Coffee heat rising

Aging in place

Wanted: Indiana Jones for Senior Consumers

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One of the many joys (yes: that’s /s/) of aging is the attitude of Americans toward the elderly. This ranges from the nasty to the predatory: overall, Americans regard their older compatriots as idiots, negligible fools, and nuisances. One aspect of this is said to be that merchandisers all across the board target the elderly (when they notice us at all) for scams and rip-offs.

It’s true: they can and do pull the wool over your eyes more often and more easily, because older people tend to be more trusting. And if experience serves…that opinion appears to be true. I do not remember vendors, back in the day of my Misspent Youth, trying to cheat me, people trying to feed me ridiculous and obvious lines of bull, salespeople trying to overcharge me as a routine matter…and on and on.

The business with the junk refrigerator is a case in point. Nothing more has been heard from AMEX about that fiasco — one of the several “fun” chores on the slate for today is to call American Express and rattle their cage about that. Meanwhile, I need to buy another refrigerator — one that doesn’t keep me awake all night rattling and roaring…which will set me back another $1400.

It useta be… that when I wanted something, I would do the research on-line and in consumer publications; then go into a store and say I want this and this and this, and I do NOT want that and that and that. The sales person would appear to understand plain English, and s/he would show me this and this and this and NOT show me that and that and that.

Now that I’m Old, though…EXACTLY the opposite happens. Sales people seem to assume that I’m naive, stupid, and just plug-incompetent.

When, O dear merchandiser, when you insist on hustling me to buy something that is not what I asked for, and when I can see that what I asked for is right there on the floor, then I perceive that you’re trying to rip me off. (Yes: upselling me when I know exactly what I want IS a form of rip-off, thankyouverymuch.) And, my friends…that perception happens more and more often with every passing month of age. How can I count the ways that I’m sick & tired of nitwits trying to rip me off when they decide that because I’m old, I must be stupid?

At this point…seriously: I would be willing to pay a fee to someone who would go to the vendors in town to do the shopping I need to have done — I would PAY YOU to order a refrigerator for me. I would PAY YOU to buy me a new microwave. I would PAY YOU to take my car to the dealership, get it serviced, and repel all offers of unnecessary work. I would PAY YOU to get the plumbing fixed. Because even if I paid you for those things, I would save money…and also escape a great deal of aggravation and frustration.

Staying Safe in Your Dotage

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Gotta share this little essay I just posted at Quora. The prompt question was “How Can We Reduce the Number of Falls among Senior Citizens?”

Good question, eh? Here’s what I propose:

As an old bat who lives alone…this is my strategy, such as it is:
  1. Live in a place that has a minimal number of stairs. These are ridiculously easy to trip on.
  2. Where a step or more is unavoidable (for example, my house has a sunken family room, meaning that to get in or out of it, I have to step down or up), have a banister or countertop that you can hang onto whenever you have to navigate the steps. Train yourself to put a hand on this countertop or banister before taking the first step up or down, and hang on for the whole journey.
  3. Have several extensions (if you have a landline) or several cell phones that can be used to dial 911. Place these in strategic positions near the floor. For example, I have one in the bathroom (I set it within reach of the tub any time I take a bath or shower), one in the family room, one in each bedroom, one in the kitchen, and one in the dining room. DO NOT assume you will remember to carry a phone around everywhere you go when you’re at home: equip the home with many phones that can be reached from the floor and can dial 911. If these are cells, be sure they’re kept charged.
  4. Be sure each room has plenty of lighting. Make it easy to turn these on and off — at least one light in each room should turn on and off with a wall switch near an entry.
  5. Train dogs and cats to stay out from underfoot while their humans are walking around. This is easier said than done; you may need to hire a professional trainer for some pets.
  6. Do not(!!) have throw rugs laying around on the floors. Where you really need a throw rug — such as a bathroom rug next to the tub — be sure it has a latex backing or place a non-slip mat under it.
  7. Be sure your shoes and slippers have non-slide soles. Do not wear footwear that might slip on a tile, linoleum or wood floor.
  8. Do try to remember to carry a cheap, charged-up flip phone in a pocket at all times, except when you’re actually laying in bed or bathing in the tub or shower. Again, bear in mind: BY LAW ALL CELL PHONES HAVE TO BE ABLE TO REACH 911, no expensive connection required. This means that if you fall, you can use the phone to call the Fire Department or the Police, but you can’t call anyone else with it. I use these throw-away phones as an emergency SOS device when I walk the dog.
  9. Inspect sidewalks in the neighborhood. Look for places where the pavement is heaved and where the curb might not be easily visible at dusk or in the dark. Be sure to point these out carefully to the elder and remind them to watch their step in that area. If the sidewalk is heaved, call the city and ask them to come fix the paving.
  10. Suggest that the person carry a walking stick, whether or not they need it for mobility. I carry a hiking stick with me every time I walk the dog, not so much to avoid falls but as a shilelagh for self-defense — we have many drug-addled transients, prowlers, and coyotes in these parts. While I have indeed used it to chase off all comers (including Wile E. Coyote), it also works nicely as a support when stepping up and down curbs and around heaved pavement.
  11. Get plenty of exercise. I walk one to two miles a day, which I consider minimal. If that’s not practical, join a health club where you can exercise on their machines and swim in their pool. Use it or lose it!

