Coffee heat rising

aging

Cleaning Lady Day…

by

Boyoboy! You wanna talk about a spoiled, lazy ole’ bat? Welp, here she is!

Yes. I am sooooooo lazy that I actually resent and cringe at the fact that today is Cleaning Lady Day. Why?

  • Because I’m too lazy to get up off my duff and shovel out the mess so she can find a few spots to actually clean.
  • Because I’m spectacularly not in the mood to have someone banging around my house for several hours.
  • Because my son is coming over here later today for an online “meeting” (har har!) with our doc at the Mayo, and trying to deal with that while the cleaning lady is roaring and banging around will be a PITA of the first order.
  • Because I’m still mad as Hell at Cleaning Lady for her most recent antic, which caused me a LOT of trouble…and continues to do so.

😀 If that ain’t spoilt rotten, I’d like to know what it is!

Well, in what passes for my own defense, we do hafta say: I’m sick as a dog, have been for days running into weeks, and all I want right now is just to be left alone, dammit.

  • No roaring vacuum cleaners
  • No stinking detergents
  • No wet floors
  • No torn-up beds
  • No kitchen in disarray
  • No…noooooooooo!

Argha.!!!

Isn’t that awful? How spoiled CAN you get?

Well, I do hafta say, one thing I can do without — spoilt or unspoilt — is annoying online meetings…with anyone, but especially with a doctor, one who knows nothing about me and who isn’t gonna believe a damn thing I say.

****

Yes. The idiot cleaning lady…I haven’t gotten around to firing her and tracking down someone to take her place — because I’m too goddamn tired to take on a bothersome project like that.

Get this: A couple weeks ago I was sick as a dawg, felt just AWFUL, and needed more than anything to go back to bed. While WonderCleaningLady was here slamming around the house. 

I’d sat down at the dining-room table for a snack to pass as lunch. This being less than perfectly appealing, I folded my arms on the table and laid my head down, waiting for her to PUHLEEEEZE get done with the job so I could go back to the bed. Shortly, I fell asleep.

She spots me there and arrives at her own tee-totaler’s conclusion: she thinks I’m drunk on the quarter-glass of white wine I’d poured to go with the mediocrity of a lunch I’d set out.

No kidding: she decides I’m passed out blotzed!

She whips out her camera/phone, takes a photo of me dozing at the table, and ships it off to my son! 

He buys her story that I’m snockered.

Jayzuz!

So now I’m in trouble with him, he’s told my doctors at the Mayo that I’m a lush(!!!), they’ve ordered that my driver’s license be suspended, and he has made off with my car!

To buy groceries, I have to hike through the heat (110 degrees today) and haul stuff home from the Sprouts or from the slum stores to the north of us.

I should have canned the nitwit. But I’m just too sick to clean a four-bedroom shack myself, and the prospect of searching for a new employee is more than I can contemplate.

Without my car in 110-degree heat, there’s not much I can do. Hiking up to the Fry’s or down to the Albertson’s or over to the Sprouts is fine when the weather is moderate, but when it’s a blast furnace: not so much.

Gettin’ Old…and Stayin’ Free!

by

My roommate at the University of Arizona had an aunt in Tucson who allowed herself to be persuaded (by my rm’s mother) to tell the university that we two girls were going to live at her house. (In those days, undergraduate girls were required to live in the dorms, unless they stayed at home.) We promptly moved into our own apartment. And lo! We escaped the Hell that was the University of Arizona’s dormitory system.

Well, that’s about how I see our present-day old-folkeries: as institutions of Hell. I most surely don’t want to live in such a place. NEVER AGAIN! I cherish my aloneness. I love living in my house. And when Ruby barks (corgis surely CAN bark!), she doesn’t bother anyone.  When a neighbor chooses to turn their TV to “blast,” the damn thing is far enough away that the racket doesn’t penetrate my bedroom walls. Or any of my walls!

So…how to stay out of some awful place designed as a prison for the useless elderly?

Back in the Dark Ages, old buzzards often – maybe usually – moved in with an adult child’s family. My great-grandmother, for example, lived with her daughter, whose own son and daughter-in-law lived within walking distance.

That, you may be damn sure, ain’t gonna happen in our time and in our space! 😀

Fastest way possible to drive my poor son nuts!

But…but…waitaminit here!

WHAT IF you didn’t live with the offspring, but rather within walking distance? Or within a few minutes’ drive time?

That would give the adult kid easy, fast access to you – and you access to them.

And…in my case, what would it do for me?

Well, it would put my heroic son within a few minutes’ drive – or even walk. So, he could rescue me from myself, when needed. Conversely, I could easily reach his place, even on foot, making it possible (even easy) to pester the bedoodles outta him. 😉

Seriously: it would make it easy for me to take gifts of food and other treats to him. Easy to haunt him when I have some PITA that needs a grown man to handle. Easy for him to pick me up and schlep me to the dentist (or wherever).

