Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

…And Day Fades into Evening

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My son will soon be over here to drag me over to the (hateful!!) physical therapy studio. Ohhhh  gawd how could I do without that place and its mindless routines?

Said routines do nothing to help the spavined hip and back. What helps, apparently, is Time and the River Flowing. And walking, walking, walking, walking…

Trotted up to the northside shopping center this afternoon. A beautiful afternoon, we might add. Enjoyed schmoozing with the employees. Eyeballing the weirdos who live in the slum apartment complexes across the road. Strolling around the rest of the mall. Headed back to the Funny Farm…

On the way, passed by the Ole Guy’s house.

The Ole Guy was a retired gentleman who lived in a corner house just to the northwest of our part of the ‘Hood. And he was on in years: I’d guess he was in his late 70s or mid-80s.

SDXB and I would march around the neighborhood every morning, by way of exercise. And generally he would be out puttering in his yard when we passed by. WHAT a nice man!!

His main concern, as the weeks and months passed, was for his wife. He felt she was no longer able to stay in the house unassisted. Wanted to put her in a venerable Phoenix old-folkerie called the Beatitudes.

She was having none o’ that!!

The quarrel…uhm, discussion…went on for months.

We would see him every day; say hello as we passed; get the current neighborhood and family gossip.

But..yea verily. One day he was no longer there. The only way he could get her locked up was to lock himself up with her, o’course. And so when the time came, they both disappeared from our parts.

Much missed, we might add.

Dunno who lives there now: one never sees them outside

Ruby the Corgi and I are outside in front just now…as befits old folks, I guess?  Ruby is telling every passer-by how the proverbial cow ate the proverbial cabbage. I am…umh…loafing

And waiting for my son to show up and tote me off to the endlessly annoying physical therapy gym.

My gawd, how I hate that place. Its exercising hassle truly IS the biggest waste of time I can imagine, other than solving algebra problems for your ninth-grade math class….

So this will blow away the evening, a pretty evening when Ruby and I should be strolling from one end of the ‘Hood to the other.

One night I got pissed off with the frustration and the time wastage and sneaked out the door. Took off down the road on foot.

M’hijito had gone home, I think (or somewhere), to wait out the time with less boredom.

He was mightily annoyed when he showed up there to collect me and discovered I’d escaped.

😀

So now he won’t leave. He brings something to read and wastes his own goddamn evening sitting there while nothing useful is being done to me.

Make it stop, God!

Okay okay…sooner or later He will. But…wouldn’t it be nice if that “sooner or later” time could pass without endless annoyance?

😀

Hmmm…  A neighbor’s fire alarm seems to be on the fritz. It’s going quack!….quack!….quack!…. 

Ah…apparently it either ran out of juice or somebody came along and shut it off.

Hmmm…  Speaking of front yards in the neighborhood, we could so with a li’l maintenance here at the Funny Farm. Couple of plants need some serious pruning. And a spot where another shrub died could be cleared out and replanted with something new and classy.

Well…we can pounce poor old Gerardo with that. Get him to work on it before the weather is too hot for working.

Hm,….quack! quack! quack! 

Dammit! The defunct fire alarm was not. Defunct, that is. It’s back to quacking…and quacking…and quacking.

Uh oh. Here’s the Kid. Sooo…bye!

 

 

 

 

Pool Dude!

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ARF! we say. ARF ARFETY ARF! IT’S POOL DUDE DAY!

Darned if I can imagine how Ruby the Corgi knows when it’s Pool Dude’s day to come over and shovel out the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour money. But by golly, she sure does! 

And she’s out there lurking by the gate — or in the house by the back door — waiting for him to show up.

Ohhhh how that dawg loves that Pool Dude!

So does the human… Bless’im, he relieves me of an annoying job. And, because he does the job SO much better than I can, he keeps that pool just spotless. Looking gorgeous. Free of casually growing sheets of green stuff.

Yeah: we’re both in love with Pool Dude. I’ll tellya: that guy is worth his weight in dollar bills.

