Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Makes the Old Folkerie Look Good…

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Gawd, I never imagined I’d have any such thought!  But here it is, not even 6 in the morning, and I’m being blitzed with hassle after hassle after HASSLE.

Got to take the dog for a walk before it gets hot — which means we’ve gotta get out the door NOW.

The pool is suffocating in dead leaves. WHERE is Pool Dude????  Amazon just delivered a new net for the leaf catcher, the original having plain worn out. 

Put that out back with a note for Pool Dude. No guarantee the guy is gonna show up.

Pool cleaning is one of the “professions” for which the state prison system trains its residents. So…that means chances are good that your pool cleaner is an ex-convict: not exactly the soul of reliability. I should wait here and see if he shows up, but you KNOW that if I do that, the dog will not get out for her walk. Because…

* The guy won’t show up before 10 a.m., by which time outside temps will be pushing 108 degrees; or
* The guy won’t show up at all.

Meanwhile, to get to the grocery store on foot before it gets too hot to walk up there (my son having purloined my car), I need to get started on that errand NOW.

But I can’t do that and take the dog for a walk. And even if I leave for the store right now, by the time I get back it will be too hot to take Ruby out.

My son is probably right: the time draws nigh when I will no longer be able to stay in my home. I’ll either have to move into an apartment (and what am I gonna do with the dog?) or into an old-folks storage bin (and what am I gonna do with the dog?).

Actually, I think some of those places will let you keep your dog. Ducky: how do you keep her from yappiing at every footfall that comes up the hallway?

Speaking of footfalls: better get the dawg out for her walk before the heat comes up: i.e., NOW.

What Next, Then?

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Okay…no sign of Pool Dude. That’s not surprising, though. We’ve arrived at a Saturday in one of the hottest months of a Phoenix year. If you were a Pool Dude, would you be busily running from backyard to backyard?

So presumably, it’ll be Monday before the mess gets cleaned up. At the soonest: that calculation depends on the assumption that he hasn’t decided to can his freelance pool-cleaning business. The mess: remains of palm fronds, with their accompanying burden of dust and dirt, dropped into the drink when Gerardo’s boys climbed up there last week to prune the accursed palm trees.

My neighbor drained her pool. It’s been empty since she moved in, several years ago. And y’know…hmmmmm….it’s a thought.

Personally, I like the pool too much to convert it to a hole in the ground in which to breed mosquitoes. If I didn’t expect Pool Dude would show up at any minute, I’d be out there in the altogether, loafing in the cool water right now. Or at least sipping coffee and listening to the birds carrying on in the brush that surrounds the thing.

And speaking of those from whom we have no word: Mijito still has the Dog Chariot and is emitting no sign of returning it.

And y’know what?

Hang onto your hat….

The longer he keeps THAT hole in the ground into which to pour money, the less likely I am to demand to get it back.

No kidding.

I had no idea how easy it would be to get by without a rolling cash-burner. And that is in the middle of an Arizona summer, when it’s hotter than Hell and a bitch to move around outside. Not only that, it’s an assessment that has occurred before I’ve even started to take advantage of the new public transit system here. Two blocks from my front door we have a kewl, shiny, sleek light-rail train, gliding past silently on shiny new train tracks.

So the question arises, like Marley’s ghost slithering through the window: Why do I want to own a car?

Several times a day, that spook materializes and moans again: Why do I want to own a car?

And y’know what? About 99% of the time, I don’t have a good answer to that question.

Truth to tell: as I sit here, only about three or four things that I need to do would be majorly facilitated with a car…and that’s in 114-degree heat. Let the weather cool off, and you can cut that list to two or three.

1. I do need to go by the pool store and get Harvey fixed.

But y’know what else? I’m gonna foist that job on Pool Dude. Let him earn his pay, by gawd. Let me loaf, as I deserve to loaf.

2. I crave another bottle of halfway decent white wine.

But y’know what further else? That object can be had at the local Albertson’s (about three blocks to the south), at the Sprouts (two blocks down the street and across Main Drag West), at our vast Mexican supermarket (two blocks to the north), and at the local liquor store (a block to the north and a block to the east). So…uhm…I should own a $35,000 rolling hole in the asphalt into which to dump money?  Really?

