Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Late October in the Desert

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Incredibly gorgeous morning! Clear, cool but not cold, not even crisp. People out pushing their baby strollers, walking their dogs. My mind wanders…

…to the horror of potential incarceration at the Beatitudes, a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie. Honestly: I’d rather be dead than locked up in an institution. Must figure out potential alternatives…

* Hire someone to come to the house and care for me? Apparently Luz (Cleaning Lady from Heaven) used to do this.

* Stay someplace overnight, but keep the house and return here during the day?

* Buy an apartment in someplace like The Terraces? (The Terraces is an old-folkerie.)

* Allow self to be forced to buy a place at the Beatitudes (an old-folkerie on the gawdawful level), but after the dust settles, go out and rent an apartment someplace else, keeping it secret?

* Buy a house in M’hijito’s neighborhood, so he feels better about being closer to me? Hire someone to help care for it?

Looks like #1 is probably the only truly viable choice. That or 1 & 5.

Right now, I don’t need #1. I have no problem caring for myself:

* Fixing meals
* Shopping for groceries
* Cooking gourmet(!) meals
* Bathing, grooming
* Tending the pool
* Riding herd on the hired help
* Caring for the dog

The big issue, really, is the purloined car: not being able to get from Point A to Point B without hiring a driver. But is that really a very big deal?

* A guy across the street drives for Uber and is usually available.
* Otherwise, Uber does its own roaring business in this neighborhood: no problem calling for a driver.
* When my son’s nose is not on the grindstone, he probably can schlep me to most routine destinations (grocery stores for example).
* But that may not be necessary: we have not one, not two, but three major grocery retailers and two drugstores within easy walking distance. And two computer stores. And a veterinarian. And a hair stylist. And a nail salon. And…hmmmm…Is anything NOT within walking distance???

My Aunt Gertrude was a very practical woman…so, my guess is that she moved from her sweet Berkeley bungalow into a fancy old-folkerie because her son forced her to move, not because she felt any urgency to do so. She could have gotten by in that house indefinitely, with hired help to come in and handle the cleaning, the shopping, and the errands/appointments. And what an asset to have handed down to her son: it’s now worth over $1.2 MILLION!

Such are the ravages of time, eh?

Truth to tell, I suspect that over the time left to me, this house’s value also will explode…right along the lines of Gertrude’s house. And how would I love to be able to pass along something over a million bucks to my son? Zowie!!

Beautiful Dog-&-Human Night

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Ruby the Corgi dragged her Human all over the north part of the neighborhood this evening. And what a beautiful evening it is! Really one of those incredible Arizona nights…just gorgeous.

We walked northward, past my old Arizona Highways colleague’s place: Jerry Jacka, one of the great landscape photographers of the Southwest. Then up past our now-absent friend Marge’s house.

She, we assume, must either have passed or have been consigned to The Beatitudes, a skin-crawling prison for the elderly. She appeared to be well into her 80s…maybe even older than that.

Her house — a classic Southern-California style 1970s ranch house — has been swarming with workmen. It’ll be interesting to see what transpires…

She told me she wanted to leave it to her son, who lives out of state. She wanted him to have it as an outpost to use when he’s here on business, which is apparently every now and then.

Our grown kids, though, usually do NOT have the same ideas about large and expensive investments as we do. My guess is, he’s cleaning it up and fancying it up so he can put it on the market.

It’s really not in an ideal location: only a block or two south of Main Drag North, one of the most hectic surface streets in the city. When you live next to a busy road like that, you get used to the racket from the traffic. But…whaddaya bet Sonny hasn’t done any such thing? He probably thinks it’s a zoo up there, and has no intention of hanging onto a piece of real estate pasted to the edge of that unholy road.

Ohhh well. Nothing stays the same, eh?

 

Scam-a-Bat

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My poor son was mightily peeved this morning when I interrupted his work by calling him to ask if some marvel of an offer that arrived in the mail was, as suspected, a scam.

Yes. Of course it’s a scam. Quit breaking into my workday with that stuff!

Uh  huh.

Well, what happens when you’re old is that it gets harder and harder for you to distinguish the Fake from the Real. That’s even when you know very well that about every third person you encounter wants to rip you off. 