Do hafta say: in the unlikely event that I were ever to buy another house, it almost surely will NOT have another swimming pool in the backyard. I do love having the puddle of cool water out there in Arizona’s gawdawful summertime. But..y’know…a shower will do the trick. 😉

Unless you have kids who play in the pool every day, owning one is hardly worth the cost. The pool really is an expensive nuisance.

It also poses a health threat that most people don’t think about: it’s a puddle spreading some very scary communicable diseases.

My next-door neighbor apparently decided she was done with maintaining and paying for her hole-in-the-ground, so she let the water drain out and then just went on about her business. Problem is: when you open the drain at the bottom of a backyard pool, not all the water drains out. 

Result: she had a nice little puddle sitting on the bottom of the plaster hole…and the mosquitos found it.

This created a fine mosquito nest, jacking up our buggy population handsomely.

Meanwhile, her other next-door neighbor, a European immigrant, had no clue about stale puddles, swarming mosquitoes, and their consequences. She liked to sleep with her windows open, and apparently had never heard of a window screen.

Next result: the skeeters flew right into her bedroom and made themselves to home, where they bit the bejayzuz out of her…and infected her with a fine case of encephalitis. She almost died from it.

Fortunately, she did recover after some time…even though her doctors had told her dad that she probably would not.

So…Ruby and I do not loaf around the backyard without being amply covered in clothing. We do have a mosquito-zapper out there. But most of the time, I stay indoors!

Therein lies one of the many drawbacks to having a swimming pool in your backyard…and it’s not even your pool!

Here in Phoenix, you’d have a hard time dodging mosquitos bred in one of the local holes-in-the-ground. Just about everybody does have a pool. You could probably evade the bugs if you lived in a high-rise apartment. But most houses…not so much.

If your pool is maintained properly, well then…no, it’s not breeding skeeters. But to take care of a pool properly is a PITA of the first water. You have to keep it steadily chlorinated. Sweep down the walls and steps. Vacuum out any debris that blows into it…. If you’re doing pool maintenance right, it’s pretty much a daily task. Or a stiff bill to a guy who comes around and beats back the dirt and the bugs.

Colder Than a By-Gawd!

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LOL! Well, no: it’s probably not THAT cold.

It was one of my father’s favorite turns of phrase: hotter than a by-gawd! colder than a by-gawd! 

LOL! I never did figure out what, if anything, a “by-gawd” was. As a kid, I assumed he meant “bi-god.” By that, he apparently did not intend the Earls of Norfolk, a modern currency, or a premium British cheese. 😀

My hip and tailbone hurt like a by-gawd. How a bi-god got in there escapes me: he apparently snuck in while I was sleeping.

At any rate, the sun is up, but it’s still passing cold out there. This morning’s doggy-walk is gonna have to wait for an hour or two, at least until the frost is off the palm tree.

I’m IN!!!

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A miracle!  Lost the password for FaM.  And thought…well, that’s it for the blogging hobby.

But nay! called up a magical page, and presto! Here it is! Why or how, I have no idea…

Probably FaM is no longer for this world than I am…which at the moment appears not to be much longer. I’m very, very sick. No sign of help from any doc in any direction. They clearly don’t know what’s causing this ailment or how to treat it.

Nor, we might add, do they care. In America, old people are less than…”people.”

So…I guess it’s…just resign myself to the obvious fact that I’m not gonna last much longer. And…well, once I’ve stopped lasting, presumably FaM will stop lasting.

{sigh} I reckon the paucity of help or effective care is a function of my personality…which apparently is pretty obnoxious. People have hated me since I entered grade school — before that, really, as evidenced  by the time a neighbor’s preschool brat threw a fistful of sand smack into my eyes.

WOW! Did that HURT! 

Worked nicely, though, to teach me to distrust other people and to stay back from them as much as possible.

Well, WTF. I’m an old lady now — a really old lady, having pretty much outlived my life. A couple of women in my family lived into their 90s. But most died much, much younger than that.

My mother and her mother both croaked over from cancer. I don’t smoke, don’t drink anymore, and don’t f**k every soul who comes up the pike, so you’d think I’d last a little longer than some.