And finally, if you have cleaning or yard care help coming in to do housework or outdoor maintenance, keep an eye on what they’re doing. They often don’t realize that some of your eccentricities — such as placing phone extensions on or near the floor — are there for a reason, so they’ll readjust things to fit their definition of sanity.

Crazier and Crazier

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So a couple days ago I was holding forth about the general looney toons of life in the Valley: the school shooters (real and wannabe), the joy of navigating the city streets around the crashes, the cops, and the lunatics, the endless traipses across the Valley, the fruitless search for a shot of covid vaccine, the ways the city has changed and the persistence of fancy prisons for old folks, the amusingly lurid murders, the daily outbursts of gunfire, the fine self-destructing mobile homes (right up the street from the Funny Farm!), the big business that is the local drug industry,.

♦ This happened right around the corner from where my friend Shannon and her family live.
I pass by this garden spot every time I drive up to the Fry’s or the Paradise Valley Costco.
♦ This: one off-ramp up the freeway from my westside Costco hangout.
♦ This fine institution is about six blocks north of Gangbanger’s Way: you could walk there from here.
♦ This also: right up the road, not far from Shannon’s place.
♦ Here, too: you could walk to this place from DXH’s house; and I can walk from my house to DXH’s without much trouble.
♦ This one occurred right around the corner and up the road from the university: also within reasonable walking distance of ASU West.
♦ This: in a hiking area not far from my favorite Fry’s grocery store and upscale Costco

And…and…as I turn these matters around in my mind, I find myself wondering why on earth do I stay in this place???

Why don’t I pack up the house and the dog and myself and take off for parts quieter, if not damn near unknown?

Well, the main reason is my son. M’hijito has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want me to move. Not out of the city…not out of my (very sweet) house. I suspect the real reason is that he hopes to inherit this house.

And that’s a reasonable desire. It’s a delightful house, very pretty, in a friendly, comfortable neighborhood (albeit surrounded by drug slums), centrally located, close to where his dad lives, close to where some of his friends live. Why would he NOT want me to hang onto this place so he can unload his un-insulatable house and walk into a larger, nicer home in a (slightly) safer neighborhood?

I do love this house, and I also love my neighborhood, with its lush irrigated lawns, its district of million-dollar shacks, its shady groves of mature trees, its large and open park. I think what I could do without is something that plagues ALL of the city of Phoenix. The crime and the drug use and the widespread lunacy make you feel unsafe no matter what part of town you live in. Given that as a basic fact, I would be very sad to leave the Funny Farm and the Hood behind.

Where on earth would I go?

Well…away from lovely Latter-Day L.A.? Here in the state, there’s Prescott, a historic small city favored by the upper-middle-class and the intellectual set. It’s cooler than Phoenix in the summer, though it does get a bit crisp in winter. Prices used to be much higher than Phoenix, but what with the Late Great Real Estate Inflation here in the Valley, they’re about the same for roughly comparable places. Crime rates there aren’t too awful…certainly not like Phoenix‘s.