3. If anything happens to Ruby — she gets sick, she eats an oleander, whatEVER — she will need to be seen by a vet ASAP.

But y’know what? M’hijito has a car and always will, at least until he reaches retirement age. In a real emergency, he can schlep the dog to a vet. But why break up his work day, when an Uber driver lives right across the street? Very likely that guy or one of his colleagues could whip us over to the nearest vet in a matter of minutes… Hmmm…for a lot less than 35 grand…whaddaya bet?

See what I mean? There really may not be much of a reason to own a car here in lovely North Phoenix, other than

* ego trip; and
* convenience.

The “convenience” part is balanced away by the repeated (and increasingly expensive) trips to gas stations, by the regular visits to the Toyota place for maintenance, by the taxes on the damn thing… Hmmm….

Really, you hafta wonder: why do any Americans keep their own cars? At the very least, why do any Americans who live free of commuting keep the damn things?

Wednesday Argha-Wargha!

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Chortle! This stuff never stops, does it?

Today, the redoubtable Gerardo (Lawn Dude Par Excellence) herded his crew over here to prune the hateful palm trees. WHY the HELL do gringos plant those damn things in their yards?

The ones some previous owner installed here have got to be 50 or 60 feet high. They continually drop crap into the pool, and when they need to be pruned…well! WHAT a mess!

Just went out back to tidy up a bit, and found piles and piles and PILES of gawdawful trimmings covering the floor of the pool, where Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner was valiantly trying to suck them up…and getting clogged, clogged, and ultra-clogged.

Managed to unclog the pool cleaner. Farted around a bit. Finally thought oooooooooh fukkit! I’ll have to call the Pool Dude and hire him to clean up this incredible mess.

And won’t he be pleased!

Shoveled around and hauled around and got some of the crap out of the way. But Harvey the (expensive dammit!!!) pool cleaner is jammed with palm tree refuse. The bottom of the pool is COVERED with dead palm fronds…so many of them I can’t even begin to fish them out. Jayzuz! What a mess!

So I get out there in the 100-degree heat and start to haul as much stuff as I can reach and as much stuff as I can stand and hoooooBOY am i MAD!

Out of nowhere, Gerardo appears. He and his crew apparently went off for a coffee break (it being around 10 a.m.). He interrupts my debris-shoveling project and says he’ll clean it up.

Meanwhile, though, Harvey is stuck on the bottom of the pool — probably so jammed he’ll need the attention of a professional repair guy.

Sheeeut! This kinda crap makes living in some dumpy apartment look good. It even makes living in Sun City look good!

My thought is, I need to find a place in Fountain Hills (Whiteyville East) or icky Sun City (Whiteyville West) and just GIVE UP trying to live in a centrally located,, moderately normal neighborhood.

*****

Grrr grrrrrrr 

*****

Gerardo’s boys worked themselves to frazzledom. My GOD the amount and the misery of the work those guys do!!!!! In the frikkin’ HEAT.

Just now it’s 105 in the shade. Those guys were out there, God only knows HOW long, hauling and sawing and shoveling and…godlmighty!

Most of the debris is now picked up, off the bottom of the pool and raked out of the shrubbery. The rest can wait until this evening or (better!) tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I need some grocery items. My son still has my car — and I don’t expect to get it back. It’s hotter than the HUBs out there, and so I do not want to hike to the Albertson’s, the Sprouts, or the Fry’s…nor do I think it’s safe to do so. So…nothing much here to eat for lunchoid…and it pisseeth me off.

Again, the Common Sense Lobe of the aging brain mutters, “Hey, Stupid! If you lived in that high-rise, you wouldn’t have to dork with a pool. You wouldn’t have to dork with palm trees. And a train would pull up to the door and take you straight to AJ’s.”

Financial Dude calls on the phone He wants to meet with me and M’hijito to talk about inheritance planning.

What IS he tryin’ to say to me???

***

If I’m gonna stay in this house until they tote me off to the graveyard, there’s gonna have to be some changes made. 

That pool is an expensive PITA. My next-door neighbor has drained hers.

Big money-saver, but an empty hole in the ground does trash the backyard. It really does trash the whole place, all the way around. Neighbor seems not to care: she’s never out there. One doubts if she even notices the mosquitos she’s breeding in the forgotten puddle. But I do like to sit on the patio and enjoy breakfast and dinner.