Yes. Even when you know that 99% of what comes in the mail is a scam. Yes. Even now that virtually every phone call comes from a crook. I no longer even answer the phone. Leave me a message, and maybe I’ll call you back. If I know you personally…

Even ordinary adults in their working years get quite enough nuisance calls! Now add to that the calls for help from elder relatives who have been pestered by this, that, or the other scammer, and you get…overwhelming!

Today I got a snail-mail from what looked like a legitimate creditor telling me that I’d better pay up some late bill or it would be off to jail for me, by golly!

Uh huh.

Well, on some level I knew that was BS, because I don’t buy things on time. If  can’t afford to pay for it now, I don’t get it.

But that’s not 100%. Yes, of  course I do have some creditors. Don’t we all?

Well…yeah. That’s what the scammers are counting on.

My son was enraged when I broke into his work morning to ask if today’s telephoned demand for money was something real…or what. This made me feel like a sh!t, of course. But…what would I have felt like if I’d fallen for the caller’s scam?

Honestly. I think a person could make a living by hiring out to answer people’s phones and screen the incoming trash. No kidding: at this point, I would seriously consider hiring someone to answer my calls. MOST of the calls I get these days are hustles and scams. Hiring someone to screen incoming would relieve me of a fair amount of tooth-grinding!

Same with the mail. It’s getting to the point where I won’t open an envelope unless I recognize the sender’s name & address. ANY envelope. But that means that occasionally someone I do business with is not gonna be able to reach me by snail-mail. Or by phone. In other words: they can’t reach me at all. 

Probably the trick to that would be to insert some sort of code into your return address.

Jane 324 Doe, Esquire
1234 Erewhon Road
New York, N.Y. 23456

But these edited return addresses would, over time, be collected by the hustlers, so that eventually you would no longer be able to tell the difference between legit correspondence and hustles. And of course, to the extent that such a maneuver works, it will waste your time as you dork around with the coded addresses.

The older you get, the tiresomer it gets!

Morning Perambulation

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So it was OUT THE DOOR as the sun bobbed above the eastern horizon. Gorgeous morning! Cool, clear, and bright.

We were, as usual, not alone. The locals love to do their morning exercise and/or dog walk as dawn cracks. Most of them probably have to go to work — poor souls — and so are getting up & attem in time to trot the dog around the park and then fix breakfast.

Mercifully, this is no longer an issue for Ruby and her human.

In no hurry, we stroll hither and thither, ogle the landscaping, dodge the local coyote, admire the neighbors’ BMWs, enjoy their kids running around.

Past the horse pasture that has been repurposed as a home for a local’s pet llamas. Cute critters…and surprisingly tame.

No coyotes in evidence this morning. They’re around — of that you can be sure. But today we didn’t have to change course to avoid an encounter.

So we wandered through Upper Richistan, the truly upscale section of our overall fairly upscale neighborhood. Pretty, broad irrigated yards, full of green stuff called “grass.” (We don’t have it over here in the low-rent district…not much of it, anyhow.)

Past our elderly friend Marge’s place. She’s recently gone: whether she died or not, I do not know. Since she was a Neighborhood Fixture, I’m sure the grapevine would have announced it if she passed on. I believe she was locked up in a prison for the elderly called The Beatitudes…a garden spot I hope to evade, dead or alive.

The Beatitudes is an old-folkerie designed to turn handsome profits from locking up, supervising, and feeding the elderly. In short: it’s an old people’s prison.

Her son lives in some other state. She daydreamed that she would keep her house for him, so he’d have his very own jumping-off place for the times he’s in town on business.

Just now, they’ve got workmen in the house eviscerating it and rebuilding stuff and painting. I expect he probably intends to sell the place…for a very nice profit, indeed.

I do miss Marge: what a nice lady! We would often run across each other as we perambulated the neighborhood streets, and then walk and talk and gossip together for an hour or so.

If I were friendlier and chattier, surely I’d be the New Marge. Unfortunately, I’m nothing like as gregarious as she was: don’t make friends easily and don’t seek out walking partners.

My plan is to do as she has done: stay in my house until simply FORCED out by age and worried offspring. With any luck, I’ll croak over before I’m made to move into the hideous Beatitudes.

And lemme tellya: I do hope never to wrap another cabinetful of dishes, pots, & pans and haul them off in another cardboard box, drag them into the next kitchen and dining room, unpack them all, wash them all, and find new places to store every darned one of  ’em!!

