Coffee heat rising

aging

Wow! I’m IN!

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One of the joys of dotage is that you can barely remember your name, to say nothing of the 87 berjillion passwords you have to memorize in order to operate your websites and cruise the Internet. But today….ohhh mirabilis! Today I managed to get in to Funny about Money‘s website…and with minimal hassle.

Dog and I charged around the ‘Hood at dawn. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s ugly. An altogether ugleee dawn.

Walked past the tragic wreck of a house on the southwest end of the park, once a pleasantly middle-class domicile for an apparently normal family. Now it’s a vacant slum property, having been abandoned after the family’s son got crosswise with the law and thereby bankrupted his parents.

One of the most alarming aspects of life in America — or maybe, more accurately, it’s an aspect of humanity — is the tendency for one to be unable to get out of trouble, once one gets into it. As a teenager, the young fella who lived in that house with his parents got up to some kind of mischief. I never knew exactly what his crime was: only that he was arrested and sent to prison. Once out of the slam, he couldn’t get a decent job — and his parents had about bankrupted themselves trying to rescue him.

So he started this laughable business: pruning trees. 

No kidding. He took a class offered by the County for wannabe arborists, wherein he tried to learn how to trim and nurture trees.

Arborists here do charge a pretty penny for their services: that’s for sure. If he’d been halfway decent at the job, he probably could have found his way to supporting himself. Problem is: he wasn’t even halfway there!

He damn near killed one of my front-yard trees, so ridiculously did he butcher it. Eventually the tree did have to be taken out. Now a yellow oleander is growing in its place…and doing surprisingly well.

Hm. Wonder how that human oleander is doing, these days…

{sigh} Their place is actually a nice house, even though it needs to be practically rebuilt from the ground up.

It backs onto the park.

Now I wouldn’t consider that a desirable feature: just what everyone needs, right? A public park as a backyard. 😮  But apparently others relish it. The houses adjacent to the park are (except for that one) handsomely maintained and regarded as prime properties.

Sooo….it was around the park and up a couple of busy local thoroughfares, the dog in search of beloved GRASS to get under her paws, the human contemplating its upcoming breakfast.

Now we’re back at the Funny Farm, pursuing the highest and best goal of human life: loafing. 

If only she were still here…

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I wish…i wish…i do wish she were here to see it.

The’Hood, I mean. My beautiful ‘Hood. “She”: my mother, gone these past three decades.

She had seen this tract before SDXB and I moved in here. And she thought it was OK.

Today — oh yeah: I can assure you — she’d think it’s a lot more than OK. This place is right up her alley — the alley we traversed  over 30 years ago, when i was a kid and she was coming to the end of her life.

***

Ian the Great: what a hoot she would have gotten out of him, her fine grandson!

And how proud of him she would have been. She would have thought he was about the best thing that ever trundled up the pike.

If she hadn’t been murdered by the tobacco peddlers, she might still be with us…though she would be older than Methuselah and all his sisters by now.

Women in her family who didn’t drink and didn’t smoke — because they were wacksh!t Christian Scientists — lived well into their 90s with no serious ailments. And no medical care. So…that would have taken her past the year 2000, give or take. Gosh! It’s hard to believe that much time has passed.

LOL! It’s a little hard to believe, too, that I’m still kickin’after all those years and all those relatives have passed. 😀

***

Heh! In its way, it explains why I’m so sick. Who knew I’d be kicking around this earth after 80 years!

Sure doesn’t feel like that long. On the other hand, we live in a culture that despises the elderly, and so we try to put our longevity out of mind. That makes sense.

Though yes, I do feel like it’s time to go (and then some), knowing that my great-grandmother and my great-aunt each still had another 10 years to go at this point in their lives makes me feel…well…strange. On the one hand, sorta encouraged that there may be another full decade left. On the other hand, sorta miserable at the prospect of ten more years to spend feeling this awful.

If there’s a God, I kinda wish She’d set me free, along about now…

She’s b-a-a-c-k again…for the nonce

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The li’l computer is back online…just now. We’ll see how long that lasts. /eyeroll/

Several hours of galloping from pillar to post finally brought us to a store that could fix it: not surprisingly, an Apple store. This one, in a large shopping mall on the northwest side. So now this unit is operative.

When we got back to the Funny Farm, though, the big old desktop was acting up.

My son sat down to it and worked on it and worked on it and worked on it….  Several hours of working on the damn thing left us both short of temper. The upshot of that: a fine shouting match.

Once that got started, we both started getting madder and madder. He just roared out the door in a raging fit of high dudgeon. I, meanwhile, sink into a slough of stupidity…nothing I say helps, because I’m incapable of saying anything that helps.

The laptop still isn’t working right. I have no car, and so I can’t take it out tomorrow. There’s a computer store about six blocks away — my son abominates the place. Abomination or no, I guess I’ll have to take the thing there, even though my son has forbidden me to do so. (He hates the place, because it’s a hole-in-the-wall into which to stuff money.)

Without a car, I’m pretty helpless: if a destination isn’t within a couple of miles, I can’t get there.

What to do next?

 

Now What???

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In a moment of misguided chumminess, I lent my laptop to a business acquaintance. This is a guy I’ve known for years, outwardly very professional, a successful chiropractor by trade.

Bad move! Among other antics, he contrived to break the computer, rendering it nonfunctional. My son has taken it to a computer store, in hopes of getting it fixed…but that hope ain’t one I hold out.

