Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Inauspicious Morning

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Ugh! Not 7:30 yet, and we’ve already had one Drama of the Day. More to come, no doubt…

Ruby and I were headed homeward from the morning walk, when we came upon a favorite neighbor. This lady lives alone. She’s very smart and very charming and just the sort of person you enjoy having as a neighbor.

As we greet each other, she trips on a heaved slab in the sidewalk…and DOWN SHE GOES.

She whacked the heck out of her head. I wanted to go get my car and drive her up to the ER. She declined. Which was good, because in the heat of the moment I’d forgotten that my son has stolen my car.

Another neighbor came along. She also proposed that we take our friend to the ER. Again, Friend declined.

Reluctantly, we complied (what were we gonna do? Tie her up with a clothesline??). And our group dispersed.

***

And this is why I need my car. You never know when some emergency, small or large, will arise.

If my son persists in refusing to return it, I’ll have to go rent a car. And I may report him for stealing my car, which will cause him to lose his job. I hope the principle of the thing is worth it to him.

***

Ugh. Hot and humid out there: 99% chance of rain.

I should get off my duff and walk to a grocery store, since a few things are needed…and I sure don’t want to be prancing around in 100-degree heat…or 100% rain.

But ohhhh…how I am not in the mood! 😀

***

Reminded of where we lived in San Francisco, a sprawling middle-class apartment development called Parkmerced. Loved living there!

One of the amenities was a huge underground parking garage. My mother would park our car in its slot on the 6th floor (that’s 6 floors down), and we would rarely use it unless my father was in port. (He went to sea; we had to pick him up when his ship docked in the far East Bay, but otherwise, we had no real need for a car).

Frankly, it was cool not to need a car. Well: not “cool” in a social way but in a day-to-day lifestyle way. We could walk to the grocery store. My mother’s job was within easy walking distance. The city busses had a stop right outside our building: I could jump on a bus and ride to school.

If we were going anywhere outside of Parkmerced, my mother would drive us. But that amounted to surprisingly few trips! Mostly, the car sat in the parking garage…day in and day out.

Wish we could live that way now.

A Plan!

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So…here I am, stuck in the house with no car in the garage and 112-degree heat outside. I need groceries. But ain’t about to get them in this weather.

Ooohkayyy…. So what AM I gunna do?

Welp, truth to tell, of late I’ve come up with a New Plan.

The basis of this Plan is to limit the number of times a week that I need to go to a grocery store or a pharmacy. With a set number of junkets for any given period, I should be able to arrange with a local driver to pick me up on specific days at a specific time. Say, Tuesdays at 10 a.m. for a trip to Sprouts. Wednesdays at 2 p.m. for a trip to Albertson’s.

And so on.

Not very much so on, I hope.

That way, I would know what I can buy, where, and when. And also have a pretty fair idea of how much it’s going to cost. If the trips are arranged with Uber (or some such), then I would always know when I’m gonna head to a store and always know approximately when I’m gonna get back.

If we discover that the local car-for-hire drivers are reliable (yeah…big “if”), so that they show up about when they say they will, it would be very easy to keep the pantry stocked. And I wouldn’t have to trudge through the heat, dodging panhandlers and sh!theads, to get to the store. Let’s say, at 10:00 on Monday morning, the Uber driver who lives across the street will pick me up and take me to the local grocer. He’ll wait till I’ve loaded up the groceries, and then he’ll bring me and the loot back home. Voilà! Chore done!

With any luck: chore done in ONE trip per week!

How awesome would that be, eh?

Hotter ‘n the Hubs…again

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Not even 7:30 a.m. by the time the Ruby and I stumble back to the house. We left at dawn.

The SMOG! My gawd, the SMOG!

At first I thought it was fog. Seriously: it looks like a San Francisco morning out there. Doesn’t feel like it. It’s 95 in the shade of the back porch. The sky: yellow with crap floating in the air.

Horrid, horrid place.

If my son weren’t here, I’d be soooo gone!

Where would I go?

Berkeley, where my relatives lived for decades. Gawdlmighty, I do miss Berkeley.

The foothills of Tucson. Clean air, relative quiet, fairly upscale.

San Diego, in its more upper-middle-class incarnations.

Paris…parts of it.

San Francisco, where I belong…

oh, Hell: ANYWHERE! Anywhere but here!

Wunderground, that eminent weather-reporting site, predicts 112 degrees with a 6% chance of rain. Hm…observant of them.

Local weather reporters claim yesterday was Phoenix’s hottest July 30 on record.

Uhhh…sure. Yeah. Must be mighty boring to be a weather reporter. 😀

Walking home, Ruby and I passed a house on the little pass-through street bordering our slab of the ‘Hood. And by golly, out in front watering his yard was one of the handsomest Black men I’ve ever met. Quite possibly one of the handsomest of all possible men.