So…drain the pool???  Naaahhhhh…don’t think so.

Gerardo wants to chop down the accursed palm trees. WHY the gringos who move into this state think there’s some fantastical charm to accursed palm trees escapes me. But that’s probably because I grew up with accursed palm trees in the garden spot that was Saudi Arabia. Ugh!!!

At any rate, he and his guys did get the palm fronds pruned, But WHAT A MESS they left. And, we might add, that’s after they did the best they could to clean it up. Just now it’s too damn hot and the sun is blasting too damn hard for me to get out there and finish the job. So…ugh.

A box in the sky on Central Avenue begins to look good. 

Oh, well: pool. What about the pool?

Could one, I wonder, drain all the water out of the hole-in-the-ground and then set up the main drain so it stays open all the time? In other words, empty the pool and fix it so any rainwater gets drained off?

That sounds pretty iffy to me. Bet it wouldn’t work. Not without some expensive plumbing and replastering, I’ll bet.

It actually might be cheaper to sell the house and move to an expensive Box in the Sky. But…but…

But that’s not actually what I want to do. 

In the first place, I love this neighborhood and I like my neighbors. I don’t wanna move away from here! Seriously don’t wanna: if I felt that I wanted to go, I’d be outta here by now: in Sun City, Moon Valley, or Fountain Hills.

In the second place, I’ve lived in a tony high-rise. My mother was delighted to move us into a tower apartment in San Francisco, in an overpriced development called Parkmerced. And…well…

I didn’t NOT like that apartment. But I was just a kid. As just a kid, what did I see that I could do without today, in my dotage?

* Underground parking across the street. PITA to get your car into it, PITA to have to walk down six stories to get to your car, PITA to haul the car out of it…

* Neighbors. The critters make noise. As a kid, I thought the click click click click of the upstairs neighbors’  high-heels tapping across our ceiling was funny. Today that would drive me nuts.

* Neighbors.The serenade from their TV set: not so great.

* Neighbors. The stink of their cooking odors: not so great.

* Neighbors. The music of their brats hollering downstairs: not so great.

* Elevators. Claustrophobia central.

* Fire escapes. If there really were a fire someday, could we actually get out of this building over this tunnel’s stairs?

****

Y’know…this, my present neighborhood, is my Sun City. Yes. This is where I wanna live for the rest of my  life.

  • I don’t wanna be in a fancy high-rise on North Central Avenue. Nope.
  • I don’t wanna live in a cute (uninsulated, cheaply built) bungalow in the actual Sun City.
  • I don’t wanna move to ritzy-titzy Scottsdale.
  • I don’t wanna live in classy, spectacularly overpriced Fountain Hills, under the path of Sky Harbor’s passenger traffic.
  • I don’t wanna listen to the superannuated hard-of-hearing neighbor’s TV set BLASTING away at high volume.
  • There are not one but TWO major regional hospitals, right around the corner.
  • From here, you can WALK to a Fry’s, a Sprouts, an Albertson’s, and two fancy electronics stores.
  • Also within walking distance: a gorgeous, wild desert preserve, with hills and arroyos and wide-open spaces to hike.
  • I don’t wanna live in a holding pen for the decrepit, teetering on the edge of the next world.

One could go on and on…

My son’s screwing around with my car throws a monkey wrench into that nest of escapist joy. But y’know what? I could easily afford to buy a new car. All I need to do is walk down the street to the nearest dealer’s lot. Or, for that matter: walk across the street and hire the Uber driver who lives two houses to the west of mine….

 

Balmy Afternoon…

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5:00 p.m., Tuesday, June 17

…and…

It’s 108 degrees in the shade of the back porch!

My son, the redoubtable Caligula, still has my car. I guess he thinks he’s protecting me from myself.

Since I have exactly zero desire to go bucketing around in 108-degree heat, he can keep the damn thing. In the meantime, if the outdoor temp were reasonable, I’d have an eight-minute walk to the nearest grocery store. So…I don’t feel very concerned about it.

What am I gonna do about this latest Act of Arrogance, though?

Really, I haven’t decided. In theory, he has stolen my car. But…you can be sure I’m not about to press car theft charges against my son.

Sooo…we’re brought around to the question of do I care whether he’s glommed the car?

And y’know…the truth of the matter is probably not. Yes, I would like to get the money for it: it’s worth a few tens of thousands of dollars.