Oro Valley: a suburb of Tucson favored by aging millenials. Tucson has a nationally respected hospital, a reasonably vibrant cultural life, pretty fair weather, and a major airport to carry you elsewhere as desired. It’s modestly scenic, tucked up against a small mountain range; a short drive into Mexico, and not much of a drive up to Phoenix. The crime rate is middling…at least you wouldn’t risk your life every time you took the dog out for an evening stroll. Probably.

Fountain Hills, right here in the Valley: a quiet, staid development on the highway up to Payson. It’s right next to the Mayo, so the whole trek-across-the-city-to-see-a-decent-doctor conundrum would be mooted. Crime rate there is nothing special: not high, but not rock-bottom low, either. Fountain Hills has two huge disadvantages, though, where I’m concerned: First is the cheap, cheesy construction. The houses, whether “custom” or not, are uniformly tracty and uniformly stick-and-Styrofoam flimsy junk. They appear not to have been intended for for people who live here year-round; apparently the builders expected the place would appeal mostly to snowbirds. And it’s not as quiet as it looks: it’s right under the flight path for jets coming in and out of Sky Harbor! Apparently the natives bellyache constantly (and fruitlessly) about the racket.

Picturesque, arty and interesting Santa Fe is very expensive. It’s beautiful and the weather’s awesome and it has a real cultural life, but… Most humans can’t afford a real adobe house. And so about 90% of those adobe-look homes are actually stick-and-Styrofoam shacks, same as the ones in Fountain Hills (and waypoints). Tarrying there one summer for a conference, I happened to chat with a woman who had moved to Santa Fe from New York, imagining she would get away from the Big Apple’s famed violence and crime. Neighborhood Scout ranks Santa Fe as 9th on a scale where 100 is safest. Lovely!

By comparison? Phoenix ranks 7, making life here marginally more risky.

So….it’s hard to picture where one could go that would be any better than what I’ve got. One or two venues might be safer or less hectic, but they’d have other drawbacks.

Wherever you’re goin’, you can’t get there from here…

Whatever Can Go Wrong…

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DOES GO WRONG.

LOL! One of those days, that is…with a vengeance!

Well…maybe not that extreme. But certainly to an extent on the high side of ridiculous.

Last week I had the laptop worked on by an outfit called MacMedia, out in lovely Scottsdale’s tourist district. It’s almost a full hour’s drive out there, on a good day. One-way. But they’re worth it. These guys are brilliant, and whatever CAN be fixed, they WILL fix.

So yesterday, they summon me thither to come retrieve the spiffed up computer.

Traipse traipse traipse, traipse traipse traipse…  Get out there, collect the machine: thrilled. They’ve somehow contrived to block ALL the blitz of incoming spam and scam emails!

Have they  blocked my friends? Nooooo idea: presumably I’ll find out. But for the nonce, at least that mess is tidied up.

This morning, there was one more thing that needed to be attended to, and I wanted to look in to buying a new or refurbished laptop to have a back-up for when this one craps out. Which it will, sooner than later…of that you can be sure.

Traipse traipse traipse, traipse traipse traipse…

They said to get there about 9:15 to 9:30. Ducky: I’m a little early.

Wait wait wait, wait wait wait

9:30. No one around.

Stroll around Scottsdale’s agèd Fifth Avenue. About all that’s left by way of retail stores are hair salons and art galleries. Stroll stroll stroll…down to Indian School Road, one of the Valley’s unlovelier thoroughfares. Come upon an old, fenced-off motel: no doubt once a nice enough tourist trap, now a ruin. Wander through…looks like they’re getting ready to tear it down. Someday. Pretty clearly it’s been in this predicament for quite some time.

This was once a thriving, vibrant arts, restaurant, and fancy retail district. It’s a ghost town now.

Where have all the tourist traps gone,
Long time pa-a-ssin’…
Where have all the tourists gone,
Long time ago?

Roam back to the computer store. No sign of life.

Ohh, screw it!

Climb back in the car and head outta there.

Mission Unaccomplished!

Cruise back across the surface streets, passing at a distance the (highly!!!) upscale neighborhood where my best friend in graduate school lived, with her low-income-earning socially useful husband.

