Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

WORSER & WORSER

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GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!  Want pain? Lemme tellya PAIN!

Spent the better part of y’day and this morning at the Mayo Clinic’s ER.

I fell face-forward on the tiled floor. Reflexively stuck out my left hand as I was going down. Whacked the Hell out of my hand. Busted the humerus, one of the long bones of the upper arm. Apparently didn’t break anything else (to my surprise). But oh!

Hurt?  Lemme tella HURT! 

And hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt… Holy mackerel, it hurts!

The little dog is accustomed to sleeping on the bed. But she’s too small to jump up here by herself: she has to be lifted.

They told me not to lift her onto the bed. (They who have no clue to what a corgi is…) So of course I’ve been lifting her onto the bed.

Just now: Slipped. Lost my footing. Dropped the dog. Wrenched the arm, And HURT!!!!!

Oh Dear GOD did that hurt.

This elicited a sky-splitting shriek of agony. Terrorized the little dog. She now refuses to come out from under the toilet.

That may be just as well. At least she won’t be out here banging on the bed trying to get up.

I don’t think Ruby got hurt. But I sure as hell did.

Ohhhhh well…  The worst of the screaming pain has about subsided

And hallelujah, brothers & sisters, Amazon carries little staircases to help a small dog climb on the bed!

heee! Have you ever seen such a thang?!?

I’m thinking that tomorrow, if I can drive (highly questionable), I’ll run over to the nearest Petsmart and grab one of these for Ruby. Failing that: order it up from Amazon.

Dunno, tho… Amazon shows several models that are cheaper. Oh, well. There’s plenty of time to think about that.

High as a Kite? Or Crazy as a Loon?

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In central Arizona’s lovely August heat, Ruby and I have to get out for the daily doggy-walk right at or even shortly before dawn. This stroll takes us around Upper Richistan, about a mile of shaded walking…two if we elect to walk up toward our friend Marge’s house, visit the cow pasture in those parts, and stroll back to the Funny Farm.

This morning was icky hot and humid, so we limited the day’s hike to the Upper Richistan loop. It’s around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. by the time we get to those parts.

So we’re strolling along the road when along comes this couple, a youngish man and what appears to be his wife or girlfriend. And the woman…well…she’s clearly stoned out of her mind. She’s already kinda raving on, and when she sees Ruby, she goes BONKERS.

She starts carrying on with ohhhh corgi!!! it’s a CORGI. look at her cute little butt! And then on and on and on about the cute little butt.

We’re not going to get away from this nut case, so I end up deciding to make an about-face and take another route, back into our low-rent precincts of the ‘Hood .

***

This is Business as Usual in the ‘Hood. The pair probably came from the slum apartments that stand on the far side of Conduit of Blight Blvd. That place, which once meandered pleasantly through a rambling golf course — now a gigantic weed patch — started out as a compound of upper-middle-class rentals. But over the years they’ve gone steadily downhill, and now the golf greens are dead and the apartments are run-down dumps. A resident once shot a cop through the front door of one of those fine dwellings.

Oh well…. Derailed from our usual route through the sylvan glens of Upper Richistan, we head back into our section of the ‘Hood. Up a cross-street to the north of us…hmmmmm….  Some of the houses there are being rebuilt and upgraded. Evidently somebody thinks that, given the central location and the widespread hallucination that there’s something kewl about the lightrail, they can fancify a house and sell it for quite a bit more than it’s worth.

Oh well, indeed.

We circle back into our part of the ‘Hood, over to where the cop lives with his young family, past the home of our eccentric pal who escaped here from the Darkest West Side. And as we walk, we pass by the Old Lady’s House.

Oh, dear.

This woman, a long-time resident of the ‘Hood — quite possibly an original owner! — was widowed and apparently left with exactly nothing. She simply didn’t have the funds to maintain a house, whether or not she owned it free and clear. And one of the things she skimped on to get by was…oh, yes: homeowner’s insurance.

Sooo… When the wild, hurricane-like storms we had a few years ago came through and tore a hole in her roof, she couldn’t afford to get the roof fixed!

This apparently didn’t much matter most of the time: she couldn’t afford air conditioning, either, so it was gonna be hotter than the hubs in there all summer and colder than a bygod all winter. But the big problem was, whenever it rains, water pours into the house like a cascade.

That’s what the wretched woman was having to live in.

Finally, the house was removed from her possession… Unclear whether she died, whether she moved in with someone and just abandoned the place, or whether it was taken for taxes. Most of us think the latter, but who knows? She was moved out of there, and the place stood vacant for awhile.

Now apparently someone has bought it. Whether as an investment or to live in it is unclear. WhatEVER: they just finished installing a whole new roof! And now they’re over there fixing up the walls and presumably repairing and spiffing up throughout.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the present owners move into it, or whether they’ll sell it for a handsome profit.