And thereby it would facilitate my living at home as long as possible: preferably until I croak over.

Voilà! I get my privacy and peace & quiet. He gets his mutther where he can keep an eye on the ole’ bat.

Welp…all those bennies are, in fact, a shade on the optimistic side. My son has, of all things, a JOB (remember those?). He works out of his home for a large international insurance company. This, as you might imagine, does keep him busy.

Very busy,

So he can’t be trotting back and forth to my house or chauffeuring me around the city.

Fortunately, the corner of this city where I live happens to be well stocked with conveniences. Within a couple of blocks, we have an Albertson’s (supermarket par excellence), a more or less competent computer store, a Walgreen’s, a T-Mobile, a Bookman’s…. on and on and ON. About 90% of the time, you really don’t need a car to supply your needs here.

Gilding that lily, the swell new lightrail train comes right up into the ‘Hood., northbound from the downtown district. And the city is building extensions that will carry passengers east and west  and, eventually, further north into the middle-class suburbs along the freeway. In another few years, I’ll be able to get out to the university without ever touching an ignition key.

Mercifully, the time for me to need to commute to campus has passed…”mercifully” because no, I do NOT enjoy being groped by fellow passengers on those trains, or hooted and yelled at by jerk drivers as I stand at a bus stop. But if few minor irritants bother you, these trains ARE the Business.

Now…admittedly, there are some benefits to locking yourself into an old-folkerie.  In my father’s case, for example, one day he sat down for a huge mid-day meal in the dining hall and…promptly had a stroke!

Staff members there recognized what was happening and called for help on the spot. MUCH faster than I would have been able to call, even though I was sitting right there beside him. And they knew exactly what they were talking about when they spoke with the operator. Help arrived within minutes…and it was help who knew what to expect and how to address the disaster under way.

That wouldn’t happen if I had a stroke as I was sitting at my dining room table here at the Funny Farm. Of that you may be sure.

Someone would discover my corpse a few days later – maybe. Probably gnawed on by a hungry hound.

At any rate: just now one option is, in fact, for me to stay right where I am.

Another would be for me to move closer to where my son is.

His place is within walking distance of the beloved AJ’s Overpriced Gourmet Market, a few steps from the lightrail, minutes from two major regional hospitals. So…if I lived near him, I really wouldn’t need a car at all. I could use taxicabs if there were some reason not to walk, and in a real emergency, an ambulance would arrive within seconds.

Heh heh! JUST what my son needs, right? For his muther to move in three houses up the road! 😀

Ohhhhh well… It’s something to think about. If not to laugh about.

Gettin’ Old

by

Just climbed out of the tub. Combed the dripping wet hair. Hauled on the jeans and T-shirt. Dog is fed. Thought is devoted to running the laundry…ehhhh…too much like work!

Gorgeous morning. If I weren’t older than the hills and feeling like Methuselah, I’d take Ruby for a walk. Except Míhito is supposed to show up pretty soon to haul me off to the damned Mayo Clinic, there to be poked and punched: subjected to yet another pointless blood test.

That means I can’t have breakfast…and I’m just about to faint from hunger. Don’t suppose the coffee is indicated, either…but fuckkit! Enough is enough.

Or not enough is not enough….

Looks like I need to renew my driver’s license, another fun nuisance to occupy hours of the day.  Nope….that’s wrong! Doesn’t have to be renewed till 2030…and that’ll be long past my driving days!

So…this is what gettin’ old is all about: one petty hassle after another petty hassle after yet another petty hassle. 😀  I guess the reason for that feeling is that after some years you get just plain sick of all the ditz of daily life in modern times. The ditz translates itself, over time, into “hassle,” and the endless hassles become endlessly annoying.

***

And the news becomes endlessly horrifying. Did you see the reports on the latest ungodly plane crash?

Gosh, I used to hate flying on passenger planes when we lived in Arabia. Every two years we had to fly from Dhahran to New York City. My father would buy a new car there (his reward for a two-year stint in Hell) and we would race across the country in that: first to his brother’s place in Texas; then to my mother’s relatives in California. Then straight back to New York as fast as we could sail along in the thing, there to jump on another plane back to the Persian Gulf.

Even after I reached an age to understand that car travel is far, FAR more dangerous than airplane flying, I just hated those hours in Connies and other passenger planes. Crowded. Uncomfortable. Fukkin’ terrifying! And 12 hours across the Atlantic in those good ole’ days.

****

Wish to gawd my son would show up here and let’s get today’s nuisance/horror trip to the Mayo over with!