HOW did those two find that really rather cool and wonderful studio on a couple acres of land, adjunct to a large, real adobe richistani’s house with space for a vegetable garden, with a big swimming pool that no one but those two used and a view from the side of a very expensive mountain and a straight shot down 68th street into Tempe, right to the university?

Huh…  Why have I never thought of that question before?

Not very curious as a kid, was I?

Oh well.

Driving driving driving, westward ever westward. Through tracts of palace-sized custom houses, their weird post-modern architecture uglier than pussly in my opinion, driving driving driving….

Think about my friend’s life. Think about her kids’ lives. Think about her ex-husband’s life. Think about my life. Think about my kid’s life. Think about my ex-husband’s life…driving driving driving….

Arrive back at the Funny Farm. By now I’ve been on the road around two hours.

Reflect that I intended to stop by the Safeway and get a booster shot to cover the current variant of the plague. Haul the computer in. Let the dog out. Climb back in the car: drive to the Safeway.

Wait is a minimum of 20 minutes, I’m told.

Now, I really don’t want to stand around breathing other folks’ germs even five minutes, to say nothing of 20-plus minutes.

Stalk back across the parking lot, jump in the car, drive out. Dodge a FRANTIC fire truck charging into the lot…did someone pass out while receiving their Omicron shot?

Weasel away from that mess.

Drive up to the Walgreen’s in the gangland bordering the ‘Hood just to the north. Squeak around a couple of sketchy looking clusters in the parking-lot; dodge into the store.

“We don’t have any of the vaccine. Call us on Monday to see…”

Jayzus.

Drive down to the Albertson’s on Gangbanger’s Way.

“You have to make an appointment several days in advance to get a shot.”

Jayzus.

Drive home.

Put on my favorite around-the-house/reading glasses. One of the temple pieces is about to fall off.

Call the beloved traveling glasses repair-dude (you would not believe this amazing man…and he comes to your house!). He’s maxed. Please call next Monday to see if he can find time to come by someday next week.

Dig out the newer, more bourgeois Costco glasses with the progressive Rx. They’re OK…I’m just not fond of having to tilt my head at a neck-kinking angle to read copy. Oh well.

Call the computer store. They beg me to come back. Ohhkayyyy.

Defrost a piece of salmon; cook it and an ear of corn on the grill. Feed the dog some of it, thereby ingratiating myself for the next week. Eat lunch/dinner.

Time to Move Along?

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Mogollon Rim from near Payson

HOLY mackerel! This place gets more and more crime-ridden and more and more violent with every day that passes!

Y’know…I can handle the mailbox thefts. And the burglars. And the cop helicopter flyovers every damn night. The abductions (for the purpose of rape) from the bus & train stops at Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E.W. can be dealt with simply by never riding a bus or a lightrail train. The transient drug addicts: locks on the doors and windows, plus a large, loud dog. The panhandler harassment at the corner shopping centers: drive to some other district for grocery shopping and drugstore visits. The car break-ins and thefts: close the damn garage door…oh, but first, do park your car on the inside of said garage. The mail thefts: for a mere 400 bucks, install a Fort Knox of a mailbox. The burglars: keep a fine, fully loaded .45 on hand.

But I sweartogawd, every which way you turn, here’s more gratuitous, demented, and criminal violence. And it is too…damn…close to home.

I go by this corner every time I visit the Costco north of the university.

Ruby and I could walk to this dump, if it were safe to do so. As it is, I drive by there several times a week on the way to the freeway or to points west. That’s rather closer than I’d like to get.

This fancy charter school is in the Arcadia district, not far from where my late step-sister lived.

This episode took place in an informal B&B (why are those legal???) that popped up, also in the Arcadia district — an area where the ritzy and the titzy congregate to live in what they imagine will be peace.

A moment of nuttiness took place at a park just south of the university’s west campus…another garden spot that I pass in my car with some frequency.

Central High School is the best public high school in the city (which may be telling you something). My son went to a Jesuit high school directly next door to it — they occupy, in effect, practically the same campus. Sunnyslope belies this figure, though; it also has a reputation as one of the best-performing high schools in the country.

