Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

How Did They Live That Long?

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Old age is creepin’ up, y’know. Where the heck did THAT come from, eh????

Welp…as I get older, I do find myself wondering…

* How DID I get this old?
* How much older will I get? and
* Do I care?
* What can I do to stay in my home until I croak over: to avoid being locked up in an old-age prison?

My father thought old-age homes were The Business. He tried to persuade my mother to move out of their pretty little house in Sun City to enter an institution called Orangewood, here in north Central Phoenix.

She would have none of it. And she succeeded in resisting until she croaked over from the cancer brought on by her incessant tobacco-puffing: right at about the age of 65. The minute he got her urnful of ashes installed in the local mortuary, he was out the door! 

Sold their sweet Sun City house and moved himself into that Orangewood prison and felt mighty proud that he’d done so.

His best friend there shot himself in the head. You’d think that might have told him something, wouldn’t you? Maybe it did, but he had the sense not to articulate the lesson out loud.

He married the Wicked Witch of the West there…apparently in an effort to revive his reasonably content life built, over 32 years, with my mother.

That didn’t work.

The evil bitch made him utterly miserable. But he was afraid to divorce her, because, he moaned, she’ll get all my money.

The idea that some things may be more important than money was beyond him. Besides, he apparently was afraid to make a move in that direction, partly because the new wife was extremely popular at the Institution and divorcing her would have made him a pile of sh!t in the other inmates’ estimation. He didn’t feel he could afford to move someplace else…and he probably was right.

So he stayed horribly married to her.

At any rate, my mother died fairly young, partly because of her incessant cigarette-huffing; partly because of malnutrition while she was growing up; and  no doubt because of the amoebic dysentery she caught while we were in  Saudi Arabia and the unholy treatment for it that she was subjected to.

This left him alone in Sun City…and for a guy who had spent his entire adult life in institutional settings, “alone” did NOT make it. So he moved out of the house and into the old-folkery within weeks of her death.

What a nightmare!

Well, I”m not up for rehearsing all that here. Just bear in mind: when your spouse dies, don’t be in any hurry to find a replacement!

My mother died within days of turning 65. He was 84 when he died — not bad for a male who had a bitch of a hard life. But…that left him with some 20 years without the the love of his life.

Rather promptly after moving into the Old Folkery, he married the Dragon Lady. Big mistake. She was one of the great Bitches of the 20th Century, and she made him utterly miserable.

But he refused to divorce her, because “she’ll get all my money!”

Arrrrghhhh! Daddy, some things are more important than money. 

But as a practical matter, that old saw did not apply, where he was concerned. He’d worked like an animal all his life to accrue that money, and as a practical matter, there really wasn’t anything more important to him than his money.

Nor did he seem to understand that, with my husband a partner in one of the Southwest’s most powerful law firms, the Dragon Lady was not about to get all his precious money. He never did get that message, so between what he perceived as social pressure and his fear of losing his savings, he stayed in what can best be described as a nightmarish marriage.

I wish I’d had the nerve to tell him that the witch was not gonna get all his beloved money, because his daughter — moi — was married to a lawyer who would crush the old bat like a cockroach. But I didn’t.

So he stayed married, miserably. Died, miserably. Left me with about half the money he had come away with at my mother’s death. That precious money.

/eyeroll/

None o’ my bidness, eh?

Well, anyhow… Sometimes I do wonder how, given the gawdawful stress my father faced at the end of his life, how on earth he survived into his 80s. Poor man! How he must have suffered…

I, thanks to him and thanks to good luck, am not suffering. And hope not to, between now and the looming end of my life. Keep the hassles away from my son, and leave all the cash and property to him as his inheritance. Just let me live out the last few years, weeks, and days of my life in peace.

If there is any such thing….

Hot and Hellish

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Lovely, lovely Arizona. 

At 3:30 in the afternoon, it’s 108 in the shade of the back patio. And overcast. 

Got that? 108 under a blanket of gray clouds.

What a place! Almost as lovely as lovely Arabia. Ick!

My son, figuring to protect me from myself (somebody has to, right?), brought over a few cans of beeroid.

And “beeroid“is the operative term: the damn stuff is non-alcoholic!

😀

LOL!  

Actually, in the flavor department, it’s not bad. Tastes much like real beer…a little bland, but otherwise acceptable.

WhatEVER…I am NOT in the mood to venture out, on foot, (the kid still has my car) to hike through cloudy (gawdawful!) heat and wind for the sake of a six-pack of beer.

