Coffee heat rising

Angst

The House on the Park

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Every time Ruby and I head out into the’ Hood and circumnavigate the park, we pass a house that makes me think We need to move out of this place! 

It’s a beautiful house: two stories, facing right on the park. About as upscale as you can get.

But…

A friend of mine was living there with her husband. They were high-school teachers: quiet, conservative types. One day they answered the door when somebody jangled the doorbell.

Two guys were out on the front stoop. They shoved their way into the house, grabbed my friends, tied them up, dragged them upstairs, and threw them into a bathtub. There the two resided, in terror, while the home invaders ransacked their house.

Eventually the thugs exited and my friends managed to work themselves free of their bonds.

Not surprisingly, said friends promptly sold that house and moved as far away as they could get while still remaining in the Valley.

And THAT is why I think I should follow them out of these parts.

Yeah. I mentioned that thought to a cop who was working the crime scene that day. And he said, “Don’t do that! We come to these things all the time: almost every day, all over the Valley. You can’t move away from it.”

Jayzuz!

Well, I figure he should know what he’s talking about, and so I did follow his advice and stayed put.

Still: it gives me the willies.

What a critter the human is! What a society we live in!

Speaking of the which: here we have R-O-O-O-O-A-R! ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!! 

Cop helicopter blasts in. Takes up his position over the neighborhood just to the north of us. And charges back and forth, forth and back, back and forth…roar roar roar! 

Get up. Close and double-lock all the doors.

keeerap! Am I tired of this!!!!! 

Trouble is…like the cop said: You can’t get away from it. 

Hah! I’m IN!!!

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Click on “Firefox” to open Funny about Money, and get an aggravating pop-up: “Choose a Firefox profile to log in.”

I don’t WANT a Firefox profile, goddammit!!!!!  I just want to get into my silly little blog!

Arrrrrrrggggghhhh!  Life in the 21st Century: one goddamn aggravation after another!

Oh, well. For reasons unknown, the system has let me in. We’ll soon see whether it’ll let me load a post to FaM.

I wonder if life in, say, the 1960s seemed as aggravating to my parents, who came to majority in the 1930s and ’40s. Can’t remember them grousing ALL the time about this modern inconvenience and that unnecessary hassle. But…hmmm… Surely, it must have seemed just as alien to them as the accursed 2020s seem to me.

{sigh} I don’t recall my mother grousing as much as I do about this hassle and that headache. But come to think of it, she did encounter hassles and headaches incident upon modernization.

Another Day, Another Jab in the Hip…

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LOL! The spavined hip remains…spavined! Well…actually, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It does still hurt. As in HURT. But…nowhere as much as it hurt yesterday.  The pain does seem to be going down a little.

My guess is (Doctor Hay Speaks!) that the worst of the pain will be gone after about another three days.

Just now, it’s a whisper on the nerve-wracking side. Horribly light-headed! Feel like I just might faint.

Why, I can’t imagine: it doesn’t hurt THAT much. But weirdly, somehow I’m dizzy and my heart is pounding and it does indeed feel like I could pass out.

Why I would feel like my head is about to float off into orbit: that escapes me. Haven’t had so much as a sip of booze all day: no wine, no whiskey, no nothin’ in that line.

Soooo….what’s with the crazy light-headedness? Seriously: it doesn’t feel like anything near enough pain to make me pass out. Hmmm…pulse seems to be pounding a bit fast…why??? Ears whistling….woooooooooooooooo!

Probably ought to repair to the ER. But my poor son has been SO HARASSED with this stupid stuff, I do hate to call him and ask him to deal with some new episode.

Should I walk up to the ER? Doubt if I can get that far, on foot and alone.

Hmmmm….  Let’s try reclining on the sofa…phone in hand. Assuming I can get that far….

WHOA!!!

Google “Can ibuprofen cause vertigo,” and here’s what you get:

Yes, ibuprofen can cause vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness, though it is not a common side effect for everyone. As an NSAID, it can sometimes cause ototoxicity (damage to ear structures) or restrict blood flow to the inner ear, leading to vertigo, dizziness, and tinnitus.

