Coffee heat rising

Angst

Lock It Down!!!!!

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Arghhhh!  I have GOT to get special training on not answering the door, on not speaking to strangers, and on uttering the sound N-N-N-N-O-O-O-O!

Crimineee! The crooks are storming me from all directions.

Did I tell you about the Tree Dudes?

A crew of guys showed up at the front door saying they were here to trim the overgrown eucalyptus-like monster in the west yard.

Uhhhh….ooohkayyyyyy……

{huh?  Did I hire these guys??}

So they bang around and thud around, getting ready to assassinate my huge west-side tree, the one that keeps the air-conditioning bills down on that side of the house

About then, my son calls on the phone. I tell him what’s up. He says GET RID OF THEM!

So I end up having to toss that bunch out in the cold (or rather, the heat), just as they’re gearing their saws to chop down everything in sight.

Good riddance to that bunch.

Here’s the problem with Old Age: you can’t remember what you did ten minutes ago, much less a day or three ago!

I cannot remember whether I agreed to hire these guys to prune that gigantic tree. My son says I did not. Just in time does he say that: minutes to spare before they started to assassinate my trees. And my bank account.

My neighbor has (I think) a camera by her front door. She does NOT answer the door, no matter who’s out there. If she can see an image of someone she’s willing to talk to, she’ll open up. Otherwise, you and your fellow scam artists can stand there till the snow falls.

I think I’m going to install one of those. Hers allows her to see who’s out there without having to open the door. I can do that, too, by looking out through a window…but that allows the “guest” to see me, too. In Terri’s case, she can see who’s out there, but they can’t tell whether anyone’s home. So they can ring the doorbell to their idiot heart’s content, get nowhere, and let Terri go out in the back yard until the ring-fest ends.

We seem to get more and more hustlers showing up at the door, trying to peddle this junk or faze that scam past you. So…a way to see who’s out there without them seeing me would be MOST welcome. 

Back at the Ranch…in the nick of time

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GAAAAAHHHH!  Go ahead: just try to sit down while the coffee steeps!

Hah. we say to that. Hardy-har-har!

Comin’ on to 8:00 of a VERY soggy morning. Thunder rolling. Clouds lurking. RRRR-O-O-A-A-R!!!! Just made it back in the house from this morning’s doggy-walk….

How can I count the ways…?

Seriously, this is one weird morning. We’re right at 8:00 a.m. and it’s so dark out there you’d guess it was around 6:00. Water all over the back porch: it must have rained during the night, ’cause it missed us while Ruby and I were traipsing around the ‘Hood.

Somebody’s burglar or fire alarm was wailing away…they must be out of town. Or all dead, presumably murdered by their alarm’s visitor. WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU WEEE-UUU !!!! What a racket! 

Inside our house, we can’t hear that serenade, though. Just the KER-BOOOOOOOM! of the present thunderstorm.

Man! It’s really roaring away out there! Wunderground predicts a high of 86 with a 98%chance of precip. That would seem to translate to HOT AND WET. 

Uh oh. Lawn blower racket. 

Puuuleeeze, Gawd! TELL me that’s not Gerardo’s boys banging around the yard!!!!!

Nope: they’re across the street, lucky guys. Thanks, God!

How would you like to be trying to mow and blower up a 1/4-acre yard as the sky is roaring at you? Sometimes even the most crabby-making days look just fine compared to someone else’s fine day….

Movin’ On…if it can be called moving…

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LOL! Okay, so the magnificent stabs of pain that visited the lame hip a little earlier today have pretty well settled down. What kicked it up, I have NO idea.

Nor do have I a clue what made it settle down. All I know just now is that at the moment it hurts, but it sure doesn’t hurt like it did.

Don’t get any optimistic ideas that “doesn’t hurt like it did” means it’s gonna go away. Because that ain’t how this thing has been working. Yeah: it comes and goes. It’ll hurt like Hell. Then for no obvious reason the pain will recede: not gone, but tolerable. Then a few hours later — again for no obvious reason: hurts like Hell again.