On the other hand, neither am I in the mood to deprive my little self.

So here we are, perched on the bed, peering through the back windows as we watch the storm pile up, and…swilling. Beeroid, is what we’re swizzling..

Tried to talk M’hito into coming over for dinner. He, being no fool, was having NONE OF IT. So…okay…there’s some work I don’t hafta do.

And instead of that steak in the fridge, I reckon we’ll have some spaghetti. Well, I will: that dawg will turn up her cute little nose at spaghetti. 😀

By dinner time, this storm will have rolled into our parts, and we won’t want to be dodging raindrops to grill a slab of meat.

Hmmmmm….  Actually….that was prob’ly a smart move on The Kid’s part. This weather is growing worse with mathematical élan! Wind is picking up fast. Ugh! Looks like we’ll both be glad we stayed hunkered down in our respective caves. Temp.: 108 degrees. Wind speed: a mere 9 mph…just now… But tree tops are waving in the wind, a standard sign that soon the wind will be whipping us all around.

***

Uggleee afternoon. The sky’s the color of mud.

Sure am glad I don’t have to go anywhere this afternoon. And especially glad I won’t be driving home from work in a storm through rush-hour traffic.

Retirement: it’s the business!! 😀

 

 

 

And…you thought “hotter than the hubs” was hot?

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Hah! we say to that…

{chortle!}  7:19 a.m.: Just back from the morning Dawg Walk.

It seems hotter than the Hubs of Hades. But in fact…it’s not. In fact, it’s only 90 degrees out on the patio.

That seeming, I expect, is occasioned by the fact that it’s a bit damp out there. The air is hazy: not overcast, but…kinda fuzzy-looking.

Ruby and I circumnavigated the neighborhood, from the upper reaches of Richistan to the humbler, Sun City-style bungalows that characterize our parts. Indeed, my house was built by the same developer who brought us that sylvan ghetto for old folks. And once you know that, you can see the resemblance. Kinda.

WhatEVER. Even though it’s not hot outside by Arizona standards, it’s mighty cozy by ordinary human standards. Yes: Hubs of Hades.

And what have we here? A wind seems to be coming up. Rain in the offing maybe, later today?  Innaresting.

Thinking, whilst hiking, about how I”m going to contrive to stay in my house until the last cat is hanged. My son wants to consign me to the Beatitudes, a prison for olde folkes.

I just HATE institutional living — hated living in the dorms, and know very well that being locked up in an old-folkerie will quickly drive me to suicide.

Which ain’t the way I wanna go out…

Recently I learned that Wonder Cleaning Lady used to take care of old bats in their homes. Whether she stayed with them overnight, I do not know…but with all the gadgets we have these days, it wouldn’t be hard to equip oneself with a call button to summon your caretaker or the EMTs. If said caretaker surfaced around 7 or 8 a.m. and stayed until after dinner, you’d be OK.

By and large.

And given what it costs to stay in one of those horrible places, you’d probably come out ahead financially.

A-a-n-n-d interestingly, I seem to be getting by just fine without a car! Dear son, who kiped mine and locked it in his garage, has driven me to a few places that I need to go, and has made it clear he has no intention of returning the chariot. But….

But…I don’t need it! 

The guy across the street is an Uber driver! He can schlep me just about anyplace I need to go. And if I can’t snab him, I can…hold onto your hat! This is radical stuff!…just call a taxi.

Yes. Phoenix still has taxi cabs. If you can imagine.

It’s interesting to think….  That you could get by without a car in a major city, I mean. Back when my mother and I lived in San Francisco, we mostly did without the car. My father’s car, that is: most of the time it was locked up in an underground garage, while he went to sea. She and I took the bus, the streetcar, or a cab. And we got around just fine.

The presence of Uber’s amateur cab drivers would hugely enhance that. With those guys on stand-by all the time…really…you wouldn’t need to own a car.

Truth to tell, though…once the weather cools a bit, I probably won’t have much use for the Uber dudes, anyway.

The Funny Farm is within walking distance of three fine shopping centers. Taken together, they house…

> an Albertson’s (giant supermarket)
> a Walgreen’s
> a computer store (new gear and repairs!)
> a Fry’s (supermarket!)
> a Sprouts (hippy-dippy supermarket!)
> an El Rancho (another supermarket!)
> a music store
> a beauty parlor
> a liquor store
> a doctor’s office
> a couple of clothing stores
…and several others that offhand I don’t recall.

Soooo…I lucked out when I bought this house here at the top end of North Central.

