Coffee heat rising

aging

Hubs of Hades, Redux

by

Three-thirty in the afternoon. High, magnificent white clouds off to the north…but nary a sign of rain here in the Valley. Wunderground says we have 114 degrees; humidity 11%; precip zero.

That, my friends, is another way of saying “hotter than the hubs of Hades.” 

The hapless woman my son hired to babysit me — he thinks I can’t take care of myself alone anymore — is bored out of her mind. The reason I’m unlikely to get hurt while I’m sitting around all day by myself is that…

* I go noplace;
* I do nothing;
* I sit around watching the dog as she does nothing.

Oh, well. If that’s how he wants to spend his money, far be it from me to contradict him.

Haven’t persuaded the poor lady to drive me to any stores or other amusements, mostly because I don’t need any new provisions and surely do not want to go out in that unholy heat.

What to do? How to deal with this new headache?

Well…

1. Make a list of things that need to be done (or at least can be done) while I’m under her control.

2. Be nice to the poor soul. She’s probably as terrorized as I am about this whole wacky thing.

3. Since my son has cut off my driving privileges, get her to drive me to stores (even those within walking distance) at least several times a week.

4. I walk a couple miles every day, for exercise. See if she would like to come along on these walks, after the weather gets cool enough that we could leave around the time she gets here.

Godlmighty, this fiasco is making me crazy. Pretty clearly, I’ve passed a milepost on the road to senility. And some major changes are going to have to be made to accommodate that. The big hope — the big stumbling block — the big screaming nightmare…is that I’m not yet so batshit that I have to be locked up in an institution.

I hate, loathe, and despise communal living. Hated every minute of living in the college dormitories. And that is NOT the way I want to wrap up my life.

This job will be made tougher for our New Lady by the fact that I refuse to pay for television. I will be DAMNED if I’m gonna pay to have advertising shoved in my face. Plus about 90% of what’s on TV is just not worth paying for.

So…that means she doesn’t have any pap to amuse her when she’s here. She must think I’m even crazier than I am. And she must be excruciatingly bored.

So…THAT means we’ll have to come up with things to do and places to go while she’s here. Better confer with her along those lines: mostly to find out what she likes to do and figure out when and where we can go for those things.

Also must ask my son if he thinks we should go ahead and pay for cable TV, so she will have some drivel to watch while she’s here. I’d just as soon not have brainless blah blah blah emanating from one of the rooms, but…if that’s what it takes to keep some poor soul in our employ, I guess I’ll have to get used to it.

{sigh}

Guess I’ll have to get used to the whole damn fiasco!

Yucky-Ducky Day

by

EWWWWW!  It is SO humid and SO sticky and SO hot outside that it feels like a good old hideous day in Ras Tanura, the seaside colony where I grew up in Saudi Arabia.

Seriously: it feels like it could start to rain out of a clear blue sky…something that, yea verily, I have seen in Arabia. But there’s neither clear nor blue out there: the sky is draped in ugly, thin gray clouds.

Haven’t heard from my son today. Hope he’s getting through this balmy day all right. His house is in a historic district and was built when every home was “cooled” (heh!) with something called “swamp cooling.” This was an early form of evaporative cooling. Worked fine when the weather was dry. Give it some humidity, though, and “swamp” would be the operative term, all right!

Even if you replace the evap unit with a modern air-conditioning unit, the result is not very effective. That, I reckon, has to do with the way the ductwork is built. Or…something.

***

I should call him up and pester him. But frankly, just now I’m reamed steamed and dry-cleaned, and so do not feel like speaking to any human beings. Today the new housecleaners he hired to replace the beloved Luz surfaced. Meeting them and introducing them to the shack and whatnot was surprisingly tiring. I just don’t do well with new people….and when the New Person is expected to work for me (the poor soul!)…well…it’s a trying experience all the way around.

Not sure whether they’re expected to surface once a week….or what. That’s one of the questions I need to pester him with. 😀  Poor guy! He must think I’m totally non compos mentis. And…hmmmm…with every month of advancing age, I seem to drift further in that direction.

Unclear whether that’s really so, or is only a time-enhanced illusion. I asked my beloved Doctor in the Wild about this. (A “doctor in the wild” is one who does NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic). And he insisted that no, my marbles are still intact and I should quit worrying about that.

Nice to think so. But o’course…he doesn’t see me every hour and every minute of every day. This marble-loss business seems to come and go, depending on stress levels, time of day, and whatnot.