Not only that, but he was friendly. And he had a big ole’ black lab named Olive.

Hilariously, Olive was my maternal grandmother’s name.

Must be Fate, eh?

Olive. She died horribly: uterine cancer as a result of her lively sex life. My poor mother had to take care of the woman on her deathbed (Olive’s, that is…not my mother’s… 😀  )

Seriously: imagine inflicting the care of a wild-assed chippie on a teenaged girl, as said chippie lay dying. What a horror show!!

And what the HELL possesses people?

There’s some question about that episode, though. Years later, I found evidence that Olive had not died when my mother was 16 years old, but in fact was living in the Santa Barbara area at the time my own son was born. Never tried to track it down, though: pisseth me off too much.

Still. Sometimes I do wonder if my mother knew her mother was still living. Or if the crackpot family told her she’d died, either by way of freeing Olive from responsibility for her illegitmate daughter or by way of freeing my mother of having to interact with her…uhh…”racey” mother.

What a bunch!

Report from the Department of Weird Experiences

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Good grief! If it hadn’t been so funny — so goofy — I’d be hiding under the bed right now.

Did you know there are people in this world who cannot imagine why anyone would want to buy a chilled bottle of white wine? Some of those folks reside behind the customer service desk in a certain beloved nearby liquor store.

No kidding!  Hey!  What’s wrong with this fine room-temperature swiggle of white???

This has been one of those days when your fellow citizens are SO goony, SO ignorant, SO far out in left field that you simply have no clue how to respond.

Seriously: Every which way I’ve turned, lurking there has been another wacksh!t experience, another goofball customer “service” clerk, another inexplicable weirdness…to the point where it all comes out kinda hilarious.

But y’know…you hafta love them all! Think how boring this world would be without them! 😀

This morning I hit my favorite local strip mall, right up at the corner of Conduit of Blight and 19th Avenue.

And yeah: you DO have to love Latino culture to love that mall.

Yeah, you DO have to be White Trash yourself to appreciate how cool, how fun, how slippery, how smart the merchants up there are. Yea verily, you need to be such WT that you wish your Daddy were here to blaze the trail through that place for you. Ohhhhh dayum, do you wish your Daddy were here!! And would you love to hear the (hilarious) opinions he would’ve formed, after a day among the locals.

I’d love to be able to say I’d be as entertained as Daddy would’ve been by today’s antics of the locals. But you know…when he was alive I couldn’t read his mind. Now that he’s deader than a doornail, I have no idea whe he would’ve thought.

Well. I have an idea. But I sure as hell could have not been able to guarantee he would’ve thought that.

But ohhhhh… Yeah. He would’ve been…

amused
pissed
wilied up
out of patience
and telling his daughter to get the f*** outta there.

😀

But when you’re my daddy’s daughter, watching a$$holes dig themselves into a$$hole ditches is…well…damn funny.

 

Life with…Other Humans

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See…this kinda thing is THE reason I do NOT wanna live in an old-folkerie, elbow-to-elbow with my fellow senile humans, taken care of by folks who can’t get a better job anywhere else:

Apparently, WonderCleaningLady unplugged the microwave, which resides in the garage.

Unplugged it…WHY???? Gaddamm it.

This a.m., I go out there to heat some potatoes for breakfast, and find the damn thing doesn’t work.

Moment of panic: hooooleeee sh!t!!! Do I have to run out and buy a new micro today? And then tote it home or have it delivered…and then get it set up and working right?

AAAUUUUGH!

Well…I finally figured out that WCL must have pulled the plug and then never plugged it back in. Okay. Problem fixed.

But…goddammit! What IS the matter with people?  If you’re going to sabotage something in the course of doing some chore, f’rcrapsake UNsabotage it before you wander off!

grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr

My problem is, I just don’t get along all that well with other humans. I have next to zero patience with Humanity, dammit!

And THAT is why I don’t want to spend the last months or years of my life locked up in an institution with a bunch of other old buzzards.

* * * * * 

Argha. It’s after 7 a.m. Before it starts to get hot, I need to get off my duff and walk up to the stores on Main Drag North by way of buying a few more cans of dog food for Ruby, snabbing some more fresh berries and melon, and roping in some bread and bacon. Blech! Just what I wanna do, the first crack off the bat in the morning.

Well: the second: Ruby and I have already circumnavigated the ‘Hood.

* * * * * 

One thing I need to do — well, plan to do more than need, actually — is to hop on the lightrail train and ride down to 19th and Glendale, where I can visit and explore the dreaded Beatitudes old-folkerie.

That’s the place where my son would like to foist me. The place where, thankyouverymuch, I do NOT want to live out the last months or years of my life.