What it means is that I can reach any of those stores in a ten-minute walk. And with the roller-cart that I tricked out, I can carry a freaking ton of goods from place to place to home.

And what THAT means is: no need for a car!

Seriously: if I need a car, all I have to do is go rent one.

And…if Luz is representative, I can rent a caretaker, too! 😀

Idle Reverie of the Day

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Hotter than the Hubs outside. No car…not that I would go anywhere if one was sitting out there in the garage. Wasting time on the Internet.

One of my fave time-wasters: real estate ads. Another fave: reminiscing about growing up, and our time in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This little place looks kinda like my relatives’ home in Berkeley. Pretty li’l bungalow, early 20th century. Gosh, I miss that place, that neighborhood…my aunt, my great-grandmother. If I could move back there right now, I’d be outta here like a rocket.

It was sooooo pretty! Had a pie-shaped lot with a lovely little backyard. Its own garage (!!!!). Sat on a hillside street that took you right up to the stop for the train that ran directly into San Francisco. Overall, in this genre…

My great-aunt worked at Crocker-Anglo National Bank — one of the highest-ranking female staffers ever to come along — and so would walk up that hill every morning, five days a week and ride that train across the Bay.

She stayed in this sweet little house after my great-grandmother — her mother — passed away. Then eventually her son talked her into moving to an apartment in downtown Berkeley — I think she’d quit her (very!) longstanding job at the bank by then. And finally he put her in an old-folkery — uhm, an assisted-living facility — in the East Bay. She was at the end of her 90s when she kicked off. Just as her mother was: longevity runs in my family.

This reverie brings me back to the question of the day, which is will I be able to stay in my beloved home here until I die?

And I’m awfully afraid the answer is gonna be NO.

Not a chance, Duckie!

By way of background: I want my son to have this house. Given the family trend toward living a century or so, I probably will have to give it to him well before I croak over.

A hopeless lone wolf, I truly LOATHE living in communal settings. So the prospect of having to move into an old-folkerie makes me cringe. But short of jumping on a bus and heading away into the hinterlands, I don’t really see how I’m going to avoid it.

* I have no family to take care of me in my dotage.
* If I do live into old age, I may not even be able to care for an apartment, to say nothing of a house, a yard, and a pool.
* My son has…you know: a life. Remember those? It’s hardly fair to ask him to take the time when he’s not laboring at his job and devote it to caring for a crippled-up old lady.
* And, logically enough, the answer to these little challenges is simply to move into an institution whose whole purpose is to babysit elders until they topple over into the grave.

Our culture has changed, over the past 20 years or so, in ways that make it a lot easier to stay in your own home without having to gad about the city. Without having to drive.

Consider Amazon and its ilk, for example. You can buy almost anything your beady little heart desires online…and have it delivered to your door. Even prescription drugs can be dropped at your house or in a mailbox.

And THAT…yes: that is HUGE. It relieves you of hours of driving, piles of risk on the city streets…hot dayum.

But it still may not be enough to keep you out of the old-folkerie.

It occurs to me that one might be able to hire a helper — such as my cleaning-lady extraordinare — to stay with you during the waking hours, keep an eye on you, be sure your kitchen is stocked and your laundry is clean, be sure you get fed. Yea verily: Luz (the C-L extraordinare) says she has done exactly that.

One expects she’d still be doing it, if that were what she wanted to do. But if she’s around when the time comes, I surely will ask if she’d like to alter her job to become a care-taker for me instead of a cleaning lady for half-a-dozen gringos. We shall see.

But failing Luz, there may be some other candidate. Yea verily: we shall see. 

Time to Exit, Stage Left?

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Hmmm…  The last couple days’ Incidents keep returning to haunt. In specific, those two social-workerish women who showed up at my door and sat around quizzing me and altogether too obviously assessing my (spotlessly clean!!!) surroundings…eeeeeee!

I’ll tellya: reflecting on those two really gives me the willies.

Who reported to them that I was being abused? Or…did anyone? Was that just a standard boilerplate answer to shut up the sucker and maybe get more out of her? Or at least to stay inside her house a few more minutes and to ask more nunna-your-business questions?

It was incredibly lucky that Luz the Wonder-Cleaning Lady had been there that day. No, I don’t live in squalor. But I do a lot of loafing and leaving the newspaper laying on the sofa and not making the bed first thing in the morning…. Thanks to Luz, the Funny Farm was tidy and sparkling clean.