LUUUUVLEEEEE!

Dammit!  I’ve been gulping ibuprofen for…what? the past three days? Hell, longer than that! The past FIVE days.

Wouldn’cha know?:

Honestly, I seem to be growing more and more sensitive to over-the-counter nostrums. This is the first time I’ve enjoyed what appears to be a reaction to ibuprofen. But…hmm…on the other hand, I wouldn’t normally dose myself with it for several days in a row.

So?????  Does that have anything even resembling significance?

Possibly: I may simply have OD’ed on the stuff.

……

hmmmmm….

Ear whistling seems to be backing off a bit. Both ears feel weirdly congested, but the loud WHEEEEEE is slowly fading.

What to do, what to do? If anything….

Hanging on for another few minutes: off to pass the idle time on the beloved Internet….

……

Next Google: Can Ibuprofen cause tinnitus?

Yes, ibuprofen, as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), can cause or worsen tinnitus (ringing in the ears), particularly with high-dose or long-term, daily usage

. This side effect is often temporary and reversible once the medication is stopped, as it often results from decreased blood flow to the cochlea.

Uh HUH! Wouldn’t you fukkin KNOW?!

……

Hmmmmmm….   What to do here?

What to do what to do….  Well…  As we sit here fussing, the ear howling is slacking off. It’ ain’t gone….that’s for sure. BUT…neither is it still wailing like an air-raid siren. Hmmm….

Welll…..it doesn’t look like this is gonna be fatal. (Hey! if it DOES kill me, at least the ear-wailing will go away!)

So I think it probably will be safe to wait another half-hour to sixty minutes, just to see what happens. If the wailing continues to fade, then I’ll just let it go…and never, EVER swallow another ibuprofen pill.

If the ears are still howling after a half-hour…then what? Guess I’ll just walk up to the local ER and see what they have to say about it.

Goody. 😮

A-r-r-g-h! Not to say OUCH!!!

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Wow! That really hurts!!! What exactly I did to bring this on escapes me: but just now, the right hip is SO SPAVINED I can barely hobble across a room.

Don’t recall doing anything to create any damage. So I imagine I must have slept crooked, and in doing so, sprained something in the groin area. WhatEVER: it does hurt colorfully.

Very tired of the never a dull moment phenomenon. Have you noticed that? All the damnfool things happen in a row: one headache after another after another…. That’s how things have gone hereabouts, over the past couple of days.

And now I’m so crippled I can barely hobble across the room.

What I oughta do is go back to bed. But…it hurts too much to limp to the back room where I can check the calendar, to see what I’m supposed to be doing today — other than loafing.

I have the worst feeling I’m supposed to traipse to the Mayo Clinic, on the far side of the galaxy. Ugh! How can I count the ways I don’t wanna?

If that’s the case — the traipsing, not the counting — my son will show up here shortly, all primed to drag me across the city.

And how CAN I count the ways that I am all doctored out? How happy would I be never to see another doctor again??? 

***

Welp! It’s quarter to noon. No kid. Hot diggety! That has GOT to mean the Mayo Clinic premonition was more like a hallucination. Surely do hope so.

Jet warplanes are zooming back and forth over the city’s northerly precincts: ZOOM ZOOM ROAR ZOOM!  What. A. Racket!!

When my parents lived in Sun City, a few miles to the east of Luke Air Force Base, my mother used to love to sit on her back patio, sip coffee, and listen to the early-morning commotion from those damn planes.

LOL! I remember remarking to her, one morning, how much I hated swilling coffee to that symphony. She corrected my socialistic error: “That’s the sound of Freedom,” quoth she.

Quoth I: Uhm…nooo, Mother. That’s the sound of World War III, comin’ your way. 

Never seemed to register with her.

Ohhhhh well….

And the Beat(ing) Goes On…

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The news is full of anguished reports about the disappearance of a woman from her home outside of Tucson. The cops don’t seem to be tracking any credible leads: every report we’ve seen in the news has described yet another dead end.

This, my friends, is why you have a German shepherd. Or a doberman pinscher. And a working pistol. And a phone in your pocket.