No clue what makes it flare up. No clue what makes it settle down. All I know is that it comes and goes. But never…ever…goes AWAY.

Well..what ELSE I know is…

* I’m tired of hurting
*I’m tired of listening to my ears whistling
* I’m tired of my yard being a mess because it hurts too much to clean things up
* I’m tired of my house being a mess because it hurts too much to drag stuff around.
* I’m tired of looking at the dorked up dining-room chair cushions, a mess because it hurts too much to take the chairs apart and try to fix said mess
* I’m damn tired of knowing that when I get up from this chair it’s gonna hurt like Hell

STOP THE WORLD! I WANNA GET OFF!!

{Chortle!} Actually, stopping the world may not help. We’re told that the accursed peripheral neuropathy can persist for weeks, if not months. Ohhhhhh well…..

Giddy-up!

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Two days later and, incredibly, we’re STILL on the wagon!

Who would’ve predicted it, eh?

Now, I ain’t a-gunna say that I don’t miss a nice beer right about now — come 4:20 in the afternoon. But neither am I gunna say that I’ll keel over in a faint without it.

The crazy-making peripheral neuropathy continues, though I could (maybe) persuade myself that it’s a little milder just now. For that to be credible, that milder-ing would have to continue for several days or weeks, and get more obvious as the time passes. So…about all we can say about that is time will tell. 

Meanwhile, I’ve come to think that if I’m going to be able to stay in my home as I age and not end up in one of those horrible warehouses for old people, I’ve got to get 100% sober and stay that way. That is to say, I’ve gotta quit drinking, and I’ve gotta quit drinking NOW.

So far, that’s not been very difficult. But…heh!!  It’s only been a few hours…

It needs to become not a few hours. Not a few days. But a few weeks.

And then a few months. And months and months… And then…yep: years. 

Videlicet: I’ve gotta get off the sauce and STAY off the sauce. Now and evermore.

We shall see, soon enough, whether that’s even remotely possible…

AAARRRRGHHH! Not to say “goddammit!”

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Just went out in back to enjoy this morning’s swiggle of coffee and…

Yeah:

Discovered that SOMEONE STOLE THE PILLOWS OFF THE BACK  PORCH CHAIRS. 

God.

Damm.

It.

!!!!!!!

I made those pillows myself, to fit the chairs. With some difficulty, we might add. Had to drive clear across west Phoenix to get the cushions and the fabric.

And now all but one of them is gone.

Yeah. The considerate thief left me ONE pillow to sit on. 

Ohhhhkayyyyyyy….given my decrepitude, is it possible that in a Senior Moment I stashed them in the garage or a closet to keep them out of the rain?

a) What rain???
b) What closet???

And c) NOOOO. Nope. No stack of lawn-chair pillows in any of the closets, in the garage, in the storage shed…nooooo where. 

So pretty clearly, somebody stole them.

Isn’t that cute?

I’ll have to electrify the next set, eh? Booby-trapped lawn chairs! 😀

GGGAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

I dunno what is going on these days, but of late everything that comes my way makes me angry as hell. 

The other Latest Goddam Outrage is that to get a covid shot around here you have to traipse to your doctor and get a prescription! 

Yeah. Kill an hour of your time driving around and sitting in a waiting room and yakking with the quack to get a 30-second jab!

What?

The?

Fuck?

I have yet to jump through those hoops — or to drive an hour out to the Mayo to talk MayoDoc into shooting me up. And so every breath  taken, presumably, risks laying me low with a potentially fatal respiratory infection.

That’s an hour each way. Yeah: TWO HOURS of driving time to get an ordinary drugstore shot.

It looks like having to extract a prescription for an ordinary flu or covid shot is going to be S.O.P. Sooo….I may have no choice!

My son thinks the Mayo can do no wrong, so at his behest all of his doctors and all of my doctors are working out there at the clinic.  Yeah: halfway to Bisbee.

Thus we’re talking about blowing away a whole afternoon to get a 20-second shot that has always been available at a pharmacy a ten-minute walk from my house!

