Coffee heat rising

aging

Moonset

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Ten after three in the morning: the quiet, dark morning. As we scribble, a brilliant three-quarter moon makes its way down the clear black western sky toward the horizon.

What a thing to see!

It’s sublimely beautiful. Truly: one of the most subtly gorgeous sights I’ve ever seen. Made more so, I’ll say, by knowing this is one of the last times — maybe the last time — I’ll ever see such a thing.

If that’s the last scene I get to see on this earth, well then… Thanks, God. It’s a magnificent gift!

As you may guess, Funny is very, very sick indeed. Beyond “funny,” we might say. The peripheral neuropathy, which never takes  pause, is endlessly painful: hands, feet, legs, lips, teeth: everything hurts. Pretty clearly this ailment is never going to heal: we’re coming into the last stage of a life that does not want to step aside and get out of the way. So the darned life is putting up a fight!

Ohhh well. Nothing I can do about it. Except wait until it goes away.

Meanwhile, in these last burning hours and minutes of life, let us enjoy what we have around us.

  • Let us relish the beauty that immerses us.
  • Let us comprehend the brevity and fragility of that beauty.
  • Let us love those who love us.
  • Let us pray for the future of our species.
  • Let us be grateful for life, for the living, for what has come before us and what will come after us.
  • If there is a God — as some of us believe there must be — let us thank that Creator for the beauty of Creation, for its glory and for its horror, for its intimacy and its strangeness, for its past and its future.

Onward. Ever onward!

Is There a Place for Me?

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{sigh} As I grow to hate the noise and the crime and the loony toons more and more, I wonder: IS there a place for me in (un)lovely Central Arizona?

Quite possibly not.

North Central Phoenix, where the Funny Farm presently resides, is…what?

* Aging

* Cheaply built, by and large (okay, okay: but better than most newer districts)

* Crime-ridden (no, I would not live here without a pistol and a dog. Why do you ask?)

* Spectacularly noisy

* Low on decent schools (you have to put your kid in private or parochial school if having them learn anything matters to you)

* Segregated (but so is everyplace else around here: Arizona is, after all, a Southern state)

* Hotter than the Hubs: essentially unlivable during the summer, for many folks

So… If I weren’t here in Noise Central, where would I be?

Sure wish I was at the ranch, yea verily even as we sit here and contemplate the local lunacy.

La Maya & La Bethulia moved to the Monterey area in California. Beautiful spot.

But…I can’t afford to live in California, not even (like them) in a trailer. Nor do I especially want to: habitable parts of that state are crowded, noisy, hectic, and spectacularly expensive.

So….where would I go, if I could?

Dunno. The Oro Valley outside of Tucson, maybe. It’s bit on the annoyingly suburban side for my taste: not fond of driving halfway to Timbuktu to fill a grocery cart.

Prescott, a small town up on the Rim north of Phoenix, is very pretty and has its charms. Expensive, though. Lacking in the big-city amenities I’ve come to expect.

Flagstaff: Colder’n’a by-gawd during the winter. Also lacking in little amenities like decent medical care and upscale grocery stores.

Yarnell: a wide spot in the road on the road from Wickenberg to Payson, waaayyy out in the middle of nowhere. Quiet, relatively cool, pleasantly hick-ridden. Our ranch was located just outside of Yarnell.,..and boyoboy, I sure do miss it!

Fountain Hills: A pricey suburb on the northerly edge of Scottsdale. Nice, toney area. My cousin lives there: not necessarily a recommendation, since she decided, some years ago and for unknown reasons, that she can’t stand my existence.

Sun City: Hate Central. And directly under the flight path for the daily jet airplane exercises at Luke Air Force Base. Noooo, thankee!

Truth to tell, there really isn’t anyplace within reasonable living distance of my son’s place and my own stomping grounds that I can even begin to afford. I’m incredibly lucky to have snabbed the Funny Farm before real estate prices rose into the stratosphere, and certainly could not afford to buy anything comparable within reasonable traveling distance of my son’s place.

Drivin’…Drivin’…Drivin…

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Had to cruise through the district called Moon Valley y’day. It’s a sub-suburb of the North Phoenix area. A dear friend and her husband — both now Late with a capital “L” — used to live there… I drove past their house, which, amazingly enough, is still standing.