Yet… the violence and the vagrancy and the craziness go on and on and on and on, every damn day! And it seems to get more frantic as the weeks pass.

And y’know what?

I’m tired of living in the middle of a war zone. Once again I’m brought back to the feeling that as much as I love my home and my neighbors and my neighborhood, as much as I like being 8 minutes from the church and 10 minutes from my son’s house (he also lives in a war zone…), it’s past time to move along.

The violence, the crime, and the Loony Toons spread pretty homogeneously across the Valley. Of course, there’s more low-end craziness in garden spots like the apartments that flank the ‘Hood on the west side of Conduit of Blight Blvd and the dank slum directly to the north. But as that cop said after the Adventure of the Home Invasion: “It’s everywhere.”

[Yeah? Well…whaddaya bet some parts of Everywhere have less of it than our part does?]

So…if one were gonna move, where would one go?

Well, if I stayed in the Valley, the two choices would be Fountain Hills or the Cave Creek/Carefree area. I don’t consider the Sun Cities a choice: just not innarested in living in a ghetto for old tolks.

Both these venues are expensive. Fountain Hills has the added attribute of late-model cheesy construction: structures that were built to fall apart. The Funny Farm is probably in the last generation of solidly built affordable residential structures, and even it has a failing in the insulation department. Those houses out east are simply junk: Southern California-style built-to-fall-apart junk. Expensive junk.

Anything that is newer construction shares that fine attribute, and most of the stuff in Cave Creek and Carefree falls under the rubric of “newer.” Ticky-tacky is the name of the Development Game here in Arizona, price range notwithstanding.

That leaves as options some of the outlying towns, or Tucson.

  • Tucson, also plagued by gimme-a-buck developments, has two big draws: the best hospital/medical center in the state (something that looks Bigger the Older you get), and the vibrant cultural center that is the University of Arizona. A lot is going on in Tucson, the weather is far more pleasant than Phoenix’s, and with a fine mountain range behind the city, just about anyplace you can live is fairly scenic.
  • Prescott, a large small town/small city up the I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, is a pleasant little burg. HOWEVER…it’s been discovered. From what I’m told, mobs of Baby Boomers and younger people are moving up there, turning it into yet another Southern California East. The weather’s a little cooler (though what you save in air-conditioning you’ll probably spend on heating); it has a supposedly excellent medical center (people who work there beg to differ, interestingly enough); and it’s a straight shot down the freeway to the urban marvels of Phoenix. I’m not at all sure it has enough more to offer, when compared to Fountain Hills, to make it worth a major move and a long drive into town.
  • Payson: Mr. and Mrs. Fireman moved up there, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. They bought an extremely cool house in the forest, and, given Mr. Fireman’s outstanding handyman skills, have turned it into a to-die-for little palace. Problem with Payson? Rudimentary services and facilities. They had to drive their dog into Phoenix to be tended to by a veterinarian after the poor pooch was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No Costco: only one Safeway, a store that I would call…well, pretty blah. No first-rate doctors or dentists — they drive into town for those services, too. Doctors? Doctors? We don’t need no steeeenking doctors!
  • Uh huh. Well…if you have to schlep all the way down the mountain — about a two-hour drive — for basic shopping and services, you’d be far better off to live in Fountain Hills.  Not only do they have a couple of supermarkets within the development, there’s a Costco down the road and all the upscale shopping of lovely Scottsdale just a few miles to the west. Plus you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from Fountain Hills!
  • Chandler: Nope. Ticky-tacky suburb Hell.
  • Florence: Nope. No better than Payson, but not as pretty.
  • Ahwatukee: Blech. If I’m gonna live in ticky-tacky mass construction, I’ll take Fountain Hills any day.
  • Tempe: Gawd help us!
  • Sun City/Youngtown: Horrible ghettos for old folks, garnished by cheaply built ticky-tacky.