Either that or taking a chance that maybe I won’t get the disease and praying for the best.

WTF???????

Morning Does Not Become Us…

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Ayup! It’s another gray, soggy morning in (un)lovely Arizona.

Hot
Muggy
Stuffy
Dim
Whatever you touch goes HAYWIRE

Why is that? The Haywire Effect, I mean. Most of the time, life the universe and all that goes along peaceably enough. But nay verily! Not today!

It truly is an unpleasant morning. Hot and overcast. The air: just sticky. 

Ruby and I need some grocery-store loot. But what with His Lordship having kiped my car, I would have to walk to the nearest store, a quarter-mile or more from the Funny Farm. And weirdly enough, I do NOT want to traipse around out there in that wet, soggy heat.

Blech!!!  I may call our Uber guy a little later…see if I can persuade him to schlep me to a grocer and then sit around twiddling his thumbs while I traipse through the store. Just think how well THAT will go over.

Oh, well. Later. Some things will wait until later.

Much later.

I had planned to pester M’hijito this morning by jangling up his phone and inviting him to visit the Old-Folkerie of my father’s choice, Orangewood: now much spiffed up since his day. And, you can bet, much increased in price. They gave it a pricier-sounding name, too: The Terraces. La de da!

How can I count the ways I do not want to live in an institution?

Almost as many ways as I don’t want to live in an ordinary, noisy, boring, annoying apartment house.

Ohhhh well. The Funny Farm continues in excellent shape. It’s paid for. The neighborhood is relatively safe (except for Gangland Central, a couple miles to the north). All that’s lacking is a car (my son having extracted mine)…and given our location, the truth is that you don’t need a car here to get by just fine.

Frankly… I’m now thinking that it would cost a whole lot less and and annoy me a whole lot less to hire workers to come in and provide the services that you get from an Orangewood-style old-folks’ warehouse.

Roof over head…much nicer and much more generous than one through which the folks upstairs are blasting their TV set and tromping around.

Proximity — as in “walking distance!” to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR top-notch supermarket and gourmet grocers.

A neighborhood doctor’s office, just sitting there by the sidewalk. Dang! Goodbye to those hour-long drives to the Mayo!

These are perks of living in the middle of a large, middle-class metropolitan area. Most of what you need is within walking distance.

What help would you have to hire?

* Cleaning lady  — already have one of those
* Driver — one lives catty-corner across the street. And he’s among a half-dozen who live in the ‘Hood.
* Yard guys — have those. Have hired them for years.
* Handyman — the guy across the street will do little fix-it tasks for me. But when I tire of imposing on him, the place is swarming with people who will repair and build things.
* The usual array of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and the like — already have them all on the string.
* Someone to supervise these folks — Heh! This is why we  have a son, right? 😀

****

Hafta say… It really never occurred to me, before this, that I really do not need a car here. This ain’t San Francisco, after all.

But…apparently while I was paying no attention, the place has taken on more and more characteristics of a large, sophisticated city.

“Sophisticated” will never fit Phoenix as an adjective. But “car-free” surely could. The roads are laid out in a standardized grid pattern, north-south streets intersecting and overlaying east-west ones. So wherever you are,  you certainly CAN get there from here. With rather little effort!

As long as you can walk (admittedly, not everyone can…and I won’t be able to, not for much longer), wherever you’re goin’ you indeed can get there on foot…with surprisingly little effort.

What will I do when I seriously can no longer walk five or six blocks?

Well….an Uber driver lives right across the street. Several more live in the neighborhood. I figure their phone numbers will be saved to my iPhone. And when I need a ride, I just press a button and roust one of those guys out!

Not only that, but the major grocers nearby — Albertson’s, Sprouts, El Rancho — have taken to delivering groceries!!! All you have to do is call up a web page, charge up a passel of products, and stand back. Shortly, they’ll appear at your door with a week’s worth of food and household loot.

Et voilà. Conveniences like these will — I think…I hope — delay having to move into an old-folkerie for several years. Yeah…

I hope.