“Amazingly,” I say, because the architecture up there is SUCH sh!t…it really is hard to believe those places remain upright. 😀

What junk. At the time my friends moved in, I went up to do some repairs and upgrades — yes, my daddy DID teach me how to use a hammer, a screwdriver, and a paint brush. And I was just astonished at the pi$$-poor construction. The walls and floors were such cardboard that when you stood there painting, barefooted, you could feel the heat radiating into the structure a good three feet along the exterior walls and into the living room. You don’t even wannna know what their summer power bills must have been!

Still…despite the junk building, it’s kind of a pretty area: upper-middle-class, neat and tidy, nestled in among the desert hills.

Drove all over the tract, wondering if I’d like to sell the Funny Farm and move up there.

And…well…the answer is No. Not on your life!

While my house isn’t exactly Buckingham Palace, it’s nevertheless reasonably sturdy. Centrally located. Almost within walking distance of my son’s house. Absolutely walking distance to an Albertson’s supermarket, a beloved Sprouts fancy-Dan overpriced grocery store, a storefront doctor’s office, and a train line that would take you to the ultra-beloved AJ’s market and to the kid’s house, if you had the patience to deal with Phoenix’s public transit.

{sigh} I do miss my friends, though. They were a good 20 years older than me, so it’s not surprising that they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. But gosh. They were fun and smart and full of ginger!

Why can’t humans live forever?

Mid-century Joy!

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Oh, my. You cannot imagine my mother’s joy when, along about 1957, we came back to the United States to find…ohhh gosh! FROZEN FOODS!

No mere packages of frozen veggies: no indeed, but whole meals — meat, veggies, starches — neatly packaged in tinfoil pans, ready for you to warm up in the oven and toss in front of the Brat, ready to eat.

The Brat, conveniently enough, had never seen any such marvels before, out in horrible Saudi Arabia, and so had no idea that frozen slop is still slop. 😀

No idea at-tall.

***

Just tossed a fistful of frozen spinach and another fistful of frozen French fries on the grill. 😀

Nooo, we did NOT have microwave ovens, back in the Good Ole’ Days.

Nooo, living in a mid-century high-rise San Francisco apartment, we did NOT have a gas grill.

My mother wouldn’t have known what to do with either of those. What she knew was to stick the tinfoil pan, fresh out of the freezer, into the oven. Let it overheat the pan’s contents. Haul it out. And dump it on a plate in front of the brat.

The brat, having no more  clue than her mother did back in the Day, thought that was just real cool.

😀

Make no mistake: my mother could cook.

Oh my, could that woman cook!

It was just that…well…she’d druther not. And especially she’d druther not clean up the mess after cooking a full-on family meal.

😀

Her excellent grandson can cook.

Oh my, can that young man cook!

And I do believe that’s one of several reasons she would have been thrilled to know him. If only she’d lived another 20 years(+). How extraordinary she would have thought he is!

Because, as a practical matter, that’s what he is. Even today, in our extraordinary times.

Arfa Arfa OUCH OUCH!

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OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!!!!

Come about six o’clock at night. Nothing will ARF do but what we must ARF a doggy-walk around the park. That’s about a mile’s dog-drag.

Ohhhh goodie…

We start out.

Drag drag yank yank drag drag HEEL, DAMMIT!!! Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..

Ohhhhh Hell  Enough is arfing enough. The human commits an about-face and hauls the Dawg back to the house drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..  And lemme tellya, that HURTS the sore, tired hands.

We trudge back toward the house. The neighbors no doubt feel their suspicions are confirmed: I am nuts. Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…finally make it back to our front yard. Up to the door. Into the house.

Ughhhhh!!!!!

The feet hurt. The shins hurt. The hands hurt. They all hurt like the dickens: the friction makes the peripheral neuropathy kick in with a vengeance. So we get yank yank hurt yank burn burn yank yank hurt hurt ROAR with pain.

By now the Human is royally pi$$ed. The Dog is dragging with all her wolfish strength.

Sheee-ut! My fingernails are lifting off the nail beds, which makes the yank-fest hurt even more than normal. By the time we get back to the Funny Farm, the Human is uniquely pi$$ed.

Now the feet hurt, the hands hurt, the chronically pained lips hurt… f-u-u-u-u-c-k!!!

Sez here the last time I took an ibuprofen was 2:2o a.m.

Hmmmmm…. Pretty sure I dropped one in the afternoon. Whaddayabet that’s 2:20 p.m. Hmmmm…

It’s after 6:00 p.m. now. So…presumably another one won’t poison me.