Well, no: “Don’t drink” is mis-speaking. I do love a glass of wine, though lately I haven’t been able to stumble to the store to get any. And I used to enjoy a bourbon and water before dinner. Can’t manage that these days, either. But still…one could figure that a lifetime of pre-prandial swiggling can’t have done the body much good….even if it’s stopped in old age.

At any rate…now that I’m old, I’m so, sooo sick that frankly, I can’t wait for the show to be over. No credible sign that it’s gonna end soon, though…unless I help it along. But that, alas, is not my style.

Ever-So-Slightly De-crippled…

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The spavined hip I’ve been whining about seems s-l-o-o-w-l-y to be getting better. The Dawg and the Human managed to make our usual perambulation around the populated part of the ‘Hood — short version — without crippling the old lady. Still hurts, but at least the leg & hip are now functional.

With any luck, the undercarriage will be back to normal within another three to five days. And then we’ll be back to our usual cavortings. Yay!

Sure as Hell hurts right now, though. 😮

Incredibly beautiful stroll! Lush, gorgeous twilight evening. Most of the kids are inside for dinner, or so it appears. So it was quieter than usual as we strolled around.

Haven’t heard from my excellent son this evening, nor have I attempted to pester him from this end of the phone line. So I hope he’s having a quiet evening…ideally, hanging out with friends.

Meanwhile, also hoping to hit the sack early — Dawg is already conkered out at the end of the bed. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help the spavined hip…with any luck and enough ibuprofen.

sigh! <3  This is such a lovely neighborhood!  I hope I can contrive to stay here until I die. Really: it couldn’t cost any more to have a caretaker come in and babysit me here in my home than it would to lock me up in some dreary old-folkerie.

Well, we shall find out before too long, as I don’t seem to be getting any younger. The longer that exigency can be put off, the better!!

Colder’n a By-Gawd

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Mighty crisp out there this morning. Truth to tell, though, it’s not THAT cold: no frost on the windshields. O’course, that may be because it’s a dry cold. 😀

Hoping that Wonder-Cleaning Lady shows up today…but then realize…hold the phone!!…it’s Friday! And that is NOT Cleaning-Lady-Day.

Oh well. The house is still clean from her last visit.

What I really hoped was that she could tell me about the (terrifying!) Beatitudes, the warehouse for old folks where I almost certainly will end up soon, unless I croak over in a timely way. She used to work there. So she should be able to tell me what I need to know and what I want to know.

And I’m hoping, as knowledgeable as she is in those subjects, that she may be able to help me duplicate the services provided by the Beatitudes without having to move into that place. I abominate institutional living: just HATE it.

When I went down to the University of Arizona, I was preternaturally young — 16 years old. The UofA required girls under 21 to live in the damned, miserable dorms. So there I was: stuck in one of those holding pens for brats for the duration of my undergraduate career.

After a couple of dreadful years, my roommate’s mother managed to spring us free. She claimed that her sister — my roommate’s aunt, who lived in Tucson — was going to put us up at her house…so ’twas said.  The aunt merrily lied for us, and so we got out of the dorm hole. We rented an apartment and lived contentedly like the grown-ups we were.

At any rate…back to the future:  What I’m hoping to do now is hire people to duplicate the services you get at the Prison for Old Folks.

Cleaning: We already have Wonder-Cleaning Lady
Driving: This neighborhood is crawling with Uber drivers
Delivery services: Is that not why we have Amazon?
Doctor: My son drags me out to the Mayo, often without especially good reason. The Mayo is great for serious stuff, but for the occasional stubbed toe, we do have have a little clinic down by the Albertson’s, staffed by nurses and MD’s.
Baby-sitting: Spare me, Lord!
Groceries and pharmacy: Yeah: we do have that mega-Albertson’s.

So what I need most immediately are cleaning and driving services…and yeah! I’ve already got those! Minor medical issues can be handled by the local store-front quacks. Et voilà! 

Serious medical issues: We’re within a five-minute drive of not one but TWO major medical centers.

There really is no reason for me to have to move into an institution to get those services.

Now, granted: this morning I’d probably freeze to death before I could walk to any of those fancy-Dan hospitals or clinics. But…I’ll take my chances, thanks.