A place around the corner that was basically rebuilt from a few surviving walls recently sold for something over a million bucks. To give you an idea: my first house in the ‘Hood was a block up the street: I paid $125,000 for it and felt that was too much….  Zillow thinks my present house — same builder, same model, a block & a half further from Conduit of Blight’s noise and crime — is worth $535,000 and change.

Can you imagine?

I sure can’t!!

Coolin’ Down!

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Wunderground sez it’s supposed to hit 112 today. But I wouldn’t put any money on it.

After yesterday’s scorcher, this morning is nice and balmy. Skies are overcast, the cloud cover very slowly growing thicker. It looks suspiciously like we’ll get some rain today.

But best of all, the inside of the house has cooled into the habitable range. Without the sun blasting down on the roof and the skylights, the temp in the house is an astonishing 77 degrees.

Crazy!

Speaking of attempts to cool down…I bought a couple packages of Talenti ice cream at Albertson’s the other day. The kind that comes in small round plastic containers. And the one I happen to crave just now? I can NOT get it open.

Ran hot water over the lid.

Nope.

Tapped the lid all the way around the rim.

Nope.

Knocked the lid hard on the floor, all the way around the rim.

Nope.

Ran hot water over it again.

Nope.

So I guess whenever I get off my duff, I’ll take it back and complain. O’course I’ve already tossed the receipt, so won’t get any money back. But after this, I also won’t buy ice cream there.

Don’t buy much at that store anyway. It’s one of those fine establishments where you don’t feel safe in the parking lot. So it ain’t much loss.

Eyeballing real estate ads.

The prices have gone completely out of reason.

Here’s a place in town…not far from where I live, as a matter of fact. They want SIX HUNDRED GRAND for it.

They’ve renovated the interior…hafta say that for it. Looks like they’ve done a good job at it, too, if you like that kind of stark effect. The backyard, while not a wreck, is gonna require some expensive landscaping. All in all, not a bad li’l house…but still…that’s an INSANE price.

But so is everything else. I couldn’t even begin to get into the coveted Central Avenue high-rise now — prices are pushing a million bucks. For two-bedroom blah apartments.

Price of a house in the same zip code? $1.15 million bucks. And up.

Here’s a two-bedroom look-alike apartment in the high-rise where my friends J & L live.  It looks exactly like their place. Under 1200 square feet…over 700 grand.

Wow!!

For what I could get for my house, I couldn’t afford to move anyplace in the city of Phoenix. Well…not anyplace where one would want to live. Prices are comparably crazy in Fountain Hills

This thing is a condo — an apartment — and centrally located. Look at the insane price! And you’d be running up and down stairs all the time! And it has no yard!

Sun City prices are still below the market in the rest of the metropolitan area. That would be because only a certain type of person wants to live in a ghetto for old people — thus the market is limited, to a degree. And they’re cheesily built, just like most of the cheesy new(er) construction in the Phoenix area.

Well…I’d better post this. WordPress keeps trying to throw me out. And I really should get off my duff and start moving around. ‘Bye!

How to Cope with the Last Phase of a Lifetime…

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So I wake up wondering — first thought of the morning — HOW the hell I’m going to stay out of that venerable old-folkerie, the Beatitudes. Remembering how my father thought its direct competitor, Orangewood (now called The Terraces), was THE most brilliant idea that came around, and how my mother resisted and refused to go in there, and then how my father suffered (almost as much as she did) as she lay dying of cancer while he struggled to care for her in their little house in Sun City, all by himself.

The neighbors threw a birthday party last week for my walking pal, Marge. She’s NINETY-SEVEN YEARS OLD and still going strong! With no plans to retire to an old-folkerie.

The way she pulls it off, as I may have explained before, is that she took out a large home equity loan against her paid-off house. Her husband and her only child pre-deceased her, and so she has no reason to preserve the value in that house to pass it along to the next generation.

This maneuver provided plenty of cash for her to hire folks to come in and help her.

I really can’t do that. Well…I could. But I don’t wanna. I want to leave this house to my son. If I take out a $300,000 loan against it, he’ll be cut out of my ENTIRE estate: however much of my cash I need to eat and house myself, plus whatever I borrow to stave off some avaricious “retirement home.”

Problem is…longevity runs on the distaff side of my family. Average age at death of people in the past three generations has been 81.5 years — a figure dragged down  by my mother committing suicide by tobacco and my uncle climbing on a chair to change a ceiling lightbulb, falling, breaking a hip, and subsequently dying. If you take my mother’s suicide out of the equation, the average life span over the past three generations has been 84 years. If you remove my father’s side and my mother’s suicide, then you get an average lifespan of 89 years. This would stay the same if you included my father’s nonsmoking brother, who died at 89 in the chair-climbing exploit.