Honestly. What a society we live in. Yesterday as Ruby and I strolled around the park, we passed the former home of some neighbors who enjoyed a fine home invasion several years ago. The perps rang the doorbell; then barged in when the residents opened the door. The homeowners were bound up and thrown in an upstairs bathtub, there to wait until their home was searched and any place that might hold valuables was tossed.

As I recall, it took the victims a couple hours to work their way out of their bonds and call the police. By then, the perps were long gone. Never have been caught.

And what am I doing as we converse here on our computer? Yeah: sitting in an easy chair with the back door wide open, so Ruby can stroll in and out as she pleases.

At least I should get her a doggy roommate: one that weighs around 90 pounds. But…I just don’t feel like dealing with a big powerhouse of a beast like a Ger-shep.

Seriously, though: every time I walk past that house I do think I should sell out and move to some other, stodgier part of the city. But where? 

Truth to tell, no place is any safer.

And I think that’s probably true of just about every corner of our country. The criminal set is everywhere: in Upper Richistan, in the center of your city, out in the country…you name it and there’s another bad guy.

After the Great Home Invasion, I remarked to one of the cops in attendance that I thought maybe I should move to some other part of town.

“Don’t bother,” said he. “This kind of stuff goes on everywhere. We get called for these things all the time, and it’s the same all over the Valley.”  Message being: you can’t get away from the Bad Guys and you can’t get away from their Depredations.

{sigh} Really, though, I probably ought to have a German shepherd or a Doberman, rather than a cute little, adorable little, harmless little pint-sized corgi. My mother and I had a dobe…and I’ve surely had my share of GerSheps.

It’s just that I don’t wanna. Dammit! I’ve put in my time training and wrangling 90-pound dogs. Enough is e-freaking-nough!

My mother used to have a gun at hand, there in the sweet little, conservative little, bourgeois little house in Sun City. No kidding: she’d take it out and set it on the nightstand each time she went to bed.

Can you imagine being SO SCARED that you have to have a pistol next to your bed?

On the one hand, that fear seems so exaggerated as to be neurotic. But on the other…so many things happen around here that you come to sense it’s no exaggeration…

****

Oh Hell. Here’s my son, to drag me off to the damn Mayo.

And he’s having 15 shit-fits…JAYZUZ! 

Now I see why my father locked himself up in an old-folkerie after my mother died. If I’d spoken to him (or didn’t speak at all) the way my kid does to me, I’d go into hiding, too. Maybe I need to do the same. Or…move out of the city.

But…where?

* Back to Long Beach? 

Too damn smoggy.

* Santa Barbara?

Too expensive. No longer know anyone there.

* Tucson?

That has its appeals, but…it’s too cold in the winter. And I no longer know anyone there, either.

Sooo….guess I’ll be staying put for the duration. One begins to hope that won’t endure too damn long….

Scared in Your Living Room…

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door!  

Ruby and I are loafing in the family room…while the kitchen door hangs open.

And while the news is full of reports about the guy who walked in a woman’s door as she was enjoying the beautiful weather around her house, out in a tony suburb…. LUV-leeee!

We live in an upper-middle-class slab of north central Phoenix, where you ought to feel safe and smug and snug. But truth to tell, it’s NOT safe. No part of the Valley of the Sun is safe. Wherever you are, you run a risk of some sh!thead breaking into your home or your car and coming after you.

This, of course, is why we have big dogs and guns.

But y’know…. Doesn’t it strike you that you shouldn’t have to be armed to the teeth to be safe in your own home? You shouldn’t have to board and feed a four-legged alarm system?

Gosh, but I’m tired of this.

Don’t know what can be done about it, other than sealing my house and yard inside an impermeable plastic dome.

But y’know…I don’t recall feeling antsy like this all the time when I was a kid and a teenager. My mother was scared — but she had good reason, having enjoyed the unwelcome attention of some guy who found her alone out on her grandparents’ upstate New York farm. But I’ve never had any such misadventure. So why am I…scared? 

Ohhhh well…

Make

My 

Day!