbor pilot’s job is dangerous and demanding…he must have been exhausted most of the time during the ten years he did that in Saudi Arabia.

When he finally retired to Sun City, he and my mother had…ohhh…about 18 months together until the cancer sticks she’d smoked in gay, stinking abandon since she was 16 years old ganged up on her and killed her. She died horribly of tobacco-induced cancer shortly after they settled into their Dream Home in the suburbs of Phoenix.

They’re both gone now. The only relative I have left is my excellent son. And…heh…that does put some strain on him, the poor man! 😀

Seriously: he works ferociously for the insurance company that employs him. I would go back to teaching freshman comp if I had to work that hard!!! It doesn’t leave him much time or energy for riding herd on an ailing old bat. So…well…I try to keep from belly-aching too much. But he does know I’m ailing…and that the indications of that ailing do NOT bode well.

Oh, well. The sooner I croak over, the sooner I stop hurting. Right? 😀