Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Fundamental Questions of Olde Age

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What am I doing?

What am I supposed to be doing?

Who the Hell am I?

And why am I here?

Yes. There we have the fundamental questions
that confront the aging mind.

😀

Was just about to fly out the door and trudge down to the ever-pricey AJ’s fancy-Dan grocery store, there to buy some swell stuff for the mid-day dinner. Charging around, it occurred to me to wonder…

* Waitaminit! What’s in the freezer?
* Waitanotherminit!! Whats wrong with this spectacularly fancy piece of spectacularly expensive steak?

and…

* Is there some REASON I can’t add this fresh, crisp asparagus to the menu?
* What??? No potatoes? Really??? What’s wrong with a fistful of freshly cooked pasta?

Sometimes I do wonder what’s wrong with me. At least this noon I escape the vicissitudes of old-age brain haze (for once!!), come away with what will be a very nice dinner, and not have to shell out another dime for it.

***

Y’know…ten years ago — even five years ago — it would never have occurred to me to traipse out into the (pricey!!!!) wilds to buy the makings for today’s mid-day feast. I would have known what was in the fridge. I would have known there was no need to go charging out in the traffic and scoop up $30 worth of fancy food and wine at AJ’s.

So…

Now we scribble while we wait for the kettle of water to come to a boil for the pasta. We swill wine by way of passing the time. And we wonder which drain our IQ points trickled down.

<<sigh>>

Worrying about SDXB and NG (New Girlfriend). He says she’s under the weather…apparently seriously so.

This is highly worrisome: first because she’s a lovely person and does not deserve to be sick; and second because he’s transparently in love with her and needs to have her in his life.

***

And in the Department of Weirdness…

Last  night I dreamed of returning to the sweet middle-class Berkeley  neighborhood where the relatives who raised my mother lived. And…

…how much I miss those women
…how much I miss Berkeley
…how much I miss the San Francisco Bay Area
…Oh hell! How much I miss my mother

How dast she smoke herself into the grave?

If heroin peddlers and cocaine peddlers and even marijuana peddlers are regarded as criminals, why the Hell aren’t tobacco peddlers legally recognized as the craven murderers that they are?

Ah well…movin’ on.

Maybe we’re all craven murderers? is that possible?

Daydreaming on in this vein, I found myself remembering Berkeley and the oh-so-long dead relatives, so vividly that they seemed almost real, almost here: and I wondered WTF is wrong with me.

If this is senility, my friends…then senility is freakin’ weird!

Argh! When was the last time….

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I felt this weary at 6:00 p.m?

LOL! Just this minute, I could very easily fall face-forward in the sack and conker out…

Alas, that would mean that along about 10:00 p.m. — tonight! — I’d be WIDE AWAKE with noooo hope of getting back to sleep…

Ohhhh well….

Dawg and I: just back from a mile-long perambulation of the park. Pretty quiet out there. Numbers of cute li’l kids playing. A couple of athletic teams bopping balls back and forth. The moon glowing brightly against a dark blue dusk sky.

Ahh, the young people are so fine, so much pleasure to watch. It really IS a beautiful neighborhood, full of excellent young folks alive with energy. My idea of energy is getting all the way around the park — about a mile — without conkering out.

The hound, being as lazy and as superannuated as her human. has taken up her position at the foot of the mattress and is busy conkering out. It’s only 7:00, but frankly I doubt if I’ll last much longer than she will… zzzzzzzzzz

*****

After Dark…

LOL! So there I wuz, going on about how beautiful the’Hood is. That was this afternoon. Now it’s coming onto 8 p.m., and what we have is BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Gunfire or backfires — or maybe a bit of both — resonating down from Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Honestly. This kind of sh!t makes the mausoleum that is Sun City look good. Which is sayin’ something.

Something horrible.

Ugh. I should have moved out to Sun City when SDXB did.

Trouble is, I hated living out there with my parents. The Silence of the Mausoleum is just not my idea of pleasant.

On the other hand…the whiz of ricocheting bullets is prob’ly not all that grand, either.

Phoenix: LA. East.
What a dump!

Wow! I’m in!!

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Dunno how, but for reasons unknown WordPress just let me back into Funny about Money.

Yeah. Here we are, coming onto midnight. The crazy-making Ailment is kicking up, making every tap on the keyboard HURT. And now the goddamn system goes down.

Yeah. Now I can’t get back into my li’l website.

Wander off. Go over to Dropbox. Mess with Google News. Dodge another gunshot. Wonder where the cops are (they usually show up when the bullets start to fly).