Can’t afford to buy another one. That unit was tax-deductible, purchased when I used it mostly for the editorial business. Now that I’ve pretty much retired from that gig and from teaching, I get no break on its cost. And my son is more than ever convinced that I’m crazy, largely because of long-standing friendship with Mr. Computer Vandal.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago my car was trashed, when I rear-ended some woman on a dark, wet, rainy road.

Now I’m banned from driving (by the Kid) and so have to walk to the stores. I do still have a driver’s license…but no vehicle! He has glommed it and stashed it at his house…rather too far to reach without a car.

Luckily, the ‘Hood is richly endowed with neighborhood stores and chains: Sprouts, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Walgreen’s, Bookman’s, and a cute little liquor store in which to feel righteous by “buying local” when scoring a bottle of wine.

Dunno which way to jump just now. I could sneak around and rent a car. But frankly, that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. In the first place, I don’t want to go behind M’hijto’s back, no matter how unreasonable I think his driving ban is. Plus…about three houses down the street, a neighbor has gone into the Uber business. If I would get off my duff long enough to contact him, I could probably get him or one of his colleagues to drive me just about everywhere I need to go.

One damnfool thing after another, eh?

Yet to decide whether to pursue the scheme to convert the garage, now empty, into an art studio. Probably not: sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Still…hmmmmm…. I do like it as an idea.

 

Glorious Morning in the Gorgeous ‘Hood

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Well. It ain’t exactly “gorgeous.” But it’s exceptionally pleasant: a big green park, irrigated lawns in every direction, handsome 1950s and 60s ranch houses punctuated here and there with newer stately mansions. Inviting enough.

The corgi and I set out at dawn to circumnavigate the park and then traipse through the northerly flange that comprises Upper Richistan, the pastures, and a tract of what must once have been a toney suburb.

Drifting northerly, up toward Gangbanger’s Way, we come to the long cul-de-sac where our dear elderly friend and co-hiker used to live. Apparently the house still belongs to her, tho’ she’s gone: nowhere to be seen. As she sank deeper into the sands of Old Age, she was consigned to a “life-care community” — read “nursing home.” Exactly the fate, as she told me many months ago, that she hoped to evade.

I think she must still be living (if being stuck in one of those places can be called “living”), because the house stands there vacant, its furniture (visible through the front windows) still just as she left it.

Her plan was to leave the house to her son, who lives in another state.

Why did she believe he would want it? He doesn’t live in Arizona! She must have thought it would make a good investment for him. He apparently thinks otherwise…but oddly, has not disposed of the place. Months after her disappearance, it stands there vacant. I’m afraid that detail — vacant, not sold — indicates the worst: she’s infirm but not free of these earthly chains. Locked up in some nursing home or old-folkerie. God help her!

The little street makes for a nice neighborhood. But alas, that extends only to the visual aspects. It’s a block south of Gangbanger’s Way, where motorcyclists and hot-rodders roar back and forth into the night.  Even where my house is — at least a half-mile away, probably more — the racket is so crazy-making you can’t leave a window open at night.

People get used to that noise. My first apartment stood right on the curb of a hectic main drag called Thomas Road. My mother couldn’t understand how I could bear to live there — whenever she visited, the traffic noise would about drive her bats. But I didn’t even notice it!

So, I imagine that must have been the case for Garnett, too.

Meanwhile, closer to home: Some developer is building a passing huge mansion over in Lower Richistan. It’s unclear to me whether this lumbering (heh!) structure is to comprise two dwellings — i.e., a pair of townhouses — or whether it’s going to be one house. The latter, I think. They’ve got the frame up and have installed most of the fire-proofing. This morning they were applying brickwork and drywall over that.

Won’t the neighbors be thrilled?

 

Ohhhh Most Brilliant of Web Gurus!

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Well, our wonderful Grayson, the guy who keeps this site online and functioning, got me back in after I forgot (lost??) the password.

God bless him!!

Geez. I must be Alzheimering out. The more I fool with computer hoo-hah, the more opaque it gets to me.

Even when I print out this kind of ditz and tape it to the computer monitor’s frame, I still cannot get reliably in to this website, that website, or the other.

{sigh} I’m awfully afraid this is part of memory loss associated with aging. As the days go by, I recall less and less. Eighty-seven gerjillion passwords? F’geddaboudit. Due dates for bills?  Gimme a break. Who borrowed my laptop? I dunno.… Nothing is distracting me. I’m not sick. With no job, I’m never harried by work tasks, office politics, and general b.s. It looks alarmingly like the brain is simply wearing out.

Then we have mundane questions like…oh, say…what time is it?

  • The computer says it’s 8:47 a.m.
  • Clock on my desk: defunct. Can’t find it.
  • Bedside clock in the other room: 10 minutes to 2:00 (huh???)
  • Timer on the kitchen stove: 8:47
  • Clock in the dining room: 8:55
  • Best guess: HUH??????

 Figure out that it’s quarter after 9:00. Reset clocks, changing battery in one of ’em.

Cute li’l clock…wonder where I got it? Oh well. If only it didn’t have to be reloaded with batteries and dorked with to show what is apparently the current time.

Seriously: I can NOT keep track of all this ditz, much less make sense of six conflicting blobs of data.

Please, dear God: next time you bring me back to this planet, would you drop me on a desert island? One with no clocks? No computers? Maybe even no other humans???

But coffee, Sire. Plenty of coffee. Pleeze…..