Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

And…whaaa? UNdone for????

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WTF?????  After this morning’s whiney whinge, now — come 3:34 in the afternoon — suddenly I’m a whole new person!!! 

Why?????  What on earth would cause a gigantic slug of misery to suddenly evaporate? To be replaced by a calm, almost complacent mood tending (even!) toward the cheerful?????

Seriously: I cannot imagine.

This morning I was truly miserable. Now: back to normal; indeed, even fairly cheerful.  Why?????

Well….I can’t imagine. Unless it was a nice sunny day and a long walk down Conduit of Blight Blvd and through the neighboring shopping centers.

Ruby and I hiked all over the ‘Hood, through three neighboring shopping centers and all around a part of the tract where SDXB and I used to walk almost every day, back when he lived here.

He has moved to Sun City, and so is long gone. Me: I wouldn’t go back there if ya paid me.

But he likes that kind of fustian fuddy-duddery, so he’s very happy there. He and New Girlfriend seem to be doing well enough, though it sounds like he’s pretty damn sick. With my mother (oh, lemme tellya horror show!!), we found the medical care in Sun City was even more substandard than you get in the typical American living space. Just. Gawd. Awful.

Would she have died if she’d had decent care?

Well, yes.

But she sure as Hell wouldn’t have suffered the way she did. And that little Life Passage is one of several reasons you couldn’t get me back in Sun City: not on a bet.

At any rate: free of that place, Ruby and I put some serious mileage under our paws and had a lovely time hiking around the ‘Hood and through the neighboring shopping centers.

What exactly I’m gonna do to get through the upcoming end-of-life years, I dunno. Have to confess that I haven’t the faintest idea.

Seriously: over the next few months and year or so, I do need to make some plans. Maybe confer with M’Hijito about what he wants me to do … yeah, I know: check my idiot self into the Beatitudes, a venerable old-folkerie.

Thanks. I’d rather take a flying leap off the North Rim…  So we do need to confer and think carefully about how to deal with the upcoming (potentially hideous) years. But just now…I get to enjoy life for a few weeks or months!

 

Done For!

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Continuing spectacularly sick. Ohhh well…by now I’ve gotten used to the what appears to be the fact that I’m never going to get well. The best that can be hoped, I reckon, is that life comes to an end in some reasonable period of time.

Though, it must be allowed, we’re well past any “reasonable period.”

This morning — it appears to be a Tuesday — I plan to call a venerable old-folkerie here in the Valley. Well…the place is what I regard as a prison for the elderly. They take everything you have: your life savings, the value of your home, any other cash you happen to have laying around. In return, they babysit you and feed you awful institutional food until you pass into Eternity.

Which, we must hope, will happen soon.

Soon as my mother died, my father signed himself into a similar place, one then called “Orangewood.” His experience was just hideous, but not because of the institution and its operators: he married a woman he met there, apparently imagining she could somehow take my mother’s place.

Well. No one could do that. He was deeply, truly in love with my mother, and she with him. This new broad…ohhhh my gawd! Long story short, that “marriage” promptly turned into a Horror Show from Hell.

For me, it had one advantage: taught me that if you get locked up in one of those places, you mind your own business and don’t get chummy with anyone. And especially don’t marry anyone!

I had hoped to save my assets to pass along to my son. Unless I drop dead in the very near future, that ain’t gonna happen. Clearly, this unholy ailment is going to drag on and drag on and drag on, as I get weaker and weaker, more and more unable to care for myself. Soo….might as well resign myself to the fact that he will get little or nothing from me, because the disease is going to eat up everything I have: the value of the house, the savings I’ve set aside for myself, the small but real inheritance from my father. Gone. All of it.

If I were little stronger, I’d bring an end to the horror show myself, right now. But I simply don’t have the nerve end my own life. Just plain not brave enough. Sooo…that which I have is effectively no longer mine. Shortly, it will belong to a prison for old folks.

What a world we live in! 

Kickin’ & Screamin’…into the 21st Century

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{chortle!} Welp, it looks like I’m gonna be FORCED to come into the (dire!) 21st Century. If you don’t have your own chariot, you now pretty much have to hire a robo-taxi: a driverless monstrosity that requires an A.A. in computer tech to operate.

How CAN I say how much I absolutely positively do NOT want to learn a complicated new system for hiring a cab and getting around the city?

Those ba*tards at the Mayo, egged on by Dear Son, have invalidated my driver’s license. When you live in a hectic L.A.-style city like Phoenix, this  puts the eefus on…just about everything.

Fortunately, because I live smack in the middle of everything, I’ve been getting by mostly on foot: whatever I need is within reasonable walking distance. That would include…

  • A Sprouts
  • An Albertson’s
  • A Fry’s
  • A Walgreen’s
  • A Bookman’s
  • An El Rancho
  • A wine shop
  • A UPS store
  • A computer store
  • A hair stylist
  • A dentist
  • A veterinarian

And  many, many more. The truth is, I don’t need a car to live comfortably and shop easily here.

As long as I’m living in this house, I’m within easy walking distance of everything I need…and then some. Outside of walking distance? Lemme tellya: have we got the robotaxis!!! 

Actually, we still have a few taxis driven  by humans, which I much prefer. ‘Cause I’m still a denizen of the 20th century, right? 😉

Interestingly, the neighborhood seems to be holding its value. We just welcomed the first Black family to our environs…and so it’s much to be hoped that we are in the 21st century and therefore that eventuality will not torpedo our property values. They look like nice folks…and I think they have cute kids.

I’m excited to welcome them and try to make friends with them. And…well…we’ll see how that goes! Even the 21st century is still part of Mittel-America. Time will tell.

 

And I’m Staying Here…WHY???

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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

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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….

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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!