It would appear that two habits sharply shortened life spans in both sides of the family: smoking and promiscuity. Those who did not smoke, did not drink, and did not cat around lived into their 90s. Consistently!

Oh well. Let us assume that even without undue deprivation, here in the 21st century it’s reasonable to expect to live well into one’s 90s.

Now you really ARE faced with the question of how you stay out of a prison for the decrepit elderly. Most of the work around this house is done by hired help now. But…even wrangling the underlings is a challenge — and likely to get more and more difficult the older one gets.

I’m thinking a possible — indeed, probable — solution for that is to move into a condo, one where the exterior is cared for by the HOA and the interior can easily be handled by casual hired help. Once ensconced, then, all you’d need to do is hire a traveling nurse or some such to help you with health care and maybe driving.

Several of my friends are living in a high-rise apartment building on Central Avenue. It’s smack in the middle of everything, and the views are incredible. So…I see that as one possibility.

Additionally, another high-rise is going in right across the street from AJ’s, my favorite grocery-store hangout. This building will combine office space with apartment rentals. I imagine the price will be staggering…but…but…

Yes: but…  From there I can walk to my son’s house. And it’s right on the light-rail line. If I decided (as I’ve been contemplating) to change my church affiliation from the North Central outfit to the downtown Cathedral, that light-rail would let me off right in front of the place. A friend lives in the downtown area and likes to habituate the restaurants in that part of town: she and I could meet down there and, again: I wouldn’t have to risk my life in a car to get there.

Another possibility is an aging but rather elegant apartment house directly across the street from the Cult HQ. The place has been there as long as I’ve lived in Phoenix…and given construction standards here, that means it’s poorly insulated for heat as well as for sound: hot and noisy!  On the other hand: it’s right on Central, so the city bus would take me straight down to AJ’s front door. A three-block stroll to Seventh Avenue would deliver me to a bus stop for a line that goes directly past my son’s house. So if driving were taken away from me, I still would be able to get to my main day-to-day destinations.

So…there are alternatives to the dreaded “life-care community” option — some of them pretty good alternatives.

Reel Estate….To Move or not to Move

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Sittin’ around enjoying the effects of covid — which, BTW, are milder than expected just now — and ogling real estate ads.

As I mentioned yesterday, I stumbled upon a real estate ad for my parents’ home out in Sun City. Nicely updated. Very pleasant. Cheap, too: real estate out there is hugely undervalued, when compared with other middle-class tracts in Phoenix. It last sold for $255,000, about a hundred grand less than I could get for the Funny Farm.

Would I want to live there?

Not in THAT house: too much old baggage. But in fact, Sun City has quite a few pleasant, highly livable houses that are perfect for a single person or an aging couple.

So this morning I found myself reconsidering. Maybe I wouldn’t mind living in a ghetto for old folks, not so very much. The houses are designed for couples or singles. When updated, they have everything you’d want and then some. As the West Side has expanded out in that direction, there’s no lack of amenities: Costco stores, grocery shopping, a huge old-fashioned shopping mall full of retail stores, a big hospital, doctors, whatnot upon whatnot.

If I stay put:

a) Here I have to put up with Tony’s depredations, now inflicted by his home for juvenile delinquents across the street.

But…do I care? Truly, why SHOULD I give a damn? The brats are quiet most of the time. Does that institution depress property values? Probably: but again: why do I care unless I’m hot to sell the house and move?

b) The crime flowing along Conduit of Blight Blvd is a problem.

And there’s no answer to that. As we saw just yesterday, the cops-and-robbers highjinks can be quite a problem. It’s an issue that’s certainly not going to go away…and that very likely will get worse.

c) This house is fairly close to my son. He can get here easily and I can get to his place easily. More to the point, we can go out to eat (whenever the plague ends) at the drop of a hat, and many appealing eateries are all around us.

d) This house is sorta kinda within driving distance of the Mayo, the best medical facility in the Valley. If I lived in Sun City, I’d have to charter a helicopter to get out there! And given the experience we had with my mother’s hideous final illness, well…I am NOT impressed with the medical folks in Sun City.

If I move out there:

a) It’s a pretty safe area to live. Crime rates are very low.

Again, though: do I care? Am I not armed to the teeth? Do I not have a dog that goes batsh!t anytime someone comes around?

b) The houses are designed for the convenience and comfort of singletons and couples.

A-n-n-d…why, again, do I care? My present house was built by the same developer who built those tracts, and the layout is very similar to the places out there.

c) Given the endlessly time-consuming and crazy-making drive between North Central Phoenix and Sun City, I’d never see my son. Neither one of us would welcome that traipse.

d) My parents’ experience with the medical offerings out there was beyond horrific. Incompetent, uncaring doctors; fuckup after fuckup; neglect…did I mention “uncaring”?

e) Getting to the Mayo would be impractical. It’s a bitch to drive out there now, and Sun City is twice as far from the Mayo as I am here.  Dealing with doctors is always difficult — more so when you’re elderly and the sight of your gray hair and your wrinkles elicits all sorts of presumptions and prejudices. But at least the Mayo’s doctors are by and large competent….quite the opposite of our experience during my mother’s final illness.