But y’know…the whole truth of the matter is that his li’l act of arrogance has demonstrated, spectacularly, that I don’t really need a car.

The neighbor across the street drives an Uber. He’ll take me wherever I please; and what the heck? If he’s not available, some other Uber or actual cab driver will be. I’m within easy walking distance of a Sprouts, an Albertson’s (huge supermarket), an El Rancho (downscale supermarket), an AJ’s (upscale supermarket), a Target, a Walgreen’s…and on and on. In other words, I don’t need a car for normal, day-to-day routine life!

Truth to tell,  I don’t need a car at all. Certainly not for everyday use. And…if something comes up that I do need a vehicle, there’s a place that rents cars within walking distance.

My inclination is not to retrieve that car of mine, and not to buy another car. Let the kid pay the taxes on it! 😉

Seriously: don’t replace that hole in the asphalt into which to pour money. Instead, hire drivers to schlep me around, and rent a car if a day comes that I really need one.

That need isn’t likely to last more than a day or three. And so…why own a car and pay taxes on it if you can provide for yourself more economically?

Heh heh!!!  If my father heard this line of reasoning, he’d think I really have gone balmy. 

Cleaning Lady Day…

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Boyoboy! You wanna talk about a spoiled, lazy ole’ bat? Welp, here she is!

Yes. I am sooooooo lazy that I actually resent and cringe at the fact that today is Cleaning Lady Day. Why?

  • Because I’m too lazy to get up off my duff and shovel out the mess so she can find a few spots to actually clean.
  • Because I’m spectacularly not in the mood to have someone banging around my house for several hours.
  • Because my son is coming over here later today for an online “meeting” (har har!) with our doc at the Mayo, and trying to deal with that while the cleaning lady is roaring and banging around will be a PITA of the first order.
  • Because I’m still mad as Hell at Cleaning Lady for her most recent antic, which caused me a LOT of trouble…and continues to do so.

😀 If that ain’t spoilt rotten, I’d like to know what it is!

Well, in what passes for my own defense, we do hafta say: I’m sick as a dog, have been for days running into weeks, and all I want right now is just to be left alone, dammit.

  • No roaring vacuum cleaners
  • No stinking detergents
  • No wet floors
  • No torn-up beds
  • No kitchen in disarray
  • No…noooooooooo!

Argha.!!!

Isn’t that awful? How spoiled CAN you get?

Well, I do hafta say, one thing I can do without — spoilt or unspoilt — is annoying online meetings…with anyone, but especially with a doctor, one who knows nothing about me and who isn’t gonna believe a damn thing I say.

****

Yes. The idiot cleaning lady…I haven’t gotten around to firing her and tracking down someone to take her place — because I’m too goddamn tired to take on a bothersome project like that.

Get this: A couple weeks ago I was sick as a dawg, felt just AWFUL, and needed more than anything to go back to bed. While WonderCleaningLady was here slamming around the house. 

I’d sat down at the dining-room table for a snack to pass as lunch. This being less than perfectly appealing, I folded my arms on the table and laid my head down, waiting for her to PUHLEEEEZE get done with the job so I could go back to the bed. Shortly, I fell asleep.

She spots me there and arrives at her own tee-totaler’s conclusion: she thinks I’m drunk on the quarter-glass of white wine I’d poured to go with the mediocrity of a lunch I’d set out.

No kidding: she decides I’m passed out blotzed!

She whips out her camera/phone, takes a photo of me dozing at the table, and ships it off to my son! 

He buys her story that I’m snockered.

Jayzuz!

So now I’m in trouble with him, he’s told my doctors at the Mayo that I’m a lush(!!!), they’ve ordered that my driver’s license be suspended, and he has made off with my car!

To buy groceries, I have to hike through the heat (110 degrees today) and haul stuff home from the Sprouts or from the slum stores to the north of us.

I should have canned the nitwit. But I’m just too sick to clean a four-bedroom shack myself, and the prospect of searching for a new employee is more than I can contemplate.

Without my car in 110-degree heat, there’s not much I can do. Hiking up to the Fry’s or down to the Albertson’s or over to the Sprouts is fine when the weather is moderate, but when it’s a blast furnace: not so much.

Gettin’ Old…and Stayin’ Free!