Ohhhh well...  The dinner chow is hot! (Hoorayy!) And the  human is ambling off to bed whenever she finishes scarfing up that stuff.

And so, away!

A Rasty-Nasty Day

by

Ugh!  This morning: hot, wet, sticky. Reminiscent of an early-morning summer day in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia…where I was (un)fortunate enough to grow up on the shore of the Persian Gulf. What a hole! My father called the camp Rasty Nasty: a sobriquet that neatly describes life there.

And Lordie, I did hate living there! Not because of the Arabs or because of the eye-searing, brain-dulling scenery, but because of the nasty brats who populated the camp’s grade school. Ugh! Those creatures were truly little monsters. If you were “different” in any way, they ganged together and worked to make your life miserable.

And they were very, very good at making an outcast kid’s life miserable! If you were a girl who failed to grasp that the sole purpose of your life, other than spawning children, was to stand in the kitchen and bake cookies, you didn’t belong.

I didn’t  “belong,” with a vengeance. Back in the 1950s, when conventionality was the style of the day, I failed to grasp that I was supposed to grow up to cook and to sew clothes. Noooo…stupid me! I wanted to grow up to become an astronomer.

You know: a person with a Ph.D. and a lifetime career in astrophysics.

No. Bad, bad girl!! Females did NOT go into the sciences.

So growing up in Arabia meant nine years of utter misery for me. GOD, how I hated that place and hated those kids! The feeling was mutual on the brats’ part. What an awful time in an awful place!

Finally, when I was nearing the end of the sixth grade out there, my mother’s best friend — a camp nurse — persuaded her boyfriend — a doctor in the camp hospital — to convince my father that my mother had to be sent home, lest she die from the amoebic dysentery she’d picked up out there.

So. That got me and my mother out of that hell-hole and back to San Francisco, whence we had emanated. And it led me into a decent school where my classmates didn’t know I was the Weird Little Kid. So my life kinda sprang back to almost normal. My mother, after some weeks in a hospital, recovered from the amoebic infestation. And so there we were — at least in much better living conditions — until my father’s current contract ended and he joined us in the City.

From there we proceeded to Southern California, where he shipped out of a port down there. My mother’s dearest friend lived in Long Beach, so she — my mother — and I rented an apartment in that dreary garden spot. After several years there, my father retired and they betook themselves to Sun City, Arizona (talk about dreary!!). By then, thank God, it was time for me to enter college. Instead of sending me to Cal Berkeley, where I’d planned to go, they stuck  me in the University of Arizona.

This parked me in Tucson, the home of the bourgeois and the mediocre. But at least it was a good long way from Sun City! 😮

Rehearsing these events…well…it sure frosts my cookies! Where I had a promising start — a strong likelihood of entering UC Berkeley and then going on to graduate school from there — they got rid of that. Instead I got a bachelor’s degree from a third-rate school, and from there proceeded to marriage and graduate studies in an even lesser school.

What kind of people do that to their kid?

Well. Uneducated people, of course. They hadn’t a clue. I think they really didn’t know there was much difference between universities around the country. And they really didn’t know a Ph.D. from some third-rate school in the middle of the Southwestern desert was not the same as a Ph.D. — or any degree — from a four-year California university. And why should they? Neither of them went to college, and I don’t think my father even graduated from high school. From what I can tell, he ran away from home to go to sea before he finished his senior year.

So…yeah. I guess I managed to steer my life in the right direction. But still…I’m not fond of  being reminded of growing up in Saudi Arabia. And a wet, rasty-nasty day like today does exactly that.

Ugh!

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona”*

by

It’s a Sea of Cortez day…moisture saturating the atmosphere, making for a swamp-like, Saudi Arabian, horrible morning. Weather is drifting up to (un)lovely Phoenix from Mexico just now…breeding a sticky, icky day.

Dawg and I are freshly(?) back from a swim through that air, as the morning sun hangs over the eastern horizon. This is one of several Arizona phenomena that make me want to brain my father for dragging us here from California.

Well. If he were still alive to brain. 😉

God, I hate this place. If there were a way to get out of here, I’d be soooo long-gone.

But…truth to tell…for me there is no way out. I can’t afford to move. And even if I could, at this age where would I go? Too old to get a job. Not interested in living in a “retirement” community.

Plus my son is here. I’m not about to move away as long as he’s lurking in Arizona. And truth to tell, given that he has a more-than-decent job here, there are not many other places he’s likely to go.