Put the dishes in the washer and turn on the machine. Come back to bed. Lift the dog onto the bed. Climb under the covers. Hear the cop copter returning…hmmmm…he’s a ways to the north.

That means the pistol-waving clowns are probably on Main Drag North.

Charming.

Oh well: at least they’re not in the back yard.

Rub CBD cream into the buzzing hands. Console self with reflection that the pain and tingling actually have backed off considerably.

Seriously: just now only the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands are buzzing like an electric current was flowing through them. Earlier, that buzz extended up the forearms to the elbow, up the lower legs to the knees, over the lips, and through the upper gums.

Palms and soles, I can live with.

Let the dog out. Wait till she does Her Thing and then call her back in — in addition to the melody of gunshots ringing out, it’s also the Coyote Hour. Those li’l pups jump over your backyard wall and will go after your dog if you’re stupid enough to let your dog out.

What. A. Place.

Dog gets on the bed.

Stick the new dirty dishes in the washer. Turn it on. Come back to bed. Rub CBD cream into the tingling hands.

Interestingly — oddly — the buzz of peripheral neuropathy has backed off a little. Not gone, by any means…but just now it’s significantly milder. BUT…whatever ails me is causing my fingernails to lift off their beds. That hurts, but not as much as one would expect.

Just what I need: to have my fingernails fall off!

😀

Ain’t life in Olde Age grand?

Wow! Clo$e call…

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Sometimes you accidentally do things that redound to your benefit….or magnificently against your benefit.

Check this out: I almost bought a condo right in this area. Smack in the middle of rapidly redeveloping downtown Phoenix. Now, our honored leaders are about to insert TEN HIGH-RISE APARTMENT BUILDINGS there.

Can you imagine what a zoo that place is gonna be?

All very stylish, no doubt. But crowded, hectic, noisy, and expensive. Very expensive. If you’ve ever lived in, say, San Francisco’s apartment/condo districts, you know whereof I speak.

Mercifully, just in time I recalled that crowded apartment living is not my cuppa tea (been there, done that!). A zoo like that would drive me out of what little remains of my mind.

So I decided against it…probably one of the smarter moves I’ve made of late. Property values here in the ‘Hood are going through the proverbial roof. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to stay here as the taxes rise. I want to leave this house to my son, but am kind of flummoxed about how to pull it off, especially if I have to go into an old-folkerie.

If the slum apartments across Conduit of Blight Blvd gentrify — as they almost surely will, in due time — property taxes in our neighborhood will hit the stratosphere. Don’t know that I’ll be able to afford that kind of annual hit.

My son has a decent job, so if and when he inherits the Funny Farm, he should be able to afford to stay here. If not, he can sell the place and pocket a nice chunk of dough. Or pay off his own house and move to a better place of his own choice.

He has remarked that he’d like to move to his father’s hometown: Grand Junction, Colorado. It’s the largest…uh…metropolis (heh!) on the Western Slope. And really: it is a pleasant place to live, if you like a slower pace. His grandmother lived in Grand Junction until the end of her life, at an advanced age, and she was very happy there. She lived to be 106.

I’m not sure he understands quite what that means. Small-town life is distinctively different from big-city life…which is what we have here in Phoenix. On the other hand, Grand Junction is not exactly Payson: it is a large small town, no doubt of it. His grandmother managed to keep herself busy all the time I knew her, engaged in state-wide politics. So…I guess if you work at it, you can build an interesting life in a place like that.

At any rate, speaking of “interesting,” I sure am glad I’m not in a downtown Phoenix condo just now. The place is already more “interesting” than one would like. Multiply that times ten and…well…it does make Grand Junction look good!

YDK: Lost and Gone Forever?

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YDK —  the beloved Young Dr. Kildare — seems to have flown the coop.

Yes, it is possible that he and his partners have closed the office for a holiday break. But if that were the case, surely they’d a) have a sign on the door to that effect and b) have some sort of off-putting announcement on their phone answering machine. But….neither of those applies. The doors are locked. No sign is in evidence. And they’re not answering the telephones.

Soooo…. I’m awfully afraid he’s gone, as in lost-and-gone-forever.

Not good, because he’s a sweetie-pie and his partners are tangibly competent. So I don’t hate loathe and despise going to the doctor when I have to see him, as is the case when I go to visit most quacks. Plus his office is right up the road from here…the Mayo Clinic, where my heavier-weight docs practice, is waaaaayyyy over on the east side, halfway to Payson. Seriously, almost an hour’s drive through cut-throat traffic.

