Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Another Swampy-Dampy Day

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The sky is clear. The air is WET and SOGGY out there. Horrible, horrible place. Almost as miserable as (un)lovely Ras Tanura, the Saudi Aramco encampment where we spent ten unholy years on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Man, do I hate the Arizona desert. If there were any way I could afford it (and…if my son weren’t ensconced here…) I would be SO outta-here!

Ruby and I just came in from the morning dog-and-human constitutional. Ugh! Thought I was gonna melt into the pavement before we got back!

Well…one good thing about it was that there were hardly any other people out there.

Most folks have better sense than to charge out in this kind of sh!tty weather.

Now we’re waiting for the babysitter my son hired to show up. I told him that I am NOT going to opt the daily exercise hike — it’s the only thing that keeps the spavined hip from freezing right up — and so these women either have to show up an hour later than they normally might or they’ll have to wait in their damn car for me.

I did leave the dear lady a note saying we’d soon be back and suggesting she repair to the local supermarket for a nice cup of coffee (they have an awesome coffee bar there!). No sign of her, though.

Awwwwwwwwww…. What a shame, eh?

Whoever was in the house a day or so ago babysitting and puttering ripped off a lot more stuff than I thought. One of the phone’s handsets is gone, as are a few other miscellaneous desk-top items. Plus the entire phone that was in the living-room desk.

Busy folks, eh?

Anyway, now I’ll have to figure out how to get extensions to replace those phones. And that may be a challenge: they were pretty old. I may have to replace ALL the phone handsets. That would be seven of them.

And you don’t even wanna know how much that’s gonna cost.

I sure don’t….

Seriously: it looks like replacing two of them will run around eighty bucks.

No wonder the dear soul wanted to steal mine. 

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.