His dad emanated from Colorado, and M’hijito has said that he’d like to repair to those parts. But…in the first place, he’d have to get work there. And the second place, it snows in Colorado. He’s no longer accustomed to snow and ice, and I have exactly zero desire to become accustomed to them!

§ § §

*  “Another beautiful day in Arizona” was the tagline of a locally prominent radio announcer here in Phoenix, back in the day. Every morning he would open his talk-show with “It’s another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it!”

Way to turn illiteracy into PR, eh?

 

I Want My Mother Back

by

She was murdered, y’know. My mother was.

She was murdered by the tobacco bastards.

They got her hooked. And she smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked herself right into the grave.

So the evil greed-masters did her in.

Oh, well. We all have to die of something, eh?

She lived long enough to see her grandson. Briefly. My son was born while she was hammering at death’s door…there in her bed floating on drugs and soaking up pain. When I brought him to her, a newborn infant, and showed him to her as she lay on her deathbed, she took one brief look at him, shrugged, and said “Meh!”

Nope. She didn’t care that she had a grandson. She was too damn sick to care.

There ya go, folks! That’s what tobacco does for you. Makes you not care one thin damn about the people around you.

A lot has happened since that grim evening. My son is now a grown man with an excellent degree and a fine job. I’ve made myself unemployable by getting my own degree, a Ph.D. I’ve written books. We’ve traveled around the world. My son landed an excellent position in the insurance industry. Life has gone on.

I just wish her life had gone on, too…

Ohhhh well. You can’t have everything, eh?

So much evil in this world. So much of it manufactured for profit…

For the Luv of GAWD!!!!!

by

KeeeeRAP!!!!!

Come the crack of dawn, the dawg is dragging me around the park on the usual morning Doggy-Walk. And what fun happens?

Yeah.

SHE DRAGS ME THROUGH AN ANT NEST!

The li’l ladies are out for their morning forage, so they’re swarming all over the place. I don’t notice them until it’s too late: now they’re all over my sandaled feet and legs, going bite bite bite bite-bite-bite BITE BITE BITE!!!

Hurt? Lemme tellya HURT.

We scurry away and I manage to bat most of the little gals off my skin. But now my feet and legs HURT LIKE THE DICKENS.

We turn around and race back toward the house, through the horrible SWAMPY morning. A classic nasty Arizona summer day is dawning, and the goddam place feels like the Okefenokee Swamp!  Holy crap, is it gawdawful out there!

Now my feet are covered in stinging, itchy ant bites. Coating them in calamine lotion doesn’t seem to be doing much good.

GAWD, but I hate Arizona!!!!!  What a horrid place to live. A thousand curses on my idiot parents for dragging us to this horrible, nightmare right-wing dump.

Yeah: part of their joy in this hole was its right-wing aspect. They abominated LIBarulism, which was one reason they were miserable in California. Barry Goldwater was holding forth here at the time. Believe it or not, I used to be a Goldwater Girl, one of his gingery little supporters.

Over time, the scales fell from my myopic eyes. Now you couldn’t get me anywhere near the right-wing crazies. Sorry if you’re one of them…but… Been there, done that!

What a horrible place this is, full of horrible people. If my son weren’t here, I’d be SOOOO FAR GONE from here!

Where would I be, if I had my choice?

I dunno. Not Hell, that’s for sure.

The east side of the San Francisco Bay Area, if I could afford it. But no doubt I couldn’t even begin to afford it.

My mother’s relatives lived in Berkeley, having settled there early in the last century, when it was reasonable to do so. I think their little bungalow is now valued at nigh unto a million dollars. Here’s one on the Web, just up the street from their place, at over two million dollars. But…it looks like that place is about twice the size of theirs.

So obviously, I couldn’t afford to live there today.

These days, I think I probably would consider the east side of Tucson. Weather’s decent there — because of the mild elevation, it’s not even too horrid in the summer. But there, too, unless you’re willing to go into a “townhouse” (which I believe means “apartment”), the prices are outta sight.

Since the Funny Farm is situated on the fringe of Phoenix’s highly upscale North Central district, presumably this place will be worth a fair amount when my son inherits it…. That’s assuming I can manage to live here long enough to be able to pass it to him but not so long as to be relegated to a prison for the elderly — and unfortunately, longevity is a thing among women on my mother’s side of the family.

So, I’ll probably be dragged off (kicking and screaming, you may be sure!) to one of the horrid old-folkeries that are now in vogue. Those places take everything you have in exchange for babysitting you through your dotage. And so…if I don’t drop dead fairly soon, presumably little or nothing will be left for my son.

What times we live in, eh?