No. I’m pretty sure I don’t wanna live out in Sun City. Mighty sure, come to think of it…

Too bad. It does have some advantages, not least of which are the economically designed house plans. Yet my house works just fine for me — one bedroom too many, it’s true, but BFD. And I do like having a swimming pool. And not having to worry too much about coyotes coming after my pint-sized pup. And having a Sprouts AND an AJ’s AND a Walmart AND a Costco AND three large supermarkets within a couple minutes’ driving distance. And having young couples and their cute li’l kids as neighbors.

Hmmm… Speaking of the sociological conditions…. Yeah!

Here’s a cop helicopter circling right over the street just north of me. And circling. And circling. And circling. And cir….on and on. Now he’s right over the house…

DAYUM! I was just about to go out and fire up the barbecue, thereon to heat up one of the gorgeous lamb shanks I picked up yesterday. And to toss on some frozen taters.

Hmmm… Not about to strap a pistol to my waist. So…wot to do?

We could microwave the dinner.

Ugh. Great way to ruin a beautiful piece of expensive meat. Nor do I care for soggy microwaved potatoes.

Heat them in pans on the stove?

Right. That’ll make a fine mess to clean up.

Pour another glass of wine and watch what happens next?

Hmmmmm…. Okay. Time to decide:

  • Drink myself into a stupor waiting for the cops and the perps to go away?
  • Fire up the grill and risk my life, for the sake of a lamb shank and a fistful of fries?
  • Continue surfing the Web?
  • Toss the dog in the car and drive down to Encanto Park, there to kill an hour or so?
  • Toss the dog in the car and drive over to Petco, there to see if I can score a dog harness proclaiming that Ruby  is a “service dog,” which would let me take her into AJ’s with me?

No kidding. Some guy who’s a regular there has got a dwarf dog no bigger than Ruby, gussied up in a harness proclaiming that it’s a service dog. Nobody does a THING to stop him from taking his dog into the grocery store.

Hmmmm…More from the young folks on the neighborhood Facebook page:

Cheryl:

Citizens App says Circle K was robbed

Bobby:

(Inserts image from cell phone)

Lorraine:

Thanks, Bobby. I didn’t see anything on AZfamily or ABC15. Anyone know?

Liz, Top contributor:

At least 20 police cars at 19th Ave and Florence

***

Welp…either the cops caught him or the perp escaped. Helicopter just flew off into the wild blue yonder.
Makes Sun City look better and better!

Life “in Today’s Modren Society”

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LOL! This morning, I’m reminded of one of my students’ favorite turns of phrase: “In today’s modern society,” to be followed by a low-key rant on some clichéd topic. Invariably, the kid would spell it “modren.” 😀

Funny li’l critters, students are.

Guess I’m with them today, though. Have you noticed how many things that we old bats have taken for granted for years are now difficult, even impossible to procure?

Today’s rant is inspired by the need to replace a plush bathroom rug. The incumbent has arrived in extreme old age, much the worse for wear thanks to Ruby trying to plump it up with her claws. Whenever I can again breathe without coughing my lungs out, I need to go over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and pick up another one…

…uhm…

wait wait… 

There is no more Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

Uh oh.

Well, surely I can get it at a Penney’s.

Uhm…

At Sears?

Argha!

Maybe the Broadway?

I’m gonna pay Broadway prices for a freaking nylon bathroom mat?????

Wait wait: the two Broadways near my part of town are closed down anyway.

No. Like everyone else, I’m gonna order it from Amazon.

And here it is! In 87 gerjillion colors. And five sizes. Mine is 25 x 39 inches. No doubt that equates to Amazon’s 24 x 40 model. Okayyy….it’ll fit. Is it cheap at $28?

I dunno. There’s nothing to compare it with. I’d have expected to pay about 15 to 18 bucks…but then, yah: it’s been awhile since I bought one.

Speaking of comparing, is it comparable to the one I have? It looks the same in Amazon’s image. But I dunno: I can’t actually see it, touch it, feel it.

With all the home stores around here shut down — except for Target, which may or may not have these little rugs — I really have little choice but to order the thing online. The Broadway, which used to carry this sort of thing, has long been shut down here, merged with Macy’s…imagine what that outfit will charge! Forgodsake: 48 to 72 bucks! FOR THE SAME PRODUCT!

How do these places even begin to compete with Amazon?

Welp…if I’m going to have to buy a new rug, I’m sure as hell not gonna pay two or three times as much as Amazon is charging. I’ll take my chances with the quality and order one up online.

And that is life in Today’s Modren Society.