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My roommate at the University of Arizona had an aunt in Tucson who allowed herself to be persuaded (by my rm’s mother) to tell the university that we two girls were going to live at her house. (In those days, undergraduate girls were required to live in the dorms, unless they stayed at home.) We promptly moved into our own apartment. And lo! We escaped the Hell that was the University of Arizona’s dormitory system.

Well, that’s about how I see our present-day old-folkeries: as institutions of Hell. I most surely don’t want to live in such a place. NEVER AGAIN! I cherish my aloneness. I love living in my house. And when Ruby barks (corgis surely CAN bark!), she doesn’t bother anyone.  When a neighbor chooses to turn their TV to “blast,” the damn thing is far enough away that the racket doesn’t penetrate my bedroom walls. Or any of my walls!

So…how to stay out of some awful place designed as a prison for the useless elderly?

Back in the Dark Ages, old buzzards often – maybe usually – moved in with an adult child’s family. My great-grandmother, for example, lived with her daughter, whose own son and daughter-in-law lived within walking distance.

That, you may be damn sure, ain’t gonna happen in our time and in our space! 😀

Fastest way possible to drive my poor son nuts!

But…but…waitaminit here!

WHAT IF you didn’t live with the offspring, but rather within walking distance? Or within a few minutes’ drive time?

That would give the adult kid easy, fast access to you – and you access to them.

And…in my case, what would it do for me?

Well, it would put my heroic son within a few minutes’ drive – or even walk. So, he could rescue me from myself, when needed. Conversely, I could easily reach his place, even on foot, making it possible (even easy) to pester the bedoodles outta him. 😉

Seriously: it would make it easy for me to take gifts of food and other treats to him. Easy to haunt him when I have some PITA that needs a grown man to handle. Easy for him to pick me up and schlep me to the dentist (or wherever).

And thereby it would facilitate my living at home as long as possible: preferably until I croak over.

Voilà! I get my privacy and peace & quiet. He gets his mutther where he can keep an eye on the ole’ bat.

Welp…all those bennies are, in fact, a shade on the optimistic side. My son has, of all things, a JOB (remember those?). He works out of his home for a large international insurance company. This, as you might imagine, does keep him busy.

Very busy,

So he can’t be trotting back and forth to my house or chauffeuring me around the city.

Fortunately, the corner of this city where I live happens to be well stocked with conveniences. Within a couple of blocks, we have an Albertson’s (supermarket par excellence), a more or less competent computer store, a Walgreen’s, a T-Mobile, a Bookman’s…. on and on and ON. About 90% of the time, you really don’t need a car to supply your needs here.

Gilding that lily, the swell new lightrail train comes right up into the ‘Hood., northbound from the downtown district. And the city is building extensions that will carry passengers east and west  and, eventually, further north into the middle-class suburbs along the freeway. In another few years, I’ll be able to get out to the university without ever touching an ignition key.

Mercifully, the time for me to need to commute to campus has passed…”mercifully” because no, I do NOT enjoy being groped by fellow passengers on those trains, or hooted and yelled at by jerk drivers as I stand at a bus stop. But if few minor irritants bother you, these trains ARE the Business.

Now…admittedly, there are some benefits to locking yourself into an old-folkerie.  In my father’s case, for example, one day he sat down for a huge mid-day meal in the dining hall and…promptly had a stroke!

Staff members there recognized what was happening and called for help on the spot. MUCH faster than I would have been able to call, even though I was sitting right there beside him. And they knew exactly what they were talking about when they spoke with the operator. Help arrived within minutes…and it was help who knew what to expect and how to address the disaster under way.

That wouldn’t happen if I had a stroke as I was sitting at my dining room table here at the Funny Farm. Of that you may be sure.

Someone would discover my corpse a few days later – maybe. Probably gnawed on by a hungry hound.

At any rate: just now one option is, in fact, for me to stay right where I am.

Another would be for me to move closer to where my son is.

His place is within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Gourmet Market, a few steps from the lightrail, minutes from two major regional hospitals. So…if I lived near him, I really wouldn’t need a car at all. I could use taxicabs if there were some reason not to walk, and in a real emergency, an ambulance would arrive within seconds.

Heh heh! JUST what my son needs, right? For his muther to move in three houses up the road! 😀

Ohhhhh well… It’s something to think about. If not to laugh about.