Can’t complain,, though: it’s only 6:30. Don’t think their lab opens till 7:00.

Naughtily, I’m dasting to swill a cup of coffee. You know what that will do, right? Screw up their damn test results, of course. So then we’ll have to jump through this hoop again.

Uh oh…shoulda looked it up before leaping off that cliff: NO, you’re not allowed to have a cup of coffee before the hateful blood test.

Goddammit! Now we’ll have to go through this hassle again.

waitwait! Here’s a page that says black coffee has no effect on blood tests.

Let’s hope that’s so. I just HATE the medical crapola, and I sure don’t wanna jump through today’s hoop again.

***

Ten to 7:00 and no sign of M’jito. Maybe he forgot?

Awwwww, wouldn’t THAT be a shame!

>:-D

Well, it’s only a ten-minute drive up to the Mayo. So he’s not yet late, quite.

Meanwhile, I’m fukkin’ STARVING and want to get this circus on the road, so we can have something to eat.

Looks like I need to renew my driver’s license, yet another hassle to cope with… Wait wait! The thing says it’s good until 2030!!!

Woo hoo! Now that I contemplate that moment of glory, I recall that yes, I’ve already jumped through the Arizona Department of Transportation hoop.

Thank goodness: One fewer PITA to dodge around just now.

*****

Seven ayem and no Young Dude. He must have forgotten or overslept

Awwwwww! Wouldn’t that be a shame? 😉  not to say 😀

Well. I should call him on the phone and wake him up. But…

But…

Uhm…

Am I going to?

Going to what? I forget….

😀

Okay, let’s wait til 7:30 and then break out the chow.

All this dorking around means the poor li’l dawg hasn’t had her morning doggy walk. Nor has her Human had its morning trek, either. Ohhhhh well….

****

Parked on the front porch, awaiting His Dudeship’s arrival.

If indeed he’s supposed to arrive.

If indeed he remembers.

If indeed he hasn’t overslept.

😀

One can only hope.

****

WHAT a gorgeous morning!!!

More than acceptable…which no doubt will poison the proposed blood test. But we’re now so late (it will take at least 20 minutes to drive up there from here: more at this rush-hour time).

I starve…  Hmmmm…. Will wait till 8 a.m. and then break out the chow. That’s 38 long minutes from now….

Hmmmmm s’more….  Here’s a news flash: Alzheimer’s may be a product of gum disease! 

Who’d’ve thunk it?

Fortunately, I inherited my father’s Superman-style teeth and gums.

My mother had terrible teeth — presumably the result of malnutrition, which she enjoyed as a child in Upstate New York. By the time I was…what? about 12 or 14, she’d had every tooth in her mouth yanked out. Poor thing.

My father, a variety of Superman, had perfect teeth all his life. No kidding: never so much as a small cavity.

***

Urk! Here’s a messsage from The Kid: “See you shortly for the Mayo trip.”

Dayum!

Well, I do hope I haven’t negated the purpose of this junket by daring to swill a cup of coffee. Boyoboy, do I ever hate this kind of thing!!!!

Ohhhh gawd. Here he is!

Darn it!

Roar! Roar!! Roar!!!

by

Ruby and I take our morning stroll, serenaded by the roar of jet planes. Yea, verily: one of the reasons I hated living in Sun City: Luke AFB, just a few miles to the south and west.

Every goddamn morning: Blasts of jet engines greeted the rising sun.

Other reasons to find Sun City tedious:

* racism
* hatred of young people
* distance from decent shopping
* isolation
* ugly, cheaply built house
* ultra-tidiness
* gravel “lawns”
* no pets: nobody had dogs, though they were allowed.

We did: we had an annoying chihuahua…but my mother preferred cats. And you hafta say: cats don’t yap.

Way over here in North Central Phoenix, a good 20 miles away from Sun City and Luke, we can get the dawn jet blasts. Even though the planes don’t fly directly over the neighborhood, their engines are SO LOUD that you can hear the damn things INSIDE your amply insulated, solid block house with its double-paned windows and its attic blown full of insulation.

What a racket!

SDXB, a long-time newsman and then a PR guy, took a little job for Luke after he moved out to SC: answering the phone to citizens calling to bitch about the jet engine noise. It was a task that kept him busy.

My mother was one who did not bellyache about the racket. “It’s the sound of fweedom,” she used to simper.

No, Mom: it’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way. 

Of course I didn’t say that to her. She’d have backhanded me into the middle of next week for any such sass.

She did love living in Sun City, you hafta say that. So much so that she not only wasn’t bothered by the ungodly roar from Luke, she even claimed to like it.

Ugh. Never been so glad to move away from a place in my life.

And after 10 years in Saudi Arabia…that’s sayin’ something!

Wow! I’m IN!

by

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…

by

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…