My parents were highly peripatetic — between the time I was born and the time we came back to the States from Saudi Arabia, we lived in four company houses. That’s a move about every 2½ years. Back in the States, we lived in five different places between the time we set down in San Francisco and the time my parents retired to Sun City.

***
Eeek! Speaking of the Bizarre Charms of Living in the Funny Farm…
***

OMG! The corgi and the human amble into the backyard, the better for said dawg to defile the desert landscaping out there. And what do we spot overhead, circling with evident interest? The biggest damn hawk I’ve seen in years!

Actually, I’m not sure it was a hawk. Could have been an eagle. But it was solid black. The local eagle set: not black. 

Could’ve been a raven…but really, it was much too big to operate as a raven or a crow.

***

Gosh, but a li’l sighting like that elicits a surge of sentimentalia in the human. Oh, my. How I miss the ranch. 

Yea verily: out there on the lip of the Mogollon Rim, a zillion miles from anything like civilization, yes, we did have eagles.

And ravens.

And crows.

And coyotes.

And the occasional nuisance human.

LOL! Hereabouts, all we have are nuisance humans.

Sorry: I don’t consider a misplaced coyote to be much of a nuisance. Understand how coyotes think and train yourself to stare them down, and they don’t present anything like a threat. What they want most is to get a nice long distance from you — preferably with a fistful of fresh garbage between their jaws.

😀

Lord, how I waaaannna go home!

Traipsing to Pretoria….

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Hot, wet morning!

Out the door as dawn cracked, wherewith to take an exercise walk before it gets unbearably hot.

“Gets”???? Seriously?

Ohhhh well. 

It was down to the Albertson’s shopping center, wherein (I imagined) to visit the shopping-lot doctor’s office and tell the staff to QUIT CALLING ME ON THE PHONE, DAMMIT!!!!!!!

Three guesses:

* They weren’t open
* They weren’t open
* Or, they weren’t open

Right. Nine a.m. of a mid-week day, and no one was there.

Brilliant white cumulus clouds climb through a radiant blue sky. They seem to be growing, thickening. Presumably we’ll get some rain this afternoon.

Passed the PILES of cheap apartments along Main Drag West. Years ago, incredibly, my mother wanted me to rent a place in those dumps. They were no worse, really, than they are now. And no better. Not a place where you’d want to live. Especially not if you were a 20-something college kid.

Well. Post-college kid. I’d finished the B.A. and was lurking, trying to decide what to do next.

One thing I did NOT want to do was continue my career as a phone-answering receptionist, working for something less than almost nothin’. 😀

In any event, I cannot even BEGIN to imagine why those dumps, even when they were 30 years newer, would have been a desirable place for a young woman to live. Chez Pitz!

What on earth was my mother thinking???? 

Now and again, I imagine I really ought to sell the Dog Palace and move either out into the suburbs or deeper into town. Rationality soon catches up, though: it’s expensive as hell to sell your house, buy another one, and move. Plus I love my house and I ain’t a-gunna move away from here.

So. There!

Handsome young black man, loafing in the covered bus stop. Ohhhh you gorgeous critter! Smile. He smiles back. He’s plainly stoned.

Damn.

Proceed northward, ever northward, along Main Drag West. This, to avoid being followed into the ‘Hood.

Mercifully, I’m now tooooo old to appeal to any man: young, old, black, white, purple, stoned or straight…. Thank goodness! 

After enough distance is passed, dodge into the ‘Hood. Come upon a fine young father, busily installing a basketball hoop for his preschool-age kid. Adorable! Despite its surroundings, our neighborhood still DOES have a lot to recommend it.

DO I want to stay here, now and evermore?

Well….I’m so ambiguous as to whether the answer is probably “yeah….” I incline to operate on the “When in Doubt, Don’t” principle. If you’re not dead sure that XXX is what you want to do, then don’t do XXX.

duh! Why does that not seem obvious?

And yet….when ambiguity lurks, it surely isn’t obvious.

If you don’t know how well the real estate will hold its value…

If you don’t know whether those slum apartments will continue to go downhill, or whether the Yup set will discover them and turn them into high-rent urban campgrounds…

If you don’t know whether your health is gonna hold out as you roam deeper into decrepitude…

If you don’t know if your son would like to inherit your shack, after you finally do croak over…

Well, Helle’s belles: then YOU DON’T KNOW. 