Swill an ibuprofen and a B12 pill. EEEEWWWWW!!!!!

I hate bolting down pills almost as much as I hate being stabbed with shots.

Smear the last of the CBD balm on the chronically burning lips. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out and buy some more of that stuff. Ugh!

CBD cream and balm are the only things I’ve found, so far, that work fairly promptly and effectively on the horrid neuropathic pain.

Dunno what is causing this ailment and dunno what might make it go away. All I know is, it hurts like the dickens. Very, very tired of it.

Too early to crash in the sack: it’s not even 6:30 yet. In the unlikely event that I should fall asleep now (give or take an hour), I’d be up at 1:30 in the morning: for the duration.

I hate laying awake through the wee hours almost as much as I hate tingling and burning from fingertips to elbows.

Dammit! Even my teeth hurt!

Make. It. Stop, Lord!

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Lock on the side gate: busted.

Latch on the kitchen door: busted.

Nails on both index fingers: lifting off their beds. Hurts.

Drag my computer into the bedroom, so at least I can put my feet up while playing at blogging and waiting for the locksmith: the phone’s gone.

Search search search around the house. Finally find a phone extension. drag it to bedroom; drop it in its cradle.

Phone jangles: repairman. Says he’s on his way.

Coffee: stone cold.

*****

Adorably handsome repair-dude shows up at the front door.

{sigh!}
Can I carry your tool kit for you all day?
<3

***

He charges off to Home Depot, there to do battle in the hardware department. He apparently imagines I’ll be irked because his bosses charge me enough to cover his gas and his time.

DUDE! If only they knew how much I’d be willing to pay to get you to do this job!

Fortunately, they don’t…

Spavined hip: EXCRUCIATING!

Don’t get old, whatever ya do. When you’re old, you hurt all the time.

Hmmm…

Y’know, another little pain that afflicts you in your old age is sentimentality.

Yesterday, I left the Dog Chariot off at the repair shop up on the corner. Getting home, then, required me to walk through the neighborhood of aging 1950s tract houses that stands just to the north of the ‘Hood.

Gosh, but construction was ticky-tacky in the Good Ole Days!

Prob’ly no worse than it is today, when you come down to it. Tract housing is tract housing is tract housing: is, was, and ever shall be. 😀

Walked past the former home of a favorite old neighbor. WHAT   a nice man! He and his equally pleasant wife moved out generations ago…I wanna say they moved into an old-folkerie. But don’t recall the details.

Sure do miss them, though. They were as nice as you could get.

****

Something there is about the modern American custom of locking up the elderly in old-folkeries. Ugh! What a fate to look forward to!

For what it costs to live in an old folks’ prison, you could hire someone to come in every day, pick up after you, fix the days’ meals, drive you to the grocery store or the quack…  Why lock yourself up to get those privileges?

Learned this from The Cleaning Lady from Heaven, who (it develops) has done exactly that kind of thing.

So…I sit around wondering about my father: could he have stayed in his cute little Sun City home until he arrived at his last days and hours?

Hm.

Possibly. But we have this huge difference between him and me: he went to sea all his adult life. Ran away from home at 17, lied about his age, and joined the Navy. From there on, he shipped out by way of making his living.

Hence, two major differences, temperamentally, between him and me:

* He did not mind institutional living. For him: bad food, annoying noise from fellow inmates, daily schedules determined by someone else: those were just normal life. For me: that kinda stuff drives me nuts.

* And he had a wife (until she smoked herself into the grave). She did the shopping. She did the cooking. She did the cleaning. She did the budgeting. She organized their social life.

Hm. As for moi…. I have no problem with cooking — actually, I rather enjoy it. I hire out the cleaning, the yardwork, and the bookkeeping. As for a social life…whazzat?

****
Ah hah!

Here’s part of my social life, right now: An adorable young workman.

He’s here to replace the worn-out deadbolt on the back door.

That’s good.

Also good: he’s more than adequately scenic.

*********

The gorgeous creature replaced the kaput deadbolt — and did so with a piece that matches the rest of the kitchen hardware in color and finish. To accomplish that, he made a trek to Home Depot, one of my very least favorite activities.

Came back with a new lock set, took out the sad old one, installed the new one…et voilà!

So…hmmmmmmmm…

Maybe we don’t wanna make it ALL stop, Dear Lord…

😀