My father consigned himself to one of those places. It was called Orangewood. And it was a pleasant enough place. It’s just that…well…it ain’t home, folks. It’s like living in a motel.

And no. No, I do NOT like motel living. No, I do NOT want to spend the final slab of my life in a prison for old folks, eating bad food turned out of cardboard and plastic packages onto steam tables.

Ugh, ugh, and ugh. Not to say UGHHHH!

The Beatitudes, in addition to multi-story structures filled with motel-like rooms, also has free-standing, single-story patio homes. These might be tolerable, primarily because they do provide a little space between you and the neighbor.

Whether these little castles are reserved for married couples or whether they’d let an old bat and her little dog occupy one, I dunno. Pretty quick, though, I intend to ask.

oooohhhhh gawd. 
The horror!

The HORROR of having to move into one of those warehouses for old folks!! I just do NOT want to live like that.

Ohhhhhh well…  It’s after 8 a.m. I’d better get a-hiking if I’m gonna get up to the grocery store before the morning gets unnavigably hot. Blech!

And so…AWWWAAAAAAAYYYYY!

Hotter Than a By-God

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Crimmineee. It’s only 2:00 in the afternoon, and the temp in the shade of the back porch is 104. 

Welp…I had things I needed to do. But I ain’t goin’ out in that!  Especially not without a car.

Should’ve gotten off my duff at 7 or 8 this morning, when the local shops opened. If they opened then. Some of them stay closed until a more traditional 10:00 a.m.

What a place! Why do I stay here????

Well, the main reason I stay in Arizona is that the kid is here.

Secondarily, I dunno where else I’d go.

Locally: Arizona just ain’t that glamorous a venue. There really isn’t anyplace else much better to live around here. Outside of AZ… back to California, maybe?  Helle’s Belles! I sure can’t afford to live in the East Bay, whence my family emanated. Hate Southern California and would rather put up with Arizona’s 100-degree-plus temps than go back there.

Ya can’t win for losin’, eh?

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the possibility of moving into an old-folkerie called the Beatitudes. Very nice place. Brain-banging expensive: basically, you fork over everything you have in exchange for their promise to care for you through your last years.

It’s just down the road, though, so it’s no further from M’hijito’s place than the Funny Farm is.

But…ugh! I’ve never been into communal living. And I don’t figure I’d get used to it now. Sure don’t wanna try. 😀

Seriously: I really dislike an institutional environment!

As places to live go, Arizona is overall kinda ugly. Unless you want to live in the Grand Canyon, I guess. Mostly it’s dusty, dreary desert or shaggy, under-watered forest land. Or Southern California style urbs and suburbs.

So…no reason to move out of the city, which at least sports a few decent grocery stores.

Where WOULD I ‘druther be?

Well, the San Francisco Bay Area, I reckon. 

My mother’s relatives emanated from the East Bay: Berkeley and waypoints. I did love those parts, for sure. But no way in Hell could I afford to live there these days. Or any days…

Trying to imagine what it would be like to live with Ruby in the hotel-like environment of the Beatitudes. Heh! I can tellya: that dawg would have a rabid sh!tfit every time anyone walked past in the hallway. Holyeee mackerel, would she go batsh!t in that place.

So would I. Truly, I do loathe, hate, and despise communal living.

Jeez. What a depressing day: what depressing prospects.

Ruby and I could stay here in the Funny Farm until I get to the point where I truly can’t manage it anymore. (That won’t be much longer, to tellya the truth…)

Or we could move to the Beatitudes, a secure but deeply depressing old-folkerie.

We could move into the old-folkerie where my father chose to live after my mother died, a single-story spread called Orangewood. Worst food you’ve ever had in your life…and you’re required to eat in their dining hall, so they can check you off their rolls and be sure you haven’t croaked over during your hours in your dreary little apartment.

Or…

I could sneak out and Ruby and I could run off to the backcountry of northern Arizona, maybe head up into Utah. Wonder how long we’d get away with that?

Ugh. None of these are attractive options. The least dreary, I think, is to stay right here.

And good luck with that…

SDXB moved to Sun City, where he has taken up happily enough with New Girlfriend. It’s not a bad option for an elder, especially one with stuffy tastes. My parents liked it there. I never cared for it…but then, I wasn’t an old bat at the time.

Honestly…I can’t think of anyplace much more depressing to live than a ghetto for old folks. WhatEVER, though.

Ohhhhh Freakin’ MG!!!!!

Just stumbled in from the mailbox, where I found an obese envelope full of old reports from the Mayo Clinic. Mygawd, there’s over 500 pages of this stuff!!!!! 

Why in the name of hevvin did they send this crap to me??  And what on earth do they think I’m gonna do with it?

Jayzuz. Just what I needed to cheer up my afternoon.

Backcountry. Northern Arizona. Utah boondocks. Lookin’ better and better!