Personally, I’m averse to making any kind of decision or move when I don’t know. Knowing what I’m doing: that’s what I do. But sometimes, that’s just not possible.

{sigh}

How Much Longer, Lord?

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😀  That’s not a moan of despair. That’s an honest question to His Godship. 

How much longer, dear Lord, am I likely to live? And if Your answer to that is “forever and aye…or at least longer than another two weeks,” then the next question is how much longer am I going to be able to live on my own?

And THAT’S the Biggie. 

I just hate, loathe, and despise congregate living. 

In college, I lived in the dorms at the University of Arizona.

Absolutely miserable, stinking experience. My roommate and I were finally able to escape, with the help of her aunt.

Back in the Day, female students were considered too feeble to care for themselves on their own, so if you were a girl at the UofA and you weren’t living at home, you were REQUIRED to live in the (gawdawful!) dorms. My friend and I persuaded her aunt, who lived in the same town where the university held forth, to tell the campus authorities that we were going to live with her, in her home.

The minute approval of that fake arrangement came down, Roomie and I raced out and rented an apartment.

Best thing either of us did in the whole four years we spent in (un)lovely Tucson.

This is the thing: I LOATHE INSTITUTIONAL LIVING!

See what I mean?

I HATE LIVING IN CONGREGATE HOMES. I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN A HIGH-RISE FULL OF OLD FOLKS. 

Or full of any folks at all.

I wanna stay right here in my house, with my dog and my backyard birds and my swimming pool and my yard guy and my cleaning lady until DAMMIT until I die!

And I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request.

But good luck fazing it past the Larger Society.

The Mayo bastards have nullified my driver’s license, for no other reason than my age. This means I have to walk to grocery stores or else hire a cab to get to a grocery store. And that presents a HUGE problem.

First off, I can’t impose on my son to drive me from pillar to post from now until I croak over (which, given the family history, will probably be another five to ten years). So that means I have to hire a driver to get…literally anywhere. This morning — it’s pouring rain just now — I really do need to get down to the supermarket and then across the street from that to the local drugstore and then all the way back up to my house.

Even if it weren’t overcast and raining, this would be a trick, here in my dotage. That’s a long walk. Make it “long walk x 2,” since we’re talkin’ round trip here.

So…the silly-sounding hypothetical question at the top of this post now takes on some significance. Rather dreadful significance…because if I live as long as other nonsmokers in my family, I’m likely to outlive my ability to do things like walk to the grocery store.

The societally planned future for the likes of me is that I will eventually be forced to sell my home and use the proceeds plus my life savings to buy my way into a holding pen for the elderly. There I will live out my days in tedium, eating bad chow out of cans and boxes, keeping my yap shut, and doing what I’m told to do.

That is NOT the way I want to live. And surely it’s not the way I want to wrap up my life.

I do not think it should be unreasonable for an elder to be allowed to live in their own home in their own peace and quiet with their own little dog and their own array of favorite foods.

See what I mean?

Probably not. The meaning is this: to my mind, it would be FAR better for one’s life to end after a reasonable time than to be forced to live for years in miserable conditions. No matter how classy those conditions: miserable is miserable. 

And no! That ain’t how I wanna live.

True enough: For the last few months or couple of years, I may not be able to get by alone. But we don’t KNOW that’s likely to be true. My aunt and great-grandmother lived into their late 90s, in their home and without a babysitter to watch them every minute.

So the question is…how do I maximize the probability of that happening for me, too?  And if it can be made to happen, how do I contrive to live safely in my own home, with my own canine sidekick and my own cooking and my own rocking chair and my own shower and my own washer and dryer and my own….everything???

One of the factors that will allow me to stay here at the Funny Farm much longer than used to be possible is today’s Uber. Plus the freakin’ Internet.

An Uber driver — one of them lives catty-corner across the street — plus a computer connection make it possible to order just about everything you need. Online. Without arguing with some moron on the other end of a phone line. I can get my Ubering neighbor to drop by the supermarket as he’s cruising around, and when he surfaces with a couple bags full of necessities, fork over enough to pay for the goods and give him a decent gratuity. And believe me: THAT guy is worth it!

Another factor, of course, is Amazon. God Bless That Outfit! Seriously: absent fresh groceries, you can order 90% of what you need online, and have it dropped at your front door. And that is HUGE.

So….I think that with a few changes in day-to-day habits, I should be able to extend the time I can stay in my home by months, if not years.