They must’ve been impressed, eh? :-d

Seriously: in my experience, when women are depressed or overloaded, they tend to let the housework go to Hell. Consequently, yes: a woman who is at risk may be living in a pigpen. Same is true of a woman who is neglecting herself, over her head with work or with personal problems, maxed out with bratty kids. So having the house look meticulously clean helped to send a message: nothing to see here, ladies. 

Nevertheless, I do hafta say: that whole episode gives me the willies. 

Who would sic those broads on me?

Why?

How? What excuse would they pump up to let them invade my privacy like that?

Frankly, I’m thinking maybe…just maybe…it’s time to get outta here. Time to find some new sylvan place to live.

Where would I go?

Ohhhhhh….where wouldn’t I go? 😀

Seriously: one can think of a whole slew of cool alternatives to lovely 110-degree crime-ridden uptown Phoenix.

The little town in Colorado whence Dear Ex-Husband emanated, for example: Grand Junction. That is a cool li’l city. Because it was developed largely by well educated mining engineers, the ambient culture is pretty sophisticated. It gets snow in the winter — some, but not a lot — and is hot enough in the summer, but overall the climate is temperate. It’s way to Hell and Gone out in the middle of nowhere, yet within striking distance of Denver.

I certainly would consider that.

In California: my friends La Bethulia and La Maya have retired to a mobile home (!) on the coast near Monterey. TO DIE FOR. I’d go there in a minute, if my son weren’t here.

Alternatively, somehow I could force myself to live in Berkeley, where my mother’s family lived.

If I would feel safe living in Arizona (probably not, under the present circumstances), there’s Payson. Prescott. Yarnell. Suburbs of Tucson. Nogales. Fountain Hills. One could go on and on, actually: this state is a gold mine of cool places to settle.

Well. If 110 degrees in the shade is “cool.” 😀

I don’t know. It really was a creepy episode. And if I had any sense at all, I’d be looking seriously at gettin’ on the road.

But instead of sense, I have lazy. 

Nay, verily! I do not WANT to get off my duff and move. Who, me? Overcome inertia? Are you kidding???

Hotter Than the Hubs

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Now, waitaminit here. How do we know the Hubs of Hades are hot?

Some cultures picture the domain of the afterlife as colder than a by-gawd. Could be, I suppose.

Oh well. Dawg and I are back from an hour’s perambulation of the ‘Hood. And yes, it IS damn hot out there. Worse, though: it’s humid. Sticky. Icky. But we did make it to the front door without melting. Just.

Still fretting about the “social workers” (uh huh…) or whatever they were who showed up at the door yesterday. Godlmighty!!!

It was just raw luck that Wonder-Cleaning Lady was here in the morning. And that she’d finished her job and left. Those two busybodies must have thought I keep the house spotlessly clean as a routine matter…an illusion that threw them off the track. They sat around making small talk and then (finally!!) wandered off into the afternoon heat. If they were as stupid as they looked, they must have thought all my little housewifely marbles were intact and I keep my house all clean and dusted and vacuumed and mopped al the time… Jayzuz!

What incredible luck. Seriously.

Wonder-Cleaning Lady paid for her wages, year after year of them, right there in that one afternoon!

At any rate, I have an idea who sicced them on me. We won’t be socializing with that one again!!

But the question is, will this unsuccessful foray bring a stop to any more efforts to protect me from my senile little self? And what else might they do to herd me into an old-folkerie?

Honestly. I will die if I get locked up in one of those awful places. And no, that is NOT an exaggeration.

Back in college, I hated, loathed, and despised every goddamn moment of living in the dorms. And I sure as hell don’t want to end my life in that predicament!!!

Mercifully, my roommate’s mother found a way to get us out. Girls were required to live in the grody dormitories at the University of Arizona, unless they were living with their families. But her mom had a cousin who lived in Tucson.

!!!

We told the Authorities that we would be living with this woman, and our mothers signed off on that little fib.

Forthwith, we rented an apartment, moved in, and lived happily ever after. Till we both graduated, that is.

Who will tell Big Mommy and Daddy that I’m living with some relative this time? I dunno. Unless I can hire somebody, I have no idea how I can evade the old-folkerie, short of moving out of town.

Which, if forced to it, is exactly what I’ll do.

oooo

But I’d druther NOT be forced to it. I love this house and this neighborhood. I love the yard. I love the pool. I love the neighbors. (Well…most of ’em 😀 ) How exactly to escape some societal dictate about where and how you will live kinda escapes me.

Better engage that issue now and have things set up to make my escape.