Really, in a lot of ways, the ‘Hood IS the best of all possible worlds, at least for someone who’s not swimming in money. It’s an established neighborhood. Because the upscale section has irrigation, we have mature and very beautiful green landscaping. Even over here in the po’ folks quarters, the trees and shrubbery are mature, shady, and lovely. It’s close-in — shopping, schools, entertainment, doctors & hospitals, all right around the corner. We have a park in the middle of the neighborhood. We’re served by a decent public grade school and one of the nation’s top public high schools, plus an array of private and religious K-12 schools. Young upwardly mobile types have discovered it and are madly gentrifying, so there’s nowhere for property values to go but up. Plus: what could be better than young families with young kids playing around the neighborhood?

So…i dunno. It’s a toss-up. So it seems to me…

Times Have Been a-Changin’…

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Couple days ago, I had occasion to drive through the neighborhood around the old-folkerie where my father chose to live out the last years of his life.  It’s over on the easterly side of North Central Phoenix — actually, within (almost reasonable) walking distance of the big North Central house where DXH and I took up residence, just to show the world what we could afford.

Killing time drivin’ around the other morning was kinda fun, kinda sentimental. After running away from the church, being told we had no choir today (why??????), I filled the gas tank and then cruised up into some of the (relatively) old neighborhoods over in the area of my favorite QT station. Part of this area comprises the easterly section of a renowned slum known as Sunnyslope.

My! We’ve been told that the ‘Slope has gentrified…. They ain’t kiddin’!!

WHAT a difference. Houses and whole streets that used to be run-down dumps have been cleaned up and painted up and spiffed up…gosh! Some of those little houses — built as homes for working-class folk, downright tiny — are suddenly VERY cute.

A decade ago, you couldn’t have gotten me even to drive around in there — because it wasn’t safe. Now, if I were in the market for a centrally located house with “charm,” that would be one of the areas where I would look.

Meanwhile, in the center of this middle-classifying neighborhood, the old-folkerie where my father retreated after my mother died has been HUGELY revamped. “Gentrified” ain’t the word for it.

When my father was there, it was a sprawl of single-story garden apartments arranged around a dining/activity center/nursing home. Renamed — no longer “Orangewood” but the ever-so-snootier-sounding “Terraces” — it’s three stories, painted in the latest, most stylish eye-searing white and beige. It’s spread out vastly — probably three times the footprint of the old place. And it looks bloody expensive.

Apparently it is: I hear tell it costs even more than the Beatitudes, whose business model is based on bankrupting the inmates.

It used to be that the neighborhood where this fine institution resided was…well…shall we say trending toward shabby (not to emit the word “slummy).”  Now it’s all been cleaned up, spiffed up, painted up, even in some areas rebuilt! Who’d’ve ever thunk! I would call it an upper-middle-class neighborhood now.

Weird!

In other precincts for the agèd, my dear friend L. (of the J. & L. duo) passed on a few days ago. He and his wife J. had, you may recall, moved into a similar institute called the Beatitudes, over L.’s vehement objections. But L. was very elderly — 94 years old — and his health was failing fast. He’d fallen a couple of times, and J. found she couldn’t help him get back on his feet by herself…so was justifiably frightened of what might happen if she couldn’t find someone quickly to get him back upright. Additionally, they had a demented neighbor who took to making trouble for them. One of this character’s more recent antics was making like she was going to run him down in her car.

So even though L. did not want to go, it was clear that getting away from their pretty little patio home was the wisest move, and, given that, the nursing care offered by the Beatitudes was a godsend for J., if not for L.

On the other hand…speaking of getting away…

J. was right, and within a year or so, L. passed on. A-n-n-d…within a week of the burial service, her daughters packed up what remained of her worldly goods and drove them and her off to California, where they live near Sacramento.

GONE!

So much for the glories of the old-folkerie. As soon as the most pressing need was past, she was outa there.

That has to have been a very pricey maneuver. Shortly after they moved into the place, she told me it cost her everything she netted from the sale of their handsome North Central Avenue patio home to get them in there. Basically, she forked over a huge chunk of her net worth to obtain end-of-life care for L.

Think you could do better at the Terraces? After a bracing buy-in, you’ll pay a staggering monthly fee. For that you get a far better designed and roomier apartment than the cramped space J. & L. landed in. But…good luck to you if you run out of money before you run out of life.

Heaven help us.

Why should we have to impoverish ourselves, our spouses, and our children to pass from this world in peace?