Called a friend who is also a YDK fan. She thinks he may have moved his practice to Sun City. That’s entirely possible: a bunch of docs are following the Baby Boomers out there.

But…well, if so, bully for him. But I ain’t drivin’ an hour each way, forgodsake, to see a doc in Sun City for 15 or 20 minutes. Plus I have some exceptionally unhappy memories of the incompetence we encountered while my mother was dying of cancer in Sun City. Sorry…but I’m NOT driving an hour each way to do business with a dimwitted hack who doesn’t give a damn about aging women patients, thankyouverymuch.

One of those bastards told me and my father, as my mother begged for care for her (fukkin’ obvious! agonizing!) cancer, that (these ARE exact his words!) “all middle-aged women are hypochondriacs.”

No kidding.

Actually, the term he used was crocks. That’s quack-talk for crocks of sh!t.

So…now I need to try to find another “doctor in the wild,” as the Mayo’s staff calls the local medicos who are not on their faculty, or resign myself to driving until the cows come home for every little sniffle.

Or…I suppose…I could move to Scottsdale.

***

But….dammit, I don’t want to move to Scottsdale!

Not that there’s anything wrong with Scottsdale, other than that it’s Snottsville.   But my son lives here in town. I could almost walk to his house from mine – it’s an eight-minute drive down through urban traffic to his house. Residential parts of Scottsdale – those I might afford – are a good 45 minutes from central Phoenix. That’s when it’s not rush hour! And therein lies the issue: I don’t wanna be 45 minutes or an hour away from my son!

***

Sooooo….what to do, what to do?

I reckon come the first Monday after the Christmas chivaree, I’ll try to call over to YDK’s place again.

Failing that, I’ll…

a) Try to get in to a friend’s doctor in central Phoenix, and/or
b) Ask on the neighborhood Facebook page for recommendations from the locals.

We shall see how that goes. Mercifully, there’s no emergency.

…for the nonce…

The Times (and the Demographics), they are a-changein’

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Sorta…

Spent half the afternoon (and more!) puttering around the Old Neighborhood where DXH and I lived for the first fifteen years or so of our married life. My goodness, I loved that area, with its elegant historic houses and its big beautiful park and its…well…let’s face it: its whitey-white neighborhoods.

Yep. It was (and is) as whitey-white as you can get and still be on this planet. If anyone of dusky complexion moved in there, they were likely to be pressured out…in any number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

My mother would never have tolerated having me and the spouse dwell in an integrated neighborhood. She and my father lived in Sun City, which was (and is) as segregated as human habitation can get. Friend of mine — dusky persuasion — bought a house out in Sun City a few months ago. And “a few months” was as long as he lasted. Less than that, actually. Didn’t take the gracious neighbors long to harry the poor guy out.

Yes, my friends: Arizona IS a Southern state….  What a place!

Oh well.

So I killed the better part of the afternoon cruising the old neighborhoods. Missing old friends, missing old scenery, remembering old adventures. My…what good times we had. How beautiful those historic houses were. How fun the young and the upwardly mobile were. How grand the park with its lakes and grass and trees. How adventurous the burglars and the rapists. How terrifying the German shepherds and the Doberman pinschers. 😀

No kidding. Greta, our GerShep, chased one poor fella off after he’d snuck into the house in the middle of the night. He’s still running…said to be approaching Lake Titicaca.

That factor notwithstanding, I do miss it.

Welp. Where I live could be called “the New Encanto.” Our houses are damn near old enough to be dubbed “historic.” The ‘Hood calls in the young, the affluent, and the upwardly mobile (to say nothing of the crooked, the greedy, and the thieving…). We are now “centrally located” in much the same way as the Old Neighborhood was. And the place is prized because of its style, its locale, and its demographic…

Plus ça reste le même…

KEEEERIMINEY!  WordPress just crashed….  Managed to to get the program back online, but this post would only come up in “text” style: basically unreadable and uneditable.

LOL! What on earth did I do to pi$$ off the gods like this? 😀

Oh…how nice. Just to make the wee hours more entertaining, some young (I assume) sh!thead is charging back and forth across Main Drag North, his engine roaring and backfiring.

Well. I assume the bang! bang! bang! is his car backfiring. Could just as easily be a pistol firing. And nooooo, that would NOT be much of a surprise in these parts.

Honest to Gawd. Sometimes it actually does make Sun City look good….

Ohhhh well. At least WordPress seems to have come back online. Now to see